A six month sejour is almost done.

Sitting in Cafe Celona updating my blog feels like a satisfactory completition to another chaper of Europe. When I first settled in Frankfurt (if you call living in a hostel settling) I was sitting here, with a coffee of some description, coercing Skype to function in order have a chat with my mother at the other end of the world. Now she has discovered the technology that is SMS, our phone calls manifest themselves once a month or so with thrice-weekly SMS updates in between.

On Wednesday night, around midnight, I have the dubious privelidge of sitting abord the first leg of Quantas' flight to New Zealand. I do like flying and don't have a problem with spending 26 hours travelling, but what bugs me most about the whole ordeal is what I'm going to do with my baggage between saying sionara to my apartment and boarding the plane. I'll doubtless head to one last German lesson, then hang in the airport for three hours. I think for the first time in my life I would have exceeded the quoted checkin window of 2 hours. I doubt many except my father and any German on the planet would achieve this pointless request of the airline companies.

To avoid degenerating too far in to the mundane, some noteworthy activities are:

I was lucky enough to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra (European version, although sactioned by the Glenn Miller corporation ivory tower) Wednesday last week. It was fantastic stuff. The stage was very minimalist, which did surprise me. The music was toe-tappingly fantastic. Lots of old people were bobbing their heads (hope it didn't inflame their arthritis) , but surprisingly little getting up and dancing in the aisle.

Thursday was my last work day.

Today is easter Friday and all the shops are closed notwithstanding cafés, so you'd think town would be quiet. Well, it felt like a scene from 28 days later - everyone was wondering around slowly, ;eering in shop windows - looking for a chance to find a rogue retail shop open for business. I guess you had to be there.

Today's grammar lession comes to you from Garner's American Usage (via a SomethingAwful goon):

one of the [+ pl. n.] who (or that). This construction requires a plural verb, not a singular one. After the who or that, the verb should be plural because who is the subject, and it takes its number from the plural noun to which who or that refers--e.g.: "It is one of the few writing texts that is [read are] worth reading." THe reason for this construction becomes apparent when we reword the sentence: "Of the writing texts that are worth reading, it is one." But many writers wrongly think that one is the (singular) subject.

So, an example would be:

One of the dudes who are aiming the gun at me is waving goodbye.

It contradicts how I thought the grammar goes. It makes sense though if you place the "one" complement at the end of the main clause, thus saying:

Of the dudes who are waving the gun at me, one is waving goodbye.

Too cool for school

Those of you who know me will know that I haven't got a university degree. I'm one of these college dropouts, but without the millions that others have in the bank. I'm still searching for those illusive footsteps to follow in. It's neither a skeleton in my closet, nor do I boast about it.

Those of you who know any Germans would know that they are very cerebral people. This doesn't necessarily mean they are smarter than other nationalities (my theory being that any group of people on Earth has the same percentage spead of differing intelligence), but just spend more time learning and thinking. They spend one more year at secondary school than those back at home, and for those who do end up going to university (not [i]fachhochschulen[i]/polytechs) are there for four years rather than three for their equivalent of the undergraduate degree.

So I took it upon myself to have a discussion on why it's ok for someone like me not to need to have gone to university at this stage in my life. It started when someone told me that going to university is important since you can go farther in your career than someone without a degree. The pot stir started by me countering with the fact that this isn't always correct. In my field I'm usually an equal peer with those who have degrees and often these folk are far more wise than me, but it's largely due the wiseness of experience rather than what university teaches. This is also exacerbated due to the fact I have always been the youngest person in my department / group, so it's to be expected. So far, I haven't found a comparative disadvantage for not having a degree in.... well.....what could one get a degree in.... "telco IP engineering".

My university evalangelist clarified their position by saying that it's not always where you get to, but often the money you make. Now, I have found this to be true, and it is often reflected in the fact that I don't have a suitable tertiary certificate. As time progresses, either in one job, or subseqent jobs down the track, this becomes less and less of an issue as I come in to closer parity to what my older peers make.

What made this hard to put forth were two things. The person I was arguing against was a student and really believed that what they had either dreamt up or heard from others was more valid than my experience. The second was that any time I try and play the "experience" card, it always feels like I'm patronising the person:

"Well, when you get out in to the working world, you'll see what I mean".

