Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Angry Customer
Finally another update from me
Friday I have been to the library and studied there for a couple of hours with my friend. I’ve been trying to decipher ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ by Dryden, but it’s really difficult and I haven’t quite accomplished it yet. I’m gonna try again tomorrow. After that I went to the centre of The Hague to look for a present for my mother, and I came home with lots of things, but not so many presents for my mom
I bought some shower-gel gift-set with 4 small bottles with different scents. I wasn’t really satisfied about it, but OK, I didn’t want to buy something crappy which would cost me a lot of money and then my mom would never use it. I bought 3 DVD’s with which I am very happy! I bought Shrek, Shrek 2 and ‘Cry Baby’. I really love that movie, and when I saw that they had it, I just had to buy it. I also bought some useful stuff, some clothes and some things for in the house.
At Saturday I stayed home all day, I didn’t do that much. I tried to work on the poem, but it didn’t really work out.
Yesterday we, my bf and I, went to visit my mother. We had to travel for about 2 hours. My mother was really happy to see us again, since it had been a while since we last visited her. My mom looked pretty okay, she had gained some weight, and she had had her hair grown. She didn’t look too bad. We stayed for about 2 hours, and we walked a little outside as well.
Today I worked again. My colleague isn’t planning anymore to take over the shop where I work, so I do need to figure out what kind of work I want to do. I really have no clue to what kind of work I want to do. I’d love to do some editorial work, just like I do right now with the Secrets of Harry Potter podcast, but I just don’t have the diplomas to be able to do that. I don’t know if I want to apply to another shop-position, I don’t know whether another shop will hire me for the position I would like to have.
I was really really enraged with a customer today. She is a friend of the shop-owners and she had given us a lot of films last week which we had to put on CD-ROMs. That’s really a lot of work for us, and I told her that the price per film was € 5.95. Since she’s a friend of the owner, I figured that they would make a deal about the price, and I also told her so. She said that was fine and that the work had no hurry, it could take a couple of weeks if necessary. Today she came in to check how far we were and she asked my colleague what the price approximately was now that we are halfway with the work. They were 2200 photos, divided by 40, which would come down to €327.00 approximately. She was really angry about that, because she said that I had said it was € 2.95 per film. I mingled in the discussion, but there was not really anything I could add. My colleague said that he had heard me saying it, but she said that he hadn’t even been there, while we both knew he was there, he was only helping another customer at the time. Well, I just answered her that we couldn’t settle our differences; I knew I couldn’t have said the lower price, while she insisted that I did. I told her I would phone the owner and let her contact the customer, and so I did. Luckily the owner believed me and knew that I would never have promised this for such a low price and she will settle this with her friend. Phew, just had to get that off my chest. My colleague and I were just trembling with anger, but we behaved ourselves and we stayed polite
I don’t have any big plans tomorrow. I need to go to Pilates, while I’m not really looking forward to it. And I think I should do some studying. Well, talk to you later!
Bad Morning, Tickets, Job, Tomorrow
I didn’t have a very good morning this morning. The train was really busy and I had to stand half of the way, which I really loathe. Then I heard that on part of the railway track on which I have to travel on Sunday to get to my mother, there will be no trains. I was pissed about it, because that means we’ll have to travel by bus or travel via another city which will take longer. This is the only Sunday in a very long time that I will travel by train, why did they choose this weekend!
Then, at work, I tried calling for a promotion. It said in my TV-guide that we could order tickets for free for the new Jim Carrey movie ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’. The lines would open at 10 am. So that’s when I called, but they kept saying that the lines were busy. And by the time I did get through, which was 10.45 am, there were no more tickets available in the cinema of my first choice. I was really pissed off about that.
And then, to conclude, I received a phone-call from the drugstore where I applied. They have chosen not to hire me. I don’t know any reasons; they only asked me if I wanted to pick up the documents I had sent them. These were all lousy copies, so I asked the woman to throw them away.
