FRANCE AND RANTS

As it turned out, I didn't just go to France yesterday, but I was also in Germany! It's just too bad that I was inside a moving car all that time and that the total time spent in Germany amounts to a grand total of 30 minutes. Hahaha. I love the way the countries in Europe are connected to each other. In the scope of eight hours, I was able to go from one country to another and another, and back to my "home country" in time for dinner.

So I finally experienced first hand how driving in the German Autobahn is like. I didn't really drive, it was my manager driving, but I was seated in the back. The minute we entered Germany, he just pushed the throttle and we were gone. 180kph. Whew. I can't wait to get my driver's licence and start being a road maniac around Germany. We travelled through the Schwarzwalder (Black Forest) and went on to France using the highway that goes all the way from Belfort to France. That part of France we were in was beautiful, with its rolling hills and low hills. Belfort, as I had learned from a French colleague, gets its name from the fact that the city is surrounded by the walls of a fortress that was put up during one of the wars with Germany. The region is not really known for its cuisine, owning to the fact that its an industrial region by nature, but he did say something about the fine sausages that they have. I really should stay in Belfort for a couple of nights sometime soon, so I can get a taste of those sausages!

On another note, it was not a good day in the office. I'm pissed off at three people. First is a colleague from Poland. Instead of referring to me, he called my officemate to discuss some problems regarding a project I'm managing. We recently rolled out a new database in Lotus Notes and it so happens that it only works on Release 6 of Lotus Notes. Unfortunately for some officemates in Poland, they still haven't received the upgrades, so that means the database encounters some errors when they try to access it. So this guy in Poland decided to call my colleague to discuss the problem. Second person I'm pissed at is my officemate. He proposed to the Polish guy to just sit back on the problem for a while until the Lotus Notes upgrades get rolled out and until the office in Poland gets trained on the details of the new database. I know he means well but still, it's my project and I feel I should be the one making decisions. I don't know about you but it borders on being unprofessional when you dip into someone's work affairs, make decisions, and then tell the affected person about it after-the-fact. Lastly, I'm pissed off at myself. I suppose the base reason why the Polish guy talked to my officemate was that he's uncomfortable talking to me in English and he's better at using German. I really should get German lessons and at least try to have some German conversation skills. I hope things start to get better in the office tomorrow. I can feel burnout beginning to set in.