Hey guys,
As you might have noticed, i haven't posted a lot lately, if at all. I'm ok, i know you're all worried, but seriously, i'm mighty fine. I've been taken with work a lot, first the Frankfurt trip as you might remember, then the Paris trip, and obviously after each i had to prepare reports on what i saw, the issues we'll face and all that. For Paris, i had to go to check out this new integrated system my company built (actually, paid another software company to build), which basically links all our current different databases together (and we have a lot, all accessed by different systems at the moment) and in theory will make things much easier for everyone, from Operations to Finance and all the stages in between...
Obviously it's broken at the moment, but what do you expect when you built a completely new system just for you and only for you... I mean, we've only paid them a few millions after all
(for the geeks, it's so badly built that the system requirements are 2GB RAM and i'm pretty sure Gigabit Ethernet... REQUIRED... err...)
If that wasn't enough (with all the reports and also my job to do in the meantime of course), Israel decided to bomb Lebanon, and we're the ones who have to assist and evecuate all our clients' members from Lebanon to a safe haven (Damascus in Syria), provide accommodation for 1 night and food, then from there get them out to either Europe or Dubai. Problem 1: everyone is trying to get out of Lebanon so the coaches we're using to get people out have a hard time getting cross the border (it is pretty much a Deep-Impact-packed-highways kind of scene, with cars trying to get out of the area all at once). Problem 2: Once they do get to Damascus (takes a bit over 10 hours), their visa is only valid for 48-hours (unless they're arab, but most of our clients' members aren't, they're mostly american in fact. And the Syrian authorities are VERY strict with visa overstayers, which brings me to the third point: Problem 3: we have to get them out of there as soon as possible. We took some to Cyprus, but of course, commercial flights are hard to come by, and accommodation too...
So, with thousands of new cases open in one single day, trying to organise all this for hundreds of people for tens of different clients, and explain everything to everyone, our Operations (London is the centre that's taking care of the region, but we get help from our other offices around Europe too, like Paris and Frankfurt which i just visited, and other alarm centres) couldn't handle it. They sent some people out there to Damascus and Cyprus which means we have even fewer people here, so they got other deparments to help them...
The whole thing was managed quite badly if you ask me, cause we were mostly doing nothing waiting around for updates while i could have done my job in the meantime, but i digress... Had to call up some high profile clients to update them on the situation and get them to join up in an air charter evacuation from Damascus, the more the merrier obviously.
So that's why i'm not very post-y lately... Too much work... I think it's disgusting, anything that makes me post less should be banned...
LOL and if that wasn't enough, my team of 7 is now a team of 3. 2 people are in Cyprus helping out, one had a baby, and my boss just called in sick... Lovely...
Yours forever
LB
As you might have noticed, i haven't posted a lot lately, if at all. I'm ok, i know you're all worried, but seriously, i'm mighty fine. I've been taken with work a lot, first the Frankfurt trip as you might remember, then the Paris trip, and obviously after each i had to prepare reports on what i saw, the issues we'll face and all that. For Paris, i had to go to check out this new integrated system my company built (actually, paid another software company to build), which basically links all our current different databases together (and we have a lot, all accessed by different systems at the moment) and in theory will make things much easier for everyone, from Operations to Finance and all the stages in between...
Obviously it's broken at the moment, but what do you expect when you built a completely new system just for you and only for you... I mean, we've only paid them a few millions after all
(for the geeks, it's so badly built that the system requirements are 2GB RAM and i'm pretty sure Gigabit Ethernet... REQUIRED... err...)If that wasn't enough (with all the reports and also my job to do in the meantime of course), Israel decided to bomb Lebanon, and we're the ones who have to assist and evecuate all our clients' members from Lebanon to a safe haven (Damascus in Syria), provide accommodation for 1 night and food, then from there get them out to either Europe or Dubai. Problem 1: everyone is trying to get out of Lebanon so the coaches we're using to get people out have a hard time getting cross the border (it is pretty much a Deep-Impact-packed-highways kind of scene, with cars trying to get out of the area all at once). Problem 2: Once they do get to Damascus (takes a bit over 10 hours), their visa is only valid for 48-hours (unless they're arab, but most of our clients' members aren't, they're mostly american in fact. And the Syrian authorities are VERY strict with visa overstayers, which brings me to the third point: Problem 3: we have to get them out of there as soon as possible. We took some to Cyprus, but of course, commercial flights are hard to come by, and accommodation too...
So, with thousands of new cases open in one single day, trying to organise all this for hundreds of people for tens of different clients, and explain everything to everyone, our Operations (London is the centre that's taking care of the region, but we get help from our other offices around Europe too, like Paris and Frankfurt which i just visited, and other alarm centres) couldn't handle it. They sent some people out there to Damascus and Cyprus which means we have even fewer people here, so they got other deparments to help them...
The whole thing was managed quite badly if you ask me, cause we were mostly doing nothing waiting around for updates while i could have done my job in the meantime, but i digress... Had to call up some high profile clients to update them on the situation and get them to join up in an air charter evacuation from Damascus, the more the merrier obviously.
So that's why i'm not very post-y lately... Too much work... I think it's disgusting, anything that makes me post less should be banned...
LOL and if that wasn't enough, my team of 7 is now a team of 3. 2 people are in Cyprus helping out, one had a baby, and my boss just called in sick... Lovely...
Yours forever
LB