When I told my bf this all had happened, he suggested it might be better to turn off my phone and not answer it anymore, so no more bad messages could come through
Nothing else happened, but I did feel quite lousy this morning. I wasn’t even very upset that I didn’t get the job. I was a bit relieved actually, since I had started to doubt whether I would like to work there. Now I’ll just have to think really hard what kind of work I want to do.
I hope tomorrow will be a better day. My eyes did nag me a little today, but not as bad as yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll go to the library with my friend; we’re going to do some studying in advance for the next semester. That will be quite nice
Let’s just hope things will be better tomorrow.
Work, Eyes, Study, Work
Today I worked again, and not much special has happened. My eyes are still irritated, although at the moment it’s down to one eye, only my left one. I’m getting better at applying the eye-drops to myself, though I need some more practice.
I got the semi-official e-mails from the university with my grades, and they were still the same as yesterday, so I’m kind of getting used to the idea that I passed all my courses and I already gained 20 ECTS (study-points), of which I am very proud.
My friend from the university mailed me that one of the other classmates has quit with the studies. She thought that it was too much work and pressure, and she has failed some exams while she still studied very hard for them. I was surprised to hear that she quit, since it sounded to me like she had been better prepared for the exams than me.
Tomorrow I’ll have to work again, and I’m not really looking forward to it. I don’t work with my colleague, but with one of the owners, and that’s not always good. But after tomorrow I’ll have 3 days off again, so that’s something to look forward to. I’ll visit my mother on Sunday; I haven’t seen her for a very long time.
Eyes, University, Grades
It’s been a while since I last updated, but here I am again. A couple of days I forgot to update, and the other days I just didn’t have anything to tell.
Today my eyes have been bugging me, they are a bit inflamed (if that’s the right word). They are very red and I have trouble focusing on things when I just turn my head. I bought some drops to ease my eyes, but do you know how difficult it is to get a drop out of the bottle into my eye? I keep missing, and that’s really frustrating. I know this will all pass by in a couple of days, but it’s still annoying.
Tonight I had to go to the university, to pick up my new curriculum and my readers for the second semester. Only two of the four readers were available, but what’s new. It will only take about 2 months for the other reader to arrive, I suspect.
But, then the woman (student-coordinator) gave us our grades! I was very surprised, since I wasn’t supposed to get my grades until Thursday. The grades are not official, they have a meeting about them tomorrow, but she decided to give them anyway. And I passed all the courses! Even the one I really thought I hadn’t. I’m still not too enthusiastic until Thursday, until I know for sure that these are my grades, but until then I’m very happy. It would save me so much time if I don’t have to study all of the theory again.
And tomorrow I’ll have to work again. I hope my eyes will be better by then, since it’ll be very annoying to work when my eyes are like this. Let’s hope for the best.
Last Exam, Second Semester
Finally, I had my last exam tonight. It was the first exam which didn’t go too badly. I am so relieved that it is all over now. I have two and a half weeks off now, only of school of course, not of work. The exam went pretty OK. It consisted of 2 sections. The first was about some literary texts, a sonnet by Shakespeare, a bit of Othello, a part of Paradise Lost. I did this section pretty well. The second section was about the theory of literature and the terms. I did this section not as good as the first one, but it was still OK. I think I have about half the questions right of this section, and I might gain some points with the questions I think I got wrong.
So, now on to the second semester. I put my books in the bookshelf, the new books that is, because now I’m allowed to look into them and read if I have some time. First I want to finish reading ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. I only have to read the last two books, so that shouldn’t take too long anymore.
I have to work tomorrow again, and I really don’t feel like it. I’d much rather stay at home and do nothing. But I guess that’s not one of the possibilities…
Pilates, Studying in the Library, Fr Roderick
This morning I had my regular Pilates class. It went pretty fast, all the exercises quick after each other. It was OK, nothing really special.
