I brought some stale sugar back from my holidays

I left work today wondering if anyone had decided enough was enough and decided to take the short route beside the spiral staircase, over the rails and down into reception. Yeah, still not enjoying this job thing too much.

It was the same though last time I started a new office job for the UN in Valencia. The boys were all talking in Spanish, and I'd been told to work through a bunch of guides and tutorials. It was September in Spain too, much more humid though and the mat flooring in what they called 'the chicken shed', didn't really work that well with the wheeled chairs we had been given - no slight adjustments were possible, and either you smacked your leg against the desk or you didn't.

In time though, around a day, the guys in Valencia soon realised my Spanish was no bueno, which in English means almost non-existent, and so they chose to chat a little more in English so I could at least try to get involved in the humor and feel a bit more welcome. Here in England though, I find myself wishing I was a foreigner who didn't understand a word.

This is it, next week I'm going on a diet

Said the smiley lady at the other end of the desk whilst opening the fifth weird looking cake someone has brought back from a recent holiday. A guy turned round and replied;

I've been sitting behind you for 5 years and I've heard you say that hundreds of times

And a conversation begin around cakes, chocolate, holidays, and sunshine, all of which I have no interest in at present having just returned from the sunshine where cakes were aplenty.

If you hear me slating an 'Ash', I'm not talking about you I'm talking about my boyfriend

Said the girl who sits next to me as she returned from a natter with a colleague close by. I think I have heard 'my' name 10 times today - which would be an annoying break of concentration if I was actually doing any work.

Dieting, make-up, chocolate, cheap jeans from eBay, and when the ladies aren't talking, pretty much silence. I'm hoping that somewhere in the open plan office of around 100 people, there is a pocket of people who put the phone down with a 'prick' and v-signs, or tap the mouse on the desk like they want to crush it, or have formed a Whatsapp group where poor taste jokes and images are frequently shared. I'll need to find these people to keep my sanity.

At present, I'm still going through the 80+ courses, manuals, and policy documents each new starter must complete before starting their job. I need access to a bunch of systems, on premise and elsewhere, and received an update on one request today stating it would be a week on Monday before that was granted. Policy and procedure mad these lot, which I understand to a point considering the industry, but damn, it is a slow and boring start.

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It seems though that I will receive my first paycheck at the end of the month, and I'm holding on to that thought a lot each day to help get me through. Most of it is already allocated, but that hasn't stopped me wondering how much STEEM I could get my hands on at the current price of around 15/16 cents - a lot more than writing a couple of posts and curating, and that's with consideration of how lucky I feel I've been with #newsteem's arrival.

Today it is looking likely that I will pass 10 SP in curation, easily double that what has been showing up on Steemworld for the past few months, and the larger accounts must be feeling pretty good about the hundreds of SP that will be appearing in their accounts daily, just for supporting content they like.

Well, most of the larger accounts. Those who haven't adapted to the new ways of Steem, like our favourite chart guy, aren't doing so well - my curation rewards for the past 7 days likely to surpass his. Bizarre that a new approach hasn't been taken yet, although most of 1.5 million SP worth of votes back into the pool each week is pretty good for everyone else.

Work is definitely cutting into my time for Steem, but the current market conditions give me little choice. I've earned above the norm for my SP range though, and so cannot complain and will hopefully just buy my way up!

On the plus side of life, I have been seeing my daughter much more and I'm going to end this post with a selfie taken last weekend, that a dog managed to photo-bomb. Thirteen and a half she is now, and I wonder if STEEM will cover some University costs when the time comes.

Two days to go until the weekend :D

Ash