A wedding, a bouquet, an excursion and what's next?

I attended the wedding of one of my colleagues and this was the first 'real' wedding I've ever been to. (I've also been to the wedding of my mother and Béla bácsi and I was the bartender at a wedding party - none of which I would qualify as 'real'.) Orsi and her husband-to-be have been together for 10 years, so I'd say it was reasonable to decide what they wanted in the long run. The venue was the Castle Hill, an old chapel in the Historical Museum of Budapest. They didn't have a religious ceremony, so it was all quite simple: they were both asked whether they wanted to marry each other, they both said yes, signed the book, then the witnesses signed the book and that was it. Then, we gathered in the courtyard to congratulate the couple, have a glass of (alcohol-free!?) champagne, talk and shiver in the cold.

Of course, a wedding is not a wedding without the bride's bouquet being thrown, so once the organizer repeatedly asked all girls to move to the center, I walked there with a bunch of my colleagues and some other unknown female individuals. Orsi turned around and threw the flowers, which landed in my hands. Not catching them would not have been as option as the roses would probably have hit my face if I did not reach for them; there was literally no escape, I was the target and I had to accept my faith and save myself from the shame of being hit on the head by a bouquet of flowers. So, I caught the bouquet.

Two weekends ago, Jani and I did our usual annual excursion in the Pilis - for the fourth time. Within the first month after we got to know each other, he proposed to climb a mountain in the Pilis. He said that he had been watching that mountain for the past 10 years, but he has never known anyone whom to climb it with. The moment I saw it, I understood. It was freakin' steep. But it was time to prove my worth and I said okay, let's do it. It was early September, it was still very hot, and the side of the mountain was full of ladybirds, hundreds, thousands of them. We brought some sausages, onions, made a fire on top of the peak and roasted the sausages. It was a fabulous day. That was when we decided that we should do this every year, and we have done so ever since.

This is what the peak looks like from the road.

So, this is why we packed up some sausages, tomatos, onions, cheese and bread and drove to the Pilis again. And the funniest thing happened. We accidentally started climbing another mountain. Once you get close enough to the mountain, it is steep enough not to see whether you are at the right place, and this time, we climbed the neighbouring peak. It was not a lesser challenge, however, and by the time we arrived proudly to the top, I stripped myself of 2 pullovers (and got a cold, of course). We collected some dry wood, quickly built a fireplace, spread a sheet on the grass and just lay there in the sun. I even fell asleep for 20 minutes. Then, we got up and made our food.

The lazy way to roast sausages.

And the view from the peak.

Since last year, I have been extremely nervous to start descending on time, because last year we left too late and it was horrifying to climb down in the dark. I was scared to slip, which I did, by the way, but luckily, I only got a huge bruise. See, there are no roads or paths on these mountains and falling would mean major wounds, which are understandably not the most appealing things to look forward to. So, having finished our meal, we looked for a patch that was still sunny, spread our sheet on the ground and lay there for another twenty minutes, enjoying the sun. And then we descended. It was lovely day again.

So, what do we have here? I bouquet from a wedding, a sweet day together, lots of bad stuff from the past months... At least, now we are talking about what we do and do not want and where we are heading. Unfortunately, just like when seeing a couple's therapist, the side effect of talking might be the end. We are figuring it out.

On-Site again

I am on-site again, working in the office of The Client. This time I have some proper responsibilities and I do not feel like a minion. I am in direct contact with the TLs and the management, I can arrange the interviews myself and I can talk to the decision makers about the candidates and get direct feedback from them. So, I am taking a 2-week 'holiday' not as a Researcher but as a Corporate Recruiter. I even have my own room, which is a little accident, but still, I have a nice and small room next to the interview rooms, I have an enormous window and the sun shines in every morning. It's nice.

Most Recruiters who work for agencies have a dream of becoming a Corporate Recruiter one day. I might have this dream in a couple of years, who knows, but I don't think people really see what a struggle this is. I mean, I think it is more difficult and quite stressful to work for an agency, because your success is evaluated based on the amount of money you generate for the agency, amongst other things, but this being most important. There is lots of pressure on being good at what you are doing, handling key accounts, making candidates happy, collaborating with other Consultants, etc. But as long as you perform and most stakeholders are happy, you have relative freedom. And in the case of mission impossible types of assignment, it's great if you solve them, but you are protected if you don't. You get sh*t from clients at times, but that can be handled. And you choose which clients and which positions to focus on. If you are good, it's valued.

