work bits

Never get too comfortable in your relationship with your boss, or with only one boss. spread the love, or you'll never be able to share your woes later. if you're counting totally on the shelter and protection of the one boss you've conned into thinking you're wonderful and indispensable, the day he turns on you, you're fucked. and he could do so - if his job is threatened for example, or if he tires of your particular approach to things, or if he's figures out you've got itchy feet, or if he's simply in a bad mood.

remember this, to survive at work, you gotta be able to lick simultaneous ass.

job search / soul search

i've spent the last two saturdays attending community events, which haven't helped any authorities make any decisions, allowed any agencies to meet any targets, made any residents feel empowered. words like 'tick box exercise', 'backroom decisions', 'eyewash' and 'sham' have been hurled across rooms and at presentations.

do they think I like going to godforsaken Council-run shitholes on sunny weekend days when I could be at home snuggling with a bear or outside talking to the river or best of all, snuggling a bear, by the river, near a bookmarket, with a hot alcoholic delicious drink, in the further company of good friends, to whom also weekends are precious? what assholes communities are!

this is it. it's pretty clear to me at last that sadly, community engagement is not my thing.

epilogue: obviously the planning system is very flawed, when the regeneration you're discussing with a resident and the pretty pictures you're trying to explain to the bored layperson may (or may not) happen (depending on funding, government change, policy shifts or weather) in the next twelve years or so. I would do better building mud huts in Latur, even though i'm a crap architect.

The blog turned four surreptitiously

On your birthday, dear blog, I was at a friend's house-warming party, showing off my bear. Afterwards we spent a comfy weekend in, mainly doing dome remote wedding planning. Therefore I missed your birthday, blog. Forgive me for being such a terrible predictabke stereotype singleton turned suddenly smug (almost) married.

happy 4!

post Diwali

The forearm of my right arm hurts. It could be from chopping, stirring heavy curries or carrying heavy shopping bags. We pulled off a double bonanza Diwali weekend; had two bunches of friends over consecutively on saturday night and sunday afternoon. Not only did the food come out great, but we cleaned the flat (it took me 2.5 months, but I finally got him to unpack his last 2 bags), and did proper Diwali decorations, with tealights floating in glass bowls with flowers, and incense sticks to amuse our lone Ganesh idol. It was all very grown up.

The weekend established that the bear and I are a good team. Although we did have a happy little helper in the form of my cousin whom I still think of as a kid, but who is doing a masters in London. We are like her LG's - local guardians! How's that for ancient?

Mishaps did happen of course, the dal tasted like egg curry and the lamb curry had chicken in it because Tesco opens at noon on a sunday and our 2nd batch of guests was arriving at one. I didn't manage to look as fantastic as planned and only wore a kurta with jeans rather than the full blown lehenga thing I'd planned.

Afterwards, when the kitchen sink was smoking from the vigorous relays of washing up and the leftovers were packed away in tupperware, we blew out the candles and went for a walk by the river. I didn't say the very gooey things that kept welling up in my heart to the bear. I didn't say I had never expected to be this happy, and that it was very strange how he somehow mostly always manages to do exactly what I consider to be the best case scenario (like lighting the same candles I was thinking of lighting, or coming out and telling me I had been right about something I was inwardly gloating about, or like asking me to marry him a second time just when I was secretly thinking that the first proposal hadn't been perfect). I didn't tell him that he was exactly what I have been looking for and whining for and writing bad poetry about, for all these years. It's like soulmates, and it's very weird.

desktop

right now, my work email has a string of messages from the bear, about the weekend, his colleagues, my colleagues, my parents, and food. Interspersed with a few messages from anne about our plans tonight. A reminder email about downtime on something called 'projectspace', which i've never learned how to use. And one acknowledgement email for the one piece of work work i've done in 4 hours.

My gmail inbox is full of facebook notifications and useless recruitment ads. Atkins global thinks i'd make a good signalling engineer one day and a great FM technician another. Among these lurks a single response to one of the many feeler emails i've been sending out, because this week i decided again to be a proper 'writer'. let's wait and see if it comes to anything.

So obviously, my sent messages folder is full of various emails with attachments or links to kinda well known websites and obscure architectural journals. I'm not aiming for the Guardians or the ADs yet. First i have to finish reading the weekly Economist and then see if its realistic to subscribe to the Guardian or the Telegraph again. And then i can identify gaps in their entertainment provision, and attempt to fill it. I realise this is isn't logical, not directly. It has something to do with discipline and humility and also general knowledge. I'm not very ambitious.

the rest of my desktop is covered with excel sheets that i'm looking at once every 20 minutes. a tab trying to hide behind the system tray says 'harry potter audio book 2 - chamber of secrets - mudbloods and murmurs'. Yes, i've found a new way to celebrate my potter monomania and get work done at the same time. Credit for this brilliant idea goes to an ex neighbour, who suggested i should plug potter into my headphones and use my fingers and eyes for work instead. brilliant.

what's on your desktop?

laundi in london (anniversary post)

It's been 4 rollicking years of riverside walking and Britishness learning.

From graduate school at Aldwych and Bankside to a short hibernation in Stoke Newington and then 27 months of celebrating freedom and girlieness and the late twenties in fulham. Through the brainwaves and the exasperation, the determined adventure-seeking and grim duvet-burrowing, the cultivated cynicism and the sudden innocence, London is steadfast in each memory. Friends and lovers and hated rivals have been and gone, but this city has made even my bitterst heartache delicious. Deep blue skies, old buildings, fresh winds and well planned night-time lighting in public spaces can do that.

I could walk here forever, stride on, scale the tallest buildings in zone 1 and clear the wildest heaths of zone 3 with a few springy skips. I could walk until my shoes fall off, until my hair sticks fearfully close to my sweating skin, until I run out of people and bus stops and sandwich shops. In London I could keep going.

Life peacefully ambles now through a bend in the road. With the future a nebulous cloud which hasn't completely formed into shapes and objects, it's lovely to know that London is forever. I may not be here one day, but London will always be.

realisation

I am jaded.

My annoying american colleague has been doing what I do for ten years longer than I have, but she still has the energy to take every new piece of work thrown our way by the planners as a challenge, and to try and save the world through it, bit by bit. She can still rehearse the arguments of the good and the true, every time, about how our specialist contribution will make such and such project better for its context. and she explains it tirelessly to the bosses and the clients in terms that they understand - long term benefit, social cohesion, 5 year plan, all rounder, farsighted, bla bla bla.

whereas to me, uttering these words feels like eating them, chewing them and spitting them out, because they are now indigestible.

i'm going to stop blaming my job, colleagues, bosses and pay for my current state of extreme unrest at work. i am simply jaded, and cannot find the slightest motivation for anything i do. i am to speak at a conference next month, alongside ol' boris johnson, but i can't muster the spirit to open the report and make the presentation.

i am enthu no longer, am not a force to be reckoned with, have no power or inclination to intervene in the set courses of mundane or big things. no bright eyes.