Back To The Office

Returning to work yesterday, after two weeks of study leave and full-time classes, was like walking onto a railway line and getting smacked by a speeding train. Within minutes, I was fighting with the Department of Health, begging the police to provide information, shouting at our IT guys for more bandwidth, calling off-the-record sources, getting comment from controversial lawyers and trying to track down the businessman at the centre of the Oilgate scandal. It was a wild day at the office.
The leave I had just finished was the first time in my life I had experienced "student life" and, if truth be told, I rather enjoyed it. Not forever, but it made for a great break from the day-to-day. Long tea breaks, late mornings and fun little outings where you get led around like a family of ducks through some random places where people stare at you like a parade of lepers.
In the real world, the never-ending strikes were ongoing, there was still mystery about whether we have a police commissioner or not and another plane had nosedived into the ocean. The strikes, in fact, have got so bad that workers were striking to show solidarity (yes, comrades) with metro police officers who were being disciplined for striking illegally on the M2 highway and shooting live ammunition at the other cops sent to disperse them. Let that sink in. Uniformed metro cops go on the rampage, bring the city to a halt, clash with the riot squads, shoot at them on the highway (bullets whizzing past motorists), get pushed back into their compound and throw rocks at the negotiation team succeeding only in hitting and denting their own cars. I know, I was there covering the story.
Now, when the time comes to stand up to a disciplinary hearing and take the rap for your actions - which some cops have described as treason - you get your mates at the licensing stations to down tools in protest. And why not, the doctors are striking, the nurses are striking, the firefighters are striking, the construction workers building our stadiums are striking, the teachers are kind-of striking and the taxi drivers are threatening to strike.
Let's see what today brings...