Uuurrgh

[simont]

For the past few days I've felt very tired and apathetic. This morning, after what seemed like an excellent night's sleep, I feel as if what I need is to go straight back to bed for another excellent night's sleep. This is not normal, so I assume I'm ill in some fashion.

It might be a nonspecific viral uurgh of some sort, but actually I'm rather tempted to speculatively correlate it with accidentally being fed gluten on Tuesday evening. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. On the one hand it would be pretty annoying to think that my entire week could be ruined by a small amount of undeclared soy sauce in a home-made beefburger, but on the other hand I've never before seen any perceptible symptoms of coeliac disease and it was also rather annoying to think that I was going through all this dietary hassle on nothing but a gastroenterologist's say-so; so it might be a relief to think that I am actually getting some benefit out of it.

Meanwhile at work, almost everybody in the office has disappeared to go to a marketing presentation. I avoid these (they're voluntary) on the grounds that marketing bores the wossnames off me; but when nobody else is in the room for an hour I occasionally start to wonder if I've missed some vital point and they're actually more interesting than they sound. Or if everyone here is actually expected to go to these presentations and I'm blighting my future career by sitting here doing real work instead. Or, in fact, any of the other collection of feelings normally grouped together under the umbrella term ‘peer pressure’. Bah. I avoided most of that at school (the really cool people smoke and drink already, the middling-cool ones can be persuaded, but nobody has any interest in even trying to persuade the geeky outcasts) and it's slightly annoying to find it turning up in the workplace :-/

Comments

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

I occasionally start to wonder if I've missed some vital point and they're actually more interesting than they sound.

Free food/beer?

[simont]

Heh. Perhaps. Though, due to the other half of this post, that still wouldn't tempt me...

[j4.livejournal.com]

I've never before seen any perceptible symptoms of coeliac disease

If you've been off gluten for all this time you'll probably be a lot more sensitive to it now than you were before. Like when vegetarians try eating meat again for the first time in ages & find their digestive system just won't tolerate it any more.

NB I am not a doctor or a nutritionist or anything so obviously don't take my word as gospel on this.

IKWYM about the presentations. Fortunately the ones where I've worked have always been compulsory so instead of peer-pressure there's just the sort of bonding you get from sharing boredom. Or a chance to develop the ability to sleep with your eyes open.

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

I usually find they are quite interesting. How many have you actually been to?

[simont]

I admit I've never been to any of the current Marketing Monthly series, but the marketing sections in other stuff like results presentations and team briefs and general updates have never inspired me. When Marketing Monthly started up I would at least read the summary text for each presentation and consciously decide it sounded terribly tedious, but by now I tend to see "Marketing Monthly" and bin it unread.

Looking back at the summary text for this morning's one, it might conceivably have had some interest in it; perhaps I should at least go back to reading each summary on the offchance that there might occasionally be a potentially interesting one worth going to...

[gerald_duck]

Unless I'm mistaken you now work where I did a decade ago. When I stormed out in a huff, there were many reasons, but a major one was the overwhelming concentration on what would sell, not on what was technically excellent.

My feeling at the time was that this would lead to the product going from being world-class in performance terms to being the dirt-cheap generic that goes everywhere… and then it fading away when better things came free with Corn Flakes. To a certain extent I feel vindicated.

I was young and naïve and idealistic back then; nowadays I'm at least slightly willing to accept requirements from Marketing. I wonder whether where you work is any more willing to accept innovative ideas from Engineering.

Back in the day, I missed some marketing presentations and I did suffer noticeable opprobium as a result. I deeply envied the couple of technies who'd been there from the beginning and basically had tenure, who could therefore turn up and heckle. (-8

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

If you've had any kind of sore throat at all, it's the bug that's going round; it seems to wipe your energy out completely.

[simont]

Nope, no sore throat. (If I had had, I wouldn't even have considered blaming coeliac disease; I can imagine a lot of symptoms it could plausibly cause, but a sore throat is not among them.) But that means I might shortly catch the bug as well, so that's a nice cheery thought to take into the weekend :-)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

When I stopped eating aspartame and MSG by accident, I stopped getting headaches, but I didn't notice this until I started eating them in term time and suddenly everything was shite. Before that the whole world was headache and I didn't notice individual ones.

You could of course eat a breadcrumb, just to convince yourself. I ate crisps the other day, and you saw the internet fallout there :) I might just write that letter still.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Hullo... a friend is whining to me on MSN about the lack of pizzas in her life... do I recall that you found some nice-tasting gluten-free pizza bases? If so, could you let me know brand name / shop / etc? Ta :)

[simont]

The Sainsbury's Freefrom are just about edible. The only one I know of that's actually nice is the Juvela offering, but as far as I know you can't buy Juvela products in any shop; you have to get them on prescription.