Last trip for the year

I know as soon as I give a post this kind of title, something will crop up and I'll have to visit the airport again, but hopefully it'll hold true this time.

I've been at the Australian Synchrotron annual users' meeting this past week and at the time of writing this am helping a colleague with some synchrotron experiments. I'm leaving tomorrow evening so he'll be on his own for the last day or so of it, but I figured the Sunday school Christmas play was more important. Actually this Sunday it's only a dress rehearsal, but still - important.

The meeting was really beneficial, especially since I'm on a few committees now including the powder diffraction PAC (proposal allocation committee), the Foundation Investor contact group, and recently was appointed to the user advisory committee. The latter two each had meetings during the conference.

As well as all that I was offered a complimentary ticket to the conference dinner, which was held on the 89th floor of the Eureka tower complex. For a certain reason (not worth detailing here) a few of us arrived before the main bus-load of people, so I had a bit of time to wander around looking out the windows. What an incredible opportunity, and an amazing position to be in. I spent a few moments thanking God for all that He has done for me, particularly with regards to the synchrotron roles - no doubt about it, it is all His planning and doing. Simply amazing - who would have thought that I would be here.


On top of the world at the bottom of the world