I got home at around 3pm on Saturday, pretty tired out after my big night out and only around 4 hours sleep. To my dismay, I also found that I had caught a cold, probably off poor Sylvia, who had one when she arrived ;/ The cigarette smoke from the club definitely didn't help things either. I felt ok once I'd had a shower though, and raced off to the Welcome Beer Garden in Himeji. That turned out to be pretty good, too, despite the weather threatening rain all day. There were about 40 people there which wasn't bad given that it was in Himeji rather than Sannomiya. I caught up with a few familiar faces both new and old but only had the one beer as I had to work the next day.

The work was the secret business trip that I mentioned a while back, which really is a secret. All I can say is that it was 8-5 and that I had to be up at 5:30am to get there on time so it was a very long day. My cold had decided to kick into full swing by early morning, so I was headachey and coughing ;/ Thankfully, I was able to get some medicine at lunchtime, although to my amusement it was one that makes you drowsy. Not particularly useful given the type of work I was doing. Anyway, I got through it all ok and the day finally came to an end. I headed straight home afterwards and got some good rest, and also used my day in lieu on Monday to rest some more. It didn't kick the cold completely, but it helped :)

The business trip was definitely an interesting experience, albeit a long and somewhat frustrating one. I expect I'll be called upon to do it again next year if I stay, and I expect that I'll probably agree again if I do. Come to think of it, business trips seem to have been a very serious part of my summer holiday this year. I spent 5 days at Tokyo orientation, 3 days at Yashiro orientation, a day on my secret trip and two half days in preparation meetings. Doing all of this was exhausting and it messed my holiday plans around quite significantly, but I don't regret helping out. As I mentioned before, if it provides me the opportunity to stay a 3rd and maybe even a 4th or 5th year, it's a good thing in my book and I don't mind the short term sacrifice. I'm used to it from EY :D