Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Sore head, busy week ahead...

I am physically destroyed. We went to a wedding reception last night, which was brilliant, danced like fools and drank like bigger fools, and wore a lovely new suit which I'd bought the previous week at Ted Baker as part of a horrifying splurge of clothes-buying. Tremendous event it was, both bride and groom looking superb and very happy indeed.

But this morning was a bit of a challenge. In fact, the whole day has been, and I'm a little concerned about the impact this is going to have on the week to come. You see, I found out on Tuesday afternoon that I'm being sent over to Houston (yep, the one in Texas) for a week to attend a conference over there. I'm flying out on Sunday afternoon, back on Friday morning, mental schedule in between and hopefully I won't have to present.

Now, today should be the day on which I print out all the stuff I'll need in order to get onto flights and into hotels etc, and although I'm fairly sure I've done all I need, I'm also acutely aware that I turn into a bit of an idiot whilst hungover so I'm bound to have forgotten something crucial. Ah, well.

So there we are, little me representing my company's retail function to lots of Merkins. It's either going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT or horrible, and I've decided to shoot for the former. If there's interweb access at the Houston Holiday Inn Express (I know), I'll see if I can squeeze out a blog entry or two whilst I'm there. Wish me luck...

Toys, changes

Now I know I've said this before, but I think I might just be finally off the Irish project. There'll be a few bits and pieces I'll probably be hassled about in the coming weeks, but I'm now committed to two main things: an entertainment project and a pitch for some retail work, both of which are intriguing and exciting to say the least. This all kicks off on Monday. I'm also coaching a junior BA onto the Irish project - hopefully this won't take up too much time but we'll see, I suppose.

This weekend's been fun so far - yesterday the Kiwi and I went to the 'Opportunities New Zealand' show to get some info on things relating to moving there; freight, money transfers, jobs and so on. I'm not sure how helpful it was, but we did meet a shipping company who seemed to know what they were talking about, and I picked up a brochure from a recruitment person who had lots of technology delivery jobs by the looks of it. I'll be the first to confess that this isn't precisely where I see my career going, but it's the most likely option in an industry where ecommerce isn't really happening at any scale.

We also had a look in Trailfinders for flights over there via Canada (snowboarding), terrifically expensive as always, but some reasonable deals to be had and to be honest we'd sort of expected it wouldn't be cheap. Irritating that a single ticket is about the same price as a return though, not news to me but it always gets on my nerves. More on this as it develops.

In other news, I have a new toy to share with you. In the box on the right, I've linked up my Nike+ account, which shows all the running I'm doing. It's a little widget that fits on my running shoe and onto my iPod, which then tracks my pace, distance and times, and when my iPod is connected to my PC, uploads all the data to my profile on the Nike+ website. Brilliant.

In fairly typical fashion, I bought the widget and then had to buy an iPod; fortunately I picked one up on eBay for not very much. Today's run was to the tune of the new Elbow album, which is brilliant. I got the new REM one the other day too, but it still leaves me cold, much like every other thing they've ever done. I've really tried hard with that lot, but it's never worked, with the possible exception of Up, which most people seem to think is their bleakest and most depressing album... not sure what that says about me but somehow I found it a little more, um, profound than Shiny Happy People. That song provokes some very dark and violent feelings in me for some reason.

Oh the glamour

Proof that the consultancy life isn't all flash hotels and Michelin-starred dinners, I have here evidence of my rather unusual breakfast at the inimitable Leeson Bridge House, Dublin. On the plus side, they do cook your toast to order, and offer both "white" and "brown" varieties.

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.

Flying

There's always something a little unreal about travelling to Dublin like this. I think it's got something to do with getting up at 0445 and stumbling dreamlike through the passages from home to tube to plane to bus to office. It doesn't entirely leave one in a suitable frame of mind for presenting complex multi-million Euro business models.

This morning, though, has been unusually calming. I've found that as I've got used to the journey (although I've not been too much lately), I've started to notice littler things about it which sort of take the edge off - the example this morning which prompted me to get out the laptop and document it before coming back down to earth was on take-off.

London was covered in thick fog this morning, the resultant gloom confusing the mind into thinking it was earlier than it was. Surging off the runway, the Airbus 321 broke through the fog within 10 seconds or so, into glorious sunlight and clear blue skies.

I don't think I'll ever get bored of flying. I know it's quotidian and mundane to many of us these days, but there's something about the seeming impossibility of getting off the ground, travelling so fast and ending up in a completely different country (and in Dublin's case, a completely different century) that never ceases to fascinate. You'd have to be pretty dull-minded not to marvel in childish wonder at it all, you really would.

Anyway, today's the last day of this sprint. The Irish project is still barrelling forwards, alarming some and exciting others. The Project Manager, with whom I'm getting on much better now I'm more comfortable in my role, is on holiday next week, leaving me to pick up from him and drive the project forwards into the next phase. Hopefully this time I'll be able to get a proper handover and won't end up feeling like the idiot I did last time.

And tonight - the perennially amazing Maximo Park at Brixton Academy. I've not seen them since the release of their last album earlier this year and, although I've seen this lot more often than any other act, I'm still so looking forwards to it - it's guaranteed to be brilliant.

More Dublin, training, lost clothes

Re my last post, I've over it now, and am quietly getting on with the serious business of sucking all 2.whatever million tracks out of the service whilst I still can, as I believe a number of other 'subscribers' are. Hooray for small mercies, I say. Oh, and whilst the mochaccino from the machine on the first floor wasn't that bad, the espresso was lethal. Although there were some mornings when Bruno (bless 'im) got in before me and was thoughtful enough to place a MUG full of it on my desk, which I think had no fewer than four rocket-fuel espressos in it. 30 minutes later and elephant tranquilisers couldn't slow me down. My most productive mornings, I think.

Anyway, back to Dublin this week, fortunately only for a day trip (although these tend to be the most tiring of all, out on Wednesday at 0430 and back around 2000, straight to the pub for the old place's semi-official leaving do, which I'm really looking forward to. This week I'm mostly writing a business case which is turning out to be more detailed than it has any right to be, and hoping fervently that all my adding up's correct. I noticed a small error the other day where I'd forgotten to divide by 1,000. Aaaanyway....

Then, on Thursday and Friday I'm in some hotel out near Reading somewhere (ooh the glamour; Kathryn gets to go to all sorts of shiny places; I'm somewhere off the M4...) on a Consultancy Skills course. I've no idea what'll be involved, but with any luck I'll be all skilled up after that and won't have to pretend at being a Consultant as I've been doing with varying degrees of success for some months now. It's been a bit like a real-life 'Faking It'; I wonder if anyone's cottoned on yet....

... and then, on Friday night, the Kiwi and I are off to Prague with some other kiwis for the weekend, hooray. I'm told it's back to its former loveliness after the recent influx of stag dos (who've all gone to Tallinn now) so I'm rather looking forward to it.

And on a final note, I've just heard a production designer on the Vodaphone Live Music awards describe Motley Crue as 'heavy metal herberts', which has made my evening, pretty much. More when I get back from Prague, unless there's wireless at the hotel on Thursday night. Looks set to be an interesting week.

Oh, and one more thing - lost clothes. I thought that, in the interest of maintaining the underlying theme of this blog (The Adventures of the Kiwi) I thought I should mention the absolutely wonderful episode yesterday where she had to knock on the door of one of the flats in the building next door to retrieve her shorts and a towel which had blown off our balcony whilst drying. We're still one towel, a dressing gown and a pair of knickers short; the people who own the properties they blew onto are away, so the knickers will have to stare forlornly at us through our kitchen window til they get back. What must the neighbours think....