My 2008

Now that the year 2008 is drawing to an end it's a good time to review what happened in my life during this year...

Work
When it comes to work it has been quite a turbulent year. After losing my job towards the end of 2007 I was very happy to find new employment with a recruitment & selection company. It would give me an opportunity to expand my HR skills, complementing the skills I already have in the learning & development field. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be... The job bore me to death. There were many days where there simply wasn't anything at all to do. And the only answer to it was to do cold acquisition, something I found out I absolutely loathe doing. So at the start of the summer I decided that this job wasn't for me and I started looking for something more suitable. In November I started working as a senior learning & HR consultant for a training and advice company. So far I'm loving this new job, as explained in an earlier blog...

Love
My boyfriend and I have been together for just over 2 years now, and our relationship is only getting better. I'm deeply grateful for the fact that I have finally found somebody who accepts me the way I am, somebody I can be myself with completely, somebody who shares my ideas on what an equal relationship is, somebody I can talk with, and somebody I genuinely want to be with. If it were up to me, we would take our relationship up to the next level, so who knows, it might just happen in 2009...

Family
Thank goodness everyone in the family is healthy and doing well. My little niece is now 1.5 years old and as cute as can be. My parents are enjoying their retirement and their new role as grandparents. My brothers and their partners are also doing well, what more can we ask for?

Health
Probably the only area that's a little troublesome. Still having regular, painful, eye infections. But in a way I'm getting used to them. According to the eye doctors I've spoken to there's nothing that can be done about them, and I should just sit it out.

House
Still love my new house... Even though I've had quite a few issues with it, including a gas leak this summer! At the same time my boyfriend and I have plans to move to a more quiet area of the Netherlands as soon as the market and our finances allow for it. But until that time I'm very happy to live here

Cats
My two cats are both happy in their new house. Tux has had a few health issues this year, but is now doing well. Roxy is becoming more and more affectionate which pleases me no end. She still doesn't like to be picked up, but she does come and ask for cuddles now. Tux is still as crazy as ever... They are my little babies and I hope to enjoy them for a long time to come...

Dancing
And then there is our dancing... which has taken off like a rocket this year. If you think that 2 years ago the last time I did any ballroom dancing was in a class during college, about 16 years ago, it's hard to believe that now we're doing competitions and even winning 1st places! But we are both loving it, and it's a great way to exercise and be together!

Well that's pretty much my 2008 summed up! All in all it has been a good year for me and my family. I hope it has been a good year for those who read this as well, and wish you all the best for a happy and healthy 2009!

Sniffles, coughs, dancing, and websites

That pretty much sums up last weekend for me... Both me and my boyfriend were not feeling well with a cold for him and a throat infection for me. One of my cats, Tux, joined us in the sick bay with an eye infection requiring 4-6 drops of anti-biotic in his eye every day for a week (have you ever tried giving eye drops to a cat? I could dedicate an entire blog entry to just that process!).

The 4-6 eye drops a day also meant that we had to rearrange our weekend plans a bit. In spite of not feeling well, we still went to the private dance class we had booked with our trainer, where we learned some cool, but difficult moves in the tango. My boyfriend has bought a video camera so that we can now tape the training and for example how we dance during a competition to review later. I'm glad we taped this training, as I'm bound to forget a few steps until we've practised it enough!

Saturday evening we had our first Christmas ball. Unfortunately it was so incredibly crowded that we couldn't really dance the way we normally do. But they had some interesting shows as well, so we still had a good time. Sunday was a family day, as my boyfriend's mother was celebrating her birthday with a family brunch. And of course we had our regular Sunday-evening dance class as well.

I also decided to build a new website (in Dutch), just to share our dance experiences with family, friends and other people who are interested. We have some big plans for our dance future, so stay tuned!

December greeting

This was sent to me by a friend, and I just want to share it with you all:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for your sensitivities of the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.

Oh forget it:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Absolutely Fantastic Show

Last night we went to see the revised (Dutch) version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I had already seen the original version in the UK many years ago. I remembered it as an OK-ish show, mainly aimed at kids. My boyfriend hadn't seen the show yet, so when it was announced as playing in our local theatre we decided to get tickets for it.
At that time we didn't even know yet, that the show's main role of Joseph would be cast as part of a tv-series: the search for Joseph. But when we found out, we also started to follow the show. Neither of our favorites won (I voted for John and my boyfriend voted for Roy), so we didn't have our favorite Joseph to look forward to. But the winner of the show, Freek Bartels, played an excellent Joseph last night.

