Hardest working weeks so far

So it's Sunday afternoon and I'm trying to catch up on last week by doing some more work. I've slept a lot this weekend, and I'm still not sure it's going to be enough rest to get me through the next 10 days. I've worked harder the last two weeks then I have ever worked in my working life. I haven't been up until midnight - my poor CFS riddled body can't do that - but my brain has not taken a vacation once.

I'm about halfway through the hell that is exams and assessment season - peak season for the part of my job that supports the processing of serious academic misconduct cases. So wish me luck for the second half, I'm going to need it. 

Pacifying the bear

There is a bear in my workplace. It is seemingly constantly in that state of post hibernation grumpiness, and I, in particular seem to anger it. Things came to a head this week and now I need to find a way to pacify the bear as I know that although I'm being asked to change my behaviour, the bear will never be asked to change, and as grumpiness is in a bear's nature I'm not sure that is possible any way. I've found the whole situation very upsetting but after getting over the shock (and significant irony) of someone complaining about my behaviour who I find a passive aggressive bully, I've decided that peace is far more important to me in this situation than justice. So now I'm going to be unfailingly polite and a civil servant to its crazy minister as much as that will stick in my throat, it's what I need to do.

Now, where can I find a giant pot of honey.....?

I am that woman

So I've been basically working my arse off this year. Harder than I've ever worked. I've travelled to: India, USA, Kazakhstan, Trinidad, China... and I've got trips to Greece, South Africa, Malaysia and France to do by the end of September. I've written ridiculously long and thorough reports on stupidly complex problems. I've commissioned £100k's worth of market research and worked with lawyers to solve the problem of China. Not to mention turning 30 next month, that one's going to be a kicker.

And this week a momentous change happened in my working life. I became a line manager to L. She's looking like she's not going to need 'managing' per se, but she is going to need a lot of support and attention to bring her up to speed and train her for the next 6 months to a year as this is a very new kind of work for her. She's coming to Greece so hopefully we'll have some girly bonding around the Acropolis.

In home life, Hubland has a new job (with my employer, but at different site) so we can finally move to near where I work, ending my 3 hour a day commute. So we're DIYing the house to death, hopefully to get it on the market at the start of the first proper week of June. We've sorted a week day place to crash from when Hubland starts work in July, and then we'll be able to start house hunting proper - and ye gads our budget is now up to £250k. That's a quarter of a million people.

But... thankfully... I do have the weekend off for my birthday... and we have our supercool Texan friend coming to stay in July/August so we'll do some chillaxing (Hubland hates me using that word) when she's here.

It's pretty much all good, even my health is holding up ok, it is just crazy busy.

All over the world

Shamed by the fact that even adventuringjen with baby boo can blog I thought I'd better update this beast for any of you that check occasionally.

It has been an insane 2010 so far - with two continents covered so far, prospects of a new person to help at work, a realisation that I really can't keep up this commute... and today, a new baby born to my sister-in-law - so I'm now officially an auntie.

It doesn't look like its going to let up anytime soon... hubland has to has to has to has to has to has to has to finish the professional qualification he started over 10 years ago. His studying will hopefully be helped by the fact that I'm out of the country for one week a month for the next three months - Kazakhstan, Trinidad and China.

Life is hectic, but mostly good... just wish I had a little more energy to enjoy it!

Who am I?

So yesterday was my last day in the office for two weeks. I'm not going to say it was my last day at work, because I no longer have a job where that happens. Hopefully a bit of puttering around on Mon-Wed will allow me to finish what I needed to finish and keep on top of developments. Thank goodness the University does close completely for a bit so nothing much will happen between Christmas and New Year..... so during that time I'll catch up on some reading.

As much as I bitch and moan, and particularly get bumfuzzled by some of the insanity behind the running of my workplace, I do really love my job. I bought myself the boxed set of the West Wing a few weeks ago and I've been using at as my own personal therapy. I'm hoping that these two weeks off will hopefully let the lessons of the West Wing sink in a little more. I think, at the moment I'm Josh - very enthusiatic, good at assimilating information, but sometimes a little overwhelmed by my own momentum. I want to be CJ (just appointed Chief of Staff as I'm watching season 5) who is learning how to not have to do everything herself, but use the people around her to achieve more than she can achieve on her own.

At some point soon I might get some admin support, and some 'back fill' for a mysteriously undefined secondment that I may or may not fully undertake.... so I'm going to have to learn to delegate and trust that other people can do the stuff I do... without hand holding. I do trust and respsect them, they're bright, talented... but they're Donna, not Josh. I need to figure out how to let go a bit and help them develop.

Who needs management develoment... WW all the way...

Multitasking...

So, I'm still feeling pretty crap. But this week is not allowing me to acknowledge that at all. I've been in the office three straight days so far - something I haven't done since July I think. I have two major things due on Friday - one I've known about for ages and is 95% there. The other, I thought we'd missed one deadline and I therefore had 6 months to fix it, but no, we got an extension so I now have 4 days to fix it. And I had to make it to all my usual meetings and answer email and phonecalls. Email lawyers, berate bad translation companies, give a two hour lecture on quality assurance. Cue manic multitasking.

I do work well under pressure. I work my best under moderate pressure - this week has exceeded this. My brain ran out of steam on the phone at 5.30pm. But luckily its quite clever and woke up to the solution to the problem by 6.15pm when I was on the train home.

I've learnt so much in my job of the last two years. A few weeks ago I thought I was really starting to get it - now I realise I've just moved to level 2 of the game.

Pondering

I've just returned from a lovely weekend in Pembrokeshire with Hubland. A wonderful time to catch up with each other after a month of either missing each other through my far flung location of me being asleep recovering from travelling.

While we were away I got the email (magic phone) telling me that I'd not been shortlisted for a job I'd applied for at another Uni. I was pretty disappointed as I thought I pretty much fit the job description perfectly... but obviously not quite closely enough. It was a perfect job, but not at all perfect geographically so Hubland and I were also rather relieved. For a couple of weeks, however, it had distracted me from the disatisfactions with my job. I still like a lot of the things about my job, unfortunately various institutional circumstances, massively worsened by the economic situation are currently frustrating the hell out of me. I seem to spend my day solving trivial problems while being prevented from getting stuck in to solving the big ones.

Unless something magical comes up I doubt I'll be applying for a job again in the future..... but I definitely need to work on a way of being a bit less 'aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' about work so I retain my sanity.

Updates - Chinese and Saudi Arabia

So I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for a few weeks now so I thought I'd write an update. I'm still loving it - studying for 1-2 hours a day, mainly utilising my long commute. Progress is slow but steady, I'm up to around 250 words and about 200 characters. You need at least 1000 characters to give you some kind of fluency in reading. My pronunciation and verbal fluency is of course leagues behind, but I'm hoping that once I've got a decent grasp of it I might be able to find a private tutor to help me with the verbal aspects - or bribe my colleagues with cake.

It isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It's hard, learning any language is hard, but I don't think Mandarin is as bad as it is made out to be. You do have an extra step as you need to memorise the connection between the English-Pinyin-Character trio but using the wonderful Anki that seems to be happening. I'm pretty good at recognising characters and I'm starting to remember the most frequent ones enough to write them from memory when I see the English phrase. I think truly memorising them enough to reproduce them easily will take some time.

I do love the simplicity of the the language. A far simpler grammatical system - no verb conjugation, past tense and questions indicated by the addition of a syllable at the end of the sentence or after the verb, very little us of 'is', 'of' and 'and'. Simple sentences just run pronoun-noun-verb-question participle i.e. You today go out? which translates into normal english as Would you like to go out today?

I've bought a couple of books to help me understand the context of the language, particularly the written characters. A small percentage of characters do have their origins in pictographs (although not as many as you might believe) and understanding how these evovled is useful to me in understanding the structure of the language. So the two characters for morning relate to 'sun rise' and represent the sun above the earth and up.

On the other matter.... I have only found one other colleague who feels the same way as I do. Most just didn't see the problem. I did quite a lot of research and soul searching after writing that last post, just to confirm that women really are in a pretty poor situation in SA. I've decided I don't agree with academic boycotts because I don't think in 99% of cases they are justified - economic and political boycotts are a different matter. But I don't think we should enter into a partnership with any University in a country where we are forced to compromise the way we work and our own obligations under UK equality legislation i.e. how would we handle an admissions process where women are automatically excluded? If I can be convinced that working with a SA University does not force us to do this, then I might be able to reconcile myself with it, but otherwise I'll take a personal stand.

