Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Just Rambling

Business has been rather slow for me today, so I thought I'd just ramble a bit. I could certainly do some filing, but this is the task that I usually keep putting off until the very last. Yesterday, I was sorry for not having brought my camera with me. There was a very official ceremony taking place in the courtyard of our building. It was the inauguration of a stele in memory of Karel Van Miert, one of the former Competition Commissioners who died exactly one year ago. I followed everything from my office window. Commission President Barroso was present and gave a speech in honor of him, as well as Van Miert's three successors. There was a red carpet spread out and they played the European anthem. I'm sure the man would have liked this!

Also yesterday, we adopted a big and important decision pertaining to one of our cases. It's about a cartel in the sector of bathroom fittings and fixtures. There are several companies in Europe, especially German ones, who agreed on prices and thus infringed competition laws. Now they have to pay fines with the money that they don't have in this time of financial crisis! In the afternoon, I helped taking four language versions of the 500-page decision to the main Commission building. There, we got the bad news that the individual versions for each company would need to be ready as well by next morning, but they weren't! So the core team had to take a night shift until midnight to sort things out and have everything ready on time. Things always tend to get crazy here when it comes closer to an adoption!

The weather is becoming summer-like now. Today it's very sunny and about 77F; towards the weekend it's supposed to be in the lower 80's even! Well, that's certainly enough to make my bedroom uncomfortably warm. The sun only sets almost at 10PM these days in June, and this makes it hard enough for me to go to sleep early. But even though they have air conditioning in Alabama, I wouldn't want to be there right now!

This coming Friday, we will start a special church revival with Jack Sequiera from the US. I have never heard of this Pastor before, but it promises to be interesting. I'm just curious how many church members will attend outside Sabbath hours. It will be hard for me as well to come every night, but I will try to be there as much as possible. More about it later!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Daniela,
Thank you for stopping by my blog and for you kind comment. Frank Fournier is my uncle and Jason my cousin. I currently live in the Philippies after God called me to south east asia as a missionary about 10 years ago.
I am a very open and honest person cause I believe that people can learn anything from anyone but only if they are honest enough in life.
I hope you stop by more often.
Take Care and God bless!

Sarah