The entire show was truly fantastic. The décor had changed for the better from the original play. The role of the children was also smaller, although there were still some in it. Several of the contestants of the show 'The Search for Joseph' had a role in the actual show as well and also did a great job. The costumes were good, the lyrics had been translated into Dutch in a good way and the show was a good combination of different music styles, humor, and entertainment.

I thoroughly recommend it! My favorite of this theatre season so far!

Frankfurt

As some of you know, my mother and I take a weekend break every year around the beginning of December. We've been to many different places, and this year we decided to go to Frankfurt, Germany. Rather than flying, we opted to take the fast-speed ICE Train from Aachen to Frankfurt.

We arrived last Thursday, to discover that the hotel was on the edge of both the business/finance district and the red light district. But the hotel itself was fine, we just decided not to head out on the streets surrounding it late at night :-)

Frankfurt had not changed that much from the many times I'd been there to deliver training in the past. It's still one huge building site, with lots of shops, bars and restaurants. We also went to the English language cinema a couple of times. Now that had changed quite a lot, and not for the better... The movies showing were still in the original language, and not dubbed in German. But the theatre itself was very poorly maintained... There was hardly a chair whose seat wasn't slashed for example.

We saw 'The Women' and 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'. The first movie is one I would recommend. Interesting feature is that there is not a single man in the movie. Neither were there any men in the theatre when we went to see it. The second movie has some good special effects, but the story is very poor. It comes down to an alien invasion, wanting to save the earth from us bad human beings that treat it (the earth) so badly. But by saying that we REALLY REALLY can change, the human race is saved. Blech. I have nothing against the green movement, but this was making it ridiculous in my opinion.

The shopping was very fruitful though, and both my mother and I came home with some nice clothes for ourselves and our loved ones. The home coming was even more special because my boyfriend had decided to join my dad in picking us up from the railway station. I hadn't expected to see him again until today, so it was a very special surprise to see him on Sunday already.

Picture below: business/finance district by night

Dare I say it....?

After my last experience I'm a little hesitant to sound too enthused about my job. But... in my new job:

- I'm allowed and encouraged to use my creativity
- I'm trusted from day 1 with training for our most important clients
- Innovation is appreciated
- We have a lot of fun as a team, even though we don't see each other a lot
- We're constantly on the look-out for new ways of learning
- Colleagues respect each other and are willing to share their knowledge as well as learn from each other
- Blended learning is what is is: blended learning
- There is NO COLD ACQUISITION
- All training is tailor-made for a customer's specific needs, no off-the-shelf stuff!
- There is a lot of opportunity to learn more, both about training as well as about HRM

So dare I say it, after only being in the job for just over 1 month? I think I do:

I LOVE MY NEW JOB!

Weekend!

It's Friday evening and the weekend has once again arrived... It'll be a busy weekend again, but filled with fun things! Tomorrow afternoon I'll be visiting the in-laws to celebrate the traditional Dutch festival of St. Nicholas. My own family doesn't celebrate St. Nicholas, but they do celebrate Christmas. At least there's no arguing about where to spend our holidays!

Tomorrow evening we'll go dancing in The Hague. Just a fun dance, no competition this time. The weird thing is that during these fun nights I usually dance more than during a competition, when the actual dance time is limited to 1.5 minute per dance...

Then on Sunday we'll go shopping in The Hague. Last Christmas gifts, and I really do need a new pair of shoes! Can a woman ever have enough shoes anyway? Then our regular dancing class in the evening and that will be the end of the weekend again...

But hey, it's only starting, so I've got a lot of fun things to look forward to! Happy weekend all!

Giethoorn

Last weekend's dance contest was in Steenwijk, a town in the North East of The Netherlands. This is quite a long way from where I live, so we decided to make a weekend break out of it. This also gave us the opportunity to visit Giethoorn, a really cute, pitoresk village where no cars are allowed. All transport is done by boat, bike or your own feet. The weather wasn't very nice, there was a slight drizzle and it was quite cold. But in spite of that we both really enjoyed our walk and boat trip through the village (see picture below).

