Australian Computer Society, Part 2

So it would seem the ACS is not striking like the rest of South Africa. Probably because the ACS is in Australia, the land where people work to make a living.

I got my results back from the ACS assessment. They accessed me as a Class A Software Engineer. This means I can now apply for my Visa as a Software Engineer.

The  only obstacle now is obviously the South African government. I need to get an unabridged birth certificate and an unabridged marriage certificate. The South African government is striking at present. So hopefully they will stop their nonsense soon, so I can get my stuff and get on the plane.

Australian Computer Society

I completed all my documentation and I mailed it to the ACS. So within the next 12 weeks I will know if they like me or not.

Another tick on the list.

IELTS done.

I finished the IELTS tests. My overall score is 8.0 and I only needed to score a 7.0, so I qualify for the 25 bonus points on the Visa.

The next application I need to do is the ACS certification of my degree and work experience.

I also need to start the process of acquiring my South African documents, like my marriage certificate etc. That will have to happen in the next two months.

IELTS Part 1, done

So the past weekend I did my first part of the IELTS test. I need to do the IELTS test because South Africa's official language is not English. South Africa has 11 official languages but listening to the politicians I would have sworn the official language is talking poop.

Back to the test. No one really knows what language we speak in South Africa, so in order to go to Australia I had to take the IELTS test. It is a lot like Grade 7 English, maybe even easier, so all in all a waste of time and money.

Part 1 of the test was reading, writing and listening. Part 2 will be the speaking test which I will be doing this coming weekend.

So one more tick on the checklist. I picked up our passports yesterday, so the next stop will be the ACS assessment of my degree.

New Skilled Occupations List

The Australian government created a new skilled occupations list (SOL) that will come into effect on 1 July 2010. Luckily for me I am still on the list. They reduced the occupations from something like 400 to just 181, or something in that line. So basically a more than 50% reduction in occupations.

I am only concerned with the IT related occupations. On the old SOL the following occupations were catered for:

• Computing Professionals (Catch all)
• Applications and Analyst Programmer
• Computer Systems Auditor
• Software Designer
• Systems Manager
• Systems Programmer

The new list only lists the following IT related occupations:

• Systems Analyst
• Analyst Programmer
• Developer Programmer
• Software Engineer

So they basically removed the Computing Professionals option. Many IT occupations came through on that catch all description, anything from a database administrator to a network administrator could be seen as a Computing Professional. It would seem the Australian government plugged that hole now. Basically if you want to go to Australia as an IT specialist your occupation must be closely related to actual programming or building of systems from scratch it seems.

Australia

I haven't blogged in a long while. I had some nice Trinchado at different places the last few months but I will blog about that later.

My family and I decided that it will not be suitable for our little girl of 14 months to grow up in South Africa anymore. A few weeks ago a small baby of 12 months was assaulted by criminals and she is still in I.C.U., so we decided that if the criminals do not even spare a baby, then we need to leave.

I started the whole process but it will take some time. Currently we are trying to get a state sponsorship from Victoria in Australia. We want to settle in Melbourne. We have a few reasons for this but just the fact that 1/3 of all IT people are employed in Melbourne makes the choice easier.

So I guess I will be blogging about the whole Visa application for the time being instead of nice food.