Tag: interesting happening

Refugees from Platform 4

I was reading on the train as it went through the City Loop.

“The next station is Parliament,” chirped the loudspeaker. The train started slowing down. I thought it was odd; it seemed too early for it to be slowing down. Wasn’t it further between Melbourne Central and Parliament?

The train stopped. I looked out the window and saw the grey of concrete walls, the walls of a dimly lit tunnel. We had indeed stopped well before Parliament station.

The train lights flickered briefly and then went off. Only the emergency lights remained.

The carriage of late night travellers was quiet. Some people leaned into the little light there was so that they could continue reading. The woman next to me was reading Wuthering Heights. I was re-reading Getting to Yes.

We sat in silence and semi-darkness for ten minutes. There was a low grinding sound as the train strained foward. Then it stopped. It seemed to have given up. Then it grinded forward again. And stopped. Again, it tried and failed.

Suddenly, the emergency lights were extinguished.

We were now sitting in complete darkness. Everyone had put down their books and newspapers, pulled off their headphones and turned off their laptops. We looked at each other.

Another five minutes passed.

Finally, the emergency lights flickered back on again. There was a new sound. It swelled into a loud whirring. It sounded like the train was starting again. It was! It was moving!

I opened my book again.

The train trundled slowly to Parliament, where it was greeted by a large crowd of waiting commuters. The train was twenty minutes late.

The doors whooshed open and the first of the crowd stepped in but everyone was stopped by the loudspeaker.

“All passengers on Platform 4. Due to a defective train between Melbourne Central and Parliament… the train on Platform 4… will not be taking passengers. There will be no trains leaving from Platform 4…”

A murmur of confusion began. The loudspeaker voice also paused, seemingly uncertain.

“Passengers for Belgrave, Lilydale, Alamein and Glen Waverley, please board the next train on Platform 2 and change at Richmond.”

I let the crowd pour me out of the train and nudge me up to Platform 2. Platform 2 was jam packed with people positioning themselves to get onto the first train. I felt sorry for the normal Platform 2 travellers who were being displaced by the refugees from Platform 4.

Some passengers started joking with each other.

We had waited only five minutes when there was another announcement.

“All passengers, the train on Platform 4…” There was a long hesitation. “…The defective train on Platform 4 has now been rectified. And will be departing shortly.”

I joined the collective sigh of disbelief and once again, the crowd of dozens, maybe a hundred, piled onto the escalators. Like a mass of human treacle, the refugees from Platform 4 flowed down to home base.

With a sense of mutual suffering, we folded ourselves into the carriage, making use of the space like bricks in a Tetris game. The doors beeped, closed, and the train resumed its journey.

An alarming week 2

Finally, after two months navigating the administrative maze, my manager in Shepparton was able to give me my own access pass. Hooray! No more time-consuming morning inductions.

On Friday, I used my new pass for the first time. I arrived at 7:50 AM, about half an hour earlier than usual. I waved the card in front of the back entrance.

Beep beep beep.

Hmm. Doesn’t want to open. Guess I’ll go through the front.

I walked about 100 m to the other side of the building, up the ramp and faced the glass doors. None of the lights in the building were on. I had never been the first to arrive before.

I held my card near the reader. Beep. That was more like it. I heard the familiar click of the door unlocking and pushed my way into the dark building.

Oooooweeeeeeee! Oooooweeeeeee! Oooooweeeeeee!

“What the- !” The piercing alarm seemed to be right next to my ear. I looked up and saw the siren.

Some people arriving at the door of an adjacent building looked at me as I stuck my head back out the front door.

“I’ve set off an alarm!” I said helplessly. “I don’t know how to turn it off!”

“I’ll see if I can find someone to shut it off,” a man said.

Alone, I stood in the darkness just inside the entrance. I must stood there for two or three minutes. Finally, Chris and Pat showed up for the start of their work day.

“What have you done, Joan?” they said, shaking their heads and smiling.

“I broke something,” I said in a small voice.

“Tsk, tsk.” Chris swiped his employee access card and the alarms stopped. Pat reached behind a tall filing cabinet and switched on the lights.

I declared, “That’s the last time I come early to work.”

An alarming week

At midnight, I cracked my eyes open, confused. Why did I wake up? Then I heard a loud beep, followed by another, and another. It sounded far away.

“Smoke alarm?” I thought. The pitch was too low for it.

I got up, cold, and followed the sound to the spare bedroom in our serviced apartment in Shepparton. The offending noise was coming from the alarm clock. Blearily, I whacked it a few times before my hand found the ‘Timer off’ button.

