Bowling-alone

My cross-Atlantic random blogger I love to read, Rand, and I are obviously on the same wavelength as I am also in the mood to write a 'That was the week that was...' post. Husband is out bowling with his work so I'm here at home save for the munchkins

Ok, right, its been a 'bad' week. Monday bed. Tuesday, at work but should have been in bed - what did I do again? Wednesday bed. Thursday bed. Today work for five hours then feeling so dizzy and sick that Husband had to drive me home at 3pm to the sounds of me going 'Oh god...' and 'wibble'. This is post isn't proving as interesting as Rand's. Ok... more rambling required.

I got shortlisted for a job this week. Interview is set for the 21st - and thank god no stupid presentation this time! But, being a University, they want all your references BEFORE you are actually interviewed so I had to fire off some swift emails, including one to my current boss. His reply included the line 'Yes, I had been meaning to talk to you about your intentions'. A little bit useless if you ask me. I have six months to go on my 2 year contract... talking to me about my 'intentions' currently depends a lot on what his intentions are for me! I think I could do my current job for another year, if the European work continues, if not, I'm just not going to have enough to do without taking on some other projects.

I'm also still very frustrated about the general madness of where I work (yes, I know everywhere is mad, but this place has noooooo excuses). Got chatting to a friend/colleague today who is an even sillier position than I am. She looked so defeated and feels like this was a really backward career move. How rubbish is that? Note to all employers, do not hire good staff and then not allow them to do what you hired them for. I don't get how everyone can have such good working conditions, benefits etc. and yet have such a crappy organisational culture. Actually, yes I can, when the senior management has no sense of the need to value the organisation as an entity in itself and people need to buy in to to feel a sense of worth in what they do.

Reading a recent (badly written but interesting) report I did realise that maybe it is the nature of our bit of the public sector - lots of responsibility but no power - we are not even vaguely the makers of our own destinies, we just get a 3rd hand destiny which is only decided upon after tortuous negotiations with umpteen stakeholders. Ok this will make no sense to anyone else, but I'm ranting.

Right now for my random Rand-inspired 'Separated at birth':


Barenaked lyric of the post, from 'Bank job':

"You had the last word, the go or no go
I knew every laneway in Ontario
But it's not what you're sure of, it's what you don't know
It should have been filled with the usual ones
Throwing their cash into mutual funds
We all had our ski masks and sawed-off shotguns
But how do you plan for a bank full of nuns?

Well, I guess we panicked - we all have taboos
And they were like zebras; they had us confused
We should be in condos with ocean front views
Instead we're most-wanted on the six o'clock news"