Hair and there
Yesterday was an interesting day. I started at 7.00 am with me rolling out of bed after hitting snooze for an hour. I went to the kitchen to start making my breakfast and coffee, there I contemplated skipping the breakfast bit and just getting in the shower. I have wanted to go to the local dermatologist for a hair removal consultation for the past two weeks. I decided there was no time like now. I could get coffee and breakfast at work later. The doctors here mostly have hours like the dermatologist; Mo., Thurs, & Fri 7.00a to 11.00a and Tuesdays from 1.00p to 5.00p. These are what they call “spechstunden” or consultation hours, where you don’t need an appointment, you just show up and wait. In general I like the docs here better than in the states. Anyway, I got to his office at 7.40, as it is literally two blocks away from my apartment. I asked the receptionist if there was time to see the doctor before I had to be at work. She said it would only be a wait of about fifteen minutes. In receptionist speak that is usually only half the time you will wait. I usually double it. I did wait for fifteen minutes in the waiting room, and then another fifteen in the treatment room waiting for the doctor.
The doc came in finally, Dr. Schulz, and we began to speak about what I am after. I told him I was the person that wrote him the email earlier in the week. It reminded him immediately what I was there for. He looked at my face and asked what color the hair was, I replied red, brown and blonde. I told him I have the hope that the treatments will get rid of the remaining darker hair, and with luck some of the blonde as well. I also showed him my chest and what little hair is left. My chest hair was mostly black or brown, and consequently not much is left after the Light-sheer treatments. He asked me about the other treatments that I have had. He gave me some information about the treatments and the price list. My face and neck 150€, and my chest 50€. Those prices aren’t bad at all, and that’s per treatment. I will probably need about another 4 or 5 treatments to get rid of at least the darker hairs. He asked how I was with pain…I said maybe not so good now with the hormones. My last laser treatments were done with the machine as high as it could go, 40 J/cm^2. That hurt pretty good. He offered Emla to numb the area before for another 20€. I decided to try it without for the first time. I hope I don’t regret it. I used Emla when I was doing electrolysis, but it rarely worked very well and was about 28€ for a small tube. It’s difficult to use because you have to enclose it somehow with an occlusive dressing. I ended up using saran wrap which worked pretty well. I made an appointment for the 27th at 5.30p. As it turns out this was a mistake to make an appointment on that day. Read on and you will found out why. I’m glad I decided to go there today.
I got to work and bought the breakfast of champions in the canteen, a salami and buttered brotchen, a pretzel, an OJ and large Vittel water. And I am worried about cholesterol?! While riding across the campus to my building, I passed Volker going the other way. I then remembered that he had invited everyone to breakfast today to celebrate his quitting. I realized this after having already bought something to eat. I got to my office and there was Heike. I was so glad to see her and told her so. That made my day. She said everything was going okay with Clemens’ chemo so far, excellent! We began to talk about me and how the disclosure went with Jens, my supervisor. I filled her in on my progress since the last time I saw her three weeks ago. She told me that she finds all the things I am doing for myself very interesting, or interessant. She’s so inspiring and loves to laugh. I went down to Volker’s going away party to find leberkäse sandwiches. Even better for my cholesterol. After chowing, I went upstairs to have a quick smoke before the all day in hell meeting was to start. I got to the meeting a little late, oops. We took all day to develop an agenda for the two day marathon presentation that we are to make on the 27th and 28th of this month to our new owners, Horiba. I didn’t think that I would end up presenting anything, as I was the lowest ranking person in the room. They chose me to present the electro-mechanical and machine performance portion of the presentation. Cool! I have wanted to do a presentation for a long time, but have rarely had the opportunity. I have an advantage over most of my counterparts; I am a native English speaker. The real new official company language will be English. I also want to get to meet the people who will be making decisions from our new owners. I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle should they decide to dissolve our product group. On the other hand, if they find our presentation unappealing, that may carry a stigma to it and therefore me also by association.
