Cats and their ego's!

After a not very busy day at IKEA, I came home to find a few nice surprises. I found a new email in my inbox which had something to do with surfing :)

Second was that we would be having cheese fondue and last but definitely not least... My camera had arrived! I was playing with it, and I thought it would be nice to take a few pictures of my cats. They don't generally move a lot and they like attention, so it is a win-win situation. Or at least I thought, the first cat I saw was Bas (black and white lazy tom-cat, who's pretty much afraid of everything that moves....that includes ants and birds?!) He was laying on a chair having his siesta-beauty-sleep. I took a pictures, and he was fine. Then I turned on the flash.... and he got mad?! He was so upset that he didn't want to pose for me anymore! Cats and their ego's!

The sky looks more blue with a bottle of wine, or two

After getting up quit early to pick up my new passport, I wondered around for a bit on the market. I was searching for vegan treacle wafers. Because Steve's parents are vegan, and they let me stay in their house for a week. I thought the least I could do is bring some typically Dutch cookies!

I asked the local 'wafers salesmen' and he told me that normally there is a stall with reform dishes and they also sold vegan treacle wafers! But not this week...

After I went to Uni I was heading to the center to buy a SD memory card. You might ask why do you need a memory card, well I bought a camera and it will probably be delivered tomorrow. The moment it arrives I of course want to play with my new toy :)

After this short shopping break it was time to go to Anoushka, to enjoy the beautiful weather and discuss the newest gossips. 2 Bottles of wine and some food later it was time to go back to Uni. Another meeting about our company. Luckily we also discussed we might needed to do some team building, and what is a better way to raise the team spirit then to go karting against each other!

Guido Weijers

Quit day at IKEA, it's Saturday evening 19.30. Roland from the storage department is hanging around at my lighting department. Then the reception calls...it's my mum. Why is she calling? My cat already died a few weeks ago so that can't be it, I won the lottery? Not a very big change, because I never buy lottery tickets....
What is it then?

A few months ago I was determined to go see Guido Weijers, for anyone who doesn't know him. He is a brilliant comedian, he's living in Breda and not unimportant one of his favourite stores is IKEA. The only thing was, that he his show was sold out everywhere in the country! So I put my name on a few back up list. Just in case some people can't come, I wanted to make sure I was going to see this show.

I didn't thought of it anymore, until my mum called last night at 19.30h. Can you be back in Etten Leur in half an hour? We have 4 tickets for Guido's show! I asked Roland if he wanted to come along because we had one spare ticket, and then we had another problem.... The store is opened till 20.00h that meant, I was not going to be home before 20.00h. So we made some arrangements with other colleagues, and we had to rush home. The first time I cycled to my work this year, and now I needed to be home quick, luckily my dad was in Breda and he picked me up :)

We made it to see the show at 20.15! It was great, the men is really funny. He discussed all sorts of subjects from eggs, to snails and one of the funniest things: rear screen wipers! So we had an unexpected entertaining evening...

Is ignorance a bliss?

One of my best friends is moving to Washington,USA. I am very happy for him. This is what he always wanted to do. Today I spoke to an old classmate of mine who happens to know him too. She thought it was really strange that he was moving so far away, and he is leaving his girlfriend behind (she on the way to the top, so she is not really willing to move to a country where their national pride is that they invented MacDonald's.)

The strange thing is that I think I am actually going to miss him. The strange thing about that is, that he moved away years ago. He moved from Etten Leur to Amsterdam, to Brussels and a few years ago to Madrid. All these cities are on the same continent, but now he's really moving timezones away! It 6 hours earlier and he's moving to another continent!

It's not that went out together every other weekend, we call, we email we try to send postcards every now and then (although I've send maybe 10 cards so far, and only 2 arrived!) I never have time to come to Spain when he has time to show me around. He is always busy working and spending 'quality-time' with his (Belgium) girlfriend. Who responded very cool to all this: "He'll come back in less then 2 months, either he got enough of the bigger the better mentality. Or he gets fat and bored of the hamburgers and he comes running back for his sushi place (which is on the corner of his street, and he refers to it as "my sushi place"). That lead his girlfriend to another question, what does he loves more 'his-sushi' or her....?!

