In the past week I've absorbed myself quite deeply in a British television series about archaeology, especially of Neolithic, Anglo-Saxon, Bronze Age, Roman and medieval sites, and have stayed there as much as possible.
It's also spring, however, and although the leaves are still small and shy, almost all trees now have them. I see late tree blossoms and forsythia blossoms, late tulips and daffodils and hyacinths, and a few remaining chionodoxa on my outings. My indoor garden is also doing well. A butternut squash that I left in the pantry a long time began sprouting seeds inside, and I've planted them now and they've gratifyingly split open their leaves (well, three sprouts have — the fourth looks quite moribund). I've had to abandon my attempt to grow potatoes as they were befallen by flies and then I forgot to water the plant for a while; the forget-me-nots are not doing so well except for one that might bring blossoms again; the spider plants are surviving; and a succulent is even looking happy.
In terms of reading, I went to Dussmann to redeem the gift certificate sent over by my kind North American colleagues, and ended up with Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom and with James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk.
At work things are still interesting. The hatchet continues to be buried regarding all my previous disputes with colleagues and my own personal situation is all right.
That said, I still worry about other colleagues: I expect personnel developments in my team.
Outside of the workplace: one Russian colleague who has already criticized her president's policies for years, despite her family's Putin fandom, has just published a long Facebook post trying to express again how awful she finds the war in Ukraine — having read the gory details of the news, and taking on herself a heaping burden of guilt. Which is a bit maddening considering that she for one is not parading around with Z symbols, or closing her eyes and ears to horrible abuses and excusing them on specious grounds.
But altogether I'm having what might be 'compassion fatigue,' in that sometimes in the past few months I haven't entirely reacted appropriately any more when people mentioned difficult situations to me. Sometimes I'm so completely saturated on bad news that any more just pings off me like a rubber ball, and I even more or less find myself smiling. But of course I need to find a way to deal with the feeling, before I seriously offend or hurt anyone.
More trivially: Last Thursday my sister and I met with high-level colleagues from our American parent company.
The highest-level colleague was endearingly shy at odd moments and perhaps a bit exhausted by his speedy tour of Europe. Whether traveling or not, he is an everyman paterfamilias with an uptilted nose and rounded cheeks, settling comfortably into his forties. He is much thinner in person than in video calls — not that he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger there either, but one tends to subconsciously assume that a round face doesn't sit atop a lath-thin physique. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that, running counter to stereotype, loosely concealed a lack of belly rather than the presence of one. And professionally, besides having a fine grasp and pronunciation of German, he was filled with the same genial fire that he exudes in video calls.
We ate at a tremendously cheap restaurant. But I was very much gratified that we all were respectful diners and didn't give the waiters trouble, except for one person who, although generally well-mannered enough, raised his hand for a mango lassi like a Roman emperor in a B movie.
After that, we walked back to the office, where I was one of a series of presenters who explained our teams' work in a slideshow for the benefit of our American guests. It was rather interesting that, considering that 3 years ago I'd become so nervous I could barely talk when presenting to groups of ten colleagues, I was able to present in front of a group of over twenty colleagues plus someone who's been in professional meetings with Jeff Bezos, without really falling flat on my face or feeling uncomfortable about the experience. Out of the corner of the eye I had the impression that even my managing director was a bit of a deer in the headlights, and the chief technical officer had made a rather unsubtle 'pitch' to a magnanimously patient American colleague over our restaurant servings of rice. What really helped is the bonds that have grown between fellow engineering managers and me over the past months, so that I could feel their interest and their willing me to do well as I spoke. Maybe the highest-level colleague's unassuming demeanour also helped.
***
This evening I went on another donation tour for sites that help Ukrainian refugees with supplies, for the first time in a week.
In both places they were very grateful, and again I sensed the strong relief for volunteers if at last new supplies come in that can relieve the strain on their resources for a moment.
It's touching but also heavy when a volunteer is Ukrainian and the donation clearly takes on a different dimension for them: expressing solidarity and care for the victims of war, whom I don't know personally but they certainly do. So I'm not sure whether to feel useful, or depressed.
Next week, I'm thinking of volunteering somewhere, if I can wrangle my work schedule. There are 4-hour shifts one could do on a one time basis to relieve those who have been showing up for hours and hours, even late into the night, as the war drags on.
Right now, returning to the donations themselves, juice boxes and other food are in high demand in some sites; shampoo, deodorant and shower gel for adults and baby/children's food, shampoo, shower gel, toothpaste, and toothbrushes seem to be running low.
Regarding the energy saving situation, it looks like official guidance is finally being released by the German government and European Union bodies on how not to waste fuel, so that we are less dependent on Russian gas and oil and therefore paying less money that can be spent on war. As this guidance largely affects car drivers, which I'm not, and possessors of air conditioning, which I'm not, I didn't really find a silver bullet to apply to my own situation. That said, I think I haven't had a cup of hot tea since I saw the first photos from Bucha, and I'm still eating bread untoasted and always washing my hands in cold water — which is not in the official guidance and is admittedly yet another massive pain in the neck for which I can blame my overactive conscience.
***
Lastly, I've been watching more of an online course on First Nations history and tradition in Canada (while heinously neglecting an Open University course about vectors that could give me a better technical background on machine learning, for my career-related technical development). Now I think it's Week 6 of the programme.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment