the walls are closing in... and what is that flushing sound

Been working on a project for the past few days, the nature of which is rather confidential, and could actually be all for nothing if a certain proposal isn't ratified...

So me and one of the other senior systems analyst have locked ourselves away from the day-to-day slog of the coal face, and basically attempt to emulate the lifestyle lived by hermits in that we've closeted ourselves away in the project room…



Amazing how much work you can achieve when there's no shoulder tapping, no phones ringing, no general conversations occurring to capture your attention for the briefest of moments (which we all know, add up to a hell of a lot of time at the end of the day when you take in to account not only the amount of time lost in paying attention to the conversation, and then the subsequent attempt at achieving the same level of concentration that you had previously devoted to the subject at hand prior to being disturbed/derailed)…

Just the furious tippity-tappity of touch-typing fingers rolling out SQL statements, contacting business users to gain a better understanding of what they're proposing be done to the system (conversations which go along the lines of "you want to do WHAT with the system? Why the h3ll do you want it to do that for?"), the scritchy-scratch noise of pen(cil) etching out notes/diagrams on A3 pieces of paper that is mapping out the ridiculous timeline that you are constrained to - all this interspersed with the exclamations of elation and/or sounds of utter anguish…

Oh, and the sounds of toilet(s) flushing… the project room that I'm cosseted away in, is beside the toilets - let me explain further, the toilets are only accessible from the foyer (ie. There's no door to access the toilets from inside our area)… it's amazing how many times the toilets are used in an hour (at it's busiest, I've counted 27 flushes in an hour - and there's only 50 people that work on this floor!)… true, there could be some that use the toilet without flushing, but I'd rather not have to count those ones - yes, I can also hear the sound of the toilet door closing and being locked/latched, as well as the clink of the toilet seat as the user raises/lowers it… and yes, much like Ally McBeal, our toilets are unisex… *sigh*