The End of a Chapter

The small com­pany where I have been work­ing for the past year and a half or so (at first full-time, later part-time) had some tra­di­tions. When­ever some­one had a birth­day, there was a birth­day cake (usu­ally choco­late) and a card signed by every­one. On Fri­days, a bunch of us would go out for lunch together at a local pub or restau­rant (usu­ally the Lions Pub near Coal Har­bour). On Chi­nese New Year, we would all go out for Dim Sum at a local restau­rant. There was a sum­mer pic­nic, often at Kits or Jeri­cho Beach, and dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son, a nice Christ­mas buf­fet din­ner down­town. I did make it for one non-annual tra­di­tion, an ‘off­site team-building event’, which was mainly an excuse for us all to indulge in go-cart rac­ing (which was a blast!) The first day I started with the com­pany, I expe­ri­enced one of the tra­di­tions the com­pany had for any­one leav­ing (which was fairly rare), a farewell lunch at a nearby restau­rant. Fol­low­ing a cer­tain cir­cu­lar pat­tern, today, at the com­pany RIPE B2B, I attended a farewell lunch, only this time it was for me.

While there were some times when I found it painful not to have not enough to do at RIPE (and I have no idea why it was always spelled like an acronym), and it’s a shame that it didn’t pan out as the place where I would be able to spend the rest of my career, I’m still glad to have worked there. In ret­ro­spect, the famil­ial scale of the com­pany (about 12–15 peo­ple) in an old con­verted build­ing in Gas­town meant that I was able to work on some small projects while the rest of our life in a new city, coast and coun­try began to sort itself out. The bus com­mute was short and easy, and I could fre­quently leave work and go straight to a con­cert, Game­lan rehearsal or lecture.

I got to meet and work with a lot of smart, friendly peo­ple. I hope they all do well, and the new project that they are work­ing on ends up becom­ing a big suc­cess. Even if it’s not a huge smash-hit and they don’t get bought out by some big­ger com­pany, I hope most of all, that they keep hav­ing those lit­tle traditions.