At long last! we have actually submitted our LTBV (long term business visa) application. I just can't believe what a long, stressful and expensive task it has been. We hold business visas for Thailand and Singapore so it is not like we are new to the process, but the New Zealand one is so tough.
We have twelve years business experience behind us and two established limited companies and we still found this application really challenging! I guess that New Zealand immigration are just really trying to weed out the time wasters at the offset (however I think the thousand pound application fee successfully does that!!!)
On top of the application fee we have had to have a financial forecast prepared by a New Zealand accountant and all of our supporting documentation certified by lawyers here in Singapore, so it is certainly not a cheap or easy route in.
Anyway it has gone and the waiting game begins, they reckon it will be three to six months before we get an answer so we are living in limbo till then!
We have made good progress with the packing but have still not decided whenever to take a chance on shipping all of our personal stuff to New Zealand and risk having to ship it back again if the visa is turned down. It is most likely that we will ship the stuff over though, because even with shipping costs and having to pay the tax on everything when it goes in, it will still be cheaper than storing it in land scarce Singapore, and at least we will have access to everything, I must admit the prospect of living out of a suitcase for six months is not appealing!
It would be so much easier to just to stay in Singapore and wait for the outcome, but if we do that then the kids will miss the start of the new school term, and as they have not been to school for six months already we don't want to keep them out much longer.
We have managed to keep on top of the home edding and I think they have really benefited from it in some areas, maths and science especially, six months of one to one learning has brought them on leaps and bounds in these subjects.
English, surprisingly has proved to be much harder to teach at home. They are both extremely proficient in grammar but Poppy seriously struggles with creative writing while Lu is the opposite, she is extremely gifted and is determined to become an author. So I have trouble helping them both but for different reasons and there is very little outside help available here, Singapore so desperately needs to enlist more English, English teachers!
Please excuse me if I am not in touch with anyone for a few weeks, after spending so long on this visa application my work has seriously slipped and it is going to take me a while to catch up on things, will be in touch soon.
Carri x
Friday, November 23, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Overdue Update
Sorry everyone, this is a long overdue update. Things are just so stressful here at the moment, progress is slow but we are starting to get somewhere at last.
The children have been officially offered places at Nelson Intermediate school and we have enrolled them for a term as international students. We submitted their student visa applications earlier this week and the immigration office has been in touch with us today with a query about their birth certificates, hopefully we should get that ironed out tomorrow and the application will go through smoothly.
The big issue now is whenever we are going to have to apply for an interim Guardian visa. Our business plan and business visa application is just about ready to submit but we can't send it in till I have my new passport, that won't be until the 19th. Once the business plan is in, it can take three to six months to be approved, but the new school term starts the first week of February, it is unlikely that we will have our visas by then and until we have work permits we can't enroll the kids as domestic students, that is why we have had to pay the fees and get them in as 'international'.
The children are not allowed to study in New Zealand without a parent or Guardian present, so it is possible that we will have to apply for a Guardian visa to cover us until our business visa is approved. That is IF it's approved! we are confident that our business plan is a very sound one, but you never know do you - and that is where the big stress is coming from because we just can't plan anything until we get that official 'yes' We daren't take a chance on shipping all our stuff over there until we get that visa because if we don't get it, we'll be shipping it all back again! on top of that, without the visa we will have to pay tax on everything we own going in.
These are all issues that we can get around, the thing that is causing us real problems right now is the fact that it is summer in NZ and peak holiday season, Nelson is one of the top tourist spots in New Zealand and finding any accommodation there at this time of year is proving to be truly impossible. We can't take on a long term unfurnished property because we can't ship our stuff over and all short term furnished accommodation is fully booked up or astronomically expensive.
When we have visited New Zealand in the past we have stayed in a hotel for few days to get over the flight, then hired a camper van and headed off. It is a fabulous way to see the country and we all love living on the road. So we have even looked at the possibility of living in a camper until we can find something more permanent, but again most of the vans are booked up and the only ones available are way over priced.
We are currently toying with the idea of buying our own camper van as soon as we arrive, that way we will have somewhere to live and transport all in one! it is a crazy idea but it may be our only option.
