Leaving UQ

June 15 was a beautiful day - completely still, sunny and warm. I took the bus from Kelvin Grove to the Cultural Centre stop in the city and on to number 109 to UQ Lakes, as I have done most Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays since September. I can highly recommend part-time work. Not so healthy for the wallet, but it has been great having a weekend, a Monday and essentially another weekend every week.

The woman who is replacing me at work kindly arranged for a little coffee (or afternoon tea as they prefer to call it in Australia) to say goodbye.

Since they are also high-security Linux users, I am unable to mention their names or post their photos. I'll leave it at this: HPC manager organised the transportation, logistics, direction and was the inspiration for a wonderful cherry cheesecake (made by his daughter). The new Executive Officer's children made some beautiful banana-macadamia muffins. My boss made a nice little speech, and people said very kind things. It was a great ending to a very interesting year. Working with a group of self-proclaimed geeks is very different than working with a group of international coordinators, but I will miss them. It's the first time in many years that I have worked in an open-plan office. I will miss the Access Grid manager saying "G'day" when I come in the door every morning, and miss their chuckling about jpg compression. Most of all I will miss morning tea (coffee again) with the QCIF (Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation) gang. They're not as nerdy as their name would make them seem.

I will NOT miss The University of Queensland's abominable financial system UniFi. I will NOT miss the number of forms and signatures required to do anything. I will NOT miss sending bills for internal services, and I will NOT miss receiving them.

At lunchtime I took a few photos of the signs for some of the research centres at UQ, which I think gives an indication of the breadth of research that goes on there. My particular favorite is the ARC Centre for Integrative Legume Research (yes, the beans). Although I'm sure they wouldn't call them beans!

It is a beautiful campus. I will miss the ducks, cockatoos, turtles and lizards. The sausage trees, jacarandas and wattle. The nerdy T-shirts, the conversations among students on the bus. I'll actually miss the bus ride itself.

Moving out

Less than a week until we move out of our apartment! I've already sold the grill, the washing machine and the kids' beds, and have leads on the furniture. Hopefully someone will go for the fridge and our bed soon, but not too soon. I have wrestled my Lovesac into 10 vacuum bags and squished it into a duffle bag. We're shipping one cubic meter back to Norway, and have done a dry run on the suitcases. We seem to have plenty of space, much thanks to being able to throw away all of my son's clothes as he grew through two rounds this year.

I filled out departure forms for the kids' school yesterday. It gave me a little chill to think back to our arrival when we picked out uniforms for them and met the principal to sign up for classes. I had a meeting at QUT yesterday and today, and my last day at UQ is on Friday. The year has gone so quickly.

Moving out is like moving in in reverse - cancelling all the services you had to set up, packing instead of unpacking. We have tried city apartment living and will not be repeating that stunt. It has been very unfortunate to have a construction project going on right next door for the entire year - a year in which we really could have used some quiet. Being right next to the rooftop terrace has not been ideal on Friday and Saturday nights. Most of the bookings have been by drunk 20-year-olds. So, coming back to a small house in our quiet little Norwegian town will be nice - at least for a while.

There will be much that I will miss. Even today, a friend took me to a completely new place I did not know existed with tiny cafes and wonderful fresh produce. I wondered how much more of the city I just have not explored yet. There is so much variety. Communication is so easy in my native language, and the people are so friendly - we have gotten to know the boys at the Chop Shop and the cashiers at Woollies now. The sounds of the kookaburras and the lorikeets, and the evening flights of the bats will be greatly missed. It has been wonderful to leave the house most days knowing there will be no need for a jacket or even a cardigan.

This has been our year of soaking in the sun, of working less and playing more.
We'll have to try to carry some of it with us. I think we will.