performance measurement & book review
I'm revising today. And tomorrow. And every day thereafter until I finish my exams, as it turns out. The last one is on 11th June, and then I get a nice long break until I (hopefully) return to college in September to start prepping for my finals. I say 'hopefully', because I need to have passed everything to take my finals, so if I fail either of these two - decison-making module, v. scary, and government policy module, v. tedious - I've got to retake in December - and then do my finals in June. Bah.
I've got one chapter left of the decision-making module to read (cost management, part 3), and then notes to write on that & four and a half other chapters. They're a bit weird, because they're all about performance measurement in various forms, so we have benchmarking, performance indicators, balanced scorecard model, business excellence model, etc. I've finished all the maths & investment banking chapters already, and the methods have already faded.
The plan for this bank holiday weekend, then, is:
Accounting for Decision-Making
- read Cost Management III
- write up notes on Cost Management I - III
- write up notes on Non-financial measures of performance
- write up notes on Financial measures of performance
- Consolidate notes on decison-making process models
- Consolidate notes on investment appraisal models
Government & Public Policy
- Consolidate notes on the civil service & their relationships to government ministers
- Consolidate notes on the Houses of Parliament
- Consolidate notes on policy making contexts - macroeconomics, past models, policy cycles
- Consolidate notes on Constitutional change
Meeples! That's quite a bit...
I've got to do all of the above because the last week was spent commuting to the other end of fricking nowhere. Greenwich, it appears, is made entirely out of building sites. Seriously, wherever you turn there's a little plaque that tells you what fantastic place of fabulousness they're building there. They'd need t, frankly, as it's currently mainly fields and military complexes (i.e. Arsenal or The Arsenal - do we capitalise these things?). It did mean that I was nearly late on Friday, though, because my bus to work (the journey to work goes: walk, tube, train, bus, walk) was held up by a parade of horsies being taken up the main road. I have no idea why. But they were pretty horsies!!
That last client was v. high pressured, v. high complexity, v. high volume of work. I was worried that I wasn't getting everything done according to the task plan, but it turns out that the task plan was put together by someone with no idea of the complexity involved, and my supervisor on site said that she was very impressed. Which is good. My confidence re: work took a serious knock about a month or so ago, and it's been struggle to rebuild. There wasn't anything that happened to make it fall, really, it just sorta did. I'm still not really involved or enthused, but having people massage your ego occasionally does help with the motivation.
Anyway, given that I had 2 - 2.5 hours there and 1.5 - 2 hours back travel time each day, I got a lot of reading done.
As Meat Loves Salt
by Maria McGann
page count: 532 pages
Jacob's impending nuptials to the lovely Caro are disturbed by the discovery of a body in his master's nearby pond: young Christopher Walshe was murdered, it seems. Another servant, Patience, has disappeared, presumed pregnant & absconded for the shame of it. Jacob is a god-fearing lad, and will not sleep with his betrothed before the wedding, although this pains him greatly. he respects her too much, you see. He had no respect for Patience's lost virtue - lost to his brother, Zeb - for Walshe's ways or for his own master's drunkenness. He longs for Cromwell's revolution to be sucessful. It is 1646, and Jacob is to be married to Caro shortly.
During the wedding, though, several things become clear. One, it was Jacob who killed Walshe, and because of a burst of anger, not for self-defence as he initially claimed. Two, Patience may not have absconded, but gone to tell Walshe's father of the murder, and to claim the servants of the household traitors and followers of Cromwell. Three, Jacob is not a nice man.
Jacob is a god-fearing young man. He fears god when he mistreats his wife to the point of her leaving, when he beats his brother to the point of said brother accusing him of incestuous thoughts, when he joins the Roundhead army (by accident) and becomes fixated on the comely Christopher Ferris. Jacob does not believe that he will be forgiven for his sins... but this soon falls by the wayside. He's not a nice man. He feels himself insulted, disrespected, and uses his immense strength and size to beat and kill other people. He feels no remorse for raping Caro, as she was his wife at the time. He feels no remorse for driving Ferris's other friends away, thinking that, as he himself only has Ferris as a friend, it is permissible. In short, he's either seriously disturbed - or the makings of a monster.
Jacob follows Ferris into and back out of the army, to London, to a proposed new settlement. This is a long, meaty book, and it's main theme is of love - excessive, drowning, obsessive love, that closes over the heads of the characters one by one. Jacob's love for Ferris, once it is consummated, eats away at them both, and they quickly fall to using sex as a weapon against each other. By the end, you understand everything each of the main characters is feeling, but are no less repulsed by their choices for it. I strongly suspect that it will have a sequel, as Jacob's story feels far from over by the time you reach the last pages. This is Maria McGann's first book, and I eagerly await her next offering.
Overall verdict? Clever, insightful and engaging.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
pages: 115 pages
This is the story of a second-rate reporter who, upon reaching 90, falls in love with a 14 year old virginal whore-to-be - and his life changes completely. Memories is a celebration of sexuality, whatever the age, and was a gloriously refreshing read of a man growing old less-than-gracefully, and being all the happier for it. I have never read any of Garcia Marquez's work, but if it's all as lush and thoughtful as this, his reputation is well-deserved.
