The Dutch Files

Yeah, I’ve got good news and bad news… It’s kinda entwined so let me just start off right away…

I pull about 36-40 hours át the office weekly and then at least another 8-10 hours more from home in the evenings and weekends. Some weeks more than others, depending on the workload. Right now it’s probably much more but I’ve stopped counting.

It does not bring me in enough cash to make ends meet. So I have extra jobs, several of them: I recently started doing the secretariat to the Dutch Vascular Internal Medicine Society, that’ll be a few hours/week. I designed the website for a webshop of one of my best girlfriends (HouseOfWonders) to which I will remain webmaster. And I do the lay out for the PhD thesi of PhD students (many of our own departments but word is spreading so I am currently spreading my wings to other university medical centers in Dutchyland). It keeps me excruciatingly busy at times but also brings in money that I very much need to keep afloat. And the good thing is that I can do most of this in the evenings when The Kid is asleep or in the weekends.

So yesterday, coming back from a hell of a fucking busy day at the office, I rushed home, rushed off to have dinner with a friend and after that went off to one of the PhD students that I am doing thesis lay out for to finish up the last little things on her layout. We managed to get it finished and I got paid for the job (i.e. GOOD NEWS)… We had a glass of wine together to toast the soon to be finished and printed thesis and then I got into the car and went home. It was late and I was friggin tired, but at least there was a few hundred euros in my pocket that could pay for some bills (i.e. GOOD NEWS)…

I drove home and just when I started going down the exit on the freeway and was about 10 mins from home…

*BANG*

Yeah, that would be the sound of really BAD NEWS… My car started to swing uncontrollably, I put on the breaks and managed to park it at the side of the road without a scratch… Um… yeah… except for both front tires… They were diminished to shreds… Shreds! I had blown both my front tires!!! WTF? (i.e. BAD NEWS)… I walked back a bit to where I think it happened and yup, sure enough… It looked like a pair of cars had recently been in a collision out there and both drivers could apparently not be bothered to clean up their shit. Glass and other shit all over the road. Yeah, thanks you assholes! I called the Dutch Automobile Service that I am a member off and half an hour later they were towing my car to my dealership that was about 8 min further up the road, I dropped the keys and a letter to my dealership in the letterbox and walked the last few miles home… after midnight… as the tow truck fucker guy could not be bothered to drop me off (i.e. more BAD NEWS)

I was totally bummed when I came home. It meant that the few hundred euros that were burning in my pocket would go straight to the 2 tires that I blew… So much for extra cash… AND I would have to do the pain in the ass thing of getting the bus to and from work the next day ánd take a few hours off in order to be at the dealership in time to pick up my car. And the bus doesn’t go there so that would mean the few miles of hiking back there too… (for now I think that was all of the BAD NEWS)

So I got up yesterdaymorning… Showered (I did have a realllly steamy one), got dressed, make up, hair, got my shit together, left the house and rushed down the appartment building stairs to try and be at the busstop in time… Only to find my car parked in its usual spot in front of the appartment building! With 2 brandnew tires on there!

Um…. What the hell? How? …

Now I must say that my dealership has been my dealership since I was 19. They know about my current situation. They know I álways need a replacement car to borrow when my car goes in for repairs as I can’t get shit done without one. Then it dawned on me. I walked around to my mailbox, opened it and sure enough there were my carkeys and a note from the dealer. He had come to the shop early and had found my car out there and my keys in the letterbox and had one of the mechanics rush the new tires on my car and drop it off at at my appartment building before I was off to the office. Cuz he knew I would need my car…

Yeah, so that would be the GREAT news…

I love my dealership! They are surely not the cheapest way to get my car fixed most of the time but they never charge me for the replacement cars they give me and well, they do shit like this for me… Obviously the invoice was in there too… in my mailbox. And it’s gonna cost me most of the money I earned with the thesis lay out… But there is no money that can pay for the wonderful feeling of people coming to your aid when you least expect it!

P.S. of course after that some potential bad news had to fuck my day back up… the medical center’s HR dept informed me that due to budget cuts the request to replace BB and put out an add for a new secretary had to pass thru the Budget Committee and that there is a very real chance that I will not be allowed to replace BB… Which would mean running the whole fucking secretariat by myself… Can you hear the sizzling of 2 fulltime jobs melting together into one really assholy big one? Cross everything you can cross for me, again… Cuz seriously… Hell No!

Remember the big office related news that I was announcing on Sunday? Wanna hear it? Cuz I finally can tell you… So? Sitting down?

*drumroll*

B.A.C.K.S.T.A.B.B.I.N.G B.I.T.C.H. I.S. L.E.A.V.I.N.G. !!!

