Big city - small world

Today I learned something. Well... it really wasn't learning, it was more like a confirmation.
What goes around ... is the flu. Or a wheel.
Nah, that's not what I learned. I learned that vengeance or retribution (if you want to feel righteous while exercising it, you call it retribution) is best served cold. And, if at all possible, it's even better when you make money from it.
There was once a young... lad. Stupid he was not, but rough around the edges to the extent where it disturbed the other around him.
At the request of his relative, a big man in a big city took him under his wing and started polishing away at the edges. Time went on and the young man started to evolve. He made a decent living working for the big man and the roughness was almost gone.
Then the big man started to question the level of living of the young one. He was getting paid well enough for his work, but he was living far above his means. The big man investigated the situation and found that the young one was stealing from him. So he fired the young man and, for the sake of his relative, did not pursue the matter further.
Years went on, the young man became a "big man" himself and in the process managed to step on many toes, including a couple of the big man who polished young man's edges many years before.
Today, I visited the big man, now a proper ageing gentleman, to ask for his help in defusing a situation created by the former young man, now a "big man" in his own right.
The gentleman will be handsomely rewarded for his efforts, should he succeed. And in the process, there is a chance of properly fucking the little prick that bit the hand that fed him.

I swear I saw a twinkle in the gentleman's eye when I told him of my situation and asked for his help. I think he knew all along that the moment would come and bided his time, waiting for the perfect oportunity to roll over his former apprentice, leaving only skidmarks behind.

Not a very inspired posting, I know, and totally out of sync with the rest of them... But I had to tell the story of what happened today. Will let you know how it unfolds.

Meltdown

I guess you've heard this hundreds of times before, so here goes one more: I FUCKING HATE THIS FUCKING HEAT!!!!
I hate the people who hate air conditioning, the people who hate drafts when there is no AC, I hate people who don't really mind this unbearable heat.
I hate that I have to work in this fucking heat, where there's no movement in the air, no breath of fresh air.
I hate the sweat, the uncomfortable feeling of leather around me, the closed windows, the heat of the laptop fan, the lack of oxygen.
I hate the nights when I could do something instead of trying to sleep off the weariness of long hot days and never succeeding.
I hate the work coming in without notice and settling in the top of already a hundred top priorities...
I hate dogs that have hair in this heat.
I hate the airconditioning in the car because I can't take it with me in the office.
I hate the office for being hot and smelling stale because there's no windows open because it would cause a draft and, GOD FORBID, one of the ... ladies in the other room might suddenly die from exposure to the elements. By that I mean the Cold, the Wind and all the other evils of this world. Much better in a hermetically sealed room at 40degrees centigrade, with no oxygen and no dry air.
I guess it helps having only a few neurons to feed with oxygen. Just imagine how it would be like to need to feed more than 3 of those hungry bastards....
I hate how the phone breaks down and you lose all your numbers (AGAIN!!!!) just two days before you had scheduled in your heated agenda the time to back up those fucking numbers.
I hate how icecream melts in 20 seconds and turns into sweet, hot melt...
I hate that bead of sweat rolling down the middle of your back, sending shivers of heat through your body.
I hate the commercials with sweaty people lounging by the pool in the Carribeans.
I hate that fucking headless guy in that mindless commercial and the way they stop shooting just as he starts eating those horrible buiscuits. I wish he would chew and try to swallow. That at least would be COOOL.
I hate suit pants. Why the fuck do we need pants to sit at a fucking computer??? I'd have no problem with the ladies in the other room wearing no pants in the office. Why should me wearing no pants in the office bother THEM?
I hate recession, where AC units seem expensive and unnecessary.
I hate asking for something and getting "uugghh.... it's 6 o'clock, we're going home".
I hate the sea for being so far.
I hate pools for not being mine.
I hate that I have to write this blog, the only constructive thing I've managed to do all day, in the kitchen, because there's a semblance of movement of air that someday, if it goes to college, might become a draft.
I hate coffee for not being on tap.
I hate that fucking musqito and I swear I will hunt it down and kill it in pains. I will stick its ugly fucking head on a toothpick and put it in front of the window, as a warning for other bloodsuckers (insects, i mean) that might foster a desire for Dan blood. You fucking ugly thing! Come bleed me when I work, not when I'm trying to get some fucking sleep.

I think I need a fucking vacation in the hottest place on earth, maybe in a volcano, in a hermetically sealed room with 5 AC units on full blast. Contemplating the heat outside.
I also think I should fucking stop swearing this much.

The Other World ?

...and so it came to pass that the young one stood in the Great Hall, in front of simple and noble men alike... and ne'er blinked at shining lights flashing in his eyes. Learned men greeted him with smiles and humility, dwarved by the greateness that would be.

Or something like that. Yea. That's why I never became a writer.

Speeches were nice, some moving, some more in the lines of "listen to me talking about me for forty minutes"....

