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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    21 posts tagged Job

    Two years in Tasmania

    Two years ago in early February I arrived in Tasmania. I had been planning to stay for a couple of weeks and now I am starting into my third year, so far with no plans for leaving. A lot has happend during the last year, exciting things, disappointing things, adventures and travels. Here’s a short recapitulation of 2009 with an outlook on what’s planned for this year.

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    My new website

    Some time ago I mentioned I was working on a portfolio website. As a developer it’s good to have a portfolio site where you can show what you’ve worked on and what you’re capable of. And I also wanted to have a place where I can blog about tech stuff, since as a developer you discover all sorts of interesting stuff every day, you use the latest technology and you develop solutions that others might find useful too. If I post that here you would be annoyed, cross-topic ‘this-is-my-opinion’ blogs suck.

    So here it is. From now on this will serve as my place to introduce projects and publish all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with traveling or life in Australia. And there will be a lot of exciting stuff in the coming weeks.

    The second winter in Tasmania

    There’s not much activity here at the moment. It’s winter in Tasmania and I don’t feel like doing a lot of outdoor activities while it’s cold out there. I’m a summer guy and at the moment I’m simply focusing on working and see how things develop.

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    About retrospection, fubar companies and flash-hiking

    There’s quite a lot to tell. The last few weeks were probably the most crazy ones I had since I based myself here. Hopefully you don’t mind that I put this all into one big post.

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    Visa application lodged!

    Wow, after more than six months of preparations, I finally lodged my visa application today. Incredible how much work was necessary to get to this point, I can understand everyone who simply hires a migration agent to do all the work. When I started to think about applying for a new visa in Australia I was thinking about a second Working Holiday Visa first and it took me countless hours to read all the documentation, information, conditions etc. to figure out if I am eligible for a real skilled working visa and which one I need.

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    Breakfast in Salamanca

    I love to have breakfast in Salamanca, a lovely part of Hobart famous for it’s weekly market, art galleries and lots of nice restaurants and cafes. I especially like the banana bread at ZUM’s at Salamanca Place.

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    Change is coming

    Not only to the United States, to this website as well! Since August I’ve been working on a complete rework of this blog and a launch this weekend seems possible. I made huge progress in the last 3 weeks and the changes will be massive. You can look forward to a new design and new functionality, some parts like the picture gallery will get a complete rework. The new website will allow me to post more pictures, posting will be easier for me especially from my iPhone (the current design has some limitations), so you can expect a lot more posts with a lot more pictures, simply because it will be less complicated and thus more fun to me. I also plan to buy a new camera soon and bought a wonderful book titled ‘100 walks in Tasmania’ today. I hope I can do as many of these walks as possible, but I don’t want to head off without a proper camera, I need to get a new one this month, definitly.

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    If you can read this…

    …then my DSL connection is working. On Monday I signed up, on Friday it’s working. Only 4 days!!! Deutsche Telekom you can k*** m* a**. When my mum signed up for a DSL connection back in Germany about 1 year ago, it took 2 months (!!) to process the application and to get it running, even though all the infrastructure was already available.

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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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