Accuracy, speed and innovation

When people ask me what I did for work I usually struggle to think of an appropriate reply. If I say that I work in finance, people tend to assume I'm an accountant. Or if I say I work for a bank they frequently perceive me sitting behind the counter in their local branch. Neither of which are true. One of the things I would like to think that I'm quite good at - in my abstract job - is building processes, putting controls around them, automation and then trying to improve those processes. (More so in my old job in London than the one I have now.)

I have a bit of a geeky interest in courier delivery. Animatedly using online tracking whenever I receive an international parcel. The big international couriers really do seem to be the experts in building processes for accuracy and speed. This week I received a parcel from Wisconsin, which took a mere seventeen hours to travel to Sydney airport. The fastest scheduled flights I could find was twenty three hours to Milwaukee. (And this still left you with a three hour drive to the warehouse that dispatched my parcel.)

All this is a roundabout way of telling you that I took advantage of the strong AUD and rebelled against Australia's ridiculously high retail prices to order myself a pair of trainers online from the US. They cost approximately one third of the price that they do here in Oz.