Scribbling #15: Finding the 'right' job

Slovak law has changed recently, making it slightly harder to register with the local authorities. Beforehand, as an EU citizen, all I had to do was show up at the Foreign Police, announce that I was here (as in just by going to the FP, not by shouting at a policeman's face 'Hellloooooo! Can you hear me!? I'm in front of you, look!', as this would be considered bad form) fill in some paperwork, and within a couple of weeks - hey presto, a shiny laminated residence card.

Moving from Nitra to Sala involved some change - I had to prove that I was at the address by giving a letter to the police from our landlord, to say that yes, unbelievable as it is, but we have a couple of Johnny Foreigners staying at our place - or words to that effect. Mrs C gained the added perk from marrying me in being able to obtain a permanent residence card as well. This means that she no longer has to visit the police, year in and year out, in order to get a visa sticker that will nicely cover one entire page of her passport. However, she still needed that one year visa renewal before she was able to get hold of the actual card, as the police needed something to tie her over with. More paperwork, but there you go...

With my card in place, I can quite happily become an employed worker within the realm of the Slovak Republic. I was so grateful and felt so blessed to get hold of a job within the space of a couple of months of 'officially' being here. Obviously the English language by itself is restrictive here, as it will limit you in what you want to do... but by combining it with the little Slovak I do know and add a huge sprinkle of mime - most conversations can be fought through. Although the end result may not be what one would expect or want, for example the people you're talking to suddenly look at each other and burst out laughing, probably because you've just sworn at them without knowing.

In finding a job, the cultural dissimilarities shine through, especially if the company's roots are in foreign investment. The 'middle ground' language is taken as English, but if you have a group of Japanese businessmen that had been taught by someone from, say, Glasgow, and a Slovak group that had been taught by someone from Chicago... then miscommunication can be rife. There has been many a time here at my place of work would just nod and smile along with whatever his boss was saying. The end result of this would be:

JC: Well?

Slovak tech: I do not understand what he said. But it sounded bad.

Not only that, but there was one time when I was introduced to someone who proclaimed that he was from 'sunny Barcelona'. Which, I thought, was a very nice if not slightly strange thing to say. It made the guy sound like he was on a quiz show. Ten minutes later, I realized that he tried to say that he was from 'Sony Barcelona'. Suddenly you're dealing with a customer, not some nice person who has a quaint outlook on life.

Increased foreign investment within the Slovak Republic also means that a lot of jobs are taking over people's lives. See those cars whizz past you on the highway, especially those with 'BA' written on the back of them? No they're not 'A-Team' enthusiasts, they just need to get to their next supplier, customer, sellling point, conference, or whatever.

I found this out by going to a job interview once in Bratislava. It was going quite well, and after an hour's talk it seemed that the Quality Manager was indirectly asking me to become one of the 130,000 employees that they have worldwide. There was one slight catch - he had to make sure that I was okay with travelling. I said I was okay with that, in light of what has happened over the last year and a bit.

He then said that the project I would be working on is something that is happening right now, this minute. And that would mean that I would have to spend a month in South Korea at the Kia plant.

He then spoke about more travelling, such as four months straight going to Zilina and only being able to come back on weekends, plus the extra flying back and forth to Korea and... I had to ask a couple of rather pertinent questions.

JC: What, exactly, family life do you have?

Silence.

Interviewer: There is no family life. It's just this, plus travelling.

JC: And you like this?

Interviewer: *shrug*

At this point I was saying silently 'Er, God, help?'

Silence. He knew that I had made my mind up already. This job was like putting a square peg into a round hole - there was no way that this was going to work. Not only that, but the job itself is highly demanding with the need to chase up people etc. In hindsight, I'm glad the guy told me about the travelling first without springing it upon me mid-job.

Thank goodness for small Japanese firms, that's what I say... ;-)

Scribbling #14: Five things I miss about the Motherland

Due to the UK election kerfuffle going on, with the Lib Dems (translation for Canadians and other exotic creatures: Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives are 'Tories' and the Labour Party is known as 'The party formerly known as New Labour, until the 'new' shininess was found to be just gold leaf, which eventually peeled to unveil the cold, black hearts of people who like shaking hands with, say, Robert Mugabe') taking centre stage in many a news story, I became vaguely wistful of what great things I left behind in the country of my birth. So, here's a list in no particular order of what I sort of miss, but don't really all that much:

1. TV programmes.

Such feats as Top Gear, the Antiques Roadshow, Christmas re-runs of Only Fools and Horses, great F1 coverage and the fact that everything is basically not dubbed. Instead of flopping on the sofa and letting my brain and my facial expression drift away in front of the telly, I instead have to choose if I want to do something creative with my time, or try and watch a DVD, like a film or something. Sometimes I opt for creativity. Sometimes the film. Sometimes it's just staring at the TV, without it being switched on. When Mrs C. then asks me what I'm thinking about, I have to say 'nothing', because I really am. I'm just waiting for the next neuron to fire in order to connect the fact that for me, there really is nothing on since I now live in a Slovak-speaking culture. Good thing, then, that English DVDs with Slovak subtitles are readily available. I just bought the Full Monty today for ten cents of a Euro. Bargain. But I still miss Top Gear.

