David:

Here are the entries for the last week:

Saturday: We went to Dom and Dee's engagement party tonight (click here for a photo). We thought that we wouldn't know anybody except Dom and Dee, and Cathy had a terrible sore throat so she didn't feel like talking much. We ended up having a good time though. Some other people Cathy knew from uni (and who I've met a couple of times before) turned up, and we all ended up chatting. We did come home pretty early though.

Monday: Work put on a motivational seminar this morning, with some breakfast (which I couldn't eat because I'd forgotten and had my usual breakfast before leaving for work). The speaker was Peter Bland, the first Australian to walk to the Magnetic North Pole. The seminar was interesting, and might have been motivational for some. I find, though, that motivational seminars that promote extreme levels of motivation (to the point of obsession) fly in the face of work-life balance. I also don't believe in the one-minded goal setting that Peter Bland appears to be promoting. I've seen too many people totally focus on one goal, only to have that goal slip out of their reach. I believe that if a person is too focused on one goal they: (1) do not allow themselves the opportunity to experience and enjoy other good things in life, and (2) tend to lose purpose if they realise that their one goal has become (or always has been) unachievable. I'm not saying that it isn't important to pursue goals (I certainly have), only that those goals should be placed in perspective with other worthwhile things in life. Here are some links to information about Peter Bland if you'd like to have a look:

Peter's ICMI profile

Life Matters - 19/2/2003: A Step Too Far: Peter Bland

Friday: I experienced my first HR Breakfast Club breakfast with Peter 1, Peter 2, Lara, Steve, and Cathy. The group catches up every once in a while to chat and discuss HR issues. The breakfast was a good prelude to work on Friday, and Cathy enjoyed meeting some of the people I work with.

I wrote a bit of a spiel above about work-life balance in my entry about last Saturday. I have decided to try something new: grocery shopping on the internet. I thought that shopping in this way might save me a couple of hours each week (so maybe I can find time to answer my emails!!!). I tried the internet grocer FoodDirect (http://www.fooddirect.com.au/). The purchasing interface was pretty good, and they deliver every week day evening. I've set it up so that the goods are delivered Monday afternoon. I'll write an update next week as to the quality of the service. If this works out okay then I might have a bit more recreation time.

Here is the next of the UK journal entries:

Friday 25/06/93 7:11 pm.

We had a long day in London today. We took the car back this morning, and booked a flight from Istanbul to Cairo for £275.10. Monique got hers for nearly half price due to her being under 24 years old. We got our French visas for £7 each for five days. There were absolutely heaps of people in the French Embassy. For some strange reason there was one que for Australians and the other ques were for every other country. There must be heaps of us going to France as no other country had been singled out like Aussies.

We met a lot of people there, an Australian couple who had been to Nepal and the USA, another Australian girl who had been to the US and was heading for Nepal after France, and we met a guy who went to school at Assumption College in Warwick who had been working in Los Angeles as an actor and a script writer. Normally, if someone had told me this I would have thought "Bullshit", but this fellow seemed to be modest about it, and what convinced me the most was that he said he was working in LA and didn't mention his occupation. It was not until I asked him what he did for a living in the States did he say he was a script writer, and even then he didn't tell me he was acting until I asked him how he got into script writing. He seemed more interested in our mutual acquaintances than talking about what he did for a living. Even with all this taken into account he still could be lying but he didn't come across as a typical "Bullshit Artist".

We booked a channel crossing for Wednesday next week and this cost us £30 which includes the bus from London to the ferry (2 hours), the ferry trip (1 hours) and the bus trip to Paris (3 hours) so I think we did alright there considering the cheapest flight to Paris is £90 and this doesn't include the bus trip to and from London and Paris airports.

8:00 pm.