No, I'm not dead.

I can only give my sincerest apologies for my complete lack of updates in the past few weeks. No, I have not been in the Amazon rainforest and no I have not been stranded in the mountains with no means of contact. I have in fact, just been incredibly busy. Boring I know. Just to show how sorry I am, here is a photo of me trying to recreate the pose of a red statue of an asian man. I hope that helps.


Anyhoo, so what has been keeping me busy for the past few weeks? In short, EVERYTHING. The three people who were fired from work have now left meaning there is half the staff with double the workload. On Mondays I'm lucky if I have a day shorter the 10 hours. Not including lunch break. This has been quite good though, as I feel I'm slowly beginning to work up more responsibility in the firm. I am now in charge of the dailz running of the business, which would be relatively straightforward had people not started finding mistakes in every report that were they before I even started! Sod's law really, as I'm having to build some reports from scratch again. On top of this we are trying to introduce our biggest and most important report yet (I won't bore you with the details) but this has hit many stumbling blocks meaning even longer hours. I barely have time to even attempt to make friends at work!

Outside of work I have also been extremely pushed for time. I've had uni work to complete, a shop to do, a haircut to get amongst various visits and social activities! This has also been good though, because it's left me very little time to think about how much I dislike where I'm currently living. I've decided that I owe it to myself to try and find somewhere else to live, with young people ONLY. If I don't I think I would probably feel like I'd wasted one of the most valuable experiences of my life. I'm not prepared to do that just yet.

In other news, I've finally joined a football team - Munich Irish Rovers! As you can probably tell, it's not a native German team so I won't actually be able to practice my German at any point but they seem to be like a nice bunch of lads which I feel is much more important. They train twice a week with matches on Sundays and boy do they work you hard. My first training session happened to be 'fitness night' and I can honestly say I've never been worked so hard in my life. I could barely walk for the next four days! I've just got back from training tonight actually, where I scored the greatest goal of my career to the awe of my teammates. I hope there's plenty more where that came from! The only downside is that it's about 40 minutes away from where I live  so it takes up an entire evening when I go but one lad lives relatively close to where I do and drives his softtop BMW training each week. I think we're gonna become good friends.

My german friend count is depressingly still at zero but I think (hope) that I am making inroads on a few fronts. I've decided to use a music website to see who else is going to the same gigs I've got lined up in the next month or so and then try to talk to them. This has yielded 2 potential results! All I've got to do is build it up to the point where it won't be too awkward to ask if they want to go for a drink somewhere. It's probably a slow burner but it's a start.

Last weekend my parents were in town and we spent a great weekend together. Matty flies out tomorrow and Ma and Pa return to Munich on Friday so I will give a full report of their visit once they've flown back to England. I also saw The Vaccines at BMW Welt last Saturday - I wrote a review of it for my cousin's website here http://thegoodreview.co.uk/2012/10/the-vaccines-bmw-world-munich/

So that's my life up-to-date! Once I get into the middle of November things should begin to settle down again and I should be able to update more frequently and move my life forward. Everything is just too hectic at the moment to do that! I leave you now to go and collapse into bed, before this all starts over again tomorrow.

What a terrible day

Wow. Today started with a hastily scheduled meeting for everybody who works in Business Intelligence, Finance, Marketing and IT. This meeting was to discuss the future aims of the company and how they could improve their standing in the 4th quarter after a poor 3rd quarter. It began with an in depth overview of the new action plan which can be summarised into 2 point - increase gross margin, reduce costs. It soon dawned on us why we were in this meeting - we were the costs that were going to be cut. We were told to go back to our departments and work for the rest of the day as if nothing had happened, and that we would be called for later in the day for individual meetings where we would find out if we still had a job or not.

Naturally this was met with utter bewilderment and the day dragged by very slowly with very few of the primary functions of the company running smoothly. I for one felt I was a prime candidate for the chop - I was merely an intern, had only recently started and didn't have a great deal of responsibility. The time came when our department were to be called in for our make or break meetings. Silence fell across the room.

First up was Bastian, the man who I had been shadowing and supporting since my very first day and who provided integral analysis to the entire company. Ten minutes past before he returned. With tears in his eyes he picked up his jacket and left. He'd been fired. This partially calmed me, as I thought I may be in line to inherit his job and that I might be safe.

Next up was Luc a new recruit from Holland whose birthday it was today. He has integrated into the company very quickly and had lots of important tasks regarding the highest people in the company. This did not save him. Another relatively new recruit, Jonathon, was also fired, but he seemed the least bothered of any of them, claiming he already has other jobs in the pipeline. At this point it was 3 out of 3 that had been fired. It didn't look good.

Our boss, who was also sitting in on the meetings, came into the office to call the next 'victim' forward. However, the bad news stopped here, and the remaining 4 people in the department would still have a job come tomorrow. In the space of an hour our department was practically halved in size and for those remaining, the responsibilities doubled.

Huge cutbacks were happening in all departments to the point where the entire Marketing department no longer exists. From a firm of around 800 this morning we are now down to somewhere in the region of 500-600.

The boss called it a day and we all finished early. To say I was relieved would be an understatement and I now look forward to playing an integral role with many responsibilities in what is a very exciting start up company.

Phew!

Seeking Asylum at the British Consulate

Arguably our most productive day since arriving in Munich today we accomplished... a few things. An early start saw us at the Hauptbahnhof for 9am where we were STILL unable to get a student travel card.

Our next stop was the British Consulate. Having spent all week in various queues we went to get some real help and found it in the form of Chris Dowers. What a man. He was able to give us all the information and forms we needed to get us properly sorted over the next few weeks.

Confident and full of new knowledge, we strutted our way back to Puccistraße where we had originally registered with the town only to find we were in the wrong place again! Tax cards are given at the Finanzamt, duh!

Upon arrival we found we can't apply for a card for another two weeks. Damn. However, I NOW HAVE A GERMAN SIM CARD. This makes me almost officially german right? I've also been able to get myself another house viewing for next saturday having spoken to one of the 2 students currently living there. I just want some friends!

Things are hopefully looking up, i just need somewhere to stay for the next week or so!

Marcus and I have set up rival blogs and unfortunately he's currently winning, despite my best efforts. He's since become an 'expert' and is posting on every social media site known to man! This is not how our first friday in Munich should be going!