DAY 23: MORE WORK, MORE PLAY AND SOME EXTRA CARGO

Well after a night on the town and about five hours of sleep at best, I still had to work on Friday (unfortunately, calling in sick is not really an option ☺). Two hours on the train and bus was a good way to make sure I was prepared for the day ahead. I finished a book that would highly recommend to anyone interested in a read about leadership. It’s called “It’s Your Ship: Management techniques from the best damn ship in the navy.” It was entertaining, thought provoking and well thought-out. Anyway, I got to work not sure what to expect since I was working in Operations again.

I worked with the lifeguards for the first half of the day. Let’s just say I look good in a Speedo. Okay, I lied I didn’t have to wear the “uniform”. Instead, I worked on cleaning their office and did some maintenance on the pool in the Plant Room – where all the chemicals and cleaners are put in the pool. Their PH levels were low which means nothing to you or me but I was just told to put some magic potion (technical term) in a big tub that I had seen done on my original tour of the Centre. Funny story (refer to No Pants Dance): My parents ended up shipping me two pairs of black pants so I could have more than one pair here. This was the first day I had worn the pants. So here I am pouring Bisodium Sulfate (magic potion) into this big ‘ol tank. I get it all in without getting anything on me, put the hose in to mix the chemicals, the water pressure is strong enough that it shoots out of the tub and sprays my legs and shoes with some of this Bisodium Sulfate. I don’t know what Bisodium Sulfate is for but I do know this BS is not for pants. For the rest of the day I had a white residue on my pants – maybe a speedo wasn’t such a bad idea. I had a good time doing all of this. It was a nice change to get out from behind the computer. This is one of the major perks of working in the sport industry and one of the major reasons I want to work in it.

My supervisor, Matt, came and got me after I was done with that project and he took me to their sports fields. They were very nice. Not quite “up-to-snuff” with a Big Ten University (by they way, I am totally on board with the Nebraska decision) but still very nice. They had an Aussie Rules Football Field, a Rugby Field, a Cricket Field (I don’t know what it is actually called) and a very nice soccer field that serves as the training field for Sydney Futbol Club. They also had some tennis courts including a couple of clay courts. It was nice to get outside on a beautiful day and see these facilities but most of all just get some time to pick the mind of my supervisor. He is a really interesting guy with a lot of the same interests as me. We had a good chat then went and got some lunch. I packed mine (in an effort to save money) but he stopped on our way back at this little café in a corporate park just off campus. Wrap your mind around this. This corporate park consisted of probably 7 or 8 buildings at the most, but accounts for about 5.5% of Australia’s GDP think about that…(allowing time for thinking)…okay, maybe this is just interesting to me but I’m a nerd.

The second half of the afternoon brought me the “They finally recognized I’m capable of legitimate contributions” moment. I met with the manager of the entire Centre and he gave me a small project. I finished it up much faster than he was expecting. While I was returning the project he asked ,“You wouldn’t happen to have any experience with event management would you?” Besides creating and hosting a golf tournament, hosting multiple School of Management Council events (shout-out: purdue.edu/smc) and being a part of hosting tons of Big Ten sport events, no I don’t have any experience. I think he might have known all of this and was testing to see if I really had the kahonas to say all of this. Obviously, I do. So we ended up talking for quite some time about a corporate Olympics they were hosting for one of their bigger corporate clients. More or less, he was struggling with this project and kind of handed it over to me and told me “figure this out”. I spent the majority of the afternoon trying to wrap my mind around all of the information and creating two proposals. Hopefully, this is something that I will get more ownership of and continue to work on. I headed home at 5 p.m. ready for a three-day weekend. But first…

… pretty much the entire Purdue group wanted to go out Friday night, so that’s what we did. I grabbed some delicious sushi for dinner at a neat little Japanese restaurant near our apartment. A lot of the restaurants here are B.Y.O. (bring your own). It’s a cool idea and creates a neat environment. Us three guys that went to grab sushi grabbed a six-pack before hand and took it into the Japanese restaurant. It was one of the better $15 meals I have ever had. I will be back and I will take pictures.
After dinner, we met up with the group at a very cool bar called Cargo Bar (http://cargobar.com.au/cargobar_about.html). The bar is located right on the water in Darling Harbor. We had a great time. It was great way to kick-off a 3-day weekend. On the schedule: Sydney Film Fest and FIFA Fan Fest. Looking forward to it. Until then…

Cheers!