(no subject)
My job here means I'll get to travel a lot. It is great to come into work and see an email telling me some far-off place I am expected to be in!
For example, last week I was told I had to go to a summit in Heidelberg the first week of December. This morning we had a meeting on whether we'd be staying in the Marriot or the Crowne Plaza Hotel! The summit is only on Tues and Wed, but we are being flown in for Monday for the entire week. Our boss told us today that we could stay for an extra weekend if we wanted, so our team is going to stay until the Sunday on the company's dollar, er, euro. One of the high points will definitely be visitng Heidelberg's Christmas Market. I should be able to find some neat stuff to bring home.
Then today I come into work and find out I am going to India at the end of January! Some of our devleopers are in Bangalore and we need to meet with them before we get too far into the project that is due to finish up in June. I had to make an appointment with the Tropical Medical Bureau to get some vaccinations and my office is handling the work visa. In India I am most excited about eating Indian food. All the naan bread I can handle! The butter chicken! The foods I don't even know I like yet! Also maybe I can find some Indian silk, what luxury. And of course, leaving the rainy, wintery Irish winter for a hot climate isn't so bad either. It'll be something to look forward to if I get depressed when I have to leave my friends and family again at Christmas to come back here.
At work here they also provide us with free lunches everyday, and they're actually pretty good... hot meals, soups, salads, fruit and dessert. I also get to have breakfast every morning with my co-workers on my team, since we're allowed to work any hours we want as long as its 38 hours/week. So we all come in for about 7:30am and go down to the canteen for breakfast around 8.
Now the job's not perfect; I mean, the training here has been lacking at best, and I find it frustrating that my manager here won't train me, but that my mentor in Waldorf, Germany has to be the one telling me how to do my job. I've been working here 3 weeks and I can't say they're in a hurry to get me working, which gets frustrating nd tiring. There's only so much time a person can spend aimlessly wasting time.
I've also started taking German and violin lessons. I thought German would be fun since I work for a German company, and it's always been a language I've wanted to learn since meeting a beautiful Austrian a few years ago! The violin has always been a plan of mine, but I thought Ireland would be the perfect place to start. I bought the violin a few weeks ago and I spend hours each week practicing it, I really love it, although I'm still on the traditional music equivalent of Baa Baa Black Sheep.
But all in all, I really look forward to coming to work everyday, and I really like the people I work with:
I had planned on my time in Ireland to be something of a detox from Paris, meaning that I'd stay until the moment I felt homesick enough to return home permanently. But the more I see of my life here, the more I like it and I might stay a little longer than I had originally thought. I won't get ahead of myself and start lessons for driving on the wrong side of the road in a manual car, I'm just saying... things here are turning into a pleasant surprise.
For example, last week I was told I had to go to a summit in Heidelberg the first week of December. This morning we had a meeting on whether we'd be staying in the Marriot or the Crowne Plaza Hotel! The summit is only on Tues and Wed, but we are being flown in for Monday for the entire week. Our boss told us today that we could stay for an extra weekend if we wanted, so our team is going to stay until the Sunday on the company's dollar, er, euro. One of the high points will definitely be visitng Heidelberg's Christmas Market. I should be able to find some neat stuff to bring home.
Then today I come into work and find out I am going to India at the end of January! Some of our devleopers are in Bangalore and we need to meet with them before we get too far into the project that is due to finish up in June. I had to make an appointment with the Tropical Medical Bureau to get some vaccinations and my office is handling the work visa. In India I am most excited about eating Indian food. All the naan bread I can handle! The butter chicken! The foods I don't even know I like yet! Also maybe I can find some Indian silk, what luxury. And of course, leaving the rainy, wintery Irish winter for a hot climate isn't so bad either. It'll be something to look forward to if I get depressed when I have to leave my friends and family again at Christmas to come back here.
At work here they also provide us with free lunches everyday, and they're actually pretty good... hot meals, soups, salads, fruit and dessert. I also get to have breakfast every morning with my co-workers on my team, since we're allowed to work any hours we want as long as its 38 hours/week. So we all come in for about 7:30am and go down to the canteen for breakfast around 8.
Now the job's not perfect; I mean, the training here has been lacking at best, and I find it frustrating that my manager here won't train me, but that my mentor in Waldorf, Germany has to be the one telling me how to do my job. I've been working here 3 weeks and I can't say they're in a hurry to get me working, which gets frustrating nd tiring. There's only so much time a person can spend aimlessly wasting time.
I've also started taking German and violin lessons. I thought German would be fun since I work for a German company, and it's always been a language I've wanted to learn since meeting a beautiful Austrian a few years ago! The violin has always been a plan of mine, but I thought Ireland would be the perfect place to start. I bought the violin a few weeks ago and I spend hours each week practicing it, I really love it, although I'm still on the traditional music equivalent of Baa Baa Black Sheep.
But all in all, I really look forward to coming to work everyday, and I really like the people I work with:
I had planned on my time in Ireland to be something of a detox from Paris, meaning that I'd stay until the moment I felt homesick enough to return home permanently. But the more I see of my life here, the more I like it and I might stay a little longer than I had originally thought. I won't get ahead of myself and start lessons for driving on the wrong side of the road in a manual car, I'm just saying... things here are turning into a pleasant surprise.