At Work!

Yeah! this is me at my desk in the office of InfoXchange Australia, the organisation providing me my very first full-time job, basicly the "official" reason to come to Australia... ;)

I've been working for 5 weeks now, which means I've spend about 200 hours at this place. That's almost 20% of my total time so far down under, so I guess it's worth telling you a little more about it!

InfoXchange is a non-profit organisation. Their mission is: "To create social equality and opportunity by empowering people through access to information technology and enabling the exchange of information and ideas". Their several businiss units over Australia all try to create positive social change with Information Technology as the primary tool. Fantastic isn't it? They give me the opportunity to stay in one of the best cities of the world, with the best waves of the world around, paying me fortnightly, enough to do almost everything I want, and in change for all that, I'm doing quite a good job on the social field!

I'm working in the web developement team. Basicly, what I've been doing so far is sitting behind the computer for hours and hours; programming, scripting, puzzling, thinking, getting crazy every now and then, listening music, surfing the web, checking the latest surf forecasts... and so developping new software. My first project has just been delivered to the client, the National Library of Australia. The next months I'll be involved in the development of a new medical referral system.

Though it took me some time to get used to working as a full-time employee in the beginning, just after having left the somewhat easy and relaxed student life in Amsterdam, I really like the job. As you can see on the pictures, no suit, I can just go to work in shorts and sandals! In the office there's a sort of young, casual, relaxed atmosphere, which is good!

Also, in contrast with being a student, I feel completely free outside working hours. There's never that voice in my head whispering "you've got to work on that assignment, got to start preparing those exams", something many students will probably recognize... For some reason I don't miss that voice at all, which makes for example the weekends feel like mini-holidays. And last weekend was just a perfect one! Curious? Read on soon in the next post!