I've resigned from my job...

Yesterday I handed in my resignation letter, giving notice of 8 weeks, my last day at work targeting 13 May 2011.  It was surreal, and I had a deja-vu moment just as I was writing up the letter, it was as if I've seen myself doing this before in a dream...I've had a few occasions of this deja-vu where I could almost predict what's going to happen next, or the situation seems really familiar...

Even though I've not formally accepted a job offer so in theory I don't have a job waiting for me, I was duty bound to let my employer know of my intentions to leave.  Some might say this was a foolish move, but I was faced with an unusual dilemma: I had a got a new job at my company and was going to start with my new team this week, I was in the process of handing over my old job and join the new team.  We were going to plan my next set of work and was being assigned to a critical project where the CEO was the main stakeholder.  This was a critical project where the stress was going to be high and the pressure to deliver, enormous.  Knowing that I'd made the decision to leave for South Africa, I felt duty bound to come clean with my new manager - it could have went either way:  I could be put on this project and commit to working through my notice period, or take on other tasks the company felt they needed help with, or my employment be terminated immediately, or stay with my old team...

It turns out however, that my new boss was very understanding and appreciative. I wish I'd made the move to his team years ago. In fact, his team is considered the crem-de-la-crem of the company (working on advanced development), and I felt honoured to have got the job, competing with eight other extremely competent colleagues...and now I was leaving!!  So my new boss says he understands completely, family should always come first, and it was the right thing to do instead of waiting to take on new tasks and then spring the notice on him suddenly.  He was very quick to resolve everything with HR and my old manager, and we came to an amicable agreement.

I would work with my new boss for the rest of my stay with the company, working on an invention of mine called "Talking EPG", bringing it to closure before I leave...What a wonderful way to stay motivated for my remaining 8 weeks!  I was dreading going back to my old job and didn't want to take on the other stressful project.  

"Talking EPG" is a project I started about 5 years ago aimed at enhancing accessibility for digital TV. Essentially for people who don't like reading the text on the Electronic Program Guides, they have the option of the TV speaking out the text for you. This was before the days of iPhone/Android, nowadays most modern devices have some sort of speech capability. Soon it'll come to TVs and Set-top-boxes.  I wish I could say my invention became public before anyone else, but alas, my company was too slow to pick it up (I'll write about that in another post on Innovations soon to come) and other company has went public and are already selling these boxes in the UK.  Anyway, accessibility is a passion of mine, one that I hope to pursue in the years to come.  So my new boss says they need parts of my Talking EPG to integrate with another project they're running...without hesitation, I jumped at the chance!!

Working on my own creations would be a nice way to go, and also leave the stressful part to the whole moving back to SA.

So I have 8 weeks to:
- fix my house up, find a letting agent and get a renter committed
- sort out all the paperwork for SA home affairs
- get relocation companies to quote on the move
- agree everything with new employer (actually sign a contract when it's ready, hopefully there's going to be a contract)
- sort out vehicle import
- sort out paperwork for UK

I should be back in SA by June time...fingers crossed