Tales of Mayhem

This week's been one of those which is a bit like crashing whilst snowboarding. You're careering along at a fair pace and all of a sudden, nothing quite goes wrong as such, but for some reason the world's going upside down and round and round and things are hitting you from all sides and everything's white and then it stops. And you think 'Am I still alive?', before gingerly picking yourself up and doing it all again.

There's a few reasons for this. One is that the whole project is gathering pace, and now we're properly into the thick of it. Once you get into the detail you tend to find out a lot about the people around you - how much they're really involved, whether they're actually bothered about delivery, how good they actually are at their job, what their personal expectations from this are and so on. Can be a tense time.

The other reason is that the Project Manager went on holiday yesterday and that sort of puts me in that position. Which is fine and all, but to continue the analogy-fest, it's a bit like being in the passenger seat of an 18-wheeler and looking over to find the driver's jumped out. I'm intending that when he comes back in two weeks' time he'll find himself surplus to requirements, but I'm not sure I can quite pull off that sort of coup just yet.

So the past week has been productive, tiring, a fair bit of fun and generally ok. Thought I'd share with you the view from our office in Dublin, too. It's rather nice, can be distracting sometimes. I've also managed to upgrade our hotel slightly, possibly a bit further than I thought: one of the chaps who came over last week asked me to get a better hotel next time, as we'd been relying on the client to sort that element of the logistics and although the hotel's alright, it's not great. I gently mentioned this to the client, who said that they only had an account with the one we'd been staying at so we might as well sort it ourselves. I found the next closest hotel on a map and asked our travel elves to book it for me, which they did.

Turns out it's Bono's hotel. Well done me. Thought I'd get a bit of stick about this but apparently it's a sort of thing they do at our place. The thinking being that if you're being forced to spend time on your own, in a foreign city and away from your loved ones etc, you ought really to at least be able to do this in a pleasant environment. Round of applause for my employers, please.

In other news, everyone should check out www.wefeelfine.org. It's ace.

And here we go again...

Another 0430 start tomorrow, shudder. It really does leave you feeling a bit dislocated all week, that sort of thing, and dropping out of my normal routine does tend to leave me somewhat ruffled. I'm sure I'll learn to deal with it in time, the rest of the team seem to manage ok.

Given the relative silence from me this week I've decided to jot a little entry down now (whilst telling the Kiwi that I'm working, which I sort of am. Sort of.). You see, we have but one ethernet connection in the Irish office, between numerous people, and the connection in the hotel is appalling, so my opportunities to do interweb stuff are a bit limited. I'd hoped to be able to give nightly updates or something, but there you go. Oh, and if you think I'm doing this from my phone, stop right there. It took me 20 minutes to write an email the other day.

On the whole it's been a productive week. I'm fortunate enough to be working with a very experienced Project Manager who's giving me a fair bit of guidance, which is great as I've not worked as a Business Analyst before. There's a certain discipline to it, which seems to be aimed at coaching people for whom analysis doesn't come naturally through the whole thing. It's a case of putting fairly rigid processes around what for me is a pretty natural way of thinking, so once I'm through the learning curve of understanding those processes I should be ok. End of next week, I reckon. It's sort of fun, in a challenging kind of way.

One of the things I'm having to learn about at the moment is unions. See, as a child of the Thatcher era, I know nothing of unions in practice. All I know about them is that getting rid of them left a lot of working people rather exposed but meant that more senior people could make more money, or something like that. Anyway, the unions are alive and well in Ireland, and one has to tread extremely carefully when entering a business to potentially effect change. I've horrible visions of the Irish fondness for kneecappings and the like, but I'm told that doesn't happen nearly as much these days.

I did actually write a big long blog post last week, typing it into Notepad and intending to paste it in when I next got online, but I decided not to expose you all to what was a fairly downbeat entry about how bored I was and how over this whole working away from home thing I was. True, I was getting a bit sick of crap TV, no swimming and no Kiwi, and any city's pretty much the same old boring nonsense when you're there on your own (as I was for much of last week, effectively), but I decided in the cold light of day to count my blessings etc. I went for a run the next morning south through the canals of Dublin, with all the hedges sparkly with dew and the morning sun just starting to warm up the cobbles and everything sort of popped into perspective.

