animal planet

Life's good

holidays ahead!

Friday is a mysterious day. I never want to work on Fridays.

The bosses are still hunting. However they called me in the morning to make sure I'm not missing from the office. Smart guys! I'm smarter, though. All calls are transfered to my cell, so technically I can be anywhere and still answer the office phone. I just love the 21st century!

The other advantage of modern technology is that movies,which are not in local cinemas yet, are on the Internet. So I'm watching "Mamma Mia!" - a fantastic musical film starring hot Colin Firth, even hotter Pierce Brosnan and stunning Meryl Streep. They are hillarious together! ...I never knew Pierce can actually sing!

In addition, today's the last one, as I'm leaving on holidays on Monday and will have fun at the Red Sea for two weeks. Yahoo!

Gonna miss you, dear blogger-mates.

mystery solved

Today I arrived at the office in time to find it completely abandoned. Even the yesterday's mystery parcel has gone missing from the bookcase. On the desk I found a post-it that said in the president's neat handwriting that three bosses of mine had gone hunting. But today is Thursday.. a work day! They could have invited me too, I can shoot at least.

Anyway, the absence of the guys means that I am not busy today at all. So I've completed the routine tasks by lunch and now just have to sit around and enjoy myself. Isn't that nice?

why coffee's gone

I had a meeting in the morning today that's why I stepped in the office only around 11AM. The bosses bombarded me with questions right away:
where the IT fellow was;
where the contract was that we had signed the day before,
who delivered the parcel with ammunition;
whom the parcel was sent to;
where the hell I had been to;
why coffee had gone

Okay, okay guys. I have just got in, so let's deal with one problem at a time. I need my coffee, the printer doesn't print, the parcel... I NEED MY COFFEE. The last shout came from the president, so the others went silent and let me deal with the coffee machine first. Explaining that I had been at the meeting, which you, guys, had sent me to, I examined the coffee machine.

I didn't know there was a planned meeting this morning, mumbled the executive. Well, of course he didn't. When I was arranging the meeting he invited a new secretary to lunch out. The two never returned that day.

As for the coffee. It hadn't gone. There was something wrong with the screen and it showed that the coffee wasn't there, while it was... So, I just pressed the button "coffee" and... to everybody's amazement there it was in the president's favourite cup. He looked really happy.

The contract. Actually, we didn't sign anything yesterday. We discussed several terms and agreed to send in a new version the next day. It means to-day, sir, so we're about to find it in the inbox. Uh, oh... okay then.

Now, the parcel. That was a mystery indeed, as nobody ever ordered that sort of delivery into the office. The addressee was the executive, though. So me and the president headed to his office and asked if he was planning to shoot someone in particular soon. He looked at us in a confused-scared way and said to go to hell with the parcel. Well, I do have a shotgun, but the shells are for some other type of gun. So I just put a return-to-sender sticker on it and locked in the bookcase.

The IT guy was *on his way* to fix the printer, that didn't print, so I asked everybody to be calm and not to press the print button. However they kept on pressing it. As soon as the printer was fixed it printed a dozen copies of each and every document.

The contract arrived at around 2 PM and the bosses headed to the conference room. Phew!

In half an hour the executive tiptoed into my cubicle and whispered: The parcel is mine. Please, don't tell anyone.

Okay, I whispered back. He beamed and went back to the conference room.

I had already started blogging when a scream came from the room: "Why coffee's gone? Again"

cute survey

One word answer is required. Join in, it'll be fun to read your answers

Where is your cell phone? desk
Where is your significant other? work
Your hair? ginger
Your mother? perfect
Your father? busy
Your favorite thing? chocolate
Your dream last night? safari
Your dream/goal? motherhood
Your favorite drink? tea
The room you're in? office
Your ex? dead
Your hobby? music
Your fear? failure
Where do you want to be in 6 years? San Francisco
Where were you last night? disco
What you're not? stupid
Muffins? chocolate
One of your wish list items? NCIS s6
Time? free
Where you grew up? Russia
The last thing you did? blog
Favorite weather? sunny
What are you wearing? dress
Your favorite book? Hemingway’s
Your TV? broken
Your pet? Cat Your computer? blue
Your mood? Busy :)
Missing someone? no
Your car? dream
Something you're not wearing? slippers
Favorite store? IKEA Love someone? much
Your favorite color/shade? green
Last thing you ate? chocolate
Your life? weird
Your friends? funny
What are you thinking right now? holidays
What are you doing at this moment? typing
Your summer: great
Your relationship status: in a relationship
What do you do when you can't sleep? read
When is the last time you laughed? today
Last time you cried? Don’t remeber

a week-end post

This weekend was girlie like :)

