bonus

Last week I had my first ever quarterly bonus transferred to my bank account. Not bad. You know me better than to expect me to just do some boring thing like, um, just leave it there or park it on some savings account with a marginally better interest rate. Well, not all of it anyway.

I blame my Mum.

When she was in Vienna the weekend before last she took me to a jewellery gallery downtown which she had discovered a while back but which must have escaped my shopaholic radar. They had gorgeous stuff by dozens of international artists and when I had tried on a silver necklace by a Bulgarian designer, I was smitten:

I told the gallery owner I'd sleep over it, but to be honest, my mind was made up there and then. Tonight after work I finished the deal and now it's mine, mine, mine.

Well, I never said I wasn't bribable

From Sunday till yesterday I was in Hamburg. The official mission was to attend a time-management training at our German HQ. Well. No epiphanies there, predictably enough. I basically got the semi-scientific proof of what I had known all along -that I have no problem managing my time. Unlike the majority of my fellow attendees obviously who claimed to be perfectionists and seemed to spend their weekends working more often than not. Eeeek!

My main motivation was the knowledge that I would get to stay at the ultra-chic Side Hotel again. You could say that once you've experienced a rectangular toilet seat there's no going back. Or something like that anyway. Plus the knowledge that I could squeeze in some power-shopping in HH, which I did, making sure that Jo Malone and Massimo Dutti won't go out of business any time soon.

And guess where I'm going next week on business...Seville, ta-dah!...which is even cooler as I've never been. I just hope I'll get to see more than air-conditioned conference rooms.

Back to Hamburg - upon arrival on Sunday afternoon I strolled to the Alster river which had stalls on all 4 sides and hordes of people sampling their merchandise, mainly of the greasy culinary variety. I couldn't see a poster anywhere, but apparently I had happened upon the annual (catchily named) "Alstervergnügen". Chewing on a custom-made Heringsbrötchen without onions I elbowed my way through throngs of remarkably badly dressed people (the proverbial subdued Hanseatic chic must have had its day off). Suddenly I saw a familiar logo - Kärntenwerbung! Now I know why Klagenfurt hosts "Hamburger Fischtage", it must be a kind of mafiaesque deal between the mayors along the lines of "I get to dump my flyers on your people, you get to sell your fish to mine"...

jellyfish

Yesterday I met former colleagues AFOS and B. from Coma HQ in my lunch-hour. They came bearing a gift from a Japanese mutual acquaintance. "How nice. A candle", I said. "Oh no", they replied, "that's what WE thought at first, too. It's a dessert."

The edible Japanese fish pond is sitting on our trusty AC, by the way.

Capital of Style

Graben. One of Vienna's most elegant and exclusive shopping areas. This fact must have made its way into guide-books published on Planet VERY BAD TASTE as well. How else could it be explained that they sent a lurex/latex-clad emissary down from their elevated spheres...

Purleeeeese! Don't tell the others to come down as well!

there's a word for it...

...to explain the drought of posts that has afflicted this blog rather than stating the obvious - the absence of office-hour boredom, the reluctance to go near computers at the weekend and the sad fact that nothing interesting seems to happen to yours truly anyway. Yawn.

Why not just call itIf Gartenbaukino can get away with it, so can I!

Vienna. Where rubbish bins talk to you

MA 48, the people who take care of our rubbish here in Vienna take customer service seriously. When they temporarily remove rubbish bins, they leave a laminated sheet in their place with a touching first-person apology by the bin itself:

Gone to wash myself for one hour approx.

Your rubbish bin

SORRY

close-up

Today I visited my old hunting grounds in my lunch-hour. After a quick detour through Naschmarkt where I grabbed a bunch of presumably happy free-range rocket leaves, I was strolling up Schleifmühlgasse towards Bobby's, the British supermarket (a bad case of salt and vinegar crisp cravings, PMS has a lot to answer for) discovering a lovely shop which despite its name not only sells whisk(e)y, but an impressive selection of chocolate and teas and herbal infusions from the UK as well when

oooops, what was THAT? A shop decorated with strange blue and white *things* all over!

Aaaaah. Trusty old BIC biros have obviously been put to good use.

It's some cool art project but I forgot to write down (alternatively just REMEMBER) the artist's name.

Speaking of cool - we were put out of our misery in the office today. No, no superiors were assassinated, just the air conditioning unit was installed at last. It's called Alaska and according to the landlord has the capacity to chill up to 100m² (our room is less than half that size) so our expectations were considerably high. After having it on for half an hour we agreed that a) it would give an airbus a run for its money, noise-wise and b) it was Alaskan indeed even if we set it to 25°. I came up with a brilliant idea: leave it on when we're out for lunch, switch it off when we're in

It's that Friday feeling...

Some people are itching to get pissed on Friday night. Some yearn for the TV or the gym. Others (not that I know such creatures from personal acquaintance, needless to say) are itching to circulate some of their hard-earned (how strange that sounds if you actually sort of mean it...) cash. Because I'm worth it and all the rest.

When I got out of the office at 6:30, I made a quick tour through shops that were still open. Turning on my heels at the changing rooms of Steffl when a friendly loudspeaker announcement thanked me for shopping (duh, if only!) at 7 sharp I had to make up for this shoppus interruptus (hate it!) by prowling down Graben, ploughing through the seasonal throngs of veiled tourists from the Gulf states.

I don't usually patronise the likes of Gerry Weber - bit too conservative and middle-aged for my taste - but this specimen was calling out to me:Buy me. Pleeeease buy me.

A cry for help I was only too happy to answer.