Maybe you wondered why there was no post yesterday, or maybe you were relieved that there was a break in my silly talk. Anyway, there's reason to that. Yesterday, I was in the office for the second day, and guess what: during the day I developed a terrible cold, with headache, sore throat, and fever. Nice, isn't it.

Well, good that in this country, they sell Nurofen and stuff like that in grocery shop... For, like, £3. :-) So I went across the street to local Tesco yesterday, forgot to take my passport with me, saw a notice saying that these medicines were age-restricted and that people buying this could be required to prove their age, wondered whether a Czech driving licence would do, finally did not have to show my ID, and went straight to bed.

As you can see, I could as well title this post 'misery continues', or something similar, because this is really incredible. At this moment, I need to be super-smart and super-alert and show everyone how good (smart, quick, incredibly capable) I am, and instead of that, I feel cold, I shiver, and I cannot focus on nothing. :( What is this...

OK, more complaints to follow.

I still need to pass some exams to be able to do my job in the UK. A nasty surprise is that you cannot take any books to these UK exams. Wait, what? Nooooo! (And a tiny voice in my head immediately starts: why have I opted for this? I've had enough exam stress for the whole life!)

To help people like me, who are not qualified (yet), my company provides some (obviously very good) in-house training, but... I came late! It all started in September, and today I received email with lesson 14, which means that there are 13 lessons before this one (yes, I started to panic). Then I opened my lesson 14, and found it to be full of things I just don't understand, concepts I've never heard of before, and things I have no idea about (yes, my panic grows and propagates).

I also sort of cannot get used to my new office. I recognize faces of less than 1/3 of people, and this causes me quite some stress. (I have no idea about names of these people, I do not recognize them when I meet them in the lift, I have no idea who they are and what to talk with them about.) In the office, there are maybe 10x more people than my previous office. More people are talking, making phone calls, and walking around, and I have difficulties getting used to that noise and disruptions. I have only a vague idea of how to make coffee and where to find stuff. I must take my access card with me when I go to WC, but I just forget in 50% cases. And so on, and so on.

Every hour or so, I discover something I do not know, or something I have very little experience with. I feel ashamed, sad and depressed. In fact it's all exactly like all this prejudice about people from eastern Europe who do not know yogurt and do not have hot water at home - you just have to replace yogurt and hot water with job-related experience, and here you are.

And, as a final misery of today, I've left my access card on my desk in the office.