second string- half 2006
- My boss, with whom I have developed a fairly unstable love-hate relationship with for the past two years, has left the company for a new position with the competition. Thus leaving me with majority of his work. See, our company has changed structure from country management to functional management, which meant that instead of having one boss, the company suddenly has four, all reporting to their respective managers in the region. I became one of those.
However, the catch is, since I am not assigned to any of the products (there are three products and then me), I ended up being the spider of the group having to build a web around everything. I started handling the marketing department, office and facility department (which means anything from mobile phones, our warehouses’ security and company events), business control (everything that has to do with budget and coordination with finance) and on top of it all business development (which kind of speaks for itself) . Most of my time thus was spent on building the team, moving people and hiring. I guess then I did have a good excuse for not updating *cough-bullshit-cough*. Now everything is getting more and more stable and thus I feel that I have more time for myself.
On my boss’ last day I made him a presentation which actually made him almost cry. With all his faults, and even if I still am decided that I do not want to work with him again, given all the anxiety he has lovingly bestowed upon me in the past - I know that I will miss the guy. I will miss our fights - those times when I believe he thinks I am trying to prove to him that I got bigger balls than him when all I am trying to do is keep my fist to myself, the way he tells me that I am still a kid and I have to learn more - like he’s dying of some terminal disease, the way he tries to make up for it by calling me into his office and asking how my day has been and confiding in me all that bothers him about the company regardless of the fact that a lot of it was about the other managers with whom I still work with, the way he fought for me to stay and to at least maintain my expat salary (sans the other benefits of course) despite having a local contract and hiked up my job class rather nicely. In the end he’s a fairly reasonable guy, and he called himself my mentor, which might be just… well true. He was my trainer and I was his circus elephant. I am the million dollar baby, and I did get a lot of blows in my head working with him. It will be a euphemism to say that he is a difficult person and very hard to please. Some of the scars he left are ghastly, but I always remind myself that - if I was able to deal with him, all the other people will be easier to persuade to see things a little bit my way.
- From our wonderful love shack which was right smack in the middle of the city, we have moved to somewhere (although, still within the city) a little bit off the center. I chose our former flat because I was new in Prague and since I did not know where anything is I reckoned it would be much better to have everything I think I will need around me. We found this nice new flat in a building which won the architectural award of 2004 in Prague. It’s five minutes from the swimming pool, its right along the river (you can imagine how nice it is in the summer), it has security and the design of the flat is a lot more modern than the previous one (more to our liking). It’s smaller than the other flat, but the balcony that looks out an endearing little courtyard makes up for it. It also doesn’t hurt that I do not have to pageant my daring, sometimes deadly parking skills in front of the whole neighborhood. Parking spaces are right under the security’s nose and are always available (a rarity in Prague).
They say that the top three --- most stressful situations you can get into in your life are relationship problems, death of a loved one and moving. I am nodding my head in agreement so passionately, that I am actually scared it might fall off. I have experienced a lot of moving in my life. During my childhood I moved 5 times with my family, there was a time when we had an apartment, and a couple of houses (one outside the city and one in a part of a city that was plagued by traffic jams and was far away from school) - this meant that I spent schooldays in the flat and weekends in the main house, not to mention visits to the other house where my father had his business set up. Eventually we decided to sell one house and to rent the flat out. We sold the main house after several years and moved to the present one. So you would think that I am a veteran at moving, so what am I whining about? The crucial point there though is that - those moves were with my parents, the final responsibility fell on them, not on my sorry little head.
When I moved here it was difficult too, especially that it was a totally foreign country to me. I knew nothing. Not the language, not the culture, not even the weather agreed with my annoyingly sunshine-y moods. Nonetheless, I had the flat ready for me. I only had my little suitcase and settled in. All my other stuff from the Philippines, I just slowly brought to Prague during my visits home. Most of the stuff that we now own has been from here. Thus, aside from the initial emotional trauma of expatriation it was really not a big deal.
It is however a big deal when you know that you’d have to pack all your stuff and dig in through all the dirt and memories, haul them to another place and then unpack them again while your busy getting frustrated that your usual organization and space have all slightly changed. It was unnerving.
For a couple of weeks my boyfriend and I were packing (with me getting my momentary nostalgia and little bits of depression with it, which I claim is naturally connected to leaving a lovely flat which has witnessed how we both grew up as a couple in the past years - seriously, that flat deserves an ode), moving, buying furniture and mounting the miracles of Ikea, and unpacking. We had to face our previous flat owners who actually confessed to us that they tried to convince my company to let us stay instead of the new Chinese expatriate who was supposed to occupy it instead of us. They said they liked us very much, maybe despite the fact that we sometimes left the window open in winter to ventilate and apparently we were wasting the heater’s effect. All in all we had a great couple for flat owners; they live right beside our former flat and were quicker than lightning when replying to requests. Now we have an absentee landlord, with relatively slower response rate but then also less meddling (that’s understatement, actually it seems to me that she does not give a fuck what we do in the flat). She is a thirty-plus-year-old advertising executive who is leasing out a flat given to her by her parents while she lives outside of Prague in a house with her own family.
It was a tough couple of weeks, my mind did not stop working, making sure everything was packed and everything had a place in the new flat. We were listing the furniture we needed amidst all the boxes around us. Coming home was a pain in the ass, a never ending parade of cartons and trash I did not even realize we had. After a tough day there really was not a place for us in our own flat to kick back with a cup of tea and talk about things other than what to set up in the new flat (that time was also a transition time at work, spelling everyday stress, an everyday inclination to clobber someone at work with my bare hands). It was hell spelled with conviction.
One night, while mounting the TV stand, I silently watched W screw the wooden planks together to the sure rhythm of the Ikea mounting manual, I realized how adult it all felt. As I picked up all the screws handing each to W, not allowing any second wasted, it dawned on me that despite of the stress, we managed to make real working partners of each other. Thinking together and making things happen, I thought to myself how lucky I am to have someone like him. I am lucky enough that our love has never stopped growing and surprising me, but to realize that I would even not mind having to work with him in projects like this ---- is simply heavenly. Through all of it I was the one who has more unhinged, he was my pillar during those times when estrogen got the better of me. Together we were efficient, quick and effective.
And thus only a few people will understand it when I say--- I would gladly replace all the managers I am working with now with one version of W.
Now we are all moved in and loving it. I’m sure we’ll have to move again someday, maybe in a couple of years, but it does not scare me at all.