Our Man In Brisbane

Since juggling several families last year worked so well, apparently the plan is to do the same again this year. So here's what we have planned:

Wednesday: Dinner at Mum's to print off the last of the stuff for the visa application (hooray!), then go looking at Christmas lights.
Thursday: Day off work because Donna is seriously an angel in disguise and arranged it this way. We hand in the visa application and have a nice lunch somewhere. Christmas Eve being the Estonian Christmas celebration, Krista and I do presents then and I think we're Skyping with her family as well.
Friday: Mum picks us up early and we go to her place for breakfast, then onto church with Simon, Kit, Dad and Andrea. Race back to Mum's to pick up the presents and food we're taking to G'ma's and get out there for Christmas Lunch with Dad's side of the family. We intend to try and put in an appearance at the Wilsons' for Mum's family's Christmas Lunch, but this is unlikely. More likely, we return to Mum's and see whoever of her family turns up there after lunch. Then it's presents with the immediate family and back home to bed.
Saturday: Another earlyish start at Mum's, since Mark will be around there after 10 for more Christmas cheer. Back here briefly, before Mum picks us up at 2 to go to her cousins' place for the traditional Boxing Day celebrations.
Sunday: Blank. Nothing. Thank Heavens.
Monday: The public holiday. There's an afternoon tea either at Sue's or Mum's that we'll go to as well.

Insane, no?

Watching (and occasionally posting in) travel communities on LJ can often be a lot of fun.

Today's amusement is the person who's going to "live in Ireland" for 2-3 weeks and is asking all kinds of crazy questions about the logistics of doing so. Either this is a person who genuinely made a mistake and meant 2-3 months or longer, or a person who has no clue about the process of travel. I mean, some of those questions are ones I wouldn't need to ask even if I were moving permanently to another country.

Time for me to start doing my end-of-year roundup:

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Watch this video. Leave comments. This is entirely acapella and utterly amazing. I've watched it about 7 times in a row now. That is all.

I'm going to try not to name names here, since there are powerful people involved.

The bank was all over the news today, and for entirely the wrong reasons. One of the high-ups - one of the same idiotic high-ups who refused to let us know before the rates went up - has taken to Emailing a video to customers explaning rate rises and comparing them to the rise in the price of a banana smoothie if a banana plantation is destroyed. This video is done in a style which can best be described as "charmingly childish", and really only fit for internal consumption. But apparently it can be sent to customers as well.
Cue bad publicity yet again.

By mid-afternoon, we all got an Email from him indicating that "I won't be sending out the Email to customers anymore, as I believe it sends the wrong message."
Insert peals of derisive laughter across the entire centre, as we all continue to read his description of the video as containing "a powerful metaphor". Frankly, the only thing the video seems to contain is the sound of a career (his) increasingly skating on thin ice.

Given that this is the same bozo who is directly responsible for every single one of us wanting to quit at the moment, the only way he could send a remotely good message would be to get on the phones and speak directly to customers, powerful metaphor or not. I mean, even Amy wants out, and this is a girl who lives and breathes for the bank some days.

Krista and I went to see "Eurobeat" on Saturday, and it was one of the funniest things I think I've ever had anything to do with.
For those who've never heard of it, it's a parody of Eurovision. The host nation is Bosnia, and only the best ten entrants (UK, Italy, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Ireland, Poland, Iceland, Hungary) put in appearances, singing remarkably dead-on parodies of what often appears at the real show.

The hosts - Sergei and Boyka - were performed by Glynn Nicholas and Rhonda Birchmore (the first time I'd ever seen her on stage). Clearly, they'd been paying attention to the unusual cadences of the presenters of recent years, because their banter was dead right. Boyka changed outfits roughly 10 times, Sergei had painfully shiny suits and laughed too much, and they both had quite a reasonable impression of Balkan TV hosts going on.
The real highlight of the show, though, was always going to be the songs. Some of them were designed as direct parodies of certain acts, but every single one was terrific. The choreography even built deliberate mistakes into most, to add to the fun. The songs do in fact deserve their own little reports:

UK - "I Love To Love To Love (Love)"
The UK were represented by "Reyne and Sheiner", with a ridiculously sappy ballad being performed by a girl not wearing much and a guy whose hand kept getting caught on the chains attached to his pants. There was more than a hint of Jemini about the entire thing, and having the two sing painfully off-key on the line "we're in perfect harmony" sums the song up quite nicely.

