Strelitzia Reginae

Finally, after almost two years, new baby Strelitzia Reginae popped out. After having new leaves one after another, finally a flower came out as well. Here it is. It is sweet little flower, strong orange and violet colour, no smell and with some tears. I hope it stays for at least a month and to encourage further flowering.

EPSO FG II Secretary

EPSO published Call for expression of interest to work as a secretary. It is a FG II (Function Group II), contract agent position for a limited period of time. One year, prolongued up to 3 years, in some cases the contract might be extended into indefinite long-term contract.

The call is open to all citizens of EU, having thorough knowledge of their mother tongue (one of the 23 official languages of the EU) and a satisfactory knowledge of one of the working languages of the EU (English, French, German) and with post-secondary education or high-school education with at least 3 years of working experience or intermediate education with 2 years of specialised training in the specific field and having at least 5 years of working experience.

Date for application is 14 November 2008 12.00 hours!

For more info check http://europa.eu/epso/CA_secretary/call_secretary_en.htm

Croatia airlines recession

Voila, this is what you get when you order Fruit Platter Meal. I remember those golden times when if you were flying out of EU they even gave you a real metal fork and knife.

WEST Photo Competition

Online newspaper West-info.eu specialised in european and local news related to social fields in general is organising a photo competition open to all amateur photographeurs.

Photos should touch social fields such as equal opportunities for men and women, migration, free movement, asylum, diversity, interculture, poverty and social inclusion, anti-discrimination, family, children, youth, disability, ageing, civil society, drugs and addictions and corporate social responsability.

The competition is open until 28 November 2008. Best pictures are chosen every month based on the number of clicks/votes. 7 best winners will enjoy weekend for two in Bratislava.

Photos can be black and white or in colour and must not be bigger than 10 Mb. Photos are to be uploaded through http://www.west-info.eu/west-info/fotoconcorso.jsp.

EPSO AST 1 Internal security

New EPSO competition - this time for Assistants in the field of internal security - AST 1

http://europa.eu/epso/on-line-applications/open_competitions_en.htm

Deadline: 20 May 2008 at 12.00 hours

WEST-INFO

For all those who are still asking themselves where I have disappeared, where I have been hiding, why haven`t you met me for days/weeks/months, have a look at this web portal.

E-portal West-Info - A web portal on welfare, social and territory topics
&

Info about West-Info portal on the European Commission portal

Are you interested in co-operation?

Not to mention reading French and Dutch books and English magazine at the same time. Proposal for a project submitted to the EC awaiting to be read. With more or less 50 pages in English. I think I could read it in a half an hour. At least something:)

Good night!

P.S.: There is a photo competition as well! Starting on 6 May! Have a look here. If you meet West, take a photo of it!

A trip with an elevator

It happened. It has happened to me as well. And I thought it will never happen. I was stuck in the elevator for about 15 minutes. Alone. No sound of elevator being alive except the blinking lights above me.

It was like in a horror movie. Colleagues on the other side of the elevator door talking to me, trying to calm me down and telling me to conjugate verb in Dutch. So I tried. "Ik ben in de lift. Je bent in de lift. Hij is in de lift. Maar, neeee, je bent niet in de lift. En hij is ook niet in de lift. Ik ben in de lift alleen. Ik alleen."

My mind was blocked on the lift. I did not panic, however I have to say I did not feel comfortable after seeing too many horror movie including lifts.

But, there is fun everywhere. Do you still remember this movie?
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/disco-elevator-p1.php

F`žou f`žou

For all those who want to practice Slovenian and see some lovely Slovenian countryside and how people live on a countryside in Slovenia:) he he

The song is about beans. The two farmers reveal that they cannot kill the cow as she has a soul as well, so they decide to become vegans. They grow beans and collect their farts as bio-fuel for the tractor.

Healthy drinks and salads - mmmmm

This is for all of you that have has the pleasure to taste and enjoy tasty and above all fresh fruit and vegetable juices and for all those that have already bought a juicer thanks to your wonderful experience with juices from fresh fruits and vegetables.