When you work for a corporate giant, escalations come into the picture. That's a bitch. After a while, even God knows that you cannot fill a position and everybody is looking for what you are doing wrong. Then, you have to chase TLs and managers for feedback on the interviews, they disappear for hours, you leave messages, then they don't answer etc. That sucks. If you fill a position, it's not appreciated, it's just how things should go. But if you don't fill one... well, you better fill them all.

The bottom line is that in corporates, Recruiters are just support staff who make sure that there are always enough people (and hopefully the right ones) on board. They are like other back office employees, like colleagues in the finance or administration departments. But in agencies, we do core business. The success of the firm is our success, or maybe the other way around. And in some way, I take pride in that.

Is there something about meeting someone too early?

Jani is working, which means that we got up at a decent time even though it's Sunday. I have two hours to be alone and do things that I generally like to do when I'm alone. Listening to Jamie Cullum or Stereophonics, for example, and read.

Something has been on my mind in the last couple of days. Is there really something about meeting someone too early? Patvaros - my first ever 'boyfriend' and the partner in my first kiss - had his birthday this Friday and he invited lots of people from our high school to join him at the opening party of his faculty. I called him on Wednesday to tell him I was going and before we hung up, I had said that I would call him or his girlfriend (who was also in our year) if I did not manage to find them in the crowd. Emese?, he asked. Emese, I replied. We broke up like a month ago, he said. Then a couple of sentences on the lines of "I don't believe it" and "you must be joking" followed.

They have been together for 4.5 years, meaning that they got together at the age of 21. Sure, there are couples that get together at the age of 20 and get married and start a family etc. I haven't read any statistics about whether they stay together and split up after a couple of years or more. My grandma met my grandfather at the age of 15, or so I assume because she gave birth to my father at the age of 16, but that's a totally different generation. With Peti and Emese splitting up, the one but last such couple in my surroundings broke up. The last one is Nadia and Urtah, an Indonesian couple, who have been together since the first year of AC (the age of 17) and got married this year, but they are from a very different culture. It seems that in my immediate surroundings and my culture, my generation fails in relationships, which started in the beginning of their twenties.

Is that because we hadn't seen enough before we got into these relationships? Is it because we are overly curious about what it might be like with someone else and fail to recognize the value of our current relationship? Do our parents fail to teach us that you can have a crush on someone else while being with your loved one and this is something that is quite unavoidable and that staying with someone is a decision and not a question of a crush? (Thanks, Joram's mom, for replacing mine for that night.) Or do we make the wrong choices in terms of chosing our partner at that age and even if we met years later, it wouldn't work out? Interestingly, one of my colleagues, Nóra married the guy whom she went out with at the age of 20 for two years, then they broke up for 3 years and now they are married. And later, do we only hold on to someone because we are scared of being alone? Or because we do not want to lose all the effort that we have put into the relationship, and we rather make the compromises we have to?

Are all relationships that start at the beginning of our twenties doomed? (Hm, or are all relationships doomed?)

A nice evening and the rest

It's 9 pm and I'm at home alone, so I decided I should do something nice. First I thought of running. Nah. Then, I thought I should watch an episode of True Blood. Nah, it's becoming worse and worse... I should read the book I started to read over the weekend. Maybe. Or I should write a post! So here I am.

Saturday, I started the evening with Sali in the Ráday street, talking, drinking sangría, eating Belgian fries and smoking sheesha, which was absolutely lovely. We've known each other for 13 years and at this moment that is half my lifetime. We even have our own vocabulary. We are never out of topics to discuss, and if we are, silence doesn't get weird. It is completely comfortable.

As for the rest of the night, I was invited to a farewell party (the second in a fairly short timeframe as my sister has only left 2 weeks ago or so). I suspected that the crowd was going to be mixed, but what I saw was more than what I expected: 30 gay guys and 4 women. By the end of the night, only 2 of us girls remained and I saved our reputation by dancing the whole night and not badly! People were sweet, they greeted me, asked me how I knew the host and most importantly, danced with me. There was one guy who did modern dances, the other was a ballet dancer and teacher and I danced with everyone who had the tiniest inclination to involve me in music and movement. I am not sure why gay parties are much nicer than straight ones - if there is ever such - but it might have to do with them not trying to become alpha males when they gather into a hoard, being willing to dance and baking fantastic cakes, which I never have the energy and willpower to do.

