I finally, finally got a good influence on someone! Apparently my colleague was on the verge of doing something stupid. But before he was going to make his mistake he sort of heard a little voice in the back of his head; telling him not to do this, and this was my advice I gave him in the past! Yes people if you want to stay out of trouble, talk to me...
Normally it it takes 17 minutes by coach from Breda station to my stop in Etten Leur. If you travel by train from Breda to Etten Leur, it's a 7 minute journey from station to station. Today this trip took me 2.5 hours!
The train station in Roosendaal was closed, cause of a gas leak or bomb...? That meant the trains to and from Roosendaal didn't drive anymore. That means the intercity train to Etten Leur didn't drive and that also meant that all people who where going to Dordrecht/Rotterdam/Amsterdam were still in Breda cause theire train could not pass Roosendaal station. And that means it was very busy at Breda station!
What do you do if the trains don't drive? You go by coach. That was my first choice anyway. Normally if the trains don't drive for a good reason, the national railways makes sure there are enough coaches to surrounding city train stations. But cause of the new time table of the coaches (the existing lines drive more frequent now) there were no coaches left.
The first two coaches to Etten-Leur/Oud Gastel/Roosendaal were full under a minute. We waited 10 minutes till the next regular coach came. The driver who went to Etten Leur decided he would only take people who lived the most distant away?! That simply meant people who lived not even close to Etten Leur got to go to Etten Leur and people who needed to go to Etten Leur (and old people which didn't do a lot of elbow work) stayed in Breda.
25 minutes later we finally got on a coach to Etten Leur. Someone in that coach had a bad karma I think, because this coach broke down on the motorway. So we got kicked out off the coach next to a forest. Everybody got a little bit annoyed, and we decided to see if we could order a taxi. The answer was clear after one phone call, there were no free taxi's in the area anymore.
The only thing we could do was walk to Etten Leur (not that far away about 5 km, but still). Of course the normal asphalted path was temporary gone, they're making a new cycle path. So we did a little hiking through the forest (with my almost new boots).
Luckily I needed to go to Etten Leur, most people needed to go to Roosendaal (about 30 km further away).
Apple up-date: Estimated delivery date: 02/02/2007
I finally cleaned my room, moved my furniture and organised my desk!
With my birthday coming up my parents asked me the same question every year 'What would you like for your birthday' this year it was easy. I want a desk, and I found one at my favourite Swedish furniture shop.
So with this idea I came home Friday evening and decided to move my furniture, just to see if my new desk would fit. In the evening Steve came around and he had decided that he wanted to paint his apartment (it was really necessary, the whole living room is light yellow!).
On Sunday we went to the Gamma (D.I.Y. shop) to get paint. Finally there, a nice salesperson tells us that the colour Steve picked was probably not possible to make (?!) The colour was chocolate brown, but the colours for this season are light like lilac, beige and light grey. And that's why the machine could probably not make the colour.... that makes sense!
Steve took his chances and decided to buy 5 liters of the 'somewhat-dark-brown-paint'. Then we went back to walk 30 minutes with a mini stairs, brushes, rollers, sticky tape and 5 liters of paint.
I wasn't very enthusiastic about the colour first, but after it dried and had a second layer it looked gooood! The only negative thing on this whole experience was that afterwards the whole flat smelled after white spirit. Even the shower (which is cold and has no water pressure, don't even make me start about that!) smelled very chemical and toxic.
Monday morning I woke up feeling a bit strange, 2 reasons the whole flat still smelled after the white spirit, can't be very healthy!? Second reason my phone alarm went off and my phone was somewhere in the living room and the flat had a lot of obstacles on the floor (lack of organising). Not very fun at 06.30h.
Summary of the weekend: good weekend
Yay IKEA send me my salary (the €13.45 was from my retirement fund and IKEA got a private retirement fund so they pay it back at the end of the year bla bla). All this meant that I got enough money to order my iMac. All I have to do now is think of a suitable name for him/her?!