2. The local pub's pig roast and pub lunches.

I've never been, it sounds disgusting, it looks disgusting, but I miss it because it was always there, every Easter, if I wanted to go to it. The motorbikes outside the place and the heavy metal Gandalf-lookalikes hanging around just added that extra appeal of 'what if?'. What if I did go and end up having food poisoning? Would it still be fun the day before my bowels turned to water? Eternal questions such as these should be given due consideration. And of course, there were always the great pub lunch - being able to sit outside in the pub garden on a slightly sunny Saturday, enjoying the pub view and all things pubby.

3. Indian restaurants.

There is only one that I really know of, and that's in Bratislava. Basically, the Slovaks' aversion to spicy food means that there is not much chance of 'going out for an Indian' (translation to all Canadians etc, etc.: Yes, that's how we say it. It's a phrase in itself. Get over yourselves.). The kebab and the chicken tandoori passed the traditional chippy as first choice for the discerning Brit on a night out. This might be due to legal regulations about not wrapping up the fish and chips in newspaper, and the UK as a nation decided not to be interested due to the imposed health and safety regulations on a takeaway meal. Either that or we've had enough of that amount of grease, one of the two.

4. Decent roads. Mostly.

Apart from the old tracks and the pot-holed monstrosities that plague Britain, they have one redeeming feature - decent road markings and cat's eyes. These little reflective bits of plastic embedded in the road make it so, so nice to drive at night to. In Slovakia, the markings here don't use the same type of bright/reflective paint, so they are hard to make out at night - especially so as the roads also don't drain water very effectively and the surface reflects oncoming headlights like nobody's business. Slovakia is definitely not the greatest place to drive at night, but then Britain spends millions on its roads, with that nice paint right up there as a priority to have. At least I know which side of the road I have to be on...

5. The Big Smoke.

London is the best capital city in the world. Get over it, people.

So, five things. It was going to be ten, but this is a blog. I'll save it for the book.

Scribbling #13: The Day I Nearly Died. Again.

Well, maybe not died, but quite probably seriously hurt and/or crippled.

Yesterday, I was happily going about my own business driving to work (yes, I do have a day job, thank goodness) when several things happened. First, a few cars ahead of me, one guy decided to slow down and stop in order to turn right. No big deal. Except that the guy behind him left it a bit late and according to Slovak (mostly male) driving tradition (i.e. he was tailgating anyway) nearly meant that the second driver would be sharing boot (translation for Canadians and other exotic creatures: 'trunk') space with him. Then there was the driver behind him, who had to emergency stop. And then there was me, who checked my mirror, braked and found that no matter how hard I was pushing the pedal I would probably be sharing tea and biscuits with the Big Man Upstairs if I didn't do something. And then the little voice at the back of my head ordered me - very calmly due to the sudden rush of adrenaline - that I should turn to the left because there is no oncoming traffic. This was when I was on a blind corner...

Anyway.

I braked, I swerved, I scored.

And then there was the matter of the car behind me. Who swerved right and basically parked alongside me. Yes, he was tailgating me too. All this from 90 km/h to 0 in a space of seconds.

I knew someone was trying to tell me something earlier on when I saw a car that had rolled over on its side, with the (rather hairy) driver standing outside of it, nervously puffing away at his cigarette.

This whole escapade isn't all that uncommon here. Talking to people at work, that kind of situation does happen - some come out of it ok, sometimes not. On the other hand, there is a lot less traffic in Slovakia than in England and a lot less traffic in, say, Bucharest...

Ah, adventures...

Scribbling #12: On-Lone Ranger

When the horse-type guide looked our group over and asked who had not ridden before, I rather sheepishly put my hand up. He led the first horse out – a rather imposing but magnificent animal – and pointed vaguely in my direction.

‘This one is yours,’ he said.

‘Mine?’ I asked, thinking that I had blagged the horsey equivalent of a Mercedes.

‘No, not you,’ he replied, shaking his head in a rather urgent fashion. ‘Hers,’ he said, pointing to Mrs. C who was standing next to me.

Christina’s eyes lit up like a fairground whose owner had spent way too much on neon.

‘This one is yours,’ our guide said, bringing out a rather reluctant and much smaller tan and white horse. To me, it looked as if it had been used to haul around cannons, around the time of the American Civil war.

The horse looked at me, turning his head one way and then the other, as if he thought he might like me better if he looked full on with only one of his eyes. I stared at this weird looking beast and quickly gathered why a large part of humanity was trying to get away from the ‘let’s go camping and ride horses’ to ‘let’s drive somewhere and go to a nice hotel with a big, comfy bed’.

This is a large animal with a mind of its own, was one of my first thoughts.

I hope it doesn’t kill me, was probably my second.

