Pop 'n' Lock

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

"Hiiiii Ellie! I need you to Shenée for me..."

This was herself in the car seat in front of me in Auckland traffic on our first site visit of the day. Shenée was talking to Ellie about door decals and room posters and budgets and Powerpoint presentations while also calling out instructions on the way to Manukau. 

"Sorry about that," she said and hung up the phone which immediately rang again.

And then she was off AGAIN schmoozing and sidling and negotiating and wheeler-dealering with a manager who - did I hear right? - just agreed to contribute $20k to her marketing budget because she totally Shenée-ed him.

"Thank you SO MUCH!" she sang. "You are MAH BOIIIIII!" 

SHE IS A MACHINE.

As for me, today was a long day. It started out as heaps of fun with Ollie, Fazzi and me doing our thing and putting up posters and delivering mihi and getting people involved and doing our skit and answering questions and giving some training. 

The Skit is evolving into its own thing. I have mentioned it before and by now I can even quote it we have done it so many times:

SYMON: (Making blustery "bah!" noises and banging on his laptop).
FAZZI: Symon, what ARE you doing?
SYMON: I'm sorry Fazlyn. I don't have TIME for this MALARKEY right now! I'm far too busy trying to organise a meeting to discuss our Labour Day holiday schedule!
FAZZI: Why don't I set it up for you in Teams?
SYMON: Bah! I don't use TEAMS!

It goes on like this for some time. I do get to say things like, "But me no buts, Fazlyn" and "This doth butter no parsnips with me" though.

What's fun about it is the feedback. People are frequently very funny and have started calling back, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And people often start calling one of their colleagues, "The Symon". 

"We've got THREE Symons in our team!" the staff at Mangere told us. So we're going to create a meme, "Don't Be The Symon, Be The Fazlyn" and send it to them.

Shenée, bless her, thought I was taking it personally. On account of I pretended to take it personally. 

Clearly I'm a better actor than I thought because I had to convince her that I was not upset at being The Symon. 

(I am, in fact, a hideous diva who craves attention so actually effing love it.)

Incidentally, it is interesting to my hummingbird brain that two words evolved from today. "Symon" is now a noun meaning a blustering, buffoonish man-child. While the verb "to Shenée" means to finesse, to polish, to generally glamour something into being.

The Mangere people were lovely actually, we had a great time there. That was site visit #2. The third site visit was more challenging as we ran smack into rooms that had already been named with the blessing the local iwi (tribe). We did not know this on account of the shit system we are about to improve is shit. Sorry for getting so technical there. 

Shenée once again took it on the chin, stepped up and addressed it right on. "I'll fight for you to keep these names, we'll work it out," she told the staff, and she was amazing and honest and forthright and incredible and blah blah blah look I'm sure you are sick of me telling you how amazing she can be and anyway she has now started reading these blips and IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT YOU SHENÉE.

I think the entire team was tired after that. I know I was after Being The Symon all day. Also none of us had eaten and hey, now we are stuck in Auckland rush hour traffic. 

Ollie and Shenée navigated through it, while Fazzi and I were no help at all in the back, calling out music requests and singing along to "Islands in the Stream" and "Total Eclipse of the Heart". 

Fazzi has a lovely singing voice and some nice moves. And... well... you all know about my talents. Let us not dwell on it. 

Eventually we got to our hotel. We convened in Ollie's room where I revealed the ridiculous amount of effort I had put into a movie night, including a short quiz, previews, a scoring sheet and an actual movie. 

Shenée naturally WON the movie quiz by a mile because as it turns out she is a high-level-performer on movie trivia too. Also, she was wearing adorable doggy jammies by now. 

She is a woman of many talents.

Then the team happily sat and watched "The Way, Way Back" and ate pizza. This has been a favourite film of mine since that time I saw it with the Princess and we came floating out of the cinema together, high on the beautiful story and at least one bottle of wine each. Team Gromit also loved it right up until - 

PROJECTOR BATTERY LOW SWITCH TO ECONOMY MODE

EFF'S EFFING SAKE!

We ended up watching the last five minutes of the film lying together on Ollie's bed clustered close around my laptop. Pop 'n' Lock achieved legendary status when he bypassed Owen on the water slide. And we all beamed.

And as Edie Brickell sang the closing song, Go Where The Love Is I realised I love being the Symon.

S.