A booklet with tips on making different kinds of juices made of fresh fruits and juices and salads over the period of one month.

Have a look! And have fun! http://www.healthydrinksandsalads.com

EPSO CAST RELEX 2008

Dear all,

Just a short note to inform you all that EPSO (European Personnel Selection Office) has published Call for expression of interest CAST RELEX 2008 for FG (Function Group III and IV) with deadline 25 April 2008 noon.

And now translation:) These are posts for a limited period of time, usually 3 years, can be prolongued up to 6 years, in some cases forever. They are looking for people with high-school education background with at least 3 years of working experience and university education background with at least 1 year of working experience.

For more info have a look at http://europa.eu/epso/CA_relex/call_CA_en.htm. Do not hesitate to ask if sth not clear:) I will be happy to help you out:)

Manca

P.S.: This is not April 1st joke!

If you have wondered where I have gone

The Centre for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically. This virus is called Weary Overload Recreational Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues or anyone else via any means whatsoever - DO NOT TOUCH IT! This virus will wipe out your private life completely!

If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises. Take two good friends to the nearest grocery store and purchase one or both of the antidotes - Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

Finnish cold remedy

Old Finnish tip for flu:

Sink your feet into a bowl full of vodka, dry them and put warm wollen socks on. Crawl to bed and sleep tight. This will only work at the first stages of the cold.

(Thank you J.!)

Mourning

Chocolate and strawberry cake

Ingredients for the dough:
6 eggs
150 g sugar
vanilla sugar
100 g flour
30 g baking powder
50 g butter
50 g cacao

Ingredients for the cream:
0.5 l sweet cream
0.5 kg cooking chocolate

Ingredients for the filling:
0.2 l sweet cream
250 g strawberries

Instructions for the cake:
Divide the egg white from the egg yolk and make solid snow from the egg white. Electric mixer allowed for this operation.
Mix the egg yolk with sugar and vanilla sugar and add four spoons of warm water. It is best if this is done manually. The fluid has to become light yellow and has to grow and be full of bubbles. Add liquid/soft butter and sieved cocoa and mix for a while.
Slowly add egg white snow to the yellow liquid and mix carefully until the dough becomes uniform. Sieve flour with baking powder to the dough and carefully mix.
Prepare the baking model by covering the bottom with baking paper. Preheat the over to 175°C. Put the dough into the model and bake for 50 to 60 minutes at 175°C. Let the cake heat down in the baking model. Best is to cover with a cloth and leave it to rest during the night.

Instructions for the cream:
Slowly heat the sweet cream. Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt it slowly in the cream. Once melted leave the chocolate cream to heat down. Best is to leave it to heat down during the night. Once cold, mix it with a mixer for a couple of minutes until you get slightly lighter and easy to spread cream.

Cut the cake into 2 or 3 level. Put some liquid over the lower level of cake, e.g. coffee mixed with white rhum, milk mixed with rhum, Marascino. Spread with some chocolate cream and cover with strawberries cut into halves. Cover again with chocolate cream. Add another level of cake and put over some liquid. If this is the last level cover thoroughly with chocolate cream and spread the cream also around the cake. Add strawberries for decoration.

The cake needs to rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours before being eaten! It is best to share it with friends! Bon apetit!

Electricity bill

Finally the day arrived I have been waiting almost 1 year. It has been almost one year since I last paid my electricity. But, do not get me wrong, I would love to pay it, I wanted to pay it, I gave several calls to the electricity company in Brussels, I even had friend going there asking them to bill me.

And today I found a lovely envelope in my mailbox. At least I thought so. I was happy to expect a bill. But..., yes, of course, there must always be but if you live in Belgium. The electricity company only sent me a letter asking me to provide them with the counter numbers, which I have already done several times. However, not this way yet.

