Whining around the Christmas tree

Ciao tutti,
I've been a bad boy and am not going swimming because I'm not feeling too good. This doesn't mean I'm really sick, because I never really get sick, but I'm using my feeling a little bit under the weather as a very lame but superficially valid excuse. However, this gives me time to write something before I start doing some exercises on the floor of our lovely little apartment which should compensate for not swimming - but just don't, to be completely honest. Anyway, the point is that I'm lazy and abusing a minor discomfort for the pleasure of whining about my life. If you are still interested in me and my life after this lovely introduction, be my guest and read on!

I'm sorry but I'm a bit frustrated. Work is very slow this month and my pay is going to suck, and not just because this month only has three days. People are always busy finishing things the last weeks before Christmas and the cancellation rate goes up significantly, as it has this year. This means less money, even though December is not cheapest month of the year - and that's making the understatement of the year (and seriously, it was time someone made it because the year is nearly at its end). I have been promised a shitload of courses as of the first week of January though - more than I can handle to be honest - so I'm hoping I'll be able to compensate for my current lack of money and will actually be able to start saving for the summer.

There have been some problems at work lately, some cashflow problems and stress to get a lot of things arranged and underway, which hasn't been having a positive influence on the atmosphere in the office. Veronica, our course manager, is sick quite a lot and completely stressed out and Caroline is stressed out about making sure Veronica's work gets done while at the same time trying to keep the business afloat. I'm trying to help out as much as I can, but it has become blatantly obvious to me how much I still don't know and have to learn about the job. My being completely incapable of understanding how the phone system works so I can't
even help by answering the phone may just be a little problem on the whole, but does remind
me of my utter stupidity on a daily basis. Moreover, my inaccurate use of Italian, which seems to prolong any conversation that should be handled quickly and politely, is contributing as well.

To make matters even worse, our endless listening to Christmas music has finally started taking its toll and I can't stand it anymore. I wish Christmas was already here, so we could just have the bloody dinners, open our gifts and be done with it!!! It does mean that for the first time in weeks we are now both sitting next to each other on the couch enjoying a blissful silence without any bells jingling, reindeer dashing, pop stars desperate to make a comeback singing horribly sweet Christmas songs or 'Santa, baby's hurrying down the chimney tonight!!!! Olé!

OK, that's it for the complaining, I promise. Let's focus on the good things. Olaf's making progress with his research, I only have to work three more days this month, I have been able to increase my number of private students to make some extra cash and we have been doing some pretty cool things. Two weeks ago, Sant'Ambrogio (the religious feast day of St. Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan) was a public holiday (another day without pay this month, but hush, I promised I wouldn't complain anymore), which I spent doing absolutely nothing. I slept late, played Civilization all day and we had dinner with Felix and Annaïg that night to see their new apartment. That Saturday, I did my Christmas shopping and Olaf and I went to the market traditionally held during the weekend around Sant'Ambrogio, although I didn't buy anything. That night, we went to an aperitivo at La Hora Feliz with a lot of my colleagues and some ex colleagues I hadn't seen for along time like Louisa, Amanda and of course Nissrine. That Sunday, we met up with Stefano and Elke to go to the fiera, where there was a big food and hand-crafted objects fair where we drank German beer, ate lovely polenta and I bought loads of fudge and Egyptian candy. That made me very happy.

Last weekend, my study mates Bert and Eefje came to visit and we spent a lovely weekend sightseeing and mainly playing lots of games. They brought us a new addition to our game collection: Boonanza, way cool!!!! Of course we also ate and drank way to much at the usual hangouts like Más and La Padellaccia. It was really good catching up with them after such a long time and gossiping about all the people still in Nijmegen. I also thoroughly enjoyed just acting crazy with them the way we used to in the old days. And our playing games almost felt like the game nights we used to have back then. Oh nostalgia!!!

