Tuesday 12 October 2010

It's Oh, So Quiet...

...except obviously, it isn't. At all. Which is why I haven't had the time post. Well, you can't say I didn't warn you...

It's busy busy busy here. As I remarked to a friend a couple of days back, I never thought it would be possible to have so much to do and not actually be paid for any of it.

I need to blog, though. I need to write stuff down. Because if I don't, all those memories, all those moments, will be lost. How do I know this? Well, it was brought home to me yesterday in my Russian lesson that the storage system in my head is perilously close to overflowing, if not already over-capacity. It appears that each new piece of information I absorb right now automatically requires the deletion of a file that was already in there.

Basically, yesterday's Russian lesson was torture. I found myself unable to remember very much at all. I experienced a kind of 'word blindness' as Mila (my long-suffering Russian teacher) was talking to me; taking each word that she said on a separate basis, I understood them. Put them together in a sentence though? Forget it. It might as well have been Dutch. Come to think of it, since I understand Dutch reasonably well, it was far worse. Mandarin, then. Or Finnish. (God knows how NotesfromLapland does that language, by the way).

This was quite upsetting (I think - god help me - that I may even have teared up a little), as up until now I have felt that - given the fact I do no homework - it's been going OK. So what's changed?

Two weeks ago I took the decision to start picking up the pieces of my erstwhile career in marketing. I've been getting pretty excited about it, actually. There are definitely opportunities for me here (if I can identify them and manage to make them fit with my somewhat unrealistic hope to remain nanny-less most of the time), and I've been having lots of fascinating meetings with people who speak a language - marketing - that, unlike Russian, I actually do understand.

Admittedly, it took a couple of false starts and rabbits in the headlights moments for my brain to start accessing the right parts of my memories, but before I knew it the terminology was flooding back as the right neural pathways in my brain fired up the right synapses and, bob's your uncle, I was spouting marketing bollocks like I'd never taken a break for 4 or 5 years...

However, it appears that my brain operates on a strictly 'one in, one out' basis right now. So; in comes the Marketing-speak, (better stop calling it Marketing bollocks as I suppose potential employers/clients might take a dim view of my referring to it in that somewhat derogatory way), and out goes what little Russian I had.

Let's hope it's just temporary. Either that, or I that I can at least learn how to say 'the computer says no'* in more than one language.




*Thanks by the way to Nicola at Some Mothers Do Ave Em for reminding me of that lovely catch-phrase...



15 comments:

  1. Oh good for you Potty - delighted for you. How exciting to rediscover missing parts of ones brain. What is the Russian for 'marketing bollocks' by the way? ;)

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  2. Ah Potty Mummy, the urge to type in a really complicated equation here just to see which bit of your memory deletes in order to understand it....x

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  3. I used to know stuff. Then I had children.

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  4. Oooh, that's very exciting, I never knew you spoke Marketing. I'm very impressed. On the Russian, I certainly used to find that some days I couldn't speak a word of French and other days it rolled off the tongue really easily, with absolutely no known reason for the difference, wonder if you were just having a No Russian day in your head?

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  5. Woo hoo! Well done you.

    The 'computer says no' sketch reminds me of a certain airline's (non) helpfulness when we were stranded during the volcanic ash saga.

    Now, if only you had been in charge of their marketing department...

    LCM x

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  6. How exciting - can't wait to hear more. Keep up that blue sky thinking!

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  7. I'm amazed you manage even one extra language just now. Your kids haven't eaten your brain then? There is hope for me yet.

    Oh, and yay on the new employment horizon!

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  8. HCM, I have it on good authority (oh, alright, I google translated it) that 'marketing bollocks' is: маркетинг ерунда
    So now you know.

    MH, ah now mathematics? That just sends me into complete shutdown.

    S3P0, yep. Know that feeling.

    DD, I can always hope that, I suppose!

    LCM, I think even my (questionable) customer relationship skills would have been tried by that one...

    NVG, oh you speak marketing too? Let's go and think outside the box together then...

    Mwa, bearing in mind I'm fully aware that English is not your first language I think your brain is far from eaten!

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  9. So impressed - marketing speak makes no sense whatsoever! Worse than Finnish.

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  10. Great news, good to know that you're unleashing your marketing prowess on to the world once more.

    And I know what you mean about forgetting stuff, am sure there is a finite amount of memory - I was in a meeting today and someone offered to pass on their local WI recipe for lemon curd...I felt the Technical Crisis Management Process slipping from my mind.

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  11. Age m'dear. There, I've said it. What we could accomplish in our twenties seems to be impossible decades later.
    I have been following along with 7 year old's piano lessons, since I read music. All going swimmingly until the left hand bits started getting a bit trickier. I can play each hand perfectly, but separately; it's when I try to combine the two (and we're talking Three Blind Mice here) that it all goes pear-shaped. When did that become such a challenge? Pah.

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  12. Computer says "ooh, that sounds exciting". But don't stop blogging, will you?

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  13. PWN - how about Bosnian?

    FK, lemon curd? Mmmmmmmmm.... Now, what were we talking about?

    EPM, depressing, isn't it?

    Iota, don't worry - will keep wittering on here!

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  14. Don't give up on the Russian! I was counting on your sister bringing you over next time you're in blighty, to tell my Russian neighbour/stalker that I'm not remotely interested - Don't think marketing talk will have the same effect somehow...

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  15. how very exciting PottyM, will you be buying a power suit anytime soon??!!
    Pig x

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Go on - you know you want to...