Twitter Newbie

Over the past few months I've been hearing more and more about Twitter. After expanding my use of LinkedIn, Facebook and Hyves I decided to find out more about Twitter as well. Where the social networking sites are pretty intuitive, I found Twitter much harder to get to grips with.

Oh signing up is easy enough, and Twitter tries to help by giving little hints as to what to do next. So you have to find some people you wish to follow and they have the same little tool you find on the social networking sites to search through your email address books to find people in your existing network who are also on Twitter. In my case there were only 2 people also on Twitter. This surprised me... isn't Twitter supposed to be this big hype that EVERYONE is using?? Apparently not...

Next I struggled and am still struggling to find others to follow. The Twitter suggestions don't really mean a lot to me and I wish Twitter would offer categories to search in, for example users from the Netherlands, or users who work or have an interest in learning technologies... But no, that's not possible.

So right now I'm resorting to occasionally hitting the 'everyone' button on the Twitter website. This shows you 'tweets' that have been recently made by all twitter users. I'm browsing through them to find interesting tweets, and thus people I might wish to follow.

So far I've not seen what the big fuzz is all about with regards to Twitter. I think it's only interesting if you can find the right people to follow. However there isn't a lot of help or support or tools that will assist you in finding the right people. If I'm wrong, please enlighten me!

Kitchen woes...

As some of you know, I've lived in my new house for almost 2 years now... When I bought it, it needed a lot of work done, including a new kitchen as the original one was totally falling apart.

So I did what you do and visited several kitchen stores and ended up making a good deal for a very nice kitchen. So far so good. Of course the kitchen needed to be installed as well and the store where I bought it recommended an installation company.

In the beginning all was well... Two nice chaps who seemed to know what they were doing and even helped me out big time when they discovered leaking water pipes in the space underneath my house. They also helped me get a new refrigerator when the one that was delivered by the kitchen store turned out to be damaged.

Now, two years later, I'm faced with all the things that didn't turn up quite right:
- electric outlets installed right above the sink
- a dishwasher, freezer and gas stove that aren't quite the quality I would have liked (do not ever consider buying anything from the Spanish label Fagor, I really cannot recommend it!)
- the transformator (sp?) for the spot lights broke and is hidden somewhere I don't know so I can't repair it
- and just last weekend the electric ignition for the gas stove broke, so I'm back to using matches

The worst part is that the installation company has disappeared and that I'm too much of a 'let's just all be nice to each other' type of person to complain to the kitchen store. I know I teach conflict management classes, but with these types of conflicts I definitely take the 'avoid' approach. I wish I could be as assertive with these types of people as I can be in other situations! I guess I'm just really annoyed with myself for not getting my act together and do something about this.

Having said all that, I still like my kitchen and my new house :-)

It takes two to tango...

It's time for a bit of a dancing update here... I have another site in Dutch where I write detailed reports, but since a lof of people reading my Tink blog don't read Dutch, here's an English update:

In the regional competition which we've been taking part in for just over a year now, we've done really well. At the moment we're dancing in the A-Class for both ballroom and latin, so only one class away from the absolute top. It's only the top class that wears the beautiful dancing gear, but with only 1 or 2 competitions away from it in ballroom I've now purchased a dress (picture to the right) and tan colored shoes (see picture below) to go with it. For latin it will be a bit longer before we reach the top level as we have some tough competition there! I expect to wear the ballroomdress for the first time in March or April, so stay tuned!


In the national dance competition we just finished our third competition. Unfortunately there are only a few participants in our class, and if there are only a few participants they don't give points to all couples dancing a final round. So progress is really slow, and at this rate it will take a good two years before we get promoted to the B-Class, which is when you have to wear the official gear in this national competition. Having said that, this is the competition we'll be focusing on as this is the one where we can see progress once we've reached the top in the other competition.

To help with the progress, we've decided to sacrifice our two week vacation planned for March, and take a two week dancing bootcamp during that time instead. Our dance trainer is developing a program for us. It will be tough, but most definitely worth it!

Apple Rulezzz

I remember it well, the day in 1999 when I decided to swap my PowerMac for an ordinary Windows based PC... I was working as a CRM Consultant at the time, and a lot of the tools I needed for work were not available on a Mac. Since then my personal laptops have been Windows-based, and for work I've used both Windows-based machines and Linux.

This past week I bought my first iPhone as well as my first iPod (Classic). And I have to say - I'm very impressed! I love the user-interface of the iPhone, absolutely love it! It's a vast improvement on the Windows Mobile based smart phone I had before. I love the fact that you can store a webpage on your 'home screen', the applications that you can download from the AppStore, and the fact that it has a mini iPod included. The only trouble I have is that I sometimes mistype, I guess my fingers are too thick to hit the right spot on the touch screen.

I store my entire music collection on my MP3-player, and the iPhone doesn't have enough space for it, which is why I also bought an iPod Classic with 120 GB of space. Plenty of space left for any future music acquisitions! The difference between the iPod and the Creative ZEN Touch I had before isn't as big as the difference between an iPhone and any other phone. But the quality of the sound, and the iTunes software is much, much, better.

As I mention in the title of this blog, Apple Rulezzz... I'm so pleased with my iPhone and iPod that I am even considering a Mac Airbook for when I need to replace my current laptop! Having said all that, I wish Steve Jobs, the man behind many of Apple's successes, a speedy recovery! We need more people like him!

Swan Lake

Saturday evening we went to a performance of the "Swan Lake" ballet, by the Tatarstan Ballet/Opera group. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed...

Somehow I didn't feel absorbed into it, like I normally am when the performance is good. There were a few good dancers, including the jester (a role I had not seen in the swan lake before), and the Princess. The Prince however, was a disappointment. There was also a very long break between the third and fourth act, which was confusing to the audience, especially since the lights in the theatre went on. People were wondering if the performance was finished.

The other surprising thing was the end of the performance, when only a selection of the group came on stage for the applause. Several of the players never even appeared. Yesterday (Sunday) evening, they showed the swan lake ballet with the choreography of Noureyev on Mezzo TV, and the contrast couldn't have been bigger.

I don't think I'll visit a performance by the Tatarstan group again...

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!