Two words

I've done pretty well not to think about work this week. I've been at home, chilling out, attempting to drill some more Chinese into my head, baking, and hanging out with friends. And then two words popped into my head, two words that really make me stressed. They are a rather strange couple of words, and they've been coming for a while - I knew they'd pop up eventually.

The two words? Saudia Arabia. I work for a University helping it to work with other Unviersity's around the world. I'm not entirely comfortable about the human rights, equality of opportunity and democracy records of all the countries we work with. But somehow I manage to rationalise myself out of the problems with most of them: China, India, UAE etc. I argue that they're on a course towards improving the situation in which their populations live, my favourite is China - and despite what you read in the press - visiting and working with Chinese Universities gives me a lot of hope.

Before I headed off on annual leave we had an approach from a Saudia Arabian University, and I had a discussion with a colleague about a scholarship scheme operated by another. I'm not sure everyone thinks that working with Universities from this country is problematic, but I seriously have to think about whether I'm willing to work with them at all. It's an Islamic monarchy. Women's and children's rights are not recognised. There is no democratic involvement whatsoever. I believe that by working with them my employer might breach its duty under the various pieces of equality legislation.

I don't want to be a trouble maker, but I know that this isn't something I'm going to be able to let lie. Obviously nothing has happened yet, but the approach is a genuine one, and they will be visiting. I want to work for a University that is true to itself as a bastion of free thought and academic critique, and I hope that I will be able to raise this issue for debate and have the senior staff engage with the complexity of this issue - rather than being blinded by the glamour of the opportunities that might present themselves. Fingers crossed.

Cream crackered

Yes, ok, I'm tired now. Having worked non-stop since Christmas, and easily pulling 10 hour days and most weekends for most of February I have officially stopped now. Had a duvet day on Monday and worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday. My brain was so tired, and so full of stuff. Amazingly I haven't had a proper CFS crash, I think this may just be 'normal knackered' which is quite a relief. I am now sat in bed with a ginger cat and my laptop, with hubland is watching football downstairs. I'm browsing www.etsy.com for new jewellery (I actually don't have that much, need more earrings) and watching 'Kitchen Nightmares USA' on 4OD.

Although I've enjoyed what I've been doing at work, and learnt so much, I'm pretty hacked off at some of the Senior Management and the general lack of direction for the University I work in. We're not bad, and we're not an ex-poly (which comes with its own challenges), but we're not currently holding our own among what we'd consider our 'peer institutions'... in fact some of our alleged peers have completely transformed themselves in the last 10 years or so while we've stood still. That has finally been brought home to everyone with the joy of the RAE (google it, go on, I dare you) - the funding letters arrived on Thursday and we've lost a big chunk of our recurring research funding. Some of it isn't our fault, the new allocation formula is mad, but a lot of it is.

We don't actually have a strategy, something that tells us who we are and where we're going. We seem plagued by indecision, with Senior Manager's influenced more by an offhand comment from a fellow VC/PVC at a conference than from the advice of their professional staff... and then there is the paralysis from fear and inability to talk calculated risks. I think I'll give it another year, but then if things don't improve it may be time to move on. It can be pretty demoralising to work your arse off in a job that you've been hired to do, present great ideas, beautifully written papers, to do everything you are meant to be doing, and not get anywhere or have your ideas taken seriously when it comes down to the crunch.

I am lucky, with the internal rearrangements that took place last summer, I've got a lot more responsibility and I am glad to be able to say that the people I respect, respect me. So that's keeping me going for the moment. But my work means a lot to me and I can't stay forever in a place that doesn't let me do for it what I know needs to be done.

The way to end a crappy-ish day

... is with “buy one book get another half price” in WH Smith. We’re at the thin end of the month but I was blue so £12 for two paperbacks didn’t seem too much of a price to pay to cheer myself up. I bought “The Last Empress” and “Becoming Madame Mao” by Anchee Min. I read “Empress Orchid” during and after my trip to China, “The Last Empress” is the sequel. At the moment I like the window into the world feeling that these books give, taking me away from myself and putting me in a world that is so different to mine. When you’ve had a crappy-ish day, it’s where you need to be.

