The Musings of a Dreamer

New Blog

2010-05-30T11:39:00.000+02:00

Just started a new blog with the same title: The Musings of a Dreamer.

Just felt like having a fresh start. See you there hopefully!

Writing Workshop

2010-03-23T22:02:00.001+01:00

Last weekend I participated in my first ever workshop, in my ongoing quest for self-improvement. :-) The workshop was called 'Simply Writing II: Completing it on the Page'. As the name implies, it is focused at helping you finish a piece of writing. The aim is to write and complete (the first draft of) a personal essay during the course of a weekend. Why a personal essay? Because it's short and manageable (and scalable!), and because it is based on personal experience, it makes it easier to know what to write about. Apart from that, I also learned more about writing technique itself, which helped me in understanding better what I'm doing when I'm writing. More importantly, it also helped me in letting go of the idea of writing 'perfectly', whatever that means. The main thing is to just keep writing without worrying about structure or finding le mot juste or whatever, until you actually start editing. The trainer was also very good in my opinion. She had a very bubbly personality who infected us with her enthusiasm (although I didn't really show), but at the same time, she also helped us in understanding the technical side of writing better.

Anyway, I don't want to talk too much about what I've learnt, but more about my feelings and impressions during the workshop (hardly surprising if you know me at all!). For me, it was an inspiring experience. Each of us had to finish an essay to bring in on Sunday. We then talked about the essays anonymously, focusing on what works and what we would like to know more about in a future draft, without resorting to any negative commentary. That really helped to put everyone at ease, and also to remove any preconceptions that might have existed otherwise. Amazingly, each participant was not only able to finish an essay, but each of us was also able to create something which is heartfelt and powerful. Something magical. Something authentic. Each and every piece evoked some kind of emotion within me, be it sadness, happiness, loneliness, belonging, hope or any other feeling. I now make it sound so sentimental, but it was nothing like that. More than anything, I think I felt a deep respect for everyone in the workshop. At times I even felt intimidated, in that I felt my piece was qualitatively inferior to the other ones. But I guess that's nonsense; my essay was far from perfect, but it contained many elements which I am justly proud of.

There is only one thing I'm worried about. I still find it very difficult and uncomfortable to be around other people. I hardly spoke at all during the sessions, and I often wondered if the others thought I was strange. so that's something I need to keep working on. I'm still happy I participated anyway. It's one of resolutions: despite my fears and anxieties, I'm just going to try and do the things I want to do, and to stop letting them control the way I live my life.

So now what? I definitely discovered a lot of new inspiration within myself; I probably haven't felt this inspired in writing since my childhood. The important thing is to keep the momentum going, to keep writing. I have been doing that for the last few weeks. Just write something every day, even if just for a few minutes. Ignore all the destructive tendencies. Just let the creativity flow onto the page without worrying too much. And it does work. The more I write, the more I want to write. Surely, things can only get better from here.

2010-02-21T22:19:00.001+01:00

Has the previous week been good or bad?

Well, I finally acted upon my feelings, not something I do a lot. It probably wasn’t even anything special at all, but it was hugely significant for me personally. Of course, I didn’t actually expect a positive response, nor did I receive one, and I can’t help but wonder if I shouldn’t have done anything at all or handled things completely differently. But let’s not dwell too much on the negative, shall we? I had been doing plenty of that already these past few days. I need to believe that I achieved some form of personal victory. The fact that I acted at all must mean that I made some progress, right, and that maybe there is still hope for me after all? Who knows, maybe I’m just fooling myself, but it’s either that or wallow in self-pity. I’ve done a lot of the latter in the past, and frankly it’s not a very appealing option anymore.

It helped that I had a dinner appointment with the trainer of the Self-Management course I did a few months ago. Talking to her helps me to put things in perspective, and gives me the belief that I can change if I really want to, even though I still have trouble taking the next step. In March and April, I’m going follow some additional training, and I hope I will benefit from that. Funny, I had been thinking about therapy for some years already, but I never dared to take that step. And as it turns out, it is a training from work which might finally help me break through the barrier.

