21 November 2008

Merry Old England.

In Janurary 2010 one of my great Aunt's is turning 80. It looks like that quite a few of my relations are going to be heading over there to celebrate. My Grandad, an Aunt and Uncle, a Cousin, maybe another Cousin with her children, my Mum. I've been thinking of going as well and making it a UK/Europe trip as well.

Points for:

- Thankyou in person for all the presents that said Aunt sent that I never got around to thank her for.
- There is a LOT of family over there that I have never met.
- Easy to see Europe if I'm already going to England.

Points against:

- Expensive, especially if the dollar remains low against the pound.
- Need to save a lot of money to make trip worth while. Compounded by above.
- Need lots of leave.

Havn't made up my mind but if I do it would mean saving from now until Nov/Dec 2009. No holidays until then either.

One thing that would work out quite well is that I've got Long Service with the NT Government due in March 2010, so I could possibly use that along with my Recreation Leave to make a good go of it.

I might even get a friend who runs a cafe in town to teach me how to be a barrista so I could maybe work every now and then to top up spending money while I'm over there.

I was looking at my leave entitlements and if I get approval to carry everything over to 2010 (instead of having to use 30 rec days by end of 2009), I could go from 01 Jan to somewhere around the middle of August 2010. That's 7.5 months at full pay. Could probably stretch that out to 9 or so months if I took the Long Service leave at half pay. Of course that would be conditional with approval from workplace. But it's a very tempting idea no?
- Grover

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