Hang on, just for a mo, lemme catch my breath here, cuz I am exhausted of all the happy dances I’ve been doing over the past days… Whew…

Yup! She is leaving our department. She found herself a new job. Unfortunately her new job won’t steer me clear from her completely, as she is moving to the Schooling Dept which I cooperate with to arrange our annual Clinical Epidemiology course on Schiermonnikoog with.. and obviously my worst nightmare would be for her to get MY course in HER portfolio over there… Something that The Chief felt was a good idea to joke about at the weekly dept meeting, when she announced her departure: “Ha! You could take up the Schier course at your new job and you and DutchBitch can work on that together”… HAD I been at that particular meeting (I wasn’t, I was meeting up with the managing director to review the dept move), I would have kicked his shins to hell ‘n back!!! But oh well, at least she’s out of our department… and soon!

Officially she needs to give her notice 2 months ahead. However, her future employer would prefer her to start Nov 1. I told her that I would have no problem with her leaving Nov 1, so that was all said and done: she resigned per the first of November.

Obviously a Backstabbing Bitch never loses her tricks and an hour after I felt like I was already being fucked over by her. This current and probably next week she’ll be working part time due to some health issues. She’s having treatment for her eyes which makes it impossible for her to work all day. That’s fine. I already knew about that. However, just an hour after OK-ing her resignation, which is 5 weeks from now, I heard her talk to one of my colleagues saying that she planned to also take another week off before she leaves….

HELL TO THE NO!

There’s only 5 weeks to go before she leaves. She’s working parttime for 2 of those. There is a shit load of work for her to finish and hand over to me. She’s organizing 2 fairly big events for the department that are taking place in the weeks after she leaves. We are still clearing up the moving stuff and getting the secretariat together, and I will be off for a week as well before she leaves… There is NO way in hell that she’s gonna be allowed to get a week’s vacation in before she goes.

So I told her in no uncertain terms, that there is no time off to be taken before she leaves. To say that she’s not happy about that restriction would be the understatement of the year. But I told her the way it is: we are allowing her to leave 2 weeks prior to her mandatory term of notice. In return we agreed that she’d finish up her work and hand it over to me in an organized manner and she needs to work her hours until she leaves. NO time off…

Anyone wanna put money on her calling in sick in her last week?

Well, honestly, even though I am not letting her get away with her shit even up until the day that she is actually leaving, I am happy that she’s at least finally going, moving her ass, getting outta here, fucking off, on a one way ticket outta here, exit!!! Good riddens to her and i wish her future employer a hell of a shitload of luck… Not my problem any longer…

CTRL+ALT+DEL

Remember that recently I switched internet providers? I was very happy about my internet provider, the new one, as their connection is speedy and much better than the old one. The old one kept being flukey and cutting out for hours on end, especially at night or early morning, the timeframe that I am usually in touch with The Guy mostly, whenever we manage to hook up.

There is one thing that was not working for me on the new connection though. I don’t think I posted about it, but the folks that follow me on Twitter might have noticed me saying something about it a few months ago… Thing was… the friggin webcam kept cutting out every 3 minutes or so. The Guy and I use MSN video calling (and occasionally Skype, but that doesn’t work as well for us as MSN) to at least be able to see eachother and talk every once in a while. And ya know, if you don’t have a chance to do so very often, the fucking think cutting out every few minutes and you having to start it up again every time kinda sorta sucks.. a lot!

After careful testing it turned out that the problem was at my end. Cuz not only does my cam suck (yes, Hon, I will admit to that publically… but then again, I was gonna bring your old cam with me coming back from the US and we forgot about that, didn’t we? Ugh), the internet provider’s router apparently could not handle the webcam streaming…

I have never ever had that problem with any internet provider I have been with!!! I browsed thru forums on internet and sure enough I found loads of discussions about it and sure enough I also found the answer. It had not been a problem with this internet provider as long as they were using the Siemens routers they had always been using, bút recently their contract with Siemens was up and they switched to a cheaper manufacturer… Yah, Guh-Reat, guys!

So I called Customer Service and quickly learned:

1. That they were fully aware of the problem and the CS guy was even telling me that all the CS employees were going nuts with calls about this issue and they felt very bad for the customers.
2. They in fact dó have “old” Siemens routers left that could be exchanged for the one I have at home now and fix the problem.
3. They refuse to do so as they only provide those routers to people who have an internet/telephone ánd digital TV subscription with them and I “merely” have an internet/telephone subscription.
4. They were fully aware of how insane that was and totally agreed with me that that sucked balls, but they still were not allowed to help me…

So there… hours and hours of phonecalls to CS and that was where I was at. It was a legit problem, they could solve it and they were just not going to…

As I had no intentions of switching providers again, simply because on all other aspects this one is really the best deal, and I have been thru most of the others and they suck ass even more, I solved the problem myself. I bought a Siemens router on E-Bay for 25 euros and then, with the help of the Tech Service guys of the internet provider, I hooked that one up and *poof*… Problem Solved!!!

