Category: meeting hell

The Fish Of The Babbling

About a month ago, much to my dismay, my very valued and crucial employee handling business in the Latin American region offered her resignation. She’d found a job at another company where she could make a lot more money. She’s a great employee and it was a super opportunity for her career.

In her absence, I’m recruiting for the role, but that always takes a very long time. So while I search for a suitable replacement, I’m also doing the job. This means now I get a LOT of emails in both Spanish and Portugese. BabelFish and Google Translate have become my closest work friends.

But you know that old saying “something is lost in translation”?

Yup. Since I have a weird sense of humor, I’m actually enjoying sorting out what these oddball translated phrases actually mean.

Here are a few of the greatest hits I’ve seen over the past two weeks:

“The gentility has requested immediate attention to this request”


Um. The gentility? Really? What is this, an Oscar Wilde novel?

This was translated from Portuguese and I’ve now seen this same usage of “gentility” crop up a lot. It must simply be how the language handles the notion of management.

Which might also explain this one:

“Waiting on response from God before proceeding”


Whoa! God? It might be awhile to get an answer from that guy. I bet he’s way behind on his email. Maybe he has an assistant we can call?

I believe this implies approval from the very top officer of the company. Now that’s an honorific!

Or, it’s better explained by:

“On taking drugs the equipment in this situation?”


Ah. That’s it. My computer is on drugs. Yup. And waiting for God to respond in a genteel way.

We never did actually figure this one out. Someone on my team thinks this is a question about how are you using the equipment…and perhaps that term “using” which can mean taking drugs, got confused in the context.

Maybe.

But when it comes to equipment, there is also this advice:

“To remember when arriving at the visited country, extinguishing and to ignite the equipment”


And also please remember to extinguish fully before reigniting. Because reigniting an already ignited device might equal “ouch”.

Especially if you:

“Reset in the heat of the moment”


Best to wait for the heat to pass before resetting or even reigniting.

And by far, my favorite closing sentiment:

“Thanks so much already”


You’re welcome by now.






Image by Jakub Krechowicz and used royalty free from stock.xchng.

Rasty Feline – Come here – I want to see you.

Back in 1876 I would imagine that Mr. Bell had no idea how his invention might take unify the world.

I appreciate that telephones and long distance dialing are nothing new, and yet I can still find ways to be amazed.

Since my job is global, I’m often up early in the morning to take conference calls. No matter what time of the dark night I rise, The Feline is always certain that it’s time to be fed.

It doesn’t matter if it’s actually her feeding time. She’s awake. I’m awake. Food. Now.

I usually ignore her until the clock spins around to the right feeding time, but this does not sit well with The Feline. Which means she rather vocally lets me (and The Good Man. And the neighbors) know just what’s on her mind.

I usually keep my phone on mute and I close the door to my home office to keep her out, but that does not deter the persistent one. She’ll get her snout into the gap under the door and let the vocalizations rip.

Through the magic of telephonic technology, my crabby Feline has been heard around the world. London, Singapore, Sydney, Mumbai, São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Argentina, Columbia, Sweden, France, Ireland, and more have all heard her pleas.

Two weeks ago, I was on a call with at least six vice presidents and executive vice presidents of my company. I fed the Feline early to pipe her down. I was on mute. I said very little. I made sure she was far away from this call.

Little did I know…

The second I went off mute to give my input to the executive team, The Feline had something to say.

Yes, executives of a multinational company had to hear my damn cat hollering.

Today was a first for The Feline. This morning she was heard in Kenya. Yup, all the way to Nairobi. May all those nice people in central Africa know: “I will not be ignored!!”

*siiiiiigh*

By the way…if it’s seven in the morning and you are stumbling around trying to dial Kenya with a country code of 254 and you forget to dial the 011 first…well, you talk to a really nice lady in Waco, Texas (area code 254) who wants to know why in the heck you are calling her.




Who me?



Photo by Karen Fayeth and taken with the Camera+ app on an iPhone4. Photo subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page.


Going Four for Four

Today, after I get home from work and grab a little snack, I will reach into my special cabinet and remove the 1970’s era KitchenAid mixer waiting there. The mixer will go on the counter next to my battle worn Cocinas de New Mexico cookbook.

It’s time to make biscochitos.

This is my fourth and final entry for my local county fair, which starts this weekend. I decided to enter my biscochitos in the “culinary arts” event under the “ethnic desserts – cookie” category.

I first learned how to make the New Mexico State Cookie on the very same avocado green mixer that I will use tonight. It’s been a part of my life as long as I can remember, churning out bread, tortillas, grinding meat and makes endless batches of cookies. My mom oversaw my first forays into baking, helping make sure I got the measurements right and followed the recipe to the letter.