I also promised myself that I would start doing things I like. For example, I attended the ballet ‘Don Quichot’ last week, and I absolutely loved it, and am exploring what other cultural events I can attend. I’m also searching the Web for workshops about writing, and I’m still seriously thinking about following a part-time education. In the past, I always used the excuse that I’m alone, so I don’t feel like doing anything. But who cares? Before I forget, I actually like being alone, so why should it stop me from going out and do things? I found that it actually makes me feel better about myself, and who knows, once I start to feel good about myself, I might feel more comfortable around other people.

Things are also looking up at work. For the first time, I actually have the feeling that we are committed to try to improve things. We’ll have to wait and see how that goes, but for now I feel excited and energized, a feeling that has been lacking for far too long. I have lots of ideas in my head, as I think many others as well, and I would be extremely disappointed if this time we fail again in making good progress.

Hmm, actually, when I sum up everything, it does seem to have been a pretty good week. I think my feelings were just a bit skewed towards the bad. Then again, perhaps the answer does not lie in what had happened in the previous days, but what will happen in the following weeks, months or even years. I feel as if I am at a crossroads, and despite my tendency to be still negative about myself, I do believe that I have the choice on which path to follow. Let’s just hope that I possess the courage and wisdom to make the correct decisions.

The Writer – Reader Relationship – Part 1

2010-02-01T21:22:00.001+01:00

Maar ik zou niet willen dat deze laatste beweringen meteen tot een andere aanleiding geven, veel gehoord onder slechte schrijvers: dat je alleen voor jezelf schrijft. Wantrouw wie dat zegt, hij is een oneerlijke en leugenachtige narcist.

But I wouldn't want these last assumptions to lead to another conclusion, widely heard amongst lousy writers: that you only write for yourself. Distrust whoever says this, he is a dishonest and lying narcissist.

The above quote is from Umberto Eco in 'On Literature', in a section called 'The Writer and the Reader'. I thought it was funny, as I had a discussion with my cousin Gwen earlier this week on this exact topic. She, speaking more from a journalistic perspective, believes that the writer should always keep the reader in mind, and should therefore always write with the reader in mind. However, I write from a more therapeutic perspective, and I believe that a writer writes primarily for himself, and the reader is of secondary importance. So I couldn't suppress a smile while reading the above passage, even if the implication was that I am a dishonest narcissist.

Of course, the magic word in the quote is 'only'. I may believe that I write primarily for myself, but that does not mean that the reader is of no importance at all. After all, if the reader does not matter, I would have no legitimate reason to keep blogging. If I would write purely for myself, I would be content with leaving my writings in my notebook, or maybe even just in my head, where they can just lie peacefully. So yes, the reader does matter a lot, as writing is in essence another form of communication, so if there is no Reader, my writing would be devoid of any purpose. This realization in itself would, in my opinion, be sufficient to explain that I do not necessarily disagree with Eco, especially since the discussion I had with Gwen was more about the readability of a text (which ironically originated from Eco's 'On Literature', which we said was extremely hard to read and understand), and I believe that that is a completely discussion that what Eco had in mind.

Still, the Writer – Reader relationship is still very much an interesting topic, and strangely enough one that I failed to explore thoroughly in the past, even if only in my head. I need to think about it and hopefully write more about it later.

Reasons for Writing

2010-01-10T17:41:00.001+01:00

This is probably the 20^th time I said this, but it's been a while since I last updated my blog. The truth is, with a few notable exceptions, I am not really satisfied with what I have written. Part of the reason is that I still lack the courage to be completely open and honest, so I end up censoring myself. As a result, my writing comes out awkward and strained, as if it doesn't really reflect my feelings and thoughts, but merely a poor copy of it. I always wonder if the readers experience it the same way I do. Do they notice when I'm particularly dissatisfied with a piece of writing?