The dance contest was interesting... There were only 7 couples for our competition class. So they decided to let all 7 couples dance two finals. Normally there are only 6 couples in a final and normally there is only one final round. Anyway, we danced two of them and ended up in second place of the competition. The skill level in this competition is very high, so I'm actually really proud with a second place! This time I kept all limbs intact, although I did manage to break the prize about 5 minutes after receiving it... Nothing a little glue can't fix though! We have a little break from competition dancing now, as our next contest isn't until the 17th of January. But no worries, plenty to talk about until then!

Let's dance!

We started our day yesterday with a good training session to practice several new dance moves we have learned recently. The past few weeks we haven't really practiced much, because of my hand injury. Which, by the way, is much better now. My thumb still tingles a lot, and not all feeling has returned yet, but I can pretty much do anything with it again.

Anyway, we also practiced because we had another competition yesterday evening. The weather here is very tricky at the moment, with moments of snow, hail, rain and then blinding sun in between. So we left early to make sure we arrived there well on time. This would be the first time we danced in the A-class for ballroom, which meant that we also would have to do a slow fox this time. I'm not all that comfortable with the slow fox yet, it really is quite a difficult dance to do right! Also, as the classes get higher, the quality of the dancers gets high as well of course. So when we started our first round I did feel a bit of a knot in my stomach! For Latin we are dancing in the B class, as we did last time. So not such a big knot in my stomach there. It wasn't my best dance experience, I forgot several steps and really didn't have high expectations regarding the results.

But we made it to the final for both ballroom and latin and to our big surprise we won first prize in both competitions! So two new cups (see below) to add to our collection... I won't take them to the dance school anymore though, don't feel like repeating the experience of last time I wanted to do that!

35 days before Christmas...

... and I just received my first Christmas Card! Granted, it came from somebody in the UK, but still, that *is* early for a Christmas Card! Then again, I shouldn't be that surprised really... When I lived in the UK, the first Christmas items started to appear in the stores around September. Here in The Netherlands there was a time when Christmas stuff didn't appear until the beginning of December, after the St Nicholas celebrations are over. But now it starts earlier here as well... Most garden centers have their Christmas items out in October, and you are getting more and more choice of Christmas card collections in the stores.

In my family we have started shopping for Christmas gifts a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness we all create a wish list, so at least A)you don't have to think about what on earth to buy for your loved ones, and B) you know that you will get something you actually like. So at least we don't belong to the group that sells their gifts on eBay the day after Christmas :-)

For me Christmas is more of a Yule-fest anyway, the mid-winter celebrations, bringing light in the darkness, spending time with loved-ones. And being happy together is probably the best gift anyone could wish for!

A rising star...

Yesterday, after an intensive private dancing lesson where we learned a really cool move in the Walz, we went to the theatre. This time we had booked a performance by Maria Fernandes, a Fado singer.

Earlier in the week I read in the local paper that she was a local girl, and to be honest my expectations weren't very high. But boy, was I mistaken! She has a wonderful voice and if I had't known better I would have sworn that she was from Portugal itself.

I was thus impressed that I bought her CD after the performance, which she signed for me. Maria Fernandes is definitely somebody whose career I will follow, and I certainly won't hesitate to book another ticket when she performs here again!

You can find more information about Maria and her performance schedule on her website.

Love thy neighbor

What is it about the night from Friday to Saturday? I had another awful dream that really upset me...

I dreamt that I had been traveling and returned home with jet lag. I was sitting in my living room when I suddenly realised that the wall between my house and that of my neighbors had disappeared. It was now one big living room... When I looked out of the windows, I noticed that the same thing had happened with the garden. Not only was the fence between the gardens gone, but the garden had also been dug up and was now one big mess!

I tried to call my parents, but the phone was picked up by my little niece who was apparently staying with her grandparents and playing with the phone. Then I saw my neighbors in the garden and I went outside to talk to them. They were very laidback about the whole thing and didn't seem to understand why I was so upset. In the meantime their big dog was running around, which led my cats to hide in a little corner. I pleaded with the neigbors, threatened with lawsuits, cried, yelled, screamed, but nothing seemed to work. As reason for the destruction of my house and garden they gave the fact that they were in a competition with a specific type of flower, and that my garden gave the best light.

