GenesisDreams

Birthday Message

General I originally sent this to Ads as birthday thankyou. I've cut and pasted bits and pieces of it here because I realise I haven't posted in ages, and this email pretty much sums up what I've been up to recently. So enjoy! So here is the story of my Birthday weekend. Nikkie had this whole thing planned out. As I would me working on my actual birthday and Nikkie had placement so couldn't be in Liverpool we decided to celebrate a few days early on the weekend I was down. So when I woke up on Saturday morning Nikkie gave me a little card. It had a clue written on it in Japanese!! I could translate a bit of it (Omedetou! Happy Birthday, some more stuff) but not all of it. She had used a web based translator to convert her clue into Japanese, so of course that garbled it! And when I plugged the Japanese back into the translator to get it back to English it garbled it even more! This is what it came out as: "Michael who is questioned with the your birthday, as for this Sawayama who is mystery travelling which celebrates your birthday the profit which is given do, the first part which can dress the clothes… If you prepare, it should start, to be warm the church day whose atmosphere is good" Basically Nikkie said that it was supposed to mean, "Happy Birthday, get out of bed, get dressed, get ready, we are going out for some coffee". We were meant to head out to Pitcher and Piano (you know, the pub in the Church) for some early drinks, so I did as I was told, and then headed out. Pitcher was closed though, so we went to Starbucks instead! There we had nice coffee and Nikkie gave me the second clue card, which had an address written on it and a print out of a street map. So we went wandering and finally found our way to the Skinny Sumo restaurant, which I had been saying I wanted to go to for about two years now, and where Nikkie had booked us a table for lunch. Unfortunately the lunch was not as good as I would have liked. As franchised as it is, I far prefer Wagamama's food. We still had a great time though, drinking green tea and talking about this, that and everything. It was there that Nikkie gave me my third clue card, and it threw me a little. The card started off "Wigs", and the first thing I said to Nik when I ready that was, "Hey, since when do you call me Wigs?". I then read some more. So here is where I do the whole "Wow!, Thank you!, I can't believe it!" thing. Seriously mate, I was totally shocked. It was a really great surprise. The fact that you even thought to send me a present was great, and when I opened it up to reveal the unbelievably slick, cool, shit fucking hot IPod Nano, in BLACK!, well that really made my day. Thank you Zim, and please pass my thanks on to everyone else was well. You made an ex-pat Aussie miss his home like never before, and miss his friends more than anything. Really though mate, what prompted this other than a deep seeded guilt regarding an ant-filled log in my toilet? I had almost even forgotten my own birthday, I didn't expect anyone else to remember! Nikkie got me the latest Jordan book and a great chess set for my birthday, which was great of her. We've been playing loads of chess recently and she is really good, so I am challenged each time I play her. It was a fantastic birthday overall. I got great presents, a super surprise and really enjoyed myself. Thanks again for the IPOD, it's been terrific so far. I would never have bought one for myself (you know me and not embracing new tech, though I did buy myself a nice 19" LCD the other day), but now I've got it I don't go anywhere without it. It's got all my music on it, plus the Pimsler Japanese lessons, and whenever I'm waiting for something, anything, I stick my headphones in a listen away. Very cool indeed. Anyway so I've got to give some sort of excuse as to why it has taken me so bloody long to reply, so I am now going to bore you with everything I've been up to these past couple of weeks. Well the biggest thing that has consumed my focus recently has been the Microsoft Office Project Conference 2006, which was held in Munich last week at the Arabella Sheraton. I had mentioned in passing to Paul that I would be interested in going and before I knew it I was packed off in a plane to the freezing Bavarian world of crazy Germans. The conference was fantastic, Microsoft really know how to put on a show, and all the guys who were talking were mini-geek-celebrities, so it was fun to watch. It ran over three days and they talked about all sorts of interesting stuff. During the opening key-note the main presenter was given a pair of lederhosen, which had me laughing for the rest of the week. The conference was held in the hotel, and it being 5 stars, and me being on expenses, I had a truly wonderful time. Boy I was exhausted and terribly hung over after it. So much German beer!! It was a great experience and I came away with a lot of really good ideas and a definite way forward for the project we are currently working on and future plans for other projects. So yeah my life has been consumed with work recently. Partly it had to do with preparing for this conference, but I've also been bumped up the ranks a little again, and I've got to deal with all the crap my predecessor left behind. In the last month we got rid of two of the IT guys who really weren't pulling their weight and hired two more on to replace them. In the process I somehow have ended up running the show. Crazy hey! So now I am managing six guys, developers, support and infrastructure people, and I am now spending more of my time project managing them than developing enterprise project management systems. I am back to working 80 hour weeks in order to get everything done and it is causing me to go grey early ^_^ I'm getting it under control now though. Most of my problems originated because of the bad job the guy before was doing. These are almost all cleaned up now and things have calmed down a little. I'm still being swamped with organisational issues rather than technical issues, which I don't know if I like, but it is fantastic experience and I am learning a great deal as I go along. Geoff says that now I've got control of the IT budget I should squeeze in a PA for myself to take some of the administrative load off. I don't know if I am quite there yet but I am considering it ^^ We've come along way in the last couple of months though. I've gotten the company registered as a Microsoft Certified Partner, revamped our development procedure, changed the strategic direction of the department, and put some effort into marketing and selling what we are doing. Before now we were pretty much 25% Innovation and 75% Operation. I want to swap those around, we should only be spending a quarter of our time keeping everything we've got going on running, the rest should be spent developing new things. I've actually got a department head strategy meeting this morning to outline to the MD where we are going. I am supposed to have budget forecasts ready for that, but I'm writing this to you instead. It's 6.30 am in the morning and I am freezing cold! Someone tried kicking Nikkie's front door in on Sunday. Nik was down in London for her Mum's birthday thankfully, but her housemate Jade was there and said it was really frightening. Nik was obviously a bit worried about it, so she bunked off placement on Monday and came up to my place to spend the night. I left work early yesterday and went down to Nottingham for the night to look after her. To get back up to Liverpool for my early strategy meeting though I was on the 5.24am red-eye back from Nottingham to Liverpool. I'm wired from coffee and can't be assed doing budget reports though, so I am writing to you. My life seems all consumed with work of late. Actually come to this of it my life has been all consumed with work for the last six months! It has been more than two years since I first came the UK. I've had three birthdays here so far and will likely have many more. Three birthdays!! How time flies by. It seems like just yesterday mate that you were camped out on my couch eating crazy potato chip and egg concoctions. When are you planning on coming back this way? Finish your PhD and get back over here mate!