As much as possible I try to maintain some sense of normalcy when I am working on projects remotely. One approach I use is to rent a furnished apartment instead of the persistent check-in/check-out at hotels. On my current project in Montreal I rented a small but nicely appointed apartment near the St. Denis area of Montreal with over 500 restaurants in a 10 block radius from the apartment, great parks, entertainment and a few blocks from Old Montreal. There were 6 floors of furnished apartments which were the bottom 6 floors of a 20 story Hotel complex.  I returned to my apartment one night at about 7 pm. Oddly the lobby door was locked a bit early, but I used my key and ascended to my room. It was quiet, but being a tuesday perhaps not too unusual.  I caught up on emails, wrote  a report, made some dinner and then retired for the night, channel surfing through the stations. I pause momentarily as a picture of my apartment appears on one of the local french language news channels…. I missed the story but went to the internet to find…

Well that explains why it was quiet! The next morning walking out through the silent empty corridors was like a scene from  The Shining where I half expected Jack Nicholson to round the corner with “Here’s Johnny!!”. The part that amazed me was that someone had the forethought to call the news crews from TV and Newspapers, but missed the little point of telling the guests.  However the closure became more obvious with the lack of elevator service etc.  It was a little bit like being evicted, without your landlord  actually telling you.

A few days later, I am evicted again. This time from spaces.live.com the site that has been home to my blog since its inception. The hoster is of course… the company I work for. I signed on to find a curt, polite message that said I could transfer my site to wordpress or delete it. No explanation, just an ultimatum. Evicted again, this time by my blog-site landlord.

It seems like  trend. Anyway, no consulting excellence blog today just some random rants and the desire to summon the courage of my evictions to carry on.