Maternal Love, Paternal Love

It’s finally raining, and the poor chicks are not getting any food. That’s because their mother is sitting firmly on top of them, keeping them warm and dry. She’s crouched low in the nest, feathers fluffed up, look of resignation in her eyes, leaves dripping water from above, chicklets doubtless yelping for food below.
It’s really [...]

Honesty - The Worst Policy

My HR Rep has been setting up meetings with the rank and file of our department – don’t ask me why – and she set up one with me, to find out what’s good and bad about the company or something of the sort. I told her the company was great, but that I was [...]

Hatched!

My pet crow has delivered. This morning, at least two, maybe three tiny pink beaks appeared amidst the brown mess of twigs that is the nest. Both parents were in attendance, stuffing half-digested grub down the tiny gullets.
The mother continues to sit on the chicks, though, as though they were still eggs waiting to hatch. [...]

Cold and Miserable

Ugh.

That is the sum total of my reaction to my cold – I don’t have the energy to say any more. Why do I always get a cold just before going for a trek? I get so worried that it might develop into something more deadly, such as pulmonary oedema. Plus, it means I [...]

Mind in the Mountains

Two weeks to departure and the countdown is very much under way. As usual, there’s too much to do and not enough time. Apart from the usual trek preparations which involve getting out our tent, sleeping bags, warm clothes, assembling cameras and tripods, taking stock of medical and first aid requirements, etc etc etc - [...]

Quarterly

My office has this wonderful concept of quarterlies. (For those of you who’ve not met with this particular concept before, a quarterly is a team outing that happens once a quarter.) My immediate team, being a team of three who are in a constant state of barely-disguised hostility, has made a fine art of avoiding [...]

Effective Meetings

There are some things my office is very good at. One of these is meetings. We’re terribly good about meetings. We set them up weeks in advance, we send out notices, keeping a variety of time-zones satisfied, we block conference rooms, we book audio bridges, we accept, decline and tentatively accept meetings, sometimes we propose [...]