priorities

As everyone here at work gets into serious blue-arsed fly mode, it was a jolt to the system this morning to learn of the death of the sister of one of my colleagues. I don't know this colleague particularly well but she's a nice girl and one of the few I chat with. Having access to our HR system, I broke protocol and gave our boss her home address so we could send some flowers.

And every day the death toll from the tsunami in Asia seems to increase by tens of thousands to the point where you can't really comprehend the numbers or the scale of the devastation. I'm ashamed to say that it's not very often I'm moved by events like this but this is truly a natural disaster – not the result of local or world politics – so this morning I made a small donation to the relief fund.

bugger

I was supposed to be going to Italy tomorrow for some meetings but I’ve lost my bloody passport!

up a notch

Implementation time is getting pretty close now; about 6 weeks away. Suddenly all the stuff I'm looking after is becoming more and more important. It's meant that even I, the man who leaves promptly at 5pm (leaving colleagues and consultants to toil away until Jebus knows when), have had to stay late a few evenings. I don't mind when it's required: the thing that bugs me is when people do it every day. I digress.

I'm not used to having to work so hard so I'm quite tired in the evenings. And with weekends being attacked by the decorating monster, certain things are being neglected.

and the toys…

I’ve only ever worked for one company so I’ve never experienced working a notice period before. It must be something like I’m experiencing now. Due to a combination of the project being in-between phases and me departing for the UK in (hopefully) under two months, there’s very little work to do. Mentally, I’ve already left too. I know it’s unprofessional but, well, bollocks! I don’t care.

Christ it’s boring though. Aimless surfing is much more fun when it’s illicit.

woops

My laptop keyboard has been playing up recently. Keys get momentarily stuck and the space bar intermittently inserts two spaces every time I press it. Yesterday, I was having a bad day anyway and then some f***ing idiot sent me the stupidist email ever (OK, I’m exaggerating). While I was replying my space bar played up. I was getting so annoyed with it that I thumped the keyboard (well sometimes that works). However I hit it so hard that the laptop blue-screened!

The space bar’s fixed though.

Sorrento/Capri

I was in Sorrento at the weekend for our annual IT Kick-Off meeting. It was a little late this year because a new IT Director has just been appointed and they wanted to wait until he’d arrived. Personally, I enjoyed this a lot more than last year’s meeting in Sardinia.

The weather was shite on Saturday but that made the afternoon of presentations more barable. In the evening we had a pizza-making competition which (fortunately) was the only team-building activity. It was susrprisingly difficult but great fun. Throughout the evening meal there was local dancing and some bloke singing. Harmless fun. I even allowed myself to be dragged up for a dance.

On Sunday we went to Capri. It was nice to be just left free to roam with only a meet-up time for lunch. The first thing we Brits did was sit down for a beer and try to get a pidgeon drunk.

After lunch we managed to catch the end of the Moto GP where Valentino Rossi won for Yamaha (surprisingly). The already exciting action was increased by the watching Italians reaction to events on screen.

I hope to put up some photos tomorrow.

chocolate teapot

With just over 3 months to go on my contract here in Italy, I am supposed to complete my performance review form. Actually, it’s already late but that’s not my fault. I’m not very good at this sort of thing at the best of times but this time it seems exceptionally pointless. Ignoring the fact that my manager’s english is as bad as my italian and brushing aside that for the last six months I have been working as part of a project team and have not had any dealings with my manager or the rest of his team (save for the odd “ciao”), just what is the point of setting performance goals when I will be returning to the UK in August.

Maybe I should mention this to my manager: I’m not 100% sure he knows I’m going home yet!

back and forth

If anyone reads this, sorry for not updating but i’ve been a bit busy with work.

It looks like I’ll be back in the UK next week. That’s good news. It’s nice for me personally to be back with HP and Miles but I also have some important work to finish off.

This week it’s 12 hour work days as we test user roles and authorisation, ready the interfaces and all sorts of boring pish like that. Strangely I’m in a very organised and work-oriented mood at the moment (which isn’t like me) so I don’t mind the long days too much. They do prevent me from from doing my circuit training though. Bang goes another New Years resolution! I also gave up tabs and that’s going OK so it’s not all bad.

in the doldrums

So I’m still in the UK, working. That’s nice because I’m with HP and Miles. It means I can play footy again. I get to drive my nice car, see my old dear – all those sorts of things. But after a shitty morning I feel very very down about work. I know it’s partly just the shitty morning but recently I seem to get this feeling more and more. Basically I have no deep interest in my job. It pays well and at the moment I’m working in Italy which is a great experience. But job satisfaction? Haven’t had that for a long time.

inertia

i’m finding it very difficult to get motivated to do my work. it’s not the usual post-Christmas thing… this is more related to where we are with the project. We hit the deadline and now the challenge has gone out of it.