Saturday evening I was too tired after work, so I hit one of my favourite youtube channels looking for updates. Singing along with Katharine McPhee I found the "The Barbie Daries" video, which made me so curious that I watched the whole cartoon the next day. The story is rather simple: Barbie's character would like to be recognised by other school kids and does her best to become popular. And of course, she succeeds in the end.

Later that Sunday I put my favourite pink dress and went to visit a friend, who was so taken aback by my pink outfit and the song "Connecting" blasting from headphones ( I'm a rock-n-roll babe after all) that insisted on watching the film. By pure accident it had been downloaded to my Ipod, so I spent one more hour watching the "Barbie's diaries".

After severals hours of discussing if that's stupid or awfully stupid to watch teen movies at our age, we decided to get down to a more complicated video "Atonement".

I heard a lot about it, however "Atonement" appeared to be so breathtaking and spectacular that left both my friend and me speechless. The storyline is perfect, the emotions are performed delicatelly and scrupulously, the set is stunning, - it is a masterpiece of modern cinematography.

'Atonemet' is going to become a precious pearl in my small movies collection.

animal planet

There must be something really scary down there :))

Stamp disaster

Sometimes I feel really stupid!

Today I had to glue a rubber to a pocket stamp set. Its body consisted of three round pieces and I had no idea which one was meant for the rubber. So I asked my cubicle-mate, who once had a degree in engeneering, to glue it for me.

He looked blank too :) Having studied the three mysterious pieces thoroughly he concluded that the rubber went with a smaller part. A bigger part seemed to separate the rubber and the ink pad, and the ink pad had to be placed in the biggest piece.

I believed him. Later I tried to use the stamp, but failed. Hope Boss won't notice that the rubber can't reach the ink pad. If he does, I can always say that that was my cubicle-mate's idea.

back to teaching

I'm babysitting Boss' kid, again :)

We have English and Maths to do, however the kid'd rather have a cup of tea, cookies and sing to my cd.

I'm listening to the Beatles and the kid is curious who're these guys and if there'll be their concert soon. It is so nice to introduce the Beatles to the younger generation, who is mainly fond of hip-hop and drum-'n'-base, isn't it.

Anyway the kid got an A for the poem, and today we have to learn some more words and learn how to write "W" and "R". These two letter are very difficult as kids usually paint them this way: "V V" and "Я".

back to teaching

Yesterday Boss introduced his youngest daughter to me and asked to help her with the English homework. That's why my last working hour was devoted to learning the following poem:

What is you name?
What is your name?
Now tell me please,
What is you name?
My name is Diana
My name is Diana
That's my name.

The third and the seventh lines appeared to be the most difficult and it took a while to explain the difference between "what" and "that". Then the girl and me repeated the poem a thousand times and in an hour or so she learnt it by heart. Her English lesson is tomorrow and I'd like to know the mark she'll receive. Hope , it'll be A.

a week-end post

Birthday-parties time has come, as almost all my friends were born in Autumn.

So this Sunday my former college-mate and colleague organised a nice little cook-out party, where I met plenty of college friends, whom I hadn't seen for ages.

The atmosphere, we created, reminded of binges we used to have: lots of chatting, gossiping, wild dancing, scary karaoke, a stripper and the tv-show "Beverly Hills 90210". We even put on our college uniforms :) What a night it was!

I can hardly believe that being a serious business lady I'm still capable of going that far and becoming that insane.

animal planet

love...

back to school

The IT department purchased a very useful software and hired a coach to teach me and one of salesmanagers how to use it. I was really excited as learning something new is aways inspiring.

So the coach arrived, switched on my computer pressed the icon of the software and exclaimed: " It's a wrong version! I was said to teach you version 7 and this is the 8th". I was startled. The version on my computer is recent, hence it's more up-to-date and is more compatible with the fancy Windows Vista. However the coach grew awfully unhappy about #8 and called the IT department to replace the new version by the older one.