So, why do I keep coming back? Why do I keep writing even though the self-torturous process of writing itself offers me no real satisfaction? I recently read a passage from Michael Allen's "The Truth about Writing", where he writes that to answer that question, you just have to look at what you daydream about. So what do I daydream about? Is it money? Well, I have certainly often thought how cool it would be if I could become rich with writing, but to be honest, getting rich has never been part of my fantasies. I don't fantasize about having millions or living in a big mansion and stuff like that. No, getting rich would be a nice bonus, but it definitely is not a motivation.

Is it fame then? Ah, we're getting much closer now, and on the surface, the answer would seem to be a wholehearted yes. I have fantasized regularly about being famous, about being recognized for the work I've done. I've daydreamed about giving interviews, or having my face on covers. But when I dug a little deeper however, I realized that fame itself isn't really a motivation at all. Yes, I've dreamt about being on TV or on magazine covers, but they are not the end goal but merely a means to the end. I've never dreamt about adoring fans or being recognized on street (I surely hope not!), but my thoughts always wander to what effect it would have on the people I know. In the end, it is always about impressing the people I know, stemming from a deep-rooted insecurity within myself. It's as if I believe that my current persona is an inadequate representation of myself. But once I become famous however… well, things would surely get much better. People will finally realize how intelligent and sensitive I really am. And then… the world will finally open its eyes and be able to fully appreciate and bask in the glory that is me (Ok ok, I'm exaggerating now, and yes, in case you haven't noticed, I looove to exaggerate).

This course of thinking is completely ridiculous of course, but there you go. Realizing that it's ridiculous does not make it any less true however, that's just how my brain functions apparently. But realizing this does help me recognize what is my true goal when I'm writing. The quality of writing in itself is not the most important aspect. After all, I just discerned that fame and money are not the real motivation behind my writing, it's about communication with other people, about acceptance, from others but also from myself, for who I am. I'm not saying that the quality is not important at all, but it is much more important that I write from my feelings, and that I feel free to do so without worrying too much about the actual wording and structure. Of course, as it turns out, I do my best writing when I feel that freedom. Perhaps it's just a subjective opinion, but that's what I truly believe.

Lately, I have been thinking often about how I wrote as a child. There was so much more creativity and imagination, and so much less fear and anxiety in those stories. I remember writing fantastical stories in Dutch just a few months after moving to the Netherlands. When years later I read them again, I found out that the grammar was completely wrong. But who cares? Just get my ideas and feelings on paper, and if truly needed, I can always correct the grammar and spelling afterwards.

I am trying to rediscover that feeling of freedom and joy I had when writing as a child. I said earlier that the self-torturous process of writing offers me no satisfaction. It wasn't a complete lie, but it was a half-truth at best. Yes, I have often feel frustrated and incompetent when I'm trying to write, but there are moments, moments like now actually, when the words are just flowing on the computer screen, that I feel a deep satisfaction, a satisfaction that I rarely feel in my life otherwise. This is what I love to do, this is who I am, and perhaps in the end that is truly the goal. Even though I am always craving approval from other people, I find that I am at my happiest when I am able to gain approval from myself, when I feel that I have accomplished something. And nothing gives me a bigger sense of accomplishment than writing something I myself believe in.

Self Management II – Renewed Hope

2009-11-27T22:15:00.001+01:00

Just finished the second part of the training 'Self Management'. It was very emotional, but something important definitely happened. What was it? Where will it lead to? I'm not sure what the answers are, but I went over an mental cliff today. Who knows, if I look back someday, maybe I will see this moment as a turning point.

I definitely feel different now than I felt yesterday. More at peace with myself somehow. I'm not saying that I solved my internal puzzle, there are still too many unresolved issues. But for the first time in a long while I can feel something within myself again: Hope. I think this hope has been within me this whole time, has never died completely, but that it has been buried beneath all my negativity. It's such a liberating feeling right now. Without that hope, I was starting to feel numb inside, but now I am actually aware of my emotions again. Not all of it is good. Most of it is still fear, sadness and insecurity. But I can feel again! It may hurt a lot, but I realize now that being able to feel that pain is infinitely better than feeling nothing at all.

