Oranje boven!

I haven't really felt homesick since I moved to London -Holland just isn't that far away- but today I am feeling a bit melancholic. For the first time in years I can't join in the wonderful madness of Queen's day in Amsterdam. I am neither very patriotic nor a big fan of the monarchy but I do love Koninginnedag. I love strolling through the Vondelpark and seeing all the kids with their tiny screechy instruments, the egg races and all sorts of bizarre games. I love the organised chaos of the boat parade and I generally just love the whole party atmosphere that takes over the city. It's 'gezellig'!

To soften the blow of having to miss all of this this year, on Saturday I went to the London Holland House event sporting a bright orange top. Everybody with Dutch blood running in their veins and living in London was probably there. It was really weird being in a place where so many people were dressed in orange and speaking Dutch...while being in London. As one might expect it was quite a cliched event. (pictures!). Obviously there was a Volendammer herring cart, a stroopwafel vendor, dutch cheese girls, flowers and of course Heineken. There was even a guy making clogs, something I have never seen on any Queen's day before! Amazingly enough I even ran into a familiar face from the lab. It was fun but it can in no way match the real thing.

So today I am feeling a bit sad knowing I'm missing out on all this. I have put on my white trousers and a blue shirt and varnished my toe nails bright red so in my own subtle way I'm still keeping up our national colours. Next year I will definitely try to be there again. I hope all of you in Holland are having a great time today. Happy Queen's day!

Sloshed

To any teetotallers out there and to my mum: please stop reading now. The picture I am about to paint here is not a pretty one.

I have just had what I sincerely intend to be a one-of-a-kind Friday night. There are a few things you need to know in order to understand what happened:

1) My exams had just finished. It had been a very stressful week and we were all celebrating it was over.

2) A week before I had literally burst out of one of my tops, a none too subtle sort of way of telling me perhaps it was time to shed those winter kilos. So for all of last week I have been dieting. Not the sensible kind but the kind where you essentially just starve yourself. I had had no more than 2 slices of bread and some tea all day...

3) English wine glasses are HUGE. They generally hold about 250 ml so even if you have had "only 3 glasses", that means you have drunk a bottle.

With such a dangerous cocktail of ingredients the result should have been predictable. I can honestly say I have never made such a spectacle of myself before. The only good thing is I made it to the restaurant's bathroom in time. The bad thing is I didn't quite make it all the way over to the toilets. Also unfortunately; I was drinking my usual red, not stainless white. I am ashamed to admit that I was regurgitating a bit more than just the principles of Marketing yesterday. That is one place in London where I can never show my face again!

Even worse than being this horribly drunk is being horribly drunk in a foreign tongue. English comes pretty natural to me these days. Most of the time I think in English and sometimes I even dream in it. There are really only two instances where my English starts to break down. The first is when I am exhausted, the other is when I am drunk. Yesterday night I was both. I fear I must have been talking complete gibberish, or at the very least some awful 'Dunglish'.

I was kindly taken care of by a friend who guided me out of the restaurant and into a cab. Angela: you are an angel for putting up with me! Now that the killer headache has subsided, embarrassment is taking over. So this is what it feels like to be a student in Britain.

Never again!

That's it. I'm not doing this again, not ever!

Over 10 hours this week have I wasted regurgitating things that by next week I will have irrevocably forgotten. My arm is sore from writing. My back aches from stress and sitting in very unergonomic lecture theatres. My brain is suffering from information overload. What was I thinking when I decided to embark on this? No more. This is the last degree I ever hope to do in my life. Please tie me down and read this post out loud to me if ever I would be foolish enough to suggest otherwise. Enough is enough.

Blessing in disguise

This week my lifeline connecting me to the outside world has snapped: our Internet has been disconnected! The line we had was being paid for by the company of one of my now ex-flatmates. Of course now that he has moved out they will no longer extend us this courtesy.