UPDATE - Just been down to the immigration office and the kids have had their student visas approved and stamped into their passports. We don't need to apply for a Guardian visa as they have only given the girls permits until May, but that will be long enough for us to find out whenever our business plan will be approved or not.
Carri x
The children have been officially offered places at Nelson Intermediate school and we have enrolled them for a term as international students. We submitted their student visa applications earlier this week and the immigration office has been in touch with us today with a query about their birth certificates, hopefully we should get that ironed out tomorrow and the application will go through smoothly.
The big issue now is whenever we are going to have to apply for an interim Guardian visa. Our business plan and business visa application is just about ready to submit but we can't send it in till I have my new passport, that won't be until the 19th. Once the business plan is in, it can take three to six months to be approved, but the new school term starts the first week of February, it is unlikely that we will have our visas by then and until we have work permits we can't enroll the kids as domestic students, that is why we have had to pay the fees and get them in as 'international'.
The children are not allowed to study in New Zealand without a parent or Guardian present, so it is possible that we will have to apply for a Guardian visa to cover us until our business visa is approved. That is IF it's approved! we are confident that our business plan is a very sound one, but you never know do you - and that is where the big stress is coming from because we just can't plan anything until we get that official 'yes' We daren't take a chance on shipping all our stuff over there until we get that visa because if we don't get it, we'll be shipping it all back again! on top of that, without the visa we will have to pay tax on everything we own going in.
These are all issues that we can get around, the thing that is causing us real problems right now is the fact that it is summer in NZ and peak holiday season, Nelson is one of the top tourist spots in New Zealand and finding any accommodation there at this time of year is proving to be truly impossible. We can't take on a long term unfurnished property because we can't ship our stuff over and all short term furnished accommodation is fully booked up or astronomically expensive.
When we have visited New Zealand in the past we have stayed in a hotel for few days to get over the flight, then hired a camper van and headed off. It is a fabulous way to see the country and we all love living on the road. So we have even looked at the possibility of living in a camper until we can find something more permanent, but again most of the vans are booked up and the only ones available are way over priced.
We are currently toying with the idea of buying our own camper van as soon as we arrive, that way we will have somewhere to live and transport all in one! it is a crazy idea but it may be our only option.
UPDATE - Just been down to the immigration office and the kids have had their student visas approved and stamped into their passports. We don't need to apply for a Guardian visa as they have only given the girls permits until May, but that will be long enough for us to find out whenever our business plan will be approved or not.
Carri x
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Halloween
Sunday, October 28, 2007
A Little Progess
This week has seen a bit of progress. We decided on a school for the girls and submitted the application forms.
Choosing a school long distance has been a little tricky but thankfully there aren't too many for their age group in Nelson so we managed to narrow it down quite quickly.
We have gone for "Nelson Intermediate School' This looks like a good sized school but it only caters for year seven and eight, so we think that two years there will serve as a good transition period from primary to secondary school.
The headmaster seems very nice and he has been extremely helpful. They are happy to take the kids on as international students initially and then allow them to stay on as regular pupils should we choose to apply for residency - but that all seems a million miles away right now.
We should have manged to wrap the school thing up this week but thanks to the incompetence of UPS we are still hanging on.
The application forms, along with last school reports, character references, letters from the children and confirmation of the bank transfer for the application fees were all completed and shipped off last Saturday. They should have arrived on Monday and we had expected to hear from the school shortly after. We hadn't heard anything by Wednesday so we called the school, it turned out that they had still not received the application!
The next few days were spent chasing UPS in Singapore and New Zealand trying to locate the whereabouts of the package. It was Friday before we heard from Auckland to be informed that they don't have a UPS office in Nelson and it had been passed to a third party courier.
This was a whole new thing for us, we are so used to shipping with UPS and everything arriving with 48 hours, so this was a bit of a reality check and a real example of what living and working in a small town is going to be like! it is certainly going to take some adjusting to.
Anyway we have been assured that it will be delivered on Monday and the headmaster has promised to get straight back to us as soon as he has had chance to look at it. He does not think that there will be any problems with getting them both in (but then he hasn't seen Lucinda's school report yet!!!)
