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Margaret has now left Aus and has joined me in Galway. She's been here over a month, now. All of a sudden I went from a rather quiet, lonely existence to the noisy family and certainly not lonely. I felt as if I'd given birth to septuplets, some of which are big noisy teenagery ones.

I'm working for Saville (named after its founder, Bruce Saville) - a telecomms billing company. It has a number of products for retail billing, interconnect billing and customer care. A typical project involves taking the standard product and 'implementing' it, i.e. tailoring it to meet a customer's requirements. Naturally this involves a whole life cycle approach - requirements analysis, gap analysis (between the customer's wish list and the product's features), specifying and quoting, management of development,
testing, production (running the product in parallel with the customer's existing product) and support once it has gone live.

After a slow start - a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to settle myself and then the family in - the pace of work is picking up, but it is not yet at the frenetic stage. That will come, I'm sure. One thing I cannot get used to is the pace of the industry. A feature of this is that the client is likely to be taken over during the course of the project. In fact this has happened to my client (it never happened in AUSTACSS) and causes massive organisational hitches. All in all, though, it seems a good industry to be in.

If any of you are thinking of a working holiday over here, let me know and forward your CV. The company is strapped for resources and needs team leaders, people with Oracle experience, telecomms experience especially required, anybody who knows me etc etc. (The last bit is a joke - just to see if any of you are still awake.)

The children are settled into school. It's a problem when you switch hemispheres, because the school years are 6 months adrift. Having just enjoyed the Australian summer holidays, the kids are now looking forward to the Irish summer holidays. Margaret's thoughts on this subject are unpronouncable - tripping up over long legs, enduring endless rounds of the Simpsons and loud music (things that are just to my taste like Prodigy and the Beastie Boys).

The weather is improving nicely. We had a great week last week - including the est weather for St Patrick's day for 20 odd years. The days are lengthening and the tourist season is ramping up. We're looking forward to our stuff (including the car) arriving from Aus so we can do a bit of touring ourselves.

Writer's cramp has set in, so that's all for now. Hope to hear from you, especially if you're thinking of a little holiday in Europe.

Cheers,
Margaret and Dominic
dominic.gatling@savillemail.com