Italy - "Don't Say 'Ti Amo'"
"Vesuvia Versace" represented Italy, with a song "skilfully combining" the Twist, hip-hop and opera, and of course slaughtering all three with great gusto. I can't remember anything going too wrong in this song, but it was just far too crazy.

Greece - "Oh, Aphrodite"
This was one of my real favourites. "Persephone" began the performance in classic Nana Mouskouri style, before singing some lyrics in what was probably not Greek and turning into a reasonable lookalike for Elena Paparizou. This meant that the screen translating the lyrics had to say "Stop reading this and watch the ruddy dancing!" A superb combination of the traditional and modern Greek music that usually turns up on stage.

Germany - "Be-Bop for Veronda"
"Nepotism"'s song was probably the silliest on the bill, as it had no words at all. The three performers looked wonderfully serious throughout, though, and the solemn ringing of bells and popping of balloons at the end was hysterical.

Sweden - "Same Old Song"
Performed by the four-piece "AVLA" (yes, I know what you're thinking), this was a rather undistinguished song, made more enjoyable by the fact that the four performers had to keep silly grins on their faces all the time, and that one of them was deliberately too stiff in his movements.

Russia - "Ice Queen"
The eventual winners, the "KGBoyz" delivered a note-perfect boyband performance. Any song that features dance moves in which the four performers are holding their nipples is quite possibly worth it, and with lyrics such as "she sent my heart to Siberia", it's hard not to really enjoy this track. I wouldn't have picked it as a winner in my own voting, but it was a lot of fun.

Ireland - "La La La"
"Ronan Corr" delivered a brilliant homage to almost every sappy ballad Ireland has ever entered. Totally aside from the brilliant lyrics that meant precisely nothing, the constant battles with an unruly microphone stand made this a real standout. Just when we thought that was the best bit, a mountain of dry ice appeared and "Ronan" got lost in it, complete with appropriate crashing noises, before appearing from the fog waving his arms with great gusto...facing the wrong way from the audience. At this point, I was helpless with laughter.

Poland - "Together Again for the First Time"
"Toomas Jerker", an Estonian expat (the official CD has him as the Estonian entrant), performed a rather generic sounding pop number that became progressively funnier as we all realised it was homoerotic and designed to sound like a poorly-translated entry from its original language. Thus, the "innocent" song it initially sounded like was entirely undermined and made very amusing.

Iceland - "Love Ballad #3a"
"Gert Gröllmersdetter" performed this rather weird thing in perfect homage to Björk. It was always going to be too weird to be genuinely funny, but as a style parody it worked quite well.

Hungary - "Apro Madarrakal"
The folk trio of the "Molnar Sisters" performed this song ostensibly in Hungarian. As with all the ethno-folk songs at Eurovision, the lyrics were translated and turned out to be utter nonsense. That said, there's something to be said for a song which featured the performers allegedly singing "Turkey! Turkey! Turkey!/Chicken! Chicken! Chicken!/Duck! Duck! Duck!" at one point.

Dad - taken care of. We have a good looking book for him
Mum - taken care of. We have a giant book for her
Simon - officially taken care of via another book
Simon (in the Secret Santa, a separate entity for present purposes) - still pending some suggestions from him of what he'd like
Kit - will be getting a DVD. Just a case now of ordering same
Krista - pretty sure I know what she's getting. Just a case of organising it
Mark - not a clue. Never a clue, in fact
Dan (in the Secret Santa) - taken care of

Considering how little time and money I ended up with this time last year (starting work less than three weeks before Christmas will do that to you), I feel very accomplished.

I've got Civilization II to work on my computer - no mean feat, given the various tricks I needed to play to get it to think it was running Windows XP. Now that it's running, I have far too many scenarios available to play.

Case in point, I've just conquered mainland Australia as "The Nation of Mabo" in a rather entertaining hypothetical featuring Pauline Hanson leading Queensland in a sort of three-cornered civil war.

I'm trying to make Civilization II run on this computer, since I've been meaning to play it again for ages. Catch is, of course, that the computer's running Windows 7 rather than something more civilised (pardon the pun).
I've been downloading torrents and trying to run it from them, but they don't seem to work. It could theoretically be that the torrent itself is at fault, since some of them were suspiciously small for a large game, but I'm finding a lot of stuff about compatability issues between the game and Windows 7.

