G’day Gentlemen and Ladies

I have a dilemma on hand that a lot of the locals might not have informations about unless they work for department of Immigration or the ATO or as a nice accountant who handles a lot of international students tax returns.

I tend to over explain and write too much, so If you wanna start reading this because you on reddit and basically got nothing better to do or just stuck on your commute to or from work with our amazing PT whether it’s a train, tram, bus (or replacement bus) cause you know level crossing gotta go. Strap on (not in the kinky way) and if not drop it and go back to scrolling.

Context:

I have been living in Melbourne for the past two and half years, when I first moved here I was on a skilled graduate work permit that had no conditions. Finding a job as an international graduate who has a limited time, who didn’t study here made everyone pass on the billion work applications I submitted online to find a job as an engineer, also back then maybe I wasn’t doing it right. I am qualified and got relevant yet short experience in different industries because of all the unpaid internship that I did back home, which left me with more people skills rather than the high technical knowledge employers looking for.

After coming to terms with reality and finishing the whole $2000 that I had in my pocket when I moved here (which surprisingly lasted for 40days) I managed to land a job as trolley pusher and the journey of irrelevant jobs started from there. Fun ride, very enlightening, specially when you want to work your way toward permanent residency, which is still the next milestone that keeps on getting delayed due to all the lovely decisions that the government took. (That’s a whole other topic tho)

Fast forward 18months later, my visa is running up and in order for me to keep living here I had to make a transition to a student visa, found an interesting enough diploma at an affordable price not really relevant to what I’ve done in my Bachelor’s and got the visa grant. Now I’m still here but I don’t have the freedom to work, which came at the cost of a few good positions I was offered before my work permit finished and other opportunities that came later on. Frustrating I know.

Being an international student, made me realize how that life here is expensive when you have limited working hours and you gotta do more if you want to be independent and at this point there is no way I am asking anyone for help, so I had to take the option of working more than the 20hours/week and ask my boss to pay me the extra hours in cash, which he agreed to but is way less than the rate I’m getting on TFN.

Doing that made me feel stuck at the same job that I’ve been doing for a while and felt caged down by the fact that nothing is looking better at any aspect of my life, that shit with everything happening around you can get you depressed af.