“Hooray,” I muttered, and padded back to my warm bed.

When the alarm went off again at midnight the next day, I spent half a minute trying to work out how to reprogram the clock, then finally yanked the cable from the power socket.

No one trips over themselves to help

“For someone who dances, you sure keep falling a lot,” Vera said to me once.

That’s right, folks. I fell again. This time, it was on the steps leading up from the subway corridor to Platform 2 at Flinders Street Station. It wasn’t spectacular or painful. It was loud and awkward, though. I had been carting my luggage from Shepparton — a wheeled luggage bag, a backpack and a handbag. I fell forward on to the steps as I was trying to drag everything up to the platform. I might have shouted an expletive.

People saw me fall. No one asked if I was all right. No one offered to help. This happened last time I tripped at Melbourne Central as well.

As someone who falls a lot, I’m starting to get annoyed that people don’t seem to care. Did they ever?

Reprieve

Every day in northern Victoria is a clear day — no rain, no clouds. We get beautiful light this side of the mountains.

It would normally be something to enjoy, this spring holiday in the middle of winter. However, we’ve been working with farmers and I’m starting to understand what drought means to them.

“We’re hoping for rain real soon,” we were told a week ago. “There are farmers out there with their fields empty. It’s pretty much the end of the sowing season but they can’t sow anything without water. If they miss this season, it’ll be the second one in a row…”

Jamie and I walked down the corridor of the main building, towards the exit doors. We were suddenly surrounded by a constant tapping.

“What’s that sound?” I said, puzzled.

We arrived at the windows and saw streaks of movement flying down from the sky and exploding on the ground, turning light grey asphalt to dark grey. The dark grey began as splotches but soon turned into a uniform sheen. I saw clouds for the first time in the two months I’ve worked in Shepparton.

“Rain!” I cried, almost in disbelief. “It’s raining!”

“Fan-bloody-tastic!” admired Jamie.

“I’d forgotten what it sounded like,” I murmured.

When we entered the next building, I felt the buzz of celebration.

“It’s raining!” people crowed. “About time! Just in time!”

“There will be a lot very happy people out there today.”

This is Lake Konardin in the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park. That’s right, it’s a lake.

The pub with no beer

We drove to Leitchville, a tiny town of about 500 people. Why were we in Leitchville? Because it was the nearest town to the middle-of-nowhere place we had to go to. We were there to meet David, who was going to give us a tour of the Pyramid Creek Salt Interception Scheme.

“Meet me in front of the pub,” David had said. “You’ll know which one it is. It’s the main building in town.”

We pulled up in front of the pub and parked alongside another car and a van. On the other side of the carpark, David waved to us. After a short discussion, we hopped into his car and started the twenty minute drive to the Scheme.

For the next two hours, David showed us the structures that they used to control the flow of Pyramid Creek. He took us to the pumps that sucked salty water out of the ground before it flowed into the creek. Jamie and I tasted the groundwater — it was almost as salty as sea water. David then drove us to the evaporation pans: 200 hectares of pooled water, waiting for the sun to evaporate it and leave behind white crystals of salt. The salt is then processed and sold as gourmet salt, amongst other things.

We were almost finished when my mobile phone rang. I was surprised I was even getting reception.

“Hello, Joan speaking.”

“Joan? This is Michael from Avis. Do you have one of our rental cars?”

“Yes, we’ve had it for about two months.”

“Is it parked in front of a hotel?”

I was confused. We had left our hotel in Shepparton this morning. “Um. You mean, a hotel in Leitchville?”

“Yeah, Leitchville. We’ve just had a call from the hotel owner. He’s going to tow your car away in fifteen minutes.”

“Excuse me?”

“He says that you’re parked in a loading zone and a truck is coming to make a delivery. If the car isn’t moved in fifteen minutes, he’ll get it towed away. I’ve got his mobile number. His name is Ryan.”

“Oh.” I racked my brains. “We’re not actually in Leitchville at the moment. I don’t know if we can get there in fifteen minutes. But, look, I’ll deal with it. Could you give me the number?” I scrawled the number down on a media release about the salt interception scheme.

I hung up and called ‘Ryan’.

“Hello, it’s Ryan.”

“Hi Ryan. My name is Joan. Avis called me to say that our car is blocking the way in front of the pub.”

“Yeah, a little silver car? It’s in the loading zone. The beer truck is coming. I need to get it moved.”

