Project ends, holiday starts

Work has been crazy busy over the past few weeks. While the recent Easter weekend provided some respite, most days lately have been long and tiring. Of course this flurry of activity was all in the lead up to this very day, which marks the end of my first project at Flight Centre and the sad departure of two of my team members, Martin and Damian. The impact of the Global Financial Crisis (tm) has not been kind to many projects and people at our company, resulting in numerous redundancies and delays to project schedules. I'm at least in the fortunate position of retaining my employment status thankfully, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by the truncation of my project scope.

On the bright side I think we've accomplished an astonishing amount in very little time. It certainly pays to work with great people that are committed to the cause and it's a crying shame to lose two of them under such unsavoury circumstances. I've obviously had to part ways with colleagues before but bidding farewell to good people that have slogged their guts out for you has been particularly difficult. It's all a learning experience I suppose, and at least I have one more feather in my novice manager cap.

What issues we may have with the latest build and solemn good byes aside, this day also marks the beginning of what I'd like to think is a well deserved holiday. Alison and I are slouching around in Toowoomba at the moment where we intend to kick off a week long driving holiday. The main impetus for this trip is to renew my passport in Canberra, which unfortunately is the only place aside from Perth where one of Malaysian nationality may acquire new documents. Tomorrow will see us driving a little over eight hours down to Dubbo, followed by another six hours the next day to reach the ACT. Assuming all goes well with the bureaucracy at the Malaysian High Commission, we should then continue on to a comfortable stay in the Hunter Valley before returning to Brisbane.

Let's hope our car fares a little better compared to our last driving holiday...