This afternoon I went to the library to study there. I arrived at the regular location, but I wasn’t allowed to enter. They are renovating the library, and they had decided to shut off this department. So I went upstairs and there was a reading-room which was completely silent. That was fine as well.
I studied for about 3 hours, which is pretty long for me. I did pretty much everything I had planned to do, so I’m carefully confident about tomorrow’s exam. I even studied some when I got home, so I did my best.
Tonight at ‘Twee Vandaag’ (a Dutch news program) they had a documentary about Fr. Roderick. He is the host of the ‘Daily Breakfast’ show to which I listen every day. It was a nice documentary. They also showed him in his church, and at home while recording the show. This is a link to the video online:
www.tweevandaag.nlWell, tomorrow is my final exam, after work, and then it’s all finished.
Job Interview, Bad Exam, Good Essay, Next Exam
Sorry I didn’t update for a couple of days. Friday and Saturday I just forgot to write, and yesterday I didn’t feel like it. I had my second job interview on Friday. It didn’t go that well. The longer I think about it, the worse it went, so it probably didn’t go that bad. I just didn’t sell myself really well on the management tasks. I hope they will still accept me for a regular function, so that I can get used to the company and climb up later on.
This weekend I didn’t do much. I should have studied for my exams, but I just didn’t do anything. And today I felt it. I had my first Literature exam tonight, and it went very crappy. I left the room crying cause I felt so bad. I even left some questions blank, because I couldn’t come up with an answer that would come somewhere close to the truth.
I did have one good thing though. My other Literature teacher was supervising the exam, and he showed me my grade for my last essay, the one about dr Faustus. I have a 9 (out of 10)! I am very very proud of this. He is not the easiest teacher, so this really means something to me.
Tomorrow I have Pilates and I will have to study for my exam on Wednesday. I think that after the fiasco of today, I really will study. I prepared my homework for this course better than for the one I had today, so I have a better feeling about this exam.
Test, Interview, CI, Mum
It’s not even that late, but I’m pretty tired. Yesterday I had my Linguistics exam. It went pretty OK. I expected more difficult and detailed questions. I hope that I will pass it, I think I can when counting the points I have scrambled together.
Today I worked all day, with the owners of the shop. That’s never too great. And I’m so glad that I put my telephone on ‘silent’, because the drugstore called today to make an appointment for a second interview. And this interview is…tomorrow! At 9:30 I have the interview in the centre of The Hague in one of the shops. Not that I’m gonna work there, but just to have an objective someone have another look at me. I’m kinda happy it is this fast, since I don’t have any time to worry about it or to get nervous. I hope it’ll all go well.
And today lots of stuff happened on the Catholic Insider forum. There’s a lot of debate going round about what to do next, since the editorial team (including me) is the only team who has really produced something. The question also arose whether some people should take some ‘leadership’ in the different departments to take away some of the workload of Fr Roderick. We’ll just have to see where this is all going to end.
And most important of all: it's my moms birthday today. She turned 55 today, and I spoke to her briefly over the phone, and she did have a nice day, so I'm happy for her.
Study, Exam, Pilates
Today I went over to my classmate’s house and we studied together, and I’m pretty satisfied with what I have accomplished. I set out to study the basics for my exam of tomorrow, and I did just that. And that’s pretty astonishing, since I usually don’t do what I intend to do. I studied for about 3 hours, and that’s more than what I would have done at home. I don’t think I have studied enough to get a good grade at my exam; it really depends on the questions I’ll get. I now know the basics of vowel- and consonant description and I hope that’ll gain me a lot of points, and I’ll have to do a phonetic transcription. I can do that, I only make a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think I’m a lot worse than the rest of my class. But we’ll see that tomorrow.
I did go to Pilates this morning after a two week break because of Christmas and stuff. It was very hard. We now have mirrors in the room, and I didn’t really like that, I’m constantly confronted with how fat I have become. I am glad I went though, finally used all my muscles again, and it’ll become easier next week or the week after.
