Things I have learnt about myself today

Things I have learnt about myself today:

• I like to have alone time sometimes. Today I spent the morning shopping on my own and it was really nice.
• I wake up in the evenings. I already knew that but it has been evident to me the last few days.
• Doing nice things for other people makes me feel really good. So does meeting new people and chatting with them.

I'll expand on the last point. Today we queued for tickets to a free event that didn't have many spaces left. We'd forgotten to queue earlier in the day so we went in the evening when queuing opened again to see if there were any tickets left. When we arrived, there weren't any left but there was a possibility of up to 30 more being released.

In the queue, we got chatting to the couple behind us. They were very excited about the event and had missed out on getting tickets earlier in the day. About an hour later, 20 wrist bands arrived at the desk. My husband and I were numbers 18 and 19 in the queue so we each got one. Unfortunately, that meant that the couple behind us didn't get in – a single guy behind them got the last one.

I felt bad because I hadn't actually been that excited about going to see this band. Nicholas and I wondered if we should have offered our wrist bands to the couple behind us. We decided that if we saw them again we would. When we got outside, we caught up with them walking back to the hotel. They were upset about missing out on tickets again. So we gave them ours. They were very touched and we all went for a drink together.

It was great not only to make them happy by giving them the chance to go and see a band they liked and had been looking forward to going to see, but also to spend time getting to know them. We had the usual first-time chat about what jobs we do and where we live, and we discovered hobbies that we had in common. We had a really fun evening, and when it was time for them to go, we exchanged Facebook and Twitter contact details.

Things I have learnt today

Things I have learnt today:

• Minecraft is used in education and can be used to learn about physics and electronics.
• Minecraft is used in visualising designs for the use of public spaces.
• Mojang has a Director of Fun.
• The lead developer of Minecraft might be related to me – he looks like a cross between me (long ginger hair and glasses) and my brother (ginger beard).
• Geeks like having long hair and beards (are they too lazy to cut their hair or shave, or is it an intentional fashion choice?) and hats (that one must be an intentional fashion choice).
• Life without much internet access is strange when you're used to checking Facebook and Twitter many times a day or looking things up whenever you want.
• Doing little more than watching one YouTube video is enough to use up all my roaming data allowance.
• It was worth using up my data allowance to watch this video and cheer myself up.

Valuable lessons

Oscar and Delta will be back soon. In the meantime, here is a list of lessons I learnt at work today, the last day before I go on holiday.

1. Don't change the margins and make yourself repaginate a 200-page document. Again.
2. Don't leave writing instructions for formatting foreign-language resources to the last minute, after all the formatters have gone home so you can't check they understand what they've got to do.
3. Run away and hide before anyone can tell you that the author of the document they are currently formatting has copied three quarters of the content from the internet!
4. Check how data is going to be used before deciding how to enter it. Fortunately the data entry temp was in the office today and available for some of the afternoon.
5. Don't expect to get everything done.
6. Do expect to work late. Very late.
7. Only expect free takeaway if the boss is also staying very late.
8. Don't start locking up before you've actually finished working because you won't be able to get into the kitchen.
9. Read the specification carefully and don't assume interns will follow it. This will avoid having to edit said 200-page document at 6 o'clock on a Friday evening.
10. Stop thinking about work and look forward to your holiday!