Christmas, NYE, back to work

And we're back. Following a week and a half's mental haring around Manchester I'm back in the office to relative normality. It's a bit of a slow day here today as you can imagine - the alarums and hysterics I'm used to on the first day back are apparently unique to retail. It seems this doesn't filter down to (or percolate up to?) agency level for a couple of days yet.

Christmas was lovely. Following a cautiously enjoyable Christmas party with work on the Friday (taking it very easy on the beer, leaving in time for the last tube, don't think I offended anyone) we drove up to Manchester, taking a full 5 and a half hours to do so. We stayed in a reasonably smart apartment in Ancoats, just behind Piccadilly station, sort of, which is real inner-city Manchester, in the first throes of redevelopment and feeling a bit like Shoreditch did a few years back. It's still distinctly edgy, with some of the old rag trade offices still open for business and some of the old alleyways still ripe for lurking in, but the tell-tale bars and cafes are starting to creep in, along with the posh apartments and new businesses with shiny nameplates proudly displayed outside.

Bouncing between our apartment and friends and family all week was great, so good to see everyone again and spend time with them over the week - just as nice to be able to retreat to our own space when we needed to. The Thursday in particular was one of these times; the Kiwi went shopping whilst I settled into a pub with a bit of Orwell and some decent northern bitter. Brilliant. My wonderful Kiwi had managed to find me a Wii for Christmas too, which has shamelessly made me fall in love with her even more, whilst at the same time ensuring that I'll pay her marginally less attention in future. Funny paradox, that.

And so back to London on the Saturday, leaving at 0700 and taking about 2 hours 40 to make it back, in stark contrast to the outward journey. We spent the afternoon with the Hatter and his family out in darkest Hampshire; he's getting married in 08 and as I'm to be his best man (hooray!) we thought it about time we met the rest of the brood, and a very happy man he must be, with three ridiculously cute and (apparently) well-behaved kiddies and a rather idyllic part of the country to call home.

New Year followed, with a small group of mainly Kiwis round at ours, me drinking unusually heavily mainly in order to numb the pain of a minor mutilation which occurred whilst preparing bruschetta (middle-class credentials firmly intact there). New Year's Day was spent almost entirely on the sofa with both of us alternately freaking out about returning to work and (mostly me) worrying about January's finances which, in the context of 2008's plans, are some way off course.

There we are then. New Year's resolutions? I don't normally, but here we go: more exercise, more reading of books, more saving of money, more earning of money, more ruthless career progression (hahaha), more wearing of good shirts. Less drinking (not sure about that one), less eating of the bad food, less procrastination, less chopping of fingers. Oh, and possibly the purchase of something shiny before too long. And that's all I have to say about 'that'.

Cooking, Christmas Pounces

Blimey hasn't it been a while since my last post - although nothing much has changed in that time so nothing to report, folks. What has happened is that I've devised a plan to get what I want from this job and have submitted it to the relevant people, so we'll see what we'll see, I guess.

The current phase of this project is due to end this week, and we've actually been reasonably productive despite it having been a rather painful process. I suppose it'd have helped to know more about what we were building before starting to build it but unfortunately that's sort of the nature of this project; it's defining itself as it goes.

On a more positive note, a brilliant weekend just passed, beginning with the Kaiser Chiefs supported by We Are Scientists at Earl's Court on Friday night, followed by an early trip to Borough Market (introduced the Kiwi to Monmouth Coffee) for breakfast at Maria's followed by unrestrained and enthusiastic food shopping. Once we'd ensured we were well and truly skint, we headed back, laden with pork, scallops, preserved lemons, cheeses, truffle oil etc and (once I'd installed BT Vision, which is ace) promptly fell asleep.

We cooked a jalfrezi on the Saturday night, which was brilliant, all vibrant, fresh flavours and a decent belt of chilli too. Sunday involved cooking what we'd bought the previous day, scallops with sweetcorn puree and truffle cream followed by roast belly pork with sage and lemon potatoes, followed by white chocolate torte with dark chocolate sauce. Two other Kiwis came over for lunch - a sort of pre-Christmas thingy. Scallops sounded odd, but worked really well, despite a minor crisis involving quails eggs.

Later that afternoon we headed up to the Green Man near Great Portland St tube to meet the Kiwi's cousin and new husband (although they've been together for ages) which was ace - they moved out to Australia about two years ago and we've not seen them since so was great to catch up.

This morning, back to work. I felt like someone had squeezed an extra week into the year without me noticing, and then I realised that we're headed up north this weekend to see the family and that sort of made it alright.

Keeping it going

Everything's gone sort of mental this week, and it's been a while since I had a proper rant so here it is. It's the first proper week of building the Irish project, and as I sort of suspected, it's taking the team some time to grasp the relatively complex concepts we're dealing with. Unfortunately it tends to come down to the business analyst to sort all this stuff out. Which is me.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, I'm not a natural business analyst. It's all about detail, translating business and functional requirements into technical tasks and so on. I hate this sort of stuff, and because I'm not naturally predisposed to break things out to the tiniest bit of detail, it's a bit of a struggle for me, and I'm convinced that I'm not doing a particularly good job. To be brutally honest, there are natural BAs in the business who could be doing this job much better. They're the buttoned-down looking people with lots of pens.

My natural role, as colleagues have pretty much mentioned in my reviews, is business consultant - the strategy, business modeling pieces which use my experience to bring context to the businesses we work with. This is where I'm comfortable - the fluffy stuff, basically. Delivering on it is one great big bore.

Add this to the fact that there's still loads of genuinely exciting stuff going on elsewhere in the business that I ought to be involved in, not to mention very real requests for help coming from colleagues involved in projects with very large clients, and you get one rather conflicted blogger.