All that angst aside, I have a half an hour segment of the presentation. I go on from 2.00p to 2:30p. I want to put together an interesting little ditty with lots of colorful pictures. I want to shine and therefore be remembered by the Horibans. I have sat through many a painful presentation that were ill prepared and obviously not rehearsed. I often wondered how these people manage to sell anything. Here’s my chance to put my money where my mouth is. That’s a really stupid cliché. Anyway I want to do a good job. We all have a week to develop our segments to be turned in to the organizer on, or before, Friday 8a. We shall see.
Doc Wang, aka Jim-Bim, came to visit me in my office. I wanted to go speak with him in the last couple of days. He caught up with me first. We discussed me coming to work in his group should anything happen with my present loser group. He said that I would provide ideal support for him, since he must do a lot of the higher level calcs himself simply because he lacks the competence in his group for anyone else to do it. I have the experience and skills that he is looking for. I would gladly come in a heart beat. The problem is this: I was brought here specifically to work on this development project which was supposed to be our solution for a profitable future. They surely won’t let me ditch it now for a different product line. We agreed that I need to wait till the bitter end before making my move. He also told me something interesting. One of product groups was moved to Detroit completely and has a current order for a Chinese customer. The Chinese customer said they wouldn’t go to the states for meetings, but they would come to Germany. This may be an opportunity for me get in on the action, if the project is designed here. Hopefully the Detroit office won’t have enough capacity to do it. I think I have found my parachute.
I started writing this last night after I got home from work. I had called Mari to see if we were still on for a couple of beers. She said she would call back later after she finished some stuff at home. I had time to write a bit, but not enough as she called before I was finished. I rode my bike to their house in the cold, damp fall air. We walked to the bar named Pilhun. There weren’t too many people there as it was still pretty early. The Pilhun is one of those dive bars with bizarre pictures and objects nailed to the smoke stained walls. You can tell the relative age of the objects by how yellow and dusty they are. It’s sort of like pub archeology. Gives new meaning to carbon dating. Before too long, most of Mari and Christi’s circle of friends had shown up. Mari kept telling me that I shouldn’t think about moving back to the states. We talked a bit about the people around us at work and they have changed for the worst. She assured me that there are definitely options for me within the company, and that I should not let it upset me, but it’s hard not to. It’s just hard to let go and move on. Ten years of the same shit over and over again. It really wears you down after a while. I reassured her that I wasn’t going to go back anytime soon, because if I did, I wouldn’t be going back to Detroit, but to Massachusetts. Going back this soon would not be worth all the time and money spent to come back here. I would have to start from null if I went back now. No health insurance, no job, mooching off Jen and Diane. So here I will sit for a while.
The doc came in finally, Dr. Schulz, and we began to speak about what I am after. I told him I was the person that wrote him the email earlier in the week. It reminded him immediately what I was there for. He looked at my face and asked what color the hair was, I replied red, brown and blonde. I told him I have the hope that the treatments will get rid of the remaining darker hair, and with luck some of the blonde as well. I also showed him my chest and what little hair is left. My chest hair was mostly black or brown, and consequently not much is left after the Light-sheer treatments. He asked me about the other treatments that I have had. He gave me some information about the treatments and the price list. My face and neck 150€, and my chest 50€. Those prices aren’t bad at all, and that’s per treatment. I will probably need about another 4 or 5 treatments to get rid of at least the darker hairs. He asked how I was with pain…I said maybe not so good now with the hormones. My last laser treatments were done with the machine as high as it could go, 40 J/cm^2. That hurt pretty good. He offered Emla to numb the area before for another 20€. I decided to try it without for the first time. I hope I don’t regret it. I used Emla when I was doing electrolysis, but it rarely worked very well and was about 28€ for a small tube. It’s difficult to use because you have to enclose it somehow with an occlusive dressing. I ended up using saran wrap which worked pretty well. I made an appointment for the 27th at 5.30p. As it turns out this was a mistake to make an appointment on that day. Read on and you will found out why. I’m glad I decided to go there today.
