A Spirit of Adventure

Just when I was beginning to think that the age of adventure as in King Solomon's Mines or Raiders of the lost Ark, was more or less over, I read something exciting in The Sunday Times edition of 12th May, namely that archaeologists have discovered a lost world in Honduras. The civilisation - spotted from an airplane - looks like "a vast tended garden" and is located inland from the Mosquito Coast.  Even the name Mosquito Coast with its reputation for swamps, cliffs, poisonous plants and leaping vipers conjures up heroes in khaki shorts battling through thick jungle with machetes.  Just think how toe-curlingly exciting it would be to go on a mission (in the company of one of these taciturn, sun bronzed types) to discover a place which has been left to itself presumably since Theodore Morde, an American adventurer and spy, emerged from the jungle in 1940 claiming to have found "a lost city of the monkey god" with giant primate sculptures. He claimed that human sacrifices were made to these gods but before he could be questioned about the location of the place he was killed by a a car in London.  Never was a car accident more ill timed, or was this some kind of curse of the monkey god?   Doesn't the very idea make your flesh creep and your heart pound a little faster?  Even Hollywood couldn't have done it better.  It will be fascinating to see what archaeologists find when they eventually reach this place - provided they survive the combined dangers of the Mosquito Coast.

Another intriguing tidbit also attracted my attention this week. Mmme. de Florian decided to leave her apartment near the red light district of Pigalle in Paris when World War II broke out.  She took off for the South of France and never returned.  When she died at age 91 her heirs set about doing an inventory of her property and their agents stumbled upon this apartment. No one had been inside it since she had left it 70 years previously.  Pictures of the place can be seen on many websites and are worth a look - here is one link http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/ which you will find fascinating.  Even more intriguing is the discovery in the apartment of a painting of a lady in a pink dress.  A bundle of love letters also discovered indicate that the painting, although not signed, is by Giovanni Boldini as are the letters.  Boldini was one of Paris' most important painters of the Belle Epoque.  And it gets even better.  The lady in the pink dress in the portrait is none other than Marthe de Florian, grandmother of Madame de Florian.  She was an actress and a socialite and apparently Boldini's mistress. Doesn't it make you long to know more?  What made Madame de Florian decide not to return to Paris at the end of the war?  How did she live during that time?   What was the story of her grandmother?   More questions than answers but the stuff of which epic novels is made.

It's nice to know that mysteries are still out there waiting to be discovered.

Everything stops for tea

Irish Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin has said that he has resolved many an important economic issue with his colleague Finance Minister Michael Noonan over a cup of tea according to an article in http://www.TheJournal.ie today.   Henry Fielding wrote "love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea".  He had a point.

A cup of tea was the "cure all" when I was growing up in Ireland.  If you had a headache, a cup of tea would fix it, if your stomach was upset, a cup of tea was recommended.  I can't remember if any of these remedies actually worked.  I suspect that the comfort of having a cup of this hot aromatic liquid improved my spirits rather than dispelling any discomfort I might have been feeling.

The Irish and the British are notorious for their addiction to tea.  Our continental neighbours do not share this passion.  In Germany, for example, where I lived for many years, tea is taken black and weak, and no self-respecting German would have a mug of tea at his or her elbow all day long.  Coffee is the preferred drink, especially in the office, but only until around four o'clock in the afternoon because if taken after that time it will keep you awake, they tell you. The Italians like to drink espresso on their way to work and they may or may not have a sticky bun or croissant to go with it.  I was in St.Mark's Square in Venice once on a weekday and was amazed at all the people in business attire who lined the counters sipping coffee and reading the daily newspaper before heading off to their place of work.  But maybe you need a good strong espresso of a morning if you have to get around by boat.

Meeting someone for a coffee is pretty much international, though. This could be because tea-making has something of a ritual about it and if you order tea in a restaurant you may not get exactly what you want.  Coffee on the other hand does not require more than a percolator or a dash of hot water on powder if you're not fussy.  Yes, there are many varieties these days - cafe creme, latte, cappuccino, espresso to name but a few but they are all something special mostly to be enjoyed in a coffee bar.  There are no tea bars interestingly enough, but in good quality hotels you have a choice of several different kinds of tea, admittedly in teabags.

There are people who still use loose tea because it gives a better flavour.  But even in our hurried world of instant gratification where we use the less messy teabags, there are differences between brands of tea and tea drinkers stick to their preferred brand.  A few gourmets only take the Darjeeling or Earl Grey variety. Most of us tea-drinkers though like our tea either "weak", "not too strong", or "strong" and we are not always sure where it comes from. 

