Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

One of the best things about my job is that I speak to people from all over the world, and get to meet them. One of the guys I was out to lunch with today was from Georgia (as in the country, not the US state), and it was really interesting to talk with him about the so many differences in culture and language from us Brits.

What really threw me though, was the couple of times he began a sentence with “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

He even told a story of how one of his best mates had to cut open some animal and sleep practically inside it because it turned so cold one of the nights they were out hunting. Like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, seriously!

Interestingly, he said that the Georgian language was pretty much entirely self-standing, and completely different from any other. It is over 2,000 years old, and has a written script that isn’t at all Cyrillic or Latin. I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia this evening, and linguistic historians have not been able to find any connections to other languages in the European or Asian area.

Apparently the closest is Basque, which is odd because the two regions are over 2,000 miles apart. What is even stranger is that the eastern part of Georgia used to be called Iberia, and the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula is the Iberian peninsula. Coincidence, or were there some very well-travelled Georgians in Roman times? I find this kind of thing fascinating.

Anyway, I’m going to make it a goal of mine in life to be able to start a sentence “I was out bear-hunting this one time…”.

Things that are currently happening in my office:

• Someone has just done a coffee run, and now everyone is topping up said coffees with wee drams of whiskey, from the handy bottle that lives on our desk.

• But not me because I don’t like a) coffee and b) whiskey. I’m drinking water.

• But I did manage to squeeze in 3 pints at lunchtime.

It’s been one of those Fridays when you feel like it’s remedied the shit-heap that has been the rest of the working week. Something came together that I’ve been looking to do for a long while, and handily it’s happened right in the middle of the pay review process.

With it having been a lean couple of months, I was worried that the boss wouldn’t have too much to look at in terms of justifying any pay rise, but today’s events should put me in a pretty good light.

Well, I hope so anyway.

Why is it I always seem to do better and be much more enthusiastic about my work when my colleague with whom I work closest is away? He’s very much my senior, and I guess I’m in his shadow on a daily basis. It’s evidently only when he’s out of the office that I spread my wings a little (to thoroughly confuse metaphors…).

I’m not totally au fait with things like health insurance, as I get mine provided by my company free of charge, but as part of this year’s renewal I’ve added the girlfriend to the company scheme. Is £900 a lot for one year?

I don’t have the explanatory notes to hand, but I’m pretty sure that it’s worldwide cover, which is handy given the amount of travelling we do, and I think that when it comes to health it’s better to be over-protected than under-protected.

Yes, we have the NHS here, which I am a massive supporter of, but having the option of going private is a benefit which I’m willing to pay for. Hell, if I go private for something, that means the NHS waiting list is one person shorter, which helps that system to be more efficient.

I love it when the last song on my headphones before getting to the office in the morning is a good one that can stay in my head for the rest of the day.

Today’s example: Josh Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness.

Note to self: Don’t audibly go “Oooooh!” as a shot goes narrowly wide of the post if the boss is in hearing distance whilst you’re watching the football on your computer at work.

In your head, Rob, keep it in your head.