Nov 25, 2008

Bagel For Breakfast


The day I move to Hungary, to my beloved birth city, Budapest, I hope they'll have a Bagelmen's or some sort of bagel shop that does express delieveries or I don't know what will I do for breakfast. Usually I try to have something really healthy and good for breakfast, such as oatmeal, which I really love, but lately, since I have no cash on me, and the only credit card I still carry around (only Hyne knows why, though) has the astonoshing amount of 900 colones left to be used. (How do I do that? It's one of those mysteries of nature science is still trying to understand.) I order from this store with the number of a still working credit card, which I don't carry around with me, or most likely I would have pumped up long ago. Not like it would be something bad, you mind, but that's not the point.

The point it that it's becoming a daily ritual to heat up a cup of water to make a cup of strong coffee in my French Press, and wait until 7 am to pick up the phone and call Bagelmen's Escazú and ask them for my breakfast.

Two regular cokes, this is a MUST. All my orders have permanently incorporated these two. Coffee or no coffee, I live for this stuff.

Hot bagel, not toasted. It remains softer, though by the time it arrives is kind of cold again.

Bagel with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. Recently I've been going for the poppy over the sesame, but from time to time I make the change, because I like sesame seeds too.

Cheese cream to the side, not on the bagel! they send me more cheese cream than what I can put on the bagel, but I like to dose the amount of cheese cream on my bagel.

Chives or garlic and herbs for cheese cream. I have tried once the pesto and the sundried tomato, but they weren't that good. Lox is a lottery: sometimes it's good, but some other times the fish has a rather "fishy" taste to it. It's simply too stale and too bad, and stinks like the 3G project. I wouldn't go for the sweet cheese creams because it's already too odd to think of raising cheese cream or cinnamon cheese cream, but then, after tasting their tooth-breaking brick coockies, their brick-and-dust-no-flavor brownies or their what-the-hell-is-this muffins, you kinda learn to stay away from their sweets and stick to what they know the best: their bagels. And my sweet Gaia, do they KNOW about bagels! Hmmmmmm.... it's an awesome breakfast every single day!

I think, right know I could answer to you that one question I never know how to answer: what's your favorite food? BAGELS!

Well no, I actually love Hungarian food much better than bagels.

Today the morning started on the sour end, since I was so pissed thinking that my boss was once again thinking I'm some sort of secretary or assistant of him. I am not. Then again, someone who has no idea what should he be doing wouldn't even be able to make the difference between his job or any job, and all he can think of is how to get someone to do all these things he wouldn't understand even if they were explained to him using games and crayons. Maybe he's just too stressed out by... realizing how inadecuate he is to the position or something, but for instance, I was telling him that some people made a mistake by saying that an index was a brief. I thought it was clear the mistake, but he said:

"Well, they are very, very similar."

O_O Ex...cuse me? So I tried speaking slower. Really, slowly and enunciating.

"No boss, I mean, they wrote in here that THE INDEX is a BRIEF."
"I see nothing wrong with that."

So I explained to him that a brief is a document where you summarize several observations, maybe several indexes, or maybe no indexes at all, and concentrates only on relevant items, and explained them, analized them and exposed the influence or effect on other items, WHILE an index took a number of variables, always fix and defined by the very construction of the index, and showed always information with the same composition. An index shows a relation between variables, or the status of a given variable, while the brief explains it.

"Why are you trying to such fine level of detail?"

My... Goodness. Better not to try and explain him the difference between a house and a cardboard box. I felt totally like a pre-school teacher bringing up funny examples. I had to use bones and exrays to explain to him the difference between a brief and an index, and even then it took him half an hour to understand. It did. I know. By the time I came out of his office (and I'mnot entirely sure he did understood the difference), it was almost MY lunchtime.

Anyway, I asked him to read the documents, write down his comments and so I could work using his expertise and point of view as well.

"But I have so much to read already!"

O_O .... Dear Hyne, is he for real? No, really, he DID said that. I mean, if some ant like me complains that he or she has so damned much to read and so damned much to do, it's kind of acceptable because we are ants. We deal with it and all, and juggle our responsabilities, but basically, the only solution for us, if we can't take it, is to quit the job. However, when someone who wants to be a boss complains about all the work he has to do, dude, step down! Didn't he know that the job of a boss entitled a hell lot more than that of an ant?