I suppose the timing has been somewhat of a blessing in disguise for me. It is amazing how much time one can waste being online when really all you should be doing is studying. I live and breathe internet & e-mail these days. It is killing me to be cut off from my digital world. Turning on the computer is almost the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before I go to bed. It is absolute agony that I can't check if I have any new e-mails on my GMail account (just a few), my College account (even fewer), my old Uni account (about 30 messages about cheap drugs) or to see if he has left me a message (he hasn't). I miss checking the Dutch news (no world peace yet) or the BBC news (no world peace there either). I miss looking up random words and facts on Wikipedia, Google or YouTube. And of course the worst: I can't even update my blog without having to go to Uni!

For my exam results it has probably been a good thing that I have been cut off but now exam week is almost over... can somebody please, please, please reconnect me again?

In an English country garden

There is no more effective way of getting me to do those laborious chores around the house than exam week. True to the spirit of escapism, I will be defrosting the freezer, painting the bedroom or rearranging my drawers. Anything not to have to sit still and study! This time it is no different. My new distraction is the most unlikely so far. Instead of working on my Marketing exam, I have today taken up that most English of hobbies: gardening!

Anybody who has ever lived with me will appreciate the unlikeliness of this. I have the least green fingers ever. I have repeatedly managed to kill off cacti! I was once even given a "how to take care of your potted plants" book for my birthday by friends who took pity on the sorry state of my flora. So gardening wouldn't exactly seem to be my thing. In all honesty; it still isn't. The gardening I have been doing so far is no more than trying to rid our patio of the thick layer of weeds that is covering it. Our flat has a small garden in the back but because of the high turnover in occupants no one ever feels responsible for it. There is not a single plant in that garden that is actually supposed to be there. It is a big jungle of weeds run amok. It is further adorned with a completely rusted through barbeque and a collapsed wooden bench. All in all a pretty sorry sight. Now that the weather is getting so warm and sunny though, it would be nice to be able to sit outside without nettles stinging my legs all the time. So rather than focusing on the "4P's of marketing"(I'll tell you but only if you really, really want to know) I have been attacking this jungle with some garden scissors, uprooting a lot of creepy many-legged crawlers in the process.

My back is killing me and my hands are a bit rough but the patio definitely looks much better. I can even see the tiles again! Ideally I would like to do something about the rest of the garden as well, maybe even plant some real plants and flowers. Then again, by the time I would have the garden ready enough for that, my exams will be over and the spirit will most likely have left me again...

No place like home

In the past couple of days I have spent time in all three of the cities that at some point in my life I have lived in. Back in Amersfoort, the town I was born and raised in, I have apparently become somewhat of a tourist attraction. People were stopping by because they heard I would be home for the holidays. For them, Amersfoort is the place they most closely associate with me so going there means coming home. I don't really feel it as such. Amersfoort is a nice, fairly pretty place and, having spent 20 years of my life there, I know it well enough but I just don't feel a strong connection to it. If anything, home in Amersfoort is my parental house. My old room is still there, looking pretty much the same way as it did on the day I moved out all those years ago. Except of course it is full of moving boxes these days with most of my stuff in storage there...

Amsterdam is where I feel at home. I love my apartment there. I have lived in my place for close to 9 years and it is really the place that best reflects who I am. But it's more than that. Amsterdam has always been special to me, even before I moved there. Living in Amsterdam has been great. It took me a long time to get to know the city properly -my infamous lack of directional sense again- but in the end I knew just where to find those nice little shops and restaurants, I had my personal hairdresser, my favourite park and have memories all over the city. All the things that make you feel you belong rather than are just a visitor.

Now, in London, I have to start all over again. I still can't find my way even around the centre. Leave me at Picadilly Circus and tell me to walk to Covent Garden and there is a fair chance I'll end up in Notting Hill. I have a supermarket but am still in desperate need of a good hairdresser, dry cleaner and shoe repair shop. And I won't be able to find any of the nice restaurants and pubs I have been to with others any more. My house is not a home either. Although my room is cluttering up at amazing speed, it's mostly with paperwork, books and clothes. I don't buy anything unless it is functional because I know I'll just end up having to move it again. The house is fine but it isn't my own space. I like London, I really do, and I can picture myself living here for another while but it is still a long way off from truely becoming a home.

