News from the Captain Downunder
Hej Hej
Well as you are aware, I have been working in the Western Kangarooland government and dealing with gas issues. Mycket boring, but you have to do something to get money and a job is a job. I'm still not sure what I am supposed to be doing in my job (after over 4 months) as I literally have no work to do. I have asked my boss what work I am meant to be doing, but whenever I ask he gets angry and defensive and lists a series of vague responsibilities which don't actually involve any real work. He usually follows it up with a "that’s what's you've been doing all this time, haven't you!?!", to which I always reply "ja... absolut... tack tack!". I have been told I am responsible for matters relating to an iron ore policy, but that policy does not actually exist. I can not create an iron ore policy because no one knows what an iron ore policy should look like and it’s not my responsibility to create policy anyway. I no longer complain to my boss about having no work to do, I just say that I'm stressed and too busy to discuss what I'm currently working on. I've ockso developed a mycket bra screening process for my phonecalls whereby I don't answer my work phone (generally when the phone rings it means bad news or work) and only return calls between 12:30 and 1:00 when most people are at lunch.
Outside work my life has been alright (not that work is so bad, I don't mind getting paid to do nothing). I've been playing some cricket, but my shoulder is giving me some real problems, so I'm out of action for a while. In some mycket bra good news, on Sunday (14 Jan) I will be flying to Bangkok for a two week holiday. I'm meeting up with a Finnish girl from the Lund orchestra who I have been keeping in close contact with. It will be great to get out of Perth and my work routine for a while. When I get back, I'll be moving into a house owned by an expensive high school in South Perth with some friends. We get free rent, utilities, meals and access to facilities on the campus in exchange for supervising children from the boarding school for 12 hours per week (during school semester). It sounded like a good deal so I will try that out for a while at least.
Academically I'm still on course for my main goal, that being to return to Europe and commence a PhD in management/industrial relations. I've enrolled at the University of WA to complete my honours year (the prep year for a PhD in Australia, much like the magister/"masters" year in Sweden is for Swedish PhD programs) as it will help with my applications to universities in the UK. The industrial relations professors at UWA have strong links with universities in the UK and have indicated that it shouldn't be a problem to get into a PhD program at a good UK university for 2008. As I have no work to do at work, I'm able to dedicate a lot of time to researching my thesis, so I expect everything will go as planned.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a good new years celebration. Please keep in touch with email or posts on this site.
Take care
Captain B
posted by Peter Bentley at 12:50 AM
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