My private Babel

Christmas is just around the corner and since the local construction site manager is not here, I'm in charge of finding a location for our Christmas party. The set-up is rather simple: 80 people, food, 2h open bar. Valencia is full of possible locations, so you'd think it shouldn't be too hard to find an appropriate venue ...THINK AGAIN! Diana and Esther, the funny, lovely and very capable secretaries, have rummaged the yellow pages for about a week and nothing they found matched the requirements. Therefore I went to Valencia today in order to find something. I ended up at the beachfront of Las Arenas where plenty of restaurants are lined up. Most of them are tourist traps with low quality food and sky-high prices, but glancing at the visitors' plates showed which restaurants deserved a closer look. I ended up entering one that looked rather promising. '¿Hablar inglés?' Mind you, these are the only words I can say in Spanish (and most probably even those are wrong). The shrug of the waiter boded ill, and the search for someone who could speak English remained unsuccessful. I tried to call up some colleagues to help me out, but non was available, so I fell back to hand-foot language and we agreed to talk again on Tuesday (at least I guess that's what concluded our "conversation").
IT SUCKS NOT TO SPEAK THE LOCAL LANGUAGE!!!!!!!

Why do we have different languages anyway? Well, I know there are rumors out there in the field of historical linguistics, containing tribe evolution, ice ages and such, that could explain why I ended up lost in translation. But linguistics are a rather boring field for a blog entry, so in this case, despite being a devoted atheist, I prefer the Bible version to visualize the roots of my dilemma. (Don't fret, still godless, but it doesn't hurt to know what you don't believe in). Always funny to see what people come up with when they lack a scientific explanation ;-)

The pics are outtakes from the Brick Testament.
Genesis 11:1-4: The whole earth had one language and was of one speech. As they migrated from the east, it happened that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. They said one to another, 'Come, let's make bricks, and bake them thoroughly.'
They used bricks for stone, and asphalt for mortar. They said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we are not scattered across the face of the earth.'













Genesis 11:5-6: Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of mankind were building. Yahweh said, 'Look! They are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do.'















Genesis 11:6-7: 'Now nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them! Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand each other's speech.'













Genesis 11:8: From there Yahweh scattered them abroad across the face of the earth. And they stopped building the city.













Genesis 11:9: That is why it was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth.












THE END

Get crackin' or die trying

Apologies to my devoted blog-readers, it's been a while since the last decent post. It's been a tough week for yours truly. Worked my butt off to get my desk clean while feeling the constant urge to return to my hotel and find some shelter under the sheets where nobody can find me. I love this place and my job, I really do, but it's time for a break (or a breakdown). At least I got enough work done to get some welcomed peace this weekend. However, enough of that rubbish, just a little stressed out - will be aloft again in no time!

Sooooo... what's new?!? Today I received an invitation to the kick-off meeting for my project-to-be. Takes place on the 1st of December in Offenbach, so I'll take a plane on Thursday evening to attend, flying back on Friday after the meeting. Will be interesting to get to know the people I'll be spending the next 2 years of my work-life with. I also got to know when I'll be starting (approximately): End of February! Before that one or two weeks in Offenbach to bound with the project office, another construction site to learn a bit more and hopefully some holiday.

The fact that I'll be actually doing this - that I'll be moving to France, that I'll have my own construction site, that I'll be a boss lady - finally sunk in... and I feel light shivers of panic crawling up and down my spine. I guess that's normal, 'cause it's a new county and a new job, but I can't wait for the relief that will come over me once I get started and realize that it's all doable. I start to become a circus artist, spinning plates in order to entertain the audience (a.k.a. boss, employees and colleagues) and prove to myself that I can actually do it, so in the end I'll either gather applause or laughter, but whatever happens, I'll gather a shitload of experience.

Hang in there ;-)

I always knew...

...that at some point I'd be able to show you that it pays off to work on a construction site :-)))

Christmas a.k.a. the yearly struggle for THE present

Quite a few days have passed since my last post.
Reason: Believe it or not, I just didn't have anything to say and nothing remarkable happened. Sooo... I'll squeeze in something random.
Christmas is already lurking to make its yearly leap on us. Luckily Spain kinda spares the dreadful 4-months-in-advance decoration flood that seems to break in over Germany's shopping malls since a few years back. Even though the first "Lebkuchen" have found its way into our office containers, I still resist the urge and will wait till the 1st of December. *be strong, BE STRONG!!!* ;-)
Since I've already been asked about wishes for my b-day and Christmas, I've been hovering around that question and... failed to answer it. I seem to be able to come up with cool presents for others easily, once I put a little thought in it, but for me? Never! Of course I can say what I want, but if I can pin-point it, it will never make a good present. Guess it's because the most important part of a good present is that it comes as a surprise. Once you say out loud what you want, and someone gets it for you, it will never have the same effect as something picked for you with a certain intention, may it be something you can use or something that's just meant to make you smile.
Talking about things that make you smile, remember the tmx Elmo I told you about in an earlier post? Now that is something I would have liked for Christmas, seeing that it's childish, useless and something I would prob. never buy myself but like to have. Just read about it and, as expected, after hitting U.S. stores mid of September, it's almost sold out in North America and already achieves 3x its purchase price on ebay. I remember reports of the first Tickle-me-Elmo invasion a few years back, where parents would pay a s**tload of money to prevent a giant Christmas drama they would have had, if Elmo didn't make his desperately anticipated appearance under the Christmas tree.
Ah well, maybe I'll get myself one after Christmas. See you next year, Elmo.

Aaaand back...

...in (still) warm and sunny Sagunto. After freezing my a** off during the last days, this is a great change. Ran into a colleague at the airport, so I got a private shuttle service to my hotel. I asked the receptionist if they offered internet access here, and they do... for 2 EURO PER HOUR! Ahhhmmm... no thanks. Fortunately someone else close here left his WiFi open, so I have the access for free :-) Low connectivity though, but hey, I'm not complaining. Only staying one night anyway, as for tomorrow I decided I'll move back into the apartment hotel I stayed last time.
This time I'll FINALLY do some sightseeing during my stay. Valencia is very nice and I got massive complaints for not having photos to show, therefore I'll make sure that I'll bring some when I get back to Germany - which is actually not too long from now, 7 weeks to be precise. "...driving home for Christmas, lalalala"

Another week gone by

and what a week it was. I pretty much spent the week as prdicted.
Highlights: Tapas party at Yvonne's place in Munich, All Saints party night in Nürnberg with Chris, Ela, Isi and some of their friends and a successfull attempt to buy a new suitcase in Düsseldorf.
A big thanks to all my hosts during this week aka Christof, Yvonne, Chris and Ela, Niek.
Great to know that you don't have to return to your hometown to actually come home :-)

Goodbye...

...Siemens SL55. After approximately 5 years it's time for me and my old mobile to split up. We had a nice time, sharing private messages and drunken late night calls. Our relationship went rather rocky in the end and culminated in the SL55 deleating my phone numbers. That's when I decided that it's time to move on. Long story short, I proudly present my brand new phone: Sony Ericsson K610i . It was love at first sight. Let's see how long we last ;-)