It's been a frustrating couple of days with some sickeningly long hours. We're working on an RFP response for a C&HT client and what it's taught me is that what looks like being a very well run affair can actually be stifling in terms of excessive interruptions and status meetings. Doing the actual work takes second place to jumping through hoops and meeting artificial internal deadlines. Trying to grab an hour here or 30 minutes there is not the way to think through or design a solution and even less of a reliable technique for writing a coherent response document.
Thankfully things are looking better today and we are moving ahead. There you go, moan over. Well not quite actually. When going down to the canteen for lunch in OB, I was accosted by an excessively sun tanned young man offering me sweets. My 18 months in Belgian has taught me to be wary of such people, but basically he wanted to tell me about our great new desk booking policy. Personally I think it is another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy and more of a pain than anything else. Needless to say we didn't agree on this point. We disputed the point until I was sick of chocolate (3 sweets) and then I left. On reflection I think I owe my willingness to openly whinge to complete strangers to my French wife. 7 years ago I would never have thought about doing such a thing (although I would probably have still taken the chocolate albeit more sheepishly). Such whingeing is just not British, stiff upper lip and all that. Anyway, I suspect I need to watch this developing characteristic for fear of being labelled a hot head in mild mannered Britain.
My slightly ruffled feathers were smoothed thanks to a lovely lunch with 4 AIMS colleagues - Gana Bhat, Vikas Sindwani, Sai Chin Li and Andrea Sulzenbacher. They really are a nice bunch! You really are a nice little group all in all.
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