bahuma: the blog

I got an email this morning from United Airlines with the subject heading “United Airlines Schedule Change Notice”. I opened it thinking what the fuck!

They provided me with this new schedule:

I review it and still see I am flying on the same day. I then pull up the old schedule:

I logged into united.com and my seats were exactly the same… so the question still remains unanswered.. what changed?

February is now one week down which means I have four work weeks left of working out of the Hershey office in PA. It is now less than 5 weeks until I land in Tassie.

The time is flying by. It is going to creep up on me and all of a sudden I will have a week to sort out my stuff and get on a plane.

I was driving through Hershey last weekend with Suz while we were taking a break from working on Saturday to get some lunch. We drove past the Hershey Theatre which had a banner out advertising Avenue Q! I had heard of Avenue Q due to one of their songs doing the rounds on youtube.

I thought about it for a few days and I decided to go. I have no idea why it took we so long to decide. The show was great and the energy of the performers was excellent. The show is done with puppets and is centered around Princeton who moves to Avenue Q in NYC to start a new job and find his purpose. Of course this did not go to plan.

The same day I went to Avenue Q, a box full of 6 surprises was waiting on my doorstep when I returned. These surprises were from Ally who had ordered me 6 cupcakes in a jar from the Bangerang Bake Shop. I am happy to say that they are very tasty and I now have only 2 left! oops

The last few days have been hell for many Victorians. The state has been ravaged by bush fires, some of which were deliberately lit. Anyone associated with lighting fires which have now claimed over 100 lives should be lined up and shot. They have destroyed so many lives and affected 1000’s more.

Since Christmas it has been mostly work and no play. We currently have multiple projects running and not enough people to do the work. It is putting a lot of strain on the core UXO people as we keep getting stretched thinner and thinner and something has to give.

I have the luxury of working from PA while I continue to process data from Cuba. I say it is a luxury but it has its down falls. One of those is that I am the only core UXO person in Hershey since both Ian and Brian are on site. This means I get peppered with questions from the boss which does not allow me to get on with what I am meant to be doing.

But a change is coming…. I have had my sit down meetings with my boss and his boss to discuss my future. I went in to the meetings with the attitude that I want to move back to Australia and if that costs me my job, so be it. I ended up putting the cards on the table and after trying to convince me to stay, they got the drift that I am off.

Then came the next meeting about how I could continue to be involved with the group. I feel a bit guilty about the arrangement but I have been given a 6 month period where I will be allowed to work from Australia on an as needed basis. If it gets to a point where work is light I have agreed to tap into the time which is owed to me.

I think my boss thinks I will move back after the 6 months… I really don’t see that happening.

I hope that the company tries to hire more people. We have a good name in UXO and we have some good contracts but we simply never have plentiful resources to do everything. Every time we get a decent sized project there is a handful of people that end up doing a lot of hours to try and get the job done. If nothing is done the group is going to dissolve as key people either take up new jobs or move out of the industry.

So that’s about for now…. I promise the next post will be a bit more fun and light hearted