Week in review

Another Saturday, and it could not have come too soon for me. I had an unwieldy week that really wore me down. I'm sure my dedicated readers will remember my last post where I described my strenuous walk through the Darbyshire muck fields. Monday was a Monday, but Monday evening did not go too well. I contracted some sort of stomach bug or I was food poisoned in some way, because... well, just trust me on this one. That carried through Tuesday until Wednesday. I got back to work Wednesday afternoon (I'm such a trooper) where I had to pour over hundreds of sheets of paper with lots of little numbers. Wednesday night was a colleague's leaving party, but I was quite restrained and made it home by 10.30pm.

Thursday night, ahh, Thursday night. What a night! I was wined and dined by corporate Britain, and I loved it. A software developer who makes one of our core products had a party at Madame Tussauds. Had to wear a suit, which I don't get to do very often, and had free food, free drinks and free entertainment compliments of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

I can't remember the last time I went there. I'm not sure I've ever been to Madame Tussauds before. Not really the kind of place I would choose to spend £21.99, just to walk in the door. A couple tons of moulded wax, no matter how realistic, is just not worth it. But I don't mind when the cost is subsidised by the company that just launched "the uOne Media Services Portal to push convergent content services over instant messaging, IPTV and 3G" (and you all know how I feel about convergent content services).

The food was fantastic. They were serving these little pastry parcels with little cuts of steak on top. I'm not sure how you engineer the perfect preparation of a couple thousand little tiny steaks, but whoever figured it out should be given some sort of extravagent gift. The wine left much to be desired, but one should not look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Now, I thought that would be it, but it we were all (400 guests, by the way) guided into a ball room where they were serving real food. Little salmon fillets with a honey glaze, sausages with mashed potatoes and onion gravy, lamb tortilla wraps, noodle salads. There was also a server walking around with small portions of fish and chips wrapped up in the financial jobs section of the Evening Standard. And for desert they had a chocolate fountain and profiteroles and fruit!

The purpose of being wined and dined is to get some face-to-face time with the customer -- namely me (and the others from my particular organisation) -- so when it was all over, the account manager took me and the two other business analysts out in Soho to a blues bar.

I suppose some of my loyal readers will be used to this kind of life. Perhaps you are a doctor, entertained by the pharmaceuticals industry, or you are a politician, entertained by any lobby who can pony up some dough. You are used to slick corporate gigs, but I, a lowly business analyst working for a (large) charity in the UK, am not privy to such socio-commercial events.

I think I may look into attending more of these in the future.