Jean Claude, Francois Houyez, Marie, Ellen, Anne Sophie and me - I think we'd popped over once before but they weren't home. Jean Claude has mesothelioma from working at Peugeot, and blowing the brake dust around. In the old days, they used asbestos for high temperature applications. Given he smokes as well, he's been lucky up to now. So we called to arrange to visit, and just happened to be when Francois flew in from France, plus Anne Sophie from W.A. We brought over some cheese, bikkies, a bit of chicken, and they made a salad. A very pleasant night.
Midweek, we dropped in to visit Jaime in his new workplace at Sydney Uni.
It has a lot of new buildings that weren't there when I was there about 35 years ago (eek). Swish but a bit sterile. The crusty old professors who never changed their lesson plans were there back when I was studying.
It's great to land a job - they've been in Australia for a long while, but paperwork etc took a long time. All the same, this job involves catching a lot of complaining from people. I guess that's the trouble with managing people, is just dealing with problems all day long.
The office is impressive.
The former heads etc make for some nice paintings. You can see Jaime is not in it for the glamour - more to get work done and moving in the right direction, helping the general public as best possible.
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