Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Things are happening very easily here. It is scary because it is a lot of work and serious planning which can't just be done on the fly, and I have never done it before, really.
I have a second serious client. He is a very lovely gentleman from Barcelona. I knew to wear proper dress pants and heels because, when I told him how to recognise me in a red jacket, he wrote back that he would have a long black coat and a grey suit. Indeed, Marcelino is responsible for making sure Nokia and whatever cellphone service they are attached to here in Andalucia, work properly. While we were discussing English class he got a call that 19 towers were down in Granada.
He is a proper and distiguished gentleman, and I am not used to working with such people. But this particular guy seems to have a good heart and to even take the time out of his cell phone towers going all to heck, to ask a crazy Canadian girl about her interest in flamenco. In fact I feel like I fit in with these sort of people (business people, proper) when I manage to dress somewhat better than usual, and feel that my reserved nature lends itself to interactions with them. On the other hand, I have a pronounced sense of being very, very weird to somebody like this.
He is very serious about learning English, as quickly as possible, and wants an hour a day. He would like to further his career and says it is literally impossible without English. Even if he applies for a job in South America where English would not likely to be very necessary, it is a requirement, just to filter people out, he says.
Our conversation started out actually with something about the Euro problems and he told me that one European telecommuncations company is using bailout money to buy technical teams from China to add to their company - that with European taxpayers' money, they are doing this. He says that China is going to own Spain soon and they will start calling the shots, due to the Spanish debt that China has bought. And that they may eventually have to speak Chinese here.

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