I got to work and bought the breakfast of champions in the canteen, a salami and buttered brotchen, a pretzel, an OJ and large Vittel water. And I am worried about cholesterol?! While riding across the campus to my building, I passed Volker going the other way. I then remembered that he had invited everyone to breakfast today to celebrate his quitting. I realized this after having already bought something to eat. I got to my office and there was Heike. I was so glad to see her and told her so. That made my day. She said everything was going okay with Clemens’ chemo so far, excellent! We began to talk about me and how the disclosure went with Jens, my supervisor. I filled her in on my progress since the last time I saw her three weeks ago. She told me that she finds all the things I am doing for myself very interesting, or interessant. She’s so inspiring and loves to laugh. I went down to Volker’s going away party to find leberkäse sandwiches. Even better for my cholesterol. After chowing, I went upstairs to have a quick smoke before the all day in hell meeting was to start. I got to the meeting a little late, oops. We took all day to develop an agenda for the two day marathon presentation that we are to make on the 27th and 28th of this month to our new owners, Horiba. I didn’t think that I would end up presenting anything, as I was the lowest ranking person in the room. They chose me to present the electro-mechanical and machine performance portion of the presentation. Cool! I have wanted to do a presentation for a long time, but have rarely had the opportunity. I have an advantage over most of my counterparts; I am a native English speaker. The real new official company language will be English. I also want to get to meet the people who will be making decisions from our new owners. I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle should they decide to dissolve our product group. On the other hand, if they find our presentation unappealing, that may carry a stigma to it and therefore me also by association.
All that angst aside, I have a half an hour segment of the presentation. I go on from 2.00p to 2:30p. I want to put together an interesting little ditty with lots of colorful pictures. I want to shine and therefore be remembered by the Horibans. I have sat through many a painful presentation that were ill prepared and obviously not rehearsed. I often wondered how these people manage to sell anything. Here’s my chance to put my money where my mouth is. That’s a really stupid cliché. Anyway I want to do a good job. We all have a week to develop our segments to be turned in to the organizer on, or before, Friday 8a. We shall see.
Doc Wang, aka Jim-Bim, came to visit me in my office. I wanted to go speak with him in the last couple of days. He caught up with me first. We discussed me coming to work in his group should anything happen with my present loser group. He said that I would provide ideal support for him, since he must do a lot of the higher level calcs himself simply because he lacks the competence in his group for anyone else to do it. I have the experience and skills that he is looking for. I would gladly come in a heart beat. The problem is this: I was brought here specifically to work on this development project which was supposed to be our solution for a profitable future. They surely won’t let me ditch it now for a different product line. We agreed that I need to wait till the bitter end before making my move. He also told me something interesting. One of product groups was moved to Detroit completely and has a current order for a Chinese customer. The Chinese customer said they wouldn’t go to the states for meetings, but they would come to Germany. This may be an opportunity for me get in on the action, if the project is designed here. Hopefully the Detroit office won’t have enough capacity to do it. I think I have found my parachute.
I started writing this last night after I got home from work. I had called Mari to see if we were still on for a couple of beers. She said she would call back later after she finished some stuff at home. I had time to write a bit, but not enough as she called before I was finished. I rode my bike to their house in the cold, damp fall air. We walked to the bar named Pilhun. There weren’t too many people there as it was still pretty early. The Pilhun is one of those dive bars with bizarre pictures and objects nailed to the smoke stained walls. You can tell the relative age of the objects by how yellow and dusty they are. It’s sort of like pub archeology. Gives new meaning to carbon dating. Before too long, most of Mari and Christi’s circle of friends had shown up. Mari kept telling me that I shouldn’t think about moving back to the states. We talked a bit about the people around us at work and they have changed for the worst. She assured me that there are definitely options for me within the company, and that I should not let it upset me, but it’s hard not to. It’s just hard to let go and move on. Ten years of the same shit over and over again. It really wears you down after a while. I reassured her that I wasn’t going to go back anytime soon, because if I did, I wouldn’t be going back to Detroit, but to Massachusetts. Going back this soon would not be worth all the time and money spent to come back here. I would have to start from null if I went back now. No health insurance, no job, mooching off Jen and Diane. So here I will sit for a while.
posted by Christine Cormier @ 12:57 PM
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