A Thousand Thunderclaps

This morning a warm, weltering haze of yesterday's less-than-delightful temperatures remained on the streets and in the U-Bahn. I rushed off to work at 9:25 and arrived, wearing a T-shirt for the first time in a nod to the weather, quite punctually.

I spent much of the morning trying to find the website of a company, which appeared ghostlike to have vanished from the internet proper; and a reverse G***le image search of its logo forked up mostly cryptic links written in Chinese characters and a great deal of humbug.

It set a sad trend, since the next task was no easier. Amateur vendors appeared to have set up fairly arbitrary names for their merchandise, freely translated as it seemed from the English and adorned with mistakes like 'Kahi': like an original and exotic name, it was really a misspelling of 'khaki,' as I suspected and proved after researching that as well. My computer went on strike several times and I had to wait it out. There was one perfidious company that insists on christening its products with two sets of names each. One set is fancy and abstract and the next fancier and more abstract still; these were also far too longwinded for my purposes. And there was no greater indication perhaps of my ungracious mood than, after reading the whimsical moniker of 'Lazy Daisy', I thought angrily, 'That makes me sick!' Marshalling this merchandise into an orderly list was a thankless task. After a while my supervisor took it over; he was impressed (to my surprise) that I had gotten so far down the list already.

In the meantime one of the managers agitated heavily for an absence of mistakes, since several clients are on the proverbial doorsill waiting to be invited in and impressed by our services. My supervisor and I will also be training a new co-worker by the end of the week. My supervisor, already pulling double duty with me, took this with his customary, great composure. I have my doubts.

Lunch was a bright spot: Indian take-out, with a pumpkin-orange curry of green peas and paneer, large squared containers of fried rice that had in it wedges of chicken rippled with its natural grain, extra rice, and other dishes I didn't try. Our drinks bottles have also been restocked, so I had a running supply of carbonated apple juice — a German tradition: the Apfelschorle — and T. gave me peanuts and raisins covered in chocolate for dessert. Earlier the elevator had painstakingly been put into operation so that the toilet paper, paper towels, etc., could be restocked. (I'm sure that was critical information.)

Then (or earlier) the vanguard of a grey weather front, which had been expected yesterday, began to roll in. Thunder, in brief conversational peals, went back and forth; the light grew darker. Then it rolled away again.

Afterward, I went back to work and over another list of product names. Magnificently grumpy still, I was beatific when my supervisor told me at quarter after six that I had done a considerable amount of work on the first list; I could *save* this list and go home.

I was befuddled and *uploaded* the list. I think that therefore we will have a great deal more work in future than is practical. I came to this realization after stepping out of the U-Bahn at the foot of our block, on the way home. (My reading that time was The Quark and the Jaguar.) So I had to send a message to work once I got home. Besides I've spent the remaining evening being gloomy about it, although that is likely not helpful.

The weather, again, this evening: In the German national evening news we heard of the torrential flooding in Bavaria. Here there was thunder and lightning that skirted the southern horizon, in an ostensibly aimless way, until the sky above the street was sheeted in grey. Angled, heavy rain soon deluged the streets, much as might be expected. I was outside, and — besides being soaking wet within one city block (keeping in mind that Berlin's are reasonably large), later having to change my pants and long-sleeved shirt despite wearing a less-than-impermeable raincoat, and even having water run in through my eyelashes stingingly into my eye — one of the closest thunderclaps really felt as if it were boiling up, magma-like, from under the pavement beneath my feet.

It's the nearest thing I expect I'll experience to fleeing amidst thunderbolts that Zeus was firing after me, right and left, like temporary columns — in warning for some infraction of the will of the gods.

(Still, of course, I was hardly solitary on the street, with apartment houses looming over me, trees — thickly and shadowily leaved now — lining the sidewalks and the median, and other pedestrians taking shelter under the balconies and in the doorways or perhaps unwisely stalking along with a spiky umbrella alongside. So any feeling of particular importance would have been entirely imaginary.)

N.B.: I am purposely vague about the nature of my work so as to honour the non-disclosure agreement that I signed. Also, because I don't want to gossip about information that belongs to others, in any case — but share things that are my own things to tell. :c)

The Nine-to-Five

Last week I started work, eight hours per day and five days per week, in a start-up firm that is only some twenty minutes away by subway. Fewer than thirty of us work in three large rooms, dark carpeting white linoleum(?) beneath us and gridded pale ceiling reminiscent of the school ceilings into which some of my classmates once threw sharpened pencils to see the leads stick in them like darts, and windows to courtyards all around. Today a duck quacked loudly, and it was impossible to tell whether someone was listening to something on his computer or whether in fact a courtyard had received a visitor.

The working rhythm begins at some point before 9:15 a.m. This is when my sister usually arrives. We each have our own computer, and I have a laptop on ergonomic stilts as well as a flat screen so that I can see everything on two screens — internet tabs, text files, G**gle spreadsheets and all. The computers are far out on the table so that I am forced (again, ergonomically) to rest my forearms and to look fairly straight ahead. Coming after a lifetime of having screens inches in front of my eyes and hunching over to look at them, this came as a shock, but not unpleasantly so.

A Vignette of Late Spring

Although housework has crept farther into my schedule, I devoted this Thursday to doing nothing much at all, in honour of Ascension Day. The Ascension is a statutory holiday here in Germany, and so it was even quiet in the streets until the livelier afternoon. Summer is nudging in and pushing temperatures to the 20°C mark, while the nights still dip under 10°C, and I think spring itself has been tardy this year despite the warm winter. The new oak leaves, for instance, are still so new that they are almost more yellow than green; and there is a funny mixture of late forsythia flowers, perishing tulips and thriving tulips, bleeding-heart, withering grape hyacinths, long-blossomed daffodils and fresh daffodils, in the streets, and even a late-blooming, violet primrose on our windowsill.

We ordered pizza — tonno with tuna and onion; margherita; and an anchovy-and-salami variety; and Papa cooked smoky Black Forest ham with eggs; and the clay teapot was kept stocked with tea. A bag full of rhubarb (in season at €1,29 per kilo) is still in the pantry, and I have yet to make into a compôte. But we shall have it, most likely, with rice pudding tomorrow. Then I will finally wash up the big pots and pans, too. (Unless Mama beats me to it.) On the shopping list are the ingredients for a generous round of chocolate pudding with whipping cream and raspberries, which are unlikely to be ripe around Berlin yet but apparently are in Spain; and a potful of red lentils with celery root, carrots, leeks and red wine. I suspect that the leeks will be less — well . . . — happy than they were at the height of winter, but are likely still in season. Of course I hate washing and cutting them, but their colour and flavour are agreeable enough that — given enough time to rest and forget the ordeal between leeky dishes — I return to the charge regularly. Asparagus is still in season, and famously at home in the sandy soils of Brandenburg; I think we have devoured but one (half of a?) kilo this year, imported from Greece in early March or February, and green rather than white, so far.