We are Bernd and Yvo, and we have an alcohol problem. No wait, that was the other night, eh, let me try that again. We are Bernd and Yvo, and we are migrating to Australia. Yes, much better.
Early September 2000 we began our studies to become software engineers at the same school, but, until the first mandatory internship (February 2002), we were hardly aware of each other’s existence. We didn’t know it at that time, but we share a trait that would change this. You see, we are both extremely lazy and even though most of our classmates had secured an internship, we hadn’t. As faith will have it, at the last possible moment the school received a letter from a company offering internships. Three students replied, two were accepted. We were assigned to different projects, but we travelled together from Utrecht to Houten and became MSN buddies.
At the start of the third study year, September 2002, the class was instructed to form teams for a new project. We didn’t team up, because we were in different study groups. Somewhere in November, at 2:30 in the morning, we had a chat over MSN. The project was due the next day and both our teams had abandoned us because they wanted to sleep. That was the moment we decided to work together on all future projects. Projects came and went and as our results improved, so did our friendship.
The final internship, March 2004, we teamed up once again. We sold ourselves as expert C# developers, even though we had no experience with the language, and graduated without too much difficulties.
We ended up working for the same company after obtaining our degree and started doing some spare time software development for our project CodeGazer.
Summer 2004 we figured that it would be fun to spent two weeks in Turkey with a mutual friend. Fun we had, but two weeks just wasn’t enough. So the next year, the two of us went on a four week fly/drive holiday to the west coast of the United States. An east coast city trip / Florida theme park trip was up a year after that. 2007 was the year of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. And Florida, because we had to experience Halloween at the Walt Disney World Resort. Early 2008 we cruised to Antarctica and Fall 2008 we went on a small world trip, during which we visited Australia.
Every good Dutchmen needs to visit Australia at least one in his life, because “je kan niet veel verder reizen, zonder dat je weer terug naar huis gaat” (basically saying that travelling further than Australia means you’re coming closer to home again). It’s just like how Australians need to visit Europe. Bernd’s first visit was in 2001, which led to him starting his visa application process in March 2008. The world trip was Yvo’s first visit and spring 2010 saw him starting his application as well.
Our planned departure date is October 1st 2011. We’ve both quit our jobs and starting August 1st we’ll have a lot of free time on our hands. Of course, when I say ‘a lot of free time’, I actually mean: No free time at all. We will use these two months to prepare for the move and to work on a new (and secret!) software project.
Australia, or rather, Adelaide, differs in time with The Netherlands 7,5 hours during European summer and 9,5 during European winter. This makes phone calls highly impractical and mailing everyone we know on a daily basis, would be way too much work (remember: We’re both lazy). Our solution is what you’re currently looking at: A blog! This blog is for everyone interested in status updates regarding us and our plans.
Bernd de Graaf & Yvo van Beek, July 2011