Birthdays, Oli’s tales from afar, remembering George, a visit to the Red Cross, a new look, off to Barcelona and more.

Oli dressed up in the RTVE correspondent gear in Israel. I think that job would be her dream and it would certainly make mine come true. Spectacular eh?
Hi again and here I am writing on Saturday afternoon with a bit of a headache I’m afraid. The week has been good and started with a bang as Monday was my birthday. As a family, though we actually celebrated it on Sunday as I told you in my post last week. You can see here the photos of lunch at José Antonio and Dolores’ house and below is a photo of my nephew Juan and I making a toast as both our birthdays are on the same day.
Me with Juan my nephew celebrating our birthday which falls on the same day.
Oli arrived back from her trip to the Holy Land late on Sunday evening and poor Eladio had to wait for her for ages at the airport. Eventually the 4 of us started our birthday dinner at Mood (place we often go to) at nearly 11 o’clock at night which is even late for Spain. Oli had loads to tell about her trip, the highlight being Petra in Jordan, her swim in the Dead Sea and also the visit to the RTVE foreign correspondent office in Jerusalem. Below are just some of the wonderful photos she has of this memorable visit. Notice how happy she looks in all of them.
Oli in Israel with her friend Ana's camera.
Happy Oli in the Holy Land.
Oli with a Jordanian guard. I wonder who was more impressed.
Oli has very obviously inherited a love of travelling and meeting people from abroad from my side of the family. We all have or had itchy feet, my brother George being the prime example. I mean once he left home and said he was going to Paris. He ended up in Afghanistan and most of the trip was done by hitch hiking!

Dear George is no longer with us and it would have been his birthday too this week on February 12th. How can one ever forget one’s only brother, the golden talented boy that life was never kind to? George would indeed have loved to hear Oli’s tales from Israel as he too had once bathed in the Dead Sea with his beloved Sanya. As I write there is a lump in my throat. Remember darling George our birthdays when we were children?

My birthday was very quiet on Monday and spent quietly at home. In the afternoon I got a lovely surprise present from my the girls from my events agency in the form of a bunch not of flowers but of candy. It's so beautiful we won't dare eat it.
A spectacular bunch of candy arrived on my birthday from the girls at my events agency. Thanks Cris, it is beautiful but we will never eat it. How could we spoil it?
The day was filled with lovely messages from friends and acquaintances mostly on Facebook, the easiest way to greet people these days but still nice. I did get some text messages from very few calls. People ring less and less these days.

That however is not completely so for Yoigo customers otherwise the company wouldn’t grow and I am proud to recount here that this week our majority shareholder, TeliaSonera, announced during the publication of the Q409 results that we had reached 1.506.000 customers at the end of 2009. That is a lot of customers gained in just 3 years.

The week was busy work wise as I was working nonstop to finalise all the preparations for our activities in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress this week; a press conference, a trip of bloggers, interviews, etc. I will be going tomorrow with Suzy and Oli will join us in the evening. Monday night, my only free night, is engaged for dinner with my dear friend Grainne. We will be going to a great place called El Merendero de la Mari. But more about our trip to Barcelona in my next post.

The professional highlight of the week was definitely my visit to the Spanish Red Cross on Friday. We went there to give a donation for the Haiti tragedy. They are a great organisation and emanate reliability and credibility. We have agreed to sign an agreement to collaborate in future emergencies like Haiti. I admire organisations that make the world a better place and as I was sitting listening to them I realised how much I would love to work for them. But that will have to be in another life maybe.
Photo with the Red Cross on Friday. I'm happy we did our bit at Yoigo for Haiti, although I still want to do more.
And that brings me to the reference of a new look in the headline of this post. Well it refers to me actually. As I am losing weight, very gradually, I am also beginning to buy clothes again to renew my wardrobe. And on Friday, after our visit to the Red Cross, near the area of Cuatro Caminos in Madrid I walked past a boutique I used to frequent and on the off chance decided to go in. I bought some very fashionable leopard skin pattern trousers and the shop assistant suggested an even more fashionable smock and voila you have me in my new clothes smiling outside our house, funnily enough on my way to the dentist on Friday afternoon.
My new look, leopard skin trousers and a long brown smock. Fashionable I guess or so Suzy tells me.
And on that note I come to the end of this post. I must mention before I stop that today is our friend Robertos birthday too and that we will be going out for dinner to celebrate. It will also be our St. Valentine's dinner which is actually tomorrow. We are not great St. Valentine celebrators but a small part of me still hopes secretly that Eladio will give me a bunch of red roses tomorrow morning. Will he I wonder. Find out next week.

Cheers and have a great week. I certainly intend to as apart from Barcelona there is Brussels to look forward to on Thursday and a lovely reunion with my dear University friends Adele and Sandra over a long weekend with our respective partners; a Frenchman, an American and a Spaniard, hahaha.

Masha