5.30 - Mariachi Music Break

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Having spent four years languishing in a tin pot arse-banditry joke of a company where the sole life aims of the management appeared to be nothing short of driving its staff to suicide or cocaine addiction - while forcing them to take the bullet for very poorly published items - I have to express my surprise, relief and delight in temping for a firm which is the polar opposite. It has just turned 5.30pm on a Thursday evening and our director, the owner of the firm, has switched on some Mariachi music for us all to enjoy. Now its kinda funny this, but the first time I walked in here, I noticed that it was very quiet, and I remembered that the first time I walked into the offices of my former employer after my second interivew, it was deathly quiet. It turned out to be a very bad sign of mass suicidal thoughts being hopelessly surpressed by lack of talking at that place - which I spent the next 4 years fighting and being made to pay for that by the powers that were. But here this quiet seems to be a result of long spates of people actually working, and regularly interrupted by people actually enjoying a chat, which often evolves (or descends) into an office-wide chat (our office being just ten people) about anything, but commonly sparring ideas for their work projects about and getting quite excited about it. People here openly talk about their ideas as they happen; then they start discussing them all and eventually some sort of theme or plan emerges. It's all a bit too heart warning and functional for my black, dead professional heart. But I do like it a lot and any place where music is so valued has to be a good thing. Even my colleague Karl has an iPod to rival my own, which I'm surprised by.

Not too much else to say about this week. I'm working hard, trying to be productive, fnishing up my freelance contracts, making my lunches, doing my washing, and facebooking like a mentalist. I'm not out that much because I have no cash but I'm looking forward to going out in Camden on Friday with my mate Sally who I met on the boat in the Whitsundays, who turned out to be a sterling girl and who has just moved into town from Manchester. Then I'm hoping to cook for Sonia and Rosie at Bex' house since she and Paul are away for a long weekend.

x

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