Surviving – Notes on Leading an Ordinary Life III

We lost :(( all the heavy work in the last two weeks in vain. That’s life, you can’t win them all. But at least I know that I still can work and can add value. And I was reminded that there are a lot of capable and friendly colleagues around, who can make even long hours of work a rewarding experience. Although I have to watch out that I don’t loose the work-life- balance. It might sound improbable to many non-consultants, but I consider it an achievement not to boot up the company’s laptop, not to check company email during the entire weekend during such a highly important phase like a proposal is. I even missed the message about us having lost the deal for a full day as I had not checked my mail until the previously announced deadline. Continue reading Surviving – Notes on Leading an Ordinary Life III

Surviving – Notes on Leading an Ordinary Life II

I’ve recently seen a note of some insane workaholic, who transported the impression that he loved returning to work after some months of vacation. How crazy can people become to replace vacation with tough work through long hours??? Hello, nock, nock, anyone at home? Drinking beer and going out for lunch with colleagues isn’t exactly the definition of “work”, is it?

I tell you a secret from this week’s experience: It is absolutely no fun to work an estimated 60 hours between Monday morning and Friday noon and produce about 80 pages of five times reviewed output in our Kronberg office far away from any bar, which would offer a nightly beer. None! Instead delivered pizza in carton boxes…oh, I hadn’t really missed that. Worth noting: Sleeping in trains while commuting doesn’t seem to be as effective as sleeping in your own bed.

I’m sitting here now at home at 7pm, my kitchen looks like hit by a bomb, and I can’t even enjoy any feeling of a great achievement because I simply have difficulties looking straight ahead, so tired am I. This afternoon I had to ask a friend who I met for a coffee to pay for me…how embarassing…I simply ran out of cash, no time fetching new cash.

Fun working…what a bullshit! These guys should be prosecuted!

The most fun we had was about spelling mistakes (sorry, that’s mostly for Germans with English slang knowledge…) like

  • Fackonzept
  • Schittstelle
  • Projektleier

I will now try to find something to eat in the left-overs of the kitchen and then have a good night’s rest. And if tomorrow I find this mad guy I gonna have a serious talk with him!

Updates 9:30pm:

  1. In the battlefield formerly known as my kitchen the Parmesan cheese had gone mouldy. Shit happens. Tough luck only if you note that only after spreading it over all your pasta. Hope I won’t be sick tomorrow, couldn’t throw away all the pasta, just tried to remove as much as possible of the cheese.
  2. When removing my brand-new shirts from the washing machine I had to note that something was still in the white-with-black-stripes shirt’s breast pocket. Damn, I though, used once only and already useless due to coloring from a forgotten note. But wrong: It turned out to be a 20 Euro bill, which I had pocketed before lunch in case I would need to load the cantina debit card with money. But I need not and forgot to return the money into my wallet. That left me without cash in the cafe and the knowledge that real European money is indeed extremely colorfast: The bill is clean, but no color rubbed off to the shirt. Washing money might be illegal, but doesn’t harm you shirts 😉

Today’s Lesson: European money is colorfast.

Categories: AsiaFrankfurt

Originally Created: 12/14/2007 07:12:28 PM

Last Edited: 12/14/2007

Surviving – Notes on Leading an Ordinary Life

I work again. Quite suddenly. 10 days ago I received a call of a colleague and couldn’t say “No”. Proposal, tough work usually. But honestly…it started to be a bit boring just to sit there all day and sort photos. About the only thing I got done was uploading a number of best-of series to Flickr. No appointments, no deadlines. I became very inefficient. One day I wanted to send a letter with registered post, so I had to get to the post office. I messed around all day until I noticed that the post office would close soon…at 6:30pm. I hurried there just to note that by now all ordinary people had returned from work and queued up in long lines in front of the post office to deal with their post chores. I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes. Continue reading Surviving – Notes on Leading an Ordinary Life