Sunday, May. 03, 2009 - 16:49

Sorry for absence - it's been a long week (and it shall continue on that theme for the next month or so, I am sure) hence I haven't really had the time, the energy or the headspace to write 'owt. Thankfully it's a long weekend (admittedly, I decided to go to work yesterday, so it's only a normal two-day weekend for me, but better that than working all Saturday and then going back to work on Monday morning) so I shall get some rest, but..

Anyhow, yes.. the lab manager is going to be signed off for another few weeks as a result of being pretty bashed up after his car crash a month or so back. The deputy lab manager left on Friday (having taken it slightly easy all week as some ongoing stuff would no longer be his concern) so I'm unable to call on him to assist, and I'm getting some friction from supervisors as there is too much for them to do already. Hence stuff dumped on me by my bosses at short notice is a bit of a nightmare, alongside all the 'fixing' work I'm having to do before the audit.

Thankfully, one of my bosses has been on site all week and has been helpful w.r.t. advice and also helpful w.r.t. taking some work off my hands to do herself. She's going to report back to our shared bosses to say that I am working my nads off to try to sort it all but need some help down here. Part of me feels naturally a bit peeved that she's saying "you aren't coping", but since it's true, I should just accept the help I get. I'm just glad that any fails in this last audit won't really be 'blamed' on me, moreso on the staff situation. I hope so at least - they could all be saying how incompetant I am behind my back!

Finished Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' in the week, and yes it picked up w.r.t. becoming a page-turner to the same degree that Dean Koontz, for example, can be relied on by me to be. There was less annoyances w.r.t. scientific inaccuracies ('cause the last three quarters of the book were mostly religion and architecture, not science) and a pretty funny joke towards the end :-)

I've got flu-like symptoms. Should I go to the doctor, or should I accept the likely thing that I have a bit of a cold, and am tired because I didn't sleep enough this week. I could have swine flu, but.. ack pigs might fly. Especially if bird flu and swine flu virus is simultaneously infecting a host!

Apprentice in the week was good as per usual, though the task (selling tat) wasn't one of my favourites. I'm not sure whether it was made clear enough how the task would be judged - on profit or on total takings.. I didn't know as a viewer so I wasn't surprised that the teams didn't seem to know (though there may have been a dossier which the teams could read). Just seems a shame that a team doing nothing and not selling anything would have won.

Whereas Noorul, a bloke doing nothing and selling nothing (well, nothing for more than a hundred quid less than it was worth) was expelled. Not sure why Ben - who split the items unevenly, who is a cockmuncher, and who presumiably decided that the 'sell at any price' tactic was the way to go and set this agenda with the rest of the team as Project Manager - didn't, but you have to think he will soon.

Football yesterday held few surprises. Man United beat Boro (leaving my birthplace club rather screwed), Chelsea beat Fulham, Arsenal beat Portsmouth, Man City beat Blackburn, Spurs beat West Brom and West Ham beat Stoke. Bolton and Wigan drew 0-0.

That's the factual stuff done. I might update more interestingly later.