I hope the young one realises it is the end of an era. An era when pints and shots were all you had to worry about at night, young one. An era that none realize exactly how missed it would be once it was over. I tried to make my point, without being too intrusive, but finally it is his choice... I will support him as best I can, but it rests with him, that final decision.

And less than 20 hours ago, I was back on this side of the sea... back from the other world.
It amazes me how simple things can be just 3 hours away from this City. You expect something to be in a certain way. And it really is. Of course, listening to Clarkson bitch about the other world, one would think it is most frustrating. Try living here for a year, Clarkson!

59 horns I counted on the way back from the airport to the apartment. 59... In a very empty city, on Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, it started raining. Hard. I think the rain drowned the horns.

There's a lot to be said about waking up in the middle of London and breathing in the cool, clean morning air through a wide open window through which an avalanche of sounds pour in: a bird chirping in the tree under the window; girls laughing in the parking lot; the deep growl of a coach pulling into the same parking lot to pick up the laughing girls... In contrast, I was pleasantly awakened this morning by the chirping of about 150 cars, all honking their horns at some poor bastard whose car had the nerve to die in the middle of the boulevard. I opened the window to breathe in the cool, clean morning air. At 0730 it was stifling already and it burned my lungs with fumes. No laughter from girls in the parking lot. You must be crazy to laugh out loud here...
I can't sleep with the window opened. Too many Valentino Rossi's and Emerson Fitipaldi's in this city. Oxford Street noise at the height of sales week is church-like quiet compared to the typical morning on Unirii.

And the young one wants to return to this dreamland. I understand the valid point he was making: working so that you may sleep at the weekend so you may work another week is indeed something one might not like. Not making new friends because people you meet at work are "work friends" and all you do is work. I understand that that is how it is in the other world.

But then I realized: except for the different chirping noise levels in the morning, I'm living in London!

Summer in the city

It can get a little crazy at times... Life in this God forsaken city, I mean. And I do not mean good crazy. It can get pathological, "here's-the-white-padded-van-you-ordered" crazy. Can you really blame the people, though? Or is it just the blinding heat, the dust, the sweat and the lack of parking spaces? Can you really blame people here for being crazy, after a lifetime of scorching sun beating down on their heads, boiling their brains into mushy soup?

Traffic is legendary already, so I will not dwell on it. Aggression is brought to new heights, whether in language, looks or behaviour. Drowsiness is something that only started to affect me this year. I thought I was stronger than that, but green is not always strong ;).

I think stupidity is also bolstered by the high temperature. Take this morning, for instance: I was stuck in Electrica for 3 hours, doing absolutely nothing but camping in front of offices so, eventually, I would be sent to a different camping site, just to be told by idiots increasing in rank and function that in order to get a quote on what one of my clients owes to the mammoth that employs the idiots, I needed a power of attorney. Lower ranking idiots accepted a regular POA, higher ranking idiots wanted a legalized POA. JUST TO FIND OUT WHAT MY CLIENT OWED THE IDIOT EMPLOYMENT COMPANY!

So I gave up, for fear that had I continued, the even higher ranking morons would probably ask my client to show up in person and have a DNA test done in front of a notary to prove that it was really him who was asking the information and, probably, provide 534 kilos of documents to prove same and also comparative studies done on his pictures as a child and his more recent pictures, for consistency.

Secrecy seems to be the word of the day in Electrica or whatever it's called these days. But I know better. I know that the real word of the day is "going-beyond-the-call-of-duty": not revealing client info to people is one thing. Not revealing client info to the CLIENT is a totally different level of secrecy.

Or maybe they just don't trust lawyers.

First time

Hello, Pis, and welcome to the great wide world of blogs. :)

I've been reading my friend's blog for a few days now and decided that venting one's ideas to the world like this couldn't be such a bad idea. Not for the one doing the venting, anyway... So I thought I'd give it a try. I chose English for my non-Romanian friends. Just in case one of them stumbles upon this "vent".

I've recently been the victim of theft. On Monday, when I shouldn't have been at work (national day off and all that), I was, again, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone broke into my office (with me and a friend in it, of course) and stole my watch from one of the rooms. After the initial outrage had passed, I started feeling some sort of admiration for the one that was actually doing what I had only done in computer games like Thief. Must be cool to be able to break into an office, with people in it, and nick a watch and not be heard or discovered. I bet they also stepped silently through the lobby, sticking to the walls, hiding in the shadows to become invisible.... I bet they used a moss arrow to muffle their steps, too....

All improper admiration aside, it was really sad... In the middle of this ugly, hot, noisy, dusty, crowded, poorly raised "metropolis", I was still expecting, after all this time, a bit of decency. OK, I can understand breaking into people's homes when nobody's there as a rule for thievery, but with me in it??!? And I didn't hear a thing... Will I ever wake up and smell the roses?

At 29, I'm still discovering the world. It speaks volumes about how vast the world is. It also says a thing or two about how green I am.