So I've been at work for three weeks now and everything's cruising quite well. The tools and methodologies are pretty much the same as home, and the clients have the same needs (although much bigger needs).
Something I'm noticing though that's much different to home is everybody's apparent allergy to beer. Nobody ever has beers during lunch, during meetings, or usually even after work on a Friday. Very, very different to home. So much so actually, that the people I've spoken with can't even believe we have a beer fridge on the meetings floor in Brisbane. It's almost like any suggestion of having a beer during the day would completely remove any trace of professionalism and credibility.
We had an informal group meeting a few days ago, something which would, in Brisbane, start at 3:30 with beers and continue for a few hours, often progressing into a reasonably large number of beers once the meeting's over. Not here. We were offerred bottled water and iced tea. Hmmm. Things got wild when we went out to dinner though. Most people had one beer before dinner and then another one with dinner. To settle things down, we got back to iced water.
The social scene's quite different here, and it certainly doesn't seem to exist in the workplace, at least not as I've always known it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just going to take a lot of getting used to. You never know; when I get back to Brisbane, I'll probably look at the office as a bunch of alcoholics!?
On the good side though, there's a convenience store over the street which sells local beer for 99 cents for a 710 mL can, so I can have a quiet beverage at home on the weekend. That eases the pain!
Other than my ongoing infatuation with alcohol, things are going great. We went to Central Park yesterday. That was our fourth trip now, and we still haven't been to the same spot twice. They opened up the open-air ice skating rink yesterday too, so we'll head over in the next few weekends for a bit of a skate.
The weather's turned quite cold now. It's what the locals call 'real Fall weather'. I call it the middle of winter. There's surely more to come. It is very pleasant though, until the wind comes up. We bought ourselves some nice overcoats through the week, so Alicia's been wearing hers. She looks like a true local. I'm holding out for some seriously cold weather before I give mine a run. There's been a fair bit of rain lately, which is still a novelty compared to life at home.
Still having fun,
Michael
3 comments:
Wow, those crazy NY locals really know how to let their hair down, don't they? You must have been getting the shakes early on in the Group Meeting.... maybe next time you can take along a Karioke (?sp) machine (or Singstar) to try to loosen them up a bit - lol. (Maybe they haven't done their drawing and self improvement workshops yet...)
Next time I send Leish a parcel, I'll throw in some Aussie tea bags so you can make your own iced tea!!
Have fun at the rink, when you go.
xx S.
Glad you can get some beer across the road. Very pleased that things are going well for you at the office. Enjoy your skating.
Troy McClure: "Ah, sweet liquor eases the pain."
Post a Comment