Megativity

Gwen and Amy came up with this phrase for me Sunday night. They said that it’s not that I’m mean, it’s just to me the glass is always half-full, and even the half-full part could be contaminated, too hot or too cold, or sparkling when you wanted still, or you shouldn’t have it now because you might need it later, or… well, you get the idea.

And, actually, the past two days this has described me perfectly I think. I’ve been in Paris since Friday night – I went to a seminar Saturday and then Mon/Tues was the “1st LNG Conference” for GDF SUEZ. It ended at 17:30 Tuesday, but I left early (14:30) with two guys from GDF with whom I got a ride up. Honestly, I wasn’t getting anything out of the conference. Even at lunch as others were talking about the presentations, I felt like they had been in a different room than me since the things there were discussing I had completely missed.

I don’t know why I felt like I had to come back early. In my mind, I’m trying to make it a bigger deal, tell myself I was near panic or something just to validate my decision more, but that’s not it. Basically, François said he was leaving, asked me if I wanted a ride back, and since I rode up in his car, I said yes. The whole uncertainty (in my mind) of the end of the event - getting everyone to the train or to the tour bus, was beyond my comfort zone. The indecision of it all was too much. And, everyone else telling me which option I should do was too much. I was too nervous to say no to the offer of the ride and then have to face leaving at 6 p.m., and getting back to the city late but then during the whole ride back and even in the office, I was nervous because I left early for no good reason. That is, I’m nervous because I ‘cut class.’ If it were just me, I could’ve gone to the train station and been fine getting back. But, since it was with about 175-200 other people, all scurrying about at 5:30, I knew I couldn’t handle that. Why is it I felt fine doing the train by myself but then couldn’t handle the fact of everyone being scuttled about together? Part of it, I think, is that the last thing I wanted to do was walk around with people and lug my luggage and be a slow, fat, sweaty, red-faced person at the back of the line.

But, I know I was already in a bad frame of mind:
-- I wore navy tights Monday with black skirt. Not a problem for some people, but for me that threw me off since I thought I had packed black tights. I didn’t plan on that and just felt uncoordinated all day.
-- On Monday I had a 9 a.m. meeting I forgot about and was ‘fetched’ by one of the participants at 9:30 – and I have no idea what the meeting was about since my expertise is not in the financial hedging side of things per se, but people seem to think it is.
-- I was supposed to be working on a project, and I was, but then my boss and another coworker evidently had lunch with others to discuss. Later in the afternoon we had a meeting with the traders to discuss and I was 100% lost in all of it, even though I am the one through whom the ‘orders’ flow and then when others were leaving for the conference, my boss suggested I go with them – basically, to me, it felt like I was asked to leave the meeting early, that I was not needed.
-- My room at the conference center was nice, but the window had been open so there were a lot of flies in my room.

Things I did learn at the conference were:
Logistics
-- Never give people click-pens or else when they’re bored or trying to stay awake, all you hear is the clicking noise.
--The translation service was about a 5 out of 10 and the headsets really hurt your ears. And, because I was trying to listen to the French too, I think I lost even more of the content.
-- There was a photographer and a videographer and they were very intrusive, getting right up in your face and in your conversations to take pictures. Come on, use a zoom lens.
-- It started about 16:30 on Monday and ended 17:30 Friday. So Monday’s work day was horrible as you had to leave by about 14:00, and your Tuesday night is horrible. Why not leave at 8:00 Monday, have a morning welcome, then lunch, then speeches and dinner. Tuesday have more speeches, then lunch, end with a cheesy picture or something, and everyone can be back in town before too late?
-- They didn’t budget time well - things never started when they were listed on the agenda, speakers were rushed along, for some there was no Q&A time, etc. If you’re going to plan this, plan it well. And, there was no agenda other than speeches, coffee break, speeches, lunch, etc. – we had no idea the overall flow of information we were receiving, etc.