Brittania rules

This island is a quaint place in some ways. It so completely rejects the notion of being a part of Europe. l don't particularly think of myself as a "European", but here there is a real 'us vs. them' mentality. One aspect in which this is blatantly apparent is in the adoption of the metric system or, to be more precise: the lack thereof.

For some time now officially all business should be conducted in metric units and indeed shop prices are quoted per kilo and per litre. Much of the signage and packaging, however, is still firmly rooted in the old British Imperial system of pounds & pints. To this day a container of milk, for instance, holds 568 ml: exactly 1 pint! Also in people's everyday conversations it is apparent that metric units have no place whatsoever. I often find myself struggling in conversation. When people tell me they lost “a full stone” I try to look impressed but I’m unsure whether that is more like a pebble or like a boulder. Similarly, I'll nod appreciatively at a height of 6 foot, 5 inches still not knowing whether the person we are discussing is a Lilliputian or a full blown Goliath. And with 12 inches in a foot, the bloody system isn't even decimal so there are no quick and easy conversions!

I can't foresee the British giving up their habits any time soon so if I want to integrate into their society I’d better familiarise myself with this odd, archaic system. So I have begun practising: I am 5’8” and weigh 123 lbs. No, honestly!

Babylonian nights

One of the best things about my time in academics is the wonderfully diverse, multicultural, multinational and multilingual circle of friends it has given me. Living in London has only amplified that further. Until recently I shared this house with 4 others, none of whom spoke the same mother tongue. Amongst the people I consider my friends I can quite easily count about a dozen different nationalities. The world really has become a global village. Our only common denominator, our lingua franca, is English. I am not saying it is all the Queen's English but it serves us well enough. Without English many of the precious friendships I have would have never gotten beyond the stage of a Babylonian mime act. Last night I got a taste of what that world could have looked like.

Together with a friend -indeed one of the English speaking variety, though she more than holds her own in Dutch as well as half a dozen other languages- I went to see a very special performance of A Midsummer Night's dream. The play was performed in 8 different languages of which I can boast only 1 at best! And that one is in "Shakespearean" so perhaps it is more accurate to claim none. Astonishing. The actors seamlessly shifted from one language into another leaving the audience to wonder what had just been said. Thank goodness we had bought the programme book with synopsis beforehand! Of course the point is not at all to understand every word (most likely even in all-English Shakespeare performances most people don't manage that!). It was kind of liberating in fact to just sit back and simply let things unfold before your eyes. The motions, the expressions, the costumes, the dances; they all conveyed the magic of the story without much need for words. However, once the lights came back on I suddenly felt very grateful again for having been given the gift of English!

Heathrow hell

Aah, no better way to start the holidays then with a nice weekend break! I have just come back from a few wonderfully relaxing days in Switzerland (the one in Europe, not the Central Asian cousin just yet). It was beautiful. Fresh snow upon my arrival meant that we even got to spend a day enjoying the slopes, whereas yesterday I spent the whole day strolling around Zürich basking in the sun. That's the life! It was a great way of recharging the batteries before facing those long weeks of study ahead of me.

They say you have to take the bad with the good. The bad in this case then would definitely be Heathrow Terminal 2. I don't normally fly out of Heathrow, mainly because it doesn't get those bright orange planes. London Gatwick is my airport of choice. It is closest by and has plenty of affordable flights. Unfortunately the orange people have had some difficulty breaking into the Swiss market so a Swiss airlines flight out of Heathrow it had to be. I was stunned! Heathrow T2 was built in the '50s and by the looks of it, it hasn't so much as seen a paint brush since. There is also something really disturbing about the check-in hall. The ceiling is so low you get the impression they actually forgot to include this floor in the original design. Then when somebody finally noticed the omission they split one of the levels in half. Truely claustrophobic. Everything about that place feels so hopelessly outdated, improvised and just generally inefficient.

Going through security is your basic comtemporary airport nightmare. At Heathrow, security checks are done before entering the departure lounge so everybody has to join the same endlessly meandering queue. Clearing security itself has these days become a rather embarrassing experience, especially if you travel with carry-on luggage only. The transparent zip-lock bag for your liquids allows your fellow travellers to scrutinise exactly what brand of toothpaste you use and how many tubes of facial cream and war paint it takes to keep you looking presentable. As if you weren't feeling exposed enough not only do you have to remove the usual coats and jackets but they also make you take off your shoes. If only I had remembered to buy some new socks.... Then while your luggage is scanned for explosives and pointy objects, some big burly security woman gets to feel you up. By the time you reach the departure lounge you feel strangely violated.

