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Published: August 8th 2007
Nice easy drive to Emma’s, where we settled down with a glass of wine or two and for a long chat. The plan was to go to Emma’s to concentrate on work for my chapter for the
London Transport Museum, with access to the internet for research, etc… which of course meant
Facebook got a bit of attention, but I did in fact get quite a lot of work done - a nice quiet place to work, and once we remembered about the spare key at the end of Monday, could aim for a bit of walk around
Bolton, which has plenty of pound shops, but is undergoing quite a bit of a makeover, and has some great Victorian architecture and statuary! Also plenty of ‘salubrious’ lap-dancing clubs, but that’s a different matter…
I spent some of the week working on my application for the
Churches Media Council conference - there’s an Academy for those considering going into the media - I’m a little too old, but I asked if I could apply anyway, and I can, so off that goes! My biggest distraction of the week was an email from
i-to-i on the Monday. I’d queried as I was still unclear as to what
was happening next now that I’d had the initial Vietnam interview, and wasn’t getting a response from the in-country contact. They said that they had problems with their Vietnam programme so I may not be going there, although they hoped to have it back on track in 3-4 weeks. They offered me the option to go to Thailand instead, but I’m not convinced I want to spend much time there, and in comparison financially it’s quite a poor deal. Along with some interesting options which had come up for July, and the knowledge that I either needed to go by end of June or wait til August, I came to a fairly quick decision that I would wait until September to teach. I will now wait and see, but China is the other option that looks most interesting - specifically the Great Wall area, but for the timing I would be getting there I think it would be ski gear weather…, and I have just bought a whole load of tropical clothes - not that I’d let that stop me, but it is something to consider!
Tuesday evening we went to a free
CIPD event, as Emma was allowed
Bolton Town Hall
Pretty impressive...to bring a guest. Really interesting event on ‘personal effectiveness’ with Tom Minter (who I believe works for
Academy of Inspired Dreams, specilising in youth coaching, largely discussing the ‘pain and pleasure principle’ - the idea that people tend to move away from pain, rather than towards pleasure, and that it can be useful to sit and think about what pleasure you are getting from NOT doing something. I reckon that you can’t get through a PhD without having some concept of this, having pushed myself through a number of tasks, knowing it’ll be better once it’s done, but I’d not really thought about what I was getting out of some of the other things I put off, so will try and put this into practice more often. Talking to Tom, our trainer, afterwards, he mentioned
‘The Coaching Academy’, with a free 2-day certificate in ‘Personal Performance Coaching’ available, for the cost of only the day-rate charged by hotels… pretty good deal so going to follow that up.
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