If the expected date to come to the office and start work is February 16, would arriving on the 10th be enough time for the required and basic errands? From what we gathered, we estimate the following activities:
1 day – Buying of personal stuff and maybe some winter clothes (we prepared some for the cold but we are coming from a tropical country so winter clothes are next to non existent)
2 days – looking for long-term housing, handling government stuff, opening a bank account (the company would be sending someone to assist us with these)
2 days – prepping the house, setting up the utilities and familiarizing the neighborhood a bit (this can be flexible and go past the 16th as only one of us would be working and the other one would be on dependent status)
Are these schedules feasible or would they be too tight? Are we missing some important to-do’s?
Thanks for your input!
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Bonus Question: I read that it is the culture to bring some item for your coworkers/ neighbors. Any suggestions for this? I’m thinking maybe local drip coffee or dried fruits from our country?
2 comments
>2 days – looking for long-term housing
Unless your company is doing the legwork on this for you in advance it will almost certainly take *significantly* more than 2 days to find your permanent housing.
Finding housing is not a quick process, especially since you’re moving outside the prime window of mid-March to early-April, which is when the vast majority of house-shifting happens here.
The rest of your timeline looks ok, especially if one of you is non-working and can finish up the errands once the other person starts working. But most people budget like a month or more for finding their permanent housing. If you (or your company) can find decent short-term housing you will have *much* better results pushing your final move-in date into the March/April window.
I’d ask your employer to provide you with temporary housing for your first month.
I find it extremely unlikely that you’d be able to find a place, sign the paperwork, and begin the process of moving into it during the three business days you’d have before Feb 16th. Which means setting up utilities and whatnot will also have to wait until you have an address for them. Much more likely that you’d be aiming for a March 1st move in date.
The banks and city hall stuff is going to have to wait for Monday. The 11th is a national holiday (retail won’t be impacted though) and those places are usually closed on Sundays.