Work

One of the things that has been distracting me for some time is work.

At the beginning of November last year I returned to work from two weeks holiday only to be told that I was being laid off due to the economic downturn.

It was rather a shock, and I'm probably one of the first 'victims' in Perth of the GFC. I had just used up almost all of my holidays and we were only just over a month from Christmas - not a great time to lose your job (not that there's often a GOOD time to lose your job!)

Thankfully I had already been applying for other jobs however none had come to fruition and as they were government jobs I was going for, the selection processes were very long and drawn out.

On my last day at my old job I was advised I'd been sucessfull in being placed in a 'pool', and there was a big chance that I would be offered a position with that department very soon.

Then came the governments' 3% efficiency dividend ... I rang every week but still there was no position for me.

Temp'ing
So I contacted a temping agency and did 6 weeks temp work over Christmas. They pay was lower than I had been getting, it was only a month-by-month thing and of course there was no sick leave.

No problem, I don't usually get ill very often at all. But I came of my bike on New Years Day and had to have two days off work due to injury (and would have taken longer if I'd had paid sick leave - my leg was a mess, and is still not back to normal now!)

Temping wasn't too bad, I'm glad I had the experience - and now this is what my daughter wants to do when she finishes uni at the end of this year!

I worked at the Office of Enery and they were a great bunch of people. I didn't get paid for public holidays so of course worked all through the traditional Christmas break. But for those stalwarts who were at the office we made a roast turkey lunch on Christmas eve :) Learnt things from these folks that was helpful for me in regards to my solar power experiment (see previous post).

But no security was not good for me - security is one of the biggies for me.

Slightly More Security ...
Then at the end of January I had a phone call to say there was an 11 month contract position available from hte pool - I took it, 11 months was far better than temping month by month, and it was a higher level, so more pay. Plus I would be doing the same work as if I had a permanent job from the pool, and would slide over seamlessly when a permanent position became available.

Then Finally ...
I only had to wait about 6 weeks for a permanent position to become available, so now I'm a permanent employee in state government public service.

I'm slowly recovering my financial situation and should have that all under control by the end of this year.

Then I'll be past the 'just paying the bills' stage and be able to plan some more fun things!

Time for dinner,

Ciao fer now.