Too much, too fast.

 

First day back in office today. Technically, that was last week, but everyone here takes and extended one week off into the new year. So, Jan 7 it is.

Weather has been playing games, last week it was so hot, and this week it is now back to winter ! And..it rained on the weekend.

But reading the news, it seems the world too wants to hit the ground running. So much happening, and it has been only 7 days into 2019.

Mr Trump is still trying to build his wall, and now wants  AMERICANS to pay for it, instead of Mexico. But there is a place where somebody is really building walls.

Down south in Kerala, my place, they built a human wall, a women’s wall, to show their strength. It was a massive success, and while all this was capturing attention, two women finally achieved that which scores of others had failed at.

Then , there was the strike. Embarassed, and insulted, religious men decided to show their strength the only way they can, by shutting places down and destroying public property. Too bad for them, merchant’s association decided to boycott their strike. Is this all really happening ?

Meanwhile, more earthquakes hit Italy and Indonesia. And one more mass shooting in the US, and the yellow vest protests in France. And Indians are still trying to claim their scientific superiority by making absurd claims about its past. And Australia is only worried about its climate, and its cricket losses.

So much happening. Too fast.

This is going to be a long year.

 

Last day of the year

 

Last day of the year!! This year I've had more travel than I ever imagined, made some lifelong friends, learnt a hundred lessons, got into better shape & health, read a lot more and realised that everytime I think life can't get better, it does!

How can I not be grateful ?

 

Happy New Year !

Mixed Bag

 

Eighteenth year into the new millenium. How time flies. 2018 was a very large, mixed bag. Looking back, the first things that come to mind are…all those floods which hit us, in Kerala, then rest of India, hurricanes,  political hogwash, and all those over-the-top, never-ending celebrity weddings. While Trump’s goof-ups all over the world, and Brexit held most of the news, the world still found time for rescues (Thailand), videogames (fornite) and various, stupid video challenges (Kiki, anyone ?).

Is this really happening ? Has the world really come down to this ? Games and songs ? With 24 hour channels struggling to keep their pipelines full, we definitely had an overload of news this year. Too much , to the point of noise. People expressing their own personal opinions in the guise of news.

Our planet is revolting, all those hurricanes and floods are just curtain raisers to what our future holds for us. And here we are, fighting over temples and religion.

So, about time we throw this out and welcome the new year.

 

 

 

 

Wish you a very happy new year !!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting trickier to get in here

 

I have been out of touch with the whole Australia PR migration thing. But the other day, someone enquired how we got here, and asked for pointers. I looked up some information before passing on my tips, and was surprised that things have changed quite a lot in the meantime.

Changes galore:

For one, they now have the EOI slots only once a month, compared to twice a month earlier. This change was from August 2018. The number of invitations remain the same, but applicants will have to wait and entire month to find out if they made the cut. Ohh..the agony !

Minor news: they changed their website from border.gov.au to immi.homeaffairs.gov.au

They also changed the minimum points required. From July 2018 onwards, an applicant needs to have a minimum of 65 points to apply. This cutoff was earlier 60. This will help Australia get better skilled people, and it means theres no place for lazybones to enter the country.

And…they have set a higher score for some job codes, including the very popular Softwar Engineer. Take a look at the latest results available online, from September 2018.

A minimum 75 points required for Software Engineers now ! No places for 60-65 pointers anymore.

The affect of this new set of rules can be seen in the applications as well. Applicants are buckling up to increase their scores, trying to keep up with the increasing cutoffs. Over at the immigration tracker, there is an increase in the median scores, whereas earlier it was full of applications with 60 & 65, now the most common scores are 70 and above, some even getting 80 !

 

Application charges for some Australian visas are going up on 1 July 2018. The government is hoping to generate $410 million dollars over a four-year period from 2017 to 2021.

 

Fineprint:

So , what does this all mean for new migrants ? Well, most of this was expected. Immigration is currently a hot topic in Australia, they recently had elections in Victoria and candidates were fighting about how the cities are getting populus, where as rural regions remain empty. Also the increase in terrorist-like attacks have gone up, with migrants being arrested for those crimes.

The changes they have brought about are not targetted at any particular country, region, religion or laguage. And that is such good news, compared to how other countries totally ban immigrants just based on their nationality. But these changes will probably affect Indians the most, simply because the receive the highest number of resident permit visas.  Australia is making it more difficult to get in here, this will allow highly skilled and experienced folks to come in. Theres simply no place for anyone average.

But looking at how the applicants are also increasing their own points, it is clear that the higher threshold is still reachable. All it takes is will power (lots of it) and planning (some). Applicants with 5 years experience and good english can easily score 70 points. They need to score top points in English to get higher.

Good luck, and hope you make it too.

 

 

 

 

 

What was before USB ?

 

 

I recently had to upgrade to USB Type C. Due to a new phone. Which got me thinking, we are already at type C ? I feel it was only yesterday that computer users started adopting USB standard in the first place. So what was before  USB ?

 

Well, someone already made a video about it.