A more average week

After Brea left on Monday, my unfortunately hectic and ill-ridden 'real life' was back in full swing. I went back to a previous client site in Canary Wharf for the week and it was so nice to be back in 'civilisation' as I call it. The nice, new office building, the decent commute, the banking attire, the lunch options - all in stark contrast to where I've been working the past 8 months out in Slough. I also enjoyed a few evenings of drinks with coworkers in Canary Wharf on Monday and Wednesday.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to lead one of the induction days for my company's experienced hires. The format is that they have 3 days of orientation, and the third day is lead by an experienced hire, manager-level or above. The topic of the third day is around the practicalities of the time reporting systems, what the basic benefits are, how to get a project role, as well as more interesting "how to succeed in consulting" type topics. HR lead a few of the sessions, but with the rest, I had the freedom to go through the material as I wished, and of course I had several opinions and advice of my own to share.....we played an acronym game and I designed an interactive activity on "how to build your network". Overall, I found it to be an enjoyable day and experience, and I look forward to further helping this group integrate into the company.

I went out to Dion Champagne and Wine bar on Friday night with friends from my banking client. There was a group of 7 of us, and we enjoyed several bottles of white wine (first a white Burgundy and then mostly Muscadet) before heading out to a karaoke bar/Chinese restaurant. The venue was a bit......casual shall we say? Upon entering the bar in our suits and laptop bags, we were asked by a few drunk karaoke attendees if we were the strippers.....er.... We weren't actually worried about anything, as our group had enough men to keep us from attracting too much attention and we hid ourselves in the restaurant bit to scarf down some Chinese food. We did belt out a few songs in the bar before taking cabs home, but all in all it was actually a really fun night out with a great group of people.

For the rest of the weekend the primary activity has been sleeping to get over this cold, which now that I've taken a break from the week's activities has gotten worse. Boo. Yesterday I met up with my 'meetup' group at Cafe des Amis to plan our trip to the Champagne region in April and today I ventured out to buy groceries. I've already made banana nut muffins and a favourite Moroccan chicken dish. In the next few days, I'm also planning on making fresh salsa and a mushroom dish with homemade mushroom stock. Now it's Sunday night again and I'm planning on taking a sick day tomorrow.