21 April 2009

Katalin: A person to contact in case of an emergency

As one of my best friends who would stay with me as a housemate in Hamilton Island for at least six weeks if I get the "Best Job in the World", I would like to tell you a little bit more about Katalin.

Katalin was my „emergency contact“ in Los Angeles. Obviously apartment managers and insurances don’t want to call your family abroad for an emergency, so you need to fill in a person residing in the United States. My person was Katalin, which made her sort of my family there. She took the responsibility with joy. She is the kind of person that really calls you later that day, when she had to hang up and told you “I will call you later.” This was another thing we had in common as foreigners in another country: we really thought “later” meant “later today” rather than “later in my life” or never.

Together we learned the differences between our old continent and the brave new world. Katalin was born in Moscow, her mother is Russian and her father is Hungarian. Her family is till today filled with journalists and as her father was one, they moved a lot and she grew up in Washington D.C. as well as Budapest. She studied ballet in Moscow at the Bolshoi Ballet. She danced on various stages in Russia and at the Hungarian State Opera House. In 2000 she relocated to Los Angeles and has stayed there ever since. I met her in Los Angeles during my studies at the Lee Strasberg. She works as a freelance dancer and ballet teacher, last she was seen dancing in the Nutcracker. She also worked as a multilingual translator and editor at a famous toy company. No advertisement here, though she really looks like Barbie whenever she puts on her pink dress.

This is what she has to say about why I should get “The Best Job in the World”:
“I once heard about the definition of professional in a tv ad "Professional is someone who does things till they dont get it wrong" and thats Mirjam , she is a perfectionist and thats why she is the one for this job.”

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