Sunday 3rd February 2013
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| Suzy at work, isn't she lovely? |
Hi everyone,
Here I am
again, another Sunday and time to write my blog. It’s now the beginning of February and for
most of the week the sun has been shining.
It’s been a
busy week and one with lots of news to tell you. The week started with a conference call with
Sweden, pretty much a repeat of the one the week before to discuss the company
activities in the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of
this month.
Whilst I was
talking to Stockholm from the comfort of my desk at home, Olivia was on her way
to Baqueira with Miguel and two of his friends.
They drove from Valencia to the Pyrenees, which is just over 500km,
quite a way. Baqueira is Spain’s biggest
and most fashionable skiing resort; after all it’s where the King used to
ski. Oli had only skied once in her life
some years ago in contrast to her sporty boyfriend who, I’m sure, is a good skier.
We were thus surprised to see how well she took to it when she sent us this
photo of her experience the next day.
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| Oli skiing in Baqueira this week |
She got better
and better during the week and seems to have enjoyed the experience and time
off from work. We look forward to her
return tonight.
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| Olivia and Miguel on their skiing holiday in Baqueira this week |
Whilst she was
enjoying her skiing holiday, on Tuesday I decided the time had come to sort out
and tidy up the huge mess in her spare room that has accumulated over the six years
we have been living here. The job was
massive and took me most of the day. I
had to clear her desk and sofa and the floor of mountains of discarded clothing
and then I even tackled her wardrobes.
Oli is a hoarder or magpie and never throws anything away. To make a long story short, here is the photo
of what the room looked like before I started and what it looks like now. I kept intending later to tackle the shelves
and the desk drawers but I’m afraid I got rather disheartened and will leave
them to another time.
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| The before and after photo of clearing out and tidying my younger daughter's spare room |
Tuesday was
our niece Laura’s 30th birthday, quite a milestone. In fact it marks the start of quite a few
birthdays to come in February. First
there is Laura’s sister (also my god daughter) Alicia’s birthday which was on 2nd
of this month when she became 21. Alicia is the youngest of all our nieces and
nephews and it’s amazing how time has passed.
Next week will be another nephew, Juan’s 30th birthday which
is on the same day as mine, 8th February. So I have arranged a big family birthday dinner
next Friday at Naia, a bistro restaurant owned by a colleague at Yoigo, Pedro. There will be 11 of us around the table,
quite a family gathering. By the way, I
used a great website called Evite to create the event and invitation.
On Tuesday too
Susana joined us for dinner. The house
was pretty empty without the girls, so when she came, as always, she brightened
up our lives.
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| It was great to have Suzy's company this week - here she is with her Father at dinner on Tuesday |
Later we
watched the news together on TVE1 and lo and behold, I appeared, albeit very
briefly, in a report on the decrease of the high speed train fares. Remember I was interviewed on the train when
I went to Barcelona recently? Since then
many people have commented they saw me on the TV.
On Wednesday I
finally went to see Susana “live at work”, something I had been promising to do
for a long time. Suzy works as a
nutritionist for the American multinational Aramark which is a food services supplier
to all sorts of institutions and Suzy works in the healthcare area and is responsible
for a group of residences. At the same time she is working most days at a
private hospital called Nisa in Aravaca outside Madrid where her tasks include
the supervision of the whole food supply chain.
I went to have a coffee with her but she was busy and so we only got
about 10 minutes together. I was
immensely proud to see her sitting with her pc working and wearing her white
Aramark coat. The impression I got was
of how grown up and professional my older daughter is. She plans to leave Aramark and move to London
in May to seek her fortune, hoping to improve her career plans with more experience
and better pay and also to find out what living in England is like, the country
which she feels is hers because I was born and bred there. It seems to be the same adventure as mine but
in reverse. I wonder if she will end up
living there like I ended up living in Spain.
In any case it will be a wonderful excuse to visit England more often
and I wish her lots of luck. The photo illustrating this week’s post is of her
at the hospital when I visited.