Tea  appears to have first been used in China in about the 3rd century and later in Japan.  Interestingly although we think tea drinking an original British and Irish habit, tea was not introduced to Britain until the 1650's when Catherine of Braganza (who was Portuguese) married Charles II and, missing  the Portuguese tea-drinking culture, started the custom.  At that time tea was distributed through the coffee houses which were popular then.   Another surprise is that tea-growing in India was a British initiative to break the Chinese monopoly.

So when we put the kettle on, we are part of a long chain of culture.  We are also continuing a very valuable ritual.  There's nothing quite as relaxing as sitting down to share a cup of tea. Cheers!

Herding Cats or You Had Me At Hello

The English language is very flexible.  You can twist it and bend it as much as you like as long as people understand you and as long as you don't mind the purists among us complaining that you're ruining the language.

Having said that, it is not so surprising to learn that phrases commonly used in day-to-day office business can be very irritating.  A recent survey found that, for example, management's over-use of expressions such as "going forward", "let's touch base on this", "thinking outside the box", "flag up" and "it's on my radar" were apt to make them see red (yes this post is a bit tongue in cheek and I put that phrase in deliberately to make you smile :)).  One of my favourite hates was "let's make it happen" but I think this has been dropped from high-powered meetings since nobody actually made anything "happen"  simply because you can't.

When I worked in London many cell phone years ago, my manager at the time was piqued by the expression "to liaise".  He maintained (at length!) that liaison was a noun begged, borrowed or stolen from the French and you couldn't make a verb out of it.  This very same manager used to get up my nose (yes, another bit of tongue in cheek :)) by saying "I'll appraise him/her of that."  As we all know you appraise a situation but you apprise someone of it.  That was drummed into me by the good nuns at school.

It's amazing how expressions come and go.  Whatever happened to manifold or diverse or even myriad? Now everything is eclectic, which gets a bit boring after a while.  And you have an "epiphany" which sounds a bit scary to me. I'd rather do some soul-searching and find myself.  My favourite though, simply because it is so evocative, is "herding cats"  This immediately conjures up the impossibility of trying to keep a group of independent and freedom-loving felines together in a group. One of the good guys among the cliches.

I think I'll finish with a quote from Jane Austen, a lady who wrote so elegantly and had a right to feel as Marianne does in Sense and Sensibility when she says  :  "I abhor every common catch-phrase by which wit is intended." Sir John, to whom she addressed her remarks, "did not much understand this reproof but laughed as heartily as if he did."
 I think we can deduce from this that we are all going to have to think outside the box as we go forward.
 

What's in a name

There are some psychologists or life coaches or whatever the fashionable name for them is nowadays who tell us that we are afraid of success and that is why we are stuck where we are. My question is:  what exactly is success?  The philosophers have been telling us their version of it for centuries but it doesn't seem to have penetrated too far into our minds.  Each individual has his or her own concept of what being successful means.  For some it's getting the top job, for others it's having enough to live on for a lot of people it's finding the right partner and having a family.

I decided to compile my own -  not to be taken too seriously -  list of what success means to me:

1. Getting out of bed at 6 a.m. on a frosty morning.  No mean feat, especially when I know (or knew to be exact, since I am now retired and living in gentler climes) that I am going to have to scrape snow off the car at -10C or so.  Now that, dear readers, deserves a round of applause.    

2. Being polite to a superior when what I wanted to do was to chuck files (and even the office desk) at this person for their overbearing attitude.  This also is in the glorious past, thank goodness!!

3. Resisting the urge to buy a product just because it's on "special offer" if it's an expensive brand that  I normally wouldn't buy.

4.  Not eating all the chocolates in the box.

Strange Bedfellows

'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows' Shakespeare once wrote and I'm inclined to agree with him, only I'd change the word 'misery' to 'travel'. 

Last week I travelled to Germany to see my daughter and her family and had a wonderful time.  Dare I mention that the weather was glorious? At 26C a lot of the locals were complaining about the sudden heat as it had gone from around 8C to the aforementioned 26C within five days.  Now in rain-laden Ireland, that would be a cause for rejoicing because we'd know that this was better than it gets!  But I didn't intend writing this blog about the weather.

Whenever I travel anywhere by plane, I am always amused - and sometimes irritated - by all those fellow travellers with tons of hand luggage who fill up the overhead lockers before you can say "jet lag".  It wouldn't even be so bad if they didn't get on the plane before you and stand in the aisle stuffing their bags into the lockers while you wait until they are finished, ignoring the passengers behind you who are breathing heavily down the back of your neck and no doubt blaming you for the hold up.  And then when you finally get to move on in search of your seat another body pops up to block your progress, takes down a bag and starts to rummage through it.  I mean, seriously, couldn't you check that you'd removed magazines and stuff you need on the flight from your bag before you jammed it into the overhead locker?