However, I'm not blind to the fact that beggars can't be choosers and, particularly with a mere six months under my belt, I'm not in a position to go around demanding certain roles, and billable work is billable work. So, I'm buckling down and sifting through the billion pieces of detail that go to make up a website these days, answering the billion tiny (and some massive) questions that the development team have to ask, and all this until Christmas. There's another 5 months to go on this project, but frankly the that thought terrifies me.

So this gives me three weeks to engineer my way out of this and onto something more interesting. Watch. This. Space.

Grumpy, stress, but some good news

Ooooh something of a day of contradictions today. On one hand, the Irish project I'm on is becoming somewhat tiresome, with fiddly bits of detail bothering me slightly and those who know me will know that I'm so not in the detail. So this is bothering me. I'm also seeing things going on in the business that I'm sure could benefit from my input but instead I'm here counting servers and adding up license costs.

Bah.

Anyway, if I'm seeming a little bit ungrateful and unwilling to do the necessary grunt work to get ahead career-wise, that's because I am. I reckon I just need to get my head down and plough on through it for a month or so before pulling the 'been there, done that, now show me something interesting' card and we'll see what happens.

That said, I am learning a ton of stuff at the moment, not only in terms of the techie stuff I'm being forced to read up on (who knew how useful an MVC Model could be?), but also in the whole project management, business analyst sense. Much though it galls me to say. It's a bit like muesli - you know what I mean, good for you but no fun.

On the other hand then, I've passed my six month probation period, which means I'm now officially an employee with rights and everything. The feedback I've had has been really quite good too, and constructive, so I'm feeling an odd mixture of massive smugness and huge inadequacy as I make my shoddy attempts to write technical specifications.

So woo for that. And for my Kiwi, who despite her monthly headache, presented me with a pretty good-looking bottle of wine as a well done present. No drinking in the week right now mind... GOD I'm so dull right now. I'm going to have to have a moment of irresponsibility soon, I can feel it coming on...

Hermitude

I know, I know, it's been ages since I last posted. I'm not ignoring you all or getting bored with bloggery, I've just been making a concerted effort to preserve my health and bank balances by staying in (and thus out of trouble) for the past couple of weeks. Bar half a night out with some old digital people (Blair, Dan A and some others) last week I've been very good indeed, even last weekend when I practically became one with the sofa. Bliss.

On the work front, things are pootling along quite nicely thank you very much. I've made my decision and am staying firmly within the retail team, as firstly it's what I understand and secondly there's a fair old job to be done in getting this business to behave like the market leader it's become. So that's that. It does mean I've now got a ton of work to do as well as my day job though...

The Kiwi and I went to the premiere of Beowulf on Sunday, what a lark that was - red carpet, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins (who was very gracious when the Kiwi burst out in solitary applause when he walked past - he'd so play her dad in the film of her life) etc. Truth be told it's a distinctly average film, but the 3D imagery really is quite special. It also gives you the opportunity to turn around halfway through the film and titter at the whole audience looking like Buddy Holly with their 3D specs on.

And as those who keep an eye on my Facebook profile will know, I'm less than impressed with Ms Jolie up close, which continues my trend in finding women who're known for being something special a bit average in the flesh. Shallow, I know, but I just can't help it. They all need to just eat some pies or something.

How crap are BA air miles?

I prefer not to use my blog for stuff like this but I can't hold this one in. Ok here we go. Why do you join a frequent flyer program? No, it's not for the free flights, because you rarely earn enough points to actually get one. You join these schemes because, after saving a few points, you get to go in the airport lounges, so that instead of spending the 45 minutes you invariably have to wait for your flight in a comfy chair instead of on a bench.

Now, recently the Kiwi and I booked a hire car (as regular readers will know). We booked this specific one because it got me 500 extra BA points. Woo. Looking at my balance, I should be nearly a Silver member by now, and I can almost taste the lounge.

However, these (plus the ones I've got from recent flights) are ornery air miles. They (if I save until I'm 50 I might get a free ride between terminals at Gatwick) don't affect my VIP level. You can only get these 'special' points by flying on very specific flights, which of course BA won't tell you about.

What a monumental pile of arse. Here's hoping my Aer Lingus points don't have the same effect. Pier B at Dublin airport is no place for a sane person to spend any time at all.

Back in Dublin

It's been a while since I was over here for more than a day trip, so it's weird to be away from my Kiwi again. This is slightly different though; we're running a workshop for a prospective client over here (all five hours of it) which isn't exactly a pitch but there are undertones of sales-y-ness there. It should be interesting.

The important thing, though, is the hotel. We're staying in a much nicer place this time, all old-school opulence and marble everywhere. The thing I think I like the most so far (having just checked in) is the quiet efficiency of the staff - me trying to check in with a Maestro card usually causes some fuss as they can't pre-authorise it, but here it was dealt with simply and smoothly. And they had chocolate brownies on reception.

So far, so good. Whether this means I'll be over here more in the future (on two Irish projects) remains to be seen.

Interesting thing just happened though. Last week, the head of my team mentioned that there would be a bit of a reshuffle within the team, and that I'd been put forward for one of the more interesting and high profile roles within the new structure. Excellent. This forms part of the proposals all the dept heads are putting together for their own bits of the business next year.

Today though, I've been told that there's a new part of the business being created, and that I've been earmarked to be part of that team. Controversial. So there's a decision to be made fairly soonish. Politics to consider. I think it's going to come down to 60% what do I really want to do and which route would get me there quickest, and 40% who do I want to piss off the least.

An interesting challenge. Fortunately I have a little time to consider my future. Watch this space.