I had forgotten what it was like to click with someone on the first meeting. I mean really click. Going beyond ‘Oh, she seems really nice. It’d be good to meet again.’ I mean the kind of rapport when you could sit and talk for hours, even if you can’t remember her name because when she first introduced herself, you didn’t pay special attention because you didn’t know you would click.

I haven’t clicked with someone new for maybe a year or two. However, on Friday I met two people that I found so likeable that I had to eventually force myself away to mingle elsewhere in order to stay within the normal bounds of first time friendliness.

I didn’t want to scare them away, although probably they liked me too and were also trying to calculate the right time to move on. I suspect that clicking has to be mutual.

The first person I clicked with on Friday is an older woman who leads the maritime business for a rival consultancy. She was sitting next to me at a gala lunch. We didn’t talk about anything in particular: work, business ethics, accounting systems, our old teachers. It just seemed that we always had something to say. We swapped business cards and I hope I can see her again some time.

The second person I clicked with is a man about my age who used to work at my company, but now works for another rival. I had just arrived at a house warming party and warned him about a giant bug crawling on his shirt. We also got talking about everything and nothing. I don’t think I’ll see him again unless our mutual friends organise another gathering.

It leads me to think about what my click quotient is. I will define this as the proportion of new people I meet with whom I click. I wonder if people have similar click quotients?

Originally, I was thinking that people have different click quotients depending on how open their personalities are. That is, the more easy going, receptive and chatty you are, the more chance you will click with a stranger.

But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe for those people who perceive that they click with many people are in fact just meeting a lot more people because they are:

• in a new situation, such as a new job, course or city, and there are lots of people to meet; and/or
• extroverted and comfortable chatting to strangers, and so in any particular room of people, will meet more of them.

So what I mean is maybe the there is a general trend for people to genuinely click with, say, 10% of people they meet. The people we see who seem to have a rapport with many people are simply clicking with 10% of a larger number.

But perhaps the opposite is also true. Maybe when you click with lots of people, you don’t think it’s all that special. Certainly for me, having not clicked with anyone new for so long, it felt a bit wondrous to do so on Friday.

Another factor is probably also the crowd that you’re moving with. If you mingle with people who have the same interests and background as you, then that might increase the click success rate.

I wonder what the smallest length of time is that you need to speak to someone before you click?

I wonder if clicking really must be mutual? (otherwise the result could be stalking or uncomfortable distancing)

I wonder if some people with a lower click quotient experience more profound/deeper clicking when it happens?

I wonder if you don’t click with someone straight away, you can develop the same rapport over time? If this happens, is it something new that has developed or is it the discovery of something that was always there?

I have been signing off my emails with ‘cheerio’ since long before I arrived in the UK. According to my email archive, I first used ‘cheerio’ on 18 May 2003. I use it to sign off personal email, and at work with people I’ve met or talked to more than a couple of times.

I can’t remember why I started using it. I like ‘cheerio’ a lot. It sounds friendly — a bit cute, a bit cheerful. I imagine myself doing a little wave, as I hit ‘send’.

Two weekends ago, I read an article that said that the email sign off ‘cheers’ is too casual.

Then ‘cheerio’ must be even more so. I’ve always supposed some people think it’s overly cute but I never worried about it until now. (The article also said that ‘cheers’ is faux British, which is a criticism we here can ignore.)

So I started thinking about other email closing options. While I like the balance of formality and friendliness in ‘best’, I can’t use it because I have a thing about grammar. Closing with an adjective is just a bit strange to me.

I use ‘best regards’ for my professional correspondence. It is too formal to replace ‘cheerio’. By that same token, ‘sincerely’, ‘kind regards’, ‘faithfully’ and ‘cordially’ are similarly discounted.

‘Yours’ and ‘warmly’ is too intimate.

No sign off is sometimes too abrupt.

Perhaps my correspondents haven’t noticed, but I haven’t used ‘cheerio’ since 10 August, except for a single slip up on the 17th.

