Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Working from home
I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about this in the future, but here are my first thoughts.
This is the first week I've been working from home as a full time employee. I need some more space as I'm just living and working out of one room at the moment. I'm making progress on this, but I've decided that moving out will mean buying a place and I'm not getting many free weekends to do any looking around.
There's much scope for improvement in this daily routine, but for the last two days:
I get up and start work almost immediately. This is not ideal, but being one hour behind Holland I don't want to leave it too long and don't fancy getting up too early. Getting up from bed before 9am is not a problem as the woman next door has rearranged her house and now seems to be washing up her dishes next to my head!
I get through some toast and coffee while I'm working.
I indulge in the same maddening game my parents love to play by hanging out wet clothes on the washing line, only to rush out ten minutes later because it starts raining, then peg them out again when the shower passes. I keep this up all day and by the end of the day I have a pile of damp clothes ready to hang out again the following morning.
There is a plastic roofed conservatory attached to my room, so I am alerted by the smallest drop of rain. This warning system is a little too sensitive. I rushed out the other day thinking a monsoon had come. I had half the clothes in my arms before I realised that it was just a daddy long-legs with corns on his feet landing on my roof.
I wash up. I do really love washing up, but mainly when the dishes are dirtied by other people. If it were just myself then I probably wouldn't bother. There are plenty of dirty dishes to be found in the house if you look hard enough. So I do some work and tell myself I'll do some washing up later as a treat.
I find it very satisfying and smugly think (know) that I'm pretty good at it. It's partially about the water (plenty of very hot water - should really be hot enough to require gloves), and the pre-rinsing, and the order and categorisation, and the post rinsing (rinsing off the soap suds) and the stacking; the attention to detail that other people ignore because they think of the task as a chore and not an art form.
When I was dumped (or should I say 'let go gently'), I left her with the aside: "You do realise you'll never find a man who can wash up better than me!". I now wonder if she didn't have a thing for trainee chefs... but that's industrial level, quantity without quality, so it doesn't count.
Shortly before this I'd asked her to name her, soon to be delivered, compost bin 'Geraint' so she'd have something to remember my by.
Lunch time comes about 1pm. I bike to the swimming pool and do a few lengths. Just a few at the moment as I'm hopelessly out of practice. Then work for a few hours. Have a few hour's break (tea and read/surf). Then back in the evening to finish off. I need to cut this evening working out. That should fix itself when I move. I've run out of interesting things to say now, I think I only started as I wanted to talk about washing up.
This is the first week I've been working from home as a full time employee. I need some more space as I'm just living and working out of one room at the moment. I'm making progress on this, but I've decided that moving out will mean buying a place and I'm not getting many free weekends to do any looking around.
There's much scope for improvement in this daily routine, but for the last two days:
I get up and start work almost immediately. This is not ideal, but being one hour behind Holland I don't want to leave it too long and don't fancy getting up too early. Getting up from bed before 9am is not a problem as the woman next door has rearranged her house and now seems to be washing up her dishes next to my head!
I get through some toast and coffee while I'm working.
I indulge in the same maddening game my parents love to play by hanging out wet clothes on the washing line, only to rush out ten minutes later because it starts raining, then peg them out again when the shower passes. I keep this up all day and by the end of the day I have a pile of damp clothes ready to hang out again the following morning.
There is a plastic roofed conservatory attached to my room, so I am alerted by the smallest drop of rain. This warning system is a little too sensitive. I rushed out the other day thinking a monsoon had come. I had half the clothes in my arms before I realised that it was just a daddy long-legs with corns on his feet landing on my roof.
I wash up. I do really love washing up, but mainly when the dishes are dirtied by other people. If it were just myself then I probably wouldn't bother. There are plenty of dirty dishes to be found in the house if you look hard enough. So I do some work and tell myself I'll do some washing up later as a treat.
I find it very satisfying and smugly think (know) that I'm pretty good at it. It's partially about the water (plenty of very hot water - should really be hot enough to require gloves), and the pre-rinsing, and the order and categorisation, and the post rinsing (rinsing off the soap suds) and the stacking; the attention to detail that other people ignore because they think of the task as a chore and not an art form.
When I was dumped (or should I say 'let go gently'), I left her with the aside: "You do realise you'll never find a man who can wash up better than me!". I now wonder if she didn't have a thing for trainee chefs... but that's industrial level, quantity without quality, so it doesn't count.
Shortly before this I'd asked her to name her, soon to be delivered, compost bin 'Geraint' so she'd have something to remember my by.
Lunch time comes about 1pm. I bike to the swimming pool and do a few lengths. Just a few at the moment as I'm hopelessly out of practice. Then work for a few hours. Have a few hour's break (tea and read/surf). Then back in the evening to finish off. I need to cut this evening working out. That should fix itself when I move. I've run out of interesting things to say now, I think I only started as I wanted to talk about washing up.
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