Thankfully after all that humiliation I could put myself in the hands of the Swiss who reassure you in no less than 4 languages that all will be well and you should just sit back and eat your chocolate. The plane arrived right on time with proverbial Swiss precision. The airport looked smooth and spotless. Within minutes I was outside. Time to let the "Zwitserlevengevoel" begin!

Bless you

Tomorrow morning I have to get up early and be in College much earlier than I have gotten used to recently. The last week of any lecture block is typically characterised by a sudden flurry of activity as all assignments for the courses are due. These assignments make up 30% of your overall mark so, although they are not crucial, it is still worthwhile to do them properly. The reason I have to be in early is that tomorrow we have to present a poster for my class in Project Management. Then on Friday is the deadline for our Marketing essay. Both projects are group assignments which means we carry them out in our allocated "syndicate groups". No, I am not kidding. That really is the official term they label us by. I think it makes us sound like some white collar crime organisation but is is probably meant to make us feel like the budding business people that of course we are.

For our presentation tomorrow we have chosen a somewhat unusual topic. Since the course is on Project Management most groups have chosen to work on things like the Wembley stadium, the Sydney Harbour Bridge or some other major construction project. We have decided to emphasize the fact that we are doing a degree in Health Management instead and are discussing the management of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. It is an interesting topic but, as it doesn't really fit the frameworks we have been taught in class which were often designed for construction or IT type projects, it is not an easy one. For our marketing essay we have taken a similar approach. I am so sick and tired of hearing about Easyjet, Tesco or the iPod. All my classes recycle these same examples over and over again. There is some logic to it but it is not something that interests me personally. Our essay instead deals with marketing of Tamiflu, the anti-flu drug.

As you can imagine a lot of my reading over the past few days has focused on infection risks and viral spread. I think I may have discovered a new method of disease transmission in the process. I now have reason to suspect that viruses can be transmitted from computers to humans. For two days now I have been sniffling and coughing. I have already had to restock on Kleenex. I can only hope that it is flu rather than SARS.

Cultural learnings for make benefit me

This coming week will be the last week of term, meaning that from next weekend onwards I will be enjoying a mixture of holidays and days spent in solitary seclusion studying for my next round of exams. In all honesty, I have lost much of the zeal that I managed to muster during the previous series. Most of the courses I had this term were just not as interesting to me as they had substantially less to do with the healthcare sector. I did courses in Strategic Management and Marketing, for instance, which are simply not my cup-of-tea. I will still study of course and, being me, I will still want to do well but my heart is not really in it. After my exams I only have one bit of collective course work left where we have to engage in a business plan competition with each other. Everybody assures me this part will be a lot of fun but I am not convinced yet. I simply do not see myself as a true-blooded entrepreneur, but I will try to keep an open mind about it.

What I am very excited about, however, is what we will get to do after that: our individual research reports. This will be the major assignment of the whole course and constitutes an individual part of research and the writing of –here we go again– a thesis. You are largely free to decide what topic you want to work on and it is generally considered a useful stepping stone into whatever career you wish to pursue afterwards. Although recently I have been applying for consultancy jobs my dream is still to work for organisations such as WHO or the Red Cross. Early in the year I spoke with one of my professors about this as he does a lot of work for WHO and he suggested that I do my final project in his group. Last week we discussed what sort of project I can do that will put me on the radar of these organisations. I came out of his office with a big stupid grin on my face that lasted for several days! In fact, I think I might still be grinning now.

