Last day of work at Telecom (4th March 2011)

Mother Nature really knows how to encourage me to leave Wellington by giving us such terrible weather leading up to the move to Sydney – it’s pouring with rain outside with gusty winds, AGAIN!

Today’s my last day of work at Telecom. I can’t believe I’ve actually been in Wellington for the last 3.5 years; I had all intention to make a short trip back to Wellington in 2007 to pick up the rest of my belongings and move to Melbourne but ended up staying on this long because I got offered a job with Telecom. It was a great opportunity for me as I got to move into an IT-based role which is more in line with my degree, and in the process gained new skills and experience which I’m hoping will quickly secure me a job in Sydney. Eek, I’m jobless effective tomorrow!

With Telecom’s recent cost-cutting policies, the company wasn’t throwing me a farewell party like they had done for my former colleagues so we had to improvise and had a small morning tea instead. I bought an orange ricotta cake from Moore Wilsons (cost $37) for the team, and Phil and Peter chipped in some cookies (the unofficial new policy is that the teams pool money for their departing team member but with only me, Hamish and Phil in our immediate team, I can’t expect them to fork out the full cost of the morning tea so bought my own cake). Around 9.30am, everyone gathered in the kitchen for the morning tea with Chris kicking it off with his farewell speech. The team pooled together money to get me a leaving card and gifts – a mug (every person who leaves the team gets one), a keychain with shape of New Zealand and a long-sleeved top with Maori designs, all to remind me of my roots in NZ. Chris insisted I unwrap the mug and show it to the team. It had a map of Australia but instead of having names of the cities and towns, it was replaced with a list of all possible hazards and disasters one could encounter in Australia: floods, baby-eating dingoes, stingrays, sharks, box jellyfish etc. We all cracked up laughing as I read them out loud! Really have to hand it to Chris and the team leads for coming out with the list for the mug – it’s brilliant :) Thanks everyone for the gifts and card!

My last day was very cruisy, mainly tidying things up and clearing my desk. Several of us headed down to the pub for a few drinks after work before saying our final goodbyes. I’ve enjoyed working with everyone and will definitely miss being in their company. Please do keep in touch and you’ll never know, we might end up working together again in the near future! Like Chris said, those who left somehow ends up back in the team ;)