I decided to come home by public transport, which took an hour and even though I almost fell asleep on the bus, the walk and the wait did do a good service for sobering up. I was in bed by 5 - alone of course, because Jani was at one of his friends' party in Tök ('Pumpkin') and even though I expected him home midway through the night the latest and he got home at 8 am. Some things don't change. Let's hope that some others do. Of course, I spent half the day sleeping.

Qué más?

Work: it's going well, luckily, having a great relationship with a client for which I am the main point of contact (and since then we have been the number one suppliers, yay), overperforming my target and preparing for the toughest part of the year: the end.

Friends: seeing, meeting quite a couple of them and also spending quite some time with my team not only during work hours. I gained a couple of new ones as well, especially because I still keep in touch with people from The Client's HR.

Family: my sister is gone and I still hasn't got the chance to talk with her, although she did write to me. Mom seems to have become a salsa addict, connecting well with Jani in this respect, and Béla bácsi and I are forming the opposition, arguing for what I would name something like a 'balanced life perspective' if I were a scholar.

Holidays: 2 days spent at the Balaton. I still have 12 days of holidays for the year, which I better use and not let get lost!

And I'm 26!

Last chance

Monday evening, I went biking with Jani, we brought a bottle of wine along, bought a pizza and a bottle of coke and then sat down on a bench in a park to eat. He said I was right. That his behavior has been completely inappropriate and he understands that this is not the way things should go.
- Have you talked to Zsuzsa?
- No, why?
- Then who told you this, who convinced you?
- Can I not come to this conclusion myself?
- Well... after 3 years...
- No, this is what I think.
- Or do you feel that this is your last chance?
- Yes, I guess I do.

I don't usually write about bad stuff, or at least I try not to. And apart from the fact that I have very little time, this is the primary reason why I have not been posting anything here for a while, or only sporadically. I don't feel it would be fair to write about how my relationship is dysfunctional. But it dominates my life and I am quite unhappy, that is the truth.

Not dead.

I'm still not dead. I'm alive and kicking. Or should I say I'm alive but not kicking? Yesterday, I went to the Partnering Olimpia, a sporting event for various companies and besides the sunburn I got, I also got very sore muscles. Thus, no kicking for a while.

This was my second sunburn for the year because the week before 10 of us from the RA went to an animal shelter to help out. We did half a day of cleaning (yes, that does mean picking dog shit and dead rats) and half a day of painting. I knew it was going to be good because I love dogs but it was surprisingly relaxing as well: while raking the ground, none of that shit related to candidates, clients, positions and targets came to mind. My mind was completely empty. The whole area was covered in the white flowers that fell from the Japanese locust trees, so what I thought while raking was something like this: flowers-flowers-flowers-stick-flowers-dog shit-flowers-flowers-dog shit-flowers-dog-so cuuuuute-flowers-let's make a little heap of the flowers-stick-flowers-etc. It was also a great team building event. Klára and I paired up to clean some of the dog-kennels and I was the one to find the first dead rat. I'm not really scared of mice and rats and stuff, but seeing a dead rat with a horrifying facial expression did get to me and I have to admit I did scream a little. "What is it?", Klára asked, and when I told her she also screamed a little, even though she had not even seen the rat. We agreed that we should leave the rat where it is, rake around it and then ask one of the people who worked there to remove the rat. Then, I got closer and realized there was another rat lying a little further, although this one seemed to be at peace at least. The guy who worked there told us that we can remove the rats ourselves (thanks!) so we agreed that Klára was going to hold the shovel and I was going toroll the rats onto the shovel using a rake. But every time Klára felt that the rat was touching the shovel, she froze and screamed and in the end it was her idea that saved our mission. She buried the rats under a small heap of flowers, and even though the tails were still visible, the whole experience was more pleasant and she coped with the bodies of the dead rats quite well. Long live ostrich policy!

Other than these lively little episodes, my life is dominated by work and seeing friends in the evenings. For example, Dávid is back from Utrecht and from his round the world travel, so I saw him recently (I also found him a nice job), I met Will who was my housemate in Wales, Agnes from the bar in Utrecht, Emese, a girl from my year at high school and the current girlfriend of my very first boyfriend, guys I worked with at The Client, and Irma, even though I can't reach her now.