Instead I’ve been rotating, as appropriate, the following pool of closing salutations:

• Nothing — good for short emails as part of a longer discussion
• ‘Thanks’ and ‘thanks again’ — always works for emails in which you ask for a favour
• ‘Hope that helps’ — responding to other people’s emails that end in ‘thanks’.
• ‘See you soon’, ‘talk soon’ — especially when you’re arranging a meeting or follow up call
• ‘Hope the rest of your day is less frantic’ — or some other set of well wishes that reflect a person’s current state
• ‘Hope you’re well’ — good for people you haven’t been in contact with for a while
• ‘Bye’ — this is, of course, quirky because it is so classic so I use it only occasionally

So many options, which were once swept up in the single phrase of ‘cheerio’!

What it means is that I have to spend more time thinking now when I close my email.

I like putting things in boxes and categories. I have mental boxes such as:

• fruit vs vegetable
• sweet vs savoury

I feel uncomfortable when things drift between mental boxes. This is why I am considerably concerned about tomato based drinks. To me, drinks are in the ‘sweet’ box, as opposed to soups, which are generally ‘savoury’.

A tomato drink is not hot enough to be a soup and not sweet enough to be a drink, so I find it confusing.

Recently, I had a mental box problem to do with rhubarb. Damjan’s housemate, Niall, went to visit Nick. Nick gave Niall some home-grown rhubarb. Niall re-gifted it to Damjan, as everyone knows that Damjan likes to experiment with cooking the less common veggies.

Damjan and I pored over a number of candidate recipes: rhubarb and orange mousse and rhubarb fool. We finally settled on a monstrous hybrid of both: orange rhubarb fool with ice-cream.

We stewed the rhubarb with brown sugar, adding freshly squeezed orange juice and grated ginger. Then we dollaped it onto vanilla ice cream and served it with fresh ripe and sweet strawberries.

What a dessert! It was very delicious, tart and sweet, soft but textured.

Even as I enjoyed my dessert, I was feeling tense because of a mental box scramble. Rhubarb is a vegetable. I can’t go around eating vegetables for dessert.

The only solution, I have decided, is to reclassify rhubarb into my mental ‘fruit’ box. Such reclassifications are not unprecedented. For my whole life, tomatoes and cucumbers have been happily sitting in the veggie box, despite being fruits.

But this particular mental switch (rhubarb as fruit) has been more difficult than I expected. The problem is that rhubarb looks like celery, and there is nothing more vegetably than celery.

If I keep at it, I am sure I will get around this mental block. I know it is possible because after a short struggle, one of my favourite desserts is now carrot cake. The sheer yumminess of carrot cake has overwhelmed the boundaries of my boxes.

I have blogger’s block.

I am unsurprised that other people have coined the phrase ‘blogger’s block‘ well before me. It’s an obvious one, isn’t it.

I remember when I was first on the internet. I was trying to create a character for a text-based role playing game and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, someone’s already chosen the name ‘Gandalf’.’

My brother and I tried dozens of internet handles. We ended with ‘VampireSmurf’. If we waited another week, VampireSmurf probably would have been taken.

No longer am I surprised that every idea I have is already on the internet.

This is cool. Use namechk.com check the availability of your username of choice on a whole bunch of sites.

Wow. There’s a joanium on a site called PictureTrail. Otherwise, all those joaniums are me. joanium is probably the nearest thing I’ll ever have to an original internet thought.

I am informed that my LinkedIn profile is ’70% complete’. To finish it off, I need two recommendations. This means I should ask two people to write a testimonial about their experience of working with me.

I haven’t bothered with this. I don’t mean to make use of LinkedIn.

However, something has made me revisit this decision. Last week I was spammed by James from a recruitment agency.

The way LinkedIn works is that if you’re not directly connected to somebody, you can only message them directly if you pay for a premium account. However, recruitment agent James has found a way around this. He requested to be my contact and in the field for putting in a personal message, he wrote:

Dear Joan

Apologies for the direct approach but I wanted to introduce myself to you and I am hoping you may be able to help me.

I work for a company called [...], a recruitment consultancy that focuses on the sustainability space. I am currently working with a company that specialise in the provision of sustainability solutions, looking to grow their team in the built environment…

I would really value the opportunity to talk to you about this role and find out if you know anyone who could be interested, or indeed if you might be interested yourself! My contact details are: [...]