Flying back into London on Thursday was a real eye-opener, can't tell you how good it was to get back to this city which, despite all its failings I really am starting to love. Was truly amazing to walk out of the tube later that day into the Kiwi's arms and get back HOME, where there are unthreatening pubs and normal money and decent food and reliable internet connections. She made a brilliant paella on Friday night too, fantastic thing that she is, having batted those lovely lashes at the fishmonger in Notting Hill and come home with some of the fattest tiger prawns I've ever seen. I'm a very lucky chap.

So, lunch today at the best pub in West London, the Temperance just by Putney Bridge with some friends of ours who've just announced that one of them's in a family way, and then an early night and doing it all again next week - we have pivotal workshops Tuesday and Wednesday, including dinner out on Tuesday which apparently might stand a chance of changing my opinion of Dublin cuisine. Presumably this means it's not in one of the thousands of kebab shops which seem to be the cornerstone of Irish foodiness. Here's hoping...

Dublin 1

Very quick one today as I'm supposed to be working really and have a meeting in 23 mins, but I wanted to drop a note in to say the I'm installed in Dublin and about to embark on this project proper.

After getting up at 0445 yesterday morning and flying over here, we got straight into the client's offices and went through all the admin stuff you have to do when working on a client site; security passes, laptop access etc and went through a series of project kick off meetings, resulting in a very tired and head-spun me stumbling off to the hotel later that afternoon in no mood for anything except a hot bath and a big soft bed.

Bit clearer this morning having had some sleep, went for a run down the Liffey for an hour or so at 0600 and very lovely it was too on this sunny, crisp morning. I got thinking about river cities on the way out and back, the Liffey's a very quiet, slow river, very calm and inky black and so still you can see the insects rippling the surface in places. Compared to the churning, milky, rolling Seine or the purposeful power of the Thames it's really quite sleepy and village-like. Got me wondering if you can define the sense of a city through the character of its river, which is the sort of not-entirely-nonsense-but-nearly I'm prone to dreaming up whilst running.

I know I've only been here a day, but I've not really got the measure of this town yet (it's my first time here). Architecturally it's a weird mish-mash of styles which don't really compliment each other at all; this feeling carries on into every aspect of the place creating a sense of laissez-faire and general lack of aesthetics which I'm not finding too endearing at the moment. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but it still feels like a bit of a frontier town, with everyone building their own thing regardless of context - don't they have town planners here?

Anyway, I'll have more of a wander round later in the week. Everyone says this place is wonderful; I'm never one to take the received view without finding out for myself though. The client is great though, very welcoming, very forthcoming and supportive, and in many ways we've a totally blank sheet to work from, and a 7th floor office with a gorgeous view to work in. Fingers crossed this could turn out to be a very cool project to work on... although four days a week without my Kiwi is a very high price to pay.

Oh, and another thing

I should point out two more things:

1. This particular pigeon actually looked in fairly good nick, unlike some of the scabbier ones you get in London. It is Kensington after all.

2. Said pigeon has been perched on the ledge outside out kitchen window glaring at the Kiwi and fixing her with 'that look' all morning. Evil little bugger's really freaking her out.

The Incident With The Pigeon

Well, what a busy morning we've had. Picture the scene - I'm still in bed, reading a truly awful bit of chick-lit I found under the bed for want of anything better to read. The Kiwi's on the phone to her dad in Australia. We hear a bit of a commotion going on in the kitchen and, still on the phone, the Kiwi wanders through to find out what's going on. I remain in bed, pondering quite how chivalrous it is for me to leave her to investigate the goings on in our kitchen.

Cue reentry of the Kiwi into our bedroom, wide-eyed, screaming and generally in a state of abject terror, poor father on the other end of the phone and the other side of the world wondering what the dickens is going on.

"OHMYGODTHERESAPIGEONINTHEKITCHENGETRIDOFITGETRIDOFIT"

Now, as I think I've mentioned before, we live on the third floor. Our kitchen window is a sash, and looks out onto the back of the building and that of the building in the next street over. The sash was open this morning, and a great stupid flying rat had managed to get itself into our kitchen and was perched awkwardly on the top of the bottom sash, which was raised up to more or less the top of the window.

Those who know the Kiwi well will know that she has a bit of a thing about birds. For me, this is the first time I've actually encountered a genuine phobia up close. The difference between a mild dislike (oh, I don't care much for birds) and a phobia (running away, shaking, tears) is quite striking. It's a fairly serious and alarming thing to see someone you care about in such distress and I hope this doesn't come across as poking fun at it.

