Recently I accepted an offer to undertake a PhD at Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands. I currently live in Melbourne, Australia so I will have to move halfway around the world. This blog is intended to be a journal of my experiences as an Australian and international PhD student in the Netherlands and Europe.
Why numbat? At school we often had to make alliterations about our names and numbat is the only animal that we knew of that started with “N”. Have a look at Wikipedia for more information on these Australian creatures.
4 Comments
December 12, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Hi! I was looking into expat blogs for people living in the Netherlands and I stumbled upon yours and I’m actually an Aussie (living in the US at the moment with my hubby) from Melbourne moving to Amsterdam to start a PhD! Any way I wanted to say hi and that I’ll be back
December 14, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Hi Bellie! Thanks for dropping by. Good luck with the move and I look forward to hearing from you again
PS. It’s so good to hear someone use the word “hubby”
December 18, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Hi Nicole,
Haha yes here in the US you don’t hear hubby too much either!!
Can I ask, how do you find living on a PhD wage? Do you get taxed a lot?
I’m going to be at UvA but out at the Academic Medical Center (ZuidOost), so a good bit out of central Amsterdam. The department I’m going to be in is organising housing, so I’m not sure how much it will be… I’ve asked, but still no answers! I thought PhD students may be able to get the 30% ruling, but I found out today that nope we don’t, so now I’m nervous about these things.
Ok, well thanks for responding!
December 28, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Hi Bellie! Hmm, I probably do get taxed a lot — I haven’t really thought about it. (And my payslip is incomprehensible: HR can’t/won’t provide a translation.) My lifestyle is not that extravagant: I rarely eat out here and I don’t buy as many CD/DVDs as I did in Australia, so I’ve been getting by fine so far. I’m certainly not rich though. I think I get a nice payrise in a few months though after I get past the one-year mark.
I also had trouble getting answers out of people re: housing/HR info/super/health insurance — in the end I gave up asking and just went with the flow. Just prepare yourself for some headaches :S When I go home next, I plan to ask some Europeans working in Australia if they experienced the same delays and annoyances — I’m really curious if it’s a global thing or just a Dutch thing.
Hope that helps a little. Feel free to drop by with more questions