Last week of work

My last week of work didn’t bring anything exciting as John started to pick up the workload and I had time to think. What do I want to do with my final 6 days in Europe? I had my travel department push my return flight out by a week so that I could travel. I had already hit most of Holland, but I had friends there and knew that I would have a good time. I could maybe do Paris and London, but a lot of that would be solo. I contacted my Emmanuel, a Parisian friend from Georgia Tech, and he seemed open to touring me around and letting me crash at his place. With that set I got another email bombshell…

Jay,

There is a possibility that you would be utilized in Australia beginning the week of 3/22 for an extended stay. Would this suit you?

Hmm, let me think about that. YES!

As you can tell from previous posts, this doesn’t mean that anything is set in stone. Emails over the next few days let my hopes down as they used a local Australian resource for the project. But wait, there’s more. Since they knew that I was interested in Australia, our company has another project that needs someone. So you’re saying there’s a chance.  They went ahead and gave me my week to travel plus a week at home to recharge, so my Australian start date is April 5th.

Toward the end of the week I hadn’t heard from Emmanuel about a few questions I had so I started to get nervous. I didn’t want to drop money on a train ticket if I wasn’t going to meet up with him – I had no backup plan. I expressed this to Carolien and Aukje and they persuaded me to come back to Amsterdam for the weekend and hang out with them in Utrecht during the week. I’d been to both places already, but I didn’t have any other options so I agreed.

As I was packing my things to check out of my home (it didn’t feel like a hotel anymore), I got a message from Emmanuel that he had been busy with work but was planning a bunch of stuff for us to do. Aw, crap. I emailed him back to give me the details and I would do my best to go there after Amsterdam, since I had already reserved a hotel (with points, cha-ching). I never heard back from him. I guess he was pissed.