I have been given the amazing opportunity to work on a project that will likely involve working with people in WHO and several other healthcare institutions. That is not even the best part of it though. To phrase it in my professor's words, I will be getting my “boots dirty” and not exactly in the most obvious of places… The dirt I will be scraping off my boots is to be found in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan! I had to Google a map to see where exactly Kyrgyzstan is but eventually I was able to locate this “Switzerland of Central Asia” somewhere between Russia and China. I have no idea yet on the details of anything. I am not even sure what it is exactly that I will be doing, or how long I will be doing it for, over there. It will definitely not be before the summer and there are a lot of other things to do before then but I am already so excited about it that I simply had to share this news. Once things become clearer I will certainly keep you updated. In the mean time I will alternate reading my boring text books with staring at the pictures in my brand new Lonely Planet on Central Asia. Very nice!

Auld Lang Syne

It's almost five months ago now that I moved into my current place, having been rather suddenly booted out of my first London residence. Finding a decent place to live in London is a real challenge, particularly if you're on a tight budget. You wouldn't believe some of the apartments -if that's what you can even call them- I have looked at! By the time I went to view this place I was beginning to feel pretty desperate so it was a pleasant surprise to find a nice and reasonably spacious room. I did have some doubts about sharing a house with no less than four others though. After all, in Amsterdam I had an entire apartment all to myself and I had become quite comfortable in that luxury. The landlady didn't give me much time to think it over and I had to make a snap judgment. Fortunately I have not been disappointed.

The house is old and definitely has some flaws but what has made all the difference is really the flatmates. They are a good bunch. We are a very mixed group with no two nationalities, occupations or personalities alike but that is probably part of the charm. We all get along wonderfully and occasionally do things together; go out drinking in the pub or stay in and have a movie night. Most of them moved in only a few weeks before I did which means that their 6 month contracts are about to run out. All three of the boys have chosen to move out and are now looking for a new place together. For me it would not make sense to move out. I have no idea where I will be in a few months time, whether it be London, Amsterdam or yet another destination, and it would be too much hassle to move for what could well be only a short period.

The past couple of weeks we have seen a parade of potential new flatmates pass by. The landlords seem eager to make the place look as presentable as possible and have cleaned up the mould in the bathroom, replaced the shower curtain and are telling us to do all sorts of bizarre things. They ask us to switch on all the lights, especially in the bathrooms, whenever there are viewings and want us to turn the TV on at MTV. I would be put off by a place where the TV is continuously blaring loud music and the lights are on for no obvious reason but clearly they have a different view on what constitutes effective marketing. So far, however, only one of the three available rooms has been taken so maybe I'm not the only person who doesn't care for MTV after all...!

It will be interesting to see how all these changes are going to affect the atmosphere around the house. I just know I will miss these guys. In a way they have become the people I am closest to in London as we spend so much time together. I have come to think of them as friends and I definitely do hope we will stay in touch.

I blog therefore I am

Many great people have kept diaries. These meticulously kept documents of course really come in handy when they write autobiographies on their equally great lives. Tony Blair recently expressed regret at not having kept a diary of his years at no. 10. Too bad indeed. I am sure we would all have loved to know exactly just what he was thinking on more than a few occasions! Some people even owe their fame exclusively to their diaries. Think Anne Frank, although I am sure she would have preferred owing her fame to X-Factor had she been given a choice.

Personally, I have never been very good at keeping a diary even though I did have one as a kid. It was one of those classic little books with a red leather(ish) cover and a shoddy lock even your five year old brother could have picked. To be fair, I don’t think mine ever tried but he could have… I wrote in it only very sporadically, maybe about two, three times a year and some years not at all. To me it always felt unnatural to write something that was to be read only by a future, distant version of myself. I never understood the point. I also assumed my brain would provide sufficient storage capacity for all those memories I could ever wish to preserve. Even though I know better now, I still don’t feel the urge to pick up a pen and write “dear diary”. I need an audience.

When I was younger I used to be a champion letter writer. My friends and I would write long letters, overflowing with all the usual teenage drama, and then give them to each other the next day at school. Keeping a blog is in some ways the logical extension of that. Let’s face it; blogs are mainly ego-documents craving for a captive audience. It is like keeping a diary but deliberately leaving the lock open in the hope that somebody will come along to read it and think you are the smartest/funniest/most interesting person to have ever walked the Earth. There is definitely something exhibitionist about putting your private thoughts and experiences out there for everybody, not just your curious little brother, to see.

