JamieJakov Blog

Australian Citizenship

June 8th, 2021

Not every day you become a citizen of a country! In fact for most folks this is once in a lifetime event. But for me, after spending 11 years in Australia living, studying, working, Australian citizenship was finally no longer a dream, but a completed life goal.

Latvia allow’s its citizen to have dual citizenship, so naturally I opted for that.

But there was more thing I wanted to do before I got my Australian passport: change my legal name. My name is Russian language is: Vadim Brodsky, but in Latvia its Vadims Brodskis, because thats how the Latvian language works, all masculine words must have an –s at the end of them. And that has been the reality of my life since I was born. I can not change it in Latvia. But I can change it in Australia!

So I applied for a name change with the New South Wales Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages and it got approved. So my name legally in Australia is now Vadim Brodsky. No ‘s’s at the end anymore. And that is what it says on my Australian passport. However I can not change my Latvian passport. Thus I am stuck in a reality where I have 2 passports with 2 different names. I’m sure that wont cause any problems to me whatsoever, right?…

Australia Day 2016

January 27th, 2016

Every year families all around the country gather together to celebrate Australia Day. Its the day that the whole nation celebrates the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, NSW. Australia has become a very multicultural society, but nevertheless everyone gathers together for festive barbecues and beach outings. All of this is usually followed by a display of fireworks in the CBD of the major cities.

Also, there is a antique car show! So Amy and I went to explore it. Old cars are so majestic, and the photos turned out great:

Aussie slang

July 29th, 2015

One thing all my international friends can agree on is that it is hard to understand Aussies speak. They generally speak too fast, don’t pronounce words clearly enough, and shorten everything. And I mean everything!

This video was shown to us at the UTS Accomplish: Adapting to the Australian workplace lecture/ seminar, and over 80% of the students in the room had no idea what they said in the last sentence. Watch it yourself and see how accustomed to Australia you have become.

Eurovision 2015

May 28th, 2015

esc2015_logo

The biggest song contest in the world is back for the 60th time, and this year with a special guest participant – Australia! Thats right, this year us Aussies can party together with the cool cats in Europe… at 5am… Yea, when Europe was celebrating Sweden’s outstanding performance and win in the contest, we were just having brekky and getting ready for a long Sunday ahead of us. But it was definitely a fun experience – being able to vote for my favourite European countries from all they way out here, in the middle of nowhere.
Everyone was shocked to find Australia participate, but they quickly agreed that it was a good idea after they heard our Guy Sebastian perform.

I loved his perforce, but my favourite is still that macho from Sweden with those pretty drawn animations in the background. Not only were the animations memorable, but the guitar music in the verse was just outstanding, I still have it stuck in my head. Overall great performance, adding it to my top for sure.

Happy Australia Day 2014

January 26th, 2014

Australia-Day

It is now my fourth year in the land down under and the fourth time I get to celebrate Australia day with friends and (host) family. Last year I went to Melbourne to watch the Australian Open finals, and I can now say that they were much better then this years (I hope you are ok Nadal, I was rooting for you). This year I stayed in Sydney and went out with my friends from JASS and The Drawing Circle, which I will be making a blog post about tomorrow as some of my friends have yet to upload their photos.

Anyway, happy Australia Day!

The Internet…. Here and There

April 3rd, 2013

The Internet… Its such a magnificent thing! I can not imagine living without it. Everything I do during the day revolves around using the internet in one way or another. May it be Skyping with my parents back home, or checking into a restaurant on Foursquare, or simply checking my Twitter feed and replying to chat messages in Line. Its amazing how much we can do on the web these days, and it makes our lives just a bit more colorful. But you know what annoys me more then anything? SLOW CONNECTION SPEED AND LOW BANDWIDTH!