Ahead of the curve... again

Those who know me well, know that I often have great ideas and then do nothing (or very little) about them and then someone else goes on with my idea and makes a great success with it.

Well, this time I am once again ahead of the curve. After announcing my gap year plans, I came across this story about taking time off to travel and experience the world.

How's the planning going I hear you ask?

Well,

Researching flights and reading lots of reviews for the lower cost carriers,  (sorry Qantas) as less money spent in the air is more for the ground, and lets face it, air travel these days is really a bus trip not much glamour left in air travel I'm afraid to say.

Spent a lot of time checking out airbnb and a site recommended by expatica.com called Paris attitude to find an apartment for our 3 months in Paris. I have 2 shortlisted, however I'm not going to book the apartment  until I have done my open day at Le Cordon Bleu

and I'm spending lots of time watching all kinds of cooking/travel shows to get ideas of where to go in Europe. I'm especially loving Shane Delia in Turkey on SBS.


And now since it's Tuesday that would be Tart's day!

You'll have to come back to see what transpires!

Mind the gap!.. ( year) I'm so tired.....part 1

Thanks for your feedback and comments, to my post about my grey gap year.  I thought I would put it in perspective, lest you all think I'm a so posh lady with so much money she can just give up work and swan around the world.

not that kind of swan

Perish the thought! I'm just tired, worn out and want a rest.

Some of you may not know but I was sent to work as a child, ( not down the mines, but in the pub!)

My sister, brother and I spent most of our Sunday mornings from when I was old enough to count, putting coin change on cigarette packets for the dispensing machines in the pub where we lived and worked!

For the younger readers, (and there are some) in the olden days, before cigarettes were locked up in plain packaging, they were freely available and people bought them from cigarette machines a bit like
this. The big miracle was that on you put in the money and the change miraculously appeared on your cigarette packet nicely sticky taped to the front of the pack.

Now I don't want to boast but I must have been child genius, as my parents wrote each brand we had in the machine, and what change to put on each pack and I supervised the production line, and as far as I know we got very few complaints from people being short changed.

We also did a sideline in lemonade concentrate, (this was in the days before post mix, like I said the olden days)

anyway my working career started young and never stopped. Here is a list of all the jobs I have done

cigarette change superisor

lemonade concentrate supervisor

hotel receptionist

Telex operator; if you don't know what that is, google it!

Sylvester switchboard operator  

and this is all before I am 13, so stay tuned for the next chapter of

"My Brilliant Career"

A little thing can go a long way

Gap year, day 1.

In our mail box yesterday there was an envelope addressed to me, and it was not a bill!

That was pretty exciting I must say, but what was inside was even more interesting.

As part of my gap year I have gone back to nursing and have just started working at the local private hospital, just working on a casual (on-call) basis, because I can assure you there is nothing casual about nursing!

Anyway, in this envelope was this...

It was a gift voucher for our local cinema for 2, a birthday gift from the hospital!  

I must say I was very impressed, for a couple of reasons.

The fact that the hospital CEO actually made time to personally write a message in the card,  and the fact they had process in place to send employees a birthday gift! In all my years of working I don't think I ever had a gift or card from the boss ( colleagues, etc of course, but not the boss).


It's only a small thing, but it really impressed me, and it got me to thinking how little things can make such a big difference to our everyday lives. Also I thought it was lovely they used the local cinema to get their gifts so that the money was staying in our local community.

Another side to this story, apparently last week an ex-patient came into the hospital to visit a friend, and went to the CEO and said how wonderful the nurses were to them when they were a patient and to their friend and gave the CEO money for the nurses to have a afternoon tea party!  How's that?

I think it is important that we remember to thank people for their work and service, unprompted and without expecting something in return. We are all ready to complain and criticise if things are not quite right but remember what your mother used to say....
"it costs nothing to be polite".

Gap year day 2, today I'm off to work at the hospital this afternoon,  so I'll catch you later.

Making up for lost time.....

Once upon a time, there was a woman who did everything she was expected to do: got an education, got a qualification, got married, ( maybe not in that exact order) had a family, worked hard and raised that family and then.....

what happened to her?.......  ( ...insert thoughts here)

 I think I need to go there!

Well, it's not going to be me!








NO!

Because I've made a decision to take a GRAY GAP YEAR ( although I'm not gray, but if I said a blonde gap year what would people make of that? You'd all think I'd gone all Paris Hilton etc, etc....)
and spend some time, doing nothing much, .... ( insert pregnant pause here)


and then something I've always wanted to do and never thought I could/would do *

(* you have to read to the end to find out).

My significant other found out about my decision on Facebook (as we do these days), when I decided to quit my very well paying corporate job and swan around at home.

To his credit he did not question my decision and fully supported it  (might be due to the fact that he gets to partake in my gap year as well)



I seem to have missed out  on a of a lot of things, that are now considered a right of passage.



like schoolies, (wasn't invented when I left school)

The swanning around  university doing nothing much or being involved in student politics, (I went as  mature student with 4 children)  so,  I was not doing much swanning around or drinking free beer with the student association. Plus I hate the smell of beer.

Free tertiary education, (I got an education and a  HECS debt too!)  paid now!

Baby bonus.
I thought that was the baby you got to take home from hospital!  Not the money for a flat screen TV, so you watch TV and don't have the time or inclination to make more babies!

Family tax credits, (I credit my family with staying together and providing 4 new taxpayers for the economy)

Child Care Subsidy, when the aforementioned flat screen TV fails to work and you have another child, just old enough to mind the younger one!


so you can get my drift...
so

now the big news... ( insert drum roll...)

Glenquarry Goddess is going global!

I'm off the Europe in 6 weeks time for some sister time  (my sister had moved to Amsterdam for work, she is the  BIG TIME corporate gal!)  and to spend some time with my sister in law whose daughter is going to have a baby in mid/late September and then do some free time travel to check out my gap year haunt*

For those who do not know, (and there is only a handful of you left)  I'm going to live in Paris for 4 months next year and study at  Le Cordon Bleu,

if you're not aware of it,   you might have seen the film "Julie and Julia"  well I am studying at the same place Julia Child did!

So I will be a post modern version of Julia Child with an Australian accent!

so, my new blog is going to be all about

Minding the Gap! (Year)

So please mind the gap, and stay tuned.....