I don't keep count of how many people visit this site, nor do I know exactly who you are. Chances are I know most people personally. Just occasionally, however, a complete stranger may stumble upon this site. I can’t deny I find a certain thrill in that thought. At the top of this page there is a little button marked "next blog". It is my own little magic door to a world of voyeurism. I often simply start clicking and surfing around, stumbling into the lives of unknown others like they might into mine. I get to read about their loves and their losses, their passions and their grievances and yet, they will never know that I have been there. We are all eavesdropping on each other’s conversations, raising our voices just loud enough so that they can hear us too. We don’t worry about a Big Brother watching us; we welcome him in for tea.

Hunting victim

It was bound to happen sooner or later and now it has. Today I received my first rejection letter or actually: rejection e-mail, paper is just so last century. It's all part of the game called job-hunting, I'm well aware of that, but that doesn't make the process any more fun. And I must say, the first one is a hard hitting one. Not because I particularly had my hopes up for this job but because of the big flashing Neon letters in which the message was brought home to me. You see... I only put in my application yesterday!

I found the position advertised on the website of another one of the big consultancy firms yesterday afternoon. From what I could tell the job looked potentially interesting and the profile encouraging enough. Since only two weeks ago I had already polished and shined my resume for a fairly similar position, my CV didn't need that much tweaking and I sent it off some time late last night. Now of course I can only speculate what happened next but I imagine the scene will have been somewhat like this:

Somewhere in London an alarm clock goes off. It's 7:30 AM and the still slightly groggy company recruitment officer drags herself out of bed. Time for another day at the office! A shower, a bowl of Weetabix and a cup of tea later she gets on the overcrowded tube, wedged in amongst the other city workers for an uncomfortable half hour journey to the office. Once arrived there she pours herself a coffee and has a quick chat with her colleagues. It's just the usual chitchat: men, kids, what happened on Gray's Anatomy this week. Then, just before 9 AM, she turns on her computer and checks the company e-mail account. She glances over the new harvest, opens a standard reply message, adds a name to the heading and presses 'send'.

At exactly 9:01 AM this morning I was informed the company "will not proceed further" with my application. Wow, I don't think I have ever been rejected that rapidly before! I'm sure it must be some sort of record. No waiting, no anticipation, just a lightning fast resounding NO. I get no explanation and worse, am informed that I will not be able to ask for feedback or further comments. Such are the rules of the game. I'm sure this will not have been my last rejection either so I'd better learn to get used to it and develop some thicker skin. I do hope though that the next person considering my application will at least take somewhat longer than a minute before giving me the thumbs down.

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain

Being a foreigner in this city, I frequently get the question where I am from. Almost without exception my answer triggers an unbelieving "really? I wouldn't have guessed" type of reaction.

Londoners are quite used to hearing all sorts of foreign accents. The city is full of French, Russians, Poles, Italians, Indians and so on. You name it, they've got it. All these nationalities have a tendency to flavour the English language their own peculiar way, the Dutch being no exception to this. The thing about me is, I don't really sound very Dutch. In itself this would of course not be such a bad thing if it wasn't for that pesky little line that usually follows: "But you sound so...American"! Now there are plenty of reasons why this is not something I care to be mistaken for.

It has made me think about how this could have come to be. It surely can not be because I have spent a lot of time in the US. I have only ever been there once in my life and I was 10 at the time. I have had formal training in English since I was about 7 years old or so. In total I am guessing I will probably have had about four different English language teachers. Each and every single one of them was a fervent advocate of good old-fashioned Oxford English. Also my spelling is completely British. I don't write 'color' but 'colour' and I'll spell 'centre' rather than 'center'. So if I have been trained to sound like a stiff Brit, how on earth did I end up sounding like a swaggering American? There is only one explanation I can plausibly come up with and it is an embarrassing one. I must have been watching too much Friends and not enough Morse!

Living in the UK, I am now desperately trying to clean up my act and transform into a modern day Eliza Doolittle. I am getting completely tongue-tied changing my pronunciation from "vaitamins" to "vittamins" and from "tomehtoes" to "tomahtoes". I no longer go shopping for a pair of pants but I will buy trousers instead, of course only while walking on the pavement, never on the sidewalk. If despite all of my best efforts at the end of the day I still can not manage to convince, I can of course always try to throw in the odd "Jolly good" or two. It sure can not get any more British than that. Cheerio!

