The Last 3,210,049 Seconds of My Life

The irony of year abroad blogging is that if you have time to write one, you probably aren't doing enough interesting things to be worth writing about. At least, that's my excuse for failing to pipe up for practically the whole of August. It's also my excuse for this blog being too long but I'll put some pictures in or something to improve that. Just at random. they won't link in with what I'm talking about. That's too much. 

To be fair, I think I was relatively busy. In fact, just taking a moment to examine the last blog, I see that I really have been. There have been three lots of friends to visit on separate weekends, with whom I have done various combinations of touristy things, gastronomic things and lying on the beach things. My budding career as a tour guide is going well. I do enjoy having people to stay and sometimes they do too so I was very happy to have those visitors. Also it makes sure I see most of the sights around the city, some of which are pretty crazy (inside of Sag Fam, Magic Fountain at Montjuic and views from hills above city stand out). I also went back to France which is why that picture has sneaked in here.

There was also the visit of the family around birthday time (21 now, so that's new) and activities were similar, only we missed out on the beach because I 100% based my ideas of which beach to go to on some information I'd read at work about the "magnificent and exclusive location of this luxury villa" without ever considering that blindly trusting an estate agency trying to sell an overpriced property might be a bad idea. Anyway, the rest of their trip was great.

Birthday can have a little separate mention, too. It might've been the first time I've been working on the day but not the last, and as the afternoon went on I gradually got more into the birthday spirit. I guess the main event was going up to a restaurant on Tibidabo Mountain. It was a really impressive location and the views were incredible but it just so happened that the owner of a local nightclub was having a private party downstairs, immediately under the restaurant, and that meant thumping bass for the first hour or so of our dinner, shaking the table and making glasses shatter and somewhat impinging the typically excellent and intellectual conversation that we almost certainly would have been having. If I changed the world "nightclub" to "fishmonger" then that would take on a much darker meaning. That wasn't funny. Never mind.

I'm now finding the problem with not writing a blog for a while - there is too much. Always like to rattle through a few of the regulars so here's what:

Other work: I've got a new job, of sorts. I'm a freelance translator from French and Russian and Spanish into English and a copywriter and proofreader now. It was going well and I was getting pretty regular work right up until I was allocated someone's university thesis to translate from French and, after quite a lot of stalling (in hindsight too much) I rejected the work on the grounds that I don't want to help people cheat. That brought a whole shitstorm (for want of a better word) down on me, as the guy called up the company, they emailed me four times in three minutes asking why I'd rejected the work and then suspended my account until next week. In the interim, a fairly straightforward (albeit large) job worth £1000 came and went. I despair. Anyway, it is generally still a good development. Also doing some boring things to do with post-uni preparations and trying to improve my chances in the fairly important matter of "getting a job".

Actual work: last blog I mentioned how they weren't paying me. They now have. That's something. Still going fine, sometimes interesting and sometimes less so. Not long left and conveniently starting to finish up some of the tasks I was set, including getting to the photo captions for the very last property yesterday and, as they happened to be of a basketball court, I couldn't resist putting some Fresh Prince references in there. They won't mind.

We went out for a work dinner last week. In fact, that provided one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, albeit not really my fault. It was a widely-discussed dinner. We had gone through it three or four times, printed invitations had been handed out in the office, it was just a known fact. So, when I got up to leave work, I naturally said: "See you all later." Never have I seen such hysterical scenes over such innocuous words. The four other interns all seemed to cringe and look incredibly disappointed, highly amused and absolutely terrified all at once. The lady nearest me started to frantically wave her arms at me like one of those guys with lights on a runway guiding a plane in to land (I swear that man doesn't actually exist but for some reason I'm sure you know what I mean). Another man started making the sort of "hush hush" expressions with his eyes and hands which made me assume it was a secret and just one bloke in the corner said "what?" in apparent confusion. Anyway, I thought it best to make good my escape and left. 

On the way home, I had genuine no idea what was going on but, agonising over it for my half hour walk, I came to the conclusion that the only possibility was that it was the birthday of the one guy who had said "what?" and he must've somehow never been in the room when we were discussing it. It seemed unlikely but it was the only option. Turning up in the evening with some trepidation and present in hand (ok, not quite) I explained myself and said how bad I felt for ruining Jorge's birthday. Similar reactions ensued. As it turned out, my guesses were some way off. Apparently the boss was in the next room at the office and the dinner out was a secret from him because he's an authoritarian figure who "wouldn't approve" of us going out together. Anyway, it broke the ice on the evening...

Sportz: I don't have much to report here but I'm going along with the things I mentioned in my last blog so may as well mention that I play 5-a-side football every week despite being genuinely terrible at it and gym on weekdays. That part is going well. I failed to start swimming but I have started trying to teach myself to planche press-up. Watch this space. In about 7 years I'll probably have mastered this bloody Advanced Frog Stand.

The flat: god more developments. 1) the flat itself is quite comfortable and only just bordered on being too warm during August. Bearable. But we have two new flatmates. There's a guy from Valencia who seems to be at work most of the time I'm home and a girl from Korea and Denmark (classic that on a year abroad you meet people of combinations like that) who is usually here. They're both very pleasant and actually the atmosphere in the flat is, I think, a lot better now. For a while we also had some other Argentinian guy visiting. Like 2 weeks. He was a character. On one evening another of my flatmates came home and found him unconscious in her bed. Controversial.

I'd better bring this to a gradual close at this point. I'm loving it out here - I feel like I have a good balance between fun and work so I feel productive but also like I'm enjoying myself. Also I don't want this blog to get all final but I have now got a plane booked in only just over two weeks and it does feel like it's all coming to a close. But that's not what I need to consider for now - for the next 15 days it's just a matter of carrying on having as much fun as I have been so far.

Adios a todos

PS I'm sorry for the entirely random selection of pictures but I'm not very pro at blogging yet...