I’ve been here for a couple more days, so it’s time for another update.  I’m not going to try to get things in order – I’ll just give a general blurb instead.

Work

My work schedule here has turned out to be pretty punishing, but so far I’ve only ended up feeling like my brain was going to pour out of the side of my head once. Just one meeting on day three, where there were a lot of unfamiliar concepts flying around in ways that I didn’t want to interrupt by asking for explanations every five minutes. I was largely waiting for things to settle down a bit and then asking for recaps… which seems to work out. It’s sometimes hard to do UX/UI design when you don’t know what the intent is yet.

I’m fairly sure that some of my brain-melting was coming from the number of hours without breaks, though. The morning session was three hours, with an afternoon session that clocked in at six hours with only a couple of short breaks. I’m not a fan of long stretches like that, as they kill creativity and massively impair the human ability to process new ideas.

Whilst I hate to admit it, there was one chap in the meeting who clearly knew his stuff inside out, but I was really struggling with his accent. The only time I’ve had that so far. I could just about cope if I switched to half-lipreading and half-listening, but I couldn’t do that and see what he was talking about. I think I got enough of it to catch the general gist, but it was a real challenge.

A bit more sleep tonight and a different schedule tomorrow should put me back on track, though.

Food

So far, the food here has been pretty fantastic, with the exception of one overly greasy hotel breakfast. I didn’t think it was possible to get bacon wrong, but this hotel managed it. The only downside of the hotel thus far.

Sleep

Sleep has been less than ideal. I keep finding myself getting tired and going to bed at around a sensible time… and then immediately finding myself wide awake until a stupid hour. Last night was the earliest I got to sleep since getting here, and that was sometime after 3am. I also keep getting up too early, and other than my first day I keep getting to work at 9am. Nobody here really starts until 10am. The result: I’m really quite tired. I’m going to try to have a slightly lazier start tomorrow and not get to the office quite so early.

Exercise

Hah.

I’m planning to use the Monday I get back to basically go for a long walk. Quite possibly of the “pack a lunch, go out around mid-morning and start walking… sit down for lunch somewhere, then walk back” variety.

I’m not yet sure if that walk will be in the local area, and there’s a chance that the weather will scupper any such plans. Last time I tried to go for a walk in that neck of the woods I ended up wading. Then again, I have at least found my gaiters now, so I won’t get quite so muddy. So I might go to London and make it an urban walk.

What else?

I should probably talk about a whole bunch more, but due to the aforementioned brain leakage, you’re going to have to just put up without.