Is there any other place in this world where the companies do not want us to pay bills? Is there somebody else in this world or is it just me being so strange wanting to pay my bills?

Goodbye IE

Welcome Firefox Mozilla:)

My IT friends will be proud of me. Now I am off to read Learn Linux in 24 hours:)

Augmentative

Not writing anything for almost a month is real pity. But that does not mean that I do not have ideas. I am diligently writing them down, so I do not forget about them. Here is one and it is not really something I could be proud of as a Slovene.

I have to admit that I never think about my mother tongue, Slovene, from the point of view of a stranger. But the other day I have been asked how we form Augmentative in my language. What prefix or suffix do we add to the word to make Augmentative. I was thinking and thinking and came to sad conclusion. Yes, it is true and sad, Slovene language does not have Augmentative. For now, let us say, because who knows what brilliant Slovene linguists might invent (or maybe they already have and am not informed:).

ice-cream (EN) - sladoled (SI) - gelato (IT) - sladoled (HR) - glaciajxo (EO)

"Augmentative" in Slovene only exists if we add an Adjective in front of the Subject:
Huge ice-cream (EN) - ogromen sladoled (SI)

As for some other languages:
gelatone (IT) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Italian
sladoledina (HR) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Croatian
glaciajxego (EO) - Augmentative for ice-cream in Esperanto

On the contrary, the Slovene language does have Diminutive.
sladoledek (SI) - Diminutive for ice-cream in Slovene

According to a good friend of mine there is a simple explanation for why Slovene language knows only Diminutive and not also Augmentative - because Slovenia is so small that is does not need Augmentative.

But, I will investigate further!

Read more about the Augmentative here.

Podcasts

Woooow, I have just discovered Podcasting:) Now I can listen to some useful stuff on my way to work and not just music! Of course, all of you, e- and i-geeks to whom this is no news, think I must be ages behind time, however I have to say that there is just not enough time to do everything we would like to do in our lives, no?

Back to Podcasting....:)

The bus story

The other day I was waiting for a bus at the bus station. Packed with two relatively big and moreover heavvy bags as I was just coming from the shop. The bus arrived and I stepped in holding both bags in one hand trying to reach for my monthly ticket with the other hand. Even before I reached my ticket, the bus driver smiled and nodded so as to say "Yes, it is fine, I see you are loaded and I know you have the ticket". Wow, I was impressed.

During the ride home I remembered the good old days, when I was still living in my small village, from where I needed to take bus to go to school to another village. And on the way back, we (the children) would sometimes try to hide in the bus, so that we could take a longer ride to a bigger village/town to get some ice-cream. I am sure the bus driver knew we were there, but he just let us go. Thank you, you made our days in those times.

P.S.: After finishing ice-cream we would not have enough money to take the bus back to our village and the ticket was only valid for the distance between our village and the school, so we had to walk back home 4 km. Those were the days. Of course, we would always get a ride as everybody knows everybody in the village and our neighbours would bring us home.

Belgium, wonderful Belgium

Conversation in the street in front of my door just the other day. Actors: an older French speaking lady, let us call her "Madame", and me and my friend, let us call us "Us".

Madame: "Excuse moi, connaissez-vous un hôtel ici, dans le quartier?"
Us: "Non, mais il y a un hostel. A la fin de cette rue, juste derrière l`église. Il s`appelle Hostel Brueghel."
Madame: "Merci beaucoup, c`est juste avec lui que j`ai une réunion à 20 heures."

BTW, Pieter Brueghel died in 1569:)

P.S.: Do correct my French and/or English mistakes, if any:)

One of the flashes

I am sure we have all experienced the following situation.

Imagine being 7 years old. Sitting by a wooden desk at school. You can smell that wood and you can read the names of all previous students that sat behind just that desk. The school bell rings. The class has just started. In one moment immense silence in class. The teacher walks into the class. Everybody rises and says in one voice "Good morning, teacher". Teacher says "Good morning class". Everybody is allowed to sit down. Lesson begins.