So if any of you know enough about computers to recommend me a Windows XP emulator (I'd really rather not waste time getting someone to install XP and go through that again unless I have to), that would be great.

I recently had the chance to see that Lyndon, who I'd previously thought of as being a very down-to-earth bloke, in fact is quite arrogant.
He'd come to the bank after being at least a T/L in another call centre, and made no secret of the fact that if all went well he wanted to rise through the ranks. Ambition being a good thing, everyone was happy that he felt that way.
After Glennis' SuperTeam dissolved, he found himself in Falcon's team. He'd started doing some part-time study around this time, so dropped down to part-time work, and also ended up with some rather serious health problems which meant that he wasn't really there most of the time.
Shortly before the restructure was announced, he quit.

Talking to him on Facebook last night, he presented his resignation as being caused by the restructure, which he'd heard rumours about before the announcement. On the surface, quite a reasonable claim.
He then followed it up by saying that he felt that the restructure would have put paid to "the team leader role people were talking about me for", so he headed to greener pastures.

I'm sorry, but what team leader role? At the time he left, he was a recently-minted Level A, and there were no concrete plans for my intake (the one before his) to do Cards training, let alone for his intake to do it. You couldn't become a T/L without having done Cards and been a Level B for a while, and even then there was still the need to get into the T/L Development Pool and get tapped to second as a T/L. Falcon - Lyndon's T/L at the time - was only on his second stint seconding and was hardly secure in his position (witness the fact that he wasn't successful in the restructure), and surely that point would have been made.
The bottom line is that there were no would-be T/Ls in a position to show their mettle for more than a fortnight or so while the existing T/Ls were on holiday (Andrew essentially ran Bec's team for a while longer, but Lending behaves differently), and if Lyndon honestly believed otherwise, he clearly had the wrong impression.
Perhaps, of course, someone might have given him an inflated opinion of his position, rather than an honest one that he misinterpreted. If so, whoever that person was (and I do have my suspicions) really needs to pull their head in.

But on a lighter note, another Great Moment in Telephone Banking:

Me: That's a lot of money to have in an account that doesn't earn any interest
Customer: True, but I'm planning on buying another vehicle. So I guess we'll have to see what kind of a hole I put in it before we see what savings I can make
Me: A hole in the vehicle, or the savings?
Customer [taken by surprise and laughing]: The savings, I hope
Me: I guess if the hole's in the vehicle, we'd be talking loans rather than interest-bearing accounts
Customer: Probably, yeah
Me: Well, I'd be talking them. You'd be sitting there feeling like a dill for not having the interest-bearing account before the vehicle had the hole
Customer [breaking up into a fit of the giggles]: You know, you mightn't have got me to open the account, but you've really made my day
Me: That's what I'm here for
Customer: Aren't you guys just about opening accounts and things?
Me: That's the sideline. If I'm not cheering you up, you won't feel happy about the account I'm talking about
Customer: You're too good for this job

Looks as though the outfit I dealt with are cowboys. At least, what else are you meant to assume when they refuse to answer phone calls because asking why they did certain things is "being rude and insulting", and then other companies you call to see about fixing the mess seem shocked that they're still in business?
Admittedly, I can be more than a touch abrasive when someone does something stupid, but when you work in customer service it's hard not to be. I have standards, and one of those standards is that people fixing my computer won't suddenly cause my precious Kenan Dogulu albums to disappear. Currently, it looks as though that's the only data which has vanished, but a real professional's going to have a look through it tomorrow and see what else was done of a damaging variety.

Perhaps working in customer service spoils you for dealing with customer service reps elsewhere. I mean, not every organisation is as dedicated to surprising customers with brilliance as we are, but when this particular company overcharges for a very poor service, you have to wonder what they are dedicated to doing.
And to think that my earlier call today to iiNet, who I normally dread calling, actually solved the problem of our missing phone connection in about 20 minutes...

The minor annoyance is that when I try to use the arrow keys to scroll, they don't work. The up arrow flat-out refuses to scroll at all, while the down arrow seems to only return me to the top of the page. Obviously my mouse has a scroll wheel, but if I'm reading a long page, I'd really rather use the arrow keys if possible.

