Matt Down Under

Ruby developer, founder of choc media, bushwalker, MacGyver fan and hobby photographer, German citizen and Australian Permanent Resident.

In 2008 I moved from Germany to Australia, the best decision of my life. On this blog you can find stories and photos about hiking in Tasmania and on the mainland, travelling, and life in Australia — my journey from Working Holiday to Permanent Residency.

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    7 posts tagged Apple

    Skill assessment successful!

    Hi guys, today I finally received news from my skill assessment and - like I expected - it’s successful. I’m now officially recognized as a graphics designer in Australia, which is worth 50 points and it makes about 50% of my new visa, depending on the type of visa I will apply for.

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    My own apartment

    Hi, this is the first post from my iPhone. I’m sitting in the kitchen of Central City Backpackers in Hobart and just finished with dinner. That’s right, I’m still staying at a hostel, unfortunately.

    However I found a beautiful apartment in the CBD of Hobart, only two minutes walk from my office. Yesterday I signed the lease but until I can move in, there’s still another three weeks of delay. I’ll try to attach some photos to this post, but if the blog layout gets messed up I won’t be able to fix it until Monday ;-).

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    Finally: iPhone arrived

    Yesterday I finally got my long-awaited iPhone. And it’s a contract phone, goodbye pre-paid! After providing a pile of ID’s and bankaccount statements they let me sign up for a 2-year contract. I didn’t need to pay any upfront cost and only pay around 40 Euro per month, which gives me 1 GB of data and more than $500 of phone/text credit per month. It means every month I can send about 2000 text messages without additional costs ;-). 1 GB data should be enough too, I can use the wireless network in my office 5 days a week, so it will be hard to exceed it. I haven’t discovered all the features yet, but I really like it, well done Apple.

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    Hobart, I’m back!

    Good news everyone! I got a new job in Hobart at an international company that sells tourism products in Australia and Canada. From this week on I am the new Senior Web Developer and responsible for about 15 existing websites, for design, further development, optimisation and the creation of new websites. It’s a full time job with an amazing perspective, they want to keep me as long as possible and even offered me an employer sponsorship to get a permanent resident visa.

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    Six months in Australia

    Six months have passed since I left Germany, time for a small review of my time in Australia so far.

    On 19 January I arrived in Melbourne together with eight friends from all over Germany. We had never met before but we all booked the same travel package and thus had the same flight and hostel. Melbourne was fascinating, there’s nothing that is not available there, but after a few days we faced the difficulty of finding accomodation in Melbourne during a major event like the Australian Open. In the end, we had to move hostels almost every day and our group split up as it was impossible to find accomodation for a group of 9 people.

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    Gadget weeks

    And now for something completely different: when I’m not in the forests I usually spend a lot of time with my MacBook. When people ask me what I’m actually doing I always say “computer work”. To prove that this is true and I’m not just wasting my time on facebook (like many others): check out the new website of my mothers business, I created a new design and included some nice functionality. Hard to believe this is realised with Wordpress once again, but it is becoming a really powerful backend for small websites if you know how to use it.

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    Some news

    I haven’t bought an iPhone yet, because the new 3G version is about to be released in the next couple of weeks, and it will also be officially introduced in Australia as well, so I won’t need to import it from the US anymore. As my plans are to stay in Australia, I’m currently thinking about replacing my prepaid Nokia mobile with a 3G iPhone that comes with a plan (=contract), if it’s not too expensive. I’m spending more and more money on calling people or texting friends, so a plan would probably be the better solution.

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