My day

I think when Kel & I talk about posting stuff, it's usually because we went somewhere or did something fun. But today has to be one of the worst since I got here. Don't know what it is really, but I'm so fed up with the bs around here.

So, Chris in Oz wanted to know a typical day. Eventhough Kel & I do different things, the day is pretty much the same.

• Cycle to work and find out how many times you can play the Hello Mister Game
• Arrive at work with an idea of things that you want to accomplish
• Before you sit down, have someone either interrupt you or stand there waiting until you acknowledge their presence (I've made it to 5 minutes)
• Start working, opening email, whatever.
• After 10 minutes, make sure someone comes by to interrupt you
• Take 5 minutes out of your day to make a sweeping policy decision
• Try to figure out again what you wanted to accomplish
• Get more work piled on
• Fix someone else's problem
• Take a couple of tangents doing stuff you forgot about from last week
• Interrupt someone else, even though you hate it yourself, but you have to play the game right?!
• Lunch - usually a tasty part of the day, sometimes even fun
• Have someone ask you about something that is number 65 on your list. Give some answer about maybe today or tomorrow or whatever makes them go away.
• Repeat at random intervals
• If someone asks you for something say no. Doesn't really matter as they'll keep asking around until they get the answer they want, or just go off and do it anyway.

Been a pretty crap week all in all. Tired of it. I'm surprised at how much I hate working here today - not Indonesia, and not what the organization stands for. I mean, it's pretty easy living in this hardship post, but the actual work environment and organization I'm working for (or dis-organization) is really getting to me. I'm tired of the work load, and of people not understanding the bs that they cause by not thinking things through. I suppose all that crap is the same as in a regular job, and maybe that's why I find it so annoying today.

I'm sure tomorrow it will be fine, or next week or whatever. This is a messed up "industry". Of course, I'm not living in a tent and haven't lost 7 brothers and sisters, but I can't help but think that we could be helping those people more if people could just get their sh*t together. I mean you have all these hopes that things will get better, and that you'll be able to put some processes in place to help everyone out...but nobody gives a sh*t about process, they just want to do their own thing but no one is held accountable. I'm all for second chances and such, but if you screw up, you should at least acknowledge it or be made to acknowledge it.

There just isn't enough reflection and thought here for my liking - I mean that's where I come from in my working life - Design Build Test Release. So many people here just jump to the last step. Maybe that was fine back in the first few months when it was a messed up place, but now ... people need to know when they can get out of tents, and get their livelihoods back on track, and I feel like we're just not making it easy for us to tell them when that will be. It just seems like everything we are doing is not helping them find that out, or at least not being able to know ourselves - either through overly optimistic estimates or just not being able to control the chaos.

Then again, maybe I've only been here a few months, and don't really know enough to bitch about it. But I am!

Maybe I'll write a post about the Hello Mister Game to cheer up the spirits.

And we're off to Angkor Wat in Cambodia on the 12th for our R&R. I wish we could just keep on going and start travelling again...

Today I hate everyone.

Dan