Careful, she bites!

Some days you just wonder why you bothered opening your eyes at all. Today I'm having one of those days. It actually started yesterday already. The day had started well enough, despite some lack of sleep, as I had just had a great weekend with friends. Then the trouble started. Just as they were about to leave, the landlord unexpectedly showed up giving us a rather inquisitive, disgruntled look. Sure enough, in the evening I received an email sternly reprimanding me about having allowed multiple guests to stay over at the premises. Now, there are no consequences or anything but that email was a non-too-subtle reminder that at the moment I am living at the mercy of others. It put me in a foul mood for the rest of the evening.

Sometimes a good night's sleep can have a soothing, tempering effect but not today. I must have gotten out the wrong side of the bed this morning or something because my spirits had dipped below freezing point. I'm usually already fairly slow in the morning but today I was moving at the speed of a slug. I finally managed to drag myself out of the house, much later than usual, only to find that my bus was nowhere in sight. Of course when at last a bus appeared it was completely packed. I had to squeeze my way in, nuzzling my face into somebody's smelly armpit. I think the bus driver must have been in an equally bad mood because about halfway along my route he suddenly decided to dangerously cut off another driver who reacted in predictable fashion. The two men clambered out of their vehicles and entered into a display of verbal abuse. As they did not appear to be coming to a quick resolution of their dispute I, like most other passengers, got off the bus and continued my way on foot. If at this point I had been a cartoon character, you would have seen a dark black thunder cloud suspended over my head! Even without the cloud though, it must have been obvious to the unsuspecting passersby that I was in no mood to be messed with as people arched their way around me at a safe distance. Naturally I was late for class so I had to slide into one of the few available seats left in the front, in the immediate line of sight of the lecturer, making me the obvious target when he marked out some 'volunteers' for a class presentation. Things have just kept piling up all day. They are all small, little things that on a good day wouldn't bother me at all but today my tolerance threshold is alarmingly low.

I don't know when I will finally manage to snap out of this grump but I reckon it won't be today anymore. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to encounter me on the street this afternoon on my way home: better beware. You'll have no trouble recognizing me. I'm the girl who looks like she is ready to bite your head off should you look at her the wrong way!

Hello World!

A few minutes ago I pushed the button; hit submit and sent myself off into the world. What I have sent out is my very first real job application.

It's quite ridiculous come to think of it. Here I am, 28 years old, and I have never seriously applied for a job in my life. Academics is a funny place to be in in that respect. Everything is done so much more informally. I remember when I was looking for a Ph.D. position I sent one single e-mail, casually enquiring about the possibility of joining that group. A few weeks later I was sitting in the office of the man who would end up being my supervisor, feeling absurdly overdressed in my skirt suit and high heels. We had a chat, I was dragged around the labs and that was essentially it. Sure, for correct form he asked my undergrad supervisor for some references and I did give him some rudimentary C.V. but there were no tough questions, no formal assessments. My next job was thrown my way by the Institute Director who was looking for somebody with a scientific background but with an interest in management. As there are remarkably few of those people around -wonder why- and he knew about my plans for the future, the job was mine for the taking.

This position I applied for now is at one of the big consultancy firms and things couldn't be more different. I uploaded my details online and it will end up at the desk of somebody whose name I don't even know. Should it kindle an interest on their behalf, I expect there will be a long trail of tests and interviews ahead of me. I'm not overly fussed about it. It will be interesting to see what my chances are, particularly since the job description asks for somebody with more experience than I actually have, but I won't be terribly upset if they show no interest. Of course I'd prefer not to be rejected but I have to be realistic about my odds. Even if they would offer me the job, however, I'm not convinced I would take it. The job description was rather vague and I am not at all sure it is what I am looking for but you can't win unless you compete, right?

We'll see what happens but at least the wheels have been set in motion. Hopefully in the next few weeks and months I'll find some more job opportunities. It's time for me to get out there and start facing the scary 'real' world!

