A short apology

It seems that I haven't made a posting in February and it's already the 10th today - well the 9th in blog country which must be West Coast US! I was so sure that I had but maybe I'm slowly losing the plot!
Last week was an interesting one at work - it's a bit of a roller coaster at the moment, one minute I think I'm really starting to make some progress and then at other times I'm not so sure! It can be such a challenge trying to move things forward and I wonder at times how anything ever gets done. I guess it's me who's always moved at break next speed and I do need to reassess the way I approach things as everything does seem to happen in the end!
We went to the Tawdeef Exhibition last week, which is a pretty big recruitment event. We had the most amazing stand with six of our subsidiaries also involved. The stand had it's own refreshment area, meeting rooms, 6 stations for internet access and lots of places to sit and talk to potential candidates. It was really quite awesome. The variety of gifts on offer from EAI and the subsidiaries included desk sets, bags, pens, key chains, stress balls and enough branded chocolate for armies of hungry people! No detail had been overlooked - even the girls had the EAI logo in diamante on their shaylas. I was most impressed and, judging by the volume of CV's collected, I was not alone. It was a great awareness raising exercise, since one of our key goals is to be seen as a first choice career destination for young Emiratis (first choice career destination is a familiar goal for me though not with this audience before!) We have significant competition from the public sector, who are seen as the employer's of choice so it was good to be at the exhibition, surrounded by the government bodies and building a reputation in the right kind of company. All exhibition's do end the same though with less shoe leather, very sore feet and no voice!
I also went on a vist to Zayed University as part of our drive to raise our profile with the Emirati graduates. I met up with Rex Taylor, the Assistant Provost, who I last met in the British Embassy garden during Manchester week. We ate a pleasant lunch in a shady garden before meeting all kinds of interesting people who seem as keen to work with us and we are to work with them.
The weather changed towards the end of the week (it always does if I ever make tentative plans to go to the beach!) and on Thursday the air was full of sand, whipped up by a wind storm. Everytime you went out you ended up covered in sand, blinking it out of your eyes and all paperwork feeling gritty! Still it was snowing again in the UK so a day's sandstorm and then some light rain over the weekend didn't feel too much of a hardship.
I managed to get an audience with my boss on Thursday which sent me a bit down. I thought I'd achieved a lot and had prepared bullet points and full reports. However, he seemed very dismissive of my range of projects and suggested I focus on one thing at a time! And me so proud of my ability to multi task! The problem with one thing at a time is what do you do in the yawning gaps when you're waiting for someone else to come back to you? I decided to carry on with my multi channel plan and take no notice in the end but it shook me up a bit.
Perhaps one day I might get the hang of how things work but till then I'll just have to make it up as I go along!