It's quite amusing noting the detail with which I deal with paper and emails at the moment (i.e. very closely/slowly), partly because I'm not overwhelmed with stuff yet so I may as well take time over it. Partly because it's in reading between the lines and 'relating' stuff here to my mental map of knowledge that is teaching me perhaps even more than I'm being formally told. But it's still odd spending time on things I might only have spent a few seconds dealing with a month or so ago.

I've been experimenting with taking a slightly different approach than I might have done in the past about asking loads of questions. If I just keep my mouth shut and assume that if the answer's really critical someone will tell me, I often don't need to ask the question at all because the answer becomes obvious or I work out another way of finding the answer. For example, the Inter Library Loan lady sits just a little way outside the office (at least till the extension is inhabitable), but I couldn't for the life of me recall her name. I was deliberating over asking or just living with the uncertainty when someone passed and greeted her loudly enough by name that I caught it. One down about 50 more to go.