The ups and downs of life!

This week has been an interesting one with plenty of ups and plenty of matching downs! I just can't get the hang of how things get done around here and I think expecting people to be able to do things when you think they need doing is almost impossible and I should work much harder on achieving a zen like state. Me and zen are not things which go naturally together though as I tend to be more of a rushing around sort of a person.
Nidal has been off ill so I've really had to learn a bit more about getting the basic things done. John was less than impressed when a pop up exhibition stand arrived in our living room late last night and the two guys then proceeding to demonstrate to me how to erect it! However, they couldn't bring it to the college where we were exhibiting at any of the right times so it seemed like the only solution. John helped me to put it in the car and there were endless helpful guys at the other end who trundled it into position and helped me to put it up. It didn't help that in the rush last night one of the guys broke off a crucial plastic clip so I was forced to hold one of the panels on with a wodge of blu tack - I think it looked alright but it wasn't the best. I then had a hissy fit because the lady in HR had not sent the driver on time with the brochures though he did manage to arrive before the students started coming through. I was also able to admire the Masdar Institute stands and collateral that I helped to produce before Christmas when I was working with Wordsearch. I know I'm biased but I thought the looked great!
Excellent news in that I finally managed to find photos that my boss was happy with for his calendars and he's signed them off. OK so you might think March was a bit late for reprinting calendars but who am I to say! If anyone would like 500 2010 calendars I'd be willing to accept a fair price. He also liked the new format of my weekly report with a combination of Power Point and Excel so maybe I'm making progress.
I went down to the exhibition centre to talk to the people who organize the big defense show, IDEX. It's not taking place till next February but there already seems to be a lot of activity going on though I've no doubt that most of it will come together at the last minute as usual! We should have an amazing stand and we are presently talking about having a tank with scuba divers included and people abseiling down the new citygate tower next to the exhibition centre. It would be a great way of raising awareness for our training but perhaps a little on the ambitious side.
I've also been working on the design and venue for a possible management weekend conference and for once this resulted in a perk in that one of the hotels offered my a complimentary overnight stay. I thought that might give us a perfect little break if we went back out to Qasr Al Sarab on Friday night but as it turns out they are full this weekend so I'm going to use it when we go out there in April with Mum and Jo.
I also managed to scratch the car which I'm pretty fed up about. My own carelessness of not noticing that someone had knocked the metal stand at the entrance to our parking where you enter your card. Consequently I swung in at my usual angle and hit it. It's only a scratch but apparently before I can get a little guy to repaint it I still have to get a police report from a particular police station somewhere on the island. They must have a busy time with the amount of car scraping that goes on round here and my lovely Jeep is now less than perfect.
A talent search chap from an American company working out here called me, having found me on linked in, about a marketing role he's looking to fill and I've made it onto the shortlist. Whether it comes to anything or if I even think a move will be better I don't know but it's good for the confidence levels and general feeling good about myself which are pretty low at the moment.
Still it looks like I'm still quite marketable even after the struggle of trying to make some progress at EAI.