I've got one chapter left of the decision-making module to read (cost management, part 3), and then notes to write on that & four and a half other chapters. They're a bit weird, because they're all about performance measurement in various forms, so we have benchmarking, performance indicators, balanced scorecard model, business excellence model, etc. I've finished all the maths & investment banking chapters already, and the methods have already faded.
The plan for this bank holiday weekend, then, is:
Accounting for Decision-Making
- read Cost Management III
- write up notes on Cost Management I - III
- write up notes on Non-financial measures of performance
- write up notes on Financial measures of performance
- Consolidate notes on decison-making process models
- Consolidate notes on investment appraisal models
Government & Public Policy
- Consolidate notes on the civil service & their relationships to government ministers
- Consolidate notes on the Houses of Parliament
- Consolidate notes on policy making contexts - macroeconomics, past models, policy cycles
- Consolidate notes on Constitutional change
Meeples! That's quite a bit...
I've got to do all of the above because the last week was spent commuting to the other end of fricking nowhere. Greenwich, it appears, is made entirely out of building sites. Seriously, wherever you turn there's a little plaque that tells you what fantastic place of fabulousness they're building there. They'd need t, frankly, as it's currently mainly fields and military complexes (i.e. Arsenal or The Arsenal - do we capitalise these things?). It did mean that I was nearly late on Friday, though, because my bus to work (the journey to work goes: walk, tube, train, bus, walk) was held up by a parade of horsies being taken up the main road. I have no idea why. But they were pretty horsies!!
That last client was v. high pressured, v. high complexity, v. high volume of work. I was worried that I wasn't getting everything done according to the task plan, but it turns out that the task plan was put together by someone with no idea of the complexity involved, and my supervisor on site said that she was very impressed. Which is good. My confidence re: work took a serious knock about a month or so ago, and it's been struggle to rebuild. There wasn't anything that happened to make it fall, really, it just sorta did. I'm still not really involved or enthused, but having people massage your ego occasionally does help with the motivation.
Anyway, given that I had 2 - 2.5 hours there and 1.5 - 2 hours back travel time each day, I got a lot of reading done.
As Meat Loves Salt
by Maria McGann
page count: 532 pages
Jacob's impending nuptials to the lovely Caro are disturbed by the discovery of a body in his master's nearby pond: young Christopher Walshe was murdered, it seems. Another servant, Patience, has disappeared, presumed pregnant & absconded for the shame of it. Jacob is a god-fearing lad, and will not sleep with his betrothed before the wedding, although this pains him greatly. he respects her too much, you see. He had no respect for Patience's lost virtue - lost to his brother, Zeb - for Walshe's ways or for his own master's drunkenness. He longs for Cromwell's revolution to be sucessful. It is 1646, and Jacob is to be married to Caro shortly.
During the wedding, though, several things become clear. One, it was Jacob who killed Walshe, and because of a burst of anger, not for self-defence as he initially claimed. Two, Patience may not have absconded, but gone to tell Walshe's father of the murder, and to claim the servants of the household traitors and followers of Cromwell. Three, Jacob is not a nice man.
Jacob is a god-fearing young man. He fears god when he mistreats his wife to the point of her leaving, when he beats his brother to the point of said brother accusing him of incestuous thoughts, when he joins the Roundhead army (by accident) and becomes fixated on the comely Christopher Ferris. Jacob does not believe that he will be forgiven for his sins... but this soon falls by the wayside. He's not a nice man. He feels himself insulted, disrespected, and uses his immense strength and size to beat and kill other people. He feels no remorse for raping Caro, as she was his wife at the time. He feels no remorse for driving Ferris's other friends away, thinking that, as he himself only has Ferris as a friend, it is permissible. In short, he's either seriously disturbed - or the makings of a monster.
Jacob follows Ferris into and back out of the army, to London, to a proposed new settlement. This is a long, meaty book, and it's main theme is of love - excessive, drowning, obsessive love, that closes over the heads of the characters one by one. Jacob's love for Ferris, once it is consummated, eats away at them both, and they quickly fall to using sex as a weapon against each other. By the end, you understand everything each of the main characters is feeling, but are no less repulsed by their choices for it. I strongly suspect that it will have a sequel, as Jacob's story feels far from over by the time you reach the last pages. This is Maria McGann's first book, and I eagerly await her next offering.
Overall verdict? Clever, insightful and engaging.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
pages: 115 pages
This is the story of a second-rate reporter who, upon reaching 90, falls in love with a 14 year old virginal whore-to-be - and his life changes completely. Memories is a celebration of sexuality, whatever the age, and was a gloriously refreshing read of a man growing old less-than-gracefully, and being all the happier for it. I have never read any of Garcia Marquez's work, but if it's all as lush and thoughtful as this, his reputation is well-deserved.