He rang me this week, he didn't call me right away when he made his decision because he didn't want to upset me during my exams. He was doubting about this USA thing for a long time, and he was dying to ask my opinion?! Which I found strange because he got annoyed if I called him just because my favourite brand of squash was sold out (for these sort of things I needed advice, what to do, which brand to buy....well not really, but I just like it to annoy him with these sort of unimportant questions sometimes.)
He didn't ask my opinion before because he thought I had enough on my mind. But I can't stop wondering wouldn't it be nice to share this important decision? We went from almost sharing everything, to sharing tips which would make your eggs boil faster!? The advantages of all this is that I don't have to wonder will he go away, what will he do. But maybe it would have been nice to discuss this probably big decision. So is ignorance a bliss? Or wouldn't it be nice to share this?

A few good reasons to avoid Etten Leur

A few good reasons not to be or go to Etten Leur

• If you're going to cook and need papadums which is quit easy to find in almost any supermarket in Leiden. It's not that easy to find in Etten Leur. It took me 2 supermarkets and 1 oriental food shop to finally find it at (my favourite) supermarket!
• On your supermarket trip (the second supermarket you walk into) you see your old PE teacher. He was always a bit 'strange'. Finally I have an explanation for his 'strange' behaviour if I see him leave with 18 cans of lager.
• At the end of your trip you ran into your ex-boyfriends mum, who's having a go at you because I am mean and I destroyed her sons life.... and what is the real problem here?!

It was a good day in Etten Leur.

Schnitzel

Monday evening we had a meeting with our supervisors from our 'clock company', and my classmate told me the most hilarious thing. It might be the most hilarious thing of the week (maybe of the month!) He cutted himself with a frozen Schnitzel!

I can play a Metallica song.... :)

After a visit to the town-hall on Friday morning, I went for some shopping to The Hague.
After 2 hours of shopping, and 1 pair of shoes and trouser later, I was bored. Luckily a friend would come to the Hague and we would have lunch together. After a (very tasty) mozzarella sandwich and a bottle of Rose later. I found out that I still didn't know the name of our new princes which was announced Friday at 10am.

Luckily our Queen lives in The Hague, so I decided (after Ronald declared I was absolutely crazy) that I would go to her palace and ask what they named our new princess. Call me crazy, but I found out the name of the princess first hand! Not from the queen, or one of her personal guards, but from someone who was on the other side of the fence...

In the evening I cooked at Steve's and Marieke was also joining us. After the food, I was entertained by some live music and singing! I learned to play a bit of guitar, I can play a whole Metallica song now. I am not going to tell you which one, but I learned it in 15 minutes :)

Saturday my parents came to Leiden to come visit Naturalis and see something of the city. Well they picked the right day to come, not only was the weather perfect the tickets for Naturalis were free because of museum-weekend. After a visit to Naturalis, which I can absolutely recommend to everyone, we went to have a bite to eat.
After lunch and a short visit to the H&M, we walked around and ended up somewhere on a floating terrace. Leiden is known for having a lot of people who own boats. Saturday this stereotype was definitely confirmed! Every 2 minutes we saw a boat passing by, this made me want to be a boat-owner...

In the evening we went to an Eritrean place (which is east African, for the people who have troubles with geographic). Steve and I went there before, but now we would go with my parents. The food was good, and it's quit something different. Eating without cutlery, and I don't mean like MacDonald's. You eat your food by putting it together with a sort of pancakes, which is really filling but really nice.

Sunday Steve and I went to the beach (29C in April is a good enough for me to go to the beach!). Mariekes her parents and her brother and sister were also there. After a bit of reading, an ice cream and a lot sand everywhere. It was time to go to have some food, Marieke invited us all to come to have dinner at hers. After that it was time to go back to Etten Leur.





Although I didn't really do anything (didn't save the world, or cured cancer), I had a really nice and hot weekend!

Milling in the sun

Today I finally had my last exam! Normally we would celebrate this with going to the city and sit in the sun with a beer.....

But that was not the case today, we had to mill 5 more clocks to show our supervisors for our meeting this Monday. It took us 2 hours to just get started (normally you check a few things, you download your program and that's pretty much it, so that's about 10 minutes!)

Meanwhile I kept myself entertained by discussing with Claudia what would be the best place to go to in Australia, what's the best sex exercise-exercise and what not to wear to a meeting. Just a summary of all the very useful subjects we discussed while waiting till we could get started.

The best thing of having the Friday off, is that I was planning to go shopping! The only thing I still need to do before the end of the week is that I need a new passport before I go on holiday. It appeared to be that the municipal of Leiden is a very busy municipal. The first appointment I could make to renew my passport (which only takes 5 minutes!) is in 2 weeks! So I decided that I'm going to camp there and be the first one on the desk at 08.30h at the town-hall.