Before the final round

This year, I did not volunteer to become a reader. Readers are the ones who read and score the incoming application materials of a next generation of wannabe UWCers: approximately 10 pages per applicant and 20 applicants per reader. Since January and February ended up being even busier than what I expected, this was a good decision. At the same time, I knew that I would take part in the interviewing in the second round and the evaluation of the third round, because that's just something I wouldn't miss.

The second round took place the weekend before I went skiing. I worked with 2 other girls and together we interviewed 15 applicants in 2 days, which is quite a performance, but besides this having been difficult in terms of concentration, it was also exhausting due to the personal involvement you experience. Regardless of the fact that I interview people every day, I found it very taxing because I had to do a very different type of interviewing. You also have to have your expectations right and think about what a 17-year-old can/should know about the world. It's not easy. Try and think about it.

I think I had many pleasant and unpleasant surprises that weekend and we also experienced many funny but also some strange moments. At times, I was wondering how someone from a very difficult background can be so well informed about politics, social and environmental issues and how others with a very balanced background can be so blind to what is happening around them. We talked to someone who failed to notice the BP oil spill, had no idea that something was happening in Egypt and Lybia and also thought that there aren't any social issues in Hungary that should be addressed. She lives in a wonderful world - too bad it's not real.

The next step of the selection will be the assessment center next weekend - we usually call it Csillebérc, because that is where it takes place. A two-day camp for the best 16 applicants, full of games and exercises and fun. We had a preparation meeting this morning (there will be 6 organizers and 12 observers/decision makers for 16 candidates...) and the atmosphere was already great. We started with a game. Each of us had to find a partner, so I paired up with Dani. We received one sheet of paper and one pen. We had to imagine a house, a tree and a dog and we were not allowed to talk to discuss our ideas. We had to hold the pen together and draw the house, the tree and the dog that we imagined. You can see the result below:

As you can see, the drawing skills of the two of us added up to the skills of a 6-year-old :) We signalled to each other that we should start with the house and that was mostly Dani's drawing, or so I thought, but at the end, he told me he let me draw a lot. For example, the horizontal lines and the round window were guided by my hand, or at least that's what he felt. I thought that's what he wanted. I asked him what the thingy on top of the roof was: it's not a boat. I was the one who put the squirrel on our pine tree and I draw our wonderfully cute puli dog with the curly fur and Dani added the poo - with the help of my hand, of course. When we had to give a title to our picture, we looked at each other and Dani tried to form letters with his hands but he was so fast that I couldn't catch it. Then, I opened a book and I tried to show him that he should point at the letters so that I could read what he thought of, but he didn't understand that. Eventually, we pointed at a random word; so that's our title :)

I'm very much looking forward to next weekend. It's going to be tiring but it's going to be oh-so-good.

Skiing!

This year's destination was the Schladming-Dachstein region. Originally we wanted to go much earlier, in January, then in February, but all kinds of things piled up, which made us stay. It depended more on me than on Jani, because I was organizing the trip and I was the one who actually had to take a week off from work. January was busy as hell and in the third week of February (the week I already had an approval for from the RA) The Client needed me very much, so we ended up skiing in the second week of March. Just in time! It was really warm and the snow was melting already. Sometimes the temperature reached 16 degrees in the parking lot and it was around 2-3 degrees even on the top of the mountains, except on the glacier, where it was somewhat colder (-5 C). I think if we went a week or two later - even if the season officially ends in April - we wouldn't have had much snow to ski on.

I always feel a little anxious when we leave for a destination without a room reservation but because we did everything so last minute, like we usually do, I just collected a list of BnB phone numbers and started calling them from the car. The first woman who said they had a room available was actually the owner of the cheapest place, so that was quite convenient. It was a little farm in the village right across the Hauser Kaibling skilift, a cute little house with two rooms to let, so it really was small and peaceful, too. We were the only guests and we received a great breakfast every morning, not so early, because Jani is not too good at getting up early for skiing, although I also enjoyed sleeping in for a change.

Usually, we bought a pass from 11 o'clock and we were on the slopes until the end of the day. Schladming-Dachstein (or 'snidling', as we called it) is similar to Bad Kleinkichheim (or 'béka', as we called it) in that the skilifts and the slopes create network that allows you to ski from one mountain onto the next and then onto the next. In snidling, the 4 mountains were really well connected and because it is always my responsibility to find the right slopes, I took on the role of the navigator again. I had the map and it was me who figured out which way to go, which can be quite a task when you have 150 km of slopes right in front of you. But this was something I enjoyed and I readily laughed at Jani when he had no idea where we were.

