The chaos before the start......

Wow, last day in the office was September 28th and October was compulsory gardening month. Full of ideas of enjoying my free time, full of ambition of playing golf, taking golf lessons, making photographs of HK, go hiking and enjoy life, truth is have done non of that! For those that will make the changes to their life like we do and 'check out', you will a lot of time on planning, banking, setting up your life on only mobile and automatic. That means for me a new phone and email address and informing my friends. Ever started a new bank account? Prepare for hours of queuing and interviewing, tax declarations, setting up Apps and linking credit cards, phone bills and any other monthly bills to direct debits...... And oh yeah, we started a company. Spaans Ltd. Registration easily done...... Until you want a bank account...... It is worse than trying to find a date. Most banks fear money laundering so after trolling the banks trying to take our business, we were accepted by DBS as a start up SME.

And oops, then there was the move preparation itself..... Where or where do we park a container with furniture. Well, the short answer is, NOT in The Netherlands. It is clever, as in order to bring my household good in to the country, I need to register myself back in NL on an address. And that links immediately to the tax authority. And although we are effectively out of work, the tax authorities will tax you on your global net worth. So even if not living in NL but having our furniture 'on land' means paying tax. So careful when you plan this.

And then the normal chaos of the move..... Ever had a team of 10 man in your place packing it all up? Quite a site and some pictures to go with it! And then the emotional roller coaster saying goodbye to Leo (our cat). We were lucky he got adopted by one of my great colleagues in Macau. Not easy to find a home for a fluffy monster so grateful for those who volunteered adopting him.

And Sharon? She should have started Sharon Travel Agency as her first free days were spend on endless research, figuring out flights, hotels, transport and more importantly, what to when there. But here we go...... Our last week in HK and we will have a chapter with our last pics of our last week!