{"id":84,"date":"2007-10-05T14:01:22","date_gmt":"2007-10-05T20:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=84"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:14:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:14:45","slug":"black-boys-on-mopeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/black-boys-on-mopeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Boys on Mopeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m in Manchester (England, not North Carolina) for the week, facilitating a Knowledge Management<\/em> workshop.\u00c2\u00a0 For those not in the know, Knowledge Management basically involves defining and implementing a strategy for capturing an organization’s knowledge (which may be on LANs, paper, individual PCs, or in people’s brains), organizing this so that the information can easily be found, and sticking it all somewhere that everyone who needs it has access to it.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess it’s not much of an issue in a small company, but when you’ve got several hundred people who are globally distributed (principally Manchester, Bangkok, and Guatemala) who all have and\/or need this information, it requires a more robust solution than Post-its stuck to your PC.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an interesting discipline, even if not entirely new to me (I’ve been doing this since before they started calling it ‘Knowledge Management’).<\/p>\n

Of all the places my boss could have sent me, Manchester wasn’t really high on my wish-list (like he pays any attention to that<\/span>).\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I have anything against Manchester itself, but I’ve been sent here several times in the past couple of years already, and with most of my extended family living in Warrington (some 17 miles from Manchester) I’m not exactly a\u00c2\u00a0stranger to the area.\u00c2\u00a0 But as this is where the knowledge is, this is where I need to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, in a couple of week’s time they’re sending me to Guatemala – where I’ve never been – for a similar workshop, so that\u00c2\u00a0should just about make up for it.<\/p>\n

Although I don’t have anything against Manchester <\/em>(in fact, I quite like it now), I’m still kind of uncomfortable with England <\/em>in general.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been 14 years since I’ve spent longer than a fortnight here, so it’s no surprise that I don’t exactly feel ‘at home’ here.\u00c2\u00a0 But it just all seems so violent<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, America is violent, but at least there’s a point <\/em>to it (drug wars, muggings, domestic violence…).\u00c2\u00a0 Over here there seems to be a lot of violence just for the sake of\u00c2\u00a0violence (‘happy’ slapping, people getting beaten up just for looking at the wrong person…).\u00c2\u00a0 I caught a TV program a couple of nights ago (called Street <\/em>Wars or something equally as alarmist) that featured footage of assorted fights and beatings that had been captured by Britain’s many, many CCTV cameras.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure how they reason that capturing happy slapping on your mobile phone is “abhorrent” but broadcasting it on national TV is light entertainment, but who am I to argue without getting punched for it?\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, it was pretty grim stuff – people having their heads jumped on, and the likes.\u00c2\u00a0 I just don’t understand the British psyche these days, where beating up strangers is a sport, and twelve year old boys are knifing each other in the school playground.\u00c2\u00a0 I just feel so disconnected<\/em> from it all.<\/p>\n

That said, I’ve not yet been beaten up myself on this trip back.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I haven’t actually seen a single threatening ‘hoodie’ – despite parking in an NCP car park in the city center (round the back of the National Express depot; I don’t know why, but bus depots are always dodgy) that had more people than cars in it (and a makeshift sign offering ‘Special Masage’ (sic)), and then taking a wrong turn into Moss Side driving back to the hotel afterwards – so maybe it’s all just media hype.\u00c2\u00a0 If I make it through the next two days until my flight out, I’ll take it all back.<\/p>\n

To be fair, there is also a lot good in England.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve been slowly stocking up on Galaxy chocolate (in the myriad forms it now comes in), wine gums, and decent liquorice (none of which America has).\u00c2\u00a0 Tomorrow I’m off to Marks and Spencers to stock up on little girl’s panties (for my 6-year old daughter!) because there’s no substitute for M&S underwear (as Margaret Thatcher retorted when cheekily asked where she bought her underwear: “From Marks and Spencer, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t everyone?”).\u00c2\u00a0 And tonight I’m off to see if I can find a curry house (curiously, the most English<\/em> thing I can think of!).\u00c2\u00a0 Throw in the chance to see those members of my family that I’m still on talking terms with, and all-in-all, it won’t have been a bad week away!\u00c2\u00a0 England – A great place to visit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Bring on the backlash!” – Arctic Monkeys<\/p>\n

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I’m in Manchester (England, not North Carolina) for the week, facilitating a Knowledge Management workshop.\u00c2\u00a0 For those not in the know, Knowledge Management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[77,76,29],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-chocolate","tag-england","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}