~ ANNE! ~

This'll be a quickie, since I'm at an internet cafe again. It's looking like I will probably have internet access at work once I'm finished being "trained" (yes, that was heavy irony contained in those quotation marks) but for the moment it's back to cafes. One thing about the law firm, it saved me a fortune in internet time!

Anyway, day 1 of the new job was interesting. They had me show up at 10 am instead of 9 today, so the manager had time to get his paperwork out of the way. But today some big shot executive guy came up (from England I assume, by the accent) and the little tiny office was completely crowded. I disliked the English executive guy immediately. He was one of those awful loud people (could NOT hear myself think when he was in the room) and he had the most horrible accent I've ever heard. Set my teeth on edge. And he immediately earned my disfavour by asking me if I'd "heard of dot-coms"! Good Lord, come on. I have not had my head buried in the sand since 1990!

Anyway. So he took over the entire office, MY computer and the entire day. Alex, my immediate supervisor, wasn't too thrilled about it either. Poor Alex was trying to train me with this walrus of a man shouting in his ear... didn't work too well. In the end, Alex got housekeeping to give me a tour of the hotel, then sent me home at 2:30 pm. So that was good, at least!

The hotel is nice, though kind of shabby. Maybe the renos will fix that. They have some really nice rooms and some not so nice (like any older hotel, I suppose). But the views are amazing. (Mostly, though one has a view of the office across the back alley...) I find it quite funny, though, that people are happy to pay up to an extra �25 PER NIGHT just for a castle view from their room! I mean, it's free to walk outside the hotel, stand on the doorstep and look at the castle!

Ah well. Rich people are weird.

I'm now a little worried, because frankly I have to say that the hotel management seems like crap. None of them work together and there's open animosity. I like Alex, though. New plan is to stick it out for two months (unless it's REALLY horrible) and see if I can hack it. Because I refuse to stay and be miserable - it would be better just to go home. If the job turns out to be okay, I will stay till mid-September and then travel and go home.

Whether any of this will come to pass at all remains to be seen!

Before I forget, big thanks to Steph for sending me all the stuff I left in Holland plus some gorgeous hand-made jewellery. (Keep forgetting to say thank you). Also to Will for the Christmas present and Kraft Dinner, which was very gratefully received. Wonder what the post office thought of the rattling parcel?