Going political, just this one time...

Every once in a while you may read a book that grabs you by the throat; a story that stays with you long after you have put the book down. About three years ago I read such a book. In English it was published under the title “Until death do us part” (published in Dutch as “Woede in mijn hart”) and it is an autobiography written by the Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. I don’t remember any more why I bought this particular book. I probably just picked it up as part of my regular dose of Waterstone’s, but it has been one of the most powerful stories I have ever read. I must profess my political ignorance as until I read this book I had never heard of Ingrid Betancourt. This is perhaps all the more shameful because at that time she had already been in the hands of the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC for almost two years.

Today, 23 February 2007, it is exactly 5 years ago that Ingrid Betancourt and her campaign manager Clara Rojas were kidnapped. The last proof of life their families received dates back to 2003 when the FARC released a video tape with a powerful speech made by Ingrid Betancourt. Since then there has been nothing to tell whether they are dead or alive.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t really ‘do’ heroes and I certainly am not inclined to any hero worshipping. This woman’s story, however, has deeply moved and inspired me. At serious risk to her own life she tried to take on a deeply corrupt political system to fight for democracy, stability and peace. The Colombian government that came into power shortly after her disappearance has thus far refused talks with the FARC stating they will not negotiate with terrorists. The FARC in turn continues to drag civilians into this armed conflict. At present it is uncertain if and when this conflict will ever be resolved or what the outcome will be for the hundreds of hostages.

I believe the story of Ingrid Betancourt is one worth being told and I strongly urge you to read this book. It provides a detailed insight into the political situation in Colombia in particular and the American politics in the region in general. If you are interested and want to know more, a good place to start is at http://www.betancourt.info/indexEng.htm

Better late than never

O, irony of ironies!

Five years I have spent mastering the skills of scientific research. Stacks of articles have I read, dissected, interpreted and paraphrased. I have slowly but steadily unravelled the intricacies of the Web of Knowledge. Through endless sessions of trial and error I have conquered Reference Manager. Statistical analysis was never quite within my reach and was largely restricted to 'guesstimates' of reliability intervals but other data sets were subjected to rigorous fitting sessions. Like a blind person I have been feeling my way through the scientific maze. It must have borne some fruit for after seemingly endless years I emerged into the light clutching my thesis, filled with graphs, data and references.

Today I had my first lecture in "Methods of Enquiry".

Exploring the territory

Today it was lovely weather here. A nice bleak wintry sun but with a chill in the air that left me in two minds as to whether or not I should wear my gloves and scarf or not. You can feel spring is around the corner but at the same time winter has not quite passed. It's my favourite kind of weather. It definitely seemed a shame to waste such a day indoors so I chose to explore the urban jungle of London a bit.

I've been living in this city for almost five months now and it's shocking how little of it I have seen so far. Every day I travel from my house to College and back but, with the exception of some of the more obvious hot spots, I have hardly seen a thing. Most tourists know London better than I do. Today was therefore I good opportunity to make my acquaintance with the city and what better way to do this than to go for a walk? Wearing my scarf, though not the gloves and with the A-Z street map safely tucked away in my bag I set out for a walk along the river bank. I actually love strolling along the water. I believe no city should be allowed to be called a city unless it has a proper river running through! It's not that the Thames embankment is all that beautiful, parts of it are even downright ugly or filthy, but it still gives the city a certain character. However, after some point the riverside had nothing more to offer than yet more luxurious but utterly soulless apartment blocks so I abandoned the river and continued my random walk into the neighbourhood. The advantage of having no fixed destination is that you can't get lost on your way there. As I am one of those people who have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever that is a considerable bonus. The downside of course is that you don't always end up at those places which are most interesting or aesthetically pleasing.

I now know that what on the map looked like a nice park in reality is not much more than a large open space of grass and mud, that Wimbledon is a fairly pretty yet mostly boring residential area and that some parts of Wandsworth are a tad grotty. None of what I saw today has any touristic value and I very much doubt I will go out of my way to visit these places again but at least I can now colour in another little piece of my blank mental map of London. For my next trip I might consider some more picturesque places though.