the hidden

It's always interesting where work can take you - people will cry out: opportunities! overseas travel! laptops! free dental care! - but it was a pretty safe bet that I would never have pictured myself standing in a solitary holding cell in prison on one Friday morning.

As part of the research we are doing on a large piece of policy, we were sent off to a prison to meet and greet staff at a young offender's prison outside of London. It was one of the most interesting sticky-beak experiences that I have had, and because we were on government business, we had a chance to view some of the cells and more secure areas of the prison. Surprisingly (and yes, I did flinch), we mingled with some of the young offenders (the majority of them under 21) while they were being served lunch, and I was shocked to see how baby-faced some of them looked. The atmosphere inside the open areas of the prison was more akin to a school camp (a good thing for rehabilitation and for breaking down barriers) and I sometimes forgot that we were actually in a prison and that there was a reason why the young men were locked inside.

I was impressed with the work that the staff did too - many of the young men have obviously come from harsh backgrounds, and the sheer work the prison managers do to reduce the chance of the young men from re-offending once they are released is phenomenal. I won't give more details, but in such an environment, I can't help but think that the prison managers deserve gold medals for the work they do in handling very very difficult and sad cases.

But of course, all good things must come to and end, but in my case, the good things merely continued the next day as I flew off to Barcelona to meet Di and Matt who were on a European holiday.

Barcelona is a beautiful city, pity about the lack of customer service and the (mostly) unfriendly people. I don't know whether the Spaniards were tired of hoardes of Englishmen descending on their shores every August, but there were times where I wondered whether Barcelona deserved the acclaim that it sprouted in every Lonely Planet guide published since 1992.

We had sangria, we had tapas, we even had a siesta. What we didn't realise was that siestas weren't just an afternoon occurrence - they happened all the time. On 2 separate occasions, our bus, full of passengers, stopped in the middle of nowhere where the driver had a cigarette break and a conversation on his mobile. Another time I stood waiting to get served my food while the staff talked amongst themselves. At a burger outlet, 4 staff waited around while 1 person served a line of 15 people. When we asked people for directions the best we got was a shrug. It was then that I wished for the brutal, cold efficiency of the Austrians!

But I digress.

The architecture was stunning and the weather was perfect. We went to a lookout point and swam in the blue blue waters of the Mediterranean with our eyes. At night we danced away at a huge club with 4 levels and go completely lost amidst the beat of Spanish pop. We marvelled at the Gaudi sculptures in a UNESCO heritage park, only for me to run away in embarrassment when a mainland Chinese tourist stood on top of a UNESCO Heritage Sculpture while yelling at his wife to take a picture. We ate tapas which was priced according to how long the toothpick which held the tapas together was, we got slightly tipsy on sangria (ok, i lie, I got mega-drunk on sangria), strolled down Las Ramblas and then we got sunburnt.

So now I'm reasonably up to date, and now that i have the internet at home (which incidentally keeps on disconnecting every 10 seconds - literally - I should be able to update the blog somewhat in real time. Not that you read this in "somewhat real time" but meh, them's the break.