This is the map I used every day, except mine was crumbled and torn.

We never managed to ski on all 4 mountains in a day and one day we went so far that we almost couldn't get back to the first mountain on time. That would have been quite an issue, because then we would have had to find a way to get from one town to the other, without a car, to get to our car. I'm not saying it would have been impossible, but I never really felt like waiting for a skibus at the end of the day. You just want to take off your boots, go home and have a hot shower... So, that day, it was around 15.55 when we reached the top of Planai, the second mountain and we still had to get to our mountain, Hauser Kaibling. The problem was that there wasn't a direct path to the mountain, and you first had to ski down to a valley in between the two mountains and then you had to take a skilift to the next mountain and there was no other way out of the valley, a slope to ski down to the bottom of the mountain or anything like that (see slopes nr. 10 and 11 on Planai). We arrived to the bottom of the valley at 16.02, 2 minutes late, but the guys down there were quite nice and let us take our ride to the top of the mountain. Then, the moment we slid out the lift, they stopped it. I wonder how we would have got out of that valley if we arrived a little later. In any case it would have probably involved a bribe.

We drove to the Dachstein glacier twice (see the bottom right area of the map) and enjoyed the wonderfully winter atmosphere of it. Down in the valleys, where we lived and where the 4 mountains stood, only the slopes were covered in snow. They made some new snow every night and rearranged the existing amount so that the slopes would be in good condition every morning, but the rest of it melted. The hills weren't yet green because Spring hasn't really arrived yet, everything was a shade of grey and brown - not really inspiring, to be honest. But up there, everything was white and gorgeous. Sure, there were not that many slopes to ski on, but the density of people was also lower, so we had a lot of space just for ourselves. The only skilift that went up to the glacier was one of those glacier types, which look like a box. The box was attached to a single rope and there weren't any poles in between the top and the bottom station; making it hard to believe that the whole construction was stable enough. (There was a Hungarian woman at the bottom station who did not dare to come up, which is a little silly if you come all the way that far, although I do agree that it was scary. Scary but beautiful.)

This is what the skilift looked like from above.

The place up there was truly wonderful. There were two large areas for Nordic skiing and you could see people doing large circles in the snow on the top of the glacier in the distance and the rest of the space was taken up by the slopes and lifts for Alpine skiing. The first day on the glacier was quite cold and windy, the second was simply windy (40 km/h) and when I leaned above the void at the edge of the rock and acted like Kate Winslet at the front edge of Titanic, the wind actually kept me from falling. That was a cool feeling. (There was a fence in front of me; I'm not totally insane.) Because Jani is a little more insane than I am, it was always him who initiated things like skiing in the freeride area dotted with rocks and going to an area where there were absolutely no signs of anyone having been in the past weeks.

This is me in the freeride area :)

This is Jani in the seemingly untouched area. We walked to the very edge, where the whole place simply ended in a vertical fall. Then and there, I was scared.

Usually, we were quite tired by the time we got home. We ate a totally Hungarian dinner (bacon, sausages, salami, onions, garlic and bread), drank something (wine, pálinka or Becherovka, with or without energy drink) and watched a movie or something. And slept. It was a nice holiday and we both needed it.

Intro

I'm afraid that I haven't written anything in the past 2 months, so there are lots of things for you to catch up with. I was involved in the second round of the Hungarian UWC selection process, so I spent a weekend interviewing 15 candidates, I spent 9 days with Jani in Austria, skiing in the mountains and I've already been working at the Client for 2 months now. All these would deserve separate posts, I guess, and I might end up writing separate posts - depending on how I feel today. I'm sick; I have a sore throat and a fever. I'm surrounded by sick people (Jani, mom, people in the office), so I'm not surprised that finally, after 3 months of good health, my immune system gave up on me. Darn you, immune system.

Jani is still sleeping and I'm downstairs. I wasn't able to sleep any longer. I had very vivid dreams of skiing with old friends from my high school and preparing for a job in which I would speak Swedish. It seems our Swedish assignment for one of our clients is getting on my nerves... After last night's garlic dinner (which we had because Hungarian folk wisdom says that garlic kills germs) I can still smell my own garlic smell. I spent the past hour drinking my strawberry yoghurt, blowing my nose and checking out phdcomics and xkcd. I should get started if I wanted a productive day, but to be honest, I don't think I'll do anything today.