In the end I cried out that I loved my house and that they had destroyed it completely. Then I woke up...

Really, I have no idea where these dreams come from... The neighbors in the dream were my actual neigbors, but I have no problems with them. The houses were slightly different, as were the gardens. Oh, and they don't have a big dog in real life either, nor do they seem crazy about flowers.

If there is anyone out there who can explain dreams and who wants to have a go at this one, let me know!

Last night I kissed Nicholas Sarkozy

Well not for real thank goodness, I don't even find the man attractive! But it happened in a nightmare and woke me up right after! I would much rather be kissed by my boyfriend thank you very much!

I have the weirdest dreams at times and have often thought of keeping a dream book. In my dreams I have been able to fly by making swimming motions in the air, I have saved the world, I have hugged trees, I have been lost, I have seen hose pipes wriggle their way into houses (that was a real bad nightmare!), and a lot of other things I can't remember right now.

Talking about dreams, isn't sleeping itself the strangest thing? You're kinda unconscious and your imagination does the strangest things while you're in this state. I often have small 'shocks' before falling asleep, like my body is protesting against entering that state. Of course Sleep wins in the end.

Waking up is another thing... Like most people I guess, I handle being woken up by alarm clocks really bad. When I'm woken up abruptly, for example by the annoying BEEP BEEP of an alarm clock, it really takes a while to become my usual cheerful self. Last year my boyfriend gave me a Wake Up Light though, and that's really amazing. About half an hour before the alarm time, a light starts to glow and it slowly becomes brighter... It simulates the sun rising. When the alarm time arises, you hear the soft sound of birds singing, a sound which gets louder and louder. But usually I'm woken up by the light, and it's a real gentle way to wake up. Not for everyone though, as my boyfriend sleeps right through it. So I wake him up, and I'm sure that's much more pleasant than being kissed by Nicholas Sarkozy!

I now know how Captain Hook feels...

As you know I had a little accident last Sunday which meant that for a few days I couldn't really use my right hand very well. It's going much better now, the bandage is off and the stitches will come out Monday. But I've been amazed by how hard it is to not be able to use your right hand!

Just for fun, try to get dressed by just using your left hand... Or ladies, put on your make-up with your left hand only. Try making a sandwich, or eating in general... Try going to the bathroom... You get the picture!

Anyway, this week is also the first week in my new job and I'm having a lot of fun. It's such a relief to have a job that stimulates and challenges me again! I'm developing course material for classes I'll be teaching this month and meeting my new colleagues. It's a fun and professional group of people, which brings back memories of the good old Learning & Development days from a few years ago!

A little accident...

I am typing this one-handed, let me tell you why...

Last night we had another dance competition. They changed the setup a little with the result that we're not quite sure how we did. Last night we were given prizes for second place in ballroom and third place in latin. However, on the official results list we were listed as first for both ballroom and latin. Anyway, we'll let our dance school sort that out, fact is that we came home with two prizes.

Today is our regular class and I wanted to bring the prizes to our dance school to show to our co-dancers there. I had already placed one prize in a bag and had the other in my hand when it slipped. My reflex was to try and catch it, but the cup hit the table and my hand slammed on top of it. The result was a small but deep cut between my thumb and index finger and a quick trip to the hospital where they stitched up the cut and bandaged my hand.

Luckily I'm still allowed to drive tomorrow, when I start my first day in the new job and have quite a distance to drive! Doctors advice is to take it easy for the rest of today and tomorrow. Stitches should come out after 7 days!

Food TV Shows

Don't know if it is the same where you are, but here in The Netherlands there seem to be more and more TV shows about food. There are the TV Chefs, showing how easy it is (until you try it out yourself) to make the most wonderful, creative, exotic dishes... There are programs about TV chefs helping people turn their not-so-good restaurants into the place-to-be. There are shows focusing on the hygiene aspects of cooking, visiting restaurants and people's kitchen at home to check on things that shouldn't be there...

And then recently a new show was launched: Who is the chef. Where 4 people each take a turn to cook for each other, one of which is a real chef. At the end they have to guess who is the real chef. It's kinda amusing to watch really, and while I think I'm a decent cook myself, there is no way I could do the things they do without a lot of practice.