The teacher writes on the blackboard "When I grow up I will be...". One by one we have to say what we want to be when we grow up. Classmates say "When I grow up I will be a doctor." "When I grow up I will be a lawyer." "When I grow up I will be a mechanic." "When I grow up I will be a teacher." "When I grow up I will be a nurse." "When I grow up I will be a journalist." "When I grow up I will be a writer." "When I grow up I will be a cook."

.
.
.

"When I grow up I will live in Belgium."

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Words of the day

Today I crossed these two words and as they are interesting I decided to put them here! I use the Ask Oxford dictionary!





Try your search for unknown words using the form below.

Working 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Is this still possible?

It is Wednesday, 18.45, and I am just leaving the office. Walking in the rain, the dark surrounding me and all I can think of is the good old days, when I was working from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Is this still possible? It seems like impossible.

Mmmm, a couple more years and then I am of to my island:)

Miles to help

Do you fly Lufthansa? Do you have your Miles and More card to collect miles, but you do not fly so often that you would actually be able to exchange them for a ticket?

If you have some and you would like to do some good things, you can. You can give them to support education, fight disease, feed the hungry, preserve endangered species, replant forests, protect ecosystems, help children and orphans.

How?

Go to Miles and More webpage and clik on Miles to Help - Do Good tab on left side of the screen.

I have given my 10.000 miles to protect ecosystems by purchasing and protection of 2,500 square metres of the world's largest wetland area, the Pantanal in Brazil.

Le français

Not everybody has the privilege to work in international environment. I have the privilege to work in mainly French speaking environment having colleagues that appreciate my French mistakes and do correct me when I say something wrong. We all know that people do not always correct our mistakes maybe because they do not want to offend us, maybe because they just do not want to correct us or due to other causes even though we would love them to do so.

Let me make the story shorter. How to learn which gender is the appropriate word in French? I know, I know, English language does not know the genders of the words, but let us think about the genders of the words in other languages that know this issue:) French, Spanish, Italian, German, Slovenian, Croatian and even Dutch has something similar. But let us focus on French.

For all those who speak Slovene and would like to learn French; here is a hint about how to learn the genders of the words in French. Please note that this is not a rule, but merely my own observation (just for fun). The observation goes like this: If the word is of female gender in Slovene; then it is probably of male gender in French language and vice-versa. Let us look at the examples:

English - Slovene - French
f - female gender
m - male gender
n - neutral gender

A book - knjiga (f) - un livre (m)
A group - skupina (f) - un groupe (m)
A pillow - blazina (f) - un coussin (m)

A chair - stol (m) - une chaise (f)
A pool - bazen (m) - une piscine (f)
Sound - glas (m) - une voix (f)

A beer - pivo (n) - une bière (f)
A question - vprašanje (n) - un question (m)
A bicycle - kolo (n) - un vélo (m)

However and although it is still very interesting thinking of the word beer being of female gender, this does not apply always. Let us have a look at the examples below:

A door - vrata (f) - une porte (f)
A night - noč (f) - une nuit (f)
A flower- roža (f) - une rose (f), une fleur (f)
A step - korak (m) - un pas (m)
A day - dan (m) - un jour (m) (but "une journée" (f))
A glass - kozarec (m) - un verre (m)

To make the things more likeable I randomly picked 10 words from the French - Slovene dictionary to see if they were female or male. Here is the result:

A tip - napitnina (f) - un pourboire (m)
Surface - površina (f) - une surface (f)
A balance - tehtnica (f) - une balance (f)
Heat - vročina (f) - une chaleur (f)
A Secret - skrivnost (f) - un secret (m)
A List - seznam (m) - une liste (f)
A horn - rog (m) - une corne (f)
A bandit - razbojnik (m) - un brigand (m), un bandit (m)
A coat - plašč (m) - un manteau (m)
A circle - krog (m) - un cercle (m)

I guess the odds are 60:40.