“We can get there in twenty minutes,” David murmured to me.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said into the phone. “We didn’t realise. We’ll be there in fifteen, twenty minutes to move the car. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, no worries. The truck will arrive about then.”

“Good, then. I’ll see you soon.”

We wound up the tour and got back to the Leitchville pub in 17 minutes. Jamie hopped out of David’s car.

“I’ll move it and go into the pub to let them know it’s been moved,” he said.

“Thanks, Jamie. The guy’s name is Ryan.”

Jamie tells me later that when he went into the pub, it was like a scene from a Western film, when a stranger walks into town.

“I walked in,” Jamie recounted, “and everyone turns to look at me, dead silence. I said, ‘Uh, g’day. Is Ryan around?’ and they all pointed to him.”


An inland ocean near Leitchville

I am the luckiest of people

On Monday morning, we drove up to Shepparton. I was packed and ready for a week away. Late in the morning, David called.

“Joan? I really need some support for a meeting tomorrow morning. I’m running a risk workshop for a water retailer. Can you come with me?”

“Hmm, David, I’m in Shepparton at the moment. Isn’t the meeting in Melbourne?”

“I talked to Paul and he said that as long as you can physically make it back here, then you could help me out. Joan, please, do you think you can do it?”

I heard the worry in his voice. “Okay, David. I’ll be there. I’ll figure it out.”

I put my phone down and took a deep breath. How was I going to do this? Jamie needed the car in Shepparton… I would have to catch the bus to Murchison then a train to Melbourne.

Fortuitously, I found out that my boss in Shepparton, Vanessa, was driving to Melbourne to attend the Environment Industry Dinner. This $145-per-head event is the biggest event on the environment calendar. Generally, only important people get to go. Vanessa was going as a guest of my company. She agreed to give me a lift back to Melbourne that evening.

As we approached the city, Vanessa asked, “Do you want me to drop you off at Flinders Street station?”

“No, I think it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s close to peak hour. Just drive me to the MCG, where the dinner is, and I’ll catch a train from Richmond station. It’s nearby.”

When we got to the MCG, Vanessa offered to let me out but there were cars behind us, waiting to enter the carpark so I gestured her to drive on. “I can find my way back once you’ve parked.”

Getting to the underground carpark was like running a maze. In the end, I loaded myself up with my rolling luggage, handbag and backpack, and followed Vanessa to the lift. She said, “There should be a way out from the ground floor.”

Unfortunately, at this time of night, all the exits were locked. We spent 20 minutes searching for a way out. “Maybe I should just go with you to the dinner and I can get a staff member to show me an exit,” I suggested.

At last, we found a turnstile that allowed people to exit but not come back. What a drama! Finally! I squeezed through, dragging my luggage behind me. Waving goodbye to Vanessa, I was about to orientate myself towards Richmond Station when a woman approached.

“Excuse me, can you find a way in? I’m trying to get to the Environment Dinner.”

“Sorry,” I replied. “I just found a way out and I’m leaving… Oh my god! Jan!”

“Joan!” she gasped. I hadn’t seen Jan for three or four years! As a student, I worked for her when she was the Sustainability Manager at one of the Big Four banks. Only a month ago, I had tracked her down again and emailed her, saying that I was working in Shepparton but when I came back, we could catch up for coffee.

“This is amazing, Joan! What a coincidence!” Jan marvelled. “You’re here for the Environment Dinner, of course?”

“Actually, I just got a lift back from Shepparton with Vanessa.” Vanessa waved from behind the glass doors. “I’m on my way to Richmond Station.”

“Well, would you like to come to the dinner?” Jan asked. “We have a spare spot. Literally two hours ago, one of the people who was meant to be on our table realised he had double booked himself and pulled out. I’ve called so many people but no one could make it. It looked like we were going to have an empty seat at our table.”

I broke into a huge smile. “I’d love to come!”

I knew that Jan now worked for my company’s biggest client. This meant that, at no cost to me, I would be sharing a table with the managing directors and board members of my company’s biggest client at an exclusive event — all on a night I was supposed to be in Shepparton!

I put my luggage into the cloak room. My boss was surprised but pleased to see me. I got a tour of the MCG. I ate delicious organic food. I drank organic champagne. I met important people. Important people met me. I had an awesome time.

I fell again


There’s a lake near where I live in Shepparton. We try to go for a jog around it in the mornings at about 6 AM. I used to run one lap while Jamie ran two, however, I found that I could probably run 1.3 laps instead of waiting until Jamie appeared around the bend.

