Lady friends

Being back is good. Work and socializing take up most of my time. During the day, when I’m not shooting emails to clients or banging little fists on the conference table, I read brainless weblogs (in Bulgarian) and listen to awesome Serbian punk. Both recommended by co-workers. At night, I eat cake or vegetarian meatballs or drink mojito-s till I start to lose count. There’s nothing better than a good day at work followed by an even better night out with friends.

As I am sitting here, tapping my foot and counting the minutes till my next girls’ night out, I thought I’d give the ladies a shout-out and thank them in public for providing me with more love, happiness and joy than I can handle sometimes. See, as most of you have already noticed, the past few months have been anything but peaceful. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown several times. Cried quite a bit. Smoked and drank a lot. Ate less. Pushed the people who love me the most away from me. Let them back into my life. Boarded several planes and finally landed in a place, both figuratively and literally, where I can finally sit still and chill the fuck out. It’s been a crazy year so far. And my lady-friends have been in it with me all along. For some reason, they have all managed to stay sane for me when I couldn’t stay sane for me. Have been with me through the good, the bad, and the ugly and helped me laugh my way out of…all of it.

We’re all finally at a point where we can just sit down and laugh our hearts out. Shop till drop. And invest most of our time in discovering the best breakfast-lunch-or-dinner place in the city. We watch pro-Palestinian documentaries while we eat our salads at lunch; call each other when feeling stuck at work; but most of all, at any point in time know that somebody’s got our back. And that’s the most amazing feeling in the world.

I wish all of you friends as good as mine.

The largest hole in the world

In case you wondered where to find the largest hole in the world:



In Russia, of course. Where else?!



It's a dimond mine.

via plasmo, via sreedhara.

RSS-celebration

My formerly broken RSS feed has been miraculously fixed by a mysterious blogger-staffer.

Wheeee!

Тит-тит

Току що неологизирах първата си думичка. О йе!

Хайде и вие.

How to build a team, Bulgarian style

Each summer our company does a short team-building trip to…help us get to know each other a little better, relax a bit...you know, build a team. Apparently, it works, because people here work their butts off but appear happier than many people I know.

So…

Here how it’s done.

Friday night:



Saturday:



Saturday night:



Sunday:



We travelled, ate, drank, rowed, hiked, biked, danced and took pictures. Somewhere in between we realized that many of us have already become good friends. I can't wait for the next time we get to do something fun like that.

Where have YOU been recently? Email me photographs and I will post them here!

***

Photographs by Nicky Trifonov and Kally Nikiforova. THANK YOU!

Size matters

I walk into a lingerie store and immediately spot the perfect bra. I pick it up and ask the girl whether they have it in my size. She takes a quick look at it, grabs the hanger out of my hands and just as I am about to realize what is bound to happen, she yells out to another sales person at the very opposite end of the store:

Do we have these in the SMALLEST size?

Woman! It is bad enough that my boobs are small. Is it necessary to announce it in public?!!

To blog or not to blog

I've been hesitant to write about work for several reasons:

1. I started a couple of weeks ago and it's probably not a good idea to draw conclusions just yet.
2. People get dooced.
3. Many of my co-workers know about my site…which means that anything I say…they’ll read.

I thought, I’d maybe just mention the basics:

1. Just started working for the web division of an IT company, called Netage Solutions.
2. My positions: Project Manager.
3. The office is на майната си, i.e. very far. ;)

Less than two weeks into it, however, I am far from nervous to say that I got an awesome job, work with smart and friendly people, and even though my office is на майната си, I couldn’t care less because my days are challenging yet exciting and I have so much fun doing what I do that I can’t help blogging about it.

You know how sometimes you go home and have nothing to say…well, right now my life is the EXACT opposite of that.

Kisses to all!

Laser Monks

If you are looking for an easy way to cut your office supplies expenses, you might want to take a look at LaserMonks. In an attempt to save his abbey from going in the red, a monk creates an online office supply store. Since monks work pro bono and the entire enterprise operates as a non-profit, the prices are pretty competitive. Also, a part of the proceeds go to good causes.

Monks are awesome! More monks!

via Wired.com

Space-benders

Three days into my new job, I am already made aware of services that bend time and space. I am not talking about the stuff that I do here. It will be a loooong time before my personal doings start having such an impact (if ever). But I can’t wait to tell you about this super cool thing that Orbitel has just recently launched and I have already tested and loved.

The service is BGnomer (BG = Bulgarian; nomer = number, for the uninitiated). It targets Bulgarians living abroad (or other interested individuals) and looking for cheap and simple ways to talk to people within Bulgaria over the phone. The operative word here being CHEAP. What Orbitel has done is so simple and sweet, that you won’t even believe it. A Bulgarian living abroad creates an account and gets assigned a Bulgarian line phone number. Incoming calls to that number get automatically transferred to a foreign-based telephone but the person making the call only gets charged the cost of one local phone call. Ta-daaaa! And that’s it.

There are some country differences. For example, you can transfer your BGnomer to a cell-phone only in some countries like the United States and Canada. Even still, the service is remarkably convenient. I got to experience it in person last night and must admit that the first 5 minutes of the conversation were composed of mostly gasps and exclamations about how unbelievably awesome the whole thing is. On top of that, because the service is still brand new, it’s completely free to sign up. They start charging people in September but the monthly fee is only 20 bucks. So…like I said…it’s still very affordable.

Many of you might not be able to understand my excitement. But all of you who live abroad are probably pretty psyched about this. Being away from the ones you love is hard enough and not being able to talk with them often because of ridiculously expensive international calls makes it even worse. For the very same reason, however, nifty little things such as BGnomer, for example, can make all the difference in the world. Nothing can beat a call from your mom who just wants to tell you that your high-school friend just had a baby. Oh, and that she loves you, too!

Just a thought

Recent conversations and interesting turns of events have made me realize that sometimes, unknowningly, you make the right decision. It is a good thing to be aware of.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some serious shopping to do.