The thing that gets me about all of these shows is that they all make it look so effortless! Ok, maybe not the shows with Gordon Ramsey yelling, cursing and swearing at you... My experience is that creative cooking takes time and practice and I don't spend nearly as much time on it as I'd like. My kitchen usually looks like a war zone after cooking an elaborate meal, not the clean, tidy, well organized kitchens you see on TV.

What I really want to see on TV is a show that demonstrates how to make healthy, quick and easy meals. When I come home from work, sometimes after hours in traffic, I just want something quick and easy, and not a microwave meal with tons of additives. So where is the show that does that?

much ado about nothing

Do you know that feeling, where you think you are not doing anything at all, but time is just flying by? That's exactly what's happening with me this week. It's my last week off before the new job starts and while I don't think I've accomplished all that much, it's already Thursday! So I just made a list in my head with all the things I did do this week.

Monday: Monday I had my farewell lunch from my current job, which was very nice... Other than that I didn't do anything big at all...

Tuesday: We had a two-hour private dancing lesson on Tuesday afternoon, and went training for 3 hours Tuesday evening.

Yesterday evening we had our Argentine Tango class, which thank goodness was more interesting than the last class we had.

Today my parents will be here, arriving shortly as I write this! We'll go shopping and just have a nice time together.

Tomorrow afternoon my boyfriend has taken half a day off from work. If the weather is nice we might go for a walk somewhere. Tomorrow evening we'll go training again for our next dance competition this Saturday.

So it's not like I didn't do anything, it just doesn't feel like a lot! But hey, I have time off right now and I don't *have* to do anything. So I might as well enjoy it :-)

A night to remember, or to forget...

As I told you we had another dance competition last night, and it was certainly a night to remember, if not for all the wrong reasons!

The day started bad for me, with a headache that was close to a migraine, and in spite of taking way too many painkillers it still wasn't gone completely by the time we had to leave for the competition.

We didn't do all that well during the first round of our class and were sitting, chatting with another dance couple while watching the other classes first round. Then all of the sudden one of the dancers collapsed on the dance floor! Luckily the first aid people arrived quickly and started the reanimation process. The man came to quickly and was taken away for further treatment. Of course the dancing was stopped during all this and to give people a chance to recover from the shock the organizers decided to let another class do their first round first before letting the one where the incident happened complete their round.

So we were all watching this new round, when another dancer collapsed! This time it was way more serious, the man had a heart attack. The organizers called for the first aid people again, but they were away still treating the first man. Somebody ran to fetch them and they finally came and started reanimation again. It didn't work though and they had to get the AED kit for electric reanimation. Of course they had also dialed 112 (the European equivalent of 911). That turned out to be a bit of a disaster too! First the fire brigade arrived and they started their reanimation. Then the police arrived, but they just stood there and watched. Finally, way too late in my opinion, the ambulance arrived. They managed to resuscitate the man and where preparing to take him to hospital. But then the poor man had another heart attack and the whole reanimation process started again. Finally they stabilized him enough to take him to the hospital... We later heard that he's stable now, but I don't know what the slow reaction times of the emergency services have done with him.... I'm also upset with the fact that the first aid people took such a long time to come to the second man's aide... We were discussing later that perhaps the dancing shouldn't have continued until the first aid people had retaken their posts after completing treatment of the first man. Or maybe they should have had more first aid people on site!

Anyway, as you can imagine everybody was quite shocked by what happened. After some deliberation the organizers decided to continue with the competition anyway. But as you can imagine it's a bit hard to dance a happy, quirky, joyful quickstep after all of this! We didn't come home with any prizes this time, but frankly I don't mind at all. Any prize on display would have been a reminder of this evening, and like I said, for all the wrong reasons...

Let's keep this dancer in our minds and hope that he makes a full recovery soon!

Spirit of the Dance

Thursday evening we went to see the dance show "Spirit of the Dance" in our local theatre. This Irish dance show, based on the original Irish dance show with Michael Flatley, had been on my list of things-I-want-to-see for a long time, so my expectations were high!

The show is definitely worth seeing! The light effects are amazing and the choreography is very well done. The dancing wasn't superb, but good enough. I certainly couldn't have done better ;-)

We spoke to the driver of the dancers during the break and he told us that this group, about 25 people out of the total of 350 members of the Spirit of the Dance team, was the youngest group of all touring groups. They had their last performance for the season in The Netherlands yesterday, but are still touring other countries!

