statue 2.0

In these days of interactivity, nothing is sacred it seems and so someone obviously decided Ukranian writer Ivan Franko needed to be spruced up a bit:

Look what I've got!

The Firm has a stall at the Austrian Media Fair and yours truly elbowed her way through the crowd to snatch the freebie above from a Dirndl-clad lady in the service of a homeshopping channel. Cool, eh?

blasé

There were times when eating out at a fancy restaurant was something special for me, a treat.

When you've lunched at some of Vienna's best restaurants 4 days a week on average for the past 5 months, you realise that the whole idea of eating out has lost a lot of its shine.

I could of course always go back to my staple rucola diet and spend my lunch-hour shopping, but unlike clothes and handbags, I can expense my lunches and the side effect that a proper lunch saves me the trouble of cooking dinner is not an entirely unwelcome one either. My fridge has become a neon-lit museum, exhibiting solitary yoghurts and probiotic drinks.

I know, I know - the issues of, say, global warming and stock market losses pale in comparison with the problems of Ladies who Lunch.

semi-detached

Late last night on my way home from K's after your typical book club meeting (when breaking up at a quarter past 11 we realised that hey, we hadn't actually exchanged one word about the BOOK but never you mind...), full to the brim with a 3-course dinner and really tired, I decided to hop into a taxi halfway rather than carry on walking to the nearest U3 station.

As the cab was speeding down Wipplinger Straße, past the former stock exchange, just round the corner from Coma HQ, I experienced the same sensation I always feel when passing my old hunting grounds, that part of the first district where I spent the greater part of the past 17 years, first at university, then at my first "proper" job. It's a feeling akin to bumping into an old friend you haven't seen for a while but everytime you meet them you realise you can start where you left off the last time you talked to each other.

Next week it will be 5 months since I commenced work for the Firm, just a bit further down (or up, depending) Vienna's "Ring" and no, it's not that I have actually regretted the decision to leave the Realm of the Comatose. And yet...

My new office is not that far away from the old one, is even more central and actually closer to the shopping hotspots I like to prowl, but for some inexplicable reason I always feel wistful and nostalgic when back in the Schottentor area. It's not like visiting my native KLU, a place where I have relinquished the right to feel like a local a long time ago, visits being too short and far between to catch up on things to do and places to go, not that I could be bothered, really. Whenever I'm there, I'm driven by a sense of efficiency more than anything else, knowing that everything I need to do can be done within a day and reached on foot or by bike.

I didn't feel homesick when I studied abroad for a year in my early twenties and have never felt nostalgic about places of town I used to live in before. Not a bit. Thus I find my sentiments for that particular geographical entity somewhat bewildering.

I'll be taking a trip down memory lane tomorrow night by meeting 3 of my Coma HQ colleagues for dinner. In a different part of town altogether.

goosebumps

I took today off work in order to spend a proper weekend in KLU. For a change, I have been rewarded for the long journey with good weather - I even swam in the (18° "warm") lake today. Few people were in the water and those brave enough made the mistake of veeery slowly decending the steps, splashing their extremities with water in the process, visibly wincing every time water hit goose-skinned body. My technique is to practically run (not jump) into the water and not even think about the shock to the system. So far, I haven't had a heart attack and it feels great to slowly regain your normal body temperature by swimming the first strokes really fast. A bit like lying down under a cold duvet on a cold mattress in a freezing b&b, frantically moving your legs to work up heat.

the beauty of small things

I recently brewed a Chinese tea flower I had got as a free "takeaway" at an upmarket restaurant. Actually, it was an unassuming grey walnut-sized shrivelled something that morphed into the beautiful flower(s) pictured above. Celebrating a cross-culture (Bodum tea strainer meets Chinese tea gadget) tea ceremony for one, I marvelled at the metamorphosis taking place in my tea pot. Yet another reminder to not judge a book by its cover.

That would of course be a more PC way of saying it's f***ing freezing

"Oh, methinks autumn has come a bit early this year."

school trip

Brrr! I came back from Seville late last night and am frozen solid already. Bye-bye summer heat, hello cold and rain.

Seville was great and as we (yours truly and 3 of her colleagues) arrived a day early we had Wednesday for sightseeing. The boys were good and went on the corporate treasure hunt in the afternoon, the girls decided to skip it in spite of its charitable cause and go on a boat-cruise and shopping mission istead. We discovered a cool Spanish store, Cortefiel (the clothes on the website are quite horrible so you just have to believe me they had other, nicer, stuff) where we raided the "Sale" section. We also popped into pretty much every shoe store there was. And there were many of them. E. bought a pair of sandals, I couldn't be bothered to extract my swollen feet from the shoes I was wearing.

As a novice to conferences, never mind those of such a huuuuuge company as the one financing my retail addiction, I have to admit I'm rather easy to impress. Still, it was pretty impressive to see that a gathering of almost 2000 people could be organised so smoothly with no technical glitches or other mishaps. In fact, it was a logistical masterpiece and the organisers had thought of everything from (branded, of course) sun-screen, mosquito repellant and baseball cap to vouchers for drinks and tapas on the night before the conference. That night, the town was full of people wearing the telltale wristbands, t-shirts and bags with the motto of the conference, the venue of which was rather original and unusual as well. Our colleagues from Dublin and Hamburg arrived in chartered planes, the handful of Viennese participants got value for money with their plane tickets. Thus I know not only know the airport of Seville (practically no shop-ops, in case you were wondering), but also those of Madrid and Palma de Mallorca. Ah well, gift-horse and all that...

I had last been in Spain at the age of 14, en route to Portugal with my parents. My parents had made bad experiences every time they visited Spain, including stolen suitcases, wallets and a hit-and-run car accident, the latter in Seville, actually. For that reason, family holidays tended to give Spain a wide berth. As my experiences on that short stay were entirely positive, I wouldn't mind going on a proper holiday to Spain or the Balearic islands.
I've just put my hard-earned frequent(ish) flyer miles to good use today and cashed them in for a flight to London. A weekend in London in November, yeah!

Oh - I now have a picture of myself grinning next to one of the Firm's founders. Not entirely uncool, that.

exceeding expectations

What can I say - our soccer table has been raised from the dead thanks to the Boss who apparently turned up at the office on Saturday afternoon armed with a drill, hammer and nail and a rod of structural steel nicked from a building site. Our unanimous verdict - who'd have thunk that there's a DIY hero in our midst. Him of all people!

Hast la vista, babies - I'm off to Seville until Friday. If I manage to see more than the convention centre there, I promise to post some pics.

just as I was contemplating a career as centre forward...

...our white goalie died, i.e. we managed to break one of the metal rods. Bummer. Recenly, we'd spent more time playing than working and I had developed a fierce shot with - surprisingly, as I'm right-handed - my left hand.

R.I.P.

We are currently trying to get Big Boss to let us order a world cup table but we haven't quite managed to pursuade him yet.