Thanks and Best Wishes

James

I thought, ‘The nerve!’ Of course I won’t respond to this kind of spam, this abuse of LinkedIn.

Just before I deleted his message, I clicked on his name and found out that we have three degrees of separation (one of my contacts knows someone who knows him). He also has a glowing recommendation from one of his clients.

‘…James has exacting standards and is a fantastic communicator which are really appreciated both in terms of the search and selection process as well as the negotiation of final contracts. James acts with the integrity of both client and candidate ensure that the final deal is one which sets both parties off on the correct footing.’

This testimonial starts to make me think differently about James. Maybe, instead of being merely rude and untargeted, he is actually working hard and is using social networks innovatively to get results during difficult economic times.

Hmm. These recommendation things could be very powerful.

We were a couple of drinks in at the pub last week * and a colleague I had met for the first time that evening was getting angry.

One of the things he was angry about was a girl in his group, who worked only exactly the hours required of us (9am to 5:30pm), and yet she is well thought of by most people.

‘People like her, they’re good at self-promotion and talking themselves up,’ he complained. ‘But she doesn’t put in the hours.’

I was surprised to hear this. I know of this girl and have chatted to her a few times. I haven’t worked with her so I don’t know how ‘good’ she is. However, she does have an interesting personal and academic background and she seems to have a lot of initiative.

I started thinking, ‘Maybe… maybe there are people in my company who are upset about me too.’

Compared to other junior people, I am well known around the company. I hope this is because I do good work. In addition, I do try to meet people, keep in touch, make presentations and answer questions on the online company forums.

While I’m good at raising my profile, I hope I back this up by showing I have something worthwhile to contribute.

I am sure that there are people in the company who have something equally worthwhile to contribute, yet they aren’t getting the same attention because they’re not as comfortable at networking and self-promotion.

I’m sorry if people like me crowd them out. I do try very hard to direct questions and work to the right people and this means passing on leads to those who know more about a subject than me.

Despite this, though, it is conceivable that there are people who resent me the way this work colleague resents that girl.

I can’t do much about this except I am now reminded that I must be genuine and thoughtful: to speak when I am sure that what I say could be useful (not simply grandstanding), and give the quieter ones in the group the space to contribute.

* Not me, I don’t often drink at pubs. I don’t like the taste of alcohol and friends/colleagues are happy for me to have water and chips instead of beer.

I’ve lived in my flat since November last year. Yesterday I finally figured out how to turn on the television.

I watched Embarrassing Bodies on Channel 4. It made me happy because it reminded me that I have a healthy normal body and that I should do whatever I can to keep it that way.

I watched Grand Designs and that made me think that people who build their own homes are ego maniacs who don’t know how to manage projects.

Well. Maybe it’s just people who nominate themselves to go on TV with their life-defining project homes who are ego maniacs who don’t know how to manage projects.

I also watched part of City of Vice, a show I’ve mentioned before. It’s a drama series about the battle to bring law and order to London’s streets during the 1700s. Once again, one of my favourite places has been revealed to be a historic slum of desperate poverty and wickedness. Seven Dials is now very hip and home to my favourite London eatery (Food for Thought). But back in Georgian England, it was crowded with starving people and a lair for criminals and prostitutes. It’s amazing how places can change so much.

I read a frightening article in the Observer’s Food Monthly magazine. It was frightening to me, even though I probably have a relatively good diet. But I can see how people could very easily fall into the trap of eating badly even with the best intentions.

Read this on The Observer’s website here — Running on Empty Carbs.

I’m a fruit fiend. Every day, I typically eat a banana, two oranges and an apple. I’ve known for a while that each orange has the same calories as a small chocolate bar. The article confirms this:

‘Even fresh fruit… is a highly calorific food that should be treated with caution. “One consequence of the government’s Five-a-Day campaign is that children are eating fruit rather than vegetables to meet their target… If you are consuming an extra five pieces of fruit a day and changing nothing else, it will give you more calories because fruit is very sugary.” ‘

There are other depressing revelations (or reminders) about mashed potato, chorizo sausages, apple juice, Rice Krispies (like Rice Bubbles in Australia), muesli bars, dried apricots, bread and crumpets.

