Christmas 2010
18/12/10 16:42 Filed in: Christmas Letters
This year is all about CHANGE.
From January, I received news that there would be changes to our Toastmasters Club’s meal costs and new rules on when we needed to vacate the premises.
I had a training course in China which was supposed to happen in May but changed to August. The location was to be Xiamen in China, which was my dad’s home town and would have suited me just fine, but changed to Dalian which is north east from Beijing (and I don’t have any relatives there)!
In August, the company was acquired by Oracle Corporation, so now I’m 1 of 104,500 employees in a company much bigger than IBM!
As a result of the acquisition, we have now vacated the office where I’ve been for the last 10 years and moved to the Oracle HQ in North Ryde, which is just 10 minutes down the road from where I live.
Through out the year, there had been a lot of unknowns and uncertainties with work. Things weren’t really going smoothly. It was as if you were walking on a straight road but somehow you tripped and stumbled. Not enough to make you fall on the ground, but just enough to annoy you.
But the year wasn’t a total waste. I still had some fun. 🙂
The Dalian trip in August was quite difficult to organise, but turned out to be one of the best work trips I’ve ever had! Things were really going badly before the trip but when the trip started, it was great!
I met a flight attendant from another trip that I took 5 years ago. It was like a surprise reunion. I saw her and thought she looked very familiar. So I quickly scrolled through my photos on my iPhone and found the photo I took with her on my trip to Shanghai 5 years ago - in case she didn’t remember who I was. But as she walked down the aisle and saw my name on the passenger list, she looked up from the list, big smile and called out my name as I held up my phone to show her the photo!
That was a good start to the trip. The clients I met in Dalian turned out to be very nice and friendly. They invited me to join them for dinner and involved me in their group activities. For this trip, I was going as a trainer and usually the clients would have just given me a meal voucher and I was on my own when I wasn’t training. So this was a very nice change. If I had stayed an extra day, they wanted to involve me in their team building exercise (which was a sight seeing trip, I think).
Photos below: With Fiona the flight attendant onboard QF127, group photo with clients in Dalian and the lobby of Kowloon Shangri-La.
But I had my own fun. I stopped by Hong Kong to and from Dalian, stayed at my favourite hotel chain and found my own fun. All in all, a great trip.
Another change this year was that I had less international trips but more domestic work trips. I went to Adelaide and Melbourne. Almost 30 years living in Australia and I’ve never really been to these Australian cities.
Adelaide is like a nice small town. Parking in the city is cheap. $12 a day for early bird parking. In Sydney it’s $27 and if you have a coupon, you can get it for $24. Food was expensive though. The Asian restaurants I tried were so-so. There is a very nice Italian restaurant though.
Melbourne is much more impressive. They’ve really polished the city up. The tram system was easy to figure out and was convenient. The taxis were a bit trickier, which was the only bad point that I don’t like about Melbourne. Food was great and I went to see the musicals “Mary Poppins” and “Hairspray”.
The Christmas tree photo this year is from Collins Place in Melbourne.
The family made a few trips this year, mainly because we wanted to get the frequent flier points to maintain our Gold status with Qantas.
We made two short trips to Auckland - one on the Mother’s Day weekend and the other on the October Labour Day long weekend. By luck, we discovered a great restaurant tucked away from the main street of Parnell, a suburb known for trendy shops and restaurants. It’s worth going to Auckland just to eat there. In fact, that was the main reason we went back in October. ☺
The photos below, it’s beef on the left and lamb on the right.
We did do a little bit of sightseeing. We figured we’d do one bit at a time each time we visit.
We did our (now almost) annual Hong Kong and Taiwan trip in March, after sussing out last year that March is the best time to visit all these locations are the weather is not too hot and not too cold. The highlight in Hong Kong was catching up with the relatives and trying out this one Michelin star restaurant called “The Drawing Room”. It was recommended to me by a young lady who used to work there so I had to try it out. It was superb.
We were again very well looked after in Taipei and Tainan. Here’s a family photo taken after dinner at the Marco Polo Restaurant in Taipei:
Two special events highlighted the year:
- My best friend, Ann, won the District (equivalent of State level) championship of impromptu speaking (called Table Topics) at Toastmasters. This is a contest where you are given a topic and have to talk about it for 2 minutes right away. This is the fourth level of the contest. I’ve only won club level twice in my 13 years with Toastmasters. It is very hard to win as it is and it is one contest I know I will never win. Ann is the only person to win the District contest twice! I was so happy for her win, it felt as good as I’ve won it myself (without having to do the hard work)!
- My cousin, Eugene, visited Sydney with his wife and her siblings. This is the first time I’ve seen Eugene since 1981, when he was still a boy and a terror! It was great catching up with him after all these years. He’s still cheeky and funny and it certainly brought back great memories of the family gatherings in the good old days. I really miss those family gatherings.
We also have a new addition to the family. No, I didn’t get married and no one turned up at the doorstep calling me “dad”. We now have Kismet the family cat. She found us last year. She turned up in our backyard last Christmas - pregnant. She was pretty much only a kitten herself. This is a Christmas letter so I don’t say what I thought of the person who abandoned her. We sent her to the vet in case she was lost and the owner was looking for her. But it became obvious that no one was going to claim her. So we took her in after her babies were born. She loves cuddles and is a cutie. She’s funny to watch.
Have a great Christmas.
Your friend,
Bevan