There is of course still a long, long way to go. Will this feeling last or will it die down again after a couple of weeks? I don't know what the future will bring, but right now I have hope! And that in itself is progress.

P.S. At the end of the training, we each had to randomly pick a quote card by Deepak Chopra. Mine is very appropriate I believe (I'm translating it from Dutch):

My intentions are a source of inspiration – If my intentions are positive, then I am inspired (in contact with the soul) and enthusiastic (in contact with the divine intelligence). I am successful.

Self Management

2009-10-31T18:34:00.001+01:00

I had a great training on Thursday and Friday called 'Self Management'. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect at first, but I was happy to find that it was what I actually was hoping for. Instead of focusing on techniques and skills, the training was much more about getting in touch and being aware of your feelings within. Our thoughts and feelings are largely formed by your childhood years, which heavily influences the way you act or behave. We then all develop behavioral patterns which we are barely conscious of, but which are triggered automatically whenever a certain situation or frustration arises. We analyzed a few of these frustrations and the way it triggers our pattern, and it was amazing and emotional to see how these frustrations all stems from a deeper desire or fear. By being aware of this, we then suddenly realize that we have another choice than behaving in the way we have always done. It also allows us to view ourselves and other people in a more compassionate light.

The funny thing is, I was also reading a book about Schema Therapy, which is very similar to what is discussed in the training. I have been struggling with myself more than usual for the last couple of months. I feel I want to change, and need to change, but I was at a loss on how to accomplish this. I have analyzed my thoughts and feelings to death over the years, and I feel I have a pretty good insight, but I can't seem to get beyond that. At times I even wondered whether it would be easier just to give up fighting and give in to my dark side. I knew in my heart that I need help from others, that it felt like a Catch-22. I need help from other people to make myself feel better, but I needed to feel better about myself first before I'm able to seek help from others.

So the timing of the training couldn't have been better. For me, it felt like therapy. For me, it has been a very confrontational and emotional 2 days, and I suspect for the other as well. Hey, for the first time in I don't know how long, I wasn't even thinking about work! This was truly something I needed. Of course, it doesn't mean that I'm 'healed' now, whatever that migt mean, and there are still a lot of unanswered questions which only I can answer for myself. But it does mean that I feel a flicker of hope again that it's not too late to change, that I could still be the person that I want to be, and not who I falsely believe myself to be.

P.S. There will be a follow up of the training of 2 days in 4 weeks time. Can't wait!!

So Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-10T19:49:00.002+02:00

I don't know what the exact reason is behind this decision, but it seems to me more like a hidden statement. Something along the lines of: 'We have placed our hope and trust in your hands, President Obama. Now go forth and bring peace to the world. And while you're at it, do not forget to smite our enemies).' Yikes, talk about pressure!

Alas, if that was the reason, I fear it may also backfire. Even the Obama supporters (not to mention Obama himself) are struggling to find reasons to justify the award. And what's more, this just provides additional ammo to his more zealous opponents for their favorite hobby: Obama-bashing. They will whine for the millionth time about how he owes his popularity, especially outside the US, more to marketing hype (and anti-Bush sentiments) than to his actual achievements. Sigh. As if those people don't have enough to complain about already without offering any real solutions...

Musings on the Last Day of Summer

2009-09-20T21:39:00.001+02:00

This is probably one of the few days left in the year where the weather will be this nice. In a way, the weather today is better than it had been during high summer. There is a slight breeze which keeps the temperature cool and provides a fresh breath of air. Once in a while, the sun is able to break through the white clouds and take away the slight chill, and it strikes me every time again at how pleasant that is. Would I have appreciated the sun better if it was shining brightly all the time? Perhaps, or perhaps not. I know most people prefer the hot summer days, and to be honest, I am inclined to agree with them on most occasions. But a day like this has its own specific charms, and it does fit my current melancholic mood better. No throngs of people going out to enjoy the sun and have fun, but just me and the IJ, with only the occasional person strolling or cycling by. I just needed to relax and clear my mind.