It took almost an hour.

Finally, the coach, the salesmanager and me settled at my desk and launched the programme. As I was closer to the PC, that was me to click all the buttons. The first hour of studies was fine, I was clicking buttons, taking notes and answering the phone from time to time, while the sales manager was sitting in his chair, dangling his feet and talking on the phone all the time. As for the coach, he was talking clearing his throat every five minutes, peeping at his notes and sipping coffee.

During the next 45 minutes I grew slighly tired and began to realise that this coach is not actually that good at teaching and most of his explanations were very vague. Anyway, I kept on listening, while the salesmanager was yawning and painting mysterious ornament on a post-it paper.

The third 45 minutes were a disaster, I was about dozing off and was trying to prevent my head from dropping on the keyboard. The coach was mumbling something about invoices registration, when the salesmanager went away for a coffee and never returned.

45 minutes of frustration more and I was honoured to show the coach the way to the parking lot. Finally, he was gone and I returned to my daily duties.

Today I've launched my brand-new version of software, downloaded a guide book from the Internet and now I'm rediscovering all the benefit of it. It rocks!

banks ep2... a happy end

What a day! The money I had been trying to transfer to the business partner finally reached the destination.

I figured that the only way to fish information out of the bank was to send a handsome male colleague to a female clerk. That what I did. The clerk was so impressed by my colleague's charm that incidently remembered how to transfer the money. The method was cazy, but it worked.

Hope, our business partner is not very disappointed and will keep on collaborating.

a week-end post

From now on I'll have to work on Saturday, that leaves only one day off, and it just cannot be wasted. So I called a couple of friends and we headed to my favourite bowling club, which very much resembles the bowling from "Across The Universe" movie. I wish Joe and Jim had played with us and had sang a little. Unfortunatelly, they were somewhere across the ocean, so we had to entertain ourselves.

The game rocked as none of us were actually good at bowling but we cheered and support each other really loud: we sang, danced, applauded... It was really crazy. The ball hit the side grooves at first, than we managed to knock down a skittle or two and finally I had a strike and seemed to become an Olympic champion. What a feeling!

In the end we drank to our sport achievements and parted.

At home an e-mail was waiting for me to discover Band From TV. The Band is a group of tv show actors and actresses, who sing and play the most popular songs for the sake of charity. Though, I'd call it - the tv stars' fooling around and having fun :)
They rock, anyway!

animal planet

The cat is clearing the bar.

back to school

It’s been three months since I quited my last job and yesterday I had a snap decision to visit my colleague and the pupils I love so much. And what a nice morning tea-party it was! We had little chat on school life, pupils, summer holidays and had a good laugh.

Later pupils started to crowd school, so I met some of my former pupils, one of them presented me a box full of his treasures. There was a mediator, a moulded pendant he made himself and some strange items, which I never made a head or tail of. Anyway it was very touching.

Hanging around the school I felt like coming back, because I realised how much I miss the lively kids, the never ending fun, caring colleagues and the cherishing atmosphere of love. That was the kind of experience one can never forget.

banks ep1... one more disappointment

Perhaps after the bank holiday, that doesn't exist here, the local bank has lost all its valuable workers, as those that are still there are awfully incompetent. They don't know how to transfer a couple of grants to our business partner's bank account which consists of both letters and numeral.

It is unbelievable, but bank representatives claim that it is impossible to transfer the money to a certain bank account whose number is a mixture of numerals and letters. I'm afraid our business partner is about to abandon us... as soon as he gets those money, of course.

I'm already thinking of PayPal or WebMoney... It may be illegal, but it seems to be the only way.

September 1

September 1 is The Knowledge Day here. It is the first school day after summer holidays and it is always celebrated at great scale. Half of the city roads get blocked, because happy pupils and students parade thought the city to their schools, colleges and universities carrying backpacks, handbags and huge bunches of flowers for teachers. At every educational institution its director or head teacher makes a speech about the chindren and teenagers who are the future of our country. They promise that the coming school year is going to me the most memorable, adventurous and exciting, and children listen to them dreaming of a nice celebration which will happen after the official part.

I just love September 1, as the city is flooded with careless chatter of young people discussing holidays, dates and parties. And every time I hear them I wish I were back to school again, back to those through-rose-colored-glasses years when I cared about nothing but fun.