Alibaba and the fourty thiefs

So summer is over, I’ve just come back from a well deserved (I think) holiday and it’s time to get ready for the next challenge, but first, let’s do a quick recap of the last couple of months.

Since I knew I would be transferring to Bremen I took my time in Birmingham really lightly, not work, which I took very seriously, but my personal life. I knew this would only be temporary, so no point letting my feelings run the show. This was the time to be fickle, and fickle I’ve been. I still hope I will keep in contact with some of the people I’ve met. I think I really clicked with people, some that have been through a similar experiences as I have and I've made a friend who somehow helped me open up about the fact that I got divorced at the beginning of the year, and I have even told a few people with a relatively reduced amount of embarrassment.

Slightly related to that (although not quite) was my short escape to Marrakech. It was pretty much what I expected. A similar culture to Tunisia, it didn’t shock me and I had the chance to enjoy walking around the souks and eating that amazing food without feeling forced into it. Of course we also had a rude reminder that, however touristy the city is, it’s in the middle of a relatively poor country.

What happened? I had my handbag stolen just a few hours after landing in the country, with the subsequent string of experiences like a completely useless visit to a police station, the amability of a taxi driver who took us to the hotel (and never got paid for it) and being locked out of the hotel until a lovely neighbour managed to contact the hotel manager inside to open the door for us.

After that we didn’t leave the hotel after dinner time and especially Isa found it quite hard to cope with the constant harassment of street vendors, kids, taxi drivers, beggars and any other person trying to make some profit out of two female tourists travelling alone.

But the only bad moment was that on the first night. The other 3 days we visited old palaces, the souks, the main square, amazing restaurants, and an art deco villa given to the city by Yves Saint Laurent, but we also had time to relax around the lovely courtyard pool in our hotel, which meant I came back with a good opinion of the place and an overall positive impression of the holiday.

After that I let myself be spoilt by my mum. And, now, the countdown to my German adventure starts for real. If all goes well, I’ll be there before the end of the month!!!

Dorothy’s shoes

Can I just tap the heels of my shoes, like Dorothy does at the end of the Wizard of Oz, and go back home? But where is home?

Since the end of last year I feel like I've been swept away by a tornado and I still haven't landed. It might take me a whole year, but the latest news is that around my 31st birthday I'll finally get the chance to settle down for a while in the alleged birthplace of the best known animal musicians.

It's crazy how things slowly seem to be slotting into place. People who know me have had to listen to me for the last couple of years saying that I wanted to become an instructor or transfer to Bremen, and I seem to be very close to having both things!!

However exciting that sounds… Ok, I'll rectify, because most people won't be the least interested. However excited I am about reaching two of my most immediate goals, I still plan to enjoy to the full the time I have left in Birmingham.

How? I wish I could be more original, but I joined a gym, I want to go and visit friends in Dublin and Liverpool, and I need to make the most of the good relation I have with people I'm meeting here. And I hope this last thing doesn't sound like I'm taking advantage of them, nothing further from reality. I would like to believe that some of these acquaintances can actually turn into friendships. Unfortunately I doubt anything more than that, especially since my stay here already has an expiry date.

Anyway… I am quite busy with work and trying to have some sort of social life, and that is leaving me no time for anything like trying out new fancy recipes, or wasting hours around architecture websites, or watching movies, or even playing my beloved bagpipes (lacking the space as well). So I guess all that will have to way until I’m a bit bored or stuck at home in the middle of winter.

Until then, if you have already wasted a few minutes in reading this, enjoy the good weather if you are lucky enough to get any.

Into the wild... and back

My new position at work is keeping me really busy and it's still very exciting, however, today and after 5 weeks away, it was kind of nice to get back home, even if it only feels like a temporary place to live.

During those 5 weeks I was incredibly busy, more than I could have ever expected, but it was a pleasure to teach and see my students pass their exams in the end. One thing that bothered me was that, after all that time, I felt nothing when yesterday I said goodbye to them. How can I be so cold sometimes?

Anyway, I was lucky that there was some people there that I knew and who offered me great support and a lot of company, but sometimes I felt the need to be on my own, take a long bath and then sit on the sofa watching a movie with a beer in hand. And I had just the perfect movie to watch. It was a recommendation by one of my colleagues, who was also very eager to give me a copy of it, so I went and watched it.

