A week of looking inside my head - physically and metaphorically

As I looked back at the last week it occurred to me that amongst the normal ebb and flow of the days 2 things stood out - and both concerned looking inside my head.

On Tuesday I met an ENT consultant to look at the results of an MRI scan that I had a couple of weeks ago.  (A few years ago I had a couple of operations to remove a cholesteatoma from inside my right ear.  Not unsurprisingly I have been left with a residual tinitus in the ear which isn't a big problem but did get worse earlier this year.   The MRI scan was mainly a precaution to check whether there was any sign of the cholesteatoma regrowing.)  I'm pleased to say that the results came back without any evidence of return.  It was fascinating to be able to see the scans of the inside of my head even if the orientation was a bit difficult.  The image showed nose at the top but right ear was on left of screen - ie you need to imaging that you are standing at you feet looking up at a cross section through you head.  Lots of detail of bones inside the ear, brain etc and, as he moved the computer mouse to pass through the images, an alarming sudden appearance of my eye balls in brilliant white on the screen !!  There was some white stuff on the image inside my ear which is probably swelling due to a previous cold or other similar infection and should hopefully just sort itself out over time.  Consultant said there were 2 options ... A) leave it alone and it should hopefully settle down by itself or B) open the ear up again to have a look around inside.....  pleased to say that we both felt option A was the best.

In preparation for a workshop that I am attending later this month I had to complete a Hogan Test this week.  The test is designed to give some insights into my leadership strengths, risks around how I may behave under stress, my values etc.   I completed the lengthy questionaries and booked a 1 hour feedback session where the results would be explained to me.   I've done a number of these sorts of tests before and am always fascinated to see what the results come back as, and how what they say maps to my own self perception.  On Friday I had my call to discuss the results and was very fortunate to be assigned a lady who clearly had a lot of experience in administering and explaining the results of these tests.  We had a great discussion about what the results said about me and more broadly what sorts of things the survey can highlight.  I am going to be moving to a new role in IBM in October so this also gave an opportunity to think about how the profile identified by the test fitted with the likely needs of the new job.   I'm pleased to say that the fit between my profile and the new role look good - I thought it was a good fit when I accepted it but it's nice to see some validation of that choice in the data from the test.  Really looking forward to the workshop in a couple of weeks and learning more about the test and what it shows.

Downs Benefice Parish walk - Day 1 Minstead

Today was the first day of the Downs Benefice Walks - every 2 years the benefice runs a week long series of walks.  This year we have a series of 6 circular walks close(ish) to Winchester all with some literary theme.

Today's was an 11, or so, mile walk (at the end my pedometer said 27,158 steps which feel about right) starting and ending at Minstead.

We had a lovely day for the walk and at 9:30am an intrepid group of 16 walkers headed out from Minstead into the forest.


The walk was a lovely mix of tracks, road and open areas in the New Forest and we saw our fair share of ponies as well as some free roaming pigs.

After lunch we stopped in Brook at the Green Dragon pub for a quick beverage and to collect another group of people who would be joining us for the afternoon section of the walk.


Our numbers swelled we pressed on back through the forest to Minstead, stopping off at the village church to see Arthur Conan Doyle's grave and look round the lovely church.




The day finished with an ice cream at the suddenly very busy village shop.

Few photos from the day in a set on flickr - here

New Wine - Local churches changing nations

Our home for the week 

Looking down from our pitch on Brown 4

We spent last week at New Wine's Summer Conference "Unstoppable" which was held, as usual, at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet. This was our 9th year attending but the first time that we were the only people from our church who were camping. Christ Church Winchester had around 250 people camping and were happy for us to join them up on Brown 4.   Thank you Christ Church for the BBQ, Cheese and Wine evening, Hog Roast and afternoon Cream Tea - me thinks we may well look to camp with you again in the future ....

Each year we enjoy the worship, hear great teaching, and spend time with friends on the campsite. The girls enjoy the freedom of taking themselves off to their sessions and activities during the day (this year Alice was in "Boulder Gang" and Helen was in "Club One"). No matter how many times I go the scale of the event always impresses - for example Boulder Gang is for just for children aged 10 or 11 but they still have around 500 children attending !

Numbers for dinner swelled by day visitors

Though we were the only ones from our church camping for the week we did also have one person staying in a nearby B&B who joined us on site each day and were delighted to have friends visit for a day during the week.

Among the many highlights for me this year a few were ...

