Settling in

Four days of work and a new bike. So far, so good.

It may be a bit early, but work seems pretty awesome. I work with the techology commercialisation team (which is about half the company, ~40 people), but I sit with the school of IT and electrical engineering 3 stories downstairs. I come up to UniQuest several times a day for meetings and lunch. I've been wandering the corridors introducing myself to grad students and researchers. And otherwise looking at a few technologies that some profs have brought my way. My office is huge, though relatively bare (I'm thinking of taking my digital picture frame into work). The people are all welcoming, the hours are officially 8:30 to 5:30, though the office is empty at 8:30 and pretty vacant again by 5:15. But most importantly, I feel pretty comfortable, even though I still don't know what I'm doing. I feel confident I can do this job well. What a change from BCG.

I live a 5 minute walk to the big bus station where I can take the express bus which takes about 12 minutes to get to campus, then it's another 5 or so minutes walk across campus to my building, General Purpose South (and I thought MIT had a bad naming scheme). The only problem with the commute is that there seem to be 4 different schedules for the bus: there's the online one, the one that's published at the stops, the digital one that flickers up at the stations, and then the one they actually run on. None of them is particularly indicative of the others. But in general, they run every 5 minutes in the morning and every 10 minutes in the evenings. So... Not so bad.

I need to do some work clothes shopping. I didn't bring a lot of "work clothes" over to Cairns, and the office is actually an office, unlike CYI. Plus I've shrunk a bit since I bought these work clothes, so things seem to hang off me. Guess this means more shopping this weekend. Thank goodness for Queen's Birthday sales! That's right, I have Monday off for the celebration of the Queen's birthday. It should be noted that the Queen Elizabeth II's birthday is actually on the 21st of April. Of course it's not the Queen's birthday in Western Australia, cause it's celebrated there sometime in September.

The apartment is coming together. Still needs a different TV stand, a BBQ on the porch and a bit more decor, but it's good. The curtains help a lot.

And then there's the bike. I just picked her up today, and she's a beauty. Small and stealthy. I'm thinking her name might be Leticia. Not luh-ti-sha, but la-tee-see-ah. Despite being an American bike, she just seems exotic. Tomorrow morning I'm gonna take her to the indoor bike studio for her first ride. I'm still nervous about riding her. She's so new and shiny. And I will try to do better by her than my LeMond, but I can't promise that she won't take a beating. I'm still learning.

I haven't joined a tri club yet. I'm still trying to figure out with my work schedule what will work best. The ride tomorrow morning is with the Brisbane Tri Squad and the studio is just down the street from me. But they swim in the Valley which is too far for me to go. There is a tri club at UQ, but I'm not sure if it'll work either: they practice at UQ at 5:30am which means I'd have to ride to work everyday in the dark, cause buses don't run that early.

So slowly, I'm starting to build a life here.

Living in Brissie