The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
“As of Wednesday, 11 March all employees working at [site] and [site] will be divided into two groups. The groups will work in alternation one week from home, and one week on site. This measure is put in place until further notice. The groups have been defined by your leadership team and for simplicity there is “a Blue and a Green group”. By Tuesday, 10 March, we ask you to put the respective color sticker on your badge in order to be allowed to enter the building.”
So this happened.
All of our computer lock screen backgrounds have been replaced, from random pastoral landscape scenes, to this.
But don’t panic.
On conference call audio:
On inefficient bureaucracy:
The view of the University of Barcelona courtyard from the math department, where we are currently meeting.
Working from home today. Stepped away from my laptop for 5 minutes to make myself a coffee. 5 MINUTES.
I thought this only happened in the movies.
I had an email composition screen filled with gibberish and 8 open remote desktop connection prompts.
CATS!!!
5 minutes into the first work day of 2020 and boom!
Regarding VIP visits:
Regarding multi-site conference calls:
Regarding software/business requirements:
A Portuguese co-worker’s visiting family restocked me with low-sugar high-fiber granola bars with coffee and chocolate (!!!!). They’re available in Switzerland, but at three times the price so I use my network strategically.
In a parallel conversation, another co-worker was asking me why I could eat those granola bars, but not ones he’d just offered me:
Conversation went something like this:
Me – I can’t eat those, they have nuts in them.
Suttipong – Do they? I didn’t see any in the ingredients.
Me – See? Right there! (now keep in mind that the ingredient list is printed in such a way as to take up the whole back side of the packaging)
Suttipong – It’s so small!
Me – It’s written in bold and underlined!
The Journée Oser tous les Métiers (JOM) has always been a very special day in the canton of Vaud, all the children of the 7P to the 9S are invited to discover the professional world of their parents. The goal of this day is to break down the barriers that exist between typically male and female trades; and to encourage children to imagine their future professional life outside traditional patterns.
Bean has finally achieved his goal to set food inside the NRC, where the security rules are more stringent than they were at the lakeside offices. As part of the JOM workshops, he’s done cell culture, electrophoresis on extracted milk powder proteins, made slime and had fun making density layers, extracted DNA from bananas and done chromatography. Compared to this, sitting at my computer and looking at the latest and greatest powerpoint slide I was making seems dull (in my eyes, at least! I sometimes miss bench work, even though I sucked at it).
One things Katy and I agree on – we didn’t do this in high school :)
