Wow what a week...

So here we have it, we applied for the house last monday at 9am, and we received a call at 11am saying 'they would be honoured to take us on as tenants'.

Woohoo.

So then started the mild hysteria about moving, all the work we have to do etc etc.

We'll it's now saturday night, and we have done a little work so far in amongst out other responsibilities - I agreed weeks ago to help out a mate who was moving house this weekend - he had hired a 3 ton truck to move all the big stuff.

Today turned out to be the hottest February day in 40 years, topping 40c mid afternoon. Our house is like a sauna. The AC has worked a trwat downstairs, but up in the bedroom it is currently 34.3c at midnight. There is no way of cooling it down. I am seriously considering sleeping on the sofa tonight, and hope that helen doesn't think I have fallen out with her!

This has been a roller coastr of a week, what with all the house stuff, but also because I have been given a promotion of sorts. It has been mooted for quite some time that our organisiation needs to develop the careers of it's technical staff - after all, we are the ones keeping the comapny running as such. So, with this in mind, I am now officially the Australia and New Zealand Territory Qstar Specialist.

What this means is that I am officially recognised as a guru in this area, and a single point of contact for other engineers throughout the territory. Beyond that, my managers want to promote this further, as there is an opening for a 'Regional Specialist' - someone who is a Single Point of Contact (or SPOC) for the product management in the US. This is something I have wanted for some years, to be recognised for my abilities and to have the opportunities to travel throughout the region (the whole of Asia Pacific, Japan and China) to fight local issues with this particular instrument. Most of the time, this will involve remote troubleshooting, with asuperb tool called Webex. We use it all the time in our company, and allows the direct control of a customers's instrument to allow us to troubleshoot.

Anyhow, I am waffling, but the first step in this will be happening in 2 weeks time. I wil be travelling to Taiwan for 2 weeks to train and mentor 4 of their local engineers. Our business out there is pretty good, but there have been issues with how the engineers have been working, leaving the customers unhappy with the quality of their job, and showing their lack of skills.

They will be attending training courses in their respective specialities, but prior to this it was thought that some one-on-one mentoring would benefit. So that's where I come in, I hope, to inprove their confidence, and get them on track.

As you may know, today sees the start of the chinese new year celebrations, and helen and I have just returned from Box Hill, a nearby suburb, with a very high proportion of Chinese migrants. With this in mind, every year the place comes alive for the Lunar Year celebrations and we wanted to go and see the street party.

So, I now have a gift for my colleagues in Taiwan - we found a stall that was doing personalised calligraphy, so I asked them to do this for me - It says " Greetings from your friends in Australia"

It is the done thing in Taiwan to exchange gifts when you meet colleagues for the first time, so I will let you know what they give to me!

Ok, it is way ast my bedtime, I better go and try and sleep in this opressive heat!

Catch you all soon....

C