On Wednesday evening,
Eladio and I did something we don’t normally do during the week, we went to the
cinema. We had wanted to see Lincoln,
the top candidate for this year’s Oscars, but just hadn’t had the chance. I was disappointed but wonder too if not
being in the mood to go the cinema had anything to do with my negative
response. I found it rather boring, very
grey and far too long. I have to admit
that this could also be because I am not familiar with that period of American
history. Nor have I ever been particularly interested and thus am not familiar
with the intricacies of American politics.
I much prefer the other films up for an Oscar, such as Les Miserables,
Argo or Zero Dark Thirty.
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| Was not impressed with the film about Abraham Lincoln |
Thursday was
the big day of the week. I was up really
early for a conference call with Sweden about the Q4 and 2012 financial results
of the group Yoigo belongs to, the Nordic and Baltic operator, TeliaSonera.
A big
motivator for me that day was what the scales told me at 07am. I had reached my target weight according to
Dukan and had shed the 3 kilos put on between last September and January. That meant that I could quit the Cruise phase
(alternating with pure protein and pure protein + vegetables) and go on to the
much more palatable “Consolidation phase”.
For every pound lost you have to do five days of consolidation. That works out at 31 days of this phase where
I can now eat two slices of brown bread, a piece of fruit each day and also eat
carbohydrates occasionally and best of all, have one celebration meal a week
when you can eat what you want. But the
weight only stays off if you stick to one day a week of pure protein which I
usually do on Thursdays. Later in the week I came across an article in The
Daily Telegraph about a diet called 5:2.
I googled it and found a website called The Fast Diet. I then investigated more and watched a video
by Michael Mosley where he explains the benefits of what is known as “intermittent
fasting”. This was shown on Horizon on the BBC last summer and I have only just
heard of it. You can watch it here. It got me thinking maybe it was time to
change my way of dieting. I then ordered
Michael Mosley’s book The Fast diet, intermittent fasting, via kindle and have begun
to read it on my iPad. I’m not sure yet whether I want to fast two
days a week (500 calories on each fasting day – they cannot be consequetive)
whilst being able to eat whatever I want on the other days. Before I started the Dukan diet just under
three years ago, I did a similar diet: the Up and Down diet, also called the
Alternate Day diet where you fast one day and eat as much as you want the next. I actually lost 10 kilos but found the “down
days” or fasting days very difficult and tended to eat more than I should. But, there is something about fasting that in
the dieting world seems to be gaining advocates and I shall be thinking more
about this before abandoning Dukan and taking the plunge. Whatever I do, I know that I shall have to
diet the rest of my life to remain healthy and in shape.
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| This seems to be the latest diet in the dieting world and I am interested |
But on
Wednesday morning after the good news on the scales I had to get down to work
immediately. Results days for me are
always stressful. First there is the
conference call with Sweden. Then we have to send out a local press release and
of course not forget internal communication.
We have to include the right messages and interpret the figures right and
give them in local currency – not in Swedish kroner – and at the right exchange
rate. Then I have to listen in or rather
watch the press conference on a webcast from the HQ in Stockholm when the company
CEO, Lars Nyberg, takes the stage. It is
then that I have to listen to every word he says and every question, to know
what has been said verbally about Yoigo.
By the time I am finished it is nearly midday and I am exhausted from
the mental pressure. The good news is that Yoigo’s results for 2012 were spectacular:
3.7m customers and net sales of almost a thousand million eurosJ. To top that,
I was proud to see that within the group Yoigo was the third biggest business,
just behind the home market Sweden.
Whilst I was
digesting this news, Eladio was reading the papers and called my attention to
the front page of El País, Spain’s left wing but also most prestigious
newspaper. He was to show me what for me
is possible evidence of the biggest political scandal in recent times in Spain
and I was astounded. El País reproduced documents that showed payments from a
number of well-known Spanish business people to the party that were then partly
used to pay regular supplements to senior party officials over more than a
decade. The most recent payments were in 2009.
The “documents” were apparently a hand written ledger belonging to the
previous party treasurer, the now famous Luis Bárcenas. The payments in envelopes were supposedly handed
to top party members including the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy himself. The English press referred to these payments
as “slush funds” – money that came from anonymous donations to the party, many
of them from construction companies, and paid out in what is called “black
money” or “dinero b” – money that is not declared. The Spanish people are fed up with the
corruption of its institutions and politics and I think that with this issue, “Bárcena’s secret papers” they have come to their tether.
