What is the purpose of your visit?
Travel
I am on the train from Reading up to Liverpool. It is a beautiful sunny afternoon here in the UK; a real rarity and something that I am enjoying immensely. I have been working on a compliance spreadsheet for a large User Requirements Document that needs to be submitted on Monday. This has been slow going, and I’ve hit a bit of a mental barrier. As I’m sitting here in the sun, I starting thinking about everything I have been up to recently, and realised that in the long distant past I often spent these train trips writing emails to friends and updating my blog. My poor, poor neglected blog. Well I am just passing Wolverhampton, and I have about 10 minutes left before I need to change trains in Stafford, so I am going to make the most of it and see what I can get off my chest.
Where do I start? Well let’s do the highlights:
- Last week I had a hectic three day business trip to the mighty USA. Flew out Saturday, flew back Tuesday night, got in to Manchester Wednesday morning, unfortunately by bags didn’t. I travelled through (even if it was just in transit), Chicago (hello Brendan!), St Louis, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Boston. What a great trip. I thought I would be hassled more getting into the country, but they asked me why I was there, I said “I’m in IT” and they was all that was needed. Got fingerprinted, my photo taken, had my battered blue Australian passport stamped and within two minutes I was on my way.
- Nikkie is backpacking around Italy for a month with our friend (and ex-church avenue housemate) Viki. Let left and the beginning of the month, and I am flying out to Rome on the 24th of June for their birthdays (they were born on the same day!). I really miss not having her at home, but I’ve been travelling like mad so far this month and it doesn’t look like slowing down, so it has worked out in that respect. From the text messages and calls I’ve had with her it sounds like she is having an absolute ball. They stayed in the same campsite we did in Venice, got the train to Milan, Verona and Genoa, saw the last supper, went to Pisa, so the leaning tower and are now in Florence, and they have only been travelling for a week! I’ll get her to write up her adventure when she gets back and either post it to my blog or I’ll create one for her.
- Graeme and Tanya (see train to nowhere) did the typical thing my Aussie no hoper lay about friends do and crashed at my place for three weeks. They join an illustrious crew, including Ads, Jimmy the Hacker, Morgs, Cowan and Lisle. They didn’t quick reach Ads’ record for most time spent on the couch (or is that now Lisle’s record?) but I think overall they had a good wind down from the hectic couple of months they spent backpacking South East Asia. Unfortunately they arrived just as I was in the middle of finishing the last of my University assessment and exams, so I didn’t get the spend as much time with them as I would have liked, but they are now down in London in their one place looking for work, so I’m sure I will catch up again with them soon.
- I am doing really well at work. The IT department has expanded to 18 people. That includes the development team, internal support and the EPM consultant team (the last are directly billable which makes my departmental P&L look really healthy). The other senior management guys are always jokingly referring to the IT battalion. IT is now the second largest department after the operational project management team. Not bad considering it was just me this time two years ago. I am saving like mad and plan to pay off my student loan at the end of the year if I can. Or not if I can find something with a better return to invest in! I love what I am doing, and I learning great things and have more responsibility than I would have dreamed of having at my age.
- I am almost finished my Masters. As mentioned previously, I was stuck in the think of it a couple of weeks ago, however now all my coursework is submitted, all my exams over and done with, and all I have left is my dissertation. I have written about 10,000 words of it so far, mostly the literature review, but now I need to work on my case study, evaluation and analysis. The topic is extremely boring to almost everyone who isn’t in my line of work; it is focused on information assurance and security accreditation processes. Fascinating, I know! I need to submit by the end of August, with my viva schedule for early September. I’m on track to get a MSC with Distinction, but this dissertation with worth a third of the entire module marks so it is important it don’t stuff it up!
There are many, many other things I feel I really should update you all about, but my train is almost at the station and so this is where I leave you. Sorry to those of you who I haven’t sent emails or IMs to recently. I am a terribly slack friend I know and will try to do better (yes I know I always say that). Also sorry to those I missed when I was in Australia over Easter. Stu thanks for your email, we
will catch up next time. I won’t be back home for a while now. Mum, Rodney, Ed and Jeremy are over for Christmas and we are hosting them, as well as Nikkie’s parents and little sister up in Liverpool, so that will be a good dose of family fun. Everyone take care of yourselves and keep in touch.
M
Posted by Wigs at June 12, 2007 06:04 PM