We also managed to get off to the hospital for our medicals this week and we will get the results of those on Tuesday. I was quite relived to get that out of the way but I'll feel a lot better when we have the results, this is where it could all come grinding to a halt!
Will let you know how it goes -
Take Care - Carri x
Choosing a school long distance has been a little tricky but thankfully there aren't too many for their age group in Nelson so we managed to narrow it down quite quickly.
We have gone for "Nelson Intermediate School' This looks like a good sized school but it only caters for year seven and eight, so we think that two years there will serve as a good transition period from primary to secondary school.
The headmaster seems very nice and he has been extremely helpful. They are happy to take the kids on as international students initially and then allow them to stay on as regular pupils should we choose to apply for residency - but that all seems a million miles away right now.
We should have manged to wrap the school thing up this week but thanks to the incompetence of UPS we are still hanging on.
The application forms, along with last school reports, character references, letters from the children and confirmation of the bank transfer for the application fees were all completed and shipped off last Saturday. They should have arrived on Monday and we had expected to hear from the school shortly after. We hadn't heard anything by Wednesday so we called the school, it turned out that they had still not received the application!
The next few days were spent chasing UPS in Singapore and New Zealand trying to locate the whereabouts of the package. It was Friday before we heard from Auckland to be informed that they don't have a UPS office in Nelson and it had been passed to a third party courier.
This was a whole new thing for us, we are so used to shipping with UPS and everything arriving with 48 hours, so this was a bit of a reality check and a real example of what living and working in a small town is going to be like! it is certainly going to take some adjusting to.
Anyway we have been assured that it will be delivered on Monday and the headmaster has promised to get straight back to us as soon as he has had chance to look at it. He does not think that there will be any problems with getting them both in (but then he hasn't seen Lucinda's school report yet!!!)
We also managed to get off to the hospital for our medicals this week and we will get the results of those on Tuesday. I was quite relived to get that out of the way but I'll feel a lot better when we have the results, this is where it could all come grinding to a halt!
Will let you know how it goes -
Take Care - Carri x
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Now Where?
It's almost four years since we first left the UK for Bangkok, at the time we never regarded the move as permanent.
For the survival of the company we had to move the manufacture out of England and the only way to ensure high quality and ethical working conditions was for us to be on site.
In the end Thailand proved to be a difficult country to work in, the people were wonderful but the government was not entirely helpful to foreigners and the infrastructure also made working impossible at times.
After only a year there we moved everything over to Singapore.
Singapore has been a breeze, our business visas were issued very quickly and we have had no problems getting them renewed. Should we wish to apply for permanent residence here, it would almost certainly be granted.
Singapore is a modern, gleaming city where everything is spotless and runs like clockwork. It is a very safe and extremely easy place to live. On the surface it is hard to see why anyone would want to leave!
I guess it depends on the type of person you are though, for us it has some major downsides. It is very over crowded and quite impossible to find anywhere to escape from people. Property and cars are simply unaffordable and the censorship of everything from Internet to TV is extremely irritating, the entire 'arts scene' is government controlled and there is very little room for genuine artistic freedom in the country.
Our major problem though, comes with the education system. In Singapore education is everything, all of the schools here are just huge conveyor belts churning out endless streams of obedient cloned genius's.
There is no disputing that the standard of education here is second to none, but the regime is worlds away from schools in the West, and consequently it is rare to find expat kids successfully integrated into local schools.
International schools are in abundance, with every country and curriculum well represented, but the fees are extortionate and very often the standard of education is well below par (It is also interesting to note that the government does not allow Singaporeans to attend international schools!)
Throughout their six years of primary education Poppy & Lucinda have attended four different schools! Two in the UK, one in Thailand and one in Singapore. We did worry initially about what effect this would have on their education, but they don't seem to have been unduly affected and I believe that what they have gained in experience, far outweighs the little they may have missed in the classroom.
However, primary school is now coming to an end, next year they will be in year seven and starting their secondary education. It is essential that we settle now for a few years so that they can get through high school with little interruption.
BUT WHERE??!!
For the past year or so the main topic of conversation in this house has been 'Where do we go from here?' Do we stay in Singapore, go back to the UK, or Europe, America, Australia????
We have now established working relationships with companies in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Nepal, so we are really free to move on and run things long distance.
When we first left England our mantra at the time was 'If things don't work out, we can always go back' We have since come to realise that going back is the hardest thing to do!
Returning to the UK for us would be the logical move, we have an extremely successful company there and we would be earning a lot more money if we were there running it ourselves rather than paying other people! It would also be wonderful to be close to friends and family again.
But there are things about England that I just find unacceptable, amongst them: violence, crime, the racial and religious intolerance etc.
When you live with these things everyday you come to accept them as normal, you think that it is just life and something that you have to put up with. It is only when you move away that you realize that it is not normal and other places are very different.
Returning to England would mean going back to a life of fear, always having to look over your shoulder and then there is the weather!!!
Europe was an option, we have a very strong customer data base in Europe and we all love Italy. The problem with Italy though is a lack of international schools in the areas that we would like to settle, that means that the kids would have to go to a local school and study in Italian. As their knowledge of Italian goes no further than 'Margareta pizza' that is also out!
Then there is America - again we have a massive customer data base there and it would be an extremely good business move for us. Problem with America is - well it's America!
Australia - We're too old!
Canada - Too cold.
India - This would be my personal choice, I would dearly like to spend some time in India, but with the children about to embark on high school it would really not be fair to them.
Which leaves us with New Zealand - Where we have very few customers no chance of manufacturing locally and we are an international flight away from anywhere else in the world. The most unlikely place of all but the one we have our hearts set on!
We have been to New Zealand a few times now and we all love the country dearly. The landscape is just exquisite and the people are so friendly and down to earth. It would be a wonderful place for the girls to grow up and for us to eventually retire!
Although we don't currently sell a lot to New Zealand, there is a lot of interest in what we do and it is possible that if we were based there then we could create a niche for ourselves. We can certainly move the design studio and the American export over there.
Before we can go to NZ and start working though we need a business visa. Problem is the school year in NZ starts in February and it is impossible for us to put together a business plan and have the visa approved before then. We really don't want the kids to have to start a new school halfway through term so if we are going to go we have to go now.
We are able to get permits that will allow us into the country in order to research the business opportunities there, but as we would not be residents the only way that we can get the girls into school is to enroll them as international students and pay the fees.
So what we need to do now is find a school that will initially accept them as international pupils and keep them on as locals should we be granted residency.
We can't apply for student visa for the children until we have a guaranteed school place. Once we have that, we then all need to have official medicals and x-rays to ensure that we do not have any contagious diseases or illnesses that would be a burden to the health service. Only then can we actually apply for the visa. I also need a new passport as mine runs out in June and your passport has to be valid six months past your permit expiry date, so I need to apply for a passport before I can apply for a visa.
At the moment we really don't know if we are coming or going. If everything goes to plan then we need to have all of our personal belongings on a container ship that is leaving on the 18th of November, that is the last one that would get our stuff there in time for Christmas, giving us time to find somewhere to live before school starts.
The shipping company are putting pressure on us to book the container space on the ship as it is filling up fast, but we can't do that until we have the permit and we can't apply for the permit until we have the medical and we can't have the medical until we get the school place!!!! You start to get the picture? It's chaos!
And if it doesn't come off? well it's plan B - only right now we don't have a plan B!!!!
Will keep you updated - Carri x
For the survival of the company we had to move the manufacture out of England and the only way to ensure high quality and ethical working conditions was for us to be on site.
In the end Thailand proved to be a difficult country to work in, the people were wonderful but the government was not entirely helpful to foreigners and the infrastructure also made working impossible at times.
After only a year there we moved everything over to Singapore.
Singapore has been a breeze, our business visas were issued very quickly and we have had no problems getting them renewed. Should we wish to apply for permanent residence here, it would almost certainly be granted.
Singapore is a modern, gleaming city where everything is spotless and runs like clockwork. It is a very safe and extremely easy place to live. On the surface it is hard to see why anyone would want to leave!
I guess it depends on the type of person you are though, for us it has some major downsides. It is very over crowded and quite impossible to find anywhere to escape from people. Property and cars are simply unaffordable and the censorship of everything from Internet to TV is extremely irritating, the entire 'arts scene' is government controlled and there is very little room for genuine artistic freedom in the country.
