Things I learned during work experience.

So, after a week going up to the office in Birmingham every day to discover the world of quantity surveying I have now made this scintillating list of observations of the construction industry, working life and council flats. Enjoy.

1) Office hours of 9-5:30 is too long. If they were shorter I’m sure that people would actually do the same amount of work, they would just find ways of doing everything faster, as most of the time an awful lot of people were just making tea or chatting.  If people knew they could get home earlier if they did more work people would be more inefficient, so would have more freetime, so would be happier at work, so encouraged to work even harder.

2) Builder’s do no work on a Friday afternoon. I went to one site where about 15 builders were outside having a fag for over 30 minutes.

3) Renovating council flats is an expensive business. I saw one flat block which had had over £1 million pounds spent on it and I couldn’t see a thing that was different except new windows. And they say the government wastes its money…

4)The world has gone health and safety mad. In order for me to be allowed to go to a finished construction site, where all the reisdents were still living, I needed to wear a hi-vis jacket and hard hat. It seemed a little pointless as all these chavs were pointing and laughing as they didn’t need to wear them. It seemed less stupid the next day when I was actually on a building site and got to go up on the roof (there’s a pretty good view up there :)) but then I needed safety boots as well. With my skirt suit that really is a very good look.

5)I can’t really think of any more stuff to go on this list without getting really silly, so I shall quite while I’m ahead. Bye people.

13 things I learnt in Scotland

Well I’ve just got back from my delightful holiday with my parents in sunny old Scotland and heres a short/long (I don’t know yet, I haven’t written it) list of stuff.

1) There’s a reason people go to Spain or Greece or anywhere abroad for their holiday. It’s actually sunny. In the UK it is not.

2) Scottish people are ugly, rude, fat and gender-confused. Oh sorry, and arrogant. (I apologise to any Scots that don’t fit this stereotype, but in two weeks I did not see a single hot guy except one who wasn’t too bad, but then turned out to be a woman with a stubbly beard, and as for service in some of the restuarants I  won’t go into it)Also, on the fat note, Scotland is one of the only places in the world you can buy a deep-fried mars bar. Need I say more?

3)German people are also rude and even more arrogant. Again I apologise to any non rude Germans I’m just speaking from the ones we saw on this holiday. Also, people from the Netherlands are bad drivers. Well, the people there were… so although I know this is almost certainly a massive over-generalisation, I will leave it in anyway, because I jolly well want to.

4) I am still amused very easily by slight innuendos, even with my parents not getting them. For example I laughed quite a lot at the ‘Cockburns solicitors’ in the small Highland town of Forres.

5) On the same innuendos note there are a lot of bird names that are quite amusing. This holiday, as my mum has got into birdwatching we have seen Tits, Shags, Thrushes and the Himalayan Snowcock.

6) Iif you are walking through a wood wearing a swimming costume and bare feet and carrying a full size canoe you get some funny looks as well as sore feet.

7)Real Italian food is not as nice as pizza hut. At least not at the ‘real imported Italian ingredients’ resturant we went to.

8)As much as I complain about the rubbish and constant repeats on digital tv, you still miss it when theres only 4 channels and then even more when BBC1 starts breaking.

9)You can buy t-shirts that say ‘Eejit’ on them. And they were 70% off. I started wondering who had a birthday coming up…

10)My bike is crap. Especially the brakes. And when you then borrow a bike with amazing brakes you will throw yourself off  and land in a conveniently placed muddy puddle if you don’t realize and slam them down like you would on your old bike.

11)Whenever you’re waiting for something (internet cafe, phone box etc) people always take much longer when they know you’re waiting for it. At least Scots do.

12) It’s hard to find shoelaces in the Glenmore 24 gift shop that don’t say ‘cool girl’ or ‘bad boy’ on them.  Next time, try to make sure your laces break when you’re in a big town, rather than in a visitor centre which just has a gift shop, a  cafe that only seems to sell mini milks, and one of the most hilarious videos I have ever seen where the sound doesn’t match up with the people’s mouths moving.

13) My family drives slowly. Or other people drive quickly. On the way home I thought we were travelling at the speed limits on the motorway but we still got overtaken by a pick-up truck, 2 VW campervans, a smart car, a toyota prius, a transit van and a caravan, amongst others.

Well there we go. I hope that was enlightening. Or at least didn’t bore you to death.