New job?

Now I'm not sure who reads these, so my aim may be a bit off with regards to content and detail etc. Who are you people in America? The stats say quite a few from the USA are reading these!

This week was peculiar, as I was leaving my lone thinker role behind to become part of  the local sales team. This is following the mass exodus of several people from the office, who I was ever so fond of. Yes, I am a ridiculously soft hearted oaf! :D

Now I've worked in the same office since the beginning of December, so you'd think that this would be quite a simple thing. Switching jobs not staying whilst your mates have to go. But it was kind of like starting a new job as I'd always worked by myself until now. Also the office felt totally different with so few people in it...

Anyway lets not dwell on that, in the words of the late great Bernie Mac "let's move on"

So I get in ready to rock n roll,  for those Simpsons fans out there picture homer running into the hospital when Grandpa needed a kidney. But I'm met with the same plan I've been wrestling with for several months now. Think I've got it sorted now, fingers crossed. So once I'm done I crack on with some marketing research. Those of you who have done this will know the joys of it all too well, I now know what you mean!

The next day brought more calls than I had ever made in my life, my ears were actually a little sore from wearing a headset. I think this might be because I have rather large ears but then again I do have quite a large head. I think my ears just stick out a little more than most. Day 1 of calls done and I drive home in a bit of a daze. I'm really not used to speaking that much, man of few words.

I realise that if you've read any of my posts and never met me then you are going to find that hard to believe. For some reason I am terribly succinct in person and exponentially more verbose in writing!

I park up in the drive and walk purposefully towards the front door. Any guesses as to what is waiting for me on the doorstep?

It's a pheasant pacing back and forth, an adolescent male by the looks of it. The fearful fellow is too scared to go anywhere as I am now blocking his exit vector. I stand and stare rather bemused by his running back and forth on the doorstep. I take a step back and he makes a run for it, straight to the shrubs!

The following day I attend Marc's birthday dinner, he's annoyingly late. I was so annoyed I had two starters! It was nice to see everyone again, except Eleanor B she's living it up in the hashish capital of the world ;-) Thoroughly nice evening only spoilt by my consuming carbs, damn you tasty, toasted bread!!!

I experience something that the asians amongst you will have witnessed plenty of times with your parents when exiting a family friends house. The general loitering at/near the door. We must've stood for a good 5 mins chatting outside before finally tearing ourselves away to go our separate ways.

In the following days I reconciled some differences in numbers, made many more calls, manned up, booked some appointments, more research,spotted a mistake, consulted an old friend, realised I am not so detached.

The highlight of the week was seeing how flustered Mark got when he almost sent a scan to the owner of the company instead of himself :P

A few too many words...

Recently 5/9 of the people in the office I work in were made redundant. I'm usually the one who moves on for whatever reason. So for me this was all backwards and it left me confused and angry.

I'd only known this bunch for about five months but it hurt like hell, after I got over the initial shock I wanted to know what it was that had created such a strong bond. So I stared inward and backwards, then I wrote a few words to say at the sayonara night out we were having.

It has been recorded so forgive me if this isn't exactly as I said it but it is what I intended to say:

Evening, How is everyone tonight?
Now this does strike me as quite a bad idea, as I am in possession of the quietest voice in the entire office.

I am a man of few passions:

Working out: some of you may have had the ill fortune of engaging me on the topic. I can and will talk you into a state of quivering boredom about the gym, protein and muscle groups if given half the chance.

Facts: I retain and dispense them freely. Sorry again, I know this gets tedious really quickly.

Reflection: I spend many hours analysing every action/reaction etc.

Using my powers of reflection, which looks a lot like this.

The first thing that poped into my head was that I am terribly immature. <pause to write penis on Sarah's hand>

And of course, you are all sooo awesome!

But the little voice in my head was like "that's not good enough, go deeper!"

