Gav

 After Ruben was born things got tougher and tougher for Mark on the trout farm. Assistant managers kept leaving which meant he was carrying the responsibility of millions of dollars worth of fish, weekly harvests for market, weekend tourists, round the clock work and eventually he decided it was time to resign and reassess his future in aquaculture. 

We couldn't stay living in Eildon as the house on the farm was part of his package so our options were completely open. We decided I would work and he would study financial planning and look after Ruben.

This meant I was going to back to working in IT so I went down to Melbourne to speak to a very fancy specialist IT company and they told me they had a helpdesk contractor job going at Mars in Ballarat. I spoke to Mark about it and we agreed Ballarat looked like a good base, close to Melbourne and the beach.

I got an interview the next week and thanks to my good relationship with OEG I managed to do it via video conference using the ISDN lines I had lobbied so hard to get implemented in Eildon (we all had the worst pair-gained dialup imaginable). I met my soon to be bosses Gavin W and Gavin C. They reminded me a bit of the old men on the Muppets, not because of their age but their jocularity. A fortuitous sign already

Gavin W or "Grumpy Gav" as the rest of the team was actually really nice to me. I worked out that he was typically grumpy only because he skipped breakfast so if you didn't bother him before lunch you wouldn't feel his wrath. Mars was all open plan office and we sat in full view of all of our team mates right through to the leadership circle directly opposite me on the other side of the room. It takes a while to get used to that set up but it is actually very productive and keeps everyone working well because well, everyone can see your screen and hear your calls so there's no misbehaving.

Gavin C or Cormi was my line manager and he was an excellent boss. He had originally been an engineer but was now a single dad with three kids in his care and I think IT suited him for that stage of his life. I'm not sure if it was the engineering background but he was very structured. My day ran off his structure and the repairs and upgrades I did on people's laptops were done using checklists he had devised.

Gav was very particular about his coffee. We had a turn about thing going where we'd walk to the Mars canteen mid morning and get a real coffee and he would be disappointed if he didn't get the head chef making his coffee because the other ladies burnt the milk.

Other than his coffee he lived on a mandarin and a yoghurt. Most days. "Other Anna", also on my team told me Gav had once been quite a bit larger and this was how he managed his weight.

He was left-handed and a brilliant illustrator and would often doodle while on the phone to people and you'd find drawings under his phone. He loved the Simpsons series.

He was very perceptive. He was the first to notice that I was pregnant and sent me a SameTime message to ask. I hadn't told anyone because I was waiting the full 12 weeks to announce it so I was a bit shocked I was "showing" already and he had noticed. I told him I was going to have to kill him now but he didn't rain on my parade.

Gavin was also a gun at trivia and regularly invited out to Trivia nights because he knew obscure things like how many miles the moon was from earth etc.

He also barracked for the Bombers so we were quite well paired.