I feel like watching Supernatural. Yep, I'm addicted. Hopefully today after the class at the University, I'll meet Víctor and we will go over to his place and watch the next chapter. Can't wait to see it!

On other news, thesis news, I've been checking the documents I've got from Carlos Manuel about this reseach they did in 97-98 and it's not only astonishing, but I would dare to say it's exactly what we were looking for. Kind of outdated, but it gives us a nice footprint to follow. It's amazing, but the more I learn about this activity, the more I love it and the more I want to know. My mind is spinning around the subject, and though I'm not much into the research of production, I kind of start thinking of it. Yesterday I found myself thinking of the Commodity Chain of the embroided goods made by the women of Mezőkövesd. You know, things like this can make you feel alive. These are the things that really matter. Doing what you like, living your vocation, developing in the area you have chosen, there where your soul lives. This is something a lot of people can get.

Recently, dear Husband was questioning me about my wish to live alone and give my head to my career. According to him, Hyne bless his innocent head, that was the sure road to depression and eternal sadness. He claims to believe that only a stable partner, and stablished, sedentarian "lovelife" can provide you with happiness, and a job could never fulfill a person. Well, it is not my desire to change his mind (thanx Hyne I'll never be caught dead getting married to him! Eww!), but one must understand his circumstances: uneducated, lazy, dependant of his environment, his only creative work is to make up lies and alternate lives for himself, where he's a maffia don, a condecorated, high ranked army official or karate kid. He's, the poor thing, completely unable to make an actual living for himself. Probably it fills him with dread to see how his actual life is so different from the life he brags about and the one he wants to have. My poor dear Husband, may the world have mercy of his deranged soul, is the kind of person who lives hoping for a miracle, winning the lottery, getting an unexpected inheritance, marrying a rich woman (now you start to see why I was the dear Wife, right?), or just finding a bag full of money on the metro. Well, with his education, and the muscle he actually puts in it, the speed with which he retrieves whenever he should make an effort, and then stays at that instead of trying to find a way to get around things, it's rather unlikely he would EVER move out of the slump he's inhabiting.

For someone like him, who really has no preparation whatsoever, talking about a "career" is like trying to explain... my boss the difference between an index and a brief. For someone who has no vocation and develops none, a "job" is an impostion he must endure in order to get money. A job it's entirely about getting money. So, getting "satisfaction" out of your job? How can that be possible? My poor thing probably wouldn't understand while would someone do something pro-bono. For him you change of jobs if you can get more money, but the idea of going to a new job that pays you less than the one you are living, or passing on a job offer that pays you more because it doesn't fulfill you as professional (or in my case as scientist), or because it doesn't allow you to grow career-wise, this not being a chief position, but to acquire more knowledge of a given area of interest... that's absolutely demented.

I pity him.

I do not seek a relationship or any kind of formal, semi-formal or informal-but-sustained-in time relationship because my goal, and the source of my happiness is my career. I don't need some guy, no matter how steaming hot and how good in bed, soft spoken, independent and out of my way he might be, to wake up with me, to be with me all my life. I have friends, I don't need a "partner". Some people need it, but I don't. What I want and need to be happy, is to be given the chance to work my field. I believe there are among you those who know what I mean. It's that sheer, bursting pleasure at working with something you love, you are passionate about. The way your brain feels inside your head, and the surge of something great from the back of your head to the front and down your chest and back as you figure something out, and start builing up something new, finding answers, turning here and there and create, just create something so magnificent! It's not only knowing that you can help a lot of people with what you do, but above all is the feeling of finding something, learning about something and realizing that you could use this in this way or that way, that you can explain now this or that and, since you understand it, you can also help fix this or that or make something entirely new and absolutely fabulous!

From my point of view, it's kind of hard to understand how can someone prefer a person with whom someone has ocasional sex and makes commitments and have to give up a lot of things one like, to something as extended and magnificent as science. Science is HUGE and new, and changing and full of so many mysteries and details you'll never get bored. You don't need to be young or beautiful to work with it, and it's intense and dynamic and fulfilling. People get boring. People get in fights with you. Science is... always building you, making you grow and be bigger, better, brighter... and I sound like a nerd.

I do would like to work on research, particularly on the areas of social welfare and technology applied to labor and it's macroeconomical effects. That's my thing.

No comments: