Rube's journal

[rube]

Is that 1 full work day and 1 half work day? Or are you going to work a 12 hour day just to end things on a good note?

Ha, it was actually a 1.5 day. On the other hand, officially it was less than the 12 hours as we had the public holiday on Thursday, but I still worked. To be honest, I haven't been really counting the hours I worked vs what I was suppose to work the last couple of weeks. Main point was to take care of everything as good as reasonable possible and I think that's okay. Still have 1 day of 8 hours left begin of next week. I doubt I will be working al those 8 hours, but I will be available if needed.

Had my digital good bye party with the (global) team and department yesterday. DW told me already last year: leaving your job is very good for your ego. Lots of compliments and so on, she was right. I think I got (much) more credit than deserved. Later next week I will have a local good bye party with the local team.

For now, officially: 8 more hours to go.

[simplex]

Ha, 8 hours!

Good luck, and hope to see you again IRL.

[rube]

And done...! 2 months holiday now (so still employed). Tomorrow a local farewell party but no work anymore.

@Simplex, maybe we should see if we can organize a small meeting again in the coming months? Would be nice if J_, DutchGirl, Mctrexx and perhaps some others could join?

[DutchGirl]

Well done Rube! And you're truly done? Or are there some lose ends that they will ask you to wrap up? I hope not. Have a nice holiday!

(Oh, and yes I'd like to meet up sometime this summer.)

[rube]

@DG, I have offered to be available for two calls with my main two contacts. But no more actual work, i.e. emails, documents, etc. just a call for support/guidance if needed. Unless there is a real crisis situation, which happened twice during 12 years, so low chance. But in that case I would cancel some of my holidays and get them paid.

I'll send out some messages later this week re. a meetup.

[Quadalupe]

Congratulations Rube! I've watched your career with great interest over the years and and am really happy for you how things worked out!

I would also like to meet up somewhere in the next months to congratulate you and swap stories again, it's been 7 years or so since my last meetup with fellow Dutch ERErs.

Enjoy the freedom and the next phase of your life! One door closes, another one opens...

[mountainFrugal]

Really cool. Enjoy the freedom.

[jennypenny]

Congrats Rube!

[basuragomi]

Congratulations, excited to see what happens next!

[rube]

Thank you all. Without the inspiration of your posts and own journals on this forum I doubt I would have been able achieve this.

My first day consisted of sleeping in a bit after my goodbye party at the local office, doing some small things in the house, an unexpected visit from a friend and getting our vaccinations for our travelling which will start end of August.

Today I made this post viewtopic.php?t=12402 to see if we can organize a new meetup. For the coming days I'll work further on my things that I need/want to do and we have a weekend away with family.

[mooretrees]

lovely to see plans come to fruition! congrats!

[rube]

I'm now 2.5 weeks "out".

Couple of things that happened:

My DD passed her exams, yeah!

On my 2nd day without work, I went to the gym for a 10 week subscription, it will end the day we leave for our trip. So far I went 5 times. I am planning to go 3 times a week, working on stamina and muscles.

Furthermore I am mostly busy with things for our trip, working on selling some of the appartments, administration, etc. and a few things (lots of work) in the house, which I want to have done before we leave for our trip. I am pretty sure my "to do list before our trip" will keep me busy June and July, hopefully I will have done most by August

This week I had a few times I had to think what day it actually was...which I guess is a good sign.

I had one question from my main colleague and I spend an hour or so on it to help him. So far so good.

Finances.....stocks down but we have only a about 7-8% or so in stocks. Apartments are not selling well for the original listed prices. There is still a huge shortage on housing but the interest keep on rising and lot of insecurety about anounced rent control doesn't help. Inflation is (very) high.
All in all it looks the economy my be in a bad situation for the near future. In any case, I have reduced the price, hopefully it helps as I would like to sell at least some before (in case) tshtf . Even though any alternatives might be hit similar, it would be good to have a better diversification. I am not worried though, it doesn't keep me up at night (at all).

I was asked (again) by my former manager (another company) if I was interested in a part time role after we return from traveling. I said "might be interested". You never know.

So far life doesn't feel too different from before. Yes, no more work for 2.5 days a week, but as it was already only 2.5 days and fully remote, the change isn't very drastic. But all good.

Ukraine, sigh. The first days it was top news, now a few months later it is still in the news but the world moves on and it's only now and than. I am afraid this might drag on for a long time, with so many victims. Sigh.

2 degrees - we not going to keep the temparature rising below the 2 degrees level according the headlines on the news today. Another sigh. And while on one hand we're pretty "green", we will be flying. A lot. the next couple of months . I will enjoy visiting the new places, but....not sure how I feel about this or what to do (pay some organisation to compensate for our flights?)

Anyway.... we're fine, all okay, enjoying life.
Btw, 46 y/o doesn't feel too different from 45 y/o. It does feel different compared to 30 years ago . I guess getting older is similar to the story of the boiling frog (which I read somewhere is actually not a real story?)

[DutchGirl]

Congrats on your daughter passing her exams! Does she know what she's going to do next year? Will she move out to study in a different city?

Good on you for exercising more, sounds like you're off to a good start with the 10 week subscription.

I have some hope for the future, but some things are looking bleak, indeed. That sucks.

[simplex]

Hi Rube,
Are you willing to share where you plan to travel?

