total disaster

Friday morning I thought that all of the problems on my project were contained. The "project manager" is on vacation for three weeks, so I don't have to read her annoying emails demanding I drop everything to go have some pointless meeting with her to discuss the "schedule" when she isn't even managing the schedule, I am. Even though one of our key players left, in an hour my customer and I figured out a solution. I also worked out this weekend how to finish the project on time, with all of the deliverables, in spite of my company's attempts to derail things by reassigning me unexpectedly to teach for a military customer, taking me away from the project for yet another week. The problem child H has been contained. I figured after I finish the training there is another week of really hard work, and then two weeks of wind down time where we wouldn't have to work so hard before I could be on a plane home.

Ah, why do I delude myself that anything in this country will work?

In the middle of class today, right as I was walking students through an exercise, my phone blew up. I paused to let the students catch up to me, and read the first email. The customer I work for, Dr. M, quit. In fact, was on his way out the door. I responded and his email bounced back - they had already disabled his email.

I was like are you god damn KIDDING ME? It was almost impossible to concentrate as my brain ran around in hamster circles going "NOW WHAT DO I DO?????????????" My stomach turned into a little rock fearing H would be put in charge.

About 10 minutes later all of my students were talking about how they had received an email that Dr. M had quit. I was accused of withholding information. A little political dust up occurred. I finally got everyone calmed down enough to finish the class for the day. I also ensured that the person taking over the project would be a guy I like to work with, and not H.

But now here I am, feeling totally demoralized, wondering, after all these months, if the project is going to crash and burn. To prevent that means keeping up the pace, and increasing it to make up for having two missing customer bodies (I am going to have to do their work because the replacement person can't, for example, prepare the briefing for the steering committee because he has a full time job). Every day I'm on the firing line from 7 am until I go home at 5 pm. I never have 15 minutes to sit at a desk, staring into space wondering why the hell I came here because I constantly have at least two people yelling at me or yelling for me. That's why when I go home at night I talk to no one, go no where, and submerge myself in drawing diagrams. It's been a while since I've been under this much pressure, in a foreign country, without having even my own company's resources to rely on. They are as bad as my customer.

Contact with the outside world? No thanks.

If I manage to get out of here in one piece I will be shocked. I'm pretty sure my face is twitching. Is that the sign of a psychotic breakdown?