Back to Work

My time on Kurzarbeit has come to an end. I successfully interviewed today and will be placed as a consultant focusing on testing at Santander Bank in Mönchengladbach. I start work tomorrow.

I'm very excited to be back working. Although I have to admit that when CGI mentioned possible placement last week I thought - oh I wish I had a few more weeks with the kids and Tamara. It was truly fun to be with them and experience their exuberance for life and participate with them in all of their activities.

One funny note. Spencer came to me a bit concerned tonight and asked. Dad, now that you are working in Mönchengladbach, does this mean that you will be a Gladbach fan?

For that we'll have to wait and see. Right now I am a bit of a Werder Bremen fan, but I mainly just like watching well played matches.

Ah, what the heck - Go Gladbach!!!!

date mich up

This is a new German word. A verb, actually, that I heard in the hallway today. If you know German, you are already laughing. If you only know English, then replace the mich with me and you have

date me up

Since "date me up" doesn't make any sense in English I'll provide some more common English phrases include "update me"; "send me an update"; "get back to me with an update"; "provide me with the update"; "keep me up to date" or in slang "give me the latest [as soon as you have it]".

The English word update has already made it into the German language according to the online translation dictionary that I use at work, but only as a noun. The noun is used very commonly in business German, especially in Information Technology where I work. But I do not recall having heard the German verb form of update.

It struck me funny because of what happens in English if you directly translate the words.

Nice to speak English again

Wow! I was in a meeting today with two Irish project members. What a nice change. They were major contributors to the meeting and could understand me. I did not realize how much I miss that on this project.

German would not be too bad, but since 1/2 the project is English only. But trying to understand all the different varieties of continental English and not being understood just wear a man down. Naja, so ist das Leben (Oh well, that's life).