Our major problem though, comes with the education system. In Singapore education is everything, all of the schools here are just huge conveyor belts churning out endless streams of obedient cloned genius's.
There is no disputing that the standard of education here is second to none, but the regime is worlds away from schools in the West, and consequently it is rare to find expat kids successfully integrated into local schools.
International schools are in abundance, with every country and curriculum well represented, but the fees are extortionate and very often the standard of education is well below par (It is also interesting to note that the government does not allow Singaporeans to attend international schools!)
Throughout their six years of primary education Poppy & Lucinda have attended four different schools! Two in the UK, one in Thailand and one in Singapore. We did worry initially about what effect this would have on their education, but they don't seem to have been unduly affected and I believe that what they have gained in experience, far outweighs the little they may have missed in the classroom.
However, primary school is now coming to an end, next year they will be in year seven and starting their secondary education. It is essential that we settle now for a few years so that they can get through high school with little interruption.
BUT WHERE??!!
For the past year or so the main topic of conversation in this house has been 'Where do we go from here?' Do we stay in Singapore, go back to the UK, or Europe, America, Australia????
We have now established working relationships with companies in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Nepal, so we are really free to move on and run things long distance.
When we first left England our mantra at the time was 'If things don't work out, we can always go back' We have since come to realise that going back is the hardest thing to do!
Returning to the UK for us would be the logical move, we have an extremely successful company there and we would be earning a lot more money if we were there running it ourselves rather than paying other people! It would also be wonderful to be close to friends and family again.
But there are things about England that I just find unacceptable, amongst them: violence, crime, the racial and religious intolerance etc.
When you live with these things everyday you come to accept them as normal, you think that it is just life and something that you have to put up with. It is only when you move away that you realize that it is not normal and other places are very different.
Returning to England would mean going back to a life of fear, always having to look over your shoulder and then there is the weather!!!
Europe was an option, we have a very strong customer data base in Europe and we all love Italy. The problem with Italy though is a lack of international schools in the areas that we would like to settle, that means that the kids would have to go to a local school and study in Italian. As their knowledge of Italian goes no further than 'Margareta pizza' that is also out!
Then there is America - again we have a massive customer data base there and it would be an extremely good business move for us. Problem with America is - well it's America!
Australia - We're too old!
Canada - Too cold.
India - This would be my personal choice, I would dearly like to spend some time in India, but with the children about to embark on high school it would really not be fair to them.
Which leaves us with New Zealand - Where we have very few customers no chance of manufacturing locally and we are an international flight away from anywhere else in the world. The most unlikely place of all but the one we have our hearts set on!
We have been to New Zealand a few times now and we all love the country dearly. The landscape is just exquisite and the people are so friendly and down to earth. It would be a wonderful place for the girls to grow up and for us to eventually retire!
Although we don't currently sell a lot to New Zealand, there is a lot of interest in what we do and it is possible that if we were based there then we could create a niche for ourselves. We can certainly move the design studio and the American export over there.
Before we can go to NZ and start working though we need a business visa. Problem is the school year in NZ starts in February and it is impossible for us to put together a business plan and have the visa approved before then. We really don't want the kids to have to start a new school halfway through term so if we are going to go we have to go now.
We are able to get permits that will allow us into the country in order to research the business opportunities there, but as we would not be residents the only way that we can get the girls into school is to enroll them as international students and pay the fees.
So what we need to do now is find a school that will initially accept them as international pupils and keep them on as locals should we be granted residency.
We can't apply for student visa for the children until we have a guaranteed school place. Once we have that, we then all need to have official medicals and x-rays to ensure that we do not have any contagious diseases or illnesses that would be a burden to the health service. Only then can we actually apply for the visa. I also need a new passport as mine runs out in June and your passport has to be valid six months past your permit expiry date, so I need to apply for a passport before I can apply for a visa.
At the moment we really don't know if we are coming or going. If everything goes to plan then we need to have all of our personal belongings on a container ship that is leaving on the 18th of November, that is the last one that would get our stuff there in time for Christmas, giving us time to find somewhere to live before school starts.
