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This week was a bit weird. Apparently, my second week on the job was the perfect time for the VP of Data Science to rendezvous the troops from across the globe into the Glasgow office for a few updates. My International Business degree came in semi-useful as people flew in from Marseille, Boston and the Czech Republic and I found myself in conference calls to London and San Fransisco. Sounds incredible in concept but a very ’sit and listen’ themed week in reality with varying results. A lot of information and terminology was thrown around that would probably be fine in a year, but a lot to take in during my second week. It was pretty relentless actually; I would argue that about half of my week was spent in conferences or meeting getting bombarded with information consisting of both terminology that I’ve heard a handful of times and a million others that I’ve never heard of and have to figure out- hence, mixed results.

On Wednesday night there was a team meal with the folks from Marseille, Boston and the Czech Republic. It was nice. A bit weird though. I was by far the youngest at 22 with the next youngest person being 34. The conversations swung like from ‘age-friendly’ to ‘age-specific’ as I breeze through talks on football and food and then sluggishly endure discussions on ’nightclubs in the 90’s’ or fine wine and whisky- things I have little to add to. ‘Occasional singling out for being super young’ aside, something I can only assume is jealousy, it was a nice night with some lovely people. And also: company credit card (maybe I shouldn’t have gone so liberal on those cocktails).

The ’sit and listen’ themed week continued much up to Friday when the visitors had to fly back home and things were back to normal…apart from the awards evening on the Friday night. ’The M-Oscars’; where the sales representatives get awards based on their targets with an excuse to drink for all. The BI team were invited and convinced by the idea of free food and drink, the office party began. Two drinking events in my second week so, again, a bit weird. My boss was drunk, the senior developers were drunk and I was….respectable. It’s week 2 guys, give it time- I can still enjoy the 80’s karaoke but I just don’t have to join in to the screaming Spandau Ballet’s – Gold. FYI- this was mentioned just to clear up any misconceptions that this was some type of ‘Wolf Of Wall Street’ -esque office party. Regardless it was fun- I feel a lot more integrated with the team now and ready to start working alongside this great bunch. And in actual work news, my first piece of work passed its’ code review ready for quality assurance, the first time. Usually, it bounces back from code review for alterations but because I am amazing coder slash genius, I got it through the first time.

As for the knee? Not super great. Yet again my lack of motivation is letting me down as I go another week with no progress. ’This will be the week’, ’No, this will be the week’, ’No, this will be the week’ has led to no progress and it’s February. Watching Alba and the girls play this weekend and reading articles on recovering is depressing and I’m coming to the realisation that this will not go as smoothly as I thought and it scares me. The Alba trials was a relentless chorus of pity from people reacting to how I’d be out for a year and watching the girls didn’t help either. I have the Orthopaedic on Tuesday so maybe I’ll feel better then. Sorry to end on a sad note, love you all.

Johnny