I hope I don’t look like a complete idiot in front of Christina, followed pretty quickly after that.

The horse – I named him Dave (it’s Dave the horse to you, pal!) – let me come near it, so I gingerly put my left foot in one stirrup, swung the rest of my body over, shoved my right foot into the other stirrup and tried not to look like a sack of potatoes which happened to be on top of a horse while wearing a brightly coloured helmet.

Hey, I’m on a horse! I’m not dead! Where’s everyone else gone?

The rest of our two-man, two-woman group, including Mrs. C, had immediate visions of being just like John Wayne and had ridden off, not bothering to wait for me or Dave. This was the decider - I had to coerce my horse to move.

I clicked my tongue, like they do in the movies. Nothing happened.

The rope I was holding onto for grim death – pulled at it, making the horse’s head move around from side to side. Other than that, no effect.

I kicked him in the sides a bit with my heels. Again, no response.

My horse doesn’t work. Therefore, it is broken. QED.

However, our guide (let’s call him Steve, because for every Dave on the planet, there has to be a Steve) was not as forgiving and decided to go down the route that any good engineer would take when something is not behaving – thump it very hard indeed.

Once I regained some semblance of control and stopped having a mild cardiac arrest, I guided Dave towards where the others were and decided that this, this must have been how the Lone Ranger felt like - just before he upgraded to a bigger horse. A rather relieved Mrs. C was supportive enough to have waited in order to laugh and point, then take the camera off of me and proceeded to take lots of pictures, just before she rode off at a fast trot.

The best thing about this adventure was that we weren’t really being guided as to the trail that we had to take. Our horses knew where to go and we went off the trail every now and again to have a nose about. To have that kind of freedom was rather refreshing, as I’m sure we were breaking several UK health and safety measures by doing so.

Good.

Dave was happy enough just to walk and not expend too much energy. He trotted when he could be bothered and was an otherwise docile animal until Steve decided that we weren’t going fast enough to keep up with the others, so he hit Dave on the backside very hard indeed and cheered.

‘Yee-haa!’

Now here’s the strange thing – although I was holding onto everything for dear life, going at high speed was far more comfortable than just walking or trotting, as you’re not bouncing around on the saddle like some sort of loon. On top of that, I was having immense fun.

We slowed for the trail ahead, and this is when our guide told us to be careful because the trail now gets a bit more wild – full of branches, roots and large rocks that the horses could get caught in and trip over. Then we stopped completely because Steve had seen a group of monkeys off-trail and in the forest. Our intrepid guide took his horse and with a metaphorical hi-ho Silver, ran his horse up the trail wall and into the trees, where everyone followed him except for Dave and myself. With some cajoling, my horse reluctantly moved off the trail and stopped.

I clicked my tongue. No response.

I pulled the bridle and kicked my heels. Still nothing.

Dave had decided that he was far too old for this sort of carry on and had switched into standby mode.

I gave up, mostly because I wasn’t really confident enough after only an hour in the saddle to be really adventurous and go off into the wild. And that, to me, was the smart thing to do – which doesn’t happen very often. On the other hand, Mrs. C was checking out the monkeys, so I figured that she could tell me the full story about it afterward.

‘Didn’t really get a good look at them,’ she told me later.

This was rather anti-climactic after seeing a bunch of horses dramatically run up a hill, kicking up mud and grass and bolt off into the woods.

‘Nothing happened? Are you serious?’

‘Um, yes,’ was the reply. ‘He kept on saying, “look, look, they’re right there” and we sort of squinted and turned our heads a bit, but didn’t really see them.’

I had now decided that Dave was a very intelligent horse to have known not to bother. These young ‘uns, all vim and vigour and nothing to show for it, he had probably thought.

Pointing Dave’s head in the direction of the trail once again, we soon came across some rather impoverished looking cows, which were all minding their own business until a bunch of horses came along. This made them all a bit unsettled, and once an entire herd of them are disturbed all at once, they all got up and started to poop in unison, which sounded like a retarded orchestra playing a mixture of cow noises and dung hitting the floor.

‘Yeah, they do that,’ said one of our fellow group members.

‘Really?’ I said, in the way only the British do, using implied sarcasm and irony at the same time. ‘Amazing.’

Dave took this moment to bend his head down to drink at the water out of a nearby trough, while the humans were all looking at the ugly cows. And then it was time to move off again.

Two hours later, and with lots of pictures taken of beautiful scenery, we were back at the stables, my muscles aching in places that I really thought shouldn’t. That comes, my lovely wife assured me, from not being able to ride a horse properly. If I didn’t just sit on it and instead tried to move with the horse in some sort of rhythm, then I wouldn’t have been in as much pain. I had been well and truly told - I just wished that someone had done that beforehand. Mind you, it was the first time that I had been on a horse, so I was glad that I didn’t die or suffer some sort of serious injury.

We said goodbye to Steve, Dave and the American couple that had joined us in our group. I got in the car, ready to go – my body very glad to be sitting in a soft seat.