The "Big Trip" explained.

Well, here I am, sitting in the waterford train with my trusty(?) laptop, with an hour to go before I get home. Might as well take the time to explain the "big trip" I mentioned earlier.

Basically, this time next month I'll be in Beijing. In fact, this time 3 weeks I'll be on the plane to Beijing! I'm not moving there for good or anything, but it's going to be a good two month stint there, a rotation program with my job, sending me over to the office there to work on a few projects. This is something I've been agitating with my boss to happen for the best part of 18 months, and it's finally come to pass. To be honest I always thought it was a long shot, as since we've never had the money for even pay rises up til last sep, there was hardly any budget there for big trips (altho it never stopped the managers swanning off to the US every few months for meetings). It seems the money is finally there anyway, so I applied for it back in November, not really thinking I'd get it. Imagine my surprise when it was provisionally approved, and I was told we just needed the big boss in the US to sign off on it! This was early december tho, and the longer she took to make the decision the more I was convinced I wouldn't get it. When I came back from my ski trip last monday, I reckoned it wasn't going to happen as if I went it was supposed to be in Feb - either it wasn't happening or they were going to push it out by a few months. Tuesday morning tho, I get the green light, and i've been running around like a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest since trying to get organized!

Thanks to my boss taking her sweet time approving it, I now have 3 weeks to get up a project plan, get my expense request in and approved, get my flights, my visa, organize & tidy up all my stuff here so I can go without things going to pot, and do all my usual work at the same time! So, to get my visa, I need my flight itinerary, to get that I need my expense request approved, and technically they don't like booking the flights until the visa is sorted. So, bit of a catch-22 - I need the flights to get the visa, but I also need the visa to get the flights! At least the expense request finally got approved on fri evening, so that's something. I went to book my flights straight away then, but it seems the ppl in AMEX are on a 9-5 day on friday as no-one was there to answer the phone. After 10 mins on hold being told that "your call is important to us", I gave up (if it was that important to them, why didn't someone pick up on the other end?). So, one hurdle over, and possibly two - the guys on the Beijing side are organizing the accommodation, I'm staying in an apartment 15mins walk from work, near the high-tech/university part of town. I'm probably going to be sharing an apartment as well with another engineer there, which will split the costs and therefore keep my boss happy. Next step, getting the visa. Apparently I need to get a letter of invitation from the office I'm going to visit before I can get it, and that should be coming through on monday.

The one bit I'm not looking forward to tho is the next step - telling the parents. One of the things about being an only child is that they can be a bit over-protective and worry a bit too much at times. I don't think my mother was overly happy with me going off skiing in case I broke something, she was a bit teary-eyed when I was going out the door, and now I'm going off to the other side of the world for two months? At least I suppose it's not like that time I nearly took the job in prague, I mean, I will be back in 8-9 weeks or so. There is precedent as well I suppose, with the 6 week trip I had to the US back in 2000. Still tho, it probably isn't going to go down well. Nothing will be really said at the time, but when I'm heading in to town with Dad I'll get the speech - "you have to look out for your own interests, don't worry about us, but your mother will be worried about you so make sure you be careful and ring home as often as you can". I got that when I was going to Austria for a week, so it'll be a big one this time! Not sure whether the short notice is a good thing or a bad thing - will be more of a shock, but will also give them less time to worry. Ah well, time will tell I guess.

I was actually looking at my expense report history when I was submitting my request, and that US trip was the last time I went abroad with the company - November 2000! So, whatever the boss says about "big opportunity, big responsbility, need to get a return on the trip" etc, I'm fecking owed this one! 4 years with no pay rises, no other recognition, well this is my payback now for sticking around!