Thursday, May 14, 2009

New Job, New Home

Where have you been? What are you doing? how's life? ... well, I've been asked a lot about those questions recently, I know it's been a while since last time I updated my blog. Life goes by faster since I'm off CAS. I can't believe it's been almost 4 months. Here I am for a little update.

I officially moved to Canada by the end of January with some concern and uncertainty about the future, but it soon turned out to be a right choice and for the first time I get to know how sweet life could be in the following 3 months. Immediately before I started the new role in the new city, I made a trip to see my old hometown. Within 2 weeks, my footprint crossed 6 cities, lots of travel ,lots of ridiculously delicious food, and of course, lots of fun. I felt what is called "Culture Shock" when I was on limo from Toronto airport to home after the trip, and I was confused and wondering what's the difference between "developing countries" and "developed countries". I was also inspired during the trip by a book called "The Phoenix Process", which again make me realize how lucky I am. Yes, life is wonderful.

I guess there's no easy start for any type of job. I have a big team which brings a lot bigger responsibility comparing to my last job, on which I only need to be responsible for myself. I feel motivated on my new role, even though I have to drive 65km (about 40 miles) each way to/from work and pay 20 bucks a day for toll and gas. We made a quick wise decision right after I started the job - to sell our still-quite-new townhouse and buy a new property close to work.

We acted immediately as we decided, 2 weekends in row, we stayed at home putting our home in good shape preparing for open house. Surprisingly our townhouse got sold through private sale even before it's listed on the market. A friend's friend came to visit and placed an offer right after the visit. It's exciting and sad, exciting for saving realtor's commission (5% is big saving) and sad that we can no longer call it home soon, considering I'm only here for just 4 months since we bought it. But the bright side, we are going to get a bigger and better home close to work and close to downtown.

The third weekend, we started looking for a new house, after seeing about 15 houses during the weekend, we found our future home. Yes, we signed the contract and bought ourselves a new home 2 days after......"you guys are crazy, buying a house is like doing grocery, wow..." my new co-worker commented on my quick movement. Yey, June 30 is the closing day. No more commuting. I'm looking forward to it.