First day at work!
Well - yesterday changed. It went from super sunny and beautiful to mega AIDS rainy and almost biblical style storm in the blink of an eye. We had a thunderstorm on practically on top of us with super loud thunder claps and a definitely biblical hail storm.
Before this Dawn introduced me to the neighbour - Giuseppe and his wife. Giuseppe speaks English well and is a yokel farmer. He keeps a small garden just outside our place and grows all sorts of strange local things, there are a lot of cabbage things, chillis, weird orange fruits, oranges and lemons and strange variegated squashes. He showed me around and gave me some chillis which are now hanging to dry - is that the best way? Any tips for drying chillis? Annie? He also introduced me to the strange orange fruit you can also see in the picture - he called them "pomi" - they are almost rottenly moist - but this is spot on according to Giuseppe. Also he told me a tale that people told their children - if you cut open the seeds of the pomi, and cut them exactly in half you can see a spoon on one side and a fork on the other! I tried to do this and cut a slightly bent spoon on one half and a headless fork on the other side. Picture included. Also picture of chillis and pomis, with a pen to give an indication of the actual size.
When we drove to the shops yesterday we saw the "walky on their own" dogs - Annie take note! Two dogs, strutting down the road, on a narrow winding bit where they are just removing some of the too old vines, not worried about us at all, and not really getting out of the way. Just looked like they were out and about for a St. Asano walk together.
So - first day. Into HR at 9 and then spent ages and ages signing hundreds and thousands of forms - don't think I've ever signed so many things. Planet Italia strikes again. Funniest part was the Italian descriptions of "single" - for males it's "celebetaire" and for women it's "nubilie" - or something like that.
Then the local bank manager came in to see me, and another new starter from Denmark called Mikkel - he will be going to where his family are in Munich every weekend for the next year. Ayeeee. Bank manager was very nice and quite humble for the bank manager to come into the office to see us. Tried to go and get my laptop and blackberry but there was an issue with the computer server in Marburg (Germany) so my account was not created properly and I will not be able to work until Friday afternoon. Blackberry won't be sorted for two weeks or so. As nice as this sounds it means I won't be able to get much done which could be an issue.
Got escorted by my admin up to the office. The campus is huge, encompassing not only Novartis but also fragments of the University of Siena (one of the oldest universities - founded in 1240) and other small companies such as Toscana Life Sciences. Not sure of the size but probably several thousand people. The campus is sprawling and contains a real hodgepodge of buildings, nestling in some classic Tuscan hills. It also contains wonderfully old Cedar trees, replete with huge pine cones nestling like Sherards of giant shrews (I tried to find the collective noun for shrews - and failed. Maybe they don't really collect. So I used Sherard. Those who know the woods in WGC will understand why!). If they fell down they could really do some damage. My building is one of the newer ones to Novartis. Recently the campus has expanded and Novartis bought a 17th century villa right at the top of the hill. Our building is not the main villa (that's where the canteen is) but maybe the summer house - there is a swimming pool (sadly empty right now) next to us and apparently in the basement of my building is one of the two gyms on campus. I heard some weights clinking around so that would be ace! Also there was a stunning sunset from the office window this evening.
Since I don't have a latop I can't do much. Got my pass with my awful photo on it! Met my group and gave a little speech in Italian to them (thanks Pablo - they smiled so it can't have been that rude!) and then didn't do much else except for sort out some bits and bobs.
Lunch was great - had some gnocchi and some beef and a yoghurt. Lovely food, in the villa.
Left just before 6 and am home and tired. Working and not working is tough. Yawn. Night nights.
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