The end

I’ve not blogged in ages because frankly I’ve not been inspired and not much has happened.
The highlight of the past week was my Skype chat with SO on Tuesday, I was feeling quite crap and he cheered me up enormously.
The second most exciting thing that happened was the ‘End of DPC party’ held on Friday at the MCG!. It was very cool, above is a picture to prove I’m not making it all up.
It was a slightly sad event, even though my job continues until the end of October, the 700 or so temporary Census staff finished up on Friday, after about 9 months of furious processing. The DPC (Data Processing Centre) environment is very unique, it’s short term but at the same time the contract is quite long (some have been with the DPC for 12 months) so people from many different backgrounds get thrown together to work towards a common goal. Its repetitive work, that at times can be boring, the workforce is broken up into groups of up to 70 and then sections of about 12 people, the floors are decorated with cartoons, photos, pictures and other assorted and colourful artwork.

Many of the staff have become extremely close, a few romances have developed and I have no doubt that many will remain in contact for a long time to come.
I came to Melbourne last year without knowing anyone and I am extremely pleased to say that now I have made many good friends who I would never have met had I not worked with them on the Census. I will be very strange going into work on Monday knowing that there are only about 100 of us left. Last week I had to move from my lovely office (see picture) on level 4 back down to a cramped desk with a missing partition (I’ve had to use a white board to block out the distracting traffic walking past my desk) on level 3. Sigh.
Anyway back to the party, there was a band doing covers, the food was buffet style and very good, although we only had enough seating for about a third of the crowd. The idea was that we were supposed to eat in shifts and share the tables but everyone was hungry so tried to eat at once, people were standing around trying to balance drinks, plates and cutlery and eat at the same time, quite a feat, which most managed quite well. Drinks were free for the entire evening (except spirits) so as you can imagine there were a few inebriated people by early afternoon, but I must say, given the size of the crowd no-one was that badly behaved. At 4pm we all got kicked out so that the staff could clean up ready for the game to be played at the MCG in a few hours. Half of us went to The Corner Hotel in Richmond and the rest to a pub somewhere in Collingwood. The Corner must have wondered what was happening, one minute there was about 7 people and then within 15 minutes, about 100!. By 7pm I figured that 7 hours of socialising was as much as I could manage so I went home, crazy party animal that I am. The end.