All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy

All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work an no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy. All work and no play makes Magnus a very dull boy.

An old Queen song that’s been on my mind a lot lately goes something like this: “It's finally happened... it's finally happened... it's finally happened... I'm slightly mad...”

Now looking back, how did I get to this point?

Working 18 hour days seven days a week is not quite enough to drive a man insane.
Close, but won't get the job done alone.

Not seeing your own home for three weeks because you were working on weekends in Cairo - while knowing that home isn't really a 'home' yet, because you've yet to buy a bed and finish unpacking your boxes - will help too.

The new fancy elevator systems that are all over Cairo could come close to doing the job by themselves. They are unbelievably frustrating. It's like someone decided "I know, let's reinvent the wheel - only this time, we'll make it square!"

The concept is that instead of just pushing 'up' or 'down', you enter the number of your floor before you get on the elevator - there are no buttons inside. The computer then calculates the most efficient way of getting everyone to whatever floor it is they need to get to. Sounds great. Except they forgot to mention that they're not trying to be efficient as in getting people from one floor to the next as quick as possible, but rather they're trying to save as much energy as they can.
So they'll send the same elevator up through all the different floors, filling it with about 20 people, which inevitably will lead to stopping on every floor. This in turn makes waiting take forever - want to get the elevator on the 17th floor? Not a problem - elevator C is already on its way (after it makes the other 13 stops).
The system also makes some very questionable decisions - you see elevator B heading up, but don't jump in because you have to push the button before getting in. The door closes and heads away, and two seconds later the display proudly tells you that you should use elevator B, when I know for a fact that it's going to have to travel to the 13th floor and back before taking me up, so it can't possibly be the best option. Finally, while people wait and start to get frustrated, they'll start pushing the buttons again. If you do this enough times, the system starts to think that a lot of people must need to go to the fourth floor, and rerouts a second elevator to you - which frequently arrives before the first. The problem is, everybody knows you can override the system this way, so people press the button over and over again, which causes the system to have a nervous breakdown (“Stop pushing the buttons, too much pressure, I can’t take it anymore”) – i.e. crash - and nobody moves anywhere. This happens repeatedly at the beginning and the end of every working day. I just manage to catch both system crashes, because I’m usually only getting done with my meetings (the practical alternative to work) at five or six in the afternoon, at which point I have to go back to the office to do some actual work.

Enter the nighttime construction workers on the floor below. These guys are seemingly aiming to be the first people in about 100 years to build a floor in a skyscraper with hammers. Seriously, not that I have any clue, but don't people use cement and stuff nowadays? What could possibly possess you to take a hammer to the third floor ceiling for six hours, starting at 6pm every day for two months and counting? Is there a scientist watching how much it'll take before I finally lose it? The only way to block it out is by lifting my feet off the floor and putting some select mood music on my iPod… which lately has prominently featured Rage Against the Machine. Unfortunately, this makes it rather difficult to write my presentations with my habitual diplomatic touch .

So. I’ve now been in Cairo in between the client, the office, and the hotel for three weeks – without going back home. To break things up, on the weekends I move to a nicer hotel with a view of the Nile… and continue working. On Saturday I heard that the big deadline I had been working towards on Monday had been pushed back to Thursday – and that I should take my first afternoon off in a long while. What a relief. I headed to the pool, swam a few laps (and nearly drowned from sheer exhaustion), stepped out and ordered something called a Scorpion and was about as deadly as it sounds. I finished it, then went to the Spa and booked myself a massage that evening, headed back to the pool, and ordered myself a meal and a beer. Just then I got the next call, 90 minutes after the first – false alarm, the deadline is back on for Monday. Beer gets replaced with a diet coke, and the meal gets rerouted through room service as I march back to my room. I also hear that my boss will be calling me from Istanbul when his connecting flight lands. In a depressingly minor act of corporate rebellion, I decide to get my massage anyway – and probably become the first person in the history of the Spa at the Nile Plaza Four Seasons to ever carry a laptop, a notebook and a phone into the massage room and brief the masseuse about potentially having to take a call half way through. About the least relaxing massage I’ve ever had… but at least the call didn’t come till later that evening.

This has been a serious rambling session. My deadline is done, and I am officially claiming the right to a life again. I’m flying back to Dubai tomorrow for a three day weekend… and will continue working on establishing a life.