Well, after having managed to survive 2 weeks of hell at work (largely due to having about 5 people away on holiday at the same time), I took a few days off last week to "recover".

OK, I am at times a bit of a workaholic. While I was at home last week supposedly taking a short vacation, I actually went ahead and logged into work. Why? Well, there were still a few things that needed to be taken care of and more or less completed by Friday. So there I was logged into work from home and checking my emails and logfiles. Pretty sad, isn't it?

On a more positive note, I will be heading to Germany for a 2 day workshop with counterparts from other parts of the world. It will be a nice break from the usual stuff. On top of that, I mentioned to my manager that I plan on rounding off the week there by spending some time in Amsterdam. He was cool with it. Besides, if I flew back on the Wednesday (the workshop is Monday/Tuesday), then I would be left with Thursday/Friday. Not worth it in my opinion. My other half will be accompanying me. I don't think he's ever been to Germany, so at least he can keep himself busy while I am in a workshop.

It's been a while sincew I travelled for work, so I'm looking forward to it. :-)

Gary's Boring Blog This is one of the Japan blogs I read off and on. I've been following Rosie's saga for the past couple of weeks and was saddened to see the title of the latest entry. My heart goes out to Gary, Megumi and their family. It must have been a tough struggle for them to get through all this.

Nuff said..

The past 3 weeks have been somewhat hellish....

Week one... Started OK. Half the team was on vacation. I had some stuff to work on. I inherited some stuff from a couple of people before they left. Of course I was also left with team leader duties....

Of course, as soon as the last vacationer left, all hell breaks loose. Escalations and urgent issues out the wazoo! Week one produced about 55hrs of work in time reporting. :-p I barely had time to recover that weekend.

Week two... faired no better... Emails flying left and right about more urgent issues and other things. I was juggling the jobs of at least 3 people. Another 50+hr week.

Week three is better. A couple of people are back from holiday. Some semblance of sanity has returned. Team leader still on vacation which means I still have to deal with the crap issues. :-p At least I *KNOW* what I am talking about or dealing with. But I won't go there. ;-) Never know who's reading this!

Anyway, I hope to take a few days off this week just to breathe. But it's so hard to take days off in case something turns up and a bad decision is made.... Oh well...

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