That Monday Morning Feeling

When the alarm went off I trudged to the shower to get ready as I needed to leave the hotel by around half 9. The reason being that I had that Monday Morning feeling and was heading outside of Sydney city centre to get to the Unilever office up in Epping. I had arranged with a couple of work colleagues that I would pop in and show my face if I was passing through and it seemed like a good opportunity to put a face to the names I had constantly seen on emails flying backwards and forwards across the globe.

I managed to negotiate the train system with relative ease, especially as it was well past rush hour. The journey only took 25 minutes, on a double-decker train with folding seats so that you can choose to sit facing where you were going or not - a great idea. I found the office and checked in at reception. It looked very impressive and had a range of products there, not just deodorants, which I realised they must have more than one category working out of the same office. Nabil met me at reception and we headed up to the office. I noticed immediately that we had the exact same glasses and he said that we obviously both had great taste. When we got into the office he showed me round and introduced me to a few of the Packaging and/or Specifications team that I deal with. It was good to meet everyone in person and before long we were all round a table and discussing the ways we could work better together. I shan’t go into too much detail here, but all you need to know is that it was a productive meeting and things should hopefully be a lot smoother when I return in January.

Just another Monday morning at work...

Once we had concluded the meeting me and Nabil went out to grab a bite to eat and we returned to the office discussing travelling in general and all the places he has been and wants to visit outside of work – he obviously has a bigger travel budget than we do. As he was due in a meeting at 14:00 I left him to it and said my goodbyes. Bridges built and networks created, I thought to myself…

On the train...contemplating

I took the train back from Epping into Central and bought a ticket to Bondi Junction. This was the only time that I would be able to the Australia’s most famous beach, although the weather was definitely not right for beach-wear. It was a fair hike from the train station to the beach and I thought it would be bigger than it actually was in all honesty. I had seen it on the telly, on a program called Bondi Rescue or something like that, and it looked very different with greyish clouds overhead and a chilly winding rushing in off the coast. But I guess that is what it is famous for, as the surf was pretty damn good. Not that I was going to do any, but I did at least walk through the small waves at the shore front along the length of the beach. It was a strange (and cold) moment, suddenly realising where I was and what I was doing. These moments tend to come when me and James are separated and you have time to reflect on things and take in the enormity of the situation. A few months ago I had been watching the TV show in a flat in Morley (Leeds) and now I was here…on the beach itself, with the waves lapping at my feet. Mind-blowing.

Me with cold feet on Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach

It was getting late, and I had told James that I would be back at about 5ish (he had gone to Miranda to get his iPod from EB Games) and it was already gone 5 before I set off from the beach. I managed to get back into the city after 6 , but at a completely different area than what I knew, so I go the map out and tried to work out where I was and where the nearest Coles was. We were having a cheap night in after the birthday celebrations, so it was a Coles Butter Chicken Curry and some tortilla chips with hummus for dinner. Plus the bottle of white wine that was still in the fridge from the night before, of course.