Archives for January 2008

Well, my not-so-broadband that I got has been turning out not too bad, and I have found out that I’m actually just on the sneaking edges of the broadband area. This is quite promising and exciting, cuz there are SOME occasions when I switch into the 3G broadband zone. I found this out cuz my USB modem has a light that goes different colours……….green for the slow GSM network, blue for the 3G network and cyan for another network I can’t remember the name, but it’s as fast as 3G.

Sometimes, the modem flashes blue or cyan, but it usually doesn’t stay there long 🙁

Last night I got really lucky though! I was catching up for one of my regular skype chats with Alexander, and my modem went BLUE for quite a long time. The connection was AWESOME, and we were able to hear each other as clearly as if it was on the phone. Usually we manage on the slower speeds, but this was so much better, and I could even browse some pages while talking to him! Alexander did think it was a bit amusing whenever I was excited over blue, lol. Easy for him to say from his nice stable cable connection…….grrrr.

I’m going to contact Optus tomorrow about their other bigger modem. I want to get one of those aswell so that I can share my connection between PC’s, but also on top of that I have this secret hope that it might have a better antenna. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough that it can pick up the 3G signal more consistently?

I’ve had lots of people asking questions about the situation with Alexander and I, who is moving where, I’ve said I couldn’t live in The Netherlands just yet, then after coming home I wrote here saying that I’d do anything to be back with him right now. But just in the last week Alexander and I have been in virtually daily contact with each other and we have some new news which have changed our plans slightly……….and for the better!

The current situation of Alexander trying to migrate to Australia is under a lot of pressure, due to the timeframe of my birth (mid May). We have been investigating every option possible and in the end all of them make it hard with the short timeframe and also require lots of money. Of course, this wouldn’t deter us, but still, it was scary for me in particular, because despite the fact that Alexander would be at the birth at all costs, I couldn’t bare for him to have to go back if it came to that.

The good news that we received this week, is that with his job, Alexander is entitled to 10 weeks off for paternity leave. So, we have now decided that 10 weeks is enough time for him to come for the birth, spend time with me and the baby and then the 3 of us go back to The Netherlands while we continue working through the immigration process.

This option has the added benefit of having more time to migrate and so maybe it’ll cost less and Alexander will also have my help to sort out his apartment and equipment and stuff. It’s a great opportunity for his family to also spend some time with our baby before making the move permanent and I also like the idea of spending some time in The Netherlands without the pressure of it being permanent. Besides, I might be lucky enough to have 18 months of summer in a row! 😀

I’m also excited about the fact that Euromad 3 is being planned for around October which means for the first time I will probably have the opportunity to make it to this UK event with forum members.

There are a few things that scare me of course, but they are minor. At the moment being pregnant I have gone through mixed emotions, and I have felt a little like I have no career etc, and I’ve lost lots of opportunities. But I think it’s nothing that every pregnant woman doesn’t go through. But with going to The Netherlands it means I’ll have to give up my classes, which at the moment feels like it’s the last thing in my life I have left right now. So I have shed a couple of tears over this, but I’m over it now and I know I can always pick it up again later, although I’ll have to work again at picking up classes.

The positives though outweight these negatives. I hope to maybe pick up teaching some classes while in The Netherlands. Maybe I can introduce the concept of Personal Training over there, since they don’t really have it? Although I’m sure I’ll probably have my hands full with raising a baby, and to be honest I’m starting to like the idea of being home for the baby, since I really don’t want to have a “childcare” baby.

Lots of the future is unknown, but I know I’ll be with Alexander and I’ll be back 😉

Now I just have to find a dutch course so I can start learning before I get there!

Well, with all the changes in my life at the moment I haven’t yet figured out what to do with my horses yet. I have 2 horses, Kira, who is a beautiful Irish Sport Horse which I bred and I’m hoping I can keep and Scooter who is an unbroken 3 yo gelding. I bred Scooter aswell, but he has turned out to be quite small for me, so I’d like to sell him, but with all the droughts and the expensive feed now it’s difficult to sell horses.

However, two days ago on Wednesday when I went out to feed them Kira was limping quite bad, bad enough that she could hardly walk. It took me by surprise, because although it’s the first time Kira and Scooter have been in the same paddock together (cuz Scooter was only just gelded 6 weeks ago) they have been pretty much ok together. I was dismayed to see her limping so bad. I couldn’t see any blemishes or swelling on her, so not sure if she’d injured a tendon or something, I put her in the stable, hosed her leg for 10 mins and then put a support bandage on her leg.

