The Diary of Anne Ku

26 July 2000 Wednesday raining cats and dogs

RACING AGAINST TIME

In project management, we are taught to plan in "slack." It's the fudge factor - a hedge against Murphy's Law that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is the main reason why my watch runs 10 minutes fast- so that I will have 10 minutes of "slack."

When it comes to packing and getting ready to go, however, there is never enough time to do justice. My initial grandiose plan was to take the A train to JFK Airport. I had never done that before - and that was reason enough. However, by the time I finished sorting out my admin, there was not enough time for this. Plan B was to take a limousine. Due to the bad weather, the limos were all booked up. So down to Plan C: flag down a cab.

I believe Murphy had also said that work grows to the amount of time you have for it. In the same vein, things fill up the size of room or storage you have available. My suitcase was ready to burst by the time I had finished packing. I've never seen my trusted green Samsonite so fat and heavy in the four years that I've owned it. Meanwhile my NYMEX cloth bag was already stretched to the limit, and the zipper broke in protest. This meant that I had to switch gears and take some carry on. It was a last minute change of plans. Racing against time, I still managed to eat the soup noodles I bought earlier - in anticipation that I wouldn't have the time to go to Little Korea for my last supper.

yesterday

tomorrow

20 August 2000

I had jotted down my thoughts of the day during my travels. Now that I've FINALLY unpacked and cleaned up my room, I found these notes. So I will now "back-fill" my on-line diary.