while the bigger cat is away, the smaller cat took the mouse away

... and the mouse cant play.

It was a dinner with the team which I was not really looking forward to. If not only for the fact that the department just recently organized and that would be a chance for me to know who are going to be my teammates, I would not hesitate making an excuse not to join. Not that I’m even really interested on meeting the new members, but as a contract personnel and a gaijin at that, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to make myself be less ignorant of the ways in the office.

But the thought that the dinner is not exactly worth the while, is underestimating Small Cat’s* knack for making meetings like that worth-blogging.
(Small cat is our team manager who is not exactly small at all ;p)

At first, as there were new members new to the team (three are freshmeat)and the others because of the reorganization, everyone was asked to introduce themselves, say something about themselves. There’s even Q and A portion, mind you! (well it has to be imposed else no one would really take the effort of pretending that they were paying attention on what each one is saying). Though, there were bits of “revealing” details, like how one of the freshman just broke up with his girl… it was still not the thing that made the night ... sort of life changing for me, the little mouse.

Small cat started which I could only call now as “signing up the mouse”. I had the shortsightedness of seating beside him again!! Anyway, one of our conversation went on like this…..
Small cat: So are you busy?
Me the mouse: A bit, there’s still some work being done.
Small cat: Oh, I don’t think so.
Me the mouse: (Is he calling me a liar?). No, really. There’s some stuff on offsite.. yada.. yada..
Small cat: You see last month, I was requesting to take some people from your project to work on this proposal. But I was told Big Cat* just had some work cut out for you guys at the time. But I believe now, your project is in lull stage, that it would just get busy later this year.
(* Big Cat by the way is the department manager up until he joined our project at the beginning of this month. He’s now acting like the adviser of the project and I think of the department still.)
And you know this proposal is for 400 kbsd grassroots refinery (times three my present project), five hydrotreaters, etcetera..

And he went on how remarkable the project is. He really looked like a kid who’s talking about his chance to own the newest and coolest game console and well….one couldn’t help to be as enthusiastic as he is… and I just heard myself agreeing how challenging it must be!!
And so he went for the kill…

Small cat: I need lots of people for this proposal. So what do you think about working for this proposal? Interesting right?
Me the mouse: well yeah… (with more enthusiasm than i should have shown.. darn!)

So that was last Friday, and Monday morning, just sometime past 9, my project lead talked to me and let me know that I will be moving to that proposal project after a week. Big Cat by the way, is away and in Client’s office.

From not so busy life with my current project, I will be jumping in to another one where my only hope is at the end of the project, I get to keep my sanity! ;p