For the people who know me well, you may know that I am highly susceptible to negative thoughts regarding myself. And if you have read my previous posts, you may know that I have been struggling to break out of those thoughts. In the last couple of weeks, I have not been able to do that. Instead, my negative thought seem to take hold of me as I found myself spiraling downwards. During those moments, I also tend to break all contact with other people, and just retreat within myself. However, as I sat there today on the long red bench taking in the view, scribbling away in my notebook, I started to ponder. Why do I keep focusing on the negative things when there are also so many positive things?

I have a pretty good job, and I'm actually good at it if I say so myself. Even more, I also think I have a relatively proactive attitude when it comes to solving problems. If you had told me that 5 years ago, I would have thought you were crazy (or just making a feeble attempt to make me feel better).
I have been working out, and even started running outside regularly. I think my fitness has improved dramatically over the last 2 years, and I consider myself as above average. Seeing how weak and sick I was as a child, this is obviously something I am very proud of.
Even though it is only September, I have read more books this year than any other year before, despite me complaining all the time how busy I am. I try to read whenever I'm in the tram, even if it's just a 10-15 minute ride. If you add that up, that's a lot of free time.
I even started writing again, although most of it is still in my head. I still have trouble actually putting the words down on paper (On hard disk? On Google Docs?), but writing scenes in my head is still better than blocking it out. I'm not happy yet at the level of commitment I'm showing, but it's better to take it slowly than to feel frustrated I guess.
This may sound strange to some of you, but I think I've become more social over the years. Yes, I used to be that bad.

So those are a lot of positives I built up over the years, especially knowing what kind of person I used to be. Of course, I still feel there are a lot of things about myself l I need to improve, but I have to remember that it is a long and difficult process. So next time, if I feel bad about myself (I have no doubt that I will have many more of those days), I hope I'll take the time to relax and clear my mind again. And hopefully I´ll be able to remind myself that I have already come a very long way, and in the meantime I´ll just keep working on myself.

An Open Letter to Myself: Part II

2009-09-04T22:54:00.001+02:00

Dear me,

You are such an idiot! You say that I drag you down, when in truth you are the one who drags us both down with your stupid hope. You say that I am the reason for your fear, when in truth your unrealistic expectations are the reason for your fear. You call me a dark presence, when in truth I am only protecting you against yourself. The higher your hopes are, the further you have to fall.

Just think back on the last couple of weeks. You fooled yourself into believing that there is hope (again that horrible word!), that there could be something more, but where has it gotten you? Exactly nowhere. The sad thing is that you really struggled to do your best, and that you have nothing to show for it. I bet that nobody is even aware of it. How often have you heard that you should try harder? Or even better still, why don't you just give it a try? Perhaps you will now finally face the truth after all these years of failure: your best is just not good enough.

Just as you will never get rid of me, I will probably never get rid of you. But if you think I am going to go along peacefully with your foolish ideas, you are even crazier than I thought. It would be fucking hilarious if I wasn't the same person as you, but as it is, you are hurting the both of us. So please spare us both the humiliation and stop acting like a fool.

Sincerely mine,

Daniel

An Open Letter to Myself

2009-09-03T15:36:00.002+02:00

Dear me,

You have been with me for as long as I can remember. You were always there with me, I could always feel your dark presence. Even in my happiest moments, you were there, lingering within my mind. You were always there with your whisperings, ready to drag me down, ready to beat me back into submission. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Ha! How much I wish that was true!

But you know what?
I am tired of being dragged down because of you.
I am tired of being afraid all the time because of you.
I am tired of making excuses for myself because of you.
And I am tired of not being able to lead life to the fullest because of you.

You have dominated my life long enough. Despite your constant incessant whisperings, I still believe that there is hope. I still believe because I have seen her with my own eyes. And I still believe because I have felt her in my own heart. No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, my own heart will always be mine and never fully yours. You see, if that hope is snatched away by the very person I'm hoping for, I will eventually learn to live with that, no matter how much it hurts. But I refuse to have that hope be snatched away by you, before it even have had the chance to be nurtured and to develop into something more.

