French lessons continued...

Come to think of it the hardest part of the French lessons was the cheese!

Our tutor tried to create the whole French experience thing - so she brought cheese in one of the classes and went ahead to share it with us! The rest of the class was more into the cheese thing and there I was (goat cheese!) but I did the best I could a slice of cheese with french bread. How do they do it?

One thing about me is I find myself very rigid when it comes to food - in fact I dread trying out new food.... from sea foods. When I go to these Far Eastern restaurants I am very predictable - stick to the tried and tested.

I got to try this cheese thing again.

Feeling the Crunch

Maybe it is the credit crunch but I am skint my VISA is unning out soon so the whole morning I have been filling out all these forms to extend my stay here. I cannot wait for pay day.

Turmoil

It has been long since I scribbled anything here – good excuses are at hand obviously. I finished the 5 week French lessons this week maybe for sometime now I can have a little rest during the week – instead of running to classes, hence getting home after 9:30pm hungry and exhausted. Imagine what I would be like if it was Monday to Friday? I would be crazy by now. But it was a nice experience – mostly because my group was lucky to have a patient tutor. And the class was lively since we had all sorts of people in the small class – from a technology salesman, fashion graduate (actually she studied accountancy but switched!), a Columbian English student, South African Project manager and an African student researcher. The other two just disappeared after like two and half weeks – pressure at work.
I got to confess I learnt a lot as opposed to self study (listening to CDs), maybe it also is due to the fact that as I looked around the class we were all struggling to make sense of the rules associated with the language.
I have a week to decide whether to go to the next stage.

Also this week I celebrated 6 months at my no-longer new job. It has been a steep leaning curve – sometimes frustrating. Nobody is confident of how the system actually works. With the deadlines and the auditors around early this month it was a nightmare at times when I looked at the pressure in the finance to explain transactions that had long been forgotten. Like I mentioned sometime ago since the DBA left it has been tough feeling her shoes, a system that otherwise was running smoothly suddenly has all these glitches.

Speaking of the highlights of the month I cannot ignore the turmoil in the ‘global’ financial sector. the once towering giants in the sector are facing mounting problems trying to stay afloat. Lehman Brothers – formed in 1850 and its Chief Executive Dick Fuld are history now. Whatever legacy he had built over the past 10 years plus wiped out too – he had led the turnaround at the bank but commentators argue that the CEOs never learn. He simply overstayed the same problem Bear Stearns Chief faced. I guess as someone once said: ‘Guys in finance don’t seem to know that.’