Tomorrow, Nissrine is coming back for two last days in Milan before she goes back to Canada. She didn't get her permesso and has to start the application process again. I feel so bad for her, because now that she finally has that job she
wanted and is able to start the career she is so ambitiously striving for, the bastard Italians are just
refusing her application - without any good reason. Let's hope things can be arranged fast from Canada and that she'll be back before we know it! Anyway, tomorrow we're going to her goodbye aperitivo at La Hora Feliz which will also serve as a pre-Christmas get-together for all my current and old colleagues. Thursday night will be spent in front of the computer as we are finally going to have our Austin Powers marathon with Nissrine before she has to catch her bus to the airport in the middle of the night. Ironically enough, Friday is my only busy day this week, but I'm sure I will survive one short night, especially because it will be the last day before Christmas break!!!

I suppose one of the other reasons I'm not too happy today is because I am a bit sickly, and so is Olaf. There's a nasty vomiting flu going around and I'm hoping we can avoid catching it. As I don't get sick that easily and infections never last long, I'm sure it will pass soon enough but at least it means I'm in for a few days of headaches and sore throats. Oh well, it is winter after all. It's just that the combination of work stress, worries about not earning enough and my physical state at the moment are trying to defeat my positive attitude. But I am not going to let it and will force myself to be merry. It has to be, after all, a merry fucking Christmas!

Until I have more to whine about, I will leave you with big Christmas kisses for now!

XXX, Fe

Parties galore

Ciao tutti,

I realise it has been ages since I wrote anything and I apologise. It's not that I haven't had the time or that I've had a lot on my mind, really, at least not all the time, but I just didn't get around to it. Anyway, a lot has happened in the mean time and this mainly consists of guests and parties - aka nice things!

I've worked more than I expected to this month but I still didn't have a full schedule, so I've been getting used to the summer and making plans for July - when I'll only have a few classes and Olaf will obviously still be working. The end of my evening group courses for CTL was a particularly liberating event, because this means I now have my evenings off! I can finally go out for aperitivo during the week or spend my evenings relaxing at home instead of rushing in order to be able to eat, spend some quality time with Olaf, check my emails, maybe watch a short movie and still go to bed at a reasonably early time. To cut a long story short, I'm happy with all the time I've got. The prospect of earning practically nothing next month doesn't make me smiley-faced, however, but I've been trying to anticipate that over the year. I just hope I've saved enough. In order to make a little extra cash I've started a course with a private student (who is paying me considerably more than any of my schools have ever done!) and I'm taking part in Corporate English' new try-out, the English Conversation Special, a short low-intensity five-week course based on conversation. Students can sign up for this in order to playfully improve their English before going on holiday simply by talking to each other under the supervision of a teacher. Unfortunately, not many people have signed up for it so I'm just going to have to see how many classes I'll actually get to teach!

But on to the happier topics mentioned earlier: guests and parties. The weekend after Andrea visited, Olaf's friends Bard and Marlous came to grace us with another visit. This was his fourth and her second time in Milan, so we could relax and didn't have to do the mandatory tour. On Saturday, we went to Monza, a small Medieval town near Milan (it's actually more like a suburb now), a place we had been planning to go to for some time but had never had a chance to actually go and see (yes, that's the Monza where the Formula 1 circuit is). The town was very small, cute and had a lot of fresh air (I just don't realise how heavily polluted the air in Milan really is). We spent a substantial part of the afternoon relaxing in the famous and lovely Parco di Monza, getting a tan and watching babes (male babes, obviously!).

That weekend the party season started. Belinda and Enrico were back in town for a week and that Saturday evening Simona had invited us for an African dinner so we could all meet and catch up, which I enjoyed immensely. That Monday one of my CTL courses finished and my students took me out to a restaurant specialising in Argentinian meat - e mi è piacuto molto!!! On Tuesday, my last CTL course finished and those students also wanted to take me out to dinner but unfortunately we're still discussing a date and I'm not sure we're ever going to find one. Oh well, it's the thought that counts, right?

