Weekend coming
Apr. 8th, 2011 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularRandom stuff, I suppose.
Spring's coming, but the climate-control systems in the office all too often seem to be set on "heat". I brought a little clock/thermometer from home which consistently reads 27 degrees C - that's eighty degrees Fahrenheit - in mid-afternoon. And the switch for getting cool air instead of hot from the climate-control system seems to be centrally located, so at this point I think I may need to beg for A/C in the early afternoon.
The interim solution was to throw open the windows in the office adjoining mine, which revealed that there was a protest going on down on street level. We're on the sixth floor - which would equate to the eighth floor in a Stateside building, because (a) the lobby counts as floor zero, not one; and (b) there's another floor, officially a mezzanine, between the lobby and the first floor. Upshot: they were pretty loud.
I realized that for all my immersion in the culture and the language, when I hear those chants, I can't understand what they're saying. It's probably exacerbated by the fact that I can't bring myself to care enough to strain to decipher the chants. It's reduced to gobbledygook to me. At least there weren't any firebombs, just some gathering that broke up after a little while.
Apparently they're going to start repairs to my apartment's outer walls on Monday. First the outer section with the nook where the rainwater leaks into the wall has to be fixed. Then the inner walls need to be re-done. Re-plastered. Or something. I don't quite know. My limited command of Greek means that the contractors speak to me like I'm an idiot, and I have to rely on my aunt for the technical language.
Hoping for a relaxing weekend. With no rain, thank you very much.
Spring's coming, but the climate-control systems in the office all too often seem to be set on "heat". I brought a little clock/thermometer from home which consistently reads 27 degrees C - that's eighty degrees Fahrenheit - in mid-afternoon. And the switch for getting cool air instead of hot from the climate-control system seems to be centrally located, so at this point I think I may need to beg for A/C in the early afternoon.
The interim solution was to throw open the windows in the office adjoining mine, which revealed that there was a protest going on down on street level. We're on the sixth floor - which would equate to the eighth floor in a Stateside building, because (a) the lobby counts as floor zero, not one; and (b) there's another floor, officially a mezzanine, between the lobby and the first floor. Upshot: they were pretty loud.
I realized that for all my immersion in the culture and the language, when I hear those chants, I can't understand what they're saying. It's probably exacerbated by the fact that I can't bring myself to care enough to strain to decipher the chants. It's reduced to gobbledygook to me. At least there weren't any firebombs, just some gathering that broke up after a little while.
Apparently they're going to start repairs to my apartment's outer walls on Monday. First the outer section with the nook where the rainwater leaks into the wall has to be fixed. Then the inner walls need to be re-done. Re-plastered. Or something. I don't quite know. My limited command of Greek means that the contractors speak to me like I'm an idiot, and I have to rely on my aunt for the technical language.
Hoping for a relaxing weekend. With no rain, thank you very much.
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Date: 2011-04-08 09:43 pm (UTC)My limited command of Greek means that the contractors speak to me like I'm an idiot, and I have to rely on my aunt for the technical language.
I get the idiot look from contractors myself when I don't understand the technical terms, so I can only imagine how much harder it must be through a language barrier. Yuck.