So why crappy-ish? Well it wasn’t full blown crappy, nothing bad happened, I was declared to have normal blood pressure for the first time in 6 months by my doctor, so that wasn’t bad. I had a comedy moment in a sandwich shop where my “cheddar and cucumber” baguette somehow became just cucumber – I didn’t realise this until I had walked down the street, and the baguette was still warm, so just cucumber was okay.

The crappy-ish came this afternoon in a meeting with one of the “middle managers” of the academic type at my University. You really couldn’t get much wetter than him, I had more enthusiasm out of my mother when I told her I wanted to do a PhD on witchcraft. After about 10 minutes I was looking around for the arsenic – for him or me, I wasn’t sure. He’s been in post now for about four years, no wonder his department is withering underneath him. He isn’t a bad man, just a man who shouldn’t be within five miles of a position which requires enthusiasm and leadership skills. He typifies what is worst about my University – slightly depressed, sleepy, totally unaware of so much of what happens in the Institution and the world around him.

So that meeting depressed me, it probably depressed him poor sod. But now I have two new books, a naughty bottle of Coca Cola, and I’m sitting on the train with my laptop out so I can look important, so life is getting better.

Boy's night out, Guangzhou style

Oh am I ready for my bed! Today has gone well, but the heat is really taking it out of me. We've managed to get through the initial negotiations regarding the collaboration, so tomorrow will not be so intense.

Dinner tonight was in the brand new international convention centre. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in my life! The reception was in an atrium 3 storeys high and completely lined with marble. It would make a great ballroom dancing space.

The food was good - I am having a little trouble with being a vegetarian, mainly because they don't serve rice or noodles, as these are the "poor man's fillers". So I'm eating a lot of lovely bok choi, mushrooms and tofu, but my goodness do I crave some carbohydrate.

Our companions for the night were some university classmates of our Chinese colleague, along with other academic staff that he knows. It was lovely to see D smiling and being happy with his friends, and it was a lot more relaxed than the formal dinner last night. A great deal of Chinese red wine was consumed on their part and it got quite silly at one point. Very fun.

Tomorrow we will get to see some of Guangzhou city itself!

Sight of the day:
- Roadside knicker stand.

Bizarre realisation of the day:
- I can post to my blog, but not read it.... Chinese internet blocking in action

In a very big country

Today I'm blogging from Guangzhou, a very large city in south-eastern China. This is the first time I've been anywhere near this part of the world - and despite the horrendous lack of sleep (I think I've had about 1 hr in the last 30 or so) I'm enjoying the adventure. I'm here for work - vi sting a local University - but I'm happy not to be a full blown tourist and get a chance to talk to people who actually live here.

I flew into Hong Kong and then got the high speed train to the city centre, a short taxi ride (in distance, not in time, the traffic was pretty much stationary) later I had transferred to Hung Hom station to catch the train to the mainland and Guangzhou. Through immigration (again) and then 1hr 45mins to look at the Chinese scenery.

So today on my travels I have seen.....

1) A man carrying about a dozen live chickens in a crate strapped to the back of his bicycle.
2) More 50+ storey apartment blocks than I ever thought existed. I was expecting these to cover Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, but they also stretched into the New Territories and over into Dongguan and Guangzhou.
3) Lots and lots of factories and their dormitories - a large proportion of people live where they work here. Some were in varying states of decay, some had big towers belching fumes, some were clean and tidy... but they were everywhere, wherever there weren't 50 storey apartment blocks.
4) Immobile rain... I think its a new category I've identified, somewhere between mist and rain... that hangs around (and falls at the same time) around Mount Baiyun.
5) A black cat.
6) The biggest container port I've ever seen - with containers stacked six high and cranes bigger than my office building.

Right, I'd better go before my brain collapses completely. I promise more ponderings, particularly on the nature of the social and cultural construction of reality...

The limit

So today I finally hit my coping limit at work. Things have been getting progressively shitter since Christmas - all exacerabated by the fact that I am actually quite sick but trying to carry on. We're merging with another organisation and on top of that we're being restructured. I haven't had a boss with more than 3 minutes to spare for me since January. My lovely colleague is now moving on to a new job (which is v. good for him so am glad really). So out of an office of 3 that leaves just me. I'm sat at my desk (sods law that my boss is actually in next door today) feeling pretty tearful. My colleague is on leave. I am on my own and I haven't even managed to eat lunch today. I wish I wasn't so stressed, but with feeling so desperately ill I just don't seem to be able to stop. Meep.

