Summer flu can be nasty

I am feeling a bit under the weather. It has been almost the whole week. Yes, it is summer time now, but we must endure there atypical summer rains here in Ireland. By the sound and look of it, it will last till the end of July. I went to the medical centre yesterday – granted with 2-day medical leave.

+ Source of pic: http://lunapath.net/

I am still trying to finish the book – Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is engaging indeed - the least to say. Hopefully I can finish that soon so that I can move on to others. I am heading for a busy week next week. Project with customer, M is about to start. After a limbo of scope changing and prioritisation, finally we will embark on it – for real. This is something I don’t understand – there’s a part of them saying “This is crucial, we must start now”. But how things have been delayed, exhibits completely otherwise.

I will need to juggle 2 projects. Over the course of 2 months, there is an interest for local market unit to get me involved in IMS project – fixed mobile convergent for another local customer, E. From what I could gather, this will take ages since it is a big investment on customer side and the signals on general poor economic performance for the rest of the year may trigger customer to be more prudent and to tighten their operational spending - no new expenditure, minimise new incremental cost or upgrades, maximise existing network assets etc. This will impact this project of course. I am already on board (and bored?) – but I want to inject some business part to the project to strengthen the buy-in process. Let’s see what I can do.

On social front – things have been going on as the way it has been last week. Last night I got a text from Barry – asking for squash this Sunday. I really want to be well by Sunday so that I can sweat it out again. My tennis-elbow reappeared. That concerns me. It will be there for some time. Nursing injury with the tendon tissue is not easy – but I will wear the band to support the muscle every time I do sports.

Finally, as of last night I finished vetting and editing Faris’s PhD thesis – it was long, technical and complicated I must say. It reminded me so much of my thesis in 2006 – how fond I was to start working at 10pm and ended up at 7am in the morning, the next day. I like working under pressure, doing analysis, doing analysis etc. I like the process and making sense out of many observations. Perhaps PhD is my next step – I don’t think so. Only if I were to find a reason why I should do it, I will do it. As for now – I am content.