One Week On

Well, it's been a week since the initial flurry, so what's happened?
Well workwise I'm still settling in really. I have now been assigned a pretty tidy batch of Clearquest Problem Reports (or as they and Prince2 call them, Change Requests), so to that extent I feel right at home already. I also now have a better idea of the dynamics of the team I am in, and to some extent the two related teams. I am in the Audio team. Under the same uber-manager (he of party-car-vomit fame), there is also the Telephony team and the Power team. There are others, but this makes up the S60/Nokia interface. Within Audio, there is Ivan, our leader, who seems very efficient, and is also very quick witted (in English & French) and a bit of a joker. I'm sure there's a large stick lying under his desk in case it's needed though. I'm guessing he is new-ish to this role and has yet to grow cynical after numerous horrible projects. Then there are three other jokers, who have made me very welcome, Gregory, the architect, Renaud and Arnaud. Arnaud is the one I usually go to for help at the moment, as he is, well, the most helpfull. These three are like the three musketeers, and Arnaud was specifically told by Ivan not to send too much spam mail to the audio mailing list when I was introduced, and has totally ignored this request ever since. These 3 are often joined by Isabelle (married, but very cute), very much one of the lads and also a joker. A few of the quieter guys are Jean-Pascal (or JP), Jean-Christophe and Thierry, who is my early mentor despite having only been here a month himself. The blind leading the blind? Then there is Michel, who appears to be proud to have cultivated a reputation as a sexual deviant, and Fabien, who seems very laconic, but has also been very helpful. Everyone goes to lunch and coffee breaks en masse, and this makes for a very tight group, although its small size helps too I guess, but lunch has become a real highlight (and there's absoultely no talking shop!). I remember when I first joined SEMC, lunches were like that, and it was a shame it stopped, sometime around the canteen refurbishment. Myself, Ray, Bhupendra, and often Ian were the only ones left in the end.

On a sadder note, on Wednesday, my tooth split while tackling entrecote, which left me feeling a bit down as it was the one that had received such excellent root canal service. It didn't hurt, because of course the root was gone, but it's made for awkward eating using one side of my face. As of now it is still split and should be attended to on Monday, when I should find out if it can be saved :-(

The big news this week however is that Freescale have announced a worldwide cost cutting initiative. Words like "bollocks, frying pan and fire" spring to mind, as this has invariably lead to the axing of contractors at every company I have been at. At this stage, the plan is that every Freescale site will shut for a period in the first quarter of the year. As of now, that means a forced week off in February. If it stays like that, or even if it is repeated every quarter, I'll be happy, but it's a bloody long way to come to get sacked already! To be fair, Eric, my agent, reckons there is no real problem in the cellular products division. The heat is being turned up because of the poor performance of the automotive division, which is tightly coupled with the US's fucked automotive industry. Hopefully Eric is right, but I'm going to curse America again anyway, because I want to.

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