To the north

Preparing an early lunch before going to fix a system problem in Hedgehog's gallery before taking the train to Hamburg for a short week (back Friday night).

This last day-and-two-halves has seemed like a week, I feel as though I've run a marathon and fought a pair of tigers and slept about sixteen minutes in total. Can't imagine why.

The possible job in Münster is now a very possible job. My contact must have speaks with his superiors © Peter Sellers, and it's all subject to non-disclosure clauses and contracts etc etc; but it looks pretty good. They don't want me to work in their offices, but are willing to pay an unsupervised hourly rate. Such trust! I really need this job. If it all comes off, the planned three months' work would triple my income for this year. Not that it's particularly well-paid, but because this been such a piss-awful year financially.

Actually, what does "well paid" mean? I'm bidding 20% under what is usual for the profession according to a few colleagues whose advice I asked, but it's still more than twice the rate I'll get in Hamburg this month. One of those colleagues said, "I try to figure out how much money my work will save the client, and that's what I charge them." It's an interesting idea, but doesn't always apply so neatly. The Münsters are happy to pay me a buttload of money because it'll enable them to sell their software in the English-speaking market, which will bring them in N buttloads of money. On the other hand, architects are paid a fixed percentage of the construction cost of the project, no matter now much work they have to do, which leads to the paradox that the extra effort you put into reducing the client's costs also reduces your income. It is not in the architects' interest to build cheaply, and it definitely is in their interests for the client to change his mind often and late because such changes are billable at an hourly rate. The commercial relationship between architect, builder and client guarantees hard feelings all round.