Vienna is a wonderful city, it truly is, but after living seven years in southern, dry, continental climates, getting used to less light and more humidity isn't quite my idea of fun. I think I'll have to do the slightly unhealthy thing and use the sun-bed at the gym once a week, to make up for the lack of light and UV rays. Once a week ought to be ( Read more... )

Well, only partly as I'd planned it ( Read more... )

...which I'm using to post another cat pic. Same window -- kitchen, overlooking inner courtyard -- this time occupied by fatty&fatty.


( Read more... )

So, my new -- and as far as I can judge it, only -- task is this ( Read more... )

...because I'd eaten some slightly dodgy hummus on Monday for dinner. I wasn't quite sure whether it was really off and thought, "Well, it's just hummus, so even if it's gone bad, what harm can it possibly do?" -- now I know that it can actually do quite a lot of unpleasant things to one's digestive tract. The worst was over by the early morning, ( Read more... )

I might be expelling the Devil with Beelzebub's help, as the German saying goes, but I've found the perfect means to stay entertained: I got myself a twitter account. And suddenly there's such a lot to read that I barely have time to keep up with facebook :-) LJ isn't being so very active right now, so I'm not getting completely stressed-out. I can ( Read more... )

Heard yesterday through the grapevine that nobody has yet applied for the job I'm coveting. Possible explanations are: a) everybody knows that it's already been promised to someone unbeatable, and b) nobody wants it, because it's a shitload of work complicated by constant meddling from the Minister's cabinet ( Read more... )

Since I'm getting paid for coming here, I suppose that's what I have to call it ( Read more... )

Today I had the training session for the electronic filing system. Training is obligatory, which is, well, OK. What's not OK is the compete lack of organization: neither do they group people by skills, nor by their needs -- people in support centres use completely different features than, say, desk officers ( Read more... )

...I have to say that I'm currently experiencing the very opposite of an ego boost ( Read more... )