Kind of lost in Utrecht...

Today my aunt Anna celebrated her 50th birthday in their former house in the centre of Utrecht. We haven't seen her and her family for a very long time so it was good to visit them once again. Although we didn't get the chance to talk to them much. But it was a good moment to catch up with "oma" and Ria, Michel and Meander as well, which was very nice. The food was great, the band was good. The only trouble was finding the house hehe. All those one-way roads and canals through the centre gave me a slight headache :wink: But we managed to get there after all. Ofcourse. We are good! Why need a TomTom?! :rolleyes:

Ahhh I'M DEAD!!! This was my first working day at RBC that there was actually a match played. So no meetings, no weddings, no private parties, but hundreds of dutch soccer hooligans in a stadium. What a joy! My shift started at 3pm, I just got home at 4.30am and there isn't a single part of my body that doesn't HURT! I'm gonna attack a pizza now, have a long hot shower and off to bed as tomorrow will be a busy day as well. So goodnight and talk to you again tomorrow! ;-)

ps BOTH Roger and Stan through to the Basel semis. Yay! that's something positive of today hehe

Cities and Knights of Catan

This weekend, Soekie, Stan, Roel, Mireille and I played again The Cities and Knights of Catan. I think this expansion of the Settlers of Catan is the greatest board game EVER!

In short, In C&K you engage in the defense of Catan and compete to build the three great metropolises of Catan. Each of these magnificent centers are even more valuable than cities and are safe from the barbarians. You must invest in city improvements, which you acquire using commodities of trade: Coin, Paper, and Cloth. If you improve your culture, muster your knights, and enrich your cities, you will be the master of the great realm of Catan!

We're all quite addicted to this board game and those nights we're playing are pretty exhausting. Time flies when you're having fun hehe. Though FUN?!? It's been quite a BATTLE&FIGHT... Mireille even smashed here (full!) glass of beer at the wall! What a waste! ;-) I didn't get to win this time, but got pretty close in the end after all and had some great time messing up chances of others hehe. That's maybe the most fun part of it all!!

PARTY TIME!!

Once in a while you've got those periods when you have birthday-after-birthday. They just keep coming! Much fun but soooo exhausting! For the wallet as well... ;-) For me, such a period just started this weekend. The upcoming weeks will be FILLED with birthday parties! Sometimes even several a day, since most of them are planned in the weekends. So you gotta make choices! Geez life can be cruel!

RE: job hunt

Last Tuesday I had a tour through the company of Schuitema B.V. in Breda. The work itself did not seem too hard on me and the building was relatively easy to reach by public transports (it did take me 1.5 hours to get there though...). But (suprise) the teamleader was not there that morning so they would call me later that afternoon to set a meeting with him. But when they called they told me they withdrew their job offer. Grrr! They told me they didn't want to hire a person for only 3 months. Same story over and over again! Why can't I get a job for 3 months?! Being a flexworker I only search for a temporary job...Is that so unusual?! At CWI they told me I wouldn't get any social securities because I'm educated enough and could do ANY job available... but if no-one will hire me, what THEN?! That won't happen, they say. YEAH RIGHT. A month without an income now and the bills just keep coming ;-) Oh, I'll get a job in the end I'm sure (probably by december hehe) but my point is that the "rules" of law just SUCK! Wednesday I've got a meeting at Roosendaal's soccerclub RBC (which demoted this year after having played the worst season in the Dutch soccer history hehe). They need someone for the restaurant at the stadium. I've got a pretty good feeling about it. Let's wait and see! =)

RE: leaky pipes

I've got new pipes! This is where the old one is disconnected and the new one starts! Now I've got warm water running all through the house again PLUS the heating works! Yayay! Now waiting for the walls and floors to DRY and get rid of that nasty SMELL!! and see what the actual damage is...*fingers crossed* hehe

btw the washing machine still doesn't work the way it should...I'm afraid I'll need a new one anytime (very!) soon!! Argh

Bye bye Internet Explorer...

OK, I now officially made Mozilla Firefox my default web browser! I've had enough of my IE troubles! Since like two weeks IE isn't even publishing my blog the way it should! Crap!

I'm so happy now, I can even read flash sites without getting a headache! Besides that, I love the tabbed browsing and live bookmarks! If you're just as sick 'n tired with Internet Explorer as I was, I really can recommend you the firefox browser. I'll only switch to IE if a website requires ActiveX and I reeeeaaaally want to see it!! That's for sure! ;-)

Ps Tips for firefox-users and potential users here !

Edit: Opera seems to work fine as well! Haven't tried Netscape, Safari, etc yet, but I do like it so far! =)

Roger & JURA!

