Scratch post

The cats often use our feet as scratch posts, including Gugs’ today when she was eating her lunch on the grass.

We had an interesting workshop hosted by my colleague Chloe, which focused on what a Project Manager role looks like in our organisation. She used various of the online tools at her disposal including ways of organising breakout rooms on a Zoom call, ways of using virtual post-its via something called Jamboard, and ways of doing group work via software known as Miro. I’ve been really impressed with the way we’ve adapted to working online and these sessions have felt impactful even though no one is in the same room.

Lots of familiar faces were on the call from my days working in our Asia-Pacific programme. I worked closely with Yen Anh in our Vietnam office on the finances of the EU-funded forestry grant I managed in the region. We had some absolute humdingers over her rigid accountant’s approach and my belief that there are many ways to cut a cake. However we have always been very fond of each other. She would always be a generous host in taking me to the eateries of Hanoi, and we spent my 30th birthday together as we’d had to accompany auditors to the Philippines office.

I messaged her a greeting after the call and she replied with:

Nice to see you too, Rob. You still look the same young as some years ago :)

She’s patently incorrect in my case as Covid limbo is encouraging rapid onset ageing, but I returned the compliment for old times’ sake.