And M is coming to Rome tonight!

It's beautiful
outside
the smokers
on their coffee break
revel in the sunshine
business
is tedious
but I'm deliriously happy
did I mention
It's beautiful
outside?

Applying myself

I'm writing a application letter to show my eagerness to work at the Nordic Council of Ministers. I hate writing those things, which is ironic since I'm morbidly interested in rhetoric which is all about presentation of self. I loathe the whole exercise because it all seems like a blatant lie: I don't know what I want to do, be, make, attain - so how could I communicate the false assertiveness and drive that these letters seem to demand? By carefully tailoring the truth, that's how.

Oh yes I've always wanted to work for you ever since I heard about you last Tuesday.

Coming clean

I’m in denial. I repeat the same pattern over and over and it wasn’t funny the first time and it’s definitely not funny now.

I’m in denial. I repeat the same pattern over and over and it wasn’t funny the first time and it’s definitely not funny now. See this is what I do. I scrimp and I save and I get by on lentils and quiet evenings at home; I fade out of the going-out-for-drinks-crowd and I tell myself that it’s healthy and fun to live on a tiny budget.

Then I snap and consequently go bananas. I don’t indulge in what would be characterized as a shopping spree by, say, someone with a salary and a penny saved for a rainy day, but still I hit the town. This week I hit that point and suddenly I found myself outside of Zara’s with a new jacket. Two days later I find myself going out with friends from work, enjoying a delicious aperetivo (buffet food with a drink), going to a concert and subsequently sharing a cab home. I think I spent what pitiful funds I managed to save while being in my spartan pre-denial phase. Damn!

But it was fun. The concert (Jamie Lidell, a British artist who plays really cool soul funky music) was good but the atmosphere was even better. I laughed myself silly at the stupid jokes told by my Swedish colleagues and the Great Dane (the new intern), shouted ‘get a room!’ with everyone else at the amorous and lip-locked couple in front, sang along and danced to the music.

So what is more important? The immediate gratification that comes from buying new clothes, the buzz that comes from shared beers and jokes with colleagues who become your friends – or abiding the feasible-but-strict budget that sees you through to tomorrow??

I don’t want to know, and don’t want to think about it. As I said, I’m in denial. Right now I am carefully reading the Guardian’s list of 1000 sci-fi and fantasy books everyone must read. It’s just as well I can’t buy stuff online at work, otherwise I would’ve bought 498 of the books by now. Nothing complements denial like a sci-fi classic as a gift to oneself!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-fiction-fantasy-introduction

Enjoy, and have a good weekend!

Random

Just some random thoughts from your Rome correspondent...

My head is buzzing from too much caffeine and too much talking on my part. My phone still isn't fixed and my trust in my oh so Swedish ergo reliable phone company has been shaken. Can't they just provide me with a code so I can unlock my phone?

I had a nice but kind of slow weekend. I bumped into a guy from work. I have a crush on him. He sends out mixed signals. He makes me confused. After I met him I ran into Zara and almost bought a beautiful jacket, just as a pick-me-up (I think I tried to transfer the crush on the guy to an inanimate object). I didn't have the cash for it so in the end I walked from the store empty-handed. Poor me, without man nor jacket (on sale, reduced to 49 Euro - the jacket, not the guy).

Things are slowly picking up at work but modern technology and I ca fait deux so when I need to do simple things (like opening an excel sheet) my computer puts up a struggle. So far it's winning.

The new intern is orphaned, no one in the upper echelons has the time for him. I have taken it upon myself to show him the ropes because a) let's be honest here, I'm not exactly swamped with work and b) he's so cute - he's practically the bees' knees.

Yesterday my flatmate woke me up with the announcement that we had no water. I got dressed, looked up the Italian words for 'Do you have water in your tap Madam?', and preceded to knock on our neighbours' doors. It turned out that the work carried out in the street had cut us off so no one in the building had water.. They solved it surprisingly fast though. Weird day.

Later on in the evening my flatmate L Skyped with her family intensely. Her middle daughter had walked out and disappeared after a row with her dad so they were all worried, especially my flatmate since she's on the other side of the world basically. They found the daughter in the end and now all is well but I could see how hard the whole thing was for L. It was a maudlin' evening. When I see how much my flatmate cares for her children I miss my mother! Really, some unconditional motherly love is what I could use right now. And an updated version of Excel but let's not be greedy here.

Happy weekend

My cell phone has locked itself (noone can call me) but I'm thankful because it's Friday.
We have a new intern at work. I have a new intern at work!

Ciao ragazzi!

