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.