Of course I don't put it like that, and try my best to convey my position in the least condescending way I can, but it still sounds as though I'm talking down to them, and thus the argument felt unwinnable.

During the discussion I also mentioned a couple of issues that isolates this argument to some specific cases. Firstly I don't think that I would be able to repeat my experience in Germany since it's intrinsic with the population that you need an education before you can get a flash job that lets you order business cards.

Secondly I think this is particular to the I.T. sector. Any chump can get their foot in the door at the lower end of the spectrum and work their way up if they show potential, since the barrier to entry is lower than however low you think you can limbo.

To try and cover my arse and not appear an anti learn-stuff bigot, I'd like to say that I'm looking forward to going back to University at some stage (probably in my 20s) to complete some degree. Perhaps in languages or aeronautical engineering, but now just isn't the time for me, and I'm happy in my career at the moment (both profession and job). If I wanted to change jobs, the student fan club would have you believe that I would only either be moving sideways or downwards on the career matrix, but I think otherwise.

Those of you now in I.T. who have degrees, or not in I.T. but with a degree can hopefully see that I'm not dissing your efforts (even though that's what it seems 100% to be), but I am instead just putting my view forward that it's not mandatory to have one in order to get in to the work force and advance your career.

Discussion disenfranchises expedited outcomes

I've been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, but past experience has taught me that you need to give yourself some internal deliberation cycles before blurting things out.

There have surely been numerous Dilbert cartoons that can better illustrate and convey my cynicism better, however I shall verbalise them here to get it off my chest and hopefully maintain some degree of sanity.

I'm buggared if I know how large organisations such as the U.N. manage to get anything done, I really do. I mean, you have a melting pot full of hands at the table and to get anything passed, it needs buy-in from countries with vastly different ideas on morality, discussion and expeditiousness. This all chews up cycles when a micro dictator or iron fist could make the decision in a fraction of the time, saving discussion when it could better be spent down at the pub, where the fervour of more productive interaction actually happens. Conventional committies have this potential too, but instead their only hope ("chair people") are instead shrouded in masses of requirements for protracted debates and giving everyone the nice feeling that their input is valued, when it often clearly isn't. Perhaps the way around this is to give everyone the feeling that they have made positive contributions to "the process" but just plod along with your agenda in the background, and swap some of the phrasing around to make it look like you have taken their contributions on board.

This is nothing new, and politicians, and moreover their PR spin doctors are masters at such a skill. Such a situation often succeeds because an environment has been set up to allow them to form a consultancy process, "update" their proposal based on feedback and continue on their merry way. However the need for transparency sometimes makes this tricky, since there are sharp tools in a given populace's shed who like to work with an analytical hoe rather than just sniffing the policy flower that has been given to them (alright, I think that analogy went too far..). So now turn your attention to the private sector where companies are often tight around the belt and don't have the "liberty" of so many beedy eyes. Here is where such behavior can fester...errr.. be fostered best. As long as you don't spread your work around for endless cycles of buy-in, but still can avoid the sticky sitution of having to justify why you didn't get enough, you should be home free.

I'll provide you with an example of how it doesn't work. You provide a document for discussion and since they are pressed for time so they only read the hilights that interest them and send feedback. This feedback can be of a tricky nature (say world peace which might need a bit of fleshing out), so it needs discussion. Now going on the assumption that your own argument is on solid ground (diamond's pretty solid isn't it?) you reply back with your argument, creating some swiss cheese from their feedback. The discussion stops there since you've got no reply to the reply.

What can you do? You go with your own suggestion since it's sound, even based on the feedback. However the committe needs to make sure everyone is heard and spends inexorable wads of time to chase them up and plead for some more input. Deadlines encroach omniously near. Churn churn. What adds some further tabasco spice to the proceedings is if the committee is reporting its work up to superiors through a series of matrix management paths. In addition, everyone's got their own opinion. Also, everyone is an expert. Opinions are fine, but when these opinions are sold as books of the gospel itself and they're repeatedly found out to be mistruths (accidentally of course) it build distrust. What can one do?

What you need is a good Fidel Castro at the heart of every committee, perferably with some physical deterrent against those trigger happy feedbackers.

I'll touch on solutions later, now that I've outlined my some of my greviences in a good incoherent manner.