• Simon Ponsonby's great teaching in the morning bible study sessions in Venue 1.  He was supposed to be looking at 5 parables from Matthew 13.  However after 3 insightful sessions he decided that the other 2 he'd prepared weren't as interesting so changed tack and instead gave us a session on love based around John 21v15 and a talk on Joshua 3 v5.
• An interesting explanation of the famous "turn the other cheek" passage suggesting that, when taken in the context of the time it was written, this is actually an example of taking an effective non violent stand against injustice.
• Mark Griffiths telling the story of the "The Happy Prince" at the All-Age Celebration, having a "reverse collection" (a bucket passed from person to person and rather than putting money in you take out a small gold coloured disc), and being challenged to perform an act of kindness over the next 4 weeks that costs us something, in time, emotion or money, but which has no chance of being repaid.
• Hearing of the inspiring work of the Street Pastors - volunteers who spend time on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights (10pm - 4am) being with and helping the people who are out at that time - largely club//pub goers.
• Browsing the marketplace and talking to people about the HoverAid charity and the work that it does reaching the otherwise unreachable in Madagascar 
• Hearing Adrian Plass talk in the ToyBox Cafe - a wonderful mixture of the amusing and the serious.  Including why Joseph is the character in the bible who best understands inner wholeness, why having a note of the names of the mid 90's Sri Lankan cricket team tucked away inside your bible could prove useful, and the importance of not trying to navigate further than Milton Keynes before you are married, 
• Mark Melluish (following Simon Ponsonby's lead) and abandoning his planned talk for the final evening and instead talking about Love.  Based around the story of Bartimaeus he talked about the importance of being interruptable, ready to stop, listen, pray and make room for others in our busy lives.

When we collected the car from the car park at the end of the week it was covered in dust - just what you want after a week's camping as it only happens if there was no rain to wash it off :-)   We've had wet weeks at New Wine in the past and dry weeks and I have to say that, whilst both are fun, the dry ones are better.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in running this year's conference and I pray that the people attending this week will be similarly blessed as were those there last week.

Weekend of dance

A busy weekend draws to a close. Friday saw us heading up to Durham for my mum's birthday party on Saturday. It was great to catch up with family at the party and over the weekend. She had booked a band for the evening and we had a great time doing lots of English Folk dances and watching the Irish Set Dancers in our midst perform some figures - now we just need the time to process the videos in iMovie.

This morning we headed back down south - thankfully we had a clear run with no real holdups along the way so we made it back to Winchester in time for Platform School of Dance's annual show.

Alice did a Rock & Roll number and a Mambo with her Saturday Latin class and I did a Jive with the rest of the Tuesday evening adult Latin group - more videos in need of attention. This was quite possibly my first time dancing on stage - only time will tell if it will also be the last..... I have a sneaking suspicion that having got us to do one this year the pressure will be on to do so again in next year's show.

Brag!

Over almost 12 years in a range of Management roles at IBM I have taken part in a lot of annual appraisal meetings, interviews, 1-1s, career discussions etc in which I have heard people talk about what they have done.

I'd noticed of course that some people seemed to be better at communicating what they had been up to than others. People's reputations also varied hugely, and not always in line with what I thought I could see of their work.

In a chance conversation with one of my US colleagues over coffee one day he recommended I read Peggy Klaus' book "Brag! The art of tooting your own horn without blowing it."

I did and found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking read that gave me an insight into what I had observed in all those meetings.

Today I got to give a talk at work based on some of the ideas from the book plus some thoughts of mine relating to our particular work environment.

I get a real buzz out of doing presentations like this on topics that interest me and where there are often no clear right or wrong answers. My audience obliged with lots of questions and discussion and the materials that I had prepared proved to be a good fit for the allotted time.

If you are looking for ideas and advice on how to ensure that you are effectively communicating your achievements and desires for the future then I really recommend Peggy's book to you.

Feeding my CV into Wordle

As a way of seeing what my CV says about me I thought it might be interesting to feed it into Wordle (wordle.net) and see what happened. Well here's the result....




After nearly 22 years in software development it's no surprise that they come through.  I do like the way that some of the words have fallen to create things like "responsible technical manager" and "worldwide career".  Leadership and innovation don't seem to quite have the prominence I would have expected so perhaps I need to go tweak the CV a bit in those areas.

Gadget Show Live

Last week the girls and I went up to the NEC to attend Gadget Show Live. We had a great time. We arrived late morning, spent a few hours looking round the exhibits and finished up by attending the 4pm Live Show.

There was so much to see - for us a few highlights were ...

3D - masses of technology around this space. We tried on different sorts of glasses some projecting images in front of our eyes and some used in conjunction with a screen. Our favorite was the 3D TV, viewed normally it was a fuzzy looking image but put the supplied glasses on and WOW the image really came to life. Rugby ball appearing to fly out of the screen certainly made people jump :-)

Old tech - lots of chance to play with some tech from the 70's and up to current day. Great to be able to show the girls some of the early games machines and just how blocky the early games were.

The live show was good fun - chance to see the presenters "in the flesh" and also a range of other items. We especially liked the flying penguins, Titan the robot and the amazing dance/light routine. To get a flavour of it here's a video someone recorded of the dancers and from there you can navigate to their videos of Titan and then the Penguins. At the start of the live show the presenter said words to the effect of..... "you will have noticed that your tickets say no photography or recording of the show..... how crazy is that, this is the gadget show.... record, photograph, post it, live stream it to the internet - we don't care" :-)

After the live show it was time to head back to the car in the depths of the N5 car park and drive home.

So ... did we leave the show laden with tech? Well I bought a Winkku mirror for my bike. Alice tried to buy a Vectron Wave from Air Hogs but sadly they aren't for sale in the UK until July :-(
Helen used the show as a chance to check out the wide range of remote control helicopters on sale and will probably get one of those after a bit more online research. Taking out a trial subscription to T3 magazine also got me a small speaker to go with my iPod.