Tomorrow I’ll have to work and take my exam. I hope all will go well.
Tests and Pilates
Today I had my Language Acquisition 1a test. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was pretty much like the quizzes we had and they didn’t ask any very difficult words or phrases. I figured I had about 35 out of the 50 questions right, so I hope that’ll be sufficient. I made some spelling mistakes and some of the others I might have guessed right, but I might have some wrong which I thought I had right. To conclude, I just don’t really know and I’ll have to wait till I get my grade. And the day after tomorrow I’ll have my next test about Linguistics, which will be worse than today. A lot of people talked about not going to this test, because they hadn’t studied enough. I haven’t studied enough either, but I’m gonna make the test anyway. I wanna know what they ask and how they’ll ask it. Lots of stress these 2 weeks.
Tomorrow I have Pilates again, and I’m not even looking forward to it. I guess I’ll just have to go.
Studying, Sick, Dragons
It’s the end of the weekend already, but I’m not very nervous at the moment. Yesterday I reviewed some of the vocabulary, and it didn’t go that bad. Today I tried to learn some of the linguistics theory for my test on Wednesday. I didn’t learn that much, but it’s better than nothing.
My boyfriend is suffering from a bad cold. He’s very tired and is already asleep at the moment. According to himself, he’s not sick, he’s only tired and he needs to sneeze and cough all the time. Men when they are sick…
And, then some major news of tonight: my article about dragons has been recorded and broadcasted tonight! Fr. Roderick has recorded it, almost in the original state as how I wrote it. He only changed some passages and some words. I am very proud of it, and my name is even mentioned at the end
Here’s the link to the mp3 file:
http://libsyn.com/media/dailybreakfast/SHP-09.mp3. At least a couple of 1000 people will hear my work.
Tomorrow I’ll just have to work in the day. Early in the evening I have my test, so please think of me so that all will go well!
Books, podcast, exams
Here’s just a short update. Yesterday I worked while I really didn’t feel like it, and I didn’t do that much either. But the day passed by pretty quickly.
Today I went to the city to pick up my new books for the next semester in February. It was a lot of money. I also bought ‘the Da Vinci Code’ and ‘The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter’. Both of them I bought for the podcasts of Fr. Roderick. I have already used the book of Harry Potter to write an article about ‘Durmstrang’ and the many symbolisms surrounding that. I guess I’ll be monitored by some intelligence-agencies for the next couple of days since I googled a lot on ‘Nazis’ and ‘Hitler’ in relation to this article. If you want to listen to the podcast, make sure to check out the website on
http://www.catholicinsider.com. There are some plans for a new podcast regarding the ‘Da Vinci Code’, that’s why I already bought it so I can at least follow what they’re talking about. I’m currently reading the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’. I have finished the third book today, so 4 more to go.
And I am getting more and more anxious about my upcoming exams next Monday and Wednesday. I still haven’t prepared anything and I really don’t feel like it.
Job interview
I won’t keep you in suspension any longer, today was the day of my job-interview. I was very nervous about it. I made sure I looked good, I polished my nails, made sure my hair was OK, I was wearing a nice blouse (the same as with Christmas, but they don’t know that), everything to make a good first impression. I arrived at the mall at about 4 o’clock, so I had to spend half an hour there. I just walked around the many shops, and I went to the toilet in the big shopping-centre. After that I quickly had to go back to the other side of the mall where I started, because I had to be there and I still had to find my way back. Luckily I recognized some shops I had seen on the way in, and so I arrived in the shop where I applied on time.
The woman I had the conversation with was very nice. The telephone call was a bit difficult 2 weeks ago, but during the conversation she was really nice, and I got the feeling she understood me. She didn’t ask any very scary questions, just who I was, what I thought the job was about, stuff like that. I answered nicely. I only stuttered for a while when she asked me in what kind of shop I should be placed. I didn’t know how to formulate my question, but then I talked around it, and she understood me quite well.
