work

you probably don’t want to here about it, but here we go. it took 1hr 45 mins to get from paddington to cannon street this morning:

Read More »bad journey

for some reason the other three people in my office have comemorative t-shirts today.

corporate mugs appeared on our desk whilst i was on holiday:

i’ve kept mine in its protective rapper so it’s worth more if i ever auction it. there is label on the bottom which says “this is photo mug. do not machine wash or place in a microwave oven. HAND WASH ONLY. do not leave in direct sunlight”. it’s probably best to avoid putting hot liquids in it as well just to be sure.
rumours are that corporate ashtrays were provided at a recent international company meeting. i shall provide evidence if ever i see what of these fabled devices.

a man has just wandered in to our office. he had a beard and a clipboard and stared at the ceiling for a while whilst rubbing his chin.
no one apprehended or questioned the man. maybe the clipboard made him invisible to any security measures (or people). perhaps i’m the only one who saw him ?
update: he’s back again at exactly noon, and this time he is staring at the photocopier in the same detached manner.

we’ve heard nothing from arjan (or lucy for that matter) for ages. all we have left is a stupid teddy and a picture of arjan.
sara constructed this beautiful montage to attract comments from them.

update: as weird as a weird thing, just as I was writing this Lucy phoned up to talk to sara. the world is indeed a strange and mysterious place. or is that plaice. a very strange and mysterious plaice which is in a fact a fish. fishworld.

my work voicemails come to me by the magic of email. here is one i received whilst in berlin:
voicemail (30kb)
if it doesn’t play when you click it you need to right click, ‘save as’ on your machine and play it from there. or just not bother.

saturday was the last day of the conference. the bloke who sat in front of me was obviously from a less well developed country and had brought his mobile phone with him in his briefcase. it consisted of a rotary dial phone and massive battery

comedy conference moment. a chap was giving his presentation very earnestly and another younger bloke wandered up to him and stood really close to him looking quite concerned. the main speaker carried on oblivious.
after a while the main speaker handed over to his mate who then presented a slide. he then handed back to the original speaker.
rather than sit down he proceeded to stand and stare at the main speaker with a really pained expression on his face. he looked like he might burst in to tears at any moment !

comedy speakers so far:
* another presenter with brown shoes
* a presenter using the word “miserable” instead of “measurable”. (we all agreed when he said “this is miserable”)
* a presenter using the word ‘fire’ instead of ‘fibre’ (we all felt fearful when she said “the future is fire”).

“we have a leg of knowledge”

we had a drinks reception in the telecoms museum which was good. they weren’t very good at pouring beer though.
i asked this guy for a beer in my bestest clearest english. he then proceeded to very slowly fill a glass with 40% beer, 60% head. he didn’t look impressed by that so he tried again with another glass. and another. and another until he had 8 mostly frothy glasses in front of him.
I said “i should give up, you’re not going to get the hang of that”. either he agreed or didn’t understand as he smiled and passed me a half full glass of froth.

conference fashion. even i know brown shoes are a bad plan

arjan left last week as you know blog-watchers. he has been replaced by something altogether more lovely. he had a pair of scissors last time i saw him, but it now looks like he’s got a pen and paper. which is much safer.

it also appears the office blew up yesterday and there were multiple casualties. glad i’m in another country

i AM actually at the conference which is actually very good. everyone i have spoken to has an agenda. a book to sell, a product concept to promote. fibre network, quality of service etc for sale.
content of rest of days looks good.

best quotes so far from the international speakers:
“I disagree, i think we can agree”
” we are firmly in the twenteenth century”
“execute – ive staff” (rather than executive staff – hachett man?)
“we will all be satisfied professionally during the conference”
wifi in the luncheon area. just my luck my work remote email access is down 🙁

esther and kezia wanted to see what my room was like so here it is.
you can’t see the wireless internet connection cuz it’s wireless.

i wanted to log my journey so got my camera out to take a picture of the stewardesses doing their safety demonstration.
it had all started nicely with the captain saying “you may think this is boring, and indeed it is very boring, but would you please want the safety demonstration for your own safety”. i notice he didn’t say deadly boring. i would have if i had been the captain.
anyway, a very scarey tall chap with camoflage trousers was sitting next to me. he looked like a paramilitary chap who took the Territorial Army very seriously. (he had been to Berlin before for a party, but didn’t get to see the town so was returning to stay with his american friend for 10 days it later transpired).
anyway, he looked at me with camera in hand and said “you aren’t allowed to do that. no electronic devices on the plane. it intereferes with the planes’ computers”.
i paniced slightly and didn’t know whether i should just take the photo anyway. i decided not to.
but it did give me a little confidence that he wasn’t going to blow up the plane as he obviously didn’t want us to crash because of my (award winning) photographic exploits.
however, i did manage to unconvince myself of that fact by suggesting to myself that he probably wanted to blow the airplane up over the North Sea or something. or hijack us whilst keeping us all alive to really scare us.

heathrow express is very expensive. man in my carriage couldnt talk without walking. he wore carpet out with a mobile phone conversation
accidentally pushed in front of a load of angry wheelchair users in burger king. luckily my server was so slow they got served quicker anyway.
plane tails are circling like shark fins. 30mins to take off

i love how unproductivity is catching. here we are celebrating lucy and arjan’s leaving again.

the unwritten rule on such occasions is to remain in the venue until the most senior member of staff leaves. any earlier is seen as not being a ‘team player’ and later reveals you to be a slacker.
we were delighted therefore when will ordered icecream and banana.

it was then passed around the table like a last supper. we were provided with plenty of spoons which was nice.

last night it was lucy and arjan’s leaving do. it will be different without them about. in particular the number of staff on our floor will reduce from 8 to 6 which is different for a start.
here is arjan:

sara got possessed by the spirit of her moustachioed £20 note

sara and herve respect each other’s personal space.

everyone looked surprise most of the time

herve shows off my wooden tie

leaving dos are good for catching up with old colleagues. everyone is on their best behaviour of course
mandie left ages ago, but came back wearing the shoes that she got as a leaving present.
I’m sure someone said “what do you want when you leave Mandie” and she said “oh, a nice leaving do”. someone misheard it as ‘leaving shoe’ and rest is history
here are the shoes:

here is mandie again, this time looking sternly at sherella (another ex-colleague)

and here she looks strangely at herve

hands up if you love maths. hands up if you love regulation. here’s a treat for you people:
i’m reading a tremendous document at the moment. It’s called:
“Fixed Narrowband Retail Services Market Identification and analysis of markets, Determination of market power and Setting of SMP conditions, Explanatory statement and notification”
You can get it in two parts from oftel (part1) & (part2). It’s 365 pages. one for every day of the year.
it contains this terrific formula:

so, i say to you “do the math” (no ‘s’ please)