Seconds out... round two. (A load of skit.)

Last Sunday we had the Project Managers' breakfast. It was really nice. Allocations for Phase Two were announced, and I was told that I'd be going to Achuapa in Santa Cruz in Nicaragua for a chunk of Phase Two. Nobody could tell me at what point I'd be going or for how long, which bothered me because I had to know what planning I had to do for the corporate blog, and it's hard to plan things with no information.

The rest of Sunday was reasonably chilled.

But then I got asked to judge the skits that each group from Phase One had to do.

And then it was bad.

The groups had been told in radio comms the week before to prepare their skits, and that they'd be judged on originality, inclusivity, language, and comedy. I know each group was told this, because I was the person on radio duty telling each group when they called in. Each criteria was marked out of five. One group scored higher than all the others, so they won. Simples, right?

Judges were ordered to dress up for the occasion. That's me as the Grim Santa.

No.

One group did a really nice skit, that was super-original and had a lovely poem and was all sentimental and stuff. But they didn't make much use of any language besides English, it wasn't that funny, and there were no points for sentimentality. So the group who ticked all the boxes for the things we were told to judge on won.

Apparently, this was a bad thing.

The winner was announced and there was a stunned silence from the audience, which led to me being stunned because I couldn't see what the problem was. A couple of Project Managers complained that the sentimental ones should have won. Then I heard that the winners were unhappy because they felt the sentimental ones should have won. I made a conscious decision to get out of there and into bed as quickly and as quietly as possible. Some strops, however, continued into the next day.

It was pretty horrible. I opted for keeping my mouth shut and letting people get over it. As far as I was concerned I just did as I was asked. We've got about seven weeks left in each others company, and then we never have to see each other ever again. Having a strop with people for that length of time, to me, seems sad. What a horrible way to spend a few weeks?

I kept myself pretty much to myself in the wake of Sunday night's events, and shoved my face in my computer to plough on with blog stuff. I got as much done a I could but was finished by early afternoon. Then I had to wait for people to sign off the content. That's the time-consuming part.

I finally found out that I'd be heading to Nicaragua on Saturday. It'll take two days to get there. And then I'm being left there until the end of phase. I asked what would happen with the blog, and they said they'd manage it themselves at Fieldbase. It didn't bother me at the time, but after considering it, I'm not completely happy with it. It's not that I've got a problem with getting out in the field and mucking out with the Venturers, but one of the things that I wanted to get out of this, was the chance to extend my portfolio of digital content, both for writing and editing, and I just think that's been taken away from me, and the experience that I want and need to get out of this has been compromised. Like, if they're able to manage the blogs while shoving me out in the field for most of a phase, why do they bother taking on a Comms Officer at all? I really have no idea what their line of thought is, but I'm sure it makes sense to them.

Waiting for somebody to sign of one of the six blogs I had ready to go, I had a mooch on Google Play. A couple of weeks back, I saw they had classic albums for £1.99. A lot of them were the albums that you've heard of, and that I know they're classics and that I should own, but mostly from being skint I haven't got. I got Licensed to Ill by The Beastie Boys and Odelay by Beck. Yesterday I got Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. What an album!? They seem to update them. I may spend lots of £1.99s on classic albums...

After a late night last night because I don't know why, I had less than two hours sleep before the wake up call to get the pup and Project Managers up for Phase Two deployment. After a load of hugging and goodbyes, those of us left at Fieldbase gave the place a good cleaning, got some bacon and eggs on for breakfast, and passed out.

Breakfast is better without pups and Project Managers.

I slept for longer than planned, and got into job applications. It seems about the right time to start. By the time the recruitment people faff about shortlisting, it'll be a couple of weeks, and then they should allow for another month for people to leave their current job, which is about when I get back. It's ambitious, but it would be lovely to have a job to go back to. The worst any of them will say is no because I can't make interviews. I've offered to do an interview over Skype with my applications, and if that's an issue, they're probably not the kind of digitally progressive-thinking organisation I feel I want to work for anyway.

Good friends we've had, good friends we've lost, along the way.
I guess I'm thinking quite a bit about life after Raleigh at the moment. Between job applications and booking a couple of gigs with my band, a bit of reality is seeping in. It's been said that you shouldn't do anything major until a week or two after Raleigh, because your head needs time to calm down. I can see that. It's also been said that your mates won't have a clue what you've experienced, just won't be able to relate. I suppose in that respect, I hope this blog will help, but probably not completely.

I've thought about the people here with me that I'm sharing the experience with. I'll probably never see most of them ever again after expedition. I spent five years in university with people coming and going from my life, who for some period of one to three years were such good friends, and who I haven't got the faintest idea of what they're doing now, or even if they're still alive. I'll occasionally think of one of those people and think "I wonder what ever happened to them?" before remembering that if I cared that much, I would have kept in touch with them. I'd like to think it highlights how much I value the friendship of those I have kept in touch with.

We watched The Motorcycle Diaries a few weeks back, a quote from that sticks in my mind: "This isn't a tale of heroic feats. It's about two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams." That's probably what uni was except with hundreds of people instead of just two, and what Raleigh is with about thirty.

Going back to what I said about mates not being able to understand what you've been through, that's probably where my Raleigh colleagues will come in. People to talk to who know what you mean when you talk about it and the impact it's had.

I slept too much after breakfast. This has been a pretty whiney blog. I'm going to bed.

Buenos noches.

Pura Vida!