September
2008
Busy Times1
Well once again, time has flown by and it has been a long time since we last updated all of you! Overall, everything is going very well. Jackie is very busy at work at Howorth in B2B division and is constantly home later than I am! I’m now fully staffed on a client case and therefore quite busy but finding the work very interesting. I have a lot of interaction with the clients and quite a lot of responsibility – it has been a steep learning curve over the past few weeks. I even spent the last 2 days in Melbourne (last minute!!) at the client site which was interesting, and also gave me the opportunity to catch up with Pasquale and Wendy, my cousins, for dinner and a drink at a cool vodka bar! I think that I may be spending more time in Melbourne over the next few weeks, and Jackie and I are also thinking about going down for the long weekend October 4-6 which would be great fun!
In other exciting news, Jackie and I have decided that we are going to move out just the two of us so are now starting to look at places – the rental market is quite competitive right now, so fingers crossed! We’re also both happy that it is now Spring and starting to warm up and get lighter, although we have enjoyed 2 quick weekend trips to the snow during the winter – more on that in a minute!
Last week I was also away travelling for ‘work’ – we had our Firmwide Conference up at the Sunshine Coast, North of Brisbane in Queensland from Wednesday to Friday – turns out that no work actually gets done and it is just an opportunity to have fun, drink lots, and meet people from the Melbourne and Auckland office’s, as well as getting to know people from the Sydney office in a social setting. The Associates (people like me who have been there for less than 3 years) then had a budget to stay for the weekend in a nearby beachfront town where we continued the partying and I even got some surfing in – it was quite funny travelling up in business clothes with a surf board 
Jackie and I have also been down to the snow twice which has been great fun. We went once the first weekend of August to Thredbo and had a little apartment right by the the lifts in Thredbo Village with Millie and James. The snow was the best I have seen there (check out the photos), and we had a great time both on and off the slopes. We also headed down with 16 friends a few weeks and stayed at the Station Resort in Jindabyne which is about 30 minutes drive from Perisher where we skiied/boarded that weekend. Again, we had a great time hanging out with friends and doing some snowboarding although there hadn’t been any fresh snow so conditions weren’t perfect. The sun was out on Saturday which was great, although it rained (not snowed!) on Sunday so we headed home a little early 
Although we do seem to have been going away a fair bit, there has also been a lot going on in Sydney. Keiren came home for a few weeks before heading back to England to start his Masters at LSE. We had a great time catching up and hanging out! I’ve also done the city2surf which is a 14km race from (you guessed it!) the city to Bondi Beach. I hadn’t really been training, and also had a friend’s farewell party the night before but still managed to do it in 60.41 minutes which I was very happy with!
Last Sunday was Father’s day, so the family went Bather’s at Balmoral Beach to celebrate. It was a lovely evening.
I guess that just about wraps up what’s been going on here! Have a look at the photos, and send us an email or leave a comment to let us know how you’re all going.
Hope to hear from you all soon.
Ben and Jackie