First, I spent Easter in Italy with a friend and his
girlfriend who moved to the Lago Maggiore from Amsterdam. It was the second
time I visited them this year as I also spent a week there in March, helping
Marcel with his studies. It was surprisingly refreshing to do something else
than what I usually do and make my brain cells work on different problems. And,
besides the studying, we were of course enjoying some good Italian wine and
food. They were great partners in drinking and a very nice company to spend
time with in general. Ah, I'm in love with Italian food...
Then, next weekend was the selection weekend for the
2012-2014 UWC scholarships for the Hungarian applicants. As always, the last
round consisted of 16 nominees and as always, it took place in Csillebérc. The
weekend is always very taxing because you have to pay attention to the
candidates all the time, from morning until the evening, literally, and then we
also try to have some fun Saturday night ourselves, which makes getting up the
next day quite difficult. At least, this year I filled up on energy drinks for
the two days, and buying those two cans early Saturday morning (I left my
apartment at 7) was the best decision I could take. The decision making was as
smooth as it could be and even though I was very disappointed that my personal
favorite did not get a scholarship, I was fairly satisfied with the outcome.
Szekér more or less shared my feelings and he said that if we were making a
list of 'who should some very good thing happen to', then this guy would also
lead his list, but unfortunately, we were making another list... Anyway, it was
a good weekend, it was nice to see everyone again. Naturally, I was as
exhausted as I could be, it was the second weekend in a row of not having any
rest.
Then, next weekend we went to Cracow with a group of friends
to visit Justy, who was originally part of our team but moved back to Poland.
As expected, Yoel was late in the morning, Miki was hungover, so we had a slow
start to our 7-hour trip by car. Ádám was driving and we made a couple of short
stops. In the first two hours, I was laughing so much that my stomach started
to hurt... Then, having 4 guys in the car, I listened to many stories about
picking up girls, even some stories involving hookers, and even though we
didn't drink at all, we must have looked like a bunch of drunkards from the
outside. Anyway, eventually we arrived to Justy's place and then we looked like
a bunch of campers in Justy's small apartment with all our sleeping bags and
stuff on the floor. We spent the 1,5 days we had in Cracow talking, catching
up, drinking, eating, exploring the city, drinking more... We ended up in a gay
party as our last stop during our last night, where Justy, Miki, Yoel and I
were shaking it for 1,5 hours on the dancefloor, while poor Ádám and Gergő were
sitting on a couch – I think doing nothing. The trip back was less lively, but
it was a nice weekend in general :)
Then, this weekend (which was a long weekend due to a
national holiday) I went to the Bakony (the hilly area above the Balaton) with
a large group of co-years from my high-school and spent 3 days in a holiday
house doing the normal routine: catching up, drinking, eating and exloring the
surroundings. One of the highlights of the weekend was that 2 guys were coming
straight from a Pick Up Artist workshop and we had hours of fun teasing them
and laughing at the study materials that they were given, especially a book
containing sample SMSs that you can use to pick up girls. My favorite one went
something like this: „After our honeymoon, I will bury you in the ground only
halfway so that I can have seconds later”. WTF??? Anyway, we went to an
adventure park the second day, where we spent at least 2 hours on a path where
we had to climb ropes hung across trees and even though we were secured all the
time, I have to admit that I was very scared of the height at times. We spent
another couple of hours doing other fun stuff and we finished off the day with
some home made paprikás krumpli and some wine. The last day, we stopped at the
Velencei Lake and hang out at the beach but I wasn't brave enough to go into
the water. Well, hardly anyone was.
So, these were the weekends. Other then this, there is only
friends and work in my life. I start at 8 and finish around 7 way too often. A
Jamie Cullum song says „don't make me live for my Friday nights”, but slowly
and surely I am getting there: it is the thought of the weekend that makes me
survive the whole week. I used to love working for RA, but in the past months,
a lot of things changed and the atmosphere is becoming worse and worse. The
economic situation does not help either but it's not only that; it is the
internal pressure that is mounting to an unbearable degree. Although it is not
stated openly, „megszoksz vagy megszöksz” seems to be the policy, a new
direction is taken by the management and that is not going to change, and many
people have had enough of all the KPIs that we have to deliver. One morning, I
actually said out loud in front of my whole team, including my TL (replying to
a statement made by a teammate) that „if I wanted to work in a Shared Service
Center, I would have applied to a SSC”... So, things are far from perfect.