Anyway, back to the story. Still in a complete state, I shut the Kiwi in the bedroom where I think her dad tried to talk her down a bit. Got a dressing gown on and went through to the kitchen where the poor thing was perching on the sash, supporting itself against the window with its wing and eyeing me nervously. A bit of armwaving and verbal abuse later (from me, directed at the bird) and a few headlong flights into the window pane (the bird, not me), it was off.

So the Kiwi is calmed, stops quaking a few minutes later. Finishes conversation with father. I get in the shower to shave my head, as I tend to do of a Saturday morning. 1 minute in, knock on the door. Woeful face appears through it.

"It's pooed."

Histrionics begin again, quietened down and sent to the shop to get breakfast whilst I 'deal with it'.

And so out of the shower, looking like I'm about to have brain surgery with about a quarter of my head shaven and a towel wrapped round me, disinfecting the kitchen. Mentally jacking up my brownie point score.

I think we're ok now - post-breakfast, showered, reading paper and with a kitchen that even C-Difficile wouldn't survive in. I'm off to Dublin next week with work (FOR A MONTH), so you should expect a fair bit of bloggage during that time as I'll be lonely and bored. I'm back for weekends though, so it's not too bad and I'm sort of excited despite being a bit terrified. More on that later - it's lunchtime and I'm hungry again.

Eh?

Weird. Really really weird. You know how I've been building up for the past 7 weeks to this earth-shatteringly important presentation which was supposed to happen last Thursday? Well, it didn't happen. Things all went, in the words of our MD: 'a bit Roald Dahl'. Took me a while to work out the 'Tales of the Unexpected' link but there you go, pay attention, 007.

What went on, basically, is that whilst we've been beavering away working on a spanky retail solution for a media entity, said media entity was considering alternative options itself. And as happens has decided to go down a completely different route from the one we were working on. This isn't entirely a bad thing, as they're still keen to work with us on whatever it turns out to be, but it's still mildly galling to have worked on something for ages and have it all turn to custard in the final couple of days.

So, the poor Project Manager will be on this for a week longer than she expected, whilst I go on to start work on a really-quite-exciting project for a bunch of chaps in Ireland. Being sanguine about it for a minute I suppose it was a good first project - plenty of experience gained but as nothing was actually produced, nothing to be judged by in months to come. And we did get paid for it, so it'll all count at bonus time.

The Kiwi and I have been dead cultured this weekend. Friday evening we went to the much talked about Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward, 'Blind Light'. Now I've always been a bit of a Gormley fan, ever since I first saw 1991's 'Field'. I'm not sure what it is about his stuff that attracts me - his writings on his work always leave me cold, but the work itself really gets me in quite an alarming way.

'Blind Light' is no exception. The titular piece is quite astounding (the glass box filled with a thick white fog, into which you walk), a genuinely unique and extremely disorientating experience. Visibility is about 18 inches, so you can see about to your waist once you're right in there. It's strangely calming and I really quite enjoyed it. I'm not sure what to draw from it though, the novelty factor sort of overwhelms any deeper reading, which is a criticism I sometimes do have about showy installation work.

The other bits of the show were also typically brilliant, although overshadowed by the party piece. I was absolutely transfixed by 'Event Horizon', which consisted of a number of casts of Gormley's body placed on top of buildings within a 1.5km square from the gallery. Once you're outside on one of the gallery's sculpture terraces, you begin noticing the figures, all of which are turned to face the terrace that you're on (there are a few of them). There's this really eerie sense of being watched, of a silent army of witnesses impassively staring at you.

There's also something incredibly melancholy about these chaps all lonely and exposed on the tops of buildings - in a way the sympathy this stirs up cancels out the unease they generate, leaving an odd but delicious confusion and mixed sentiment. It's also great to be able to see this piece from all around that part of London - every now and then you'll notice one brooding down at you from a rooftop and some of the initial wonder and excitement you experienced on the first view will briefly come creeping back.

There must be something in the air at the moment. Yesterday afternoon whilst drinking a bit more rum than was decent (Havana Club 7yo though, so it's sort of allowed) in a cuban bar off Kensington High Street I got transfixed by a snippet of Shelley in an article in the Guardian and properly went off on one to the Kiwi who presumably thought I'd finally gone entirely mad.

And that's the lot of late - we spent most of today in Kew Gardens at a gentle family event laid on by work, which was lovely and sunny, now I'm blogging from the kitchen (I'm so cutting edge) whilst roasting a chicken and trying to remember how to make cauliflower cheese. On the whole, stuff is good.