Australia Entry #10 - September 24th - October 23rd, 2024

A Busy Month

It had been quite some time since the last time I posted, but not too much had been happening outside of work over the course of October. Generally, work had picked up in preparation for a DR cutover that one of the customers I support in Singapore and so much of my focus even outside of normal business hours was making sure that things went smoothly with that project. I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to talk through and plan the event. Some of those work days had me staying until 7 PM to accomodate the time shift of 3 hours with the country of Singapore. I’m writing this entry now from the airport lounge waiting to board onto my flight to Singapore to help with said event. I’m looking forward to visiting the country and meeting my coworkers and colleagues that I’ve been working with 20-25 hours per week with and I’m crossing my fingers that the event ges well and leads us to having a more frequent back and forth crossing between running in both data centers.

I also took some time to search and see what things there were to do in Singapore at night. When I flew out to Sydney for my other customer’s non production build trip, I spent a lot of extra time in my hotel researching and optimizing our time together on site as we were falling behind completing what we wanted to during the trip. Because of that I didn’t walk around and actually see much of Sydney. I don’t want this trip to be the same. I prepared a bunch of topics and me and the ODBAs have done a ton of work in preparation of the event, so I want to actually enjoy my time, eat some good food, explore some touristy spots after work and chat with coworkers. Evan, out in the Singapore office, is already planning to find some place for dinner one of the nights and I bought myself a ticket for Sunday (after the DR event) to go to the ArtScience Museum for a Studio Ghibli exhibit. I brought my 360 camera as well and hope to take plenty of pictures with my ODBAs and of the beautiful country I’m landing in. Even though it looks like it’s suppose to rain for the entire week I’m there, I don’t care. My mood is positive and this will be a great trip, even if I have to will it into existance.

After I come back, I also plan to take a trip to Tasmania during the longer Melbourne Cup weekend on the first week of November. October was a pretty boring and work filled month, but today is the day it all turns around back to some extra fun. One of the most important things that I’ve taken to heart was hearing from people I respect tell me that it’s always important to have something to look forward to, be it a trip, a new tv show, a video game, a concert, a book. Part of what got me through October was looking forward to this trip, even it is above all other things for work. I’m also looking forward to starting to play in the volleyball league that kicks off when I arrive back. Technically a few weeks had already started in October, but both weather and work got in the way.