I did put in a serious complaint with the internet provider though, as it had taken me money and numerous phonecalls to 50 ct/min Customer Service phonenumber, to fix a problem that was not mine in the first place and could be solved by them. I never heard from them again…

Until Saturday last… I was bumming around on the couch all sniffy, feverish and shit and my phone rang. It was a guy of Customer Service of the internet provider and he called me to follow up on my complaint. He basically told me that he had been talking to his supervisor and they totally agreed with me, but they were just not allowed to hand out the Siemens routers. He then proceeded to tell me that they would totally allow me to end my contract with them without any breach-fee or whatever, if that was what I wanted. I told him that I had already solved the problem by myself buying a 2nd hand Siemens router and calling Tech Service.

Now… this Customer Service guy did something that totally blew me away… He told me that they would reimburse the money I had spend on the 2nd hand router… Then he asked me had I spent a lot of money on the CS and TS phonecalls. I told him I probably had but I didn’t have a set figure for him. Then he said he’d double the reimbursement for the router and make sure that I get 50 euro’s reimbursed to my account within a week..!!!

* Blank Stare *

Wow… I am probably getting reimbursed for more than it actually cost me but hey! Who am I to complain as aside from the money its cost me a lot of time and aggravation…

There is justice in Customer Service afterall, though! And putting in a serious legit complaint, and flying off the handle a bit with them (within limits) really does work, as I have experienced in the past as well (The Sis and I are champs at that shit, heh)…

Yeah, I just thought I’d share that with ya…

See this, down there?

What does that say? It says ZERO days until Jill arrives in Dutchyland. Yessss!!! The woman will be touching down on Dutch soil TODAY! This day! Tuesday June 24!!! Damn! Finally!

I have been in touch with Jill for quite a while and can you imagine that I don’t even really know how we first met up in the blogosphere and who found who and when we actually hit it off? What I do know is that I met her in September of last year and we had a great time: windowshopping in The Hague, visiting Madurodam and sipping rose at the beach side of Scheveningen… By then she already had plans to come to Dutchyland for good, although they had not materialized yet. But now, today, she is finally coming over here to live!

So I will be off later this p.m. to go and meet her girlie ass at the Amsterdam Schiphol airport. I managed to take a few hours off work and as the medical center is right behind a trainstation that has a regular (only 15 min) service with Schiphol, that enables me to come welcome her. She will be picked up from the airport by her bestest friend Tracey, whom she is going to live with. And I am joining her to at least get a chance to say “Hi” and welcome her. I can’t believe today is finally here! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

I will be back in the office later and will surely try to take pics of her arrival and post them on here as soon as I have my ass back behind my desk…

Oh and incidently… Jill is also bringing my iPod Touch… The one she bought me in Florida for a kickass prize… So that makes today a double Squeeeeeeeeeee day! Especially as I get to shuv my new gadget in The Chief’s face when I get back.. knowing that he desperately wants one too… I mean, how many times does a girl get a chance to beat her boss to a gadget… Gah!

OK, so gotta work my ass off now in order to make sure I can get out of this place by the time Jill’s plane touches down in Dutchyland! Today is gunna be a good day!

I have finished the first of the PhD theses lay out and got the money for that. I decided that this once it’s going towards a present for me. A gadget that I’ve been wanting to get for over 2 months now… since I was introduced to it by The Guy.

I’ve been dreaming off it ever since… drooling over the prospect of getting it… going everywhere and asking everyone to compare prizes for me… in Dutchyland… at the Dutchyland airport… at foreign airports and then finally, I asked Jill… and she found me a 16G in Florida that is cheaper than the 8G one is anywhere in Dutchyland!!!

I’ve been waiting desperately for the lay-out money to come in and fiercely hoping for the prizes not to rise in the mean time…

Yesterday I PayPalled the money to Jill finally and guess what? While chatting on MSN she signed off cuz she had “some stuff in the house to get done”… I had to get The Kid to bed anyway so I was fine with that. We usually hook back up later that day anyway…

Sure enough, when she came back on line an hour later… She switched on her webcam and was waving a box in my face!!! The woman had gone to Best Buy and gotten me the gadget straight away!!! And once she gets her ass to Dutchyland to live here in about 4 weeks, she will be bringing it for me!!! That will be a double party on Schiphol airport: welcoming one of my favorite bloggy friends ánd holding my gadget baby in my arms for the first time…

I owe you BIG time Jilly!!! Bløf concert and drinks afterwards-big time!!!

And what’s a nice extra: The Chief, mr Gadget King, is gonna be INSANELY jealous when I show it to him!!! Heh…

Oh sorry… you want to know what I am talking about? Errr… I am talking about this:

THE iPOD TOUCH 16G