gaining acceptance

It's been an incredibly busy 24hours, but our application for residence in New Zealand has finally been accepted. In now-typical fashion the wording - 'Approval in Principle' doesn't make it seem as though we're finally there, but the following paragraphs makes it more clear;

'Approval in Principle' means that you have almost successfully satisfied all criteria under the Skilled Migrant Category. Now all you need to do is complete these last few steps and I will be able to confirm final approval of your application for residence.

We need to send our passports and a Migrant Levy of £450 to complete the process. The passports will be returned with shiny new visas inside, and then we're done!

Not content with shelling out another load of money, I spent a fair few hours on the phone to various agents trying to secure 5 seats on flights from Manchester to Christchurch on December 20th/21st. I knew this would be difficult, but it was more time-consuming, stress-inducing and hideously-expensive than I expected. But it's now done after a number of games of brinkmanship, and Cathay Pacific won the tender to fly us to our new home by virtue of the fact that no-one else could match the dates. I've never been to Hong Kong before, and I'm looking forward to our 90minute stay there!

Finally, we've booked the removal people to come on December 10th and 11th to ship all our stuff away in a sea-bound container. This gives us a week to clean up before our new tenants move in, but does mean that we'll be possession free until some time in late January / early February. No matter how it was planned this was always going to happen. Luckily t-shirts, shorts and jandals are de rigeur at my new office...