Last weekend, we finally got to organise a party of our own. We realised we had never had a party at casa nostra before and decided it was time. We called it our 'housewarming party', even though we've already been living here for eleven months - so we subtitled it 'summer celebration'. We invited all our colleagues and friends and prepared a lot of food. We had a great time, although the crowd was a little smaller than expected and got horribly, horribly drunk! We almost forgot to take pictures, here are just a few:

Björn, Idil and Mariangela

Nina and Marta

Paola

We of course enjoyed some lovely voddy melon...

Don't Nina and I look like a couple?!

In the end, drunk as we were, we decided to do something about the constant mosquito attacks we had been suffering all evening. So, the evening ended in a MOSQUITO BLOOD & GOREFEST!!!

... which we didn't appreciate that much the next morning.... but then again we had to clean anyway. Well, at least we didn't have to cook but could eat left-overs from the party for two days!

This week was quite relaxing. I finished some more courses and did a lot of overdue admin. On Monday, some CTL students who hadn't been able to do their tests could come in for make-up appointments and that more or less concluded my year with them. On Thursday, they organised an international aperitivo in English for all our students, but unfortunately only one of mine showed up. I didn't really mind as I wasn't getting paid anyway and I had a lovely chat with some of my colleagues I didn't know very well - while drinking beers of course. I actually found out two of my colleagues are gay (which makes us a very large minority seeing as there are only 8 or so people working there) and another one is actually Dutch - although hearing someone speak Dutch at CTL was a bit disconcerting...

After we had cleaned up, had all said our goodbyes and had wished each other a very good summer, Stefano and I went to Peter's goodbye cocktail party. Peter (former director of studies at Corporate English) hasn't been able to get his permesso di soggiorno renewed and is forced to relocate to London for at least two years. I'm quite sorry to see him go, because I think he was a good manager and we worked well together. Anyway, while having some cocktails I realised I had completely forgotten to have dinner and started worrying about the rest of the night, although nothing happened - to me that is. At some point Veronica started acting weird because she had inadvertently got really drunk while suffering from a broken heart - and alcohol and broken hearts don't really combine very well. Caroline, Paola and I spent about an hour trying to get her into a taxi, but they wouldn't take her because she kept lying down on the pavement and the drivers even suggested to call an ambulance. In the end, we found a taxi that would take her and Caroline took her home. Paola and I didn't really feel like drinking and partying anymore after this and after saying our goodbyes to Pete we went home.

Yesterday, Moniquita (my Mexican colleague Monica, our Spanish teacher) invited us to her husband's birthday party aperitivo where I had some lovely Spanish food (Olaf suffered a little bit because everything contained meat but got by on nibbles with guacamole quite well) and where we met Caroline, Paola and a recovering Veronica (who had stayed home sick all day). After that, we rushed off to meet Olaf's study mates as the first year PhD students had finished their last exam and were celebrating that with lots of booze. We joined them for a little drinky-poo, because most of them are leaving for the rest of the summer quite soon and won't be back until September. We didn't stay out too little though, because we had to get up quite early this morning to clean the house because Stéphanie and Marieke are arriving today. They were supposed to arrive around noon, but unfortunately their plane has been delayed quite a lot. I hope they'll arrive soon because I'm really looking forward to their visit - especially, because summer sales are starting tomorrow and we need to shop till we drop!

I've also taken up swimming again which makes me feel really good. I haven't swum for years, but it's something you just can't unlearn. I still remember almost all the strokes (although I just can't get the hang of butterfly stroke anymore) and it's getting easier to get my breathing right every time I go. This is pretty much what has been going on in my life. As for plans for the summer, we won't go on holiday until 20th August, although we might make a little trip before that. So what am I going to do with my free time? You'll think I'm crazy but I'm actually going to study. I haven't read any Latin or Greek this year and I feel like it's slipping away from me. So, I've decided to start reading Homer's Iliad in Greek. My goal is to read all 24 books from the beginning to the end, we'll see if I make it...

Ciao, Fe

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