Saying Goodbye to New Friends

As I walked away from the bank today after saying good bye to my new friends, I stopped and took a picture of the building where I spent most of this week. It was an educational experience and a cultural experience too. It was sort of weird saying so long to the people here at the bank because we all knew that chances are, we will never see each other.... ever again. We will certainly talk with one another over the phone, but trips like this overseas just do not happen too often.

We all felt happy to associate a name....to a voice... to a face. To my new friend in operations Tony Todara, I wish you good luck with your new family member Tony. Enjoy your 5 weeks off of work getting "acquainted". I know the conversion has been a "bit of a prick" and left you feeling "necked after work", but your help and effort was greatly appreciated.

To Paul Jeffries, I wish you health and happiness. I enjoyed talking with you Paul and learning all about your work (and your world travels too) very much. To the rest of the team (Mark, Guarav, Jenny, Sammy, and Orianna), it was a pleasure to meet with you. Special thanks to Sahil for making all the local arrangements and most of all, thanks to everyone for so much cooperation in getting this upgrade done.

My acknowledgements would be remiss if I did not mention the one and only Peter Pappas. You are one of a kind Peter, it was great working with you "mate". You are a person filled with personality. I wish your "Footy" team the best of luck. I may even follow the AFL a bit.... even after I return to the US....I want to watch and see how they "crack-em".

You know.....I must say that travelling around the world and making new friends builds character. It shows you that people don't always see the world through the same lenses you are wearing. Meeting the nice people here at ANZed and working with them all week..... is something that will stick with me forever.