Oliver's blog about life

A day which started with big wakeup

oliverbross — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 21:38:48 +0000

After yesterday trip to Poland I was very tired and needed a much needed sleep. I am not used to slip in an apartment (flat) as you can hear every noise coming from the elevator, people slapping doors, talking loudly, loud music. Well, it’s bad. Anyway, I was woken up at about 9:30am by a phone call made by a nice bloke from IBM. Last night I decided to apply for a few jobs here in Slovakia. It’s not like I am after a job, actually, I do have a good job in Australia and of course they want me to come back, I wanted to know if I am employable here as well and why not to try the big players? Maybe they can make me an offer which I would not be able to resist. Maybe. We had a good 15minute chat about my IT experience and he left me saying that he needs to talk to his HR manager and that he will definitely call me back later on with the results.

The day went from there quite uneventful. In the afternoon I met with a friend of mine to discuss a business idea I have and his possible contribution. He is a programmer and I thought he might be quite useful to me. We met in a local cafe and by the time I left I smelt like chimney. Unfortunately, the Slovakian government is just painfully too slow to implement solid laws to protect non-smokers. Shame on all the politicians, they are certainly not doing their jobs. No excuses here!

A day spent in 2 countries

oliverbross — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:32:46 +0000

I had to get up early this morning to take my GF to the Krakow airport. The journey started not well, it was very misty, the roads were slippery and full of small rocks and whatever left from the snow, so the first part of our journey was very slow.

The interesting thing is the huge difference in the quality of “clean” roads when comparing Slovakia a Poland. Slovakia is quite a small country with not as many roads compare to Poland. However, Polish people do know how to maintain their roads and the Slovakians just don’t. The roads here are just awful. As soon as you cross the border, the Polish roads were impeccably clean. Go figure …

In the afternoon I had an appointment setup with a local reality agency. It was a day D, when a sale agreement for my land purchase was signed. It all went quite smoothly, except that I had to go to the land registry office which resided in a awful old smelly building. I felt like I am back int the Communist era, it was that bad. Luckily, I did not have to spend long time there and I left with a stamped documents after few minutes.

I truly hate Slovak bureaucracy. Everything has to be stamped, everything has to be signed like a million times with multiple copies, the amount of paperwork is just amazing. Do you want to deal with a local government office over the phone? Forget it! Prepare to take few days off just to sort some formalities out. Compared to what I experienced in the UK or Australia … well, I don’t every know what to say. They think they are doing things the right way … WRONG! Instead of one agency to collect taxes they have, well, I don’t even know how many, let’s say at least 5!

Anyway, my day finished by watching 10th episode of UK Apprentice, a program which I find quite interesting and truly educational.

Here I am again

oliverbross — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:30:36 +0000

I can’t remember how many blogs have I started already, but this is not a first one. I always had plenty of ideas about what to do but never kept up. This time I want to do everything differently. This blog will stay and continue to grow.

I am prepared to write just about everything, kind of a personal diary of my thoughts, things which happened to me and my opinions about life on this beautiful blue planet.

It is going to be very interesting. Well, I hope, every reader will find something interesting here. As this year is going to be very interesting and eventful, I will be writing about my experiences, and not only about that, but my own thoughts about for example politics, life in different countries.

Tomorrow I am going to pay for a land I have purchased in Slovakia few weeks ago. I have a meeting setup with the current owner for the afternoon. Just last friday I had to go to my bank to withdraw a lump of sum to pay for the purchase as for some unknown reason for me the seller wanted cash instead of a bank transfer. As we are not talking just about few hundred euro’s, I asked bank to give me the sum in 5 euro’s notes. And I got it. They gave me lots of small packs of notes and I almost had problem carrying them out of the branch. My backpack was completely full. The seller is not going to be happy bunny as here in the Slovak republic nobody trust each other and I am sure he will want to count every banknote to make sure all is there. Do I care about it? NO. If he wanted to be awkward, I am not going to just simply comply and have prepared a little surprise for him. Hope he brings a big case with him!

Anyway, tomorrow morning I have to getup early to go to the Krakow airport so I’ll let you know all what happened on my return.