Truth to be told, I seriously doubt that serving such a large breakfast increases the effectiveness of a conference. On the contrary: sometimes it seemed to me that the participants were more interested in the food than in the topics discussed. However, I, who is still not a burned-out professional, but someone who has still much to learn, really enjoyed that less people felt it necessary to ask stupid questions or make even more stupid comments than usual.

It was the first real (serveral page long) test for my new Stabilo ’s move pen I got from V. a few weeks ago. (This was the very first thing I wanted to get because of an ad I saw on the street.) Since I make most of my notes on my laptop, I rarely write by hand, but I am still much into well-designed pens. And I just can’t stop loving this one.

This time we were much smarter. Unlike last year did not planned to do anything special (besides being at V.’s house). Ee played on the computer, talked, had some champagne with V.’s Dad. We did not watch television — in fact, we just swichted it on just to know when midnight was.

Next day, I was a bit sad while packing my things. Usually I do not mind going home after a few days of holiday, but this time it was too nice, too peaceful, too perfect to leave it behind easily. It was a very wonderful way to spend the holidays: I hope we will have some more Christmas like this.

On the 2nd of January, a very few people of the staff could be seen at my workplace. As it turned out later, even I wasn’t obliged to go there. I did not mind it, however: that day with the dizzy people around and with the small amount of work to do was an excellent warming up.

At first I was terrified when I heard that there would be some team-buliding games. I had to endure many of these at my previous job on several weekend workshops and summer conferences. I was only happy when I could find and excuse not to participate in them. Most of the time, these games were completely pointless, badly organized, and, to make it even worse, humiliating. Now I see it was only because of the bad trainers. This weekend these few-minute-long ice-brakers did help to form a team from the participants and to warm us up for the real work.

I was a bit unconfident first whether it was a good idea to consider me a part of the team. After all, I was there not to contribute in the results but to learn as much as I can. Then, surprisingly, it turned out that even I could find a role for myself. When we had to work in small groups, I could help mine to summarize our results. I could also solve some disputes with reminding the group the original task.

The weekend was useful because I could forge some kind of good relationship with two colleagues of mine. One of the few small drawbacks of my workplace is that everyone or nearly everyone is super-serious and super-reserved. Of course, I do not expect anyone to chat with me all the time. However, at my previous job when new people joined, we did find some time to help them to fit in the team. Here no one really bothers. For example, I really had to struggle to keep up at least some conversation at the dinner table. Fortunately, my boss is a real exception It is good because it’s him I had to spend most of my time with. He is really nice and easy going and even able to talk while eating or travelling.

However, today when I showed up in the office, I felt that the two other workmates who were present at the workshop are somewhat more friendly. Not too much, but I have received some nice remarks and some small, collegian smiles from the corner of their mouth. It was worth to sacrifice my entire weekend, after all.

When I arrived home, V. expected me with a superb supper. She also cleaned the flat, put everything in order, so we could spend the entire Sunday afternoon and evening with each other. Finally I could even have some weekend-like weekend.

8.15 am. Her son calling. He doesn’t want to go to kindergarten. Twenty minutes chatting with the young man to convince him that kindergarten is fun.

10.23 am. She is calling Aunt Gizi, the sister of her recently died father. Aunt Gizi’s sister is obviously a bitch, since my neighbor (let’s call her Anita) complains about her at least fifteen minutes every time she calls Gizi. Making plans about Christmas. Anita’s husbad is also well. More complaints about Aunt Gizi’s sister. Hangs up after an approxiamtely 30 minutes talk.

12.30. Lunch break.

13.44. Time the call the waterworks. Anita calls them at least twice a week. Her water-meter is not working correctly, it needs to be fixed. She ordered it from the waterworks via fax, e-mail and phone and still nothing has happened since 3rd December. Some frustrated conversation with the customer service department.

14.08. Informing her husband about the proceeding with the waterworks.

14.32. Calling the bank. Wow, at least some new story. Unfortunately, it is a real nasty business. They had a 21-million forints mortgage at one of the largest bank in Hungary. The bank then unilaterally changed the costs of the mortgage, so they paid it back. Six month later the bank wrote them a letter humbly asking for 160.000 HUF because of miscalculating something. They even put some interest on it, at least six months passed and time is obviously money. They do not really care that is was not Anita’s and her husband’s fault. Serious shouting with the lady at the bank’s customer service department, promises that she (Anita) will even bring this case to God, but she will not pay. At least there are some results: they have some chance that after all they will not need to pay because of the bank’s fault.

15.07. Some hopeful conversation with her husband.

15.15. Calling her mother-in-law who looks after her son. After all, he went to the kindergarten, the lunch was O.K. and he is fine.

16.24. After a hard day’s work, leaving six minutes earlier.

My main task for this month to learn as much as I can about the life and the current issues of the office. I am going to have to read a lot; fortunately, I have absolutely no problem with reading several hundered pages long, official documents on the screen. It may sound a bit absurd, than I even enjoy it, since it’s learning, and I love learning new things.