After the interview she gave me some forms to fill out and send back to her with some copies of documents. She also gave me the form which is needed for the tax-stuff, which I thought was a good sign, because she made a big deal out of finding this form for me. It’s a form which is only needed when you enter the company, so I think she was kind of positive about me. When she receives the forms, I will be called by one of the shop managers of a shop in the Hague who will invite me for a second interview. She won’t talk to him about me in advance, so that they both talk with me in an objective manner. After that, they will decide whether they want to hire me or not.
If they want to hire me and I want to become an Assistant-manager, I will have to get my drugstore-diploma first. It will take at least a year before I can assume that function. But OK, that’s fine with me; I’m closer to a promotion then, then right now. She also talked about placing me in Scheveningen, which I pretty much liked. It’s a place with a lot of tourists, right next to the sea, and I can reach it by bus in 10 minutes.
I’m pretty positive, and I think that if I don’t blow up the second interview, I will have a big chance of getting a job there. It’s just gonna take some more time then I thought, but that’s just as well.
Leiden, glasses, dragons
It is so hard to find any motivation to go to work, once you have decided to leave… I’m very glad I don’t have to work today and tomorrow. I do have to study for my exams, but I can’t seem to get myself to it. Don’t know what that’ll turn out to…
Now I have to go to Leiden, to my university to hand in my essay, and I really don’t feel like it. I have to go, otherwise I’ll have to go tomorrow, and I really don’t want to go then, just before my job-interview. After going to Leiden, I want to go to a store to order new glasses. I only have mine for a year, but my eyes must have deteriorated pretty fast, because I have difficulty looking at a distance, and that’s what my glasses are for. I just had to wait for the new year, with our new insurance thing here in the Netherlands, if I go to a specific store, I can get a refund on my complete glasses, and that would be very nice. I just hope it’ll be possible and that they’ll know what I’m talking about and how it works when I get to the store. I have to go to some other mall I have never been before, because this shop is not anywhere near my house.
And after that, if I’ll succeed in everything, I still have to finish my dragon’s piece.
Lots of work to do, and I’m not really looking forward to it.
Happy New Year, Pictures, Rome
This is the first post in the New Year. First of all, Happy 2006 to all of you! My New Year’s Eve was all right, not that spectacular. My boyfriend and I just stayed at home. We had lots of nice food and some ‘oliebollen’ of course, which is a Dutch tradition to have on New Year’s Eve.
I didn’t do that much spectacular either this weekend. It was pretty cold and wet weather this Friday. I was very happy that I didn’t have to work, because the trains didn’t ride after 4 in the afternoon. Well, they did ride, but with much delay. We just went to do our groceries (in 3 different supermarkets) and I picked up my pictures at the postal office. I ordered some pictures via the Internet, since I’m gonna leave the photo shop where I work and I do need a new address to print my pictures. I just don’t want to go to a one-hour service anymore, since that’s way too expensive without any discount. I ordered 150 pictures for a very low price via the Internet, and I’m not that disappointed with the outcome. They are a bit dark, and the paper is very thin, but the overall quality was OK, better than I expected. Now it has cost me like a third of what it would cost me if I would pay the full price in my own shop.
Yesterday I didn’t do that much either. I’m still working on a text about dragons, and I still can’t find any information on what it means in stories if the hero fights a dragon. I have found a lot of b***sh*t of Jung and stuff, but since I’m not a Freud-fan, I don’t wanna include that in my article (Jung was a student of Freud). I still have to figure out a way to solve this.
And tonight I watched the first episodes of Rome, a new TV-series, created by a conjunction between the BBC and HBO. It was nice to watch. My teacher at the university recommended this series, since it’s pretty accurate historically. And for a half American series, there’s a lot of nudity. I guess we have the uncensored version over here.
Well, gotta work tomorrow again, so looking forward to that…