I realize now that I will never get rid of you and that you'll always be a part of me. So be it. There will be days when you will have the upper hand, when I feel I am defeated. But as long as there is hope, you cannot keep me down forever. I sincerely hope that one day we can be friends, that we can work together towards a common goal. But until then, we will have to find a way to co-exist together.

Sincerely mine,
Daniel

Sijo

2009-08-31T22:10:00.002+02:00

I suddenly remembered learning something about the Sijo when I was in Korea. I had to google it to refresh my memory, but I thought I might as well give it a try. So here goes:

…

Inner demons assault my mind; I lie here drained of all hope

Yet there she is smiling at me; hard to believe yet there she is

Is this a dream or is it real? I stand up to find the truth

…

Coming Back

2009-08-28T23:31:00.001+02:00

I stopped writing in my blog because I wasn't happy with the direction it was heading. My blog had multiple purposes: practice and improve my writing, a place where I can explore my creativity, a form of therapy where I can let out my feelings. It was supposed to be alive, vibrant and personal. I still remember my first post with fondness, not because it was a literary masterpiece, but because it so perfectly summed up my own feelings towards myself (although I've always wondered if everyone understood that the last line is supposed to be a hopeful message). However, it quickly went downhill after that, and what I wrote was dry and whiny and without really a lot of heart behind it. Maybe others will have a different opinion, but that was how I experienced it. Blogging became a chore, I hated what I was writing, and I just needed a long break away from it to clear my mind.

Somehow that long break ended up being five months. Five months is a long time, and yet so short. I will never understand where all the time has gone. Rarely a day passed by without me thinking what I could write about. Rarely a day passed by without me feeling guilty that I haven't written anything yet again. And rarely a day passed by without me realizing how much writing means to me. It felt like never ending agony, yet at the same time, those five months have flown by.

It seems the urge to write will remain a part of me till the day I die. And until then, no matter how long I have not written anything, I will always return to my notebook or my computer to make another half-assed attempt to tell my stories. It sounds so much like a curse when I put it that way. But during my better days, I like to think of it more as a blessing. In the end, this is really the only way I know how to express my feelings. I have written things which I have never said and never will in my life. Without it, I am afraid that I will completely shut off my feelings and turn into a bitter old man. Or that I will retreat further and further into my own world until I completely lose contact with the real world.

…sigh…

Why are the things we can't live without also always the hardest to live with…

2009-03-29T22:27:00.002+02:00

Last Friday, the uncertainty was at last over, as the final announcements were made about who had to leave the company. In the end, there was little impact on our department, so that was good news. I knew the chance that I would get laid off was very small, but I was still afraid what it would mean for the people I know, and how the decision will impact our situation at work.

The atmosphere in the last two weeks was definitely very strange. Everyone talked about the coming layoffs, of course, but not excessively so. There were even some jokes made about the whole situation. All in all, things at work almost seemed entirely normal on the surface. However, I don't think anyone really felt in a normal way, and you could constantly feel that tension hanging in the air.

And now it's official, I'm not sure what to think or how to feel. Do I feel relieved? Do I feel guilty for feeling relieved? Am I angry? Am I sad? Do I disagree with the whole situation, or am I able to rationalize the decisions to a certain degree? I don't know, in the end I feel all of these things, and yet I feel none of them at the same time. I don't know if that makes sense at all, but that's the closest description I can come up with. It also feels like an anti-climax. For 2 weeks, this has been a large part of the lives of myself and people around me, and now the moment has come and gone, what does it really mean? On Monday, the world will just keep going on again, like it has always done, almost as if nothing had happened at all.

At least I had time this weekend to clear my mind. Strangely, I feel less tired at the moment than before. I admit I haven't thought much about work this weekend, and barely even touched my laptop at all, so that helps. For some reason, this weekend also seemed longer than usual, even though we lost an hour today due to daylight savings. I guess it's just another sign that I should stop thinking about work so much.

