A film, more lunches, preparing Christmas, a surprise party, 45 years since JFK was killed, Spain in the Davis Cup final, off to Stockholm and more.

Balloons for the surprise party for Gaby on Saturday night.
Hi again,

From this week’s headline, you can probably suss out that the week was busy on the work and home front and so it was.

Last Sunday we went to see La Buena Nueva a film set in a village in the north of Spain (Asturias) in 1936 during the Civil War. I don’t think the film will become famous but the storyline was right up our street; war, love and religion being the main ingredients.
On Tuesday I had lunch with María at the Asador Imanol in Diversia. I arrived late which is highly unlike me, but I had to get together a sudden press release when I was in town on an errand. María is a colleague from work and this was our first lunch together. We spent the time talking non stop from beginning to end about work, mutual ex colleagues, current colleagues and a hundred other things that women talk about when they get together! No doubt this lunch will be repeated.

Wednesday was a girly lunch again, this time with my ex Nokia colleagues, Jill and Susana. We went to La Leyenda and thoroughly enjoyed catching up on each other’s news. It was great to hear work gossip too; always highly interesting.

And on Thursday I took my PR agency team to Aspen after a morning working session together to plan for the next few months.

Oli meanwhile, had just started her PhD lectures at the Madrid Complutense University which she will try to juggle with her work at RTVE. She has begun a PhD in Film Studies! They keep changing her timetable and for the past fortnight she has been working on the 17h to midnight shift. This fortnight coming up, starting tonight, she will be working at nights, from midnight to 7 am. I wish her luck as I know it’s going to be tough.

On Friday she had an interesting experience at work as she had to chair the voting table at RTVE for the Trade Union representatives and here you can see her in this video which they published on the RTVE website.

At work I am immersed in plans for Christmas activities; a children’s party at the office premises, the employee annual office blast with partners, as well as all the actual Christmas gifts, on-line cards etc. It’s amazing how Christmas creeps up on you and how it maintains its magic year after year. I like preparing Christmas at work but enjoy the home preparations much more. This year Eladio and I will be going away on Boxing Day, to India, of course and it will be the first time we have ever travelled at Christmas. I did once before I was married and that was to Mexico with my Mother to visit George who was living in Veracruz. But that’s another story.

Suzy sprung a surprise party for Gaby last night, at our house, of course. It was for his birthday which had actually been about a month ago so I imagine he wasn’t expecting anything at all. Each person was supposed to make and bring food but, as we were eating the left overs all together today, it transpired that most of the guests had delegated this task to the Mothers; the Mothers of course who were not invited. I made the potato salad and I wasn’t invited either.

Instead Eladio and I went out to dinner to Mood with our friends Roberto and Mari Carmen. Before that, though I must mention the wonderful siesta and Jacuzzi I had to recover from the week’s hectic activity. We own a lovely Jacuzzi in our bathroom which hardly ever gets used but yesterday was one of those times.

Dinner was great as the food is always original and tasty at Mood. We were all in the talking “mood”, ha, ha, specially Eladio who had us all thinking when he announced that Christianity was only really a continuation of Judaism, from the point of view of sex. And yes, he’s right. Did that get you thinking too?
Eladio and his friend Roberto at Mood on Saturday night
On the news front, this week marks two important dates in history. November 20th was the 33rd anniversary of the death of Francisco Franco Bahamonde, also known as “El Caudillo” and November 21st was the 45th anniversary of the death of the world famous JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy who these days seems to be equated with Barack Obama. And certainly there are fears that his life may end in a similar way. I hope not!

On a lighter note, but of great importance in the world of tennis, Spain is playing the final of the Davis Cup against Argentina on their home territory. Unfortunately the super star player, Rafa Nadal, is injured and cannot take part so no one really thinks Spain can win. However, halfway through the championship, Spain is leading 3-2. There are two matches left to play before the winner is decided and here I would like to copy Obama and say: “yes we can!”.

This week coming up we will be going to Stockholm as I will be attending the communications kick off. We have travelled so much this year; it could well be our record. Well, I was always a “travelling girl” and inherited the itch from my Father, who, if we asked, would probably jump at the chance to come too as he is addicted to travelling and also loves Stockholm.

There will be a full report, of course, in next week’s post.

Cheers till then,
Masha