It’s been a while since I last posted here. I guess I’ve just been too busy barbecuing, going to the beach and the pubs here in Sydney. 
Although most of you will know what I’ve been up to (as I regularly post on FB), I still feel it’s about time I update this website. Today is my last day at LivingSocial, where I worked over the last 8 months. As Agnes and I will leave for Tasmania next week, and I’ll start my new job early January, this seems like the right moment to look back at all the things we’ve experienced over the last year.
And that’s quite a lot, I must admit. I would not have predicted this when we left for Australia only 15 months ago.
Early this year I asked Agnes to marry me (luckily she said yes), and we got married in September. We went back to the Netherlands for 3 weeks and had our bachelor parties, our wedding, lots of parties and barbecues and our friend’s wedding. All in 3 weeks. We didn’t plan to go back to The Netherlands so soon, but it was definitely worth it. We had a great time and it was good to hang out with everyone we’d been talking to on Skype in those 12 months before that. The one ‘downside’ to going back to The Netherlands is annual leave. Or the lack thereof. Although would love to go back every year, I’d probably end up using most of my annual leave on that. Which means I can’t use it on going to New Zealand, Western Australa or Uluru. I guess that’s a real ‘First World Problem‘…
The Noosa sunset, our mini-honeymoon
We also moved this year. From Annandale to Redfern. From a little house to a big apartment. From a nice backyard to an amazing view. People that know us from The Netherlands won’t be surprised, as housewarming parties were almost yearly events with us. Although our house in Annandale was lovely, we wanted to live a bit closer to the city, and a bit closer to all the bars and restaurants Sydney has to offer. In that regard, Annandale really doesn’t offer a lot, and Redfern / Surry Hills is one of the best spots in the city. Also, the view is amazing. Really. Amazing. With some of the thunderstorms last week I’d just sit down on our couch and watch the whole thing unfold as if I was watching a movie. Beautiful. We now live right next to Centennial Park and close to Crown Street, and only a 60 minutes walk to my (previous) office in Circular Quay. Until we moved offices this Monday, I often walked to work through the Botanic Gardens. Now we’ve moved across the bridge it’s a bit too far, but the bike ride is still beautiful.
The view from our apartment
Not that I’ll be able to enjoy that for very much longer, as today is my last day at LivingSocial. As I said, a lot of things happened this year, and changing jobs is one of them. When my contract at MediaCom ended I was happy to join LivingSocial as Digital Acquisition Manager. Looking forward to build the digital marketing strategy at a young company in a challenging market, I was excited to get started. Unfortunately, quite early on the job and the company didn’t seem to be what I had expected them to be. A couple of managers, strategy changes and a lot of unexpected / unexplained budget changes later I decided this wasn’t the place for me. Although I did have a lot of fun, and my colleagues were great, I wasn’t able to properly do my job like this, and I didn’t feel that was going to change anytime soon.
Obviously I didn’t expect to leave LivingSocial this soon, I had hoped to stay here longer. I guess you never really know how things play out. I’m happy I made the decision to leave though, as I’d rather change jobs once more to find the right company for me, than stay in a job that I don’t get any satisfaction from.
And now, I’m going back to agency side. I’m starting work at Resolution Media as an Account Director early January. I’ll be working with multiple clients on optimizing their performance marketing across SEM, SEO, display, paid social, affiliate and anything else that comes up. I’m really looking forward to this and have heard great things about Resolution Media as a company. It will be fun working agency side again too, as I enjoyed my time at MediaCom a lot too.
Of course this year wasn’t all about work and our trip to The Netherlands, we made a lot of other trips too 
We went to the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley, Surfers Paradise, Sunshine Coast, Jervis Bay, Batemans Bay and a lot of other places. We had a lot of friends visiting us here, and we made a lot of friends too. On my birthday BBQ (in November, yeah!) we had about 30 people joining us in Centennial Park for some booze and barbie.
I’ve been learning to surf, even bought my own board! (still very much trying though, I still need a lot of practice). It seems that we’ve kind of found our place here in Sydney. My new company is going to help me get my Permanent Residency, so there’s effectively no limit on how long we can stay here. Although I wouldn’t say we’re staying here forever, it definitely feels like we’re not leaving anytime soon.
Who would have thought…?
Greetings from Noosa