The next morning she was possibly slightly better. Still no swelling although possible sign of a tiny amount of swelling high up just underneath the knee. But it was so marginal that I could have been just imagining it. I thought I’d keep an eye on her and left her in the round yard over night so she could pick on the grass and see how she was the next morning.

So this morning she was definitely bad and absolutely no improvement, but now her tendon was swollen aswell to my dismay. In horses, tendon injuries seriously devalues a horse (and Kira is much more valuable than Scooter) and possibly affects their performance career permanently. It’s a bit like a football playing snapping an achilles tendon…….out for a long time, lots of recovery and possibly never quite the same again. Tendon injuries are quite common in horses, and having a horse without tendon damage is a requirement in any performance horse. I had always had a future planned out for Kira as an excellent eventing horse and so I was devasted when I saw the swelling on her leg this morning!

So I called the vet out, because I’d probably need some bute (anti-inflammatories) and needed to be sure that it was her tendon we were dealing with. She was so badly lame that I wasn’t sure if maybe there was a fracture, although that seemed unlikely. The vet came out, took one look at her, examined her tendon and then looked at me and said “did you have any plans to do anything with her the next 12 months?” So, that looked like it was confirming my worst fears. I asked her if we could check the extent of the damage to see if it was indeed a bad tear.

She had to go get her ultrasound unit and then she returned to do the scan. This is when things got puzzling. She carefully checked and rechecked and couldn’t find any tears in the tendon. So now we started to think maybe it was just a strain and this is awesome news since the recovery would be much shorter! So basically the treatment would be ice/water therapy (hosing), bute (anti-inflammatories) and support bandages. It was confusing though cuz the amount of pain she was in didn’t seem consistent with the injury.

But then, while we were standing discussing her and looking at her the vet suddenly said spontaneously “you know what? let’s check her feet”. So she got her pincers and used them on the soles of her feet to detect any soreness to which she got an immediate pain reaction from Kira! Ok, so now that changes things a bit meaning she could just have an abcess. So a litle bit of cutting out some pus revealed an abcess………the vet treated it, put on a poultice and so yay, we’re onto something!

So, to explain, abcesses in a horses hoof are excruitiatingly painful, because the hoof wall cannot expand to allow for swelling. This explains why she was so lame on that leg. We have no idea if there may also be a minor tendon strain aswell, so we have to wait a few days for the abcess to heal first to then see how the tendon is going as we have no idea whether the swelling is being caused by the abcess or not. So the plan is to still treat the tendon as if there is a strain.

So after all these fears I’m so happy that she has an abcess! I can’t believe I didn’t even think of it as an option. The thing is an abcess is so easily treatable and she could be ridden next week, as opposed to being out for 12 months and permanently affecting her for life. It’s kinda like to a football player, the difference between snapping an achilles vs getting a bruised foot! So this news came as a HUGE relief.

Well, I’ve got myself a little present to replace the horrible dialup I’ve been stuck on for so long. Over the last 4 years I’ve continually researched options for broadband and there was no way I could get it, and the few options (like satellite) were too outrageously expensive to consider.

But now finally an option has become available with Optus, for $39.95 a month (if you already have a phone with them) you can get wireless broadband with 5G download using the 3G and GSM network. Seemed to good to be true! The other mobile phone carriers that I’d previously researched didn’t have coverage out where I live, except Telstra and they’re very expensive.

So yesterday I signed up for it, since it’ll end up being cheaper than the cost of my dialup and extra landline combined. However, it hasn’t turned out to be quite as exciting as I expected. Unfortunately I didn’t research the difference between 3G and GSM and there’s significantly different speeds between the 2. 3G is quite fast broadband speeds, however the GSM network is much slower, only a little bit quicker than dialup.

So, needless to say my house is stuck in the GSM network. But I have to say it IS faster than my old dialup and at least I can take the USB modem anywhere. I can actually use it as a portable modem on my laptop, so that’s pretty cool. Even travelling on the train or something. Maybe when I’m teaching a class at Zest (that’ll be in the 3G area) I’ll go out and do some work on my websites from a park or something, lol.