The second best thing that happened to me today was that I found the recipe of one of my favourite desserts: trifle. I had never tasted it or heard from it before, until I ate it at Christmas at Steve's family. It was good....! Today at work I was going through a dessert book and there is was page 12. My dessert: trifle! So next week I'm going to make trifle!
I work for IKEA almost 4 years now, and never had any troubles with the salary administration. They pay in time AND they pay me the right amount of money. But of course the only day of the year that I'm really waiting for my money to come, something goes wrong! They gave me €13.48, (and yes we get our salary paid a month) that's just not enough to buy my new iMac :(
I had some ambitions plans for my Saturday off. Well not like solving the world hunger problem, but I was planning to clean my desk (because I can't really put my future iMac on a a pile of papers!). Perhaps if I had sometime left I could move my furniture, cause my desk and my bed are close to the window and I definitely don't want my (IKEA) bed and most certainly not my future iMac space to get wet!
But I didn't do any of these things. I had a good weekend thou! On Friday night my boyfriend Steve came around to visit me. He did warn me that he had a bit of a cold. That cold was not just a headache. It was more like a fever, headache, sore throat and a lot of snot...
Cause of this 'cold' I got to practise my nursing skills (making tea, handing handkerchiefs.)
Saturday (my suppose to be very productive day) we stayed in bed till late in the afternoon. We discussed some pretty important subjects like: the English police is not always armed and cause of that they should people in the head, the Dutch police (who are most of the time armed) shoot people in the heart area. And some information for every woman who didn't go to self defence class, if someone is attacking you and you happen to have a gun in your bag. Aim the gun in the mouth of your attacker and aim it a bit up (pull the trigger).... It apparently always works, good to know?!
After all this violence it was time for "Happy Feet", yes the film with the animated penguins. We've already seen it in the cinema, but it's still hilarious. And then I got something to do that I wanted to do for weeks. I cut Steve's hair, and it's quit a nice haircut, if I may say so myself. If my degree doesn't work out, I can always start as a hairdresser!
Sunday was the day that my alarm went of at 7 am. The day that I had to go to work and everybody else could sleep late. Happily I like my job! Now the countdown for the next weekend has started.
Today I woke up, opened up my eyes...and apparently I approved to lay out a pond in my bedroom. Well that's not quit how it went, I woke up after turning off my alarm for 5 times. After the fifth time I decided that it was really necessary to get up, so I jumped out of bed and 3 seconds later I was laying back down again. Not in my warm and comfy (IKEA) bed, no on my cold floor.
How did this happen? Well somewhere between 1 am and 6 am they rain was coming in via my window and ceiling. It started with a little pond next to my sofa. Then it became a little stream of water, running just a few centimeters away from my bed. How romantic you might think, your own little pond and stream in your room. I must tell you, it's not the best thing that ever happened to me!
With a little bruise I started my day; and what can be more fun to start the last day of the week with an exam applied mathematics?!
Well I tell you an exam applied math AND after that, a meeting about the financial aspects of your company! That's the best way to start your weekend.
Note to myself: find 3 shareholders before February the 8th!
I actually made this blog to express my enthusiasm to the world for my future computer. For the nerds who are reading this; it's an iMac,
20 inch screen, 2.16HHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB DDR2 (2x512MB) Memory, then there is the Graphics processor that's a ATI Radeon X1600 with 128MB VRAM. The Hard drive is a 250GB serial ATA drive and then last but not least a wireless keyboard AND a wireless Mighty Mouse (the person who made up that name deserves a Nobel price for originality!)
You're probably questioning now why didn't she buy her beloved iMac jet? It's a money thing, I have to wait till IKEA gives me money for my (hard) work last month. And then my iMac is coming!
Now I have a blog, I should use it! The first question about my blog was: why is in English? Simple explanation, somewhere around the end of the year I want to go to Australia for my internship...and what better way to practise my English then with a critical reading audience like you?! (And I make a lot of mistakes with -d and -t at the end of words in Dutch)
The whole world has a 'blog' these days, I refuse to be the only person without a blog!
