Mi Bodeguita del Medio

While my blog is named after a restaurant in Havana I hope to someday visit, here you will find musings, rants, political incorrectness, thoughts on Indian Nationalism, and some straight-forward opinions.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Aspects of my vida laboral

Between working 10-12 hours a day, dancing flamenco, studying for the CIA, having long nights out in town, and a totally unreliable internet connection, I haven't really been able to blog much lately. The "Catalan experience" is turning out to be interesting. After having lived for over a year in Madrid, I can say that Barcelona is different. The Catalan are special people, and their eccentricities I think are mainly rooted in history. In any case, living here you learn that Spain is not just Spanish and Spanish speaking (but I will get into that in further detail some other day).

At work I've been reviewing documentation of a Spanish company which originated in France. The documents are in Castellano (Spanish) mainly, which is difficult already but few are in Catalan and Euskera as well. Needless to say, its a lot of fun disciphering all of this legal documentation in various non-english languages (managing with catalan is still alright, but euskera, no way).

Working in a foreign language (spanish) and continuous additional exposure to another foreign language (catalan) is pretty challenging, but I'm staying positive. People take their work seriously, but at the same time are light-hearted about things. With complete disregard to our "official timings," most days we allow ourselves a 20 minute breakfast break, a 1,5 hour lunch break, lunch taken in three courses (primero, segundo and postre or dessert), about 3-4 coffee breaks of varying lengths depending on workload, and yes I've started writing the decimal as a comma :) Thursdays are caña days, we go to a nearby bar after work, down some beers and spend a few hours laughing. My colleagues are a blast!

No comments:

Post a Comment