Top of the list

I’ve had two “No 1’s” in the last week or so – events that have topped my experience list in their respective categories. One good, one bad.

Wednesday morning I sat in what was potentially one of the most important meetings of my job so far – a grilling by an external audit panel. I was the note-taker for the session and I was also there to answer questions on my particular area of operations. Within 10 minutes I knew I was getting a headache. By the time they came to question me directly an hour later, I knew I had a migraine. I survived the meeting, answered the questions with something approaching sense, survived the de-briefing, survived finding an obscure document the audit team had requested. Then I threw up. Then I attempted to make my 90 minute journey home without throwing up again. I worked in stages, rewarding myself after every stage of the journey with the thought that I was one move close to home: to bus stop, bus journey, to platform, on train, change trains, get taxi, home....

I managed to hold out to the last part of my journey until I had to throw up again. Luckily I had a lovely taxi driver, who I had had before, and who’s son has migraine. I also managed to throw up outside of the taxi so I wasn’t that bad a passenger.

Because the migraine had by that point had about 5 hours to establish itself it meant I spent the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday in bed. I still feel pretty spaced out on Friday – but at least I had a quiet day in the office.

So that goes down as the worse migraine of my life so far (Evan, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid that one where you drove me back from York has been knocked off the top spot, sorry it was a close call).

So on to the good “No. 1”. One of the sessions I attended at my new religions conference last week was on the experience of the Branch Davidians at Waco. We had an outline of the current state of the research into the group and its experiences, and an overview the materials held in archive which are accessible to researchers. Interesting, but didn’t blow my mind.

Then at exactly 15 years to the day and hour of the final assault on Waco we had a chance to hear from one of the survivors. He survived primarily because he was captured at the start of the siege on 28th February. His wife and mother were killed during the siege. He has spent the last 15 years in prison, some in the USA, some in the UK (he’s a British Citizen), much of it in solitary as punishment for not acknowledging what he did was wrong.

He was an ordained 7th Day Adventist minister with a degree from Manchester Metropolitan University before he joined the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the 7th Day Adventists. He spoke with great grace and faith, describing the horrors and injustice that had been inflicted on the religious settlement that he belonged to at Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas.

To the British people (and other Europeans) in the audience the story behind Waco is pretty hard to get your head around. The community made much of their income through dealing guns – legally, at gun fairs and the like across the state. They were under surveillance as they were suspected of converting semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons. This is not illegal in Texas, but you do need to pay a fee for every weapon you convert. So essentially this was a revenue issue, not one of religion or arms. The government agents had been watching the compound for some time, and had actually been invited in to inspect, and had taken up the offer. I don’t know all the details of what happened after that but obviously something went fundamentally wrong in the approach of the government agencies involved.

The Branch Davidians do not hold a pacificist theology, on the contrary they believed that they needed defend their faith, with force if necessary. I can imagine that this might have happened if government agents forcibly entered any number of properties around the USA where people hold weapons and do not generally recognise the authority of the state. Being a religious community didn’t really make them any different in this regard – they just had a different reason for doing it.

It was a tragedy – members of the community and FBI officers lost their lives needlessly.

The survivor spoke elegantly of his own experiences at Waco, of his theology, of David Koresh’s religious experience in Jerusalem. He quoted scripture from the Old Testament to the New, focusing a great deal on the Gospel of John and Revelations. His theology was as coherent as any other Christian based theology that I have come across.

Many Christians may not agree with the Branch Davidians interpretation of the Bible, but hearing it just drove home to me again that the Bible (and other religious texts) are open to such varying interpretations – and that’s even before you start looking into the issue of translation.

You may believe in the one true God of Christianity, but if you’re reading his message, remember that you’re nearly 2000 away from when the accounts of the New Testament were written, speaking a different language, and relying on hundreds of years of translation and interpretation. So never get too stuck on a word or a phrase – far better to go one on one with your God.

Survived

Just a quick post to say I survived my week of running around. The work conferences were good, the academic conference was even better. Expect to see some posts on it in the near future as it has got my head a buzzing on all things religious.

KLassic

So it was a day at the prospective partner University yesterday - always interesting.... actually they're very organised and hospitable, although keeping track of all the Malay/Arabic names has been a challenge. The Chief Operating Office is very suave, and rather dishy in a short, stocky Malay kind of way - very commanding moustache!

