My old working life 以往職業生涯

A few years ago at work I was assigned to a project and flew to Brussels every week for four months. 幾年前還在英國工作時，我被分派到一個在比利時分公司的項目。連續四個月每星期都要飛去比利時。

I became such an expert at packing that it would only take me ten minutes to pack my case every Sunday evening.  I had Monday morning down to a clockwork from the moment I got out of bed at 0430 to sitting down on the 0635 flight from Heathrow Airport.  On Thursday afternoon I would catch the flight back to London if all went well, otherwise it would be Friday afternoon.  That was my working life for four months. 那時候我變了一個收拾行李的熟手技工，每個星期日晚上只需要十分鐘就可以收拾好一個星期所需要的行李。星期一大清早，從0430鬧鐘響起那一刻，到我坐上0635倫敦希斯路機場開往布魯塞爾班機，中間這兩小時我安排到得分秒必爭，絕對不會浪費或多用無為的一分鐘。如果那個星期工作順利的話，我就會乘坐星期四下午的班機回倫敦，否則就要延遲到星期五。這就是我那四個月的工作生涯。

During those months I never set foot in Brussels city centre as our office was about 20 km away at a place called Mechelen. Other than the office, hotel, many restaurants and a few pubs, I didn’t even get to see much of Mechelen either.  That’s what happens when you are working with a bunch of Brits, Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian and many other European colleagues, and mainly guys, on a major project.  在那幾個月中，我從來未有踏足布魯塞爾市中心，因為我們的分公司在離開市中心約二十公里一個名叫Mechelen的地方。除了辦公室，旅館，不少餐廳及幾家酒吧外，我根本沒有機會看到其他地方。這就是當你跟一大群英籍，比利時籍，荷蘭籍，德籍，意大利籍及很多其他歐洲國家同事，還多是男生一起工作時，必然會遇到的情況。

It sounds great, working with an international team, meeting people from all over Europe, all expenses paid, not to mention the project was the most significant and biggest for our Belgium office and was constantly on the US board’s radar.  It was something definitely worthwhile to have on my CV. 其實，聽來好像蠻不錯，可以認識很多歐洲的同事，了解不同文化，跟一個國際化的團隊一起工作，所有出差費都是公司付。最重要就是這個項目當時是我們比利時分公司最重要及最大的項目，美國總公司對我們期待很大。所以是一個很值得寫在工作履歷上的經驗。

However, there were some Monday mornings when I absolutely hated it when my alarm went off.  If you have ever lived on UK you will know how depressing it is to go to work in a cold winter morning.  When you have to do it at 0430, that is even more painful. 但在這四個月中，我也試過在星期一早上鬧鐘響起時真的會覺得很討厭。因為如果你曾經在英國工作過，你就會知道在冬天的星期一早上要上班是何等沮喪的事情。尤其如果還要在0430起床那就更加痛苦噢!

Despite all this, the best part about the project was not that it ended at last, but we actually won the contract!  A few months later I went back to Belgium for the last time to do a handover, and more importantly for the party to celebrate the win. I even managed to grab a few hours to finally do a tour of Brussels city centre! Belgium was actually very nice. 話雖如此，項目終於都完成，但這並不是最開心的事情。因為最開心的事情就是客戶跟我們簽合約!幾個月之後我再一次回到比利時，這一次是參加慶祝派對。我甚至有幾個小時空檔可以到布魯塞爾市中心遊覽。比利時真是一個很不錯的國家!

So this is a snapshot of my old working life.這就是我以往職業生涯的一小段插曲。