Monday morning, my alarm went off at 7.15, so that I could get up and go to the Burgeramt before starting my first day of work. Julia had told me that as long as I don't steal the bathroom between 7.15 and 7.20 then we would get on just fine. I had set my alarm with good intentions. Ah well. I decided to go back to sleep until 8.15 and got up and had a shower, thinking I would arrive at work at 9.30, given that I could arrive between 9.30 and 10. At 9, I decided to check my emails. WRONG! I had to be at work between 9 and 10. What a great way to make a first impression, turning up late on the first day! I had wanted to be punctual at the earliest time I could be there, unfortunately I got that time wrong. Oh well. I stayed on a bit later to make up the time I had lost by arriving late (it ended up being only 15 mins, and I stayed 24). Yesterday kind of dragged. I spent the day on Trados, which is a software used for translation memory. I basically copied and pasted an 83 page document into the software, so that it can be saved and not waste time for future similar translations. It was extremely tedious and given that the software randomly splits the document into segments (it comes from a PDF) and tables were a nightmare. But the atmosphere in the office is great. There are approximately 6 of us. 4 girls in one room. And then approximately 3 men around and about. I haven't quite figured out who is who yet. Of the men. Of course, working in the office with the girls, I have figured out who does what.
Last night I once again went to the supermarket with Andy, although it was kind of a bad idea as I was REALLY HUNGRY. I bought some yummy goodness and when I got back in, I cooked straight away, without even taking my bag off! Yes, I was that hungry! I hadn't eaten a huge amount during the day, as I had forgotten what living with severla people requires claiming your food and writing your name on it if you want it there the next morning. Or the next whenever. Particularly if you only have one fridge shelf for approximately 5 people. AAAAAAnyway, we went to the supermarket during the day (it is literally under the office) and I bought a salad and some chocolate to compensate for the lost chicken slices. Anyway, I watched some Shameless that Julia gave me on the external hard drive she lent me, blogged, chatted and went to bed.
TODAY. Wow, I might almost finally be up to date. I don't think I will bore you every day with the details of what I did, but maybe until I start doing something specific at work. And I will of course post random titbits about the city, pictures of things usw usw. Today, I didn't see the time fly by (probably because I deliberately stayed later than necessary to finish the Trados input)! Which is good news, because yesterday dragged, despite the great atmosphere. Today, Aki (one of the two permanent workers, apart from the 3 men) showed me what she does, how the bills are calculated, how translators are found and so on, there are some big companies that have regular translators and lots of translators on the database. So today's job was putting new potential translators on the database. There is basically a form that they send over with languages, prices, information usw and I just put them onto the database. Once I had done that (I'm slightly worried that I was too efficient, because there wasn't too much to do and I spent lots of time doing nothing - Aki told me wenn du nichts zu tun hast, darfst du einfach surfen (you can just surf the net, if you have nothing to do)), I sent out emails to the people who had sent CVs and stuff telling them to fill in the form and send it back. I then went on one of the company's other sites and registered for things. Then, I got to translate something. To be fair, it had already been translated, but I got to read the translation that had been sent once I had finished my version. It wasn't too far off, but given that in the Masters, I didn't translate from German to English... I think it was OK. :)
And here I am, back at home, finally up to date with my blog and waiting for a phone call. I am also going through my to-do list and organising some papers. That's the plan. Then tomorrow night I will see if I can catch up with Eba and Thursday night I am seeing Dave (who managed to block his phone and went slightly AWOL upon his return from Amsterdam). That's about it.
Happy bedtime reading! Ciao for now x
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