The Anghel Family Conspiracies – Ep.1

PROFILE: My Grandmother – analyst, sociologist, psychiatrist, private investigator, prosecutor, authoritarian leader, oracle extraordinaire. Born and raised on a village farm, she spent most of her working years as a nurse before dedicating herself to the experimental task of raising ME. If I had to think about one word that describes her best, it would be suspicion. With Grandma, there is no such thing as ‘innocent until proved guilty’. We’re all guilty. Of everything. And it’s only a matter of time before she gets to the bottom of it.

To the inexperienced eye, Grandma represents the humble Eastern European old woman with a garden, who cooks, cleans and takes care of every living soul within her jurisdiction – that’s 3 cats, 7 dogs, me, mom and stepdad. Many have fallen victims to this intricate illusion of innocence and, for 14 years, I myself was naive enough to believe that Grandma had nothing to do with the intrigues surrounding my adolescence. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Beneath that apron hides the mastermind of a thousand conspiracies, to whom even the likes of Dan Brown should offer their respects. Sitting on our terrace, with her fat female cat in her lap, Grandma observes, plots and carefully collects data from our casual conversations over dinner, only to piece everything together into one big speculation that baffles the common sense out of me and my mother.

You also have to trust me IMG_20140826_181155 when I use the term ‘jurisdiction’ because her *Terms and Conditions always apply. Being the bo$$ of the land, all inhabitants must abide by her code of conduct. For instance, I can’t walk out of the house with a cleavage or a short dress and neither can I come back from a night out without being invited to an office (kitchen) interrogation the next day. Every unidentified car that stops in front of our gate is thoroughly inspected, a situation which often escalates if I happen to step out of it. And don’t think that I’m her only target – I may be the juiciest catalyst in our family but the last time my mother arrived late from a business dinner, she was accused of having an affair.

So you can see how living with my Grandmother can be a stimulating experience.

Last year, I had a really hard time going though my year in Computer Science. Five months into the course, I was sad and hopeless and computer illiterate, close to giving up as I was to failing the year. Then, during a moment of lucid thinking, I decided to stay in England for the spring break and study study study, despite breaking my usual habit of flying back home every holiday.

For a while, my decision went unnoticed, until one day, as I was sweating off my brain in the library, I receive a call from my mom:

‘Do me a favour. Log onto Skype so that your grandmother can SEE that you’re in your room. She suspects that the reason you didn’t come home this spring is because you’re secretly visiting your father in Italy.’

For a person who hasn’t been exposed to anything but communism and 21st century country life, Grandma sure makes some bold accusations. So I log onto Skype, I talk to her and explain my reasons for skipping the home visit. Looking back on our conversation, I assume that all my talk was for nothing because the one and only thing she responded to and didn’t hesitate to point out was that I got a bit chubby since the last time she saw me. I denied everything. Ok, maybe half of my wardrobe didn’t fit me at the time, but I was stressed and the only thing that kept me going with my studies was Ben & Jerry’s Caramel Chew Chew – end of story.

After that episode, my mom reported that Grandma was a peace and that ‘our operation’ had been a success. Needless to say, a week later I receive another phone call from my mother:

‘Child?’

‘Yes?’

‘I need you to be honest about something.’

‘I didn’t fail yet, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

‘No, no that. Listen, I need to know: are you pregnant?’

Let me just say that nobody could ‘read my poker face’ at that moment.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Well… your Grandmother thinks this is the case.’

But it really wasn’t and I demanded an explanation. Turns out, Grandma had pulled off another one of her flawless inferences based on the following premises:

the child refuses to come home on holiday despite having done so for the past 2 years
she never sacrificed her free time for studying, EVER
she obviously gained weight
there is no available information on her romantic life
her mother is always hiding something

THEREFORE, she must be pregnant.

Touché, Grandma, touché…

DISCLAIMER: All the above remarks are made with love. In our family, Grandma is highly cherished – for keeping us on top of our game, among many other things. She also sends me home-made pretzels in England, so my loyalty to her is absolute.

5 Facts About Being a Red Head

With 4 years’ experience of being red headed, I think I’m air-tight qualified to speak the TRUTH.

1. People will judge you. With red on your head you’re asking to be labelled and, mark my words, it won’t always be pretty. You’ll be a ‘slut’ in Eastern Europe and you’ll be either ‘intriguing’, ‘fun’ or ‘trouble’ in the West. ‘Attention whore’ is always an option. ‘Emo’ maybe, if you tend to wear dark colours. If you’re overweight and a red head, people will assume you have a complex and treat you with contempt. On the other hand, if you’re hot and a red head, do not generally expect to get along with women (though I think Google image search might have a hand in this). Children will look at you and call you ‘Cruella’ despite the inaccuracy, while Americans might go as far as taking you for a socialist. Expect the classic inference of ‘ginger therefore no soul’ to come up pretty often too.