One morning, I decided to do an extra loop in the far south-west corner of the lake. There’s a bridge that cuts across a section so I thought I could cross it a few times to add some distance to my run.

It all went to plan until I headed back towards the main trail. Suddenly, my foot had caught on something and I was falling. Instinctively, I put my hands up to protect myself before I hit the gravel.

I bounced back upright before the pain hit my palms. Winced. Couldn’t see the damage in the dark. I hobbled back to see a low hanging chain between two posts. It was less than a foot off the ground.

I brushed the stones and dirt off my palms as I slowly walked away. In two minutes, I was jogging again, more slowly this time.

The sky was lighter when I got back to our starting point. I rolled up my pants leg and saw a long gash of blood. It was shallow. Nothing as bad as the last time I fell.

Now, that would have been the end of it except for this postscript, the kind of postscript that often happens to Joan. An hour later, we were back at home getting ready for work. I grabbed my handbag and checked that I had the essentials.

Uh oh. Where was my phone?

Oh, I knew. I knew exactly where it was. Lying in the gravel near the south-west corner of the lake.

“Jamie, this is going to sound stupid. I think my phone fell out of my pocket when I fell over at the lake.”

Jamie stopped immediately. “Oh no! Are you sure?”

“Yeah… Do you think we should get ready for work then go back and find it?”

“No, I’d go straight away. There were a lot of walkers this morning. Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be right. Where are the car keys?” I grabbed a fleece jumper, shoved my feet into sneakers and ran to the garage.

I parked as close to the western end of the lake as I could, got out of the car and started running — for the second time this morning. I wondered what the people who saw me thought, this girl in black dress pants and a shirt, with a baby blue polar fleece top and blue sneakers running around the lake at 7:45 AM.

I was lucky. The phone was still there.

They’re very proud of you

I arrived at work this morning, and did something I shouldn’t but I always do: I checked my personal email.

Sitting in my mailbox was an email with the subject, ‘Results of your interview for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship‘. Very calmly, I clicked it and started reading.

On behalf of the Trustees of the Gates Cambridge Trust, Dr Gordon Johnson and I would like to thank you very much for being available for interview for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

A whole sentence and I still hadn’t gotten to the part that mattered. Then:

The Trust is delighted to offer you a Gates Cambridge Scholarship from October 2006, subject to the normal condition of your being offered admission to Cambridge. Please accept our warmest congratulations.

I considered it and tried a small smile. This was good news. Great news, right? Yes, of course. Great news.

A little box popped in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. “It’s Joan! Hi Joan!” So Vera became the first to know.

After signing off my illegal chat, I began an email to my lecturers and work mentor to tell them my results and thank them for the references they wrote for me. Jamie came in as I was about to send it.

“Hi Joan,” he greeted me.

“Hi Jamie. I just won the Gates scholarship. I’m going to Cambridge.”

He stopped, then broke into a huge smile. “That’s great! Wow. Congratulations. Wow. God, Joan. That’s so great! You must be excited.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, a little concerned by my equanimity.

“Have you called your parents? Have you called Damo?”

“Oh no. I’ll talk to them later. I’ll just send them an email.”

“I think you should call them! Wow. That’s so great. But damn, we’re going to miss you.”

I was more pleased by this comment than anything so far.

“It’s still ages away, Jamie,” I said. “The course starts in October. There’s still four months, a third of a year.”

“Now I’ve forgotten why I’ve come in,” Jamie said ruefully. We soon figured it out and began talking work.

After he left, I hit ‘send’ on my email to my referees. I thought about what Jamie had said. I picked up the phone to call dad.

“Hi dad,” I said when he picked up. “I won the scholarship.”

“Oh! That’s good.” I could hear the sudden smile in his voice more than in his words. “So you’re leaving us.”

“In October,” I said. “So you and mum can start planning your trip.” Mum and dad will incorporate London into a round-the-world trip next year.

I called mum next.

“Hi mum.”

“Hi Joan. What’s wrong?” I don’t often call mum at work.

“Nothing. I just wanted to tell you I got the scholarship.”

“Scholarship! That’s good. Ooh. You’re leaving! Well. I guess it can’t be helped.” I hear the mixture of pride and sadness.

“Only for a year,” I assured her. “You’ll have to think of all the computer questions you want to ask me before October.” I am mum’s IT support.

She brightened. “I can start buying you winter clothes!”

