Alexandra Branzan

I was reading this BBC news on the Somali pirates, setting their Spanish prisoners free. I started thinking about the Pirates of the Carribean and Johnny Depp. Yeah, I know, I’m really tired and Brussels weather is not exactly helping me keep my thoughts on the right track. So, I was reading the article and the image of Captain Sparrow kept coming to my mind with every mention of the word ‘pirates’.

In the end, when I got to this part Pirate spokesmen who spoke by telephone to news agencies earlier on Tuesday said they were receiving a ransom of between $3.5m and $4m from the Spanish government I instantly burst into laughter, ’cause now Captain Sparrow was dressed up in a black costume, wearing a tie and announcing the press, from behind the lectern, that the pirates had received the 4m ransom.

I’m tired, I could laugh at anything right now… But don’t the words ‘pirate spokesmen’ sound amusingly strange to you? Nowadays, pirates are not what they used to be. They’ve learned doing things the nice way. They’re communcation professionals, too.

I’m at the office, doing some follow-up and I’m supposed to call journalists from all over the world to ask them with a very soft, PRistic tone in my voice, if they received our press release, if they published it, if they have any intension whatsoever of publishing it any time soon. I’ve been doing that for the last two days, experiencing acute understanding disorders due to the large variety of accents. This is, of course, not a very difficult thing to do. You just have to be really good at spelling and make peace with the idea that some of the conversations may entirely sound like a spelling contest. So, please let me know via email when it gets through to the senior editor. My addresss is alexandra.branzan at porternovelli.be. Yes, of course I can spell it for you. a-l-e-x-a-n-d-r-a dot b-r-a-n-z-a-n at porternovelli.be. Porter Novelli, too? Sure. p-o-r-t-e-r n-o-v-e-double l-i dot b-e.
Anyway, I have been waiting for the hour to turn 4 so I can get hold of the American journalists. I finally get to talk to one of the editors. See conversation below:
‘Hello, this is Alexandra Branzan, from Porter Novelli Brussels. May I please talk to someone in the editorial team of zzz magazine?’
‘What do you want to know?’ (What do I want to know? Well that’s not exactly the cordial addressing I’ve been used to, courtesy of the British journalists I’ve been on the phone with the whole day)
‘I would like to know if you’ve received the press release I sent you on behalf of our client, yyy, concerning the launch of innovative compounds for the footwear industry’
‘Where did you send it?’ (where, not even to which address, to what editor)
‘vvvv.zzz at….’
‘Yeah, that’s me, let me check…Yeah, I got it’
‘Is there……’
interrupting me ‘It wasn’t published. I’ll let you know when it is’
‘Ok, I appreciate it. Could you please tell me when is the deadline for…’
She hangs up on me! Just like that! In the middle of the sentence. While I was still talking!!!!
‘…your next issue’. I wanted to know when is your deadline for the next issue, so I can call you again, and ask you again if you plan on publishing anything, so you can interrupt me again, so you can hang up on me again. Vita dubla! (That’s just something nice in Romanian, don’t bother to look it up) So, see? I was just bonding. Making sure there’s continuity within our relationship. I know that’s why you don’t like people like me. And that’s why I don’t like people like you, either. But I guess we’ll just have to live with it. And make money out of it, too.
Good thing I have a blog at hand, to ’shout’ at. If I were telling you all this, Mrs. vvv zzzz, you’d probably interrupt me right in the middle of my outburst, wouldn’t you?

There’s this interesting theory that I have recently found out about (at Rik Otten’s European Lobbying class). The six degrees of separation theory (aka Human Web) states that ‘if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth’ (from Wikipedia) Yeah, I know it sounds intricate, but it’s rather simple to understand.

Let’s take, for example, president of the United States and… me. According to the Human Web, there’s a chain of (less than) six people between me and the president. I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Obama.

I was at the office on Thursday and a colleague of mine was reading a news on Obama’s visit to the MIT. A few minutes later, she got a message from her cousin, who’s working for MIT. ‘I’m gonna meet Obama tomorrow’, the message said. The whole second floor was thrilled with the news of such presidential proximity. The thought of the six degrees of separation instantly came to my mind. I guess I ‘know’ Obama now.

- Started my internship at Porter Novelli. Commuting from Ghent four times a week, getting up a six and typing on a Dutch keyboard. It’s only been a week, but I’m starting to get used to it all.

- anamariaalexandra.branzan@student.artevedehs.be My new Artevelde address. Quite long, huh?

- Classes at Artevelde on Mondays. Exams and assignments are already scheduled. It’s a piece of cake, comparing to what I had to do back in Romania. I may have to take some exams there, too, so let’s not miss that too much…

- Film on Mocoma/Ghent, due by December 14th, for the Digital Storytelling class. Have to present the storyboard in two weeks. No brilliant ideas yet…

- ‘Your best friend in Belgium is the umbrella. It won’t rain if you have it, it always rain when you forget it at home’, the English teacher told us yesterday, while we were abstractly decorating the room with our soaked coats. Boy, was she right!

- People here don’t seem to have the notion of feeling cold. They still haven’t given up on heir summer clothes, while I sit and wonder how much colder can it get. It’s not that I mind it, but I’m already starting to wear my December clothes.

- I went to Antwerp this weekend. Loved it! You can see some of the pictures I took on my Facebook profile.

So, here I am in Gent. Very adventurous journey to get here, however. The story of it all is here… The key words would be: too much luggage, I’m never ever ever gonna pack so much again, I promise!

I am absolutely crazy about this place, already starting to feel bad I’m only staying here for one semester. The intercultural part is so much fun…we’re teaching one another basic words in our native language. The people at MOCOMA are mostly Spanish, but there are some Swedish, Estonians, French, too. I’m the only Romanian and they all say Romanian is hard to learn. I felt really satisfied when they started saying ‘neatza’ all day long, but soon found out they had completely forgotten the meaning of it. Can’t move on to the verbs, yet:))

I’m only here for one week and already had so many problems to deal with. First, my laptop broke and it took me a lot of Gent sightseeing to have it fixed. I doubt it there is any street of Gent I haven’t been on (or at least near to) in my everyday search for a compatible and affordable adapter. I gave up today and bought one for 70euro. I trembled at the sight of my laptop turning on, after such a long time of abstinence:)). And just when I was about to start a neverending chat, the lights were suddenly off. I waited and waited, everybody in the dorm started knocking and asking questions. And nothing. For the next 5 hours there was nothing.

The people at Sovoarte, the institution which owns the building, were so nice as to become unreachable. Just the thought of spending the entire weekend with no electricity drove me mad. I went for a walk to calm down and asked a lady on the street what was the name and phone number of the service in charge. She gave me the name, but couldn’t remember the number, so she advised I should call the info for the exact number. Which I did, just that the nice lady over the info put the answering machine on to tell me the number. So there I was, all frustrated and non-Dutch speaking, getting the precious information I needed…in Dutch!!! I went out again and asked some neighbours to call Electrabel for me. I explained what the problem was and the man offered to come and take a look. He was an electrician, lucky me! But he couldn’t see the problem when he checked the pannel. Taking ‘lucky me’ back. They called the service anyway…

Two hours later, we still had no electricity, but there was the Electrabel man in our house, writing a 135 euro!!!! bill for Sovoarte. The problem was in the basement, not outside the house, so he said it was not whithin his responsibility. He advised, though, that we go down and check for some red button to switch on. Quite a professional, what can I say! Finally Max, from Germany, had the guts to go down there and he brought the light back to us )

Electrabel, your people suck! Sovoarte, you suck, too! How dare you not answer you emergency number? We might as well have burned down the house! Hope you enjoy your 135euro bill. It should come with a note saying ‘you suck’ in German, Romanian, Sweden, Estonian and finally Dutch.
From Papegaaistraat no. 19, with love!

I thought it would be nice to start this blog (which I’ve been thinking about for a while now) by sharing this dream I had a few hours earlier. I had a cat nap after lunch (that wine must have had smth to do with it:p) and woke up with this queer dream in my mind.

Classes at Artevelde had started and I was a few hours late. Don’t remember exactly why, but I seemed to be coming straight from the airport. All messed up and confused, I entered a class-room which looked like the one I used to have classes in back in highschool. Nobody seemed to mind me, the lecturer went on with his speech and I sat next to I girl whose face reminded me of Elise. Long live Facebook! She was Elise, indeed. Luckily, she was as kind as she seems in her photos. She told me I had not missed anything important and started packing her things. ‘Where’s everydoby going?’, I asked. ‘Well, home. That’s all for the day…’, she said.

Everybody smiled at me while I started thinking this can’t just be true. Elise took my hand and started telling me all these things about her and her friends back home. In French!!! ‘Lovely accent’, I thought, ‘but I can’t keep up with you’. With my decent knowledge of French, I couldn’t make out a word she was saying. And here comes the funniest part: Artevelde University College was a multi-storeyed building with no staircase, no elevator. People climbed to go up. As for going down, there was this metal, firemen-like….thing. Half staircase, half bar. Got no clue what it actually was. All I know is that the descent was quick.:)) And then I woke up.

That’s my first Belgium-related dream. I’m curious what Freud would have to say about it:)).