So I’m really happy and disappointed at the same time. I haven’t actually lost out, but I’m just frustrated that I can’t get the super fast speeds from where I live. At least the house is for sale anyway, so maybe I won’t have the problem for much longer!

A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about whether I could move to The Netherlands to live there with Alexander. At the time I wrote that from The Netherlands and said although I liked it and maybe I could in the future, but not yet, I wasn’t ready for that yet.

But now I’m back home and missing Alex I’ve changed my mind. I guess I needed to come home first to discover this, but I’ve realised now I’d do absolutely anything to be with Alex…….even right now, I would like to book a flight straight back to The Netherlands to be with him. Adelaide just doesn’t feel worth it without him and feel pretty empty and lost.

At the moment I’m still a bit jetlagged and I guess unmotivated aswell, and I’m spending too much of my time clicking “Send and Receive” to see if I’ve received an email from Alex. It probably sounds crazy, but that’s just the way it is and it’s how I feel.

That puts me in an odd situation, cuz it’ll be at least a couple of months before Alex could get here and I despair at the thought of waiting that long. I’d love to just turn around and go back, but in reality it’s not that possible. There’s a house to sell, horses to organise, dogs, a cat, obstetrician appointments (these have already been booked for the year) plus my hospital admission for when I give birth. Then there’s the financial side of it and leaving all my friends. Sometimes I ask myself whether it’s just me myself putting these barriers in the way cuz I’m scared. I feel desperate enough to give all this up for him, and more……..but on the other hand it just doesn’t seem possible. Even though I’d hate having a baby in a foreign country part of me just doesn’t care!

Alex migrating to Australia on the other hand does seem possible, although there’s still the wait. We’re both doing our research at the moment and we’ve promised each other the tentative goal of April……..whether this is possible yet or not remains to be seen, but it’s a starting place. It’s going to be tough for a little while, but not as tough as being without him for 2-3 months. 🙁

Feels like deja vu, here I am again writing from Kuala Lumpar waiting for my flight, this time on my way home to Adelaide.

It was a very emotional farewell to Alexander at the airport. I already miss him to bits, in fact, I started missing him about a week before I left. But at the airport I actually cried. Usually when I have to say goodbye to someone I usually clam up and don’t get emotional. My way of dealing with it  I guess. But this time was different, and I found it almost impossible to walk away from him. I just cried and said to him “I can’t walk away from you!”

I feel like my life at the moment is part of a novel. I always figured we’d get married, since we have already committed ourselves to each other. But what I didn’t expect was Alexander to propose to me before I left! It’s impossible to explain my happiness and surprise at Alex asking me to marry him on my last day in The Netherlands. Hopefully we will get a chance to tell most of our friends and family before they read this, although I know a few of my friends have already messaged me about our new “Facebook” status. 😉

It’s usually difficult for me to openly show emotions, but when it comes to Alex I have to say that he has changed my life and made me very happy. He is absolutely wonderful to me and we learn more about each other every day we are together. He has shown me how beautiful love really can be.

Hopefully soon he will be here in Australia, the 3 of us amongst all our aussie friends. I know that there are quite a few people looking forward to Alexander coming to Oz, but none as much as I am. 😀

Today (9th January) is officially Alexander’s birthday and I went out shopping so that I could do something special for him.

So I followed a map Alexander made for me to a supermarket. It wasn’t the easiest map to follow, since it didn’t have the small streets named, but I somehow figured out that the line I was meant to follow was a bike path, and it looked in the general direction of which I was going. I blindly followed this strange path between houses, thinking there was no way in hell I was going to find it! To my surprise, I reached the end of the path to a little road and I could see a small supermarket not far away, yay!

My plan was to withdraw money, buy some groceries and I was going to try to make a lasange and also buy some items that are good for Alexander’s lunch to pack into a laptop bag, since Alexander doesn’t look after himself when it comes to food. After this I was going to consider going into Apeldoorn again or at least find somewhere I might be able to buy him something nice.

However, those plans all came to an end when I used the ATM outside the supermarket. It told me that it couldn’t give me the cash and it kept my card!!!! I freaked out and not really knowing what to do I went into the supermarket and asked someone there. They gave me directions to the nearest bank and so I rode the bike there. I explained what happened and they informed me that that ATM is managed by contractors and they come and collect the cards and destroy them and there’s nothing I can do about it!

