Kings Day, and cars

I was really looking forward to the extra-long weekend of Kings Day. Because of the weather forecast I also had a day of extra leave on the Friday before the weekend so I was ready for doing nothing for a few days.

Friday was not as warm as they promised, but okay, it was possible to sit in my favourite spot in my garden. And so I did. When Jan Cees came home we had a difficult job waiting for us. It was time to choose the new lease car and we have to decide in 4 weeks. Of course when you know what car you want and when it’s in the budget it’s not that difficult. However, the car of his dreams was not allowed, because plug in hybrid cars are not on the list yet. The second best one, was too expensive in the end. A bit disappointing but still a luxury problem. So we started all over again and searched the list from the beginning. First wish, only 20% addition (is that the right word for Dutch 20% bijtelling?)
Than we  would prefer a station wagon and if possible with automatic gears. That means there was not so much to choose from anymore. So we went on tour on Saturday to see the preferred cars for real.
First the Peugeot 308SW, than just to see it for real the Citroen Cactus C4, a really strange but funny car. After this we went to Toyota to see the Auris Sports Tourer, a hybrid car with only 14% addition.
Not the most beautiful one but it has a few pros above the others. The car trip continued to the Volkswagen to see the Golf, which we found too small, and we ended the tour with the SEAT leon, which we found really nice but too expensive compared to the Peugeot and the Toyota Auris.

I’m guessing you can imagine how the cars played a prominent role in our weekendJ

After thinking through the pros and cons we decided to go for a test drive with both cars, the Peugeot and the Toyota. Unfortunately, Toyota will introduce its new model in June so we cannot see and test the new model yet. I’ll keep you posted about what we will choose at the end.

Than Kings Day Monday; we didn’t do a thing, we only watched the new style Kings Day on TV to see what it looks like. I found it a bit boring and so we ended up on the couch to watch 3 movies, I ordered food from Thuisbezorgd.nl and that was our Kings Day. So funny, when I came into the office the next day a lot of colleagues asked me how my Kings Day was. I think foreigners think all Dutch people run around in orange clothes and sell their stuff during Kings Day. Now Not Me!

Speaking English

I know we have talked about this problem before but it is so frustrating to have those terrible English speaking days. Especially after having an amazing speaking day. I had to welcome two applicants for a lecture job yesterday. My job was to install the laptop for their presentation. In the meantime I had a small talk with them, about their trip, where they came from and where they’re living. With both of them it went smoothly. I was really proud of myself. I even told Myra this morning about my feeling.

I know it’s normal to have more or less a fluctuation in performance, but it’s so annoying. It makes me feel insecure because I had a very good experience and still know I cannot trust myself. So, it still seems to be aleatory how my performance will turn out. I really hope it will reach a level in which I’m convinced of my ability to speakJ

*Aleatory= l looked it up, dependent on chance/van het toeval afhangend

Spring in the Netherlands

Finally we made it to the end of March and with this the spring has started. Officially, yes, however looking out of the window for the last couple of days are you setting back to fall. What a terrible weather! Okay, I’m probably the biggest Dutch weather hater there is in this country, but this was really unbearable. I had to walk Basil yesterday and I had to keep him on the leash to avoid him for blowing away. And not even he had trouble staying up, for me it was difficult as well. We struggled through together more or less.

Now we have the first of April, April fool and the IT guys came up with an ultimate joke, they thought.  They’ve send out an e-mail in which they let us know that from now on, the print balances will be deducted from the employee salary. And as always we had a few people who really believed it. Always fun of course.