Now what is it like to migrate to Australia?   I was already 36 when I migrated to Australia.   It was a very daring move, especially since I lived with my parents almost all my life before that.   My brother Onie had migrated to Sydney in 1982 and we all thought that was daring.   He applied while still single, working for an international company in Makati, Metro Manila.   When he got his interview, he had just gotten married to his wife, Gina and also they had to apply as a family and when they were granted their visa, they just had a baby girl, Krisan so they were off to Sydney with a 4 month-old baby.   Onie sponsored my application and I applied in 1986 and left in December 1987.   My office then was undergoing reorganization then and so I applied to be phased out.

It was scarey, and job hunting was a humbling experience.   Getting all those rejection letters through almost 8 months without a job can really be depressing. I finally accepted a job at a law book company as a Collating Clerk.   So what does a collating clerk do?   Law Books are in a 3 ring binder form and the changed pages had to be replaced with the new ones.   Not a very exciting job but my boss Jim then was grooming me to be his assistant when the section becomes independent with it's small printing/copying machine (all then in the pipeline when I accepted the job).   Anyway, I kept applying and a government department dealing with vocational education offered me a job with their then educational network arm as a computer systems officer.   We installed computer rooms, tested software, answered queries from users, provided support to teachers and college computer coordinators.   I did travel around New South Wales and went to places like Albury, Goulburn, Tamworth and Dubbo.

I have travelled a bit in Australia, as far as Perth in Western Australia, and as far south as Melbourne in Victoria and as far north as the Gold Coast in Queensland.   I would like to go and visit Tasmania, the Northern Territory, Central Australia, and South Australia.

Best viewed with and