Baking biscochitos is like a meditation. Mix the dough, an extra pinch of anise seed for luck, roll out the heavy dough on the counter, cut out circles and bake to golden perfection.

This process, these cookies and that green mixer are all a part of my DNA.

I have no idea what sort of competition my cookies will go up against, but I know this: win or lose, The Good Man and I will have a fresh batch of homemade bicochitos to get us through the day.

A little bit of New Mexico in the middle of a very busy work week. That’s a winner!




Note to El Viejo: I will make them both with and without cinnamon sugar on top and then decide which I think the judges would prefer. I tend to think I should go gringo style and turn in the sugared tops to try to curry the favor of the judges.



Which Side of the Pond Are You On?

Yesterday I had to attend an all day meeting with representatives from a fairly large British company. We work very closely with this company, and almost daily I’m on the phone talking to these Brits. I think I’ve spoken about this in quite a few previous posts, but I’m a bit of an Anglophile, so I have a lot of fun with these quirky cats from London.

After our day long business meeting was done, we all went out to a fabulous Italian restaurant in San Francisco to celebrate over good food and good wine.

As we all waded into appetizers and Chianti, the good natured ribbing began all around. The Brit sense of humor works for me and let’s be honest, it’s extraordinarily easy to make fun of the squishy British man.

At one point, I’d brought up a topic which after a long bit of convoluted conversation (you had to be there) landed us on the topic of the Steve Miller Band. Which then caused one especially posh guy (think of a messier and louder Prince William) to start naming off Steve Miller songs.

It went something like this (hear this in a Brit accent as you read):

“Ah, Steve Miller. Yeah, right, Abracadabra, isn’t he? Fly Like an Eagle, sure. And what about Space Cowboy, then? You know, Maurice, wheeet-whoo!”

To which I replied, “So, are you a midnight toker?”

And he took a prim sip of wine and responded “no, I’m a cowboy joker.”

Which caused the rest of the lads to break down in giggles. Then these London boys got down on a riff about cowboys, and how they all fancied themselves to be cowboys.

Well now we’re in my zone, right? I know more than your average person about actual cowboys, so I just sat back in my chair with my own glass of red and stayed quiet while these Brits went off on their version of the American cowboy.

My over active mind started imagining some sort of summit meeting. I imagine my best friend’s back patio for this event. We’d serve good food, and we’d set up a nice long table. Squishy Brit boys sitting down one side, New Mexico cowboys on the other.

Same planet, worlds apart. But not so different, I suspect.

I believe both sides would agree on the importance of beer. They may not agree on the brand, but the concept, hell yes.

They’d both be able to dish up hearty doses of self-effacing humor.

And each would talk with their own particular accent that would make the other say “huh?”

Ay god, what an event that would be. Once everyone got past the awkwardness, I bet it would be one hell of a party.

Or one hell of a fight. Hard to say.

I think I should ring up my best friend and get to work on the party planning.

Or maybe I need to go a little easier on the Chianti next time.





Photo by Raúl Fernández and used royalty free from stock.xchng


Time, Time, Time, See What’s Become Of Me

Remember back in the day when computers were brought to the desktop of every office worker? These funky machines came with the promise of less manual tasks and thus, more time!

More time! What an awesome benefit.

You know how when you get a good raise, you first think to yourself, “This is great! My expenses will stay the same and I’ll bank the difference of this new paycheck.”

But then you don’t. You manage to find a way to expand to use up every single dollar of that new pay.

Yeah. It’s like that with all the “found time” that computers brought to my world.

Right now time is the scarcest and most valuable resource I have.

There are only 24 hours in a day to spend.

I use eight of them sleeping.

Another three or so on getting ready, eating, travel time between destinations, dealing with a yowling cat, hugging The Good Man, etc.

And twelve sitting in front of a computer screen working my buns off on a massive project at work.

Let’s see…twelve plus eight is twenty…plus three is twenty three….

That leaves, uh, yeah, one hour in the day where I can just skive off (as the British say) and have some fun.

One hour to write, and craft, and think, and read a book, and just sit for a moment and look at the sky and daydream.

One hour. Sixty small minutes.

That’s not very much. I’d best use it wisely.

What got me thinking about this today?

The ten minutes I sat, waiting, on an open conference call bridge waiting for my perpetually absentminded sales rep.

I only gave it ten, then I got back to work.

I’m a little bit aggrieved about that ten minutes. Especially since I wolfed down lunch in order to make that call in time.

And now I’m indigested.

*sigh*

This should get better by end of April. That’s a looooong thirty days.





And for all you smarty pants out there, yes, I found time to write this blog post. I used the hour I WOULD have spent on that conference call. Found time! Yesssss!


Photo by Chris Gilbert and used royalty free from stock.xchng.