Last winter I went hiking in Patagonia for two months with my son. I can really recommend the area if you love mountains, wind, and remote hiking.

[rube]

@DG: Yes, for the year 2023/2034 she moves on to study in another city and she will move out of the house. But she will join us on our trip in 2022/2023.

@Simplex: we're thinking to visit quite some different places with regards to nature, climate, language, cultural. Some island in the Caribbean, a few countries in Central and South America, perhaps the southwest of the USA and thereafter we probably go to Asia. But if we like it in South America and Asia is partly in lock down again, we might decide to stay in South America longer or even the whole trip. Or, if for some reason we prefer to move one we might skip some places and go to Asia earlier. So basically we have some idea, but only the first 6 weeks or so are fixed right now. Everything there after is depending how we feel, what we like and what is possible.

So what happened the last 4 weeks:
I sold one apartment, yeah. Preferable I wanted to sell one more, but the renters are probably staying (also during our trip) so in that case i'm fine to just collect the rent during that period and see what the status is when we're back. I hired a new property manager for 2 that I did previously myself because they're easy and in the same town I live. But for our trip I want to have somebody else taking care of it. I also switched one other apartment to them as I wasn't really satisfied with the other property manager.

Did a lot of preparations for the trip on the house and some administrative stuff. Like...insurances when you are no longer registered in the country is kind of a nightmare. But, we're almost there.

DD of 16 went on her trip to Africa to do volunteer work for 3 weeks. Of course it is also kind of a holiday. Or maybe even most of it. She had two layovers, it is a chaos at many European airports so I was a bit anxious if all would be okay as this was the first time she would fly alone. But everything went fine.

The first leg of our flight to the Caribbean was cancelled, so trying to get that fixed. Not easy with so many flights cancelled and 225 persons in line for you every time you call, except at 5:30 AM when DW woke up and called them, only 18 persons in front of her....still have to wait if they do offer us a solution.

I got covid. I was afraid I would transfer it to DD, so she couldn't go on her trip. But luckily that didn't happen. I isolated myself for a couple of days completely till she was gone on her trip. Now keeping distance from my other family members, mostly upstairs and in the garden, for another few days when it's hopefully gone.

Bad news: dad has undergone some hospital test. Nothing is sure, but might not be good. We'll know in a few weeks. Extended family got into a serious, awful accident, one person is still on the intensive care, others on normal care and only of the family is okay-ish and at home with other family. Hopefully they will all recover as good as possible.

I haven't been a week to the gym due to covid. Hopefully I haven't lost everything from the previous 5 weeks when I can go back again to the gym in another week or so.

My manager contacted me and asked for advice about a topic. I gave my advice. It's still "free" for another 2 weeks (when my payroll and official holiday period ends).

Opened another brokerage account to be able split investments. With the sale of one apartment and the re-payment of one loan, there was suddenly a lot of cash and I had to review my portfolio. Worked out my preferred portfolio, i.e. type of assets/funds (ETF's) and percentages. I am now in the process of realizing this in the next 4 weeks.

So far a rambling update of several topics that happened or are ongoing.

[rube]

The bad:
My dad got some signs that don't make me hopeful on a good outcome of the tests he underwent. The Docters appointment is in about 1.5 week. I will probably join my parents at this appointment.

My relatives that had the accident are all out of critical stage, but it will take a long, long time to recover with for some of them many operations. And it won't be a full recover for some of them.

The good:
We have a newborn in the family, all well with him and the parents.

DD is having a great time at her volunteer-holiday. During the videocall she looked genuinely extremely happy. She's experiencing a lot of new things, making new friends, being independent of her parents etc. Great to see her being happy and how she is developing in to a social world citizen.

My Covid is over, only some light coughing. So far no signs of long covid symptoms. Went to the gym again for the first time in 2 weeks, probably will take me a other 2-3 weeks going to the gym before I achieve the same results again before getting Covid.

Other
8 weeks without work, i.e. the paid job. So far, I don't miss it. I am getting slowly into a different rythym. Sometimes I just pick up something that I wanted to do and spend a few hours on it, without thinking "is that a priority" or "I should be doing more useful things that are on my list". Mostly cleaning and sorting boxes of stuff, cleaning and sorting of digital files.

I have automated a few minor things in our house. Nothing special, but I might want to pick this up further after our trip. Just to learn and play with Home Assistant and raspberry pi and see what I can do with it. It is a bit a contradiction because on one hand I want to keep the house simple, on the other I am intrigued by what is possible, monitoring and optimizing. So whatever I do I want to make sure that the house is fully functional without this automation, just as usual. But do also some things to play and learn.

4-5 weeks before our trip starts. We still don't know the exact date because the ticket issue is not fully solved yet, though I am hopeful. Day of departure is quickly approaching and it frightens me a bit, because we still got a lot to do. But I guess we will manage to take care of all the real important stuff in the coming weeks.

[rube]

The ugly: when I wrote my post yesterday, I was still expecting my father's doctors appointment would be mid next week. However, he was called this morning, they had an opening this afternoon. I couldn't be there on such short notice, but was able to join by phone. Long story short, worst case scenario became reality, which means unfortunately a very short life expectancy. My father seems calm under the news. We'll visit my parents later this week.

[shaz]

I'm very sorry to hear that.

[DutchGirl]

I'm very sorry to hear that, Rube. Sterkte for him and for all of you that love him.

[McTrex]

Heel veel sterkte Rube!