The major one is that apparently uploading is nearly impossible on this system. I can attach files to Emails, which is good, but if I try to upload to Mediafire and similar hosting sites, the upload goes at a million miles an hour but then freezes when the site's "verifying" it. The same would seem to be true for uploading photos to Facebook, although I'm yet to try this.

Any ideas here, clever people?

It seems as though Mum paid the bill for this by credit card (she was able to do so quickly, which is what they wanted, and I'll pay her back), so I've told her to be ready to dispute the transaction, since the goods were patently not fit for the purpose. I've contacted the company informing them of this fact and demanding they fix their handiwork, and it looks as though I'll need to get someone like Pete to have a look at what the bill covers and work out how much of that should really have been done in the first place.

(Still getting the hang of this insane new OS, so let's just have a meme)

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My computer's motherboard died on Monday, and the technician apparently couldn't find a copy of Windows XP to install. As a result, I now have Windows7, arguably the most annoying thing in the universe at the moment, to learn the ins and outs of.
If anyone has any experience with this OS and can give me some ideas about how to do any of the following, please let me know:
1. Make the icons a sensible size. Right now, "small icons" look like they're in a large-print book, and this seems to be the smallest they'll go.
2. Make the top bar of a window not be transparent, which frankly looks stupid.
3. Bring up a list of programs near the start menu that I can modify (so that I can have things like LastFM, Winamp and friends sitting around without having to hunt for them).
4. Make Firefox windows actually name the page they're on (so this one would say "Post an Entry"), rather than just having a Firefox logo smiling up at me.

There's probably more things I'll add to this list, but we'll see how we go.

For those of you who haven't yet heard of him, my new favourite singer (for the next couple of days, at least, until I hear someone else new) is Max Raabe. He sounds roughly like this:


There are more "modern" songs he does too - I've heard a cover of "Sex Bomb" and know of a cover of "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" - but the main stock in trade here is spot-on covers of 20s and 30s music as it would've been played in inter-war Berlin. Sheer glory of glories is all I can say.

I had an interesting discussion with Drew over lunch today (Drew's lunch involved pizza that was apparently not "meat-based" or "chicken-based", but rather "green-shit-based", but that's another story) about culpability.
The more long-standing people from the old team obviously know exactly where I stand with Night of the Long Knives, and I know I'm safe to talk quite freely with them. So I argued that Ros had basically forced people, such as Kelly, out of the bank. Drew's response was that she'd definitely forced Glennis and Stacey into redeployment and probably forced Bec into redundancy, but Kelly had never been planning on staying forever and hadn't been directly impacted by the Long Knives.
I find that argument to be a bit disingenuous. As I see it, Ros' actions are the same as someone selling a drug to someone. The buyer then overdoses and dies. Sure, the dealer didn't actually shoot the customer or anything like that, but they provided them with the means to end their lives (either intentionally or not), and that to me is nearly as bad. The dealer should have the user's death on their conscience as such. For me, this is true even if the user was already an addict.
The same applies at the bank. Ros didn't physically fire Kelly or give her the choice of signing redundancy papers or taking a step backwards in her career, but she brought about a situation where Kelly brought forward her plans to move on. Lest it be said that the plans may always have involved leaving around this time, I doubt that quitting a job in the middle of building a house and preparing a wedding is what she was intending to do.
Ros should therefore have Kelly's resignation on her conscience, as well as Bec's forced redundancy and those of any of the redeployed people who end up on the scrapheap as well. We've established that she probably doesn't have a conscience, of course, but that doesn't prevent her from being culpable in all this. If everything blows up in someone's face, that someone should be Ros. My experience of administration types, though, is that it never will blow up in their face, with the underlings being expendable.

Ruminations like these aside, I'm a lot less fragile now after a week back at work than I was afraid I would be. There are still points when I realise just how fundamentally different things will always be, and so many of these would normally come under the heading of "the good times". Seeing Marty act like an idiot, or Anne cracking jokes while we look at a troublesome customer, or even looking up the row at Donna teasing Troy and realising that Dan's not there to cover people's computers in confetti at such a time keeps reminding me of what I've lost. Even today, when Donna told me that she'd be in training next Tuesday and I was therefore allowed to do whatever I felt I needed to do during my coaching session, kind of felt a bit weird, since I still won't have had that return-to-normal feeling there.
At least it's not the constant raw pain of the weeks leading into the break. This is more a dull feeling that happens only sometimes - kind of the way I felt near the end of school or uni as I realised all the fun was nearly over there as well.

