Entries from December 2004 ↓

My God, I’ve been professionally challenged … my boss has just given me a TEXTBOOK to read. One of two she’s ordered – published by the Harvard Business School Press none-the-less on a strategic tracking system she wants me to adopt in my work. The Balanced Scorecard system (… read all about it http://www.balancedscorecard.org/). I’ve been dabbling in it a bit under her guidance with some reports I’ve done for a Steering Committee I support – using a graphical representation known as ‘dashboard’ to track using red, orange and green which tasks are on schedule and which are behind. I’m kind of excited and kind of scared – this text book is REALLY grown up, with diagrams and graphs and tables and massive overuse of words like strategy, platform, measurement, performance, map, alignment, derive, portfolio.

I hope the expectation is that I will read it on work time and not over Christmas! And fingers crossed for being sent on a course somewhere fantastic!!

Today I went locally for coffee as I ran out of time to go to Fuel. The barista’s said they were carrying out a survey this morning, asking customers what they thought the sexiest profession was. Interesting. They said the top male opinion was nurse, and the top female opinion was tradesman or guys in uniform. I guess it depends on your interpretation of the question. I did not interpret ’sexiest profession’ to be a sexy ‘person’ necessarily, but what the profession embodied. I went for lawyer. Not that I’m saying lawyers can’t be sexy as people! I thought the whole nurse and tradesman thing was interesting given their customer base is from around Featherson St … I wonder what the suits on The Terrace would’ve said?

I ask to be noticed. I really do. Today in honour of there being no wind and straight-down rain, I’ve brought out my big orange umbrella with an orange handle. My special one. And by lunchtime had received at least half a dozen comments about it; from colleagues, shop assistants and strangers in the lift. And in fact two people thought it very ‘feng shui’ of me to have matching accessories i.e. watch, rings, bangle, credit card wallet - feng shui indeed: I put them right and said it was absolutely intentional and was all about me and not the order of the universe!

And just now I had to reluctantly lend it to my boss who was leaving the building for lunch – very cool to watch from my office window down to the street to see it go off on an adventure – it sure is bright on such a dreary day!

I just saw an interesting thing. A motorbike was parked at the end of a series of car parks, in the little space between the last line of the last car park and the lines of a Give Way sign. Undoubtedly a ticket-incurring spot. However, the meter maid (sorry, Parking Infringement Officer) was down on her hands and knees with a tape measure taking measurements of the space the bike was taking up and proximity to lines … I wonder if she was working out whether they were in fact in a ticket-incurring spot or perhaps the closer you are to the line the bigger the fine? By the way, the bike was orange … probably why I noticed the whole thing in the first place

New shop. There used to be a tiny jewellery store next to McDonalds on the corner of Victoria and Manners. Noticed this morning that it’s now a barber shop. Is not finished completely and there are building materials lying about and exposed wires but there was a guy in there this morning getting his hair cut.

Except it’s a TT … saw it in Auckland.

Some random thoughts & observations:

• There is a monumental amount of construction going on in Auckland – all apartment buildings it seems. In the central city and city suburbs. They look pretty shoe-boxy though.
  


• There are thousands of pregnant women in the streets. Shopping, serving in stores. dining. Perhaps somehow this is the cause of point one above.
  


• Fitting rooms in women’s clothing stores are ferreted away, down corridors and guarded by a girl wielding a plastic number or escorting you down a mirror panelled labyrinth to a room with a lockable door. Meaning your partner has to stand out in the store and wonder if you’ll be brave enough to come out in some ill-fitting garment saying “see, I told you it wouldn’t be right”. On the other hand, fitting rooms in men’s stores are totally accessible. The female partner can even go into the fitting room to offer advice and at the very least can stand right outside the fitting room door and peek in. I found this all rather frustrating by the 3rd solid day of shopping.

Most of the time I feel ageless but out of the blue I was struck by recent sad memories on my walk to work. The fact that I have been a pall bearer twice. Already. Surely I am too young to have experienced pall bearing, let alone having done it twice. I guess it’s something I thought you did from about 50 onwards.

Look what we’ve got

Getting back into the swing of reporting on orange stuff … thought it was about time I did an inventory of orange things on my desk:

OK, from left to right (I won’t repeat the word ‘orange’ every time, just know all the following objects *are* orange, right down to the very last paper clip) … lunchbox, manilla folders, A4 notebook that goes everywhere with me, plastic document cover for current work, finger puppet sitting on lever of copy holder, cover sheets on documents I circulate, plastic carrot on monitor, cardboard cat on monitor, tiny shiny star on bottom of monitor, memo cube, 6 blocks of little post-it flags, several blocks of post-it notes, container of paper clips, ruler, stapler, hole punch, tin of designer pencils, pencil sharpener, clock, calculator, orange cup filled entirely with orange 21 pens (all other colours relegated to different cup), cocktail umbrella, piece of ribbon tied into a bow, poncy pen on wire stand, another piece of ribbon, plastic document wallets in filing area, another piece of ribbon tied around a pot plant, name tag on in-tray, plastic flower on in-tray, scissors, whiteboard markers, umbrella.

Shit, that’s heaps!!!

Lots of people at work have donated their sections of orange memo cube paper so I’m stoked to have an entire memo cube of orange paper!