And then there's the 'snoozer' for want of a better word, the traveller who decides to use their seat as a recliner and bounce around on it, making you draw back instinctively and sit bolt upright. Maybe they miss lounging on the terrace at home.  Whatever the reason, it doesn't give you much room in the Economy class.  And of course, there's the passenger who manages to dig his/her knees into your back - but here they are entitled to my compassion and understanding because there is really not much leg room if you are tall.

Being a neurotic traveller (see my blog of last week lol) I always choose an aisle seat so that I can get out in a hurry if anything should go wrong.  No one has ever had a problem with this up until now, everyone being happy to sit in a window seat and philosophical  if they get the middle one.  However, on this last trip a passenger arriving late onto the plane wanted to shush me into the window seat (which was his) without as much as a "would you mind?".  I couldn't tell if this was chivalry, a determination not to disturb me, or a macho masterful attempt to get the seat he preferred.  I refused, of course.  I'm not a neurotic traveller for nothing.  There was a frosty atmosphere between us for the flight and we both refrained from dumping our magazines and stuff on the unoccupied middle seat, treating it as a demilitarized zone like the 38 parallel in Korea.  I'd just like to add that he had two pieces of hand luggage.  'Nuff said.

The Travelling Neurotic

I am writing this blog today because I am off to Germany tomorrow to visit my daughter and grandchildren. 

I'm a travelling neurotic - one of those travellers who are uneasy until they board the flight or the train or get in the car.

This morning I have checked out my ticket, my passport, my airport coach ticket and the money in my purse just to make sure I have everything.   Tonight I'll print my boarding pass, compare it with the ticket and put it with the other stuff.  And I'll check everything again before I go to bed and then again tomorrow morning just in case some mysterious troll has secretly removed my passport or airline ticket during the night.

A lot of my acquaintance are remarkably laid-back about travelling and don't see the necessity of being hours at the airport in advance of the flight.  They don't expect last minute snags such as traffic jams or long lines at security or getting lost and going to the wrong gate.  I really envy them!  I can never relax until I am sitting at the departure gate waiting for the flight to be called. 

I wonder if this is a generation thing,  like always checking your mobile for the latest tweets?  When I was growing up most people got to their destinations by train and boat.  The pace was considerably slower, you didn't have a security check, you produced your train ticket to the inspector when asked, and you had time to gaze out at the countryside as it slipped past the train window.  There was a sense of time.  Once on the boat or ship you could roam around the decks, lean over the side and watch the waves, feel free of land and its encumbrances. 

Tomorrow I am getting up very early and I won't be happy until I've checked in my suitcase and taken a seat at the departure gate.  The interesting thing is that when I am returning, I don't get half as edgy.  Does this have some deep psychological significance?  If so - I don't want to go there!  All I want is to get to my destination on time without the teeniest hitch.  Here's hoping!

Did you move someone's cheese? How to cope on your first day in a new job.

We've all heard of the book "Who Moved My Cheese?"  I haven't read it so can't comment except to say I understand it is about coping with change.  Now, I am all for self-help books and have used a few myself (still do, in fact) to get another perspective on things that are bothering me.  We all need a little help from time to time.  The important thing is to select the bits that are of use to you.  When you're in a store you don't buy everything in sight, you choose what you need at that particular time. And that's the way to go for all of this self-help stuff.

Dealing with change can be difficult or it can be a challenge, depending what the change actually is.  I always found starting a new job both challenging and stressful.  But I did learn that in any office the two most important locations are the coffee machine and the photocopier.  At some point in the day you are going to want one of them - okay so you don't drink coffee but the coffee machine will be located in the kitchen or at least somewhere with easy access to water.  That's where you are bound to meet up with someone and have a little chat.  First steps in making friends.  The photocopier is no less effective because even in these digital, everything online days, it is always necessary to make a few copies of some document or other.  Once you've located the copier you can ask for help if you have to do anything exotic with the documents (don't get ahead of me on this!)  or you can ask where the paper is kept so you can replenish the paper tray.  This last manoeuvre will probably get you the office Peace Prize and will help you top the popularity poll because so few people bother to do it.

And to remain popular stay away from other people's cheese, even if it's a month old and greenish round the edges.  In other words, don't try to reform the bad habits of the others on your first day at work.  I have seen people do this and be forever branded as "know-it-all" types even though they were actually quite humble people who just hadn't got the knack of interacting with others.When you've proved your worth after a month or so you can bellyache about colleagues who take the last cup of coffee and don't make a fresh pot.  And you can hint that maybe that bit of mouldy cheese at the back of the fridge could be thrown away.