However, that feeling of tiredness seems to have been replaced by a feeling of melancholy. For the last 2 years, I thought I had my life almost figured out. Even though I never really have a life plan, I thought I would be fine as long as I stayed in the current path. But now my inner doubts are starting to creep to the surface again. Is this really what I want? I worked so hard during the last few years, but can I seriously say I feel like I achieved anything? Am I actually happy with my life and where it is headed? I'm not sure, but answering 'no' to these questions don't feel as improbable as it would have seemed a year ago…

P.S. I realize it sounded petty when I mentioned in my last post that I was angry that my salary has been frozen, and reading back, I don't think I put my comments in the right context. It's more the combination of things that got me pissed: even though the company made a lot of profit last year, we still had to cut people AND freeze salaries? If they were to freeze salaries so we could keep more people, I would have understood (of course, management said that we would have to cut even more people if salaries were not frozen…). I can understand cutting costs in the face of the economic crisis, but I felt and still feel these measures were too extreme.

2009-03-17T22:39:00.001+01:00

Damn, I'm tired. I know I complained before about being tired, but that was never anything like I've felt in the last couple of weeks. At times I feel like I could drop into my bed and sleep for 3 days straight. And at other times, I just feel like snapping at other people for no reason at all. So far, I've still been able to keep these urges relatively under control, but I really feel that I need to take care that I don't fall too deep. I think this is illustrated very well by how I felt when I had 2 days off a few weeks ago. I was actually stressed during those 2 days than I would have been at work. I just kept thinking about all the work I still have to do at the office.

What makes me feel this way is that I feel the control is slipping further away from me every minute. When I moved to Amsterdam with Vodafone, I was determined to improve a lot of things, and I was convinced that we could achieve that if we all put our minds to it. But then you realize that due to all the short term pressure, you can never really work on the long term issues, which then puts even more pressure on the short term. On top of that, it seems like we are having more and more issues with our systems. A lot of my time now goes into checking stuff and chasing our IT and datawarehouse support instead of actually making reports and analyses, which is just very frustrating.

Just when I thought there was no way for my motivation to go but up, it turned out that the economic crisis has now also hit our company. Last Thursday, we all got a mail that they are going to sack people, which will be announced on March 25^th. On top of that, they are also going to freeze the salaries. You can imagine that it doesn't really boost morale on the workfloor, especially not if we've been hearing that we've done such a good job and has been so profitable year in the previous year. Okay, I understand and agree that we definitely need to cut some costs, but the measures imposed just seem to be too extreme. To me, it also doesn't make economic sense in the long term. By cutting away more than we should, the revenues will probably go down in a higher ratio. The thing is, we won't necessarily feel the impact in the coming year, but more realistically in the years after that. By then, no one will link the downgrade in revenues back to the layoffs. It'll just be explained as bad performance by the workforce. Of course, these measures are imposed by HQ in the UK, so perhaps I can't really blame the managers here. It's not like they really had much of a choice. The timing is also bad of course, because of the move to Amsterdam. One part of the people made a conscious decision to move to Amsterdam, whereas the other part made a conscious decision to leave their current jobs and join Vodafone (a not insignificant part of those people were hired from abroad) 6 to 12 months ago.

Personally, I don't think that I'll be one of the people who have to go, although stranger things have definitely happened before (It will actually be the second time that I'm sacked by Vodafone if it happens). But still, if my feeling turns out to be true, that means the pressure will become even greater, since we have to achieve much higher targets than previous years with less people, and all that during a recession. I'm also disappointed that the salaries will be frozen. I've been working extremely hard for the past year, and now I just feel they snatched away the reward that I rightly deserve just before the deadline. I know it sounds petty when compared to people who actually lost their jobs, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

Maybe I said more in this post than I should have (you never know), but I'm just disappointed, angry and tired right now, so I don't really care…

