Working from Home

Six inches of snow fell overnight and we are expecting more snow later. Heathrow airport is closed and all London buses have been withdrawn. Train companies are advising passengers(me) not to travel as they can't guarantee they can get you home, even if you can get where you need to go in the first place. The BBC says it's the "worst snow" in 18 years but it's the best i have seen !

As I waited for my notebook to boot up, the corporate signage went up outside to say I was working from home... not playing in the snow.

Right, I am ready... time to think about work. Let's see... at my proper office, we will soon be returning the 4 large cactus we have hired for the last 7 years, saving us £550 per annum. There is one sitting on the landing of each floor. Returning them makes sense - we cut costs in the current economic downturn and eliminate the miles travelled by our supplier when they come to water their plants.

Right, it must be about time to eat. There is so much I need to get through today that I won't have time for anything too fancy. A peanut butter and jam sandwich will have to do.

I don't usually work from home though I have heard many complaints about how distracted you can get when you do. Staying away from the shops, I hear, can be a problem. My solution is to think about all that snow outside and focus your thoughts on the tropical warmth of your house.

Monty Don wasnt impressed when he visited the garden city during the filming of Around the World in 80 Gardens.

My favourite garden presenter (who AA Gills says "looks good in a vase") thought it was too man-made for his tastes. I was quite excited to be in Singapore last December to see the greenery and architecture, and also to experience the novelty of seeing something that was broken in this super-efficient city. The Singapore Flyer is a ferriswheel 30m taller than the London Eye. It stopped working before Christmas and was being fixed when I was there. I hear the Flyer is now turning again, just as the London Eye has to close because of adverse weather.

Back to work 80 gardens, Monty concluded that

...for a garden to have meaning, it must have context. Context is everything. To understand a garden properly, you must understand where it came from - the people, the language, the climate, the geology, the mythology. Everything about the people who made it and run it will tell you about the garden. And that's what I have taken away with me - that gardens are not about plants at all, they are about people.

Hmm... I actually loved how Singapore looks like one big corporate plot ! In that context, i think it works really well. The idea of a "city is a garden" came from Lee Kuan Yew, the "leader who worked on the concept first hand and provided unconditional support to make the concept work"(ref). According to the same paper, when Singapore attained the economic success Lee was after, "he began working harder to make the garden city possible". Did he step down as Prime Minister for this noble pursuit ? To learn more about Singapore's Prime Gardener, you can watch Seelay Palays' banned film here. A word of caution : this film contains no scenes of a gardening nature.

It is getting too warm inside, I ought to go outside to stretch my imagination legs and get some fresh air. Wonder if Dee's done with that wedding cake ? Hey, it's Emmo's ... on Friday, I must make her something - Happy Birthday Emmo !

The Chinese Premier is on a visit to the UK after telling governments and bankers off at Davos. It doesn't help that he is in town now and Gordon Brown had to apologise for being late this morning because of the snow. There is more snow expected this afternoon, let's hope Putin doesnt decide to drop in too. He's already condemned our "low quality regulation", imagine what he will say about our broken transport system. Maybe I neednt worry, Heathrow is closed.

And now i must work till midnight !

picture credits
London Eye from bbc.co.uk