Thursday, September 30, 2004
Malaise
Yup. That just about sums it up. After an exceptionally busy day yesterday, dealing with Mr. O, the Nifsan business in Australia and trying to get acquainted with the details of our new UK opeation I barely had time for lunch, let along time to spend typing here. Contrastingly, just over one hour into my work day today, malaise and a general air of 'I can't be fucked' has descended and all I want to do is book one of the meeting rooms with the soft leather chairs and go for a nap. It's not that I am exceptionally tired, just that I can't be bothered to do much else. I can see myself spending pretty much the next 7 or so hours finding ways to kill time.
As it turns out, the lastest and greatest plan for the new UK factory is being presented to the Board as I type, so hopefully sometime this week, I will be let in on the results of said meeting and have a slightly better idea of what is going on. We have a new boss being transferred to our departement on Monday, who I have learned will be playing a fairly large role in this UK business, and I am expected to work with him. I only hope he is slightly more competent than the average memeber of management around here, otherwise it looks like this new project will be a 9-way clusterfuck from here to Herefordshire. Not that the complete and utter failure of this project would surprise me. In fact, I would probably be smugly satisfied if it did. I have after all been doomsaying it from the start. Of course, the fact that my name will probably be attached to it in some way, shape or form would significantly reduce my satisfaction.
The again, I am probably just bitter because they have sidelined my pet project in the Czech Republic in favour of a second UK factory. Ho-hum.
Outside of work, life has been decidedly uneventful. I visited my usual yakitori restaurant on Monday night and guzzled down some Nihon-shu (sake). I normally opt for beer, but I think I could develop a taste for it. Smoky bar-dwelling aside, the only other thing that has really been capturing my attention of late is a particularly delectable book.
Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross, while almost Peter Jackson-esque in appearance is undoubtedly one of the best works of modern sci-fi I have read in a while (granted, I haven't been reading huge amounts of fiction of late) but it is superbly written, and offers a slightly different twist on the future of human society when compared to most sci-fi writers. With the exception of Peter F. Hamilton's superlative Night's Dawn Triology, I have found modern writers in this genre to be very similar, and uniformly drab. Iron Sunrise on the other hand is engrossing enough that I have nearly missed my train station once or twice.
With Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne likely to scoop the Ansari X-prize this Monday, and Sir Richard Branson's recent acquisition of their techonology to create the Virgin Galactic fleet of commercial air/spacecraft, the future is looking closer than we often think.
As it turns out, the lastest and greatest plan for the new UK factory is being presented to the Board as I type, so hopefully sometime this week, I will be let in on the results of said meeting and have a slightly better idea of what is going on. We have a new boss being transferred to our departement on Monday, who I have learned will be playing a fairly large role in this UK business, and I am expected to work with him. I only hope he is slightly more competent than the average memeber of management around here, otherwise it looks like this new project will be a 9-way clusterfuck from here to Herefordshire. Not that the complete and utter failure of this project would surprise me. In fact, I would probably be smugly satisfied if it did. I have after all been doomsaying it from the start. Of course, the fact that my name will probably be attached to it in some way, shape or form would significantly reduce my satisfaction.
The again, I am probably just bitter because they have sidelined my pet project in the Czech Republic in favour of a second UK factory. Ho-hum.
Outside of work, life has been decidedly uneventful. I visited my usual yakitori restaurant on Monday night and guzzled down some Nihon-shu (sake). I normally opt for beer, but I think I could develop a taste for it. Smoky bar-dwelling aside, the only other thing that has really been capturing my attention of late is a particularly delectable book.
Iron Sunrise, by Charles Stross, while almost Peter Jackson-esque in appearance is undoubtedly one of the best works of modern sci-fi I have read in a while (granted, I haven't been reading huge amounts of fiction of late) but it is superbly written, and offers a slightly different twist on the future of human society when compared to most sci-fi writers. With the exception of Peter F. Hamilton's superlative Night's Dawn Triology, I have found modern writers in this genre to be very similar, and uniformly drab. Iron Sunrise on the other hand is engrossing enough that I have nearly missed my train station once or twice.
With Burt Rutan and SpaceShipOne likely to scoop the Ansari X-prize this Monday, and Sir Richard Branson's recent acquisition of their techonology to create the Virgin Galactic fleet of commercial air/spacecraft, the future is looking closer than we often think.
# posted by Nils @ 10:17 AM 