So I now I had no credit card and no money. It’s not the end of the world, since Alex can help me, but I’m just really disappointed I couldn’t do anything for him today and being hormonal it upset me quite a lot! So feeling quite dejected I rode the bike home and looked online for info on my bank. Since I’m going home Sunday there’s no way a credit card could be issued to me in time, but it turns out that my bank doesn’t replace credit cards overseas anyhow. 🙁

So I waited till Alexander got home. He was pretty tired from our late night and couldn’t believe I’d lost my credit card aswell……so we were both feeling pretty down. He promised me he’d withdraw money for me and we also decided to go out for a special dinner.

So first, we did a quick stop at the supermarket to buy some of the things I was going to try and buy that afternoon. While we were getting our purses, wallets, bags etc to go to the supermarket, I opened my purse and found my credit card safely in my purse!!!!

I feel so stupidly hormonal and pregnant. I have no idea what I’ve done, but my credit card is indeed in my purse. What the hell???!!!

So anyway, this time I DID withdraw cash, from the same ATM. I was so scared to use it, since I was convinced it would take my card, lol. Rational thinking could not stop me from wanting to use a different ATM.

Finally we went out to dinner to a nice Wok Restaurant, a bit like the one we went to with Ben and his family. It was a really nice evening and I ate way too much food, after which when we came home I gave Alex a massage a bit similar to a sports massage to help his sore muscles from pump (we were both a bit achy from the class, although I expect day 2 might be worse).

So what started out a not so nice birthday for Alexander turned out to be a beautiful evening. 😉

Since Alex is at work during the days at the moment, I did a brave thing and tried riding the bike into the city this afternoon. It was a bit scary, trying to remember the “road” and bike rules and stay on the right hand side all the time. The bike lanes are mainly pretty safe anyway, but I just forget when I have to stop and give way, cuz most of the time here the cars have to give way to the bikes. I’m not used to that and I stop all the time, lol.

Incredibly, I found my way and remembered from the few times we’d been before. At one point it did become a bit fuzzy to me which way to go as I got nearer to the city, so I just followed all the other bikes. So I spent a few house walking around and discovered that there were a handful of stores that take visa (they have the sticker displayed on the doors), but there was also a lot of stores that didn’t.

Even better, after all that I actually found my way home again……yay!

One thing I’ve forgotten to mention so far, is that I’ve now driven Alex’s car a few times since I’ve been here. I even drove Vicki, Robert and Alex home the night we went out for dinner.

I have to say it takes a LOT of concentration to give way to the other side of the road. Actually driving on the right side is easy to get used to, but giving way, roundabouts, indicating (I keep putting the window wipers on), changing gears with the left hand and turning left onto the right hand side at traffic lights is incredibly hard! It takes a lot of concentration, and just by instinct I still have to look the other way aswell when giving way (which probably isn’t a bad thing anyway).

Anyway, it’s a bit of fun, and I’ve only driven on local streets and not for very far. I wouldn’t ever attempt going on the freeway, that’s just too scary.

Last night Alex and I went out to dinner to a restaurant. It’s actually the first time we’ve eaten out with just the 2 of us. It ended up being a later night than we should have, since Alex has his first day back at work today and poor Alex got very little sleep. So now I have a day to catch up while he has a day of solving problems at work without much sleep.

I’m starting to feel anxious about going home. I’m looking forward to seeing “home” again, but on the other hand I don’t want to leave Alex. It’s been amazing spending this time here and being part of his life, even if for just a few weeks and I just keep falling more in love with him each day.

I’ve often thought about whether I could live here permanently and I’ve been asked the question aswell. My answer is “I don’t know”. I know without a doubt that I want to be the rest of my life with Alex, and I think really I’d do just about anything for him. But for now I’m glad that he’s willing to come to Australia (once we get past the immigration issues).

I like The Netherlands, except the cold, and I love the food. But I do know that I’m certainly not ready to move at this point in time. Maybe it’s cuz I feel vulnerable at the moment being pregnant. I think my 2 biggest barriers are the cold and the language (and the right hand side of the road).  Sometimes it just gets really mentally tiring trying to decipher signs in dutch and it makes me feel incompetant sometimes that I’m not able to communicate with some people.

So for those who have been wondering about how I’d feel about moving here, all I can say is not yet………….and maybe…….who knows what the future holds. In the end as long as I’m with Alex that’s the thing that matters most to me. 😉