The University is based near Little India - although driving through it I couldn't see a great deal of difference from Chinatown, except the shops were selling Sari fabric not fake Gucci handbags. Apparently there are some more Indiany bits, we just must have not seen them.

Dinner last night was in a Lebanese restaurant in a posh Mall called the Starhill - I've never seen so many branches of Hermes and Bulgari as I have seen so far in KL. Had a slight menu malfunction as I ordered what really did look like a veggie option - the menu was quite descriptive - which turned up with two great hunks of lamb on the bone next to the stuffed courgettes. We figured out something for me to eat in the end so no worries.

Then it was cocktails in the "Jazz lounge" - read "easy listening", although live and rather good. With a view over one of the main thoroughfares through the posh shopping district. All rather spontaneous and nice. Having good conversations with my colleague and her chap - although I always wonder if they think I'm mad..... personal paranoia strikes again.

Anyway, I've got to hop in the shower and then down for breakfast..... will post some more tomorrow.

KLassy

So the adventure begins. The plane landed at KL international airport at 7am local time - 11pm UK time. As we were making our descent the dawn was breaking and suddenly all the forests of palm trees were visible below us.

We made it to the hotel with not much hassle - brand new high speed rail connection - plus teksi (taxi) from KL Sentral rail station. The hotel is definitely KLassy with a capital K and L. Not bad for £40 a night, you'd definitely be pushing £100 for anything near as good in the UK.

Then I tried to sleep. But my head was racing around with all sort of random facts. So I tried some relaxation techniques, but that didn't work. 2 hours later I dozed off. So I'm working on 3 hours sleep in the last 30 hours or so. Oh well.

Did a quick walk around the base of the Petronas towers and the KLCC park. Then headed up the Menara KL Tower - fourth largest telecommunications tower in the world don't you know. Its always the thing I like to do in a new city - get up high, and work out where the heck everything is. Then a quick dip in the pool sticking out from the fourth floor of the hotel. Will post pictures when I'm pack in the UK - forgot to pack the camera lead!

It's off to dinner with my colleague and her chap tonight. I'd like to try out one of the Rough Guide's restaurant recommendations in Chinatown - the first of many adventures. Then its back on with the work brain tomorrow negotiating with a Malay University - eek!

The panic subsides

I had the shock of my life last week when I opened up an email from one of our academics and he asked if I minded flying to Kuala Lumpur on the 8th February.... aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... is what I said (to an empty office). Now I've travelled a bit - Europe and the US - but I've never been to East Asia before. I knew this trip was coming up but I didn't think it would be so soon. But this is part of what I'm paid to do, so now that the panic has subsided somewhat, I'm getting rather excited. Flights are nearly sorted, and so are hotels. KL looks like it has a fab public transport system - monorail mixed with other light rail - and a quite new high speed connection from the airport. I should get there early Sunday morning, so time for a kip and then a wander around in the afternoon. Meetings all day Monday and Tuesday. Then fly back to the UK Wednesday, landing late afternoon. My word am I going to be knackered. After a slight trauma I found out I probably will be travelling out with the colleague who will be coming with me, although travelling back alone as she is bringing her partner along for the trip.

I will try and do a blog from the road as I should have the work laptop with me and I will definitely have my camera!

Ok so...

At the moment I'm either unconscious or stupidly busy - which doesn't make for good blogging. Health is still not good with added joy of having the blood pressure of an overweight octagenarian. Back to the docs again on Thursday to find out just how bad it might be. Purchase of home blood pressure monitor has caused much delight among friends and family - a new toy! Fear of blood pressure has put me on a mission to lose weight - even though I'm not that big, and that probably isn't the cause - so now also living without proper amounts of caffeine or sugar. Spare bedroom still isn't completely decorated - still a coat of paint on the ceiling, another coat of paint on the walls, one wall of wallpaper and the carpet to do.... Starting to look vaguely better though. New bed from ebay - 100 year old, solid oak, Arts & Crafts - is fabulous.
Just survived the first work event that I've organised at this place - complete with lunch. It was a sharing good practice thing, and we ran out of time (and therefore got kicked out the room), but I'm taking that as a good thing. I think I will be heading home soon as I'm completely wiped and can't imagine I'm going to do anything wonderfully productive for the rest of today. I'll be back in touch when I'm conscious again.....