Just as Spain was beginning to see some recovery in the crisis, this
happened and any improvement in the brand image of the country will have gone
into reverse.
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| The news about slush funds being paid to top party officials has been a real bombshell |
The issue has
dominated all the news this week and culminated yesterday with a disappointing appearance by Spain’s premiere on television, denying ever having received any illicit money. The press was denied access and no one could
ask questions.
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| Spain's premiere, Mariano Rajoy on TV denying the charges of receiving illicit money from party donations |
He talked
about being transparent and carrying out an investigation, but there was no
transparency in the way he made his statements.
You can see the video here. The scandal will continue and evolve and
many people are wondering if he will have to resign. The next few weeks, will no doubt, bring more
clarification and I think the Spanish people deserve to know the truth. Either El País is lying or the Government is
lying. One day we will know and hopefully
that will be a turning point for a less corrupt future.
None of this
will have been on Phil and Kathy’s mind, our friends from Keighley in West Yorkshire
(UK). Ironically that day, 31st
January was Phil’s birthday but it was also the day his Father died. My heart goes out to them as I know what they
will be going through, a tough period that I experienced myself when my own
Mother died on 1st October 1999.
Friday morning
was just as stressful as Thursday morning.
I was up early to drive to work for an internal meeting with the staff,
what we call Yoigo Mornings. I organize these
events every quarter to explain the financial results. I have to prepare the presentation of course
and as usual, we were making last minute changes up until the last moment. Most of the stress I felt that morning was
from driving to work early with the traffic jam which on Friday was worse than
ever because of extreme fog. When one of my colleagues commented to me: “but
Masha everything you do always comes out fine”, I was happy to hear that is
what she thought but replied that success never comes without some stress and
loss of adrenalin.
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| On Friday we had our first Yoigo Morning of the year |
There was a
very tense moment too during the staff meeting, for that was when I heard, via
my phone, that the CEO of TeliaSonera had resigned. The company is embroiled in its own scandal
in Sweden with accusations about possible shady conduct in the acquisition of a
network license in one of the most corrupt countries in the world, Uzbekistan. A report from a legal company that week found
nothing to support the allegations but when the CEO, Lars Nyberg, a big burly
Swede, realised he did not have sufficient support from the Board, he decided
to quit after five and a half years as TeliaSonera’s chief executive. It was my job to send out a release internally
explaining what had happened and to monitor the Spanish press to see what
repercussions there would be locally. So these are new times for our Swedish
owners.
The drive home
was much easier and it was great to arrive to find the lunch ready and made by
Oufa and nice to know that we were to be joined by Susana once again. I spent the afternoon working with her.
Being Friday
and my first day of “consolidation” I decided there and then that my first so-called
“celebration meal” would be that night.
After our walk, Eladio and I went to La Vaca Argentina where I enjoyed
things like a simple glass of red wine or a piece of bread that tasted like
heaven after three weeks of abstaining. Not
surprisingly I had a bad night because of the heavy stomach and woke up with a
headache.
The weekend
has been quiet, our walks, reading, making meals and watching television in bed
at night, one of our favourite pastimes if the content is good enough to keep
me awake. Well it was last night as the lovely,
if somewhat controversial film called “Camino”, was shown again on TVE. You can read about the film here and judge for
yourselves or even better watch the trailer here. The film is a criticism of
the Opus Day Catholic organization and a distortion of the real story of a girl
called Alexia who died from spinal cancer aged fourteen and who is currently in
the process of canonization. Whatever
anyone may think about the film, one thing no one will doubt about is of the
wonderful performance of the actors and the beauty and freshness of Alexia,
played by the delightful Nerea Camacho.
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| We watched this delightful film last night on the TV |
Today Sunday is equally quiet, no
Suzy for lunch, Oli only coming back late tonight, but of course the best day
to write my blog.
Next week will
be my birthday. I will be 56, nearer 60
than 50 but I prefer not to see it that way.
I feel young, hopefully look young and with all my dieting and walks,
feel healthy and on top of the world.
So my friends,
with that I leave you for this week.
Cheers till
next time
Masha
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