Well, I promised and failed to give an entry from the airport, but that's mainly because loads of people turned up, and we got drunk-ish at about 10am. Then there was all the champagne on the plane, so that counted out being sane/sober when I landed and so I've had to leave until now. Now being the morning when I had a 6am meeting which was then cancelled. Grrrrrrrr.
It's looking decidedly miserable outside from my view on the 25th floor of the Hilton so I might just sit here and do some work instead of walking the 100 yards to the office and doing it there.
Well, I promised a post from a 1st class lounge, and here it is. I'm in JFK, and the flight leaves at half 9 (in about an hour) and there's not a lot to do. It's rather pleasant in here and the food was fabulous.
All in all, rather a good week. But then again, any week that involves an evening containing $65 rounds of drinks, a large amount of steak, a guy with 3 titanium black amex cards and a casual invite to the Monaco grand prix is going to be a good one.
I'm back in the land of them that are normal and work!
I'm back! Hurray! Work! Boooooo!
So last week was fun. Having not been skiing in a "long" time, I was surprised by a few things. The first thing was this: Skiing hurts and is hard work. I don't remember it hurting that much just by going down a slope. I think it's my rather shocking fitness level that is to blame, so I need to exercise more. The second key thing I learned was: Skiing in the snow isn't necessarily fun. It snowed quite a lot and as a result some of the days were spent looking at the haze of snow and sighing lots. On the other hand, this provided a good opportunity to rest (sleep).
The way back was mildly interesting. After going through The Greatest Car Journey in the World™ (it involved snow, closed mountain passes, the Valley of Death, and a quick lesson in fitting snow chains in the snow at 4am) we decided we would go a sensible route back avoiding Mont Blanc. This was due to take around 2hrs 45mins, so for a 7:30am flight, we thought we should leave at 2:30-3ish. On friday (the day before we left), the weather started to close in quite badly prompting a rethink in case they closed the road out of the resort. In the end, we left at midnight-ish and dribbled down the mountain at a leisurely 18mph. The plan was to hit the motorway and do nice speeds all the way back, but when we noticed that we were actually on the motorway and it was still blizzarding with 2cm of snow on the ground, we were forced to trundle along at a mediocre pace. The end result is that what should have taken nearly 3 hours took over 5 hours, which usefully landed us there in good time to check in. So that was the interesting bit of the way back.
So now I've arrived back, and I have 85 unread emails to read and deal with. Joy!
I've been trying to put into place the various bits and pieces for my next work placement over the past few days. It seems that there's a certain order I have to do things in so that everyone stays happy, and the end result is that I get to go live in New York for 6 months. It's likely to be something approaching the media area, but I'm not 100% sure yet. Decision about that on Wednesday. :-)
All I need now is a visa and a place to live, and I'm sorted. Well, that and I need to wrap everything up that I've been doing over the past 6 months to leave it in a state whereby someone else can pick it up and fix it if it breaks....
We have this thing at work whereby a certain percentage of the profits are shared out amongst the employees. So the idea is the company hits a target profit amount, and then everyone starts to get money. It's something like 1% of the total amount.
So mine turned up today, and seeing as I've only technically been working there for 3 months it had to be scaled down. That said, I've now got £87.29 (gross, £50 ish net) to play with!