Pippi Longstocking

I changed jobs recently at work, new contractors, new kit, new contracts but same old office, pay and long commute but new perks. I'm going to Sweden next month for a meeting and I'm inordinately excited which is daft but in the last 6 years I hardly went anywhere, once to Scotland and once to Germany. Aha, you might cry "but lots of jobs are like that" I agree, that's true but it's a bit galling when normally you never get to go any further than the next county when half your colleagues are jet setting around the world and are doing the faux world weariness about being upgraded to first class when they got to LAX, again.

I've checked out the sites - on google earth at least and will be investing in the krona shortly... now does M.A.C have a concession at Heathrow?

Phew That Was Hard Work

I've just completed a job application form, they are never easy to do, I agonise over what to put whether it is what they want to hear or am I putting in too much or too little. I will get back to blogging nonsense tomorrow.

Meanwhile here is a pretty picture of a flower.



Not bad for a 2 megapixel mobile phone camera.

There's Keen

I had a slightly strange evening yesterday. I was sat in the "Social" helping to wave goodbye to a departing friend when another old colleague walked in. The last time I saw him was when we were waving him goodbye to him about 10 months ago.

"You're back" (not the most intelligent statement I know but I was surprised!)

"Yeah, I know, I was bored. It was a great job in someways, good pay, the people were ok, but I felt like I was a glorified clerk. I had no responsibility, no budgets, I didn't get to make decisions, it wasn't challenging" he then went on to say.

"I've got a finance meeting tomorrow, I can't wait"

"Enjoying finance meetings? you're weird."

"Yup I know"

Lunchtime

It's lunchtime in my office. I'm always amazed how the noise levels drop as lunch progresses. Like everywhere else most people eat at their desks, read their papers or surf the internet unlike everywhere else some of my colleagues are doing a jigsaw puzzle on a spare desk in the room.

I was showing young Ady the clip of the Mighty Boosh that's embedded in this blog, it played fine but when he tried to watch another clip directly from YouTube it came up with the message "you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player" so what's that all about? I would love to know.

Can I complain about the weather again?

It's still too hot, I'm slowly melting here... 11pm and still 26.5 degrees. It has been hellish at work, we do not have air conditioning and we could do with it. The rumours are that the buildings were scheduled to have it but it was cut by some knothead to save money. Instead they told us to stop complaining and open the windows the air would circulate and we would stay cool. That's fine in principle but the cool air theory only works if there are no dividing walls or cabinets above waist height and of course we have loads of dividing walls, cabinets, IT equipment throwing out heat too. Eventually after much protesting and campaigning, management put a forced air system in upstairs. On Monday there was an email saying sorry but the forced air system isn't on and only the contractor can turn it on and facilities management team will ring them. Will ring them? Talk about being on the case. I spoke to one of my friends this afternoon he works upstairs, the forced air system still isn't on!

It's too hot to do an appraisal.

I'm going to my Mum's tomorrow to cook for her and my aunt see you Saturday!

Work

First day back at work after a week's holiday. Always a bit disorientating, I normally try to forget what it is I do there as soon as I leave the office, this usually works if I'm away for more than a couple of days. It means however, if my boss tries to tell me what I missed while I was away, the morning I get back, I am sat there staring at her blankly, while my brain whirrs furiously as I desperately try to remember what it is exactly they pay me to do. I need the morning to compress down from that feeling of being as light as air and back to the one of being a wage slave working for the man.

My usual compression method is to start wading through all the e-mails sat there waiting for me on my computer. 108 this morning, that's not bad for a 4 day week. Most of them can be deleted immediately, a few are work ones for latter reveiw and a few decent funnies worth keeping or forwarding. I found this one moderately amusing.




By this time it's normally all coming back to me, then I trawl through the intranet to see if there is any thing I should know about as a caring sharing line manager and more importantly if there are any jobs worth applying for.

Then I get the trays out... and I'm back to work.

Although I have just wittered on about work, this blog will not be work related for several reasons.

• Although what I do has interest to me it will not be interesting to you. Trust me, it's not even that interesting to me, certainly not enough for me blog about it.

• I don't want to betray confidences, even by accident.

• I want to keep some mystery about myself.

I do work with a lot of engineers though!