In other news, I've decided to convert my Hons thesis into what amounts to a book. Not a professional book, just one done by someone like Snap Printing, but still it'll be better than a bunch of loose A4 pages held together by a bulldog clip in a rather dodgy looking manilla folder.
Some of the guys at work have wanted to see what I spent my time doing before coming to the bank, and I figure I may as well frighten them with the results.

For the first time in a very long time, I think I can say I was happy at work today. Perhaps not for all of the day, but there were several moments when I was genuinely enjoying myself and not forcing a smile at the crazy antics of the team.
The major reason, as far as I can tell, was that Donna was back from rec leave and I was able to see her in her position as Team Leader (or "Customer Service Leader", as nobody calls them) again. It's been one thing to know that I'd come back from rec and have Donna as my Team Leader still, but quite another today to actually have her to talk to some times about tricky customers and the like. Monday and Tuesday were perhaps more negative experiences because she wasn't there, and the more irrational part of my brain was afraid that was the way it would always be.
The major downside of the day was that some things came up at the team meeting which really explained that the Night of the Long Knives was worse than it seemed. Gus was at the meeting, since he was talking about some really good changes (yes, there are such things in this universe at the moment), and it came up that he and Marty were originally slated to be in our team, with Drew being decamped to another team. For various reasons, we retained Drew but at the cost of both Gus and Marty, who in a sense equate to one BR as they rotate on and off the phones for complicated reasons. The fact that we actually had to choose between retaining Drew and retaining Marty further underscores the hypocrisy of the claim that "the team will stay together", as there's no operational reason why our team couldn't have had at least Marty and Drew, regardless of Gus, that I can see.
It also emerged that Anne's been moved to the other side of the centre, and is in Mac's team. Sad as it is to see Anne - one of my biggest influences ever since the first day on the phones - go, it's kind of pleasing to know that Mac actually kept a team, rather than returning to the phones as rumour had it. He's a good bloke, and deserves the success. Again, though, I fail to see why our side of the centre had to get a whole bunch of Team Leaders from next door, when Mac was clearly doing a great job with his guys on our side.
Nonetheless, I made the point of stopping back after my shift ended to tell Donna that it meant a lot to be able to see her again. I think she was confused a bit by the comment, but it made sense eventually.

It's interesting, in a way, to think back to the really important mentors I've had in my life to date. A lot of them seem to turn up at times when I'm really doubting myself, and end up turning me around entirely.
I think here of the late Mr Glover, who really took me under his wing when I was going nowhere at school, as well as people like Pastor Puk who did much the same thing (although admittedly it was his job). From Mr Glover, I acquired the confidence in my abilities at school again, as well as the desire to do well.
Then there was Renee at uni. Again, after a bad experience with Law, my uni experience was going nowhere until she came along and inspired me towards an unusual degree with a lot of enjoyment in it. As she left, causing more uncertainty for me, Bob emerged to really convert the promise Renee had seen into the polish they both knew I had in me.
And of course there's been Donna. She and I are both amazed when we look back at where I was in February - confused, panicky, downright wrong a lot of the time and generally a liability to the team. As with Renee, she was able to see the promise in me, and inspired me to turn it around and become the polished performer I am now, and one who others tend to learn from and who can be left to his own devices.
Perhaps the moral of the story is that, as one perceptive person once argued, I really need a mentor relationship in my life most of the time. I never responded as well to "teachers" as I did to "colleagues" and "mentors", who would treat me as a bit more equal and remind me that I could be like them one day.

What all of this really means is anyone's guess.

Krista's seemingly posting more day-by-day stuff from the trip, as well as photos, on her journal, so anyone curious in that regard can have a look over her way. Otherwise, you'll have to put up with my recollections.

We spent 7 nights in Singapore, arriving on Tuesday evening and leaving Tuesday morning. This was intended to give us the chance to see as much of the city as we wanted to, as well as to satisfy my curiosity about Singapore as a destination, rather than just a handy stopover point with some cool food.
The major thing I'd point out about Singapore is that it's very hot and humid. Most of you will probably think that goes without saying, but there really isn't any way to prepare for the feeling on your first morning as you set off to go sightseeing and realise you may just melt in this place. The guidebooks are very insistent on drinking water and making the best use of airconditioning, and my advice would be to take their advice.