I finally got back to work. It was surprisingly easy to concentrate. I had already decided not to tell my managers at work yet, not until I had time to absorb the news, overcome that high that was surely coming, and work out the best way to let them know that I was depriving them of their carefully trained engineer for one year. I had been anxious that work would resent me taking off just as I was becoming a useful, autonomous professional. Somehow, I had to convey the gratefulness I felt for all the training and support they had given me, that they hadn’t wasted their time because I would be coming back.

My email inbox refreshed itself and suddenly there was a flood of emails. What was this? The email subjects were lined with ‘Re: [Fwd] RE: Fwd:’ There were emails from my lecturers throughout my degree, the engineering marketing people, and the Dean of Engineering. The news had spread like wildfire. The Dean had even copied in the Chairman of my company. They knew each other?

Cherida, head of engineering marketing, wrote, “We are all so pleased for you – the office is buzzing and your ears should be burning (all nice things)!”

That was so lovely. When I was studying, I made the effort to get to know the admin and marketing staff. It was a pleasure to be remembered.

Hours later in the mid-afternoon, the phone rang.

“Hi Joan, it’s Cara here, along with Paul and David.” Cara was head of recruitment at my company. “I know you’re in Shepparton and couldn’t it make it to this meeting but we thought we’d call you up so we can discuss the final selection of graduates to join the Environmental Management group.”

As you might remember, I helped interview the graduates two weeks ago.

We had four candidates and three positions to fill. One position had already been allocated to one of our vacation students. The position in the Air group we soon filled with a female candidate. So there was one position left and three to applicants to choose from.

It really came down to a choice between two boys, including my favoured candidate, John. They had both scored very highly in all the tests: the interviews, team exercise, personality assessment… It was a dead heat.

Fifteen minutes of discussion, and still, we hadn’t decided. Such a shame, I thought, to let either of these boys go. Can’t we have them both?

Then I realised I could break deadlock.

“I have something I want to say.” The talking ceased. “I didn’t want to tell you like this so it’s going to be a bit awkward.” I suppose they were wondering what I was going to say. “I was offered a scholarship to Cambridge this morning so I’ll be leaving the company for a year.”

There was a pause. “Congratulations, Joan!” exclaimed Cara. A flurry of congratulations followed.

“I was offered a place in the Masters of Engineering for Sustainable Development a month or so ago but I didn’t mention it earlier because I was still applying for a scholarship. I had the scholarship interview two weeks ago,” I explained. “I wouldn’t have gone without a scholarship.”

“No, that’s great!” Paul said. “I was going to ask if there was any way I could stop you from going!” He was joking, of course.

“Okay, so now you can hire both the graduates.” This was what I was trying to get to. If I wasn’t there next year, they would need someone to fill my place.

“That’s right!” said David. “Well, that solves everything. Good on you, Joan.”

This gave me an even greater buzz than the big email this morning. What great timing! I’ve made a difference in someone’s life and except for fifty minutes durins an interview, I barely know him.

“So we’re hiring an extra graduate,” Paul said.

I spotted his difficulty immediately. “I’ll send you all an official email to let you know about the scholarship. Then you can tell others.”

“Yes, we’ll have to explain to Tasos why we’ve getting four grads instead of three.” Tasos is the manager of the entire Environment Group.

So I sent the email, which in the end, was easy to write. The positive reaction from all my workmates so far made me think that there wouldn’t be the resentfulness I had worried about in the past months when I had thought about my application.

Tasos replied. “This sounds like a fantastic opportunity, Joan. We will welcome you back with open arms at the tail end of 2007.”

I got an email from Tia, a friend from work, “WAY TO GO, JOAN!”

“How did you hear the news?” I asked, puzzled. I hadn’t emailed anyone but my immediate managers.

“Paul has been talking about it. He’s very, very proud of you.”

It feels wonderful, to work for people who are very proud of you.

Smash and grab

I sub-loaned my company laptop to my boss. He went to Shepparton this week, while I stayed in Melbourne.

During this morning’s break, I noticed I had a few missed calls from Jamie. I called him back and he told me that during the week, someone had broken into Paul’s car and taken the laptop.

“I wanted to call and let you know. Did you have anything important on it?”

“Hmm… It had all my personal emails on it, which is a bit of a worry. But there’s nothing that can’t be replaced.”

Although the laptop is password protected, someone keen could probably extract my emails from the hard disk.

On the train home, I noticed all the people with white earphones — iPod owners or iPod owner-tryhards, as I’ve discussed before on this blog. Then I remembered: I had left my own white earphones in the front pocket of the laptop bag. Damn. Forty dollars, gone.

I think the company’s insurance would cover it. Surely, so.

At least it wasn’t my car window that got smashed.