And another thing

Another great thing about being 3 hours behind the rest of Australia is that if your head office is 'over east' (as mine once was) it is quite easy to avoid a pesky colleague who's been hounding you to finish that urgent task.

Let's say you get into work at 8am as most Westralians do - nominally to maintain close relations with the east - well, that's 11am eastern time. If you can somehow arrange an hour-long meeting toot sweet, that will take you to midday eastern time - when the easterners commence lunch.

If you know when your irksome eastern states colleague likes to take lunch, all the better. You can leave a message on their landline to prove you've been tryna catch them.

Say they usually duck out for an hour, that takes you to 10am Westralia time - the start of a hairy 2 hour period when you're most likely to be called upon.

However, if you can again arrange a meeting, and periodically excuse yourself to check your emails and messagebank, you'll greatly cut the odds of taking a direct call from the east.

Come midday (WA time) it's 3pm over east. If you lunch for an hour from noon like your slack-bum colleague in the eastern states did, that'll take you through to 4pm eastern time.

By then, if you're unlucky enough to be called before they go home over there, you may well have already completed that wearisome task they were sweating on. If not, just arrange another meeting, and you'll be fine.