Hi,

Thanks to a distant (but apparently very attentive) reader called ..... (hihi, won't say) I found out that my blog had disappeared. Again. Which is pretty annoying cause i'm not writing all this for fun, you see.

So it appears that a certain person with bad intentions (in Dutch we call such a person an 'onverlaat' which is a quite accurate description) has added some stuff to my carefully hand-written html codes - did that a year ago, had happily forgotten all about it after that- with the clear aim of misleading my perfectly innocent reader(s?) by redirecting them straight towards some stupid site that has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

Sigh.

After messing around in my html source code stuff (no idea what's they're called officially) i managed to locate and erase part of the intruder's additions. Not all of them, unfortunately, which means that this post is perfectly visible, but all the archives are still gone.

Aaaaaaahhhhhh!

If i manage to get them back, i'm gonna put all of them on a cd right away, no, on three cds! And i'm going to print all of them too and make absolutely sure they're not lost again, ever.
So if anyone of u people out there have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Otherwise things are fine. Not much happening here. Still really motivated to get the h*ll outta here and get to Brussels asap, Brussels, where all the action is, Brussels, the city i have of course completely idealised in my mind...

Gonna sit in front of the tellie again for a while. Long live the Olympics! They're the best excuse ever to not do anything at all, all day.

Later! xxx Else

Aaaahhh!! What's wrong this time?!
My blog keeps disappearing and that causes a lot of stress!!!!!!
I hate it when they do that!
Help?

Hi Blog,

First day on the job can best be described as 'relaxed', started at nine, finished at half past three (while i get paid for the whole day) and basically all i did was chat with my new colleagues and listen to an impressive number of presentations, watch countless video's, fill in forms, and chat a little more. Etc. On my way there this morning i was so absorbed in The Unbearable Lightness of Being that i completely forgot to change trams and ended up at Museum Square, while I should have gotten out at Overtoom. But i was still ten minutes early when i arrived... so it's less far away than i expected, which is also a very good thing, cause it means that i can sleep longer and get up later...

The place resembles Natolin even more than i thought it would... Firstly because my group consists of thirteen ladies and two men ;-) of some eight different nationalities or so, sounds familiar, no? And secondly because there was this cute Italian guy named Luca who gave us 'a zzzzzmall tour of zzzze building' :-) which brought back many a happy memory...!

The gym is just perfect, i ckecked it out immediately after we were dismissed from our first day of class (no Lukaszewskis to be seen anywhere, i was almost disappointed), it's huge and very state of the art... looking forward to lots of body balancing and spinning and all that, after work.

I have no clue about the job itself, to be honest. What do i know is that i will be expected to learn all the airport and city codes in the world by heart in a couple of weeks' time, so that sounds promising... AGP is Malaga, Spain, BCN is Barcelona, Spain.... siiiiggghhhh!

And before i forget... in case you're looking for a job in Amsterdam, one that's not too demanding, but does offer you a chance to really use your languages all day, every day, in a nice, Natolin-style environment that comes with cheaperino, totally cool company fitness... please give me a call. I get a truly incredible amount of money for every person recruited via me.... i'm not kidding, we're talking hundreds of euro's here, which i am of course willing to share with that someone...

Ciao!
- Else

Hi Blog,

Tomorrow's my first working day.. so just a short one:
I finally started reading Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being and it's so incredibly wonderful!
I can feel everything he writes (that might have smth to do with the present status of my emotions...) and all of a sudden my world is filled with fate.. and with lots of little coincidences...especially after seeing Amélie and her fabuleux destin again yesterday in the open air cinema in 'my' park... it makes me feel like i'm floating a little ... oh no! weight is good, i just read that today...

I also just read that people who want to leave the place where they live, are unhappy people.

Talk of coincidences: there's this girl who was a part of my life a long long time ago, when she and i and two other girls were the only girls in our class at the Dutch School in Nairobi, Kenya... the last time i saw her was in 1985... but i remember her so well!
She just wrote me an email cause she just very accidentally came across my website!
That's just... hmmm magical.
:-))))))))))

Makes one wonder what's going to happen next....!

Sogni d'oro,
- Else

Czesc!

Big time for a proper update, i'd say.
Been very lazy...
Today's the last day that i'm officially au chomage, so i'm planning to do absolutely nothing at all, but i need to write down what i've been up to this week, before i start forgetting about it all...

So, Sunday i went to this 'Food and Faces' festival, in one of Amsterdams' parks, one that has been given the terribly un-original name of Oosterpark ('East Park'.... in comparison, for example, my park is called Westerpark (West Park), not very inspiring either). The festival was great, lots of faces to look at indeed. I think i like the look of Dutch people, especially of those who like to go to festivals on warm summer days. And i met up with some people i had not seen for quite a while, which was nice!
Once on the spot I found out that what I was dealing with was in fact a culinary festival, so lots of Italian, Spanish, Turkish delicacies, hence the happy faces! Had some really good Spanish cheese, a bite of the finest pizza margarita ever (except for a very special one i had in Brussels a while ago ;-) and lots, lots, lots of watermelon.
Me and my friend Ania decided to leave the crowds for a high quality conversation in the nearest café, accompanied by a few white beers, and so it was one of the finest nights in Amsterdam in a long time!

Monday... hmmm, i don't even remember...
Anyways, the rest of the weeks i spent mainly in my park (quote Ellen: 'who said people in Amsterdam don't have backyards?'), where i spent quite a few evenings with Laurens, listening to some really great 70's music played by a couple of men in their forties who are always hanging out there and whom Laurens likes to refer to as 'The Steppenwolf Boys', which i think is very funny, but I guess i'd have to know Laurens to agree that that's very funny), commenting at people walking by, discussing what it is that makes daddies with young children so incredibly, irresistably sexy, getting nauseous looking at all the sticky, soggy couples, discussing Life, the Universe and Everything.
That was nice, too.
One night (don't remember which one) we went to the new -architecturally interesting- part of the park for a picknick Mangel organized, lots of good company and good food :-)) played cards till it was too dark to see what we were doing and of course i screwed up badly cause the game was VERY complicated, and i mean seriously complicated, so i'll have to practice secretly at night otherwise i'll never be invited again.

In the meantime me and Ellen's cat disappeared. He's called Ludwig and we want him back right now! On the poster Ellen made he is quite accurately described as 'active'....... some of my friends refer to him as 'the killer cat' (but they're not really my friends of course) and i really miss him so much!! It's so nice to wake up in the morning and find him purring extremely loudly, warmly, friendly somewhere on my bed... and he's such a beautiful thing, too!
Fortunately yesterday night Ellen discovered him sitting behind the window of our ground floor neighbours' place... unfortunately they're not home and when i checked this morning i did not see him anywhere anymore...
I hope they did not take him to one of those depressing shelter places, and if they did they'd better get him out of there immediately...
To be continued... for sure!

So now i'm waiting for Erik to show up in Amsterdam, we're going to a party tonight at Mangel's (hai Mangel, gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag!!!!!)

More soon,
- Else

Amsterdam!


Hi Blog,

Just a little late night note to communicate to the entire world out there that things are going perfectly fine!
Amsterdam is an exceptionally wonderful place when the sun shines...

After my return on Friday i have been pretty busy and very lazy... hung around in parks and at festivals a lot, discovered a new one last night, 'Food and Faces', which very accurately describes the whole thing i would say:

hmmmm
smth has come up...
sorry
will write more tomorrow!

xx Else