Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. The plan was the next installment was to be written by Mr S the following weekend so he could tell you all about his very exciting sailing trip out into the Bass Straight, but I'll let him tell you about that...
September has been a real mixed bag. After the Gripper incident I was struck down with a mystery illness (coincidence?) and was confined to my bed for a week. Fortuitously, I had been for a job interview on the day that illness struck and despite being called back for a second interview the following day which involved lots of drugs and dragging myself from my bed, I was somehow offered the job! Woo hoo! I started my new job last Monday working for Coles supermarkets (the Aussie version of Tesco) at their Store Support Centre (Head Office) in a place called Tooronga which is to the east of Melbourne city centre way out in the 'burbs, so it's a bit of a schlepp when it comes to the commute. The place is huge and has the nickname of Battlestar Galactica due to it's size and black glass windows. There are 800 people in the IT department! The more I find out about the company, the more it reminds me of the way Tesco operates in the UK (courtesy of work tales from Sarah and George). It's all worked out rather swimmingly really, as Coles is a household name in Aus and I'm working on their customer loyalty programme (Nectar, ClubCard etc) so it's a pretty high profile thing to be involved in. What an introduction to Australian working life!
Last week our Big Shipment was finally delivered to our apartment. Absolutely brilliant. Bloody hard work. Very emotional. The guys arrived at 8.30am and by 10.30am 71 of the 72 pieces were in the apartment. The 72nd item was the 3-seater settee. I was called to the first floor by the guys to assess the situation of the settee which hadn't fit in the lift and they were attempting to carry up the stairs. The message I'd received was that it was stuck on the roof. How did they miss the 9th floor, I was thinking. Turned out to be Chinese whispers. It was in fact only slightly cosily snug between the floor and the ceiling on the first floor landing. Call themselves removal men?!?! Despite their defeatist attitude "This isn't going anywhere", I insisted that the settee would fit up the stairs and around the corner of each of the nine flights of stairs, so I proceeded to make them carry it back down to the ground floor so it could be turned around to the right angle and begin it's journey upwards again. It is worth mentioning at this point, that Mr S, very conveniently, had a business meeting in the City on Thursday morning, so was no where to be found when the hard work was to be done. Did I mention we live on the ninth floor? After my insistence that the settee was going up to the flat come hell or high water, I thought it only fair to lend a hand with the grunt work, so Brendan, Dylan and I got to work and within what seemed like no time at all *clears throat* the settee was in the flat. There's nothing like a bit of Friends style pivoting to make the floors pass by quickly (David - that one's for you). Just call me the Fairy Spatially Aware Godmother.
After the excitement of Thursday's unboxing extravaganza, "Eee, I'd forgotten we had that", Saturday afternoon was our housewarming drinks. It was planned as late afternoon sunset cocktails, but we couldn't resist waving the British flag (not literally of course) and having Pimms as the welcome drinks (thanks to Kevin's most delicious Pimms recipe from the Hunters BBQ's - happy days). The plan was for a few casual drinks, then sometime around 7pm head out for the evening. As my project management skills were off duty, mainly due to excessive early intake of Pimms, the evening didn't quite follow as planned. The sunset cocktails merged from afternoon to evening, the nibbles morphed into a late night pizza order and the sensible chat degenerated into talking absolute rubbish with fuel added to the fire in the form of a bit of Irish craic. The result was a truly hilarious evening of memory making in our new pad.
This coming weekend will be another busy one. We're booked for an afternoon of learning to kite board on St Kilda Beach, then with a bit of luck the subtle hints will have worked their way into Mr S's psyche and I'll be whisked off for a wonderful evening of yummy food and quaffable wine to celebrate another year of getting older. Happy Days :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment