'Out of office'
Last week was like a dream. This was a week before it was time to put that Out of office auto reply on my work email and the week after the hectic conference.
Two Sunday mornings ago the alarm rang at 5.30. You might wonder why. By god why? Barely four hours after we had gone to bed. In order to get 45 minutes more sleep I decided to take a cab to the station and an hour later I was having a wake me up breakfast at Arlanda Airport. Never the one to say no to work (like ever) I was heading to Copenhagen to work another MCI conference and to breathe some Danish air. From 9 am to 6 pm it was full speed preparing for the guests to arrive and then handing out badges until I finally zipped up my pink suitcase and got a cab back to the airport.
But that’s not where it started. No, cause as everyone knows that the week starts on Monday. Or usually it does. That one had a nifty bank holiday inserted on Tuesday so really it felt like it started on Wednesday. Any who, that Thursday me and Isabelle, the event assistant took the bus to a castle (of sorts) located fifteen minutes (without traffic, 35 with) from the city centre. I had volunteered to work an event for another teams event: the 30 year anniversary of a French bank.
French speaking people and men in suits. Two things I love, so I really didn’t have to think too hard before saying yes to working an evening after a 24/7 week at work.
Okay, so technically I didn’t exactly know that it was a bank event nor that it had any connection whatsoever with France. But I like to think that I was a bit psychic in that moment and sensed it. Either way it was a surprise in the same class as being served a truly delicious glass of wine with your steak. Yum.
The Thursday began as all events do: in pure panic. True story. It’s sort of the charm of working with events. No matter how much you prepare there is always something that turns out wrong and you have to run around like a maniac to handle it before anything happens.
So about thirty minutes or so after arriving at location we discovered that the clients carefully prepared presentation was in a format not supported by the television devices. Upon discovering this we quickly found out that it was working on two of the four screens. How the f* was it doing that? It turned out there was some mysterious tech guy out there who had reformatted the presentation on two of the USB sticks and then like dust he had disappeared. Now I don’t believe in ghosts, or anything but… No just kidding after some minor investigative work (nowhere in class of Sherlock Holmes) we got hold of him and after listening to a quick tutorial of what he had done I gathered all the sticks and got to work. It quickly turned out that though he had managed to make the presentation work it was just less than half of it there and 25 pictures where missing.
We re-grouped, I took the presentation and the other two took everything else. Two hours and a whole lot ot running up and down and up and down the stairs later
- to see if it worked now, nope? okay, back to the computer on the top floor! - it was finally done.
After that it was business as usual. The night went on, there was drinking (wine), oysters, dancing and after midnight it was time for us to pack up and head home.
I admit it, 3 hours of sleep followed by 9 hours work didn’t exactly result in an overly energetic me, but after a swift shirt-change at the airport restroom I did feel somewhat more…alive!
Dinner, a stop by Starbucks (!) and then it was time to fly back to Stockholm. Unfortunately the plane was packe and thus my hand luggage was involuntarily checked in - so instead of being able to quickly grab it at the airport and run home, I had to wait and wait, for it to appear on the conveyer belt. Sigh.
At last landing at my flat I changed into pyjamas and was just about to have a midnight snack when I remembered something. Damn. The water bottle! I quickly opened the freezer and there it was. On the top shelf the glass water bottle, which I had nicely put in the night before, you know to have ice cold water, had exploded and there was glass everywhere.
There it was. The perfect end to a hectic weekend!