LGBTQ+ Its Pride Month !!! Virtual Engineering Pride Here !!!!!!!

Hi Its Alex


Im doing ok, Ive continued to work through everthing and avoided the furlough.


The only major impact I have experenced during the lockdown is not being able to get laser hair removal as part of my transition as a transwoman.

Its been a really tough time to deal with facial hair being a transwoman. But im ok as still employed at the moment so its not all bad!


Hope you all are doing well

Hey! 


All good here... Only one in my team was furloughed - he was self isolating and almost all of his work was physical wiring so those projects were put on hold. I've been doing a lot of virtual hand holding as we get people through using tech at home, and keep our broadcasts going with reduced staff and remote workers.


Our internal pride team have had a couple of great events - a virtual bingo hosted by a lovely drag queen who's name I've forgotten and a company wide charity quiz. Next up is a talk by a trans woman and activist about her story and things we can learn as a company to be more inclusive and supportive, internally and externally. 


​​​​​​It's been weird splitting time between home and office, as we've never really had home working before (quite hard to fix, build and develop studios and broadcast chains from home) but it's been working out ok! Glad I've had the office time and looking forward to getting some projects going again as we start to come out the other side... 


Happy Pride everyone ??️‍?

Hi its Pete


Life has been busy. I changed jobs in March and managed a whole 11 days in the office at the Office of Rail and Road before being sent to work from home!


It’s my first time in the Civil Service, but I have found the CS LGBT+ Network and have been getting involved. We’ve had a whole series on online events for Pride. Every thing from panel events (I ran one on being safe and out at work), book club, bingo, meditation, quiz and a work out session with Mr Motivator!


Hope everyone is doing well and making the most of the plethora of free online Pride events.


Pete

Hi it's Chris,

Happy Pride, everyone. Tomorrow is Global Pride Day 2020 and if you haven't seen the is going to be an amazing, world-first event of a 26-hour-long virtual pride. Go to https://www.globalpride2020.org/watch/. It starts 6am BST, main show around 12pm and UK content around 6pm. At work we're running our own mini virtual pride at 2pm for a could of hours. My partner is a drag queen and is performing in it. So exciting!


I'm doing very well in this lockdown. In January I started working in a project where we connected into our customer's development platform remotely from our office to work. So I just took my with laptop home and carried on regardless, with daily video calls for the team. My partner has taken it very hard, though. He's been out of work for a few years and with the help of a psychologist was just about to apply for a job when the pandemic hit. He's autistic with a heart condition and social anxiety, so the sudden changes to his world have been a nightmare. But we do what we can do enjoy life. One of our guinea pigs had 4 lockdown babies! So cute.


Looking ahead, 28th November is LGBT STEM day. I'm going to contact my local IET community reps to see if we can do something for it. 


Enjoy Global Pride Day and keep in touch!


Chris

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