Why is it so hard? Why is it much easier to get it wrong than to get it right?

I’m trying to find ways of increasing the protein in my diet but I don’t have the skills or knowledge. It’s also expensive. What can I snack on, if not fruit, rice cakes, muesli bars or salted almonds? Am I meant to keep cans of tuna and boiled eggs on my desk?

I have five ‘first tier friends’. I’ve known this for a few years now. Sometimes, I am unwise enough to say aloud who they are but those people who aren’t first tier friends generally know this. I think it’s very rare that someone would consider you a first tier friend, while you think of them as a second tier friend.

Here is an interesting article from BBC Magazine — What’s the ideal number of friends? The article posits that the maximum number of ‘core’ or ‘Premier League’ friends a person has is between six and twelve.

This is funny:

‘A newspaper columnist once told of her shock when, having struck up a rapport with a man over dinner, she was told at the end of the meal he had no vacancies for friends. He was operating a “one-in, one-out” policy. Six months later she received a card stating he was now available for friendship.’

I will add one more feature to this theory of friendship. Like the United Nations Security Council, there are five permanent members of my first tier and one or two rotating members. At any one time, I feel close to a person that I am usually spending a lot of time with. These days, it’s often a work mate.

It may not be obvious at the time that this person is not a permament first tier friend but rather a rotating one.

Right now, though, this post is vacant. Apply within.

I have a lot of experience setting objectives and targets. I do it for a living and I pretty well know how to put together a target, commitment or goal that actually spurs people to change what they do.

It may surprise you, then, that I have made a dumb new year’s resolution. It’s dumb because it’s not SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic or Time-bound.

My resolution is: ‘To enjoy going to the gym’.

Since coming back to the UK, I’ve been to the gym twice. Both sessions have been good — I think I enjoyed them. Does that mean that I’m keeping my resolution?

Well, it’s hard to say. It’s hard to say because ‘to enjoy’ is pretty vague. What does it mean? I also don’t know how to measure it. Am I having more fun than I had last year? Should I enjoy myself more tomorrow? What level of enjoyment should I have (whatever ‘enjoyment’ means) within three months? What about by new year’s eve 2009? Is it really possible to enjoy going to the gym or are those gym junkies deluded?

Speaking of new year’s resolutions, I brought macadamia-centred chocolates back to the UK so that my workmates could have a taste of Australia. Would you be surprised if I told you that about a quarter of the people to whom I offered a chocolate declined because they were on some kind of new year’s resolution diet?

I was astonished. How can one resist chocolate-covered macadamias?

But I shouldn’t be surprised, really. After all, I too have been on an no-chocolate regime.

Back in September last year, having completed my one month chocolate ban, I reintroduced chocolate back into my diet. For a while, it was going well. I ate a bit of chocolate here and there. But then, my chocolate eating started to ramp up. One day, just as I was putting another piece of pointless-sweet-no-flavour chocolate in my mouth, I realisedthat I had reverted back to my former ways.

So I made a new resolution and that time it was a SMART resolution. I am only allowed to eat chocolate with greater than 70% cocoa content.

Specific? Yes. I know exactly what I am allowed to eat, and not allowed to eat.

Measurable? Yes. It’s a pass/fail criterion that applies 100% of the time, although I have made exceptions for spectacular chocolate cakes on three occasions.

Achievable? Yes. If coeliacs can avoid wheat products and vegans can avoid animal products, then resisting milk chocolate should be a piddle.

Realistic? Yes. It’s not like an indefinite ban on chocolate — clearly, I would fail that resolution. With this goal, I’m allowed to have the yummiest and best chocolate but avoid the incidental stuff (e.g. team mates bringing in cakes and sweets). It’s the incidental (accidental, non-deliberate, unplanned) chocolate eating that has increased since moving to London.

Time-bound? Yes. The resolution was applied immediately and lasts forever.

Forever!