That being said, Singapore's a wonderful place to visit. With a combination of Chinese, Malay and Indian cultures, as well as the British colonial legacy (and strange pockets of Portuguese, Armenians and Arabs among others), it's the kind of melting pot you have to see to believe. The country is, not to put too fine a point on it, a family-run dictatorship, but one that genuinely works in probably the most brilliantly efficient way possible. As a result, it's tempting to see it as a place to experience China, the Malay world and India without the difficulties of language barriers and inefficiency. Yes, the real China is probably a million miles better than the Singaporean version, but as a taster you can't beat Pagoda Street in Chinatown.

We divided our time between various cultural expeditions - the Asian Civilisations Museum, the National Museum and the Chinatown Heritage Centre are all must-sees and there are any number of other places if your interests go off in other directions - and doing more touristy activities such as the Singapore Zoo (an absolute must-see as well, with the added bonus for me of being out in the Heartlands of the city and requiring a bus trip to get there) and ambling around on the fabled Orchard Road and being variously amused and worried at the rampant consumerism around us there, as well as ducking into the shopping malls to take advantage of the airconditioning.
Having already studied Southeast Asia at uni, I knew roughly what to expect in the various museum and so on (I'd been to some last year, in fact), and I got the impression that Krista was very taken with the new cultures she was able to experience there. Even the Chinese community - being mainly from the Hokkien and Teochew ethnic groups, rather than Cantonese or Han, as they tend to be around the world - is a different one to what she's come across in Chinatown here in Brisbane.

For me, the other success of Singapore was the food, and I won't lie and pretend that this wasn't something I wanted to experience again after last year. We ate at several of the more well-known Hawker Centres - Lau Pa Sat, Newton Circus, Tiong Bahru, Gluttons' Bay and Maxwell Road - and devoured many of the specialties of the city, while enjoying the quintessential Singapore experience.
I've lost count of the number of icecream sandwiches we ate, including several durian-flavoured ones as I made up for lost time last year. Indeed, when I discovered a stall at Maxwell Road selling ais kacang with durian topping, thus combining two of my favourite things in dessert form, I could hardly resist. Considering that neither could I really resist the Hainanese Chicken Rice from the famed Tian Tian stall (also at Maxwell Road), nor other delicacies such as ikan bakar (barbecued stingray) and sambal sotong (octopus in a blindingly spicy sauce, possibly fatal in the wrong hands and requiring no end of Tiger beer to cool down with afterwards), it probably should come as no surprise that food was the biggest expenditure in Singapore. I also picked up a taste for drinks with "pearls", otherwise known as little balls of tapioca that are added to things such as bubble tea.

The major downside was definitely the heat. Both of us suffered from it, and Krista significantly more than I did. We saved money by not staying at a place that included breakfast, but in retrospect this was a silly move as it required even the mundane task of finding breakfast to be accomplished in high temperatures and energy-sapping humidity. Were we to return to the Lion City, I'd organise accommodation which included breakfast, as I feel this would have at least started our days on the right foot.
Possibly as a result of this, the stay in Singapore may also have been slightly too long. Admittedly, our last couple of days involved popping up in unusual places to see things we'd been planning on seeing all week, but a lot of that was due to our late starts as we mentally prepared ourselves for the day again.

Still, Singapore remains a fun place to visit, and I imagine we'll be seeing it again sometime, even if just for a night or two en route to or from Europe.

I'd been intending to write a bit about the trip, but since today was my first day back at work since the holiday - and since what turns out to be the Great Restructure - I feel I should write about that.

There've been so many more wholesale changes to the centre than I think anyone realised, or possibly than Ros was prepared to admit. It seems as though today was the day that all the new teams started operating as cohesive units, too, so in a sense I wasn't the only one feeling rather confused by the clash between what we were told versus what we saw.

