Flying Home Tomorrow
Another week in Germany comes to and end. Another three day development sprint, working like a lunatic while the project owners test, make changes, and call various people in to discuss ideas. I guess this has been my first real experience of “Agile development” – where you release early, and release often. In the “real world” you might draw parallels with building a house before the architect has put pen to paper. It’s interesting, scary, and requires an awful lot of trust in the developer.
I’m sitting in the hotel room again tonight – I grabbed a ready-made salad from the supermarket after work, and ate it in my room. I’m sure the house staff at the hotel will be pleased with the collection of empty plastic bottles in my room in the morning – you can claim a refund for recycling bottles in Germany.
I will admit to being distracted this evening – while away, the wheel fell off the wagon at home last night – resulting in a lengthy email from my other half requesting that something change – either my continual travel with work, or my job. It is getting a bit ridiculous – I’m missing so many moments in my children’s lives – awards, performances, parents evenings. Of course I try to make it up to them, but there’s no substitute for being there. It’s also not fair on my other half when the kids kick-off, and she has to deal with it all. I imagine many families face the same struggles – it’s not fun.
While here I have been getting up at 6am each day, and making it down for breakfast by 6:30 – slightly insane, I know. You can imagine how shocked I was this morning when I arrived in the hotel breakfast area to discover perhaps a hundred people fighting over anything and everything available to eat and drink. The eggs had all gone, the orange juice had gone, the bread rolls had gone, the yoghurt had gone… it was ridiculous. I grabbed a handful of small pastries, a glass of apple juice, and what was left of the bacon – of course bacon makes everything better.
On the television behind me in the hotel room, the World Cup is on. I might turn it off in a moment – England just went behind against Belgium, which isn’t unexpected. We talked about both the German and England football teams in the office today, and agreed – they are fit, strong, and fast, but lack the talent players so many of the great teams have. While tonight’s result doesn’t really matter, I can’t see England getting any further than the last 16. Is that unpatriotic? Perhaps. Is it being a cynical realist? Absolutely. There was already talk in the British press this week about England winning the World Cup – this happens every time. I imagine tonight’s result will cause the back pages of the tabloid newspapers bought by legions of idiots to castigate the England manager (of course, after writing this, it’s inevitable that England will equalise, and this entire paragraph will become a footnote in the idiocy of the World Cup).
Anyway… it’s hotter than balls here. I’ve had the hotel room window wide open all week, because there is a lovely atrium outside with trees, and birds flying around. I may give in tonight, close the window, and switch the air conditioning on.
Maybe I’ll finally get around to reading a book tonight too – last night I made it about three pages in before falling asleep, and woke in the early hours with the Kindle stuck to my face.