A day in a life

Read this first if you're thinking of working in IT/management consultancy.

0630 am Alarm goes off;
0640 am Alarm goes off a second time;
0700 am Wake up with the BBC Worldservice news;
0723 am True to the patented JIT ironing system (Just In Time) I quickly iron what I'm going to wear today;
0730 am Jump in my car, hook up the mobile phone, drive to work, make plans for the day, have breakfast, check out chauffeur-driven cars and wonder what side of the car I'd sit on if I were them (right hand side seems to be the side of choice);
0900 am Although the drive can be done in an hour, I never make it in hour (except on Friday morning);
0901 am Now the day really starts, I have to make a choice, light-coloured dishwater or darker-coloured dishwater, although the choice on the machine reads 'tea' and 'coffee'...
0930 am Just spent the last half hour checking my email, phoning a number of colleagues (that's the beauty of the project work I do, my colleagues are scattered all over the country), when the first 'emergency' of the day comes in and life gets hectic;
1130 am Emergency solved, more email from colleagues and clients, more phonecalls from clients, quickly send my boss the latest status, make sure the temp still has work, prepare the 1 pm meeting;
1205 pm Stroll to the canteen and decide if the soup looks appetizing enough to eat (usually it doesn't);
1230 pm Help a colleague do some lastminute stuff he needs to do;
0100 pm Help the same colleague carry truckloads of files to his car and at the same time meet my one o'clock;
0400 pm It was a productive meeting, but whilst the client can go home, I now have to do all the paperwork. Mind you, little of what was on my regular to do list today has been accomplished due to the emergency this morning. I try and do as much a possible from to do list, and make sure that everyone knows what they need to do for the next two days (I've got two days off);
0553 pm My brother calls, we chat for a bit and then I decide to call it a day for today;
0559 pm Say goodbye to the guys from a big IT/mngmt consultancy who share the building with us and NEVER leave before 8;
0600 pm Bugger. Just realised that I left too late or too early, at 0630 pm the bridge I have to cross opens for 10 minutes which always causes a huge traffic jam. Ah well, that'll give me extra time to phone some colleagues to talk about the day, and I still need to return some personal calls;
0745 pm Home. Cook. Hang up laundry. Water my balcony flowers. Eat. Blog. Read. Sleep.
All in all a pretty laidback day today: only one meeting which was on site, projectmanager wasn't on site, and I didn't have to do overtime. I wish every day was like this ;-)

So, what do we learn from this?
a) I should get up earlier in order to avoid traffic
b) As a consultant, your workday doesn't really start until the client goes home
c) If you're not careful, you're still there at un-decent hours, the work can really suck you in but is never ever done
d) If in doubt, pick 'tea', it's usually marginally better than 'coffee'....