*Sigh* "our" Roger as ambassador of the Swiss Jura coffeemachines! Geez, right NOW I would sell TONS of them! I'd be overly enthousiastic! (I would make Big Boss Lodewijk very very happy hehe) On RF.com everybody's talking about JURA these days... We adore our Roger, I just looove those coffeemachines... Why didn't we have those flyers in store like ...two years ago?? hehe in that case I guess I wouldn't mind working 24/7 ;-)

I have to say, I DO miss the "match" and "championship" posters here

Hey! I'm living in WATERWORLD!! #*&@!%*

DAMN the warm water control! A leak under the floor or in one of the walls caused chaos at Robijndijk 48... so I'm staying at my mom's for the time being. Since the plumbers can't find the exact location of the leak (ALL walls are soaking wet, as is the floor...), new warm water controls will be installed throughout the house the upcoming days. Grrr! Today I've been clearing the boxroom, kitchen, bathroom and part of my bedroom. oh my, the house is a mess!

"Yeee-haa!"

Yesterday Dennis and I went to a show of the dutch comedian Jochem Myjer, quite well-known in Holland for his hyperactive behaviour hehe. We've had some pretty good laughs there. The show was completely sold out! Our seatings were on the very last row, but we could still see perfectly well. (And you REALLY don't want to sit front row anyway..) Too bad Gemmy couldn't join us, but we got to meet her parents and Bas. Unfortunately we lost track of them when the show was over - soooo many people around us! But we had to leave right away anyway since I promised to drive Dennis back home in Tilburg. It's been a lovely night out!

"Why is the rum always gone?!"

FINALLY I got to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest @ Metropolis in Antwerp! We did it! YAY! Maaike and I actually bought the RIGHT tickets (yay!), we CHECKED the tickets (goood!), and DOUBLE-CHECKED (better!), and we were actually sitting in the RIGHT room hehe (unbelievable!!). Wow are we good or what?! =)

This is a "warning!" for the dutchies among you!

Yesterday my brother received an invoice from J.B Entertainment company, saying that they recieved his order and that it was sent to some address (Agavestraat, can't remember its number) in Almere, and that the payment would be done by automatic debit transfer. Since my brother DID expect some package ordered online by our mom for his birthday, he thought at first maybe there went something wrong in that delivery. After all, he did not know by what company it would be ordered.

But a closer look at the invoice revealed some spelling errors he did not trust. After some "google-ing" he found that the company was not known to the Chamber of Commerce. According to the invoice, the company supposed to be located in Roosendaal (!), to be more precise on the Hoveniersberg! less than a mile from where we used to live! The invoice gave a 0900-telephone number, which can be very expensive and not always to be trusted. Actually it said 0900 827 0 823 p/m which might mean you pay 823 eurocents (or euro! or even worse: 9008270823 euro!!) a minute! So if you receive this invoice as well, I suggest you do not call this number! ;)

A look at the website of Tros' "Opgelicht" showed us that more people received this invoice yesterday and it seemed that the guy living in the Agavestraat in Almere has been called over 90 times already yesterday and had even angry people coming over to his house. But it seemed he had nothing to do with all this - they just picked some random address. So, definitely fake! It was just a bit strange since we DID expect some package from which we did not know its sender, and the fact that it was from Roosendaal...oh well one big coincidence I guess... What I do want to know is by what means they retrieved the detailed info for the delivery. *sigh* we might never know...

Konnichiwa!

Konnichiwa! Just a quick note to say:

YAY! YAY! YAY!

Roger just won his very first title in Tokyo! It's been a week in which (as far as we know) no-one outside of Japan got coverage of the matches, so we all logged in on rf.com and watched (very slow) live-scores, rooted and cheered together. Not perfect, but always much fun! Luckily Roger wrote his ATP blog this week, so we did get some inside info after all (>> Captain Wasabi & the amazing toilets hehe)! But as the tournament was held in Japan, the matches were "at night" so I'm off to bed now to get some more sleep! Lucky you, that way I won't bore you to death with the fan-talk, or at least NOT RIGHT NOW hehe, but I DID want to express my joy for a moment! And so I did.

And so the job-hunt continues...

Geez I survived my CWI meeting! The employee I was supposed to meet was ill and had some weird woman to replace him. She paid more attention to her cell phone than to our conversation and I really did not like that! She told me just old news; there was nothing new that I didn't already know. It just felt like a complete waste of time! On top of it she said that I was "on the right track", that "I should not worry" and that "I'll do fine". Well that sounds great, but then, how come I can't pay my bills?! ;) Well ok, not a complete waste of time, she did give me a list with even more employment agencies and so the job-hunt continues...

But: I DID notice an announcement that the department of Radiation Oncology in Erasmus MC-Daniel den Hoed Cancer Center (the largest in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe) is looking for new students for a 3 years' training starting March 2007. It will be combined with a fulltime job at EMC Rotterdam which I think is great! November 6th they will give a presentation on the job and training and a selection procedure will start that day as well. I'm pretty excited from what I've read and heard about it. I think working with cancer patients will be a very tough thing to do, but I can learn so much from it! It will be a great challenge for me! So this story is to be continued! Until that time I'll go hunting for temporary jobs so I can make a living. I just changed my "profile" at the employment agencies so when there's a temporary job available they'll let me know. Which will be soon coz I'm willing to take ANY job now...ok, ALMOST any job he he.... ;)

To conclude this "job-hunting-topic" I can proudly announce that Tink has been offered a job as a Customer Service Agent at the Agoda Company travel agency and she accepted! I'm so happy for her! She will start October 12th which will be very soon! So she will have to find an apartment in Bangkok now! Good luck, Tinky! =)

Happy World Animal Day!

Here's to Sammy and Thyrza!

You'll get your yukky bones tomorrow! =)

Holy Cr@p! She's back!! -----------------------------------------------------alive and (still) kicking...

*Shame on me!* I haven't been posting here in such a long long while! So much has happened since my latest blog entry!! I won't discuss it all thouroughly now, now THAT would be boring... so I'll just stick to the latest most important updates! From now on I promise to write regularly again he he, might be good to reboost my english writing skills again as well, so just let me kill two birds with one stone now

Most important at the moment, I quit my studies!! Yeah, you got it right he he. The dutch bureaucracy and non-logic rules were working too hard against me. I almost literally got sick of it! And since they wouldn't let me join the classes I should follow this year anyway, I let myself unregister from university. Why pay all that much money while they won't give you any proper education?! HA! At that time, I didn't like that at all, but the more and more I think of it now, I think it was a good step to take. I did not like the things I was doing at school...it was WAY too abstract, too much scientific blablabla. I did not get any satisfaction from my work. Not at ALL! I need to work with people, I want to help, I want to do something good... If only I could start school all over... but that just isn't the case... TOO BAD! I do have my bachelor degree in psychology, but people do not seem to recognize any value to that. So I have been applying for jobs that are combined with a study now. That way I can still learn and develop and have a fulltime job and (more important) salary!! in once. But so far, only rejections... but quite a few are still in progress so...to be continued! This Tuesday I will finally have my meeting at CWI, let's see if I get any wiser by means of that!

Well that was my major update I think. Many things have happened besides that, but I think that one in question would be my most important one since it affected my whole way of living now. So what else has been going on?!

Ofcourse we've had the pleasure to welcome Frank and Diana in Holland. It's been a great again! Ok, we've had MUCH rain, more rain, and even more rain...Both Frank AND Diana got sick (too much food?! --too much beer?!) and if you happen to read this... do you guys remember the "wegenwacht"?! he he. But besides all that, it's been fun! Diana, too bad you had to leave your purse at the airport, but you should know I'm taking good care of it :P

Looking forward to visit you all in Phoenix once again! I love the renewed Micola website, Rick! Good job! It's one of the great ways to keep in touch! Keep on writing, keep on posting those pics! =)

What else is new? I just heard that Menno bought the house AND has the job! Wow that's all going great! Good luck to you and Brylie!

Yesterday, Tinky arrived in Bangkok safely! although she had to walk like a duck through the airports because of a broken high-heel of one of her shoes. She had to break the other one as well by herself so she could keep on walking on it. And above all that she got lost on the just newly opened BKK Suvarnabhumi airport! I felt so sorry for her... I'm glad she's ok now! Now we should all cross our fingers for her job interview! Good luck kuhn Supalak! =) Ahh and I do have to mention her book is published and in thai bookstores now, even to be ordered online as well! Ok, it is in thai but there are some good pics in it as well so if you can't read you can still see he he... :

I just felt like promoting it a little bit ;) You never know what this all leads to, right?!... >> r i c h & f a m o u s ? !

Book’s name : ลุยทุ่งทิวลิป ท่องแดนกังหันลม ฮอลแลนด์ (Walking through the tulip fields in the windmill land: Holland) ISBN : 9789749474372 Total : 157 pages Author : Tinky Winky Printed : 4 colours / paperback Published : 9/2549 ( September, 2006 ) Price : 145 Baht ( Via SE-ED Eshop 131 Baht )

Ok, let me just leave it at this for now... so many things still left to tell you all about but I really don't want you to get bored on your sunday. HA! t2u l8r!

Note: I haven't been able to reply all emails YET ;) working on it...please be a bit patient he he

Ok, now don't freak out!

Het Blok is gewoon weer mijn Blog, de kleuren veranderen (bij wijze van...) met de minuut (ik wil wat anders maar weet nog niet wat...dus de komende tijd zal er waarschijnlijk wat geexperimenteerd worden), Engels?! ja, zit er over te denken om er wat engelse posts tussendoor te gooien zodat iederéén dit makkelijk kan volgen zonder te hoeven Babelfishen ;) Verder zal ik snel weer updaten, moet eerst de achterstallige mail "wegwerken" maar daarna is deze blogspot weer aan de beurt! Tot snel!

-Saar