And now for the good news

Following on from several rather dull moaning whinges about the unfairness of life and stuff, this weekend has finally confirmed a piece of good news I have been sitting on. I'm a superstitious sort, you see, so I don't like to count my chickens until they've hatched.

But in five short weeks time, I'll be on my way to Adelaide, South Australia, for the start of six weeks of what can best be described as holiday.

One of the benefits of being involved in research (perhaps the only one) is that you get to attend conferences in far-flung parts of the world. Barbara has managed to persuade the company that cannot be named to let her go to two, one in Adelaide and the other in Christchurch about three weeks later. It doesn't make sense to fly all that way, then come back, then go out again. So we're going to make a holiday of it. Better yet, the research work which Barbara is going to present was done for private companies (we do work for the government as well - sinister, shadowy research projects), and in both cases they have agreed to cover her costs, which means all I have to stump up for is my flight.

And serendipitously, I have a short-term chunk of work to do which will provide more than the necessary folding. OK, so it's mostly boring, repetitive data-entry work, but there's very little I won't do for six weeks in Australia and New Zealand.

The flights have been booked, the papers accepted to both conferences, so there's no turning back now. Time constraints mean that we get to spend just one night in Bangkok (make's a hard man humble) on the way out, and two nights in Singapore on the way back. But mostly it's six weeks in the antipodes, taking it easy. And who knows, South Island in October, I might even manage some skiing. Hooray.

You all have my permission to be green with envy and generally abusive;}#

Comments

Stuart MacBride said…
"You all have my permission to be green with envy and generally abusive;}#"

Ok – you smell of poo and have a silly-looking haircut.

Popular Posts