What an Opportunity

Winter time is still not over here, however the sun has been shining often these past few days, and this of course makes a big difference. At work, things are going fine. The temporary arrangement with me having to be in the unit's secretariat in the afternoons is actually not that bad. My head of unit is nice to work with after all, and this also gives me more opportunity to socialize with my colleague Cristina.

I'm currently working on the so called Car Price Report. This is a compilation of the prices of the most popular car models marketed in the EU, which is published by our Directorate-General every year. Since our unit deals with this sector, it's up to us to prepare it. So I've been swamped by excel tables which have been filled out by over 20 car manufacturers. It's my task to transfer the data to our tables, add new car models and bring everything into the right format. Another colleague, who is an economist, is going to do some calculations later on and finalize the report. I was joking with him the other day, because of the fact that we are working in this sector, however we both do not even own a car! Last year, there was another colleague who was in charge of this task, and I just assisted her. Now, I'm on my own with it, which I was a bit apprehensive of, since I'm not an expert in excel. But I'm thankful that I have been able to solve every problem so far.

Last week, I received an unexpected e-mail. I had mentioned some time ago that I got to talk to a lady from our Human Resources department on giving health presentations at our DG. She was really open to it and wanted to schedule me, but the problem was that our HR manager wasn't sure whether he wanted to have any training courses offered which are not related to competition policy. I've been put on hold with this again and again, so I didn't really expect it to happen anymore. Well, it seems that he finally made up his mind, because I've now been asked to give a talk! It will take place on 21 March during lunchtime. I'm quite excited and very grateful for this opportunity, but also quite nervous of course. I'm going to give a presentation on the eight laws of health. The day before, on March 20, I had already scheduled another cooking class at my home, so I will be very busy those days! I hope and pray that everything will turn out to God's glory.

Well, I better continue preparing my presentation :-)

On the occasion of the international women's day, one of my male colleagues sent out this mimosa today to all the females in the unit. Very thoughtful, isn't it?