There goes my sleeping late plan, sit outside (weather forecast 23C), and a bit of shopping!

We have a new princes!

Because our king and princes to be are just like rabbits, they got a third baby today. After Amalia and Alexia, we think our crown prince wanted a boy. But no, he got another princes.

My mum and I were speculating about the name, it's likely to be something with an 'A'. Although I would like it if they were a bit more progressive and called our newest member of the Royal House something like: Belinda, Christa, Danni, Erica, Florentine... anything as long as it it not an extremely long name like her sisters: Catharina-Amalia Beatrix Carmen Victoria & Alexia Juliana Marcela Laurentien. Everybody must admit that this is just child abuse. By the time you called them in for dinner, the food is cold!

I will let you know in a few days.

Easter weekend

Thursday I visited Leiden because Heather (Steve's mom) and Laura (a friend of Steve's mum) were in Holland. This meant we got to do some tourist things. We went to the van Gogh Museum (which I had never been to!), the museum was much nicer then expected. I'm not a big van Gogh fan, but he has made some incredible paintings.

After wandering around a bit more in Amsterdam, we went back to Leiden to have dinner at Cojico a really nice Mexican restaurant. After dinner Marieke joined us (only because Steve has 400 grams of heavenly, delicious Cadbury chocolate!), on the way back to Steve's flat we also found out Leiden has an English/Australian food shop! That means I can eat salt and vinegar crisps the whole year :)
Friday I had to leave early and Heather and Laura had to catch a 6 o'clock flight back home.

Saturday Steve and I made a personalised trifle. This had fresh strawberries, white chocolate, custard, cake and whipped cream in it. Can't go wrong with those ingredients!
On Easter Sunday I woke up to find a massive (50cm tall) chocolate Easter bunny and duck! Thank you Steve... The rest of the day we didn't do a lot. Everybody just relaxed. Steve and I went to the forest, and we did a lot of cooking (and we tried to eat a lot but my stomach can only have so much).

Monday was a work day again, which was fun. Specially because people tend to be annoyed or mad quit fast with other people (or our staff) on a bank holiday. Don't know why, probably because it is crowed and they have to queue at some places. Whatever it is I find it entertaining!

An entertaining 'goodbye' party!

After 2 exams on Wednesday all I wanted to do is not think about Uni for a while. But that evening we suppose to have a second share holders meeting. That meant stay at Uni till at least 21h! The only thing was that we had nothing new to tell everyone and we only had our supervisors who would come to this meeting. So we decided to cancel it and postpone it for a while.

This meant that I could come with Steve and Marieke to their colleagues 'goodbye' dinner. After hearing so much about all these people I would finally going to meet them. It was good evening with a lot of (vegetarian :) ) food, and apart from that it is entertaining to have dinner with other people then my own colleague's (who are absolutely crazy, all of them!)

After dinner went to the Irish pub for a final drink, which Marieke particularly liked cause she loves Bailey's. She loves it so much she even wanted to pose for a picture with her Bailey's!

Bye bye Karin

After a training at my work on Friday I decided to go to Breda. It was time to exchange the last news and gossips with Anoushka. After a few beers Steve and Bart joined us and we decided to be lazy and eat in the city. After that we went to Anouhska & Bart because Steve still had to fill in some forms for his tax return. Bart likes to fill in tax forms or should I say he is interested in our tax system so he helped Steve while Anoushka and I discussed what was the best song from the nineties. After a few more drinks we went home (on a very decent hour!).

Saturday I had a day off!! How great is it to just hang around and don't really do anything? In the evening I went with a friend to de Lama’s (based on 'Who's line is it anyway' from channel 5). A hilarious show with a mixture of cabaret, improvisation and real comedy. I know it's sold out everywhere, but please try to get tickets!

Sunday was a workday again, it was nice. Today I exactly work four years for IKEA so I expected cake but no :) It was a good day anyway, it wasn't to busy (mainly cause it was 18C outside!) It was also the day that it was Karin's last work day. Karin is the first employee to leave our team, from the lightning department. So we decided that we had to something. Everybody likes food, so we would go out for dinner with Karin's closest colleague's. Only she didn't know we would go out , so she was quit shocked when my boss and another colleague were waiting for her in the restaurant. The look on her face: priceless!

It was a very nice evening, we gave her some nice presents, we had good food (Indian curry!) and a lot of laughter. And now to bed cause tomorrow I'll have an exam!