Can't stop joking

So today (don't I always start these rantings with "so today"?) I talked to the new boss of our unit, the new matron of this happy little family of reporting officers. She's American. She's nice. She's got a lot of influence. She laughs a lot, and I know that because I can't seem to stop joking when I'm around her. I do that when I'm around many people here. I do it when I'm nervous. Or bored. Or understimulated. Or happy. Or c) all of the above.And I'm not sure whether that makes a good impression or not. My guess would be no. On the other hand, I'm quite good at it (though not as sharp as my middle sister) and I don't hink I appear nervous or self-deprecating while doing it. I do succeed in making people laugh. It's a nice quality but I don't think it's an express lane to any future prospects in the serious corporate world. Anyway, our short meeting was nice but a bit bewildering. Maybe I could have hinted GIVE ME A JOB I NEED THE BLOODY INCOME a bit more but hey that's still not my forte.

Tonight I'm providing vocals again for my old supervisor and his band (a fellow colleague who is also in the band try to name the band "The Squeaky Wheels" - I love it, the others don't); that's my forte!

Melancholy oyster girl

Uurgh. Having a melancholy day already and I've haven't even been awake for 3 hours yet.. That's the price I pay for skipping breakfast? No that's a lousy theory.

Things are going to pick up at work, this is the "calm before the storm" as my old boss puts it. The storm is set to begin really soon, within the week. Ironically, being so close to the finish line (the busy times at work), I am now in the mood to bugger it all and just go home to Sweden. As you can tell I am having a "square peg round hole" kind of day today. I think it started when walking from the train to the office this morning. A workmate asked me what I wanted to do once my internship is over. I had really no clue what to answer but as that doesn't fly very well in this kind of place I had to say something so I blathered on about me wanting to work with, uh, environmental issues. "Governmental or NGO-approach?" was the follow-up question. "Uuuh.. I want to work with the environment.. but not hug trees.. ". Not a stellar response.

So why am I letting this get to me today then? I've known for quite some time that I don't have any clear career goals besides being able to pay back my massive debts and loans. I have also known for quite some time that I'm not overly ambitious, and that I don't care about getting a bigger piece of the pie. In fact I sometimes despise the zero-sum division of the pie. I don't even care for pie. My point is that I know all this - and still it can ruin my Tuseday mood? Well maybe it's got to do with the weather. Maybe I miss my mother's cooking. Maybe I can't handle idleness as well as I thought I could. Perhaps I was cut out for something more creative than this. Possibly I need to eat more for breakfast.

I'm not being very productive here.

S.O.S

My computer is like, totally dead. I'm writing this at work from the internet cafe that I had forgotten existed. This office is great man, it has its own post office, two banks,an internet cafe, a cafeteria and a coffee bar, one formal and one informal library, a newsstand, a tailor and a doctor. NOW ONLY IF IT COULD HAVE SOM FRICKING IT SERVICE!!!!!

What's more is that it's quite embarrassing to be shut out from your computer and therefore your duties.. and no one notices. Incentive to go to work any one?

Well. Have a good weekend everyone. I know I'm going to, I've just borrowed a cheesy romance novel and Kafka's Metamorphosis - interesting mix for an interesting person like me.

Ciao!

I envy that.

I talked to my Swedish colleague S yesterday, asking her about her holiday back home. Her description mirrored my own experience of holidays and traditions in general. Her family is Muslim so they don't really celebrate Christmas, but they've also stopped celebrating the Eid Al Fatr so the end result is that they don't really do, or in if you take it one step further, believe in anything at all (as in, believing in something thus upholding or recognizing it) this time of year. It's the same with me. Christmas is not really relevant anymore, but Chanukka isn't observed by me or my family either - so you end up with little ado about nothing. And this at a time when everyone else, Protestant, Catholic or you name it, is going holiday bananas.

And it keeps on in a similar vain - Pesach, Easter, Midsummer... I don't make a fuss about anything, which is weird in a way. Is it the same thing as nothing is important? Now I'm not saying that just because regular secularised yet Protestant Swedes (as an example) deck the halls with bows of holly they also believe in the birth of Christ, or that it's even related to Him. You can celebrate Christmas in a eating-and-shopping way that is quite detached from religion these days (less true in Italy though). The point I'm trying to make here is that that religiously detached consumerist stuff-yourself-with-stuffing-holiday is celebrated with religious fervor by most people, thus giving them something to uphold and look forward to, something that is kinda sacred and important.

Christmas/Chanukka/Eid/Kwanzaa is still the opportunity to meet up with your family and eat and be merry so I'm not complaining. I miss the weight of traditions, that's all.

Smelly New Year

It's unimaginative to start 2009's blogging with a link to what someone else wrote but I think this man is very funny. He is a columnist at the Guardian and he writes about what we can expect from 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/05/ch

My flatmate L ventured in to the kitchen yesterday evening, heated some oil in a saucepan and added rice, and then apparently forgot all about it and went in to her room. The smoke coming out of that kitchen! The state of the saucepan! My clothes hanging out to dry in the living room!

Smelly.