The good news is that the new additions to my team are generally pretty amazing people. There are two who I know by reputation only, and who I'm kind of neutral about, but a lot of the others are friends already. We've got Steve, Lisa and Dale, for example, who were among the first people I got to know at the bank. Indeed, Donna put me in between Steve and Lisa, which I think may turn out to be a great place. We've also got Dione - or will have when she's back from her honeymoon - and she's terrific fun. Of the newbies, we've gained Rebecca (who seems to be a very impressive performer) and Sharon (who's an absolute gem). My desk is also a lot closer to Donna's, which I think I need after some of the experiences recently.
The bad news, though, cancels some of this out. Despite constant promises that nobody was going to shift sides of the centre, and even that Donna's team would stay intact, both things have happened. Clare and Mahomed look to have gone to Card Originations (the technical term for Card Applications), although I suspect that was their own choice. Marty's now one of the SMEs-in-rotation, but no longer in our team, and Brett and Dan have been moved next door to join a team of roughly 30 part-timers.
Of the losses, I probably feel most strongly about Marty and Dan, and possibly Clare. Marty's become a really close friend recently, and I remember one of the things she kept saying during the tough times was "We're not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere", and of course now she has done. The SME role will suit her down to the ground, but it's a very high price to pay for it. Dan and I go back a long way, and it'll definitely be weird when I eventually hear that laconic "You're speakin' t' Daaaan, y' senior c'nsult'nt" and realise that I can't look down the row and see him pulling faces. Clare's a different one, in that I've always been sitting near her since probably just before Christmas last year, and it feels very weird to have her down the other end of the centre. Much as we've often had huge arguments, we've learned a lot from each other, and while I can hardly begrudge her the chance to move into another role if that's where she is, there's definitely an element of splitting up an award-winning duo there.
It sounds really weird to say it, but one thing I'm really sad about is that the team rap could only be done that once before I went on holidays, and Donna wasn't there to see it. On some level, I'm sure nobody would mind a farewell performance, but it doesn't seem right to perform the thing anymore when five of the figures aren't there anymore. I guess I'll have to rewrite it with new BRs in it...To think that Dan even promised to work out a video shoot for it, too.

On some level, I'm sure the way I feel is accentuated by the fact that I've just got back from three weeks away, and I'd feel similar even if no restructure had happened. After all, people left the Delighteners every so often, and Anthea at least would have difficulty recognising even the old incarnation of the team if she came back before today. Now, she'd basically have no idea at all.
Still, I'm certainly not regretting being away when I was. If I'd been there for the last team meetings or even just when the Night of the Long Knives really occurred (yes, I'm not the only one calling it that), I wouldn't have been able to handle it. I think here of someone like Kelly, who's much better adjusted than I am, but who actually resigned because of the poor implementation of the restructure. I would have been hard-pressed not to follow suit if I were there at the time.

Another part of me says that I don't really know what's happened yet, since Donna's on rec leave and will be until Wednesday (my day off for the month). When I get the chance to talk to her and hear about why it's a good idea that Marty's moved teams or whatever, perhaps I'll take back some of the distrust I feel about the entire thing. I definitely know that Thursday will be an important day for me, because I'll even just be able to see Donna, who's been one very important constant in all of this.

Of course, a lot of me agrees with Steve's comment that if they don't start hiring soon, the centre will see a lot of its best people leave. This is true anyway, since a lot of the best people were long-termers who've moved onto other roles in the bank (Amanda being a classic example) or bigger and better things (the amazing Debbie) or finally got sick of the place (Kelly). But an uncharitable view of the restructure would definitely have it demonstrating to a lot of respected people that they really don't count for anything in the New Order unless they can sing the metaphorical Horst-Wessel-Lied with the more vocal ones.
Again, I'm inclined to give it some time. Even if nothing else, I couldn't walk out on the place until mid-year next year after Krista's visa is finalised. If I'm mean, I honestly want to see some of these "exciting changes" blow up in Ros' face when they do (which they will). The reaction from the higher-ups will really demonstrate which way my attitudes towards the bank go. If they remove Ros from her position and never let her do this sort of thing again, then I'll know their rhetoric has meaning. If they try to sweep it all under the carpet, then I'll know the rot extends further upwards.

I have no idea if this is the original or official video or not, but it's of a song I NEVER thought I'd find anywhere on YouTube:

Fettes Brot (and roughly 90% of the German hip-hop scene in the north at the time) - "Nordisch By Nature", the FULL 9 MINUTE VERSION:


There are so many brilliant jokes in this song and zillions more I know I've missed over the decade I've known at least some of it.

So it turns out not to be the original official video - indeed there may not be such a thing. It's still an amazing track.