Episode 7: November 2005

November was yet another slow month for us (thankfully). It was a month primarily marked by a missing Shorg: me (Deb)! Altogether, I was in Zurich for seven days during month thanks to a hectic business travel schedule.

My first trip was to the U.S. to attend a two-week course at the Thunderbird Management School in Arizona. In a word, Thunderbird was excellent. I attended the International Consortia executive education program. The program included 36 participants from six different companies (including other well-known companies like McDonalds and EDS). The content was great, and the exposure was really valuable. While the program was quite challenging and demanding, I really enjoyed the mental stimulation and the opportunity to learn with people from other companies. The program gave us one day off, and I took the opportunity to travel with a group of people from EDS to the beautiful red-rock region of Sedona to take a look around. It is a very beautiful part of the U.S. and well worth the visit.

Neal spent the better part of the time that I was away working. He claims that he worked some crazy hours in an effort to catch up on some work and press ahead with new duties. When he was not at work, he volunteered his time to the November production of the theater club that I joined when I arrived in Zurich. The theater club is called the Zurich Comedy Club. The name is a little misleading as the club expands beyond comedy and does several dramatic productions as well. Case in point: The November production that Neal helped with was the club’s two-week run of Arthur Miller’s famous play, “Death of a Salesman”. Neal claims that he is not ready to appear on-stage in a production. So, he chose to help with the technical side of the production, specifically the lighting. Needless to say, after running the lighting board for the production over multiple performances, he will likely never choose to see “Death of a Salesman” again!

On one of the nights that I was in town after Thunderbird, I was lucky enough to attend final night of the production. The play was good, and in English, which is always a bonus! The whole event is even more astonishing when one considers that all the actors and backstage help are volunteers who have regular day jobs in addition to an interest in the theater. And every night they hold a show, it’s sold out!

In the middle of November, I was off to the airport again, this time on my way to Singapore. I had a business meeting there, hosted at (get this) The Ritz Carlton, which just so happened to be the same place where I stayed! The hotel was divine, to say the least, and an experience all to itself! I was greeted at check-in with flowers and extremely personalized service, and my room had an amazing view over the bay. After arriving, I spent the afternoon relaxing, shopping, and preparing for the day-long meeting I was hosting on the first day of the meeting.

The meeting went into the middle of the week and went well. More importantly, I felt wonderful being in Singapore. I knew I was only a 7-hour flight from Melbourne, so it felt very comforting and for the first time in a long time I started to feel quite homesick. I really missed Australia! Good news for me, after the meeting finished, I headed flew to Australia for a few days to see my family and friends. It was wonderful to see everyone again, albeit briefly. I stayed in Oz for six days, spending much of my time catching up with friends and family and soaking up the sun. I also managed to do some research for our wedding. My sisters, mum, one of my best friends, and I visited some locations for the ceremony near Melbourne. The road trip was fabulous, and we had so much fun driving from venue to venue and even making a stop to have a fabulous Aussie pie at a small country town bakery. Carol (my older sister) had done a fabulous job to prepare us for the road trip, complete with a binder full of the details of each venue. From now on, she will forever be known as C. Bo, the Wedding Planner. The trip did produce a promising result. With the help of my posse, we chose a winery located two hours (by car) from Melbourne. The winery is small and cozy and promises to be the ideal setting for the casual, quaint wedding we are hoping for. There are still some remaining details to sort through before we can book the venue, but having an idea of what the setting might look like certainly helps.

There were, of course, other highlights of the short trip back home, including having fish and chips on the beach, Mum and Lou’s cooking, sharing stories with my mum and beautiful sisters, and spending time catching up with my wonderful friends. Before I knew it, I was leaving Australia again. This time, though, I was coming back to Switzerland. However, I had one more stopover to make, this time in Paris for two days. I had to stop in Paris to make a presentation at a conference of HR professionals, sponsored by the European HR Forum. The topic of my hour long presentation was “The Role of the HR Business Partner”, and I am pleased to report that the preparation paid off – all went very well!

Finally, at the beginning of December, I came back to Zurich. After a busy travel month, both Neal and I were ready for more time together in December!