A Visit to Adelaide part 1

It was a refreshing and exciting to visit to Adelaide "the capital city of South Australia". For one, I had a good break from a straight 4 months work. Second, I was able to meet up with my cousins there and thirdly, I have seen the beauty and the difference of Adelaide and Melbourne City. Adelaide is 716 km away from Melbourne.

One of the differences that my wife and I had observed is that Adelaide City is very simple. Adelaide is quite easy to tour around in. It's relatively easy to drive in Adelaide. Apart from the fact that we're using satnav (GPS) when we stroll around, Adelaide City is not congested after all. The streets and road signs are very visible. The streets are very well structured that it wouldn't confuse a first time visitor.

Since the road is not too congested, going from$ one place to another within the metro is not troublesome. There's also ample and big shopping centres to go to. You can go to Westfield Marion, Westfield Tea Tree Plaza , Westlakes shopping Centre and Harbour Town where you can buy some signatured clothing at bargain prices.

Adelaide offers good sight seeing spots as well. There is Glenelg bayview which is comparable to Melbourne's docklands where you can find yachts and nice restaurants along with it. The weather is also good. Considering its warmer there than Melbourne in an average of 4 degrees which is good on winter but terrible during summer. There are also fast food centres that we can normally go to like Hungry Jacks, KFC, Subway and Mcdonalds. But, what Adelaide still don't have is Krispy Kreme Donuts. We had to buy 4 boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts inside the Tullamarine Airport the night before we left for our Adelaide trip.

There were also plenty of banks and ATM Machines for NAB, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Westpac etc... You can also find Bunnings Warehouse for your hardware needs, Mitre10, Radio Rentals and Cashconverters to name a few. Car dealers are relatively easy to see. Just a quick stroll to the city, you can find all the car showrooms from Holden, Toyota to BMW and Porsche. In short, Adelaide is a very livable place in Australia. For a migrant who wants simplicity, peacefulness, and cleaner environment, Adelaide I would say is not a bad choice after all. I myself, fell in love with the City of Adelaide.

Useful basic skills to bring to Australia

When you migrate to Australia you will notice that the cost of services are relatively high. Services like haircut, car repairs and maintenance, plumbing and even small electical works. That is why, I would strongly suggest for you to at least have some basic knowledge if not skilled on these aspects for below reasons.

1. Auto / Car maintenance and trouble shooting. If you bought a second hand car as most of the migrants do during the settlement stage, it will be very handy to have some basic skills in car maintenance and trouble shooting. You should plan when to have your car serviced for preventive maintenance. You shouls at least have a know how on certain parts like fanbelt, top and bottom radiator hose and basic stuffs in service like spark plugs, oils, filters etc...Knowing the basics can save you some amount as getting someone to do these for you will definitely cost you 40 AUD per service at a minimum.

2. Haircut. Having your hair cut will cost between AUD 9 to 25 for men and AUD 15 to 30 for women. If you know the basic in cutting hair, it would save you about AUD 25 to 50 a month. You can invest in a haircut kit for AUD 30 in Kmart and off you go.

3. Driving. If you've been driving for quite sometime, then i congratulate you. That means half of the battle is done, you just only have to adjust for the right hand drive car and the rules in driving in Australia. Hiring a driving instructor in Australia cost about AUD 30 to 45 / hour. The cost include the use of their car and petrol together. If you're driving quite long enough, 2 to 4 hour driving sessions would be sufficient to get you through getting your driver's license.

5. Computer trouble shooting. You may also earn from this like what my cousin does. He earns AUD 30 to 50 per service or repair. If you don't have the time to do this, at least you save the amount by doing it on your own with your computer and not having to get the service of someone to do it for you and pay for it.

These is are the basic ones that I could think of based on what appears to be very vital in Australian living. Definitely once adjusted, we can all afford to pay for the services but what we are after is the savings that it could make doing it on our own. In this way, we can spend the money to some other important things to attend to.