Arty-farty arrogance & mediocre mediation

Ciao ciao, here I am once again. This week has been excruciatingly tiring but quite good. I've worked a lot, earned a lot of money and had a lot of interesting experiences. Nothing life-altering, but interesting enough to tell you. I started some new courses this week and if my other new courses are finally starting next week I'll have a 30-hour working week. I'm also loving my Italian lessons, as Paola, my colleague and teacher, shares my love of conjunctives, conditionals and literary language. We're studying a lot more than just the Italian language: this is going to be a course on Italian rhetoric, literature, style and linguistics in general as well! Isn't that cool? OK, so maybe I'm an idiot whose interest in languages is completely stupid, useless and non-sensical, but hey, as long as it makes me happy, right?!

When one of my classes at the Corriere della Sera (an important Italian newspaper) was cancelled on Tuesday, I had some time to kill in the middle of the Brera, Milan's old artists' quarter. Nowadays, this is a very hip area famous for its art galleries, art school, art museum (the Pinacoteca di Brera I have spoken of before) and classy bars and restaurants. Therefore, I decided to check out the infamous Art Café opposite the Pinacoteca di Brera. It is supposed to be a hip arty-farty bar where - as a fashion-sensible Milanese yuppie - you just have to be seen. Well, being the fashion-sensible Milanese yuppie that I am, this obviously sounded like a nice place to spend an hour and a half of otherwise wasted time. Well, this turned out to be quite a disappointment. The walls were painted in the brightest non-complementing screaming colours, the staff walked around in currently fashionable clothing (baggy jeans pulled down to expose tight Armani, CK or H&M - for the losers - boxers clutching an overly-exercised pair of buttocks) and nobody seemed to have heard of the word service. The staff members were obviously employed solely for their beauty and arrogant 'do-you-really-think-you're-worthy-of-my-attention' looks, but there was nothing superior about their serving abilities. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy myself that much and left the 'quality establishment' with a condescending look of utter superiority over them on my face. Those yuppies just don't know what to do with their time.

I also seem to have gotten stuck in a disagreement between my boss and one of my most treasured colleagues, our intern Silvia. Silvia and I get on really well and she is one of the reasons life at school (Corporate English) is very enjoyable. She started when a lot of things were changing because one of my bosses had just left and was handed a lot of responsibility without getting the chance to get adjusted to the job or receive proper training. She's been complaining to me for a while that she doesn't feel appreciated and often gets blamed for making mistakes she hasn't been trained to be able to recognize or avoid. On the other hand, she's quite the chatterbox which - to be completely honest - doesn't improve her efficiency very much, to say it euphemistically. Plus, she has been with us for three months now and should be able to do the main part of her work independently. According to my boss, however, she still makes a lot mistakes she shouldn't be making anymore and is way too slow in doing her job. As I know my boss as a very reasonable person and employer, I have no reason to doubt her. So, now I find myself in a position where I feel myself forced to defend each party to the other. I've been trying to stimulate them to talk to each other, but I'm afraid this has been going on too long to be mended. I don't want to be a mediator, but on the other hand I think part of their disagreement is caused by misconceptions and if I'm going to be the one who has to listen to others complain I'm not one to listen quietly to things I know or perceive to be untrue. So, maybe I do want to mediate between them. Well, we'll see. Silvia is leaving in a few weeks anyway and then we'll probably get another intern. Maybe my boss will appreciate then how much Silvia has actually helped them the past few months and will Silvia finally understand people's frustrations about her.

Anyway, this is all stuff for the working week and the weekend is here. Maartje and Steef are coming over tomorrow morning and I just know this will be a great weekend! This will actually be Steef's first time flying, just to visit me! Good luck, popje!!!! They have apparently chosen a very nice weekend to come over. It was 17 degrees last weekend, but we've been having a little winter since yesterday. However, the winter is supposed to be over tomorrow. And they're arriving tomorrow! I wouldn't call that a coincidence... More soon.

Ciao,
Fe