Don't mess with me

It's Monday night, a night after the start of my workweek. I have been adjusting to things here in Geneva and everything seems to be already routinary.

I'm already into the basic routine. I wake up 7:00 - 7:30ish, prepare my breakfast which usually is cereals and milk and eggs and bread and margarine and honey, then I have my orange juice and a bit of Swiss Romade morning television. I then shave and shower. I try to hurry up and time myself in the shower not to miss the 8:45 bus but I always get caught up either enjoying my breakfast or overdoing my shower. Sucks!

Next, I brush my teeth, put on my business attire, look for my tuque and winter gloves and put on my shoes. Today is a special day as I put my suit for a good 8-hours of work which I enjoy a lot. It makes me feel a lot older and let the ILO people not to mess with me since I'm a big-time international civil servant.

Everyday, I always take the 10-15 minute walk en route to the bus stop near our house. I actually passed by many elderly people taking promenade in the neighbourhood and greeted then bonjour and you know wha they replied back??? 'Bonjour, monsieur!', my God am I that old???? I'm not accustomed to being called Sir and its a little bit weird to be called like that. I then take buss 22, get off at ITU and then take bus 8 to work.

Today was actually a special day. I do have a presentation at 10 with the bigwigs and fatcats in my workplace. Try to be really early so as to avoid last minute glitches with the slides and the computer and the projector. Turns out that the room doesn't have any projector and I need to set up my own. Too bad... if I didn't pay attention to it, I might probably be in a really panicky mode.

It's kinda intimidating entering the room as you see the bigwigs flaunting their rolex, bulovas, black stockings, perfumes, and.... and.... false eyelashes! I was actually on the last part of the meeting and would still need to wait for about 3 hours to do my thing. I stayed for three hours, sitting bored and having no clue at all to whats happening as they kept on yapping in French....

I did my stuff and did not know if they understood me. I tried to speak as slow as possible but all I can see were bewildered faces... Anyways, what matters is that I am done and they didn't ask me questions in French... that must be really disastrous. For the entire 3 hours, even though English and French were the co-working languages, I was the only one who I heard spoke in English....

Anyhow, so much with that... Last weekend, I went to an interns social in one of my co-interns apartments. They were really lucky to get a place soo nice that I would consider luxurious by Geneva standards. The price comes luxurious itself, with each one needing to pay 900 CHF for a place 45 minutes by tram to work. They are Americans from Cornell, and like me would be doing the internship up until May. They're really nice people and its actually a weird feeling to speak to Americans as I haven't done so much in the past year or so.

Speaking to Americans feels a little bit weird... I have been speaking with so many different nationalities at the ILO but I didn't know that its not the same speaking to Americans than to Canadians or Manitobans. You can somewhat tell the difference in the accent, vocabulary, speed, inflection and intonation and that actually surprised me lot. And talking to them made me aware that Americans in general are not that familiar with Canadian geography.. usually they just know the MTV cities - Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. They thought Manitoba is in the east coast and Saskatchewan is a part of...... Russia!:) It's not the first time I've experienced this one as last week, together with WHO Canadian interns there were Americans present and they were also not aware where Nova Scotia is, to which they rebutted in a classical American way, I don't care because its not the US. That actually tells you what Americans learn in school and see in their mass media as they are not provided with accurate information about the outside world. Other than that, the American ILO interns are really, really nice, humble and down to earth people.

Hopefully, today will be my last 3 days living in a couch and will soon be able to pull out my stuff at long last... Yes all my clothes are still in my luggages can't you believe that. Looking forward to have a place of my own!