Saturday, November 17, 2007

The City Where Giants Roamed

Rome... It's an aboslutely incredible place. The scale of the city is beyond words, there you are walking down a narrow and dark street wondering what is that pretty church that is coming into view, when all of a sudden you are the end of that street and that Rome comes in full view with giangantic buildings of huge proportions. In the photos below I'll try and represnet that grandeur to you, use your imagination, and remember that most of this city was build 2000 years ago.

Bellissima! The Trevi Fountain
A Detail of the Arch of Optimus Severus (3rd century AD)
Posing in front of the Colosseum, built in 8 years with 40,000 slaves in 3rd Century AD
I liked the remains of this bridge built in 3rd Century BC!
You can see more photos on my facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21561&l=55209&id=583215597
(You don't need to set up an account or register to view this page)

Friday, November 09, 2007

What's the big secret keeping me away from blogging?

I can finally reveal (I think I can anyway) the reason that has been and will continue keeping me away from my blog and reading your blogs (I still get regular updates from Kitem though).

You are now reading from the new UK Retail National Account Manager - Ta-Da!

A few months ago, a young man joined the team as sales executive to support Martin and take away the load from me so that I could focus on Marketing and business development, unfortunately things did not go as planned and sadly Russell left our team as quickly as he joined - No, I did not beat him or torture him - he had a long journey to work, which he hated, amongst other reasons which are irrelevant now. So I found myself absolutely swamped trying to catch up with all the range reviews and year end promotions to plan, the marketing events to organise and attend. To put it simply I was doing two full-time jobs in the time given to one human being. It was exhausting but I coped really well, and before I knew it, Ron was calling me to his office to say very nice words indeed: "Helen, I don't know why we're looking to recruit outside the company when we have the perfect candidate within"... Not being the brightest one, I waited for him to continue, till the light switched on in my head that he was actually talking about me!!!! memememe, perfect, clever, beautiful me! (oops I'm being over confident again).

That said, I wasn't meant to tell anyone, and what happens when something is not quite official? Well, you start doing the new job but continue doing the old one at the same time. Martin introduced as the UK Retail National Account Manager to all of his customers that will now be mine (and as you know, I get on famously with all of them, so it's simply awesome) and I still have to cope with my current job until someone comes in to take over my role; that will be in January by the looks of it, so I won't be around here much till then - but I do think about all of you everyday and I do miss you loads.

In the meantime, Alex and I are escaping this stressful times, with a four day trip to Rome! So have a brilliant weekend. Love you all.

PS: Kitem is offline for a few days while she is changing ISP. She sends her love to you all and will be back on Wednesday.