So I sat down and thought, then I stood up and thought and lastly I laid down and thought. Several hours later I snapped back to conciousness and realised that why I'm ever so fond of you all is because we've done some really weird stuff together!!!

Some examples:
Eleanor and I walked around an industrial estate handing out information on a local milk delivery service, for three hours!

All the lads mucked in and shovelled snow on many occasion's. I've delivered milk on several occasions. And this one time me n Swapnal headed out and I managed to hit not one but two stationary objects!

Sarah and I got to work extra early one day so we could head to a school n loiter outside the gates. Handing parents, who are obviously in a massive rush, info on milk!

Lots of lettering, canvassing, dropoffs, pick-ups, throwing a bottle around, paper aeroplanes, throwing a foam cow, throwing a foam ball, talking dbz. Soooo much stuff!

There is a lot of stuff there that I don't think I'll ever do again, certainly not in another office :( little sad at that if I'm honest! Suffice it to say that these unique experiences bonded us together.

I'm very grateful to have met you all and you've had quite the impact on me in the short time we worked together in that windowless office.

Now the sincere bit's over with I'm going to try n shoehorn in the phrases on the table into the end of this thing. Going forward I would like to encourage all of you to do some work!

You never know when or where a random fact may come in useful. For example you'd have to eat about 22 pounds of chocolate to kill you.

In life you'll have many opportunities to strike a pose. Whenever this opportunity presents itself remember to smoulder...

See it now: Contrast and compare!!!

Plans, wings, pen 15 and Ludacris

Yesterday, as much as the day doesn't exist it did happen. Have I lost you yet?

Got up at 4am, caught the train at 7am got to work at 8am. I then spent 45 minutes sat on top of my suitcase, I carry my sleeping bag in a suitcase because I've lost my sleeping bag bag. Steph our superb delivery agent swung by to take the piss and drop off our Friday delivery.

Set off from work met up at spoons for a civilised drink. Mandy drove us! Reminiscent of my first week in the job when she drove us across town a few times :-D Some time passed and we headed off to Ribs 'n' Bibs. Where we'd liberally coated the table in our stock catchphrases/expressions. I then proceeded to deliver an extraordinarily moving speech only pausing to write Pen 15 on Sarah's hand. I chose to write in board marker, partly because that's all we had and partly because it should wash/wipe off quite easily. That said the Pen 15 was refreshed on a regular basis, awesome!

It's all sounding rather run of the mill am I right? But now comes the bucket of 50 wings which have to be consumed in 25 minutes. So I go flying out the gates chomping like a mad man. If one of the photos is anything to go by I eat wings with my eyes closed! As time progresses my face is slowly accrues a liberal layer of sauce, whilst the bib remains strangely clean.

In the end I managed to battle through 43 of the bad boys. That's 86%, but this is an all or nothing challenge and now my sad, sad face adorns the wall of shame :( :D.

But that's not all that happened, we discussed an enormous variety of topics: adoption, incarceration, cycling whilst under the influence, Marc's dedication towards becoming hench n gay, secret asians etc. The night kind of petered out after that. I also managed to pull off the five question con on Fish! Been meaning to try it forever and was presented with an opportunity too good to turn down :-D

Swapnal and I went in search of Mark, who was sporting a mankini + bib combo that was too...I honestly don't know how to describe it. But we walked in to a club stood around for a bit and decided we were in the wrong place and walked out again. Upon finding the right entrance the queue is look rather ridiculous, ain't nobody got time for that! So we grab a pizza and walk back to Eastbourne St. On the way we receive some abuse from some lovely young men shouting from a car :D

Get in, watch 2 Fast 2 Furious and then I decide to read a bit of Double Cross before dozing off. As I am reading about the exploits of Dusko Popov in America, Swapnal's new flatmate Vicky gets in from a night out. Of course she confuses me for Swapnal, as you all know we are identical in everyway so it's to be expected :P That said thoroughly nice girl who chatted to be for about an hour.