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.

Lisbon

I've promised to tell you all about our city trip to Lisbon. It was wonderful, and we were very lucky that it was much warmer than usual. On Sunday, we had almost 24 degrees! I am sure you can imagine how we enjoyed this. We arrived early in the morning on Saturday and the plan was to see Melissa first. The moment we landed, I received her sms to tell us she could not make it because her 1-year-old son was ill and she had to go to the doctor. So, we went straight to our hotel to check in and leave our stuff there. 

We bought tickets for the hop on/off bus and off we went. You really get a good impression of the city travelling in an open bus. We stopped at Belem to see the important tower and, of course to eat Belm's most famous pastry.

 I don’t know exactly how to describe them, They're’s filled with a kind of yellow pudding and with a crispy crust what you should sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar. It was indeed very tasty!  Almost all tourists are going there to taste them and when we went there, we had to wait in a queue for almost ten minutes, so busy it was. (I will try to find the recipe to try to make them myself.) We went further with our tour and around 19.30 hours we found a nice terrace and stopped for a small meal. We were both tired of the long day and went back to the hotel by metro. After a shower, we fell asleep. 

The next morning we woke up early and started with a nice breakfast. Our city tour went further along very beautiful buildings and nice white houses with the red roofs. We saw the castle and tram 28, the one you may not miss when you are in Lisbon. To be honest, we saw so much in such a short time that I almost can’t remember everything. The last day, we went to Sintra. This is a very beautiful small place near Lisbon. It’s on the Unesco world heritage list. There are very old castles, palaces and particularly beautiful parks. Too many to see them all closely. 

Time for an update

What has happened in the last few weeks? First, I have started with an extra speaking course to get my level one grade higher. I really enjoyed this class and I was very sorry to miss two lessons due to illness. Or a better description because of suffering from afterpains after removing my last wisdom tooth. Although I have missed lessons, it was very helpful and in the end, my speaking has improved. However, I am not convinced it is a C1 level yet. For that, I need to improve my vocabulary much more. We're done now, and we all agreed, 8 weeks, is too short and we all would like to extend the course. As for the wisdom tooth I can only tell you that the removing part itself was difficult but luckily not painful due to the sedation. After 45 minutes, the tooth was gone and I had a numb jaw. That numbness can stay for a long time; I read on the internet there are people who still have problems after more than a year. I refuse to feel this numbness longer than necessary and I have made an appointment with an acupuncturist to see if he can speed up the healing process. This morning I had my second session and it is feeling much better already. Unfortunately, it has not gone yet! 

The first week after the holiday

After having three weeks of holiday I was back in the office last Monday.The first day is always difficult. After having weeks of doing nothing, no alarm clock and just go with the flow, you have to adjust to the workpace and waking up in the middle of the night.
A mailbox full of emails has to be read before you can throw them away because most off the questions and problems in those emails are already done by someone else.
Emptying the email box and a bit of chitchat with colleagues is all you can do on day one.The second day is just a little bit the same as the first day and from day three everything is business as usual. It's now Thursday evening and just one day to go and the first week is done. I have to be honest I'm looking forward to the weekend.And for as far as I have something to say about I will do nothing.

Almost Christmas

Although it's almost Christmas and my holiday started yesterday I'm not yet in the real Christmas spirit. Still busy with the last Christmas decorations. My house is a real mess and a lot of things still need to be done. At least the Christmas cards are already sent.
On my last day at work I've got my speaking recognition software installed with which I now posting my blog. It seems weird that if I use this in Dutch all-new sentences starts automatically with a capital letter. However in English new sentences all needs correction on the first letter to make it a capital letter. In a way it's good practice because I have to make a lot of corrections. The speaking part is really easy the correction part is still a big challenge.Furthermore, it's funny to see that there is a real difference in typing your message or speaking it. I don't understand a lot of the human brain but I'm sure that you use different parts for both of it.I realise this is a strange's blog post but this needs to be done to get a real expert in using this software.