Down down down and Twitter

TRAINING
This couple of weeks has been all downhill.

The downhill grade was initially quite gentle, but as time wore on it became steeper until finally I fell off the edge of the cliff. The signs: a tummy bug, a sore throat, fatigue and irritability. The cure: sleep, sleep, sleep.

So no State Champs for me this weekend. This is not the first time I've dipped out of the States..I'll be getting/have got a name for it. The trigger is doing the high end training while simultaneously being very very busy/stressed at work. Just too overwhelmed with ( in no special order) annoying colleagues, accreditation, TRAC and more cultural change (interesting and exciting but also tiring). Picking Phil up at the airport at 11pm on Wednesday didn't help either.

So gentle or no training at all this weekend..and instead reduce next week's stress by using the time to create the next TRAC newsletter and my accreditation power point presentation.


TWITTER
At a talk I gave to about 50 colleagues this week I mentioned Twitter and drew a total blank..I had to try and explain it from a very low knowledge base. So much for its global takeover...it might have taken a proportion of the population by the storm, but there are clearly alot of people out there who either can't or don't feel the need to get involved

In today's Age weekend magazine there is a 2 page article on Twitter indicating the amount of followers some people have eg Stephen Fry has 252,681 followers, Lance Armstrong has 213,970. I have seven, although they wont much to read from me!

This same article also mentioned that when the plane hit the Hudson River a while back, it was instantaneously on Twitter whereas it took 15 minutes before the New York times had it on its website.

Obviously there are many who can and do use their mobile anywhere, anytime but I work in a service industry (hospital) where mobile phones are not allowed to be a part of our working day. Naturally there will be many others who are in a similar position..people working in shops, hotels, teachers, factories etc etc.

There are times when I would love to be at the leading edge, hearing the gossip and the news as it happens, but they are rare (fire and earthquakes come to mind!) but while I work where I do I will just have to be towards the end of the gossip/news queue.

A thought: Is Twitter a symbol of the Y gen "I want it NOW" attitude?