This is how it works…every beginning of the week I am sending out an email informing 4-5 people that have expressed their wish or that reached their turn that it’s up to them for a short while to keep the blog ongoing.

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Still, no matter how much we enjoy writing for it or how many reviews we might get for our blog, we still don’t seem motivated enough to write on and keep the blog flowing on a weekly basis. After some inquires, I reached the conclusion that we are all finding some difficulties after all in mixing personal with professional worlds. Because let me tell you, this is not a typical blog where you can write yourself away with anything that blows in your mind.

No…With just a bit of exaggeration, every time we write, it feels just like we are walkers on a thin rope carrying a weighted pole, trying to maintain equilibrium and not lean too much on the right or too much on the left… But clearly… we are writing about EU, about our job within the institution, but we need to be careful to maintain a very clear equilibrium between this and thus avoid any possible confusion. Our work is to write and communicate to citizens, but under professionalism we are real people and we came up with this blog exactly to reinforce this statement.

Well, then I am wondering, should we try to preserve this mixing idea, but in the same time come up with more challenging and inspiring ones for us, the writers? Should we just back down, simplify it and just go for work related blog, news and everything we are usually writing about or should we become even more personal and closer to ‘real people’?

It feels just like we are walkers on a thin rope carrying a weighted pole, trying to maintain equilibrium.

My head goes around series of blogs, interviews, VIPs, news, more fun and inside touch, but I am continuously puzzled and cannot seem to brush off whether it would actually reach both writers’ and readers’ interest.

Let alone the bawl outs, I still cannot help but wondering, are we doing it right? How could we do it better?

Crazy webcommunciation unit

Then we have the blog here, where we really try to show a much human side of us, we want to give in the fact that we are real people as well. We speak 22 different languages within the Unit, we come from all around Europe, we all have our culture we are so proud of and this comes with totally different (and sometimes even strange for others) habits. This is quite visible from the inside, so my intention with this blog is to grab this and through it on the surface, for others to get a taste as well.

Here is a small compilation of ten things you most probably don’t know about our Unit:

Raffaella, our Italian editor, would never leave her office without her espresso cup.
• Evita and I:  you can feel the smell of galletes from the other end of the corridor. But make sure that whenever you feel like having a snack, Evita has dozens in there.
• Thibault likes music a lot. This I can see every day after 6 pm when he plays his music loud and starts singing. Does he hear the same thing as we do?
• Anete is the plant doctor for this corridor. Ever since we had discovered the power to cure half dead plants her bright perfectly sunny office has, it has been changing into a botanical garden.
• Speaking of light, opposite from this is Hanneke’s office; she likes to keep her office dark, lights off.
• Our head of unit has a special time frame, I was told. For a while, he used to keep an out of order clock on his wall and regularly check it out when late comers were popping by at work in the mornings.
• Josh likes tuna; my guess is that whenever he has his door closed, he is eating tuna and cottage cheese in the office.
• Please try to stay for more than 5 minutes without a jacket in Hanna’s office (Finnish editor) and let me know what you think afterwards.
• Whenever he needs a break, Pavel likes juggling, quite a good show, I admit!

I have no idea how you find all these, but for me, one cannot possibly demand for an extra proof – we are all just humans, I say.

What if the entire world would have diverse superpowers and we would have the same super jobs in a super powered Parliament? Well, then it is time for super Lisbon to come along… But that is another issue which I will not deal with now. So, coming back to childish wishes, I made a small survey among my colleagues to find out about their own superpowers wanna-have.

“Power tends to corrupt let alone superpower. So thanks, but no thanks”

Anete would like to be able to teleport from her cosy office in Brussels directly in the middle of the plenary in Strasbourg, afterwards dinner on a beach in the Caribbeans while being back on time for the following working day.

Our photographer, Pietro, wants to be able to freeze time whenever or how long he feels like. To be honest, he is one of the visionary ones since he chose the right career that is getting him the closest possible to his desired superpower, or am I mistaken?

We do have one super-hero in our team

Steve on the other hand would travel in time so as to discover on his own and check the accuracy of all the historical details and EU facts over passing the subjective results the modern search engines might offer. In any case, it’s very likely that he will meet Cristina in his past or future journeys, since they are both looking for the same power.

Just when you think it cannot get stranger than this, Florent would be very eager to show off with his walking on water ability. However, I am wondering whether he was just slightly subtle , whilst he had a much more religiously related power in mind…

Tibo, well, this is another story… Tibo wishes to have the power of controlling the minds of the others. Imagine working together with somebody who can actually read your mind and then control it according to his own views and perspectives. Well, hopefully for our team, this isn’t going to happen!

We would have some super healers in the Unit as well, thanks to Josh and Petra, who will be safe in front of any ceiling fall that might occur in Strasbourg every now and then, and we wouldn’t have to worry either while having them around.

Given all this superpower madness, we would never know when Raffaella and Asta would be around since their power would be to become invisible whenever they want to. So? Who closed that window then?

Some of us would be greedy as well, as I was very surprised to find out about Kurt’s super power. He would like to have the ability to take the powers of all the others. Well, this is what I call too much super power series watching, right Sylar?

Personally, I would like to have kameleon abilities, and be able to cloak, change appearance and infiltrate everywhere I want, without people necessarily realizing it’s me. But what happens if I will enjoy too much being you?

Still, not everybody wants to have a superpower and I think it’s good to keep a balance here as well: “Power tends to corrupt let alone superpower. So thanks, but no thanks” said one of our editor.

But then again, it is Christmas and I think we can all make wishes, even if most likely we will not find them under the Christmas tree, wrapped in shiny paper and tied with red ribbon… Can’t we?

Merry Christmas everybody and may all your wishes come true!

Have somebody seen Anete?

Apparently the perfect combination for such an office is a smooth mixture between the elements mentioned above, between personal, yet mysterious touch. Well, this kind of office and place belongs to our Latvian editor, Anete.

Her favourite object in the office is the picture of Himalaya behind her desk. “It is from the Russian painter and philosopher Nicholas Roehrich. His pictures have always inspired me. At some point it also turned out that a picture of a mountain behind one’s desk gives strength and protection according to the principles of Feng Shui”.

Well, with a bit of a more personal note, she went on… “Both pictures with the Cuban musicians are a spontaneous present from my brother. I saw them on the floor at his place, liked them and he said – you can have them. They are cheerful and remind me of my brother.

The perfect combination for such an office is a smooth mixture between the elements mentioned above, between personal, yet mysterious touch.

Although preserving the same charm, this is yet a different type of office than the ones I have seen so far. It is simple, personal, yet gives a bit of mysterious taste. It belongs to Anete… and I am heading again for the laughs!