Today I can put on my dancing shoes for another competition. I don't think we're going to win prizes in this one, it's a tough one, with really good dancers. But it will be good practice anyway, and one day we will make it to the nr. 1 spot there as well! Just watch this space! ;-)

If I were a rich (wo)man....

With all the fuss about the Italian mega jackpot in the news right now and me living my days as a lady of leisure until the 3rd of November when I start my new job I started thinking again about how I'd fill my life if I were really, really rich...

Well first of all I hope I'd be rich enough so that both my partner and I could give up work. Sitting at home alone for these past 2 weeks has shown me that it's much more fun to have somebody to share the free time with!

We would probably look for a new house, somewhere quiet, close to a forest where we could start living together in a nice way. Travel would also be on the cards, as it's something we both enjoy doing (even though I don't like being away from home for too long!).

Since I cannot handle doing nothing, I would most likely continue and expand my voluntary work. There would be no botox or lipo treatments for me, but I might get a personal trainer. And of course there would be lots of dancing, probably even our own practice area in the house!

It's fun to dream, isn't it... And I do play in pretty much every type of lottery we have over here. So it could happen, it could be me one day! But until that day, we'll just get on with our current life, which is pretty nice as it is. And sneak in the occasional dream of course...

I could have danced all night...

... well I pretty much did! We didn't get home from the competition until 2am, but what a start of the new season! We came first in both Latin and Ballroom! As usual I didn't think I did that well and I was surprised to even make it to the final round. So you can imagine my surprise when we came 1st twice! The nice thing about this particular competition is that it was held at the rival dance school in my home town. Always nice to beat them :-)

This afternoon we will go to the Tea 'n Dance at our dance school, then out for a quick bite to eat and back to the dance school for our regular weekly lesson. Several people from our class came to see us last night and they took a few pictures which we should get from them this evening. If there's a nice one, I'll post it underneath this blog later!

For now, feet up and relax! There's more dancing to come today and I want to be ready for it!

US Elections

Short blog today, as I'm preparing for our dance competition tonight...

The fact that the election for a new US President is upon us in just a few weeks now has probably escaped nobody's attention. One thought that keeps running around my head is the following:

If the American President is considered by so many people to be the most powerful man in the world, then why don't all residents of this planet have a vote in (t)his election?

Your thoughts please!

Cats and emotions

As some of you know, I share my life with two cats, and have been around cats for most of my life. Having lived so closely with them, it didn't surprise me at all when research found that cats actually do have emotions.

I have had a cat that grieved, truly grieved when her brother was hit by a car and died. She would just sit in the hallway, sighing, and wouldn't eat...

I'm convinced that cats can feel love. One of my current cats is especially skillful in expressing that, to the extent that it gets really annoying at times! This same cat also has a talent for showing when he's unhappy. He kinda lowers his whiskers and I swear that he knows how to lower the corners of his mouth to make him look even more upset.

Having shared my life with multiple cats at the same time, I've most definitely also seen jealousy, when one cat thought the other was getting too much attention.

Anger or fear I noticed recently when I tried to douse a cat-burglar (neighbor's cat who likes the food my cats have better and tries to visit us) with a bucket of water. The first time I tried dousing the cat with water I ended up bleeding to such an extent that I almost needed stitches. But the second and third time I won, and the cat ended up soaking wet... He still tries to visit, but as soon as he sees me he runs. Ha!

Below a picture of my current two sweeties when they were still kittens...

Avoiding the winter blues

It's only October and we just went through a few very springlike days... I don't really suffer from the winter blues like some people do, but I do appreciate a bit of sunshine and vitamine D during the winter months.

So I've started looking at brochures with sunny beaches, exotic places and allowed my mind to wander for a bit... However... I also need to replace my central heating unit, and the chimney of my fire place is 'leaking' as well. So no dinero for a luxury exotic vacation... We know when we want to go, and we know that we like quiet, authentic places, not too touristy, nice climate, offering a good mix of culture and relaxation and a bit of action when we feel like it...

Right now I have my eyes on Morocco, but it could just as well turn out to be Malta, Malaga or Madeira. And no, it doesn't have to start with an 'M' ;-) Suggestions are welcome of course!

