Catalan Communication

Nothing good happens after midnight.

Except my ideas. Important, life-changing ideas.

I think I have found one possible answer of what to do after graduation.

Now, I have had an idea of what to do a few years after graduation, but that job will start 8 months later. I have been thinking and thinking (and thinking) about what to do during that awkward months. I know for sure that I don’t want to stay here, so the answer is going abroad, for another temporary job. We will see.

As for the study abroad, or rather the post-study abroad, my plans are almost consolidated. I will hear whether or not I will the scholarship on February 28th, which is fast approaching. Although the scholarship is sure as heck important, I think it will not have significant effects on the last steps of my plan. I won’t announce them now because, well, I’m a bit dramatic and very much superstitious.

I will say that whatever I have been plotting requires some communication via e-mail. For some relevant reasons that have to do with Marc Marquez, all my e-mails have been sent to someone, somewhere in Catalonia. The first one, as I have mentioned in the previous post, was sent to a hostel in a middle of nowhere, requesting more information about the price. I tried to be as polite as possible, even apologizing for my broken written Spanish. Then I went on and on about how much I would love to spend some time there and that I very much am looking forward to an important event that is happening in August. Can you imagine my disappointment when all I received back was one sentence? “El precio es de 25 por noche” (“The price is from 25 euros per night”). That’s it. THAT-IS-IT. The e-mail did not even begin with “Dear…” or even a “Hello…” Just that one sentence and then a first name.

The second e-mail is….how do I say…historic and unforgettable, but the best of all was that it was unexpected. You may not see this coming (ha, right), but I have recently applied for a membership of the Official Marc Marquez Fan Club that is based in his hometown. Somehow I have managed to submit a payment without the registration form going through, because I thought that I could fill it out and that go to make the payment and the form would be automatically submitted, but no. So that is how I got a super kind and caring e-mail from the president of the club, Marc’s uncle. You read that right, his U-N-C-L-E – as in the one by blood. Ok, I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m still excited to this day. This is what I got:

“Hello —–,

    We received paypal payment, but we have not received the    registration form?

    You Might fill?

http://fanclubmarcmarquez93.net/weblog/en/incripcion

    thanks”

After giving the first impression to my most favorite man’s uncle that I am a careless idiot, I gathered up courage and replied:

“Hello Ramon,

 

Thank you for reminding me. I just submitted the registration form. Please let me know if you have received it.

 

Sincerely,

Name”

 

It looks like I have learned my lesson from the hostel and even his first e-mail that I need to keep it short. I cannot judge for a whole country let alone a region (of Catalonia) that this is a “typical” or “proper” style and etiquette of electronic letter writing. But I still can’t help making comparisons and looking for the cultural differences. I may not be the best e-mail writer, but I will say that I have learned some crucial knowledge and experience from writing over 1,000 e-mails for my administrative (and completely voluntary) job at my university that although it is important to be concise, it is also equally important to not sound too terse and blunt. You have to ask something directly in an indirect way, if that makes sense. Either way, you would think that I have learned my lesson from the first three e-mails to the Catalans (three, because Uncle Ramon replied “Right, all ok. Regards”) that I need to keep it short and forget all the formality found in the kind of e-mail that I usually write. But no, I haven’t learned.

 

My most recent e-mail was sent to a recreational place for some kind of prestigious global sports, asking about the price and the options of combing certain programs, AND about the legality of something. All I got for a reply was the answer to possibility of combing the programs (which is a big, fat no, by the way). Unfortunately, the one thing that I needed to know the most was the last issue. No worries, I have it covered with my back up plan. I will post more details once I get it figured out. We will see.

 

 

 

~Brisa