Hi everyone, I’ve returned from my short break. I feel completely at home in my new job, because of the excellent team and management. One of my bosses was a Hollywood movie director for many years. I politely asked him to send Brad Pitt to me for a haircut, and he replied “we found ourselves in Dublin on several occasions”. I tried to pretend to be cool and unimpressed. Then recently, instead of chatting to me about the weather, a client was telling me how his “good friend Sean Penn is a nice guy“. It wasn’t that he was trying to impress me, that’s just reality for some people.
Last week I managed to spray a freshly painted wall with hair colour. White wall with black spots, nice one Ana. I also managed to stain the beautiful ancient wood which adorns the interior of the entire building. The question of what to do about it flooded my mind. I could:
A) Leave in the hope that no one would notice
B) Try to clean up the mess, even though I knew for sure that it was impossible
C) Admit my guilt sincerely and offer to repaint it
Unfortunately the first option was entirely unrealistic, after trying option B I managed to create even more mess so option C was all I had left.
And so I went crestfallen to the reception desk, where I faced the Hollywood director himself. “Hi Ana, how are you?” he smiled from ear to ear. “Umm, erm, I’m great but… I’ve been clumsy and splattered the wall of my station with dark hair colour.” “Yeah, ok, whatever, it doesn’t matter, did you get the wood as well?” “No, I didn’t.” I sharply replied and then… “Well, I did actually but I cleaned it off” (I blinked, flashing the sweetest smile that I could dig up). “That’s awful”, he responded, “now we have to knock down the entire wall.” He burst out laughing, saying it was so nice of me to be honest, people usually try to hide mistakes like that and that he would paint the wall. The next morning there was a fresh coat of paint on the wall. So, into my valuable collection of stories, I can add ‘the time a Hollywood director painted a wall that I messed up…’
All of us who live abroad in some way represent our own country, we help shape people’s opinions on our nation. I’m not sure what people think about Croatian women after they get to know me. They probably think we are a little crazy. But some have definitely said they are now even more interested in visiting Croatia. I wrote before about my beautiful colleagues from Latvia and China. It turns out all three of us have had previous acting experience in commercials and have also had some close encounters with cameras. We love to cook and we’ve organised to each make a traditional dish which represents our countries and try it out on our lunch breaks. We have a new colleague starting soon and the bosses and managers are making fun of me, saying I can finally relax, I won’t be “new” anymore.
Chat soon my dear ones,
Your blogger Ana