2. Your fashion senses will be tingling like crazy. Why? Because you’re in grave danger of pulling off the wrong colour combinations and I’ll take you through it just to prove it:

Dark green makes you look like a Christmas tree and white clothes will stain from your hair. Wear yellow and people might stop at you instead of the traffic light. Black is safe but it might attract unwanted attention from Goths, whereas pink only helps if you’re going for ‘grotesque bimbo’. Grey just isn’t an option and, as for blue, you’ll need someone with you at all times to Photoshop down the contrast. The best you can do is use (the right shade of) red to accessorize and accept your fate.

I’m sorry but I never said that being a red head was easy.

3. You will have to adapt your environment. That’s because the red colour gets on EVERYTHING. Clothing, bedsheets, towels, headphones and… walls. Hence, instead of fighting the power with soap and frustration, you’ll have start ‘chameleorating‘. I’m not so sure about the walls, but every other item shouldn’t be a problem.

4. You will be harder to forget. Take that to be your superpower. When you walk into a room, people will notice you’re there. On the downside, they’ll also notice when you aren’t. You need to be aware that, as a red head, you’re pretty high up on people’s mental check-lists, so going incognito will be hard to achieve. Also, don’t try being anyone’s mistress – those red hairs stand out on beds and floors like they own the place.

5. Once you go red, there’s a chance you can never go back. At least not without losing your sense of identity. With time, people will associate you with the colour and they will start calling you ‘Red’, or refer to you as ‘the red head’. Soon enough, you yourself will be referring to the colour of your hair more often than you should and you’ll even sometimes use it to justify your actions. ‘Yeah, I can pull off a stunt like that – I’m a red head.’ You’ll notice how the hair colour slooooowly infiltrates almost every aspect of your life until, one day, you’ll think about what you used to be like before going red… and not remember. Suffice to say, if there’s no memory of that, neither will there be a vision of the future with you wearing any other hair colour. Personally, I dread the day I will wake up to see a brunette in the mirror. It even gives me nightmares. Talking about not being a red head, hi hi, it’s funny – until it’s not. And I’ve already warned my therapist about it.

Undoing the Curse of Applying for Grad Jobs

Being a final year sounds to me like being in labour for 10 months. They say that it’s painful and that you have no choice but to keep pushing. Not only is there a dissertation to be written and re-written, but you also need time to cancel your Facebook profile, to think about what’s next and, more importantly, to do something about it. I suspect this is where grad applications come in. Unless you’re doing a masters degree to delay contact with the real world (which I am not), grad jobs are the latest #trend in coping with your new adult life. Rumour has it that they pay well and can even restore meaning to your work after graduation. All I can say is let’s just hope this is more than a myth.

On that note, I’m writing this article because I am applying for grad jobs at the moment and I really need to get myself into thinking that every damned application is worth it. With internships, I used to gamble my chances because the alternative was spending a free summer in the sun. As of July 2015, that alternative will DIE and, with it, a zombie alternative will emerge, involving spending the rest of my young adulthood living with my parents and shopping at Primark – so not my priority.

But enough complaining. I’ll save that for later posts. For now, using the power of suggestion, I will lay out the benefits of pushing through those endless, tedious, mind numbing grad job applications:

1. For one thing, as you get ready to sell yourself, you get to look back over your achievements and realize that you haven’t been so useless for the past 3 years (unless you really were and your CV is 2 paragraphs long – in that case, I would recommend therapy)

2. Never say no to a chance of using your written communication skills. These days, it’s pretty hard to give up hashtags, getto jargon and ‘like like’ in casual dialogues. I’d say job that applications have the power to keep you speaking Human more than anything else.

3. All those interview and online app questions set the scene for some serious introspection. ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Why do you want to work for the company? How do you handle failure?’ These questions have a point in that they kind of guide you through the thinking process you’d otherwise use if you weren’t so desperate, impatient or unmotivated. It would be good practice to consider these issues anyway but the problem is we don’t, because we’re too young and wild and free to care yet, so thank you, multinationals, for keeping us down to earth.

4. Let’s not forget about those online numerical, logical, situational reasoning, killmenow assessments. Personally I hate them but they remind me of a good piece of parental advice: ‘In life, you will have to do things that you don’t like – it’s unavoidable. What speaks about your character is how well you handle them’. So if it’s timed math tests that speak about my character, SO BE IT! – I will practice the crap out of them until I score max points and move on with my life in glory.

5. I hate to admit it but Snoop Dogg is right: keep your mind on the money and the money on your mind. So I might as well try coding this next one:

if (grad job) {

salary && bonuses == Marc Jacobs, Adidas, Estee Lauder, maybePrada

else

Primark}

Did anyone say Primark? Ok, it’s time to start another grad job application.

I bet you’re wondering why now.

Red, Right & Wrong – a display of the ‘moral high-ground’ that comes with being a red head.

As if I’m not a loud mouth already, I now have a blog and I expect this to be an entertaining experience just because I live in England. People here do not meet up to share their drama, or complain or boast or generally RELATE to others. This island is a sad, sad corner of Europe, where I have to pay 5p/minute to call my girls back home and bitch about life. But since my appetite for human interaction has lowered significantly over the past few months, I’ve decided to take it online. Plus, this is a wonderful way of getting rid of the feedback loop that comes with sharing thoughts. I do want to be heard, I just don’t necessarily want to argue about it.

We can move on now.