Hot or Cold, Rain or Shine

The weather here had gotten a little worse lately, with a bit of rain and lower temperatures. however, today is amazing, at about 28 degrees it's el scorchio and we made the most of it by going first skating this morning then out for a bike ride this afternoon. we went to a nature part called Hostivar, the park is quite nice but not the best around here, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant and although the food was ok, waiting 45 minutes for it wasn't. Petra will go to see something at the theatre tonight and I was planning on going to see Spiderman, but now I am not sure.

This Friday we fly to Paris for 5 days for Petras birthday, I am really looking forward to it, because although I have been to France many times, never in a situation like this where is will be just the 2 of us for nearly a week, I have never really had the opportunity to site see.

We have also booked our trip to Vienna in July. This will be another enjoyable trip I'm sure.

Sweden again

Been away to Sweden again this weekend, I had to go on Thursday evening, ready for a board meeting on Friday. Basically each country manager had to present to the board the QTR 1 results. My country manager had a holiday scheduled, and the sales director also had a holiday scheduled, which left only me. I had a lot of work todo because I have only been there just under 2 weeks and had very little help to gather the information I needed, which of course was mainly past detail on how and why the budget was missed or achieved. So for a few days my work was quite intense. It all went quite well on Friday morning with the board, and in the afternoon the company owner had a grand opening and press conference about the new strategy which is taking the form of a new business form in Sweden. To outline it, one of the clubs has been remodelled and includes offices for medical staff within the facility, which will work with companies, insurance companies and the clubs on the health of clients. You can imagine that the individual goes to see the medical practitioner and ends up coming out of the room with a gym membership. This is the idea. Although, you mustn’t be sceptical because it really has been set up with all the right intensions of promoting healthy lifestyles to all, and providing a platform to make it easy for all, with all the right care and attention in one place.

I stayed Saturday night and wasted time until my flight on Saturday afternoon, I took my taxi to the airport and when I got to the check in desk had quite a surprise. I was one day early for my flight! I should have checked more carefully but my boss who booked the flights had made a mistake and booked my return flight for Sunday afternoon. This was quite disappointing as you can imagine, but to solve it without too much fuss I just bought another ticket to return on the flight I had originally arrived for. Airlines are such bastards though, to change my flight they wanted to charge me 18,000 Kc, the girl on the desk tried her best to help me, she searched for other flights and got down to 9,000 Kc, this was still way too much and I was trying to decide if I should just go back to the hotel and book in for another night, meanwhile the girl did another search and found something at about 5,000 Kc, so I took it because another night in the hotel and the taxis etc would have come out at more.

This is why I think that the airlines are bastards, the flight I went home on was only half full, it made absolutely no difference to them that I was on it, or if I had been on the flight the next day but it still cost me £125 to change.

We had a little bit of rain today and yesterday, it’s the first for 7 weeks, I guess we need it but I would rather have sunshine, we are going for lunch today with Jana and Radek, Petra has just told me to hurry up because we have to leave, to goodbye.

New Job

I have a job now, and so the story goes that I am very short of time. I have the same time as every one else does, but I always seem to have to many things to fit into it. I guess that’s better than having nothing to do.

The new company I work for is WorldClass health clubs, you can find out more about them at www.worldclass.cz . I am the General Manager for the Czech operations which means accountability for the business here. 3 clubs, quite small but with nice facilities and decent clientele.

I have kind of been thrown in a the deep end, but its no real problem, in many ways it’s better because it makes you get on with it and ask questions which leads to you obtaining knowledge about the business faster. On Thursday I have to fly to Sweden again, this time to give the QTR 1 presentation to the Board. I am certainly not looking forward to it but its necessary so I must just get on with it. The 2 main people who should have done it are absent due to holidays so it fell on me to prepare and deliver.

Petra and I have had some lovely inline skating lately, and the weather has been so nice we get out as much as we can, last weekend an old colleague of hers visited Prague with her husband so we spent Saturday afternoon giving them a tour and having the customary food, beer and icecream, it was fun.

We haven’t got anywhere with the flat hunting, it has really stalled, I think it is because we are so short of time, I have been working long days and haven’t even felt interested in looking. We really must though, we can’t live in the rented accommodation for ever, it’s just money thrown away. Even my money in the bank doesn’t earn interest because of the shit interest rates here. The banks like to take your money but certainly don’t like to give you any.

Today was a public holiday, and the Czechs are smart, they book the Monday as holiday then they have 4 days off together, so its been like a ghost town except for tourists. Really, it shocked me how few people stayed in Prague, many of them seem to leave for a short vacation or to their weekend houses. Next week will be the same because Tuesday is also a public holiday. Hooray. It’s only a couple of weeks now until our trip to Paris, I’m looking forward to it, in July we are visiting Vienna because there is another public holiday so we’ll take a trip there with Jana and Radek. I’m quite excited.