Into the wild, based on a real life story, came out in 2007. It´s about a guy from a seemingly perfect suburban background, good student, etc. who decides to take some time to travel after college and, after wandering around the US for a while, decides to give away all his money, burn his documents and, under an alias, go to spend some time alone in the wilderness in Alaska. It really makes you think, first about society and how unnecessary are some of the things that we seem to value a lot. The realisation in the end that, however superfluous our lifes are, we need the people around us to share our joys and sorrows left me in shock.

The message itself is nothing new but, taken to an extreme environment like Alaska, the movie made me see it from a different perspective.

Just to finish for today, a quote from one of the last scenes of the movie:

"[written into book] Happiness only real when shared."

Planned Obsolescence

This morning, after one of my weird chain of thoughts I ended up having a geeky moment and watching a very interesting documentary about planned obsolescence.

So, how did I get to that? Well, the last few days I’ve been looking at new phones, I can’t really afford a new one, especially because most contracts around here are 24 months long and the way my life is, who knows where I’m gonna be in 24 months. I still wanted to know what’s around in case my battered Sony-Ericsson died. And since I refuse to get an iPhone, and the reason why is not the point now, I was looking at all sort of other phones. Then, this morning I woke up quite early and wanted to listen to some music, so I thought I would use my iPod (the one I found and never use) and it was out of battery, then it wouldn’t switch on… so while I was resetting it, because it froze, and trying to get the damn thing charged I remembered a documentary my sister told me about a few months ago about planned obsolescence.

It sounds kind of obscene, but it’s not. The documentary talked about how in this consumer society nothing is built to last. And that’s not because all these electronics are delicate or anything like that, but because if things lasted we wouldn’t buy new ones, so the factories wouldn’t need to produce so much, so the big companies wouldn’t make so much profit, etc. The documentary is easy to find in youtube if you search “obsolescencia programada”, however, it’s in Spanish and I have no idea if it’s available in any other language. I found it very interesting, although quite unsettling. I suppose that’s the purpose of it, a way to report that economic growth doesn’t mean all is well.

Finally, I started remembering what a friend always says, that nothing is supposed to last a lifetime any more, and now I’m not just talking about material things. I’m sure there is another documentary somewhere about the changes in society and the end of lifelong relationships is happening (and the problem is our generations are caught in a changing society). And somehow, I want to believe something different is possible.

New challenges

My last week in Porto was one of the hardest in last times. It was depressing, not just because of having to pack, but also because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the friend who has been there for me in the last year and a half. And it wasn’t hard just for me, no matter how many times she said that she didn’t feel like I was letting her down and that she was very proud of me, we didn’t know how to handle it. I would have liked to go out for a drink one last time all together but you can’t force people to do something they really don’t want to. And, as I said before, here comes the difficult part of keeping in contact. I hope we manage.

On the other hand, I’ve been already for a week in this new city, and for now things have been going quite well. I worked a couple of days without making a fool of myself, I found a house and I moved in, and last night I went out for a drink with my new flat mate/landlady. I still haven’t met many people at work and have no idea if I will make any long lasting friends, but that’s not something that can be easily predicted, and it takes time so, for the time being, I can’t complain. By the way, this is what my house looks like, small but nice, I think.

Obviously, this last week, I’ve been busy enough with adapting to a new place. But on my last Friday in Porto, I was going kind of mad on my own in the house surrounded by boxes and suitcases, so I decided to do something I had never done before: Go to the cinema alone.

It was kind of depressing because it was the way I was feeling, but it didn’t feel as awkward as I thought it would. What did I watch? The King’s Speech. Very English and also very inspirational. I thought it was very appropriate that the story was about a king who could not speak in public, and made me remember how, when a was little, in more than one occasion I got a bad grade in school because I could not force myself to speak in front of my classmates, and now I’m going to be the one teaching other people and talking to them for hours on end.

Life goes on

Yesterday I had some great news. I received a phone call that I had been waiting for over 2 years and, instead of jumping around in happiness, I cried. They were happy tears, I suppose it gives me the closure that I so desperately needed, but also reminded me that my problems are not solved yet, this was only round 1.

Even if my legal status has changed, my mental one is exactly the same.

For example, a few days ago someone’s FB status changed to “in a relationship” and it suddenly struck me that people’s lives also keep moving forward, on the other hand sometimes I get the feeling that, by trying to move on, I’m throwing away the life I had until now, close to the family and with quite a nice group of friends, for a new job that is probably not going to pay any better and will force me to start over once again.

