Engineer Andy's Journal: Day two in Cairns - first day at work

Monday morning saw me strolling to work a little before 7am (body wakes me up at about 5-30), wearing shorts, short sleeves, and sneakers. I wasn't under-dressed at all in the context of the Cairns office. It was such an event when the office manager was seen wearing long trousers and a shirt with a business collar that people took photos of the event, and emailed it widely.

Everyone laughed when i told them that i seriously expected to get back to Brisbane in four weeks. i'm hoping that they don't extend my stay beyond that, or at least that i get time back in Brisbane to attend social functions I'd accepted in the assumption that the four weeks was relatively firm. Will, in the words of a colleague from NZ, put my foot down with a firm hand and get at least one week in Brisbane before they ship me back to Cairns.

Even at 7am, it was already getting warm, but was not intolerably hot yet.
At lunchtime it was hot.
I walked all of 100m to the Cairns city council cafe to get an iced coffee, and felt the burn of the sun even in that distance. For those back in NZ, it is an order of magnitude hotter in terms of the skin heat than you'd feel on a hot day in Gisbourne in summer. And this isn't the peak of summer yet.

I was roped into joining the office social indoor cricket team. That i had not played cricket of any flavour for at least ten years did not enter their selection criteria. I had a pulse, and the requisite number of limbs, and that was enough. The game started after the sun had gone down, so the temperature was gradually dropping, but even so it was hot work. Loads of fun though. Indoor cricket works by having points deducted for wickets that fall, as well as having points added for scoring runs. Our first three batting pairs (I was one of them) batted with courage, with conviction, and with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, we did not bat with skill, and so had negative 19 runs til our last pair prevented the humiliation of losing with a negative score.
We ended the game with about 21 runs.
The other team had 191 runs.

The other team had some "interesting" looking locals. I'm hoping that they were not too typical of the populus but i have my suspicions.
One of them looked like a biker with a full strength mullet, and a set of handlebar moustaches. He was not wearing it with the least sense of irony. Another was a lady who looked like one mean grandma. Not gentle granny material, but sun weathered, and wizened. Good reason to not spend too much time out in the sun.

Dinner was a simple affair of a massaman curry cooked on an electric frypan. The challenge lay in preparing food on a bench space not much larger than the frypan itself. At least there is air conditioning. Many things can be accepted in the presence of air conditioning.

Tomorrow (tues) will see me tying up the last of the loose ends from Brisbane, and hopefully getting full time onto the projects which i was shipped up for.