The shipping company are putting pressure on us to book the container space on the ship as it is filling up fast, but we can't do that until we have the permit and we can't apply for the permit until we have the medical and we can't have the medical until we get the school place!!!! You start to get the picture? It's chaos!
And if it doesn't come off? well it's plan B - only right now we don't have a plan B!!!!
Will keep you updated - Carri x
As I put a picture of Poppy on the last post here is one of Lu that I have just reworked. Taken a few years ago at a Tiger sanctuary in Thailand.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
At last, a blog!
Hi Everyone
Hope this finds you all well ...
Finally, I have got round to setting up a new 'Blog Page'! I really regret not starting one when we first left the UK four years ago because it would have served as a wonderful record of the time that we have had out here in South East Asia.
I did set up a blog earlier this year that attempted to record the bizzare journey that we have been on, unfortunately it got a bit long winded and read more like an autobiography, so I scrapped it!
Blogging is a superb, spontaneous way of keeping in touch with everybody on a regular basis. As you are all aware, I am an atrocious letter writer! Unfortunately I can never remember if I have already told somebody something or not, so I'm sure you all get letters from me that say exactly the same as the previous one and you just think I'm going senile! Hopefully with a blog I can simply recount things as and when they happen, then I don't have to remember them!
Blogs are also a brilliant source of information. During our years of 'globetrotting' other peoples blogs have been an invaluable resource to us. Guidebooks and information packs for expats are undoubtedly useful, but advice from people who have actually 'been there' is priceless.
So hopefully this blog will also serve as a resource for anyone who may be embarking on the same journey that we have made.
Most of you know that we are going to be leaving Singapore very soon, however we are still not sure when, where or how! so I am going to use this blog to keep everyone updated on day to day events as they happen. I'll still keep in touch by email, but having a blog as well means that I don't have to write the same thing over and over again.
It is also handy for you guys that actually have a life and don't have time to write lengthy emails to us! you can stop by, catch up and just say hi, that way, hopefully we won't lose touch so easily.
I am going to try and write every few days, well at least once a week (or two!) If any of you know your way around computers, set up a feed so that you will be automatically notified when the page is updated. Don't ask me how to do it though, I haven't a clue!
Finally, the very best thing about a blog is that I can post loads of pictures! I don't have anything relevant to this post so I'll just put up a new piece that I have been working on of Poppy - like it?
That's it for now, catch you all in a few days - Carri x
Hope this finds you all well ...
Finally, I have got round to setting up a new 'Blog Page'! I really regret not starting one when we first left the UK four years ago because it would have served as a wonderful record of the time that we have had out here in South East Asia.
I did set up a blog earlier this year that attempted to record the bizzare journey that we have been on, unfortunately it got a bit long winded and read more like an autobiography, so I scrapped it!
Blogging is a superb, spontaneous way of keeping in touch with everybody on a regular basis. As you are all aware, I am an atrocious letter writer! Unfortunately I can never remember if I have already told somebody something or not, so I'm sure you all get letters from me that say exactly the same as the previous one and you just think I'm going senile! Hopefully with a blog I can simply recount things as and when they happen, then I don't have to remember them!
Blogs are also a brilliant source of information. During our years of 'globetrotting' other peoples blogs have been an invaluable resource to us. Guidebooks and information packs for expats are undoubtedly useful, but advice from people who have actually 'been there' is priceless.
So hopefully this blog will also serve as a resource for anyone who may be embarking on the same journey that we have made.
Most of you know that we are going to be leaving Singapore very soon, however we are still not sure when, where or how! so I am going to use this blog to keep everyone updated on day to day events as they happen. I'll still keep in touch by email, but having a blog as well means that I don't have to write the same thing over and over again.
It is also handy for you guys that actually have a life and don't have time to write lengthy emails to us! you can stop by, catch up and just say hi, that way, hopefully we won't lose touch so easily.
I am going to try and write every few days, well at least once a week (or two!) If any of you know your way around computers, set up a feed so that you will be automatically notified when the page is updated. Don't ask me how to do it though, I haven't a clue!
Finally, the very best thing about a blog is that I can post loads of pictures! I don't have anything relevant to this post so I'll just put up a new piece that I have been working on of Poppy - like it?
That's it for now, catch you all in a few days - Carri x
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