“Don’t worry, don’t worry”, said the lady as she mopped the table.

The Thai restaurant had become our new choice for lunch. It won as it was different food and a single helping. We all seem to be piling on weight from the eat as much as you like buffet up the road at Peter’s Palace.

We’d lunched well and were enjoying sitting and resting before the flurry of activity heading towards in the afternoon session when I knocked over and broke a glass and Nick managed to tip over the vase, spilling the water all over my trousers. Like Thai people all over the world the smile appeared, the voice was calming and the concern was more for the fat falang than the cost of the broken glasses.

Calmness and smiles was something we have been missing all week as we’ve struggled with project plans. I’m a little out of my depth, rusty as I am from years of not using Project, and taking my time to get used to resource levelling and critical paths. Luckily I had worked out early on how to aggregate the nine plans we have to do into one overall plan and then present only a subset of information for the management plan.

Yet, despite that early success there was a lot of work left to do and after that we had to present them and get everyone’s agreement to use them. This week is already turning out to be a long one.

“See you tomorrow”, the lady smiled as we left, looking like some sheepish schoolboys, and we all knew that we would be back but hopefully better behaved.