What I've been up to lately

Hey Team,

Well I have been a very busy bee lately- in the last week I think I?ve only spent one night in London, the rest of the time I?ve been jetting all over the place taking care of business.

Let?s see, it all kicked off a week ago when my work had our summer ball, so I got all dressed up in a tux and had a very pleasant evening with my co-workers. Check out some photos of me looking fancy here:

Then from the ball to more work-related stuff, I went on a three day course in Horsley (near Guildford) called ?Managing Project Relationships?. The course itself wasn?t very helpful (pretty much teaching you how to deal with irritable people- like I didn?t learn that in Teacher?s College), but the location was fantastic- we were housed in a castle/manor called Horsley Towers- it had a gym and a spa pool and a lake and it was in the middle of a forest- it was like being on holiday- the food was good (and free, heh) too.

Then I went directly from Horsley to Hamble (near Portsmouth), where we did a training run for the PFI Challenge, which is a sailing boat race that my company participates in every year. This was my first time helping to operate a boat and it was a lot of fun- I even slept overnight in my own little cabin on the boat (which was a Bavarian `37, if you want to know what sort of boat I was in). What was most impressive to me, and I think you?ll enjoy this, was that if you have the same class of boat, and your crews are operating at roughly the same level of competence, and both boats are using the same wind, the only thing that determines who the winner will be is the decisions the captain makes. Like, the captain has to determine a course based on the conditions he observes, and he directs the crew how to best exploit those conditions, and whoever makes the best decisions will be the winner- everything else is just an extension of the captain?s will- quite apt advice for a management training course, really. On the downside I did get quite badly sunburned and I also took a boom to the head but both were well worth it!

After a quick jaunt back to London on Friday to shoot a music video (!) I was back in the country by Saturday morning to camp on a small island (isthmuth, actually) called Portland, which is just west of Weymouth. I went out there with some friends to do some rock climbing, and it was gorgeous! Absolutely beautiful, it was like being on a Greek island- the sun was shining, the water was crystal clear, the coastline was lovely. We did something called ?sport climbing?, which means one person ?leads? by climbing up to various notches, setting the rope on each notch as they do so, and then someone else ?seconds?, by climbing to the top (just like in regular climbing) removing the set-marks as they do so. I mostly did seconding, but I did my very first lead (which is way scary as half the time you?re not supported by anything) on Sunday. It was a lot of fun and I can?t wait to go back and do some more climbing.

So as you can see the last week has been very eventful, loads of stuff to do, it feels like a month has gone by since the ball. Would love to hear about your adventures too!

YTMD,

d