Outsourced

7 months are more than enough to establish a routine. Every single morning, I was waiting for the yellow metro, standing right in front of the Vörösmarty utca sign at the first station, because I knew that that's where the last doors open. I sat on the same seat every morning. Sometime between 8.30 and 8.33, I changed to line 2 at Deák tér and I stood right in front of the half-naked ladies - the image of two statues - waiting for the metro every morning. Besides the great works of art and the fact that pretty breasts are always nice to look at, that was where the doors opened. So, at one point, I had enough and worked out another way to the office, including the yellow metro and tram nr. 4/6. To bring a little variety into my mornings. At that point, I had little idea that my routine would change quite dramatically.

It was only two weeks ago when the idea of outsourcing me to a client came up. RA, of course, has dozens of clients, but this one - let's call it The Client - is pretty huge, quite difficult and they were the ones whose vacancies were used by my team leader to train me. From July onward, I was the one who dealt with The Client the most in our office and consequently, I collected quite some knowledge about the organization, the vacancies and the procedures. I attended their own training on competences and a lecture for the agencies. So, I was very involved. Then, when one of their recruiters decided to quit, they asked for our help and proposed that an on-site recruiter would be able to help them best. My team leader asked whether I wanted to be the one to work for them on-site and I didn't think for a second before I said yes.

It's exciting to spend 3/5 of my week in a large multinational corporation and to see where and in what circumstances my placements - past and future - would be working in. Everything is regulated, everything revolves around data protection, you have to fill out an sign millions of papers even before you are let in and then you can only pass doors with your magnetic card and you read that "tailgating is forbidden and is a security incident" in front of every door. Even the screen saver is about security incidents. You would expect that a bunch of zombies are working at such a place, but that's not the case. I met a couple of managers and they are completely normal, quite nice actually. And the recruitment team is also very cool, they are very open, happy to chat, very chill, and because the organization is full of foreigners, I can finally speak English again.

So, now I have to think about where to go to work every morning. 3 days at The Client, 2 days in the RA; I'm in an exceptional situation. It's unsure how long this will last, but it seems that I'll be outsourced for a couple of months at least. It's a great learning opportunity, not to mention that every recruiter is dreaming of working on the corporate side one day. I'm too junior to have got bored of recruiting in an agency, but in a couple of years I might be able to build on this experience when applying for a job in a large corporation. You never know. I'm not sure how long I can stay on-site, but I'll keep my eyes open, build a network and do my job.

Another new year

Happy new year!

So, another year has ended. I made the usual lentil soup today and I went back to my posts in January to find the recipe. It wasn't difficult to find it but looking through the other posts around it I was a little shocked by how many things changed in the past year. I was studying then, I have a job now. I lived in the Netherlands then, I live in Hungary now. I saw my boyfriend every day on Skype only and now we live together.

The Christmas period is over but our huge Christmas tree in the living room is still gorgeous. I didn't have enough time before the holidays to prepare myself in spirit, but in the end, Christmas was nice. I was working like crazy in the two weeks before Christmas, so I had zero time to buy things, make the Christmas liquor I usually make or bake as much as I would have liked to. I did bake a lot - 10 bejglis to be precise - but I would have liked to make some other things too. Making the bejgli is usually the task of the grandma in the family but because my mom had a huge argument with her mom, this year it was me who provided the traditional Christmas dessert. And it was good.

So was New Year's Eve, although it seems that every New Year's Eve Jani and I must fight over something. Oh well, sometimes some good fighting is not bad at all. I have one resolution only for the new year. I've put on some weight since I started working and I'd like to get rid of that and keep it off. Losing 6 kgs would be quite optimal and I'll give myself 3 months to achieve that. I have nowhere to rush. Today, I started writing a diary to follow what I eat and drink (that in itself has been a good way for me to lose weight in the past) and I have at least two Christmas presents that will help me: an exercise mat and a 10-occasion pass to my mom's masseuse.

In terms of work, everything worked out fine in the end. I managed to reach my target, which means that I will get a bonus in March and the end of this month was so eventful that I'm pretty much ready with my target for the first month of the new year, too. That's nice - not having to start the year with worrying about money.

Happy 2011, everyone! 2011, bring it on!