About me and how I ended up here

Who am I?
Well as a short summary, 38-year-old (young) IT worker, programmer, runner, skier, golfer, gamer, traveler.

How did I end up in this situation?
I have now worked with my current employer little over 9 years. Last summer I was approached in our office and asked that would I be interested in a job opportunity 15000 km away. The Valo Intranet product team had decided to open an office in Melbourne, Australia because the wanted to expand to that region better. Supporting our current partners and getting new ones wasn’t so easy from our current office locations due to time differences. The position they proposed would be technical support for the partners for a year until they could recruit someone locally for the job.

The proposition was a tempting one since I have wanted to travel in that part of the world. Work in mind though, it would mean that I wouldn’t be doing much of coding, which I enjoy. Thinking it over night (or a few) and discussing it with friends and relatives led to the conclusion that I decided to go for it. Even the visa application went through so as the country is going to let me in, it’s really happening. Here is the news about the office opening from Valo Intranet https://www.valointranet.com/blog/news/valo-solutions-established-to-melbourne-australia/. This blog isn’t about the work part of the adventure down under though, so I won’t be writing about it much after this. Well I’ll also link this article (it’s in Finnish) where I said that I would write a blog about this journey. I couldn’t have backed off after I had said that in the internal interview and thus it’s in the article. https://www.meteoriitti.com/2019/11/21/uratarina-vuoden-seikkailu-australiassa-odottaa/

Preparations and adversities
The position was supposed to start from the beginning of the current year (2020), but during the fall there was some complications that came up. During a light run in September I felt a pain in my left knee, which meant there was something broken. It wasn’t unexpected in a long run (no pun intended) since there has been several injuries to the knee dating back 20 years. The MRI revealed a torn ACL and meniscus, which meant that if I want to do sports normally in the future, a surgery would be required. It was a familiar situation for me, because 8 years ago I had the same procedure with the other knee. I went under the knife at the end of November and spent the December on sick leave healing the knee. On the safe side, I chose the departure date to the end of January so there would be two months between the surgery and the long flight.

And back to the present day, it’s now under two weeks before leaving this dark and grey snowless winter and jumping in to summer in Melbourne. The jump only requires 24 hours of traveling and with my knee, it might not be comfortable. I should get up from the chair and move around every hour in the plane. Last week over two hours movie in a theater caused a quite stiff knee so even if it’s getting better every week, it’s not easy to sleep in the plane (yeah like it’s normally easy).

Now there is only some arrangements and packing left and then I’m ready for the adventure. 😎