Travelling through Books

When I travel, I try to buy books written by local authors. I love to discover, through their books, the things they have in common with Romanian society or concerns, but also Romanian literature. And a special enchantment comes from discovering the differences. 

Unfortunately, there are only a couple of main actors on the market, and the others hardly or never get in the spotlight, and it’s such a shame. This is visible not only in the literature that gets to Romania, but also in other arts, such as movie, theatre, music, etc. I know of different cultural programs meant to promote other less marketized cultures, but still what is in fashion takes the spotlight.

Aside from the abovementioned discoveries, another wonderful thing happens – I can travel any time I want to those respective countries, albeit only by thought.

This week, I travelled to Croatia and Italy, as you can see below.

What if?!

Kindness in communication

What a carousel of emotions these past two weeks have been! And this is good, no shame about it; we tend to hide our emotions as if it’s something we should feel ashamed of, or a sign of weakness.

Two of my team members left, and even though we worked remotely, we managed to foster a great team spirit, respecting and supporting each other, and throwing in a good joke from time to time to lift up the spirits. That’s positive work environment for you, in a nutshell. 

On the last day of the second team member, we made a top of the most used emoticons in our chats and the words we most used in the last two years. One of my colleagues used some of them to make this collage and ended it with “soare” (which means sun in Romanian), because working together means one has to find ingenious ways to communicate. Especially when the language we work in is not our mother tongue. 

These days, we are all communicators. We are forced to do it (by technology, society, you name it). That’s why we must show kindness and understanding when we communicate. And not assume that the other reads one’s mind. Go that extra mile to create the bond of communication. Use kindness because it works every time. Quoting one of my now former colleagues, kindness is a choice. Choose kindness in your communication because it builds a positive work environment which positively influences your team members, your mental state, and your life entirely.

Let’s laugh!

If laughter cures all, I guess it’s safe to say that if one regularly reads jokes one will never get sick.

I’m enjoying some good laughs by reading the jokes in this book.

And the joke below made me laugh really hard because it reminded me of a former colleague’s saying when he heard I was to leave to another company – ‘Do they know how much water you can drink?’

(translation from the Romanian:

Mr. T does not feel good and goes to the doctor.

‘Do you often have the feeling of being thirsty?’ asks the doctor.

‘No, doctor, I don’t let things go that far.’)

When...

 

The Truth

I have been living on standby for some weeks now. Finally, the waiting is done. Which is a good and not so good thing because my expectations were shattered.

Last summer, this pretty flower came into our home. For those that do not know, I don’t like having flowers inside the house and nor am I very interested in learning how to care for them. But this one charmed me with its beautiful blue and so I took it home.

After the petals had fallen, I have been waiting for it to bloom again, refusing to believe others who insisted that it will no longer be a blue blossom.

And here it is, it’s not blue but white. I only now found out that the plant must have been injected with ink and so the beautiful color can be explained.

(yes, it's true, I have strawberry string lights on my balcony)

But it’s ok. I must consider my winnings, and this one is not at all a small one – a plant survived me. Which is not an easy thing to do, actually!

 

P.S. Please don’t read this as an encouragement to give me plants in pots!