WORK TRAVEL

“The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.” – Françoise de Motteville

Part of my new job involves travelling (mainly interstate, but occasionally internationally also). Today I had a day trip to Sydney – you could say that I commuted to Sydney for the day. The mind boggles how nowadays we can wake up, make our way to the airport and an hour later be in another city, 800 km away, put in a day’s work and then take the plane back to our home town and sleep in our own comfortable bed. It is a rather hectic day, but it achieves much because even in these days of high technology and instant communication of a number of different kinds, the face-to-face contact and interaction that meeting someone across a table entails is not possible with the technology. Also of course, one can have a very nice lunch with one’s colleagues. I must say that very often, it is these informal social interactions over lunch, over a cup of coffee, while talking about a variety of topics, that allow one to achieve quite a lot of the business at hand also.

The weather in Sydney today was very pleasant, sunny and warm, just to spite the weather bureau who had predicted storms and a downpour (although the sky did look ominous as we were flying out of Sydney airport). The pleasant weather allowed to go and have a very nice lunch in a delightful restaurant in Crows Nest, called “Garfish”. As the name suggests, it specialises in seafood, which is very fresh and exquisitely cooked. Although the conversation at lunch was agreed not to be worked related, we didn’t honour our agreement and work was discussed…

Overall, an enjoyable day that achieved a lot. There is a lot of satisfaction associated with having done a day’s work that has been enjoyable but which has also achieved much. I like my new job as it has a lot of variety (and routine is something that I do not like). Now I’m off to write my report for the day’s work!

Do you enjoy your job? Why or why not?