Although I listened to far too many scientists in the last few weeks, yesterday I decided going to yet another conference, this time purely for private reasons. It was held by the Instute of Chemistry at Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences to provide an opportunity for the student researchers of the Institute to present their recent results. One of the presenters was an acquaintance of mine. She is one of my former colleagues at the Student Union she also was my photo model. A few months ago she described the experiments she had to make during her research — I became curious what is the purpose of her work. Well, she is studying biodegradable medicine polymers. I was pleased with myself since I understood almost the entire lecture; only some minor details remained to be clarified. She promised me to send her presentation to me this evening so hopefully I will not remain in the dark.

Yesterday I met with my my sister and her husband at Mum’s. We had lunch together, I finally got my present they brought me from Thailand. It’s an exceptionally beautiful jenga set; I could not help try it out on the spot. After I came home, I also introduced the game to V. We played much more viciously than I did with Mum and Robert.

Borcsa also bought some new clothes. Since she is pregnant, she has much less to wear and got tired of her few pregnant trousers she had. Fortunately she takes pregnancy very easy; actually if I see her, it’s me who is more worried about her. It’s really strange to imagine that my nephew is in her belly and it does not hurt her at all.

A nice side-effect of this work that I can hear a lot of interesting presentations in every scientific areas from IT-science to numismatology or biology. I can also improve my press-photo skills, since I also have to be a photo reporter when needed.

It’s really strange how few people attend these events. Sometimes it’s only me and the hosts. In the national Museum, when the Numismatic Department introduced itself, there was an old lady besides of me. It is strange because it was an exceptionally interesting evening: we were let to take genuine five or more hundred year old coins in our hands. Of course, it is partly because the communication of the events are worse than terrible. Evidently even the Hungarian Academy of Sciences cannot afford itself to believe that everybody is curious about them. It’s not enough to organize en event: audience also have to be taken care of.

While mum was back to the States, I visited accounting portals and asked for tenders. Our “firm” is absolutely miniscule, we have no employees and very small circulation. We can take our bills and receipts to the accountant personally. In my letters, I emphasized these, and stressed that our first priority is cost effectiveness. The bids started to flow in.

It turned out that the realistic cost of this kind of job is between 5,000 to 10,000 HUF. We got plenty of good offers with slightly different conditions. That’s why I was astonished when some stated in their letters that the minimum cost — for which they are happy to do our accounting — is 22,000 HUF. Sometimes the offer contained payroll calculations for up to three employees. They obviously didn’t bother to read my letter. The winner was a guy, who stated that he is ready to take this job for a “realistic price”: 50,000 HUF.

Of course, it is a free market, but I also think that accounting is a sensitive business. I definitely expect my accountant to use my money the most effective way. Her salary is no exception. If she doesn’t know what the realistic price for that kind of job, then she is not a good accountant. If our company is too small for her, than she shouldn’t send an offer.

Maybe they hoped that I was silly enough to turn only to them, and ready to accept any kind of price. What I definitely do not want from an accountant is to regard me as an idiot.

The story doesn’t end here.

We had three really good offers, so we started with them first. Mum called the first one. She lived off the map, but in her letter she stated that she comes to Budapest frequently. On the phone she said that she would come to Budapest only on next week. Ahem. One out.

The second one presented herself at Mum’s one hour after the call. She was so drunk that she fell at the staircase, so she showed up with bleeding face. She was also working illegally, “mainly for the Chinese”, as she said. We decided we want someone who is sober and who can give us bills, otherwise we cannot write down her salary as an expense. Two out.

The third one lives twenty minutes from Mum, she has good sense of humor and two cats. She explained us everything clearly, she is ready to work via the Internet and she obviously has a lot of experience with small firms.

Now only one thing remains: to teach Mum doing remissions on our bank’s on-line banking system.

My temporary job in the publication of the letters of the famous Hungarian cartographer, Manó Kogutowicz is coming to an end. He lived at turn of the turn of the 19th century, he was the founder of the Hungarian Institute of Geography, and a real pioneer in Hungarian cartography. Working with his letters was a really interesting and challenging task; I could immerse in that age — I never new so much about the life in the late Habsburg-Hungarian Monarchy. It is the age of the early capitalism in Hungary — Manó Kogutowicz himself was the director of one of the first cartographic firms in Hungary. As an editor myself, I could also see that despite the century between us, editors seem to have very similar problems every time. Authors have absolutely no sense of deadlines, procurers want to dictate while don’t know or care about basic rules of publication.

He did have a lot of financial problems, though — although I suspect that he complained a bit more to his business partners that would have been absolutely necessary.

I ate home-made hot dog for supper. Veronika used semi-finished rolls which had to be baked in the oven for ten minutes. Nice and easy.

Truth to be told, I have never been taken so seriously — and I mean seriously — as a professional. Even if I don’t get a job, I got many exceedingly useful pieces of advice for career-building and some really good remarks on my cv. They did provide me some interestingly-looking perspectives, too — now they just estimated me, but in the next weeks they may even find me some actual offer.

On the whole, it was a really interesting week — although I was turned down from a data controller position at Diageo, I got only much better offers this week. Now I only regret that it seemed a really nice and value-oriented multinational company. It is still a bit strange to me that the team leader could refuse me on the basis that the job is not good enough for me, while I definitely thought and stated otherwise. I didn’t think it was her right to decide, but it’s not my problem any more. After this week I definitely feel that I will eventually find something interesting to do.