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!