The long road home before the long road away

This last week has both been stressful and rewarding. My mother came down to San Jose to help me pack and sell my worldly possessions. I had a 3 day moving sale from an apartment--not a small task. I was constantly on Craig's List posting and updating posts so that I could attract attention to get people to come to my place. All in all I did pretty well. I sold everything but a 3 piece cabinet set and my coffee table. Those pieces are now in Kevin's storage unit.

After that it was a whirlwind of errands: Bank, Diveshop, Walgreens, Doctor appt., Work, Goodwill,...

On Friday night I was blessed to have good dive friends throw me one last party. It is sad to be leaving such great people but I know it is temporary and I know they will come to visit me in Thailand. Thank you again Kevin and Jo for the great food and wonderful place to gather.

The final chore was to clean the apartment enough to say I tried. We left San Jose at 11:20am and made it into Ashland, Oregon at around 5:30pm. That's pretty good time and it actually went pretty fast with my Mom and me taking 2 hour driving shifts.

We hit the road exactly as planned on Sunday morning at 8am and ending up stopping in Woodburn Outlets for lunch and little tax-free shopping at 12:30. After that we hit a chunk of traffic through Portland and another larger chunk in Tacoma. Not sure why the latter stretch had traffic around 5pm on a Sunday but we still rolled into Mercer Island at about 5:45pm. Surprisingly my gas light indicator hasn't turned on yet. We filled up in Medford about 460 miles ago. I guess I'll miss my Camry as well but it will be here when I return. It will be nice to not have to thinking about driving or filling the gas or other car tasks for a year.

Now I have to concentrate on one main thing: relax before I go while spending time with friends and family up in Seattle. I have a couple small errands to run up here but that won't distract me from the former task.

Back down to San Jose on the 25th for a flight to Thailand on the 28th out of SFO.

Making Progress

So I received a certified letter from HR on Saturday. It simply stated that my last day of employment with BAE Systems was Sept 1st. I was fine with that as I was tired of getting yanked into the office to do busy work tasks when I had been loosely promised paid administrative leave.

Tuesday I received an email with an attachment from HR. It looked like the same letter (especially when reading it from my Blackberry screen). After looking closer I realized it said Sept 4th. Apparently HR got flak from some other employees that volunteered that they hadn't received 2 weeks notice like the company had promised it would give. The date in the email was amended to reflect giving me 10 business days of employment from the date they sent the first letter.

This brought a question to my Director's mind--"What if the volunteer doesn't want their 2 weeks notice?" A good question. The overwhelming feeling we all have been getting at work is that HR has boasted that they are going to be flexible to the needs of the employee, and then with every decision they make, it appears as if the only driving factor for their decisions is ease of execution for them. This translates into processing everyone at the same time regardless of personal preferences, individual requirements, and common decency. One of my co-workers applied for a new job as soon as the company warned him of layoff. Then he managed to lock in the job before the volunteer period was over. When he notified HR and the Director that he wanted to separate as soon as possible, they refused and basically said they wanted him to quit. "We didn't tell you to go and make plans!" Yay HR!

So now that I have my date, I can appropriately plan my exodus.

Open tasks:

-Organize all my stuff

-Decide what I want to keep

-Decide what I want to toss

-Decide what I want to sell

-Decide what I want to donate

-Buy plane ticket

-Get visa

-Visit family

-Leave country

(not necessarily in that order except for the last one!)

Another test blog

Tell me if you get this email...

Pool Party

My co-workers threw me a really awesome party at the bbq and poolside last night! I'm gonna miss BAE...Let me restate that. I'm going to miss all my friends at BAE! To be honest I'm going to miss my job too. But my job left me, I didn't leave my job.

Why am I working at BAE still?

I'm sitting in a computer lab at work right now. I wasn't supposed to be working anymore. The plan was for me to be on paid administrative leave until my voluntary layoff was complete. Not sure what's going on. I have no dates. I have no visa to leave the country. I have nothing sold yet. =(

My first test blog

Here is my first test blog. Look here for future posts!