The sound of silence...

I don't know if it has anything to do with getting older, but I'm finding more and more that I enjoy the sound of silence. Quietness, peace of mind, silence...

It's probably a good thing my boyfriend and I don't have children, nor do we have plans to have any in the future. Nothing against those of you with a family, I think it's good that you do, but it's not my cup of tea. I think we can all agree that children certainly take a lot of the "quiet" out of your life. Of course, they also give a lot in return and it's just wonderful to see them grow and develop themselves... but the quietness of your life - if there was any to start with! ;-) - will certainly need to be put on hold for a while...

Most of us have busy jobs, and training is certainly a job that puts you in the middle of a bunch of people. And that's ok for me, as long as there's the quietness, the solitude to look forward to when I get back home. Being among people gives me energy, which would label me as an extrovert according to Myers-Briggs. But at the same time I also need time alone, or time with my partner who is - thank goodness - also somebody who can enjoy quiet time. An advantage of being "like this" is that I don't have a big problem with traffic jams. As long as I have some nice music and can let my mind wander. (And as long as I don't have an urgent appointment to go to, because I hate being late anywhere!).

Right now it's Sunday evening and I'm writing this with a glass of wine next to me, after a family weekend with lots of driving and people around me, completed with our Sunday evening dancing class. It was a fun weekend, and at the same time I enjoy the peace of this moment...

Efteling

Today my boyfriend and I went to the Efteling (a themed amusement park for those of you who don't know it). It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the temperature was very nice, almost springlike. Since most people are at work and the kids in school on a weekday, there were almost no lines/queues for any of the rides. The most we had to wait was about 10 minutes, for the newest ride: the Flying Dutchman. And it was most definitely worth the wait! This must have been my 8th or 9th trip to the Efteling, and I simply do not get bored with the place.... The Dreamflight is awe-inspiring, with its fairies, trolls, planetcities.... The fairy tale forest remains cute, the pirana ride made me look as if I hadn't made it to the bathroom in time, the bobsleigh ride, fata morgana, vogel Rok.... all of them a great experience! Maybe the fast rides aren't as cool as the ones you experience in Disneyland or Six Flags, but the care the Efteling has taken in its themes is clearly visible and it remains one of my favorite theme parks in the world! Go see if if you can!

(Pictures below are from the Dreamflight (Droomvlucht) ride)

Another one bites the dust...

So today was my last day at this job, and what a day it was... I won't go into details here, this is the internet after all, but I can tell you that the stuff that happens at this place has left me flabbergasted (love that word) more than once. And today was certainly one of those days. All in all I've learned a lot there... a lot of good things, but certainly also how things should not be done :-) At least not according to Tink's Law.

On the positive side I finally got an email that my new Latin dance shows are on their way to my feet. This is great news, because as of the 18th of October I'll have three dance competitions on 3 consequetive Saturdays, two of which will include Latin American dancing. So far I've done all my dancing and competitions on ballroom shoes. And during the competition on the 18th there's a good chance that we'll get promoted to the next level if we make it to the final round. And of course I want to wear the right shoes for that!

In between jobs

At the moment I'm kinda in-between jobs... Tomorrow I'll be handing over my laptop, phone, keys etc. to my current employer and on the 1st of November I'll start my new job as senior learning consultant for a training company. Right now I'm at home, cleaning up the hard drive of my laptop, mailbox and phone memory while watching the financial crisis news on CNN.

So what to do during the 3 weeks off? There are still boxes to unpack from my move nearly 1 1/2 year ago... There's always tidying up to do as I'm not the most organized person when it comes to housekeeping... My boyfriend has several vacation days left for the year, so we could take some time off together... I need to get a new central heating system and my fireplace is 'leaking' so that needs to get fixed... There's weeds growing in my garden that are by now taller than I am... My wardrobe is too full and needs sorting out... There are friends to see and/or write and/or call...

But for now I don't get much further than watching the news and wondering what this is going to mean for us all. It's history in the making, for sure, but not a piece of history that a lot of people were hoping for. I have only just become active on the stock market, but my thoughts are with all those people that see their savings and retirement money go down the drain. Let's hope things recover soon and that the world has learned another valueable lesson...