strange

My female owner has just gotten into gear one for her second semester (i.e. just starting doing work) when she experienced a spate of strange happenings today. Firstly, she woke up with less voice than yesterday. She has a tutor meeting (0900hr) and three clients planned for the day. Client A (1000hr) is a new one. Client B (1830hr) is a set of argumentative parents. Client C (2000hr) is a single parent.

So she went to school, wondering if she should cancel client A. As usual, she took really long to decide, because she was weighing the pros and cons. Pros – Wont scare off Client A with her horrible voice. Affect rapport and things like that. Cons – very last minute (it was already 0900hr), might create a bad impression. In the end, she decided to call the client and give the client the choice of whether to come in. In the end, the client said that she couldn’t come in anyway (yes, and forgot to call).

So she croaked through the tutor meeting and went off to the supermarket to get some food and honey. Now she had to decide whether to see both clients, just one or none at all. Her preference was to see both but her voice may be totally gone by then. If she has to cancel any appointment, she prefers to cancel Client B because she reckons she won’t be able to overpower their volume when they start arguing. But that leaves her with Client C at 2000hr. So she might as well struggle through both clients to make it worth her while going back to school at night. And she doesn’t want to cancel Client C because she is a single parent and my female owner wants to make things as seamless for her as possible.

When she got home around lunch time, she received an email message to say that Client B would not be coming. Yay in a way. So she would just be seeing Client C tonight. To make it worth her while going to school, she decided that she would pop into the library at about 1730hr to read a PhD thesis that her supervisor instructed her to read. To her best knowledge, theses are available in hard copies in the library and they cannot be borrowed out.

She spent a while reading a book to gain insight on her own psychological issues (?!) and suddenly received a call from the clinic at 1400hr, to say that her new supervisor is waiting for her. She was shocked coz she thought their FIRST meeting was scheduled to be next Thursday. Because she was home, the meeting was cancelled, with my female owner feeling so bad, coz her supervisor does not work in the university (i.e. he made his way to the university to meet her and possible run other errands?). Plus, it was their first meeting!

And so, she spent the day reading up on Autism, overdosing on honey and lozenges to get her voice back for Client C. Just before she was leaving for the library in the evening, she decided to look up the reference number for that thesis she was to read so that she could head straight to the right shelf… and realised that the thesis, for some reason, was available online! Ah, so she spent even more time at home reading the thesis and finally reached school at 1900hr.

Heading for the clinic phone to check for messages, she found out that Client C was not able to come in tonight as her car was still under repair. So my female owner ended doing some administrative task which she had planned to do on another day.

So tally for the day: 1 still-to-be-found voice, 3 client cancellations (100%, never happened before!), 1 missed supervision session, 1 wasted trip to school in the evening…. All in a day’s work! No sweat.