How can I avoid feeling like I’m letting friends and family down? There’s going to be a lot of changes in the next few weeks and I just hope things settle down quickly and everyone adapts to the new situation.

On a completely different topic, I've just spent part of the afternoon watching the movie "Crash". I haven't got a clue about movies, the proof is that I've spent the last year trying to catch up on must see movies and I still have a long way to go, but this one definitely impressed me. Wow!

Mission accomplished!

Apparently I have this very particular way of saying goodbye to a place. It was my lovely flatmate who pointed it out and I didn’t give it any importance, because I had no intention of perpetuating the tradition, but … Ups! Saturday night out and it happened again.

And this was her mission, not mine. I was, in fact, the victim (or one of them) of my matchmaker friend putting her skills into action. So that’s what she told me the morning after: Mission accomplished! Now you can move.

The only problem is I still have no confirmation of when I am moving, but now I can concentrate on starting the house/room hunt.

And then, just one day later, I find myself sitting in my hotel room sipping half a bottle of red wine (which by the way was free, courtesy of Hilton hotels, and I’m not going to ask why) and spending the evening on Valentine’s day watching Before sunrise; a story about a train, a German speaking city and a couple who are spending their one and only night together before they never see each other again… and there’s no sex involved!!! I wonder who would be so stupid to do that (wink)… Brilliant!

So now I just can’t wait to go to Vienna.

Hotel life

Two weeks into the training course before I take up my new position at work and I still can’t believe this is really happening.

I always thought it must be really cool to be one of those executives that stay at hotels paid by their company, and going down to the hotel bar for a drink in the evening. (I just got an image in my head of the movie Up in the Air) And for now I’m actually enjoying it. I can’t say I won’t change my mind, I just hope I get used to it instead of getting to the point of hating it.

So this is my life for now, Monday to Friday attending a course that for the time being is the most relaxed training I’ve ever had, and coming back home to catch up with friends and laundry before flying away again for one more week of “learning”.

Unfortunately this means that, among many other things, I’ve had to put on hold my new, and very lame, hobby of doing pilates twice a week, and I’ll have to trust someone will remember to water my miniature tree from time to time.

The other big disadvantage of changing jobs within the company is that I will have to move to a different base (confirmed I’m going back to the Isles, I’ll be working out of BHX to be precise). And although I never get too attached to places, I do get attached to people, and I will miss having someone to talk to over a cup of tea and scones like I did last week. However, I want to make a public promise that I will do my best (hopefully more than my usual best) to remember who my real friends are.

But now enough of this, it’s time to get ready for a couple of Saturday night drinks.

Ups!! You must have noticed one of my new year's resolutions has already gone done the drain. The others still stand, though.

Time for a recap

From time to time it’s good to stop and try to look into our own lives from the outside. And the New Year is as good a time as any other. I’m hoping that, since I forgot to think about any new year’s resolutions, I can try to make some sense of the mess that have been the last 12 months.

And the thing is that most of the year was pretty good. I had a lot of fun: drunken nights out (maybe a few too many), trip to Sintra, the amazing holiday in Germany, meeting lots of nice and interesting people, applying for a better position at work… and getting it!! But as always, I tend to focus on the few (or the only) bad thing of the whole year, that is, not getting one person’s attention.

It’s funny how writing things down kind of gives you some perspective, and I still have a lot of things to work at during the next months. First of all, I got the promotion, but that is going to involve a lot of studying and focus to pass the training course before I officially become an SEP instructor, so that means no more alcohol until that’s done. Second, my future new job will give me the opportunity to travel with work a lot more, so there should be a lot of interesting new cities to discover, and will force me to meet and deal with a lot of people, which is always a challenge, a pleasure and a learning process. And third, I’ve always been crap at keeping in contact with people, so I better not mess it up this time and appreciate the friends I’ve made over the last year and a half.

I would probably add another new year resolution, which is try not to make a fool of myself when I’m drunk, but since I’m not trying any alcohol again until I am officially an instructor, I can kind of call it a summer resolution and put that on hold for a few months.

Oh! And try not to kill my bonsai!! Which, by the way, was my favourite Christmas present. Not because the others weren’t good, but because it was really thoughtful and came from someone truly special.