Participants / Purpose
-- The “experts” in the company are all middle aged white, French men.
-- A lot of the presentations were lacking substance – I felt it didn’t really address us as “one” group, nor did it explain well our operations, nor our “shared objectives.” It never became clear to me the purpose of the event, or how LNG is across the Branches, let alone in our Branche. I saw / learned no “common vision”.
-- If you want the “experts” of your company to come together to share skills, how is sitting in a darkened auditorium looking at PowerPoint slides the best way to do that?
-- The “big” actions launched by this committee thus far are publishing a list of members (employee list), organizing this meeting, and publishing an 8 page newsletter. That’s “big”?
-- If our working language is English for our Business Unit, why did our leader speak in French?
-- Wouldn’t the fact that no one was asking questions be an indication that something wasn’t going well? Usually there are questions when people are engaged, dead silence when bored.
-- Some of them have no idea how to summarize their responsibilities / job description in 15-seconds on less. You'd be surprised by the rambling.

Quotes
-- The mediator / announcer actually said ‘leaving the male world of seafarers now…entering the more female world of communications’ – this is 2008, right? Did I go back in time by traveling to Paris? To top it off, he continued by talking about the newsletter as a ‘newborn’ and other such baby analogies.
-- Someone actually said, or it was translated as such, that we should ‘capitalize on the fault lines’ – what? Take advantage of others’ distress?
-- One speaker would’ve made any speech professor proud by outlining his points, ‘I have 3 points on…’ but then he had 2 points, then 3, then 4, then 3…
-- ‘Size matters’ and, ironically ‘size doesn’t matter’
-- One presenter actually said ‘corporate culture is by no means a hurdle’ [to the success of a merger]. Really? Seriously?
-- It was an office bingo lovers paradise with enough buzz words to make your head spin – synergies, develop relationships, stakeholders, objectives, optimization, strategy, trends, scope, etc.

Well Miss Megativity, what were the highlights?
-- Remember those flies in my room? I literally killed 9 of them against the sliding glass door w/ my shoe and left the guts on the window and floor. I think that was what made me feel best all day Monday.
-- UIOLI = use it or lose it. That’s a good acronym, and fun to say.
-- We had little boxes w/ 7 buttons numbered in a circle w/ an “ok” button in the middle, to be used for interactive quizzes. The numbers were red and the ok was green. I literally found it therapeutic to press the numbers so they would light up (all would stay lit up) and then press the ok button – it would turn green and the numbers would turn off. I kept doing that over and over during the speeches. I felt like smiling and clapping at my success, much like my 17-month old niece would do.

I guess I should’ve just taken a ‘happy pill’ or ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ and put up with all of it, but I just can’t ‘turn on / turn off’ as some people can. For someone who is an ISTJ (Myers Briggs), this just wasn’t my thing. The “I” in me was being trampled on and the STJ part needed more structure. I think I was just tired and need of some “Megan time” since I hadn’t had that since last week.
-- Friday: went to work, took the train to Paris, getting in at 20:30 p.m., then met Julia, Gwen & Marissa for dinner. Away from ‘home’ (flat / hotel) from 6:00 to 23:00
-- Saturday was a day conference on ‘how to work in Paris’ that involved socializing and interacting with strangers from 9 to 5, from there Julia and I met Gwen & Marissa for dinner and drinks. Away from ‘home’ from 7:30 to 23:00
-- Sunday: went to church with Gwen, walked around and had lunch, then directly met Amy and walked around with her (to Monmartre), and then met Gwen for dinner with Amy. Away from ‘home’ from 8:00 to 21:00
-- Monday: met Gwen, Marissa, and Amy to take bus to work, then to conference. Away from ‘home’ from 7:00 to 00:30

See the trend – NO time to myself over the ‘weekend’ and I think it just really got to me. Anyway. Am hoping for the next three days to be ok in the office. And am looking forward to bell choir rehearsal Thursday night and playing in church (in Paris) Sunday.