A perverse and often baffling state of affairs exists in our Holy Capital: our most talented souls are rarely the same ones collecting the booty.

People, blessed with skills and experience, aren't clocking as many ducats as those assorted knuckleheads and goons who while away their time, sleeping, over on the Lesser Side -- and on our tax dime, no less! (Not mentioning any names, of course, but the Austrian Count is definitely on my faeces-list now that he's been forced to eat humble pie over a certain former mayor from Vsetin).

Because we Czechs are a concrete people -- admiring examples, shunning visionary ideal-seeking behaviour, and not thinking too far into the future -- I'll tell you what I'm talking about:

Translators and interpreters.


So let me tell you about a friend I have in town...

Yes, samozrejme, she's female, and yes, she's gorgeous. (Who else does "the ADM" hang around?!)

The gal speaks three languages (count em!), drinks like a sailor, is a diligent grandchild, dresses like a fox, and smells positively sensational. In short, she's a man's wet dream.

What sets her apart from the other XX chromosomal walking Nivea billboards in our Holy Capital is that she isn't only someone I play "house" with and probe with my doctor's tools, she's also got talent up the wazoo.

She's smarter than most people I know. Smarter than a lot of the bosses I've had in this city, that is, before I become independently wealthy (and considering the number of advanced degrees they have, that's saying heaps).

Following a recent shower and rub down session, this girl hands me a copy of eminent Polish agit-prop man's, Adam Michnik's, 1990's tome about his involvements with Solidarnosc. I'm talking about a thick 400pp bad boy -- a heavy momma, in other words -- so I drag it all the way home and tuck into it that very same night.

I'm proud to announce -- it has been one of the more delicious books I've read this oh-eight. My blood rushes to my nethers just thinking about it and who gave it to me, truth be told.

You do, of course, realize that all this comes from a girl who would look sumptuous wrapped in a newspaper?

But the point was that this same girl -- let's refer to her by the shaft-softening moniker of Grezelda -- simply cannot earn a living doing what she was made to do -- which is simultaneously translate.

I've often asked her why.

So on the last occasion we got together, Grezelda wips out a cocktail napkin and jots down her Top Three Reasons:

1) she's unwilling to kowtow to the fat slobs' lascivious demands during professional mixers and networking events -- places where people in her profession normally head to make contacts and secure jobs.

According to G, she's unwilling to engage in bottom pinching, won't do the "dirty looks" innuendo thing across the gilded room, won't bat her eyelids at bearded old men, and will absolutely never engage in sexual favours (the fact that most of these politicos are married is hardly an impediment, for them).

2) she's unwilling to "prove herself" -- for free -- during various EU confabs going on around Prague, which her would-be employers have often asked her to as a way to break into the business.

Grezelda tells me how she basically puts her bosses to the test: when they start asking her whether she can translate from English to Czech and back again, she basically begins simultaneously translating on the spot! I nearly tossed my cookies laughing.

3) she's unwilling to go to a translating academy in order to obtain her so-called "qualifications" for her profession.

I won't reveal the some of the names of the people she's worked for -- as that would be totally unethical of me, and I'm not a Czechoslovak politician -- though when I heard her short list, I was gobsmacked her superiors would have the brass testicles to ask her to go back to schule.

I mean, what better proof that she can get the job done than by calling around to check references?

Were her potential employers just being petty? Were they trying to beat her down to size because she wouldn't do the horizontal lambada with them? Were they just posturing for nothing? Go figure...

~~~~

This, friends and lovers, is the Czech Talent Paradox.

Like an old Slovak saying my grandmother used to tell me:

"Teeth exposed? Hands up!"


Stuffing my face with her tasty brynzove halusky, I never understood exactly what she meant by it until my conversation with Grezelda.

When the [Czech] smile comes, the [Czech] slap across the face is sure to follow.

Figures it would take a Slovak to come up with something so brilliant. And not just any Slovak, mind you, but "the ADM's" granny...



As always,
I wish for you the very best of things,
Podepsan,
The Astonishing,
ADM