The joys of work

I've now spent about 240 hours in my latest workplace and as yet I've hardly mentioned it. Maybe that's a measure of how much my current work means to me. I hope not. Certainly there have been days when I'm pretty sure I've achieved nothing, but I haven't yet had a day when I've achieved less than nothing (I sure did in my last big corporate job), so that's got to be a positive.

Our office is near the top of a skyscraper and, on a sunny day like we had today, offers a panoramic view of the city and the harbour. There are seventy of us, or thereabouts, with a similar number on one of the lower floors. Considering it's the end of May, a surprising number of Christmas decorations adorn the office. There also some interesting signs, such as the two contradictory ones in the loo: "Save power - turn off the lights" and "DON'T switch off the lights - repeatedly turning the lights on and off reduces the life of the bulbs by 50%." So you can't win.

I'm in a team of six. Luckily my immediate colleagues all seem nice enough people. My boss is fortyish; his wife is in the same profession. The bloke I sit next to is just a shade older than me; he's got a small son whom he wants to ensure doesn't follow in his father's footsteps, instead hoping that he becomes handy with a hammer. The only female member of our team is 28; she emigrated from China at the turn of the century, since when she's acquired an extremely good command of English. None of those L-and-R mix-ups. She lives with a Kiwi partner.

The number two in our team, certainly in terms of experience, is a particularly interesting bloke. He's talkative and speaks quite passionately and at length about certain issues. His keen sense of humour often revolves around word play. I wonder whether he might have Asperger's, albeit in a mild form considering he's got three teenage kids and has no problem dealing with "life stuff" as far as I can see. That leaves only the boss; he's in his late fifties, is softly spoken and as yet I haven't had a lot to do with him.

The good news is that it seems whatever was getting up my nose last week didn't come from this flat at all. And talking of the flat, I bought some furniture for it yesterday. I haven't bought a lot of furniture in my life so far, so I have very little idea of how much it should cost. I spent a little over a grand on a chest of drawers, a bookcase and a bedside table. Is that a lot? Who knows?