Meanderings: January 27, 2000

Thursday,
January 27, 2000

Oh, God, just put me out of my misery right now.

Okay, so it isn't THAT bad, but it's pretty damned close. I'm in a very small but lovely room at an island hotel/conference center called Rosenön, somewhere south of Stockholm. And why am I here, you may ask? Why, I'm here for the department "kick-off," a twice-yearly event where we go away somewhere for two days and hash out departmental goals for the next six months. It's essentially a team-building exercise, and I will even admit that I can see the point of it.

Except. Except.

It's all in Swedish. And while my comprehension is going up, I'm still nowhere near fluent. So I spent about, oh, five hours in a conference room today while our manager outlined his vision for the next half-year and another manager gave us the Belbin test to find out what role we're best suited to in a group (turns out I'm a "Plant" -- a creative leader. Like, no shit, sherlock).

All of this was in Swedish, by the way (although I did get the test in English). So what did your intrepid journalist do while Svenska was murmuring and rippling around her?

Wrote a story, of course. Got about 2,000 words into "A Robot in Your Future," in between trading written quips with my tablemate who will be appearing as the female lead in the story in return for allowing me to make snarky comments without howling in outrage. Anne's so cool.

Now I just need to get some time to type all this in (no, I'm not doing it now -- we had a Mexican fiesta dinner afterwards, and I did about four tequila shots, so all I'm good for is sprawling in bed here and typing up this entry. I'm letting down the great tradition of drunken writers, I know, but there it is) By the way, this is a picture of the building with my room -- imagine a lot of snow piled around it, and you've got the right idea.

Tomorrow: we split up into groups and work on a Balanced Score Card. Oy. . .

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