2009-03-01T22:34:00.002+01:00

I finally did some touristic stuff in Amsterdam when my brothers visited me earlier in the week. We went to Artis (the zoo) on Monday, which was pretty cool. The Dappermarkt was a little disappointing; I guess once you’ve been to markets in Hong Kong and Turkey, your expectations tend to be a bit high. And we took a stroll in the famous Red Light District. There are talks of ‘cleaning up’ the district in recent years, so I guess we should see it before it’s too late. The van Gogh museum on Tuesday was also nice. It is fascinating how his art progressed from a sober, realistic style (e.g. the Potato Eaters) to a much more vivid and colorful style (e.g. Starry Night). And I saw pictures of the Smoking Skeleton many times before, but I never realized it was painted by van Gogh as well. Finally we went to the P.C. Hooftstraat (the shopping street), but just like the Dappermarkt, it was a bit disappointing. The Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona was definitely cooler, even if I don’t like shopping that much.

On Saturday I went to a Chinese bookstore, which I knew was there but never visited before. I was totally geeked out when I stepped inside, they had a lot more than I dared to hope. Of course, I’m not actually able to read those books yet, but it’s a great incentive for me to brush up on my Chinese. I particularly liked the books containing the Chinese classics in both Chinese and English text. These classics include the “Journey to the West” (featuring the famous and beloved Monkey King) and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. I must admit the little I know of these stories is mainly from movies and tv, which of course might not be very accurate, so I was excited about reading the original novels. I was disappointed that you could only buy these novels in its entire set. The Journey to the West set, for example, contains six (huge) books and costs €149, which is just too much at once. I also thought about buying the one-volume books with the teachings of Confucius or Mencius. I ended up buying a Chinese translation of Jane Eyre instead. With the help of a dictionary and the English version of Jane Eyre I own, I hope it will help me to dramatically improve my vocabulary.

2009-02-17T22:15:00.001+01:00

Last week Kyoko, a Japanese girl I met in Korea, visited Amsterdam, and we met for some dinner and drinks. She actually lives in the UK now, so it wasn't such a long trip for her. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive at first, because of what happened during one of the last days in Korea. I'm not going to say what exactly, but for me personally it was certainly a strange experience., and I guess for her as well.

Of course, in the end it turned out to be a nice weekend. We talked openly about what happened, and it's always nice to talk about stuff that happened in Korea. We'd actually never really talked much to each other before, but it's funny to hear that we form more or less the same opinions about most of the different people we met there, even though we hung with different crowds. It was a pretty fun time, and talking about it definitely makes me feel a bit nostalgic.

One of the things we mentioned is how much more confident and social I seem to be compared to 5 years ago. I remember saying to her that I don't like to pinpoint any one reason for that, and that I rather see it as a long and hard process. But looking back, I have to admit that I made a huge step thanks to my experiences in Korea. Perhaps that's the reason why I feel Korea will always seem special to me, even if I did not harbor any particular feelings about the country at the time.

2009-02-02T22:09:00.001+01:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot of picking up another education. Not to advance my career or anything like that, but out of pure interest. My mind has been restless lately, perhaps because it has spent so much time thinking about my job, and it needed something else to keep it distracted. So I've been looking on the University of Amsterdam website to check what courses they offer. My preference goes to literature (of course), though philosophy and history also interest me.

Sometimes I wonder why I chose International Business (IB) when I was younger. It wasn't too bad, and I guess things turned out pretty good in the end, but I realized that I never really experienced much fun or passion during my education. The funny thing is that my favorite course by far was Distributive Justice, when it should not even have been available for IB students if not for an administrative error. It had a very philosophical angle, which just reaffirms my interest in those kinds of subjects (though I also really liked the workshops SQL and Working with spreadsheets, which is actually a large part of what I do for a living!).

In the end, I even wanted to write my thesis from a philosophical point of view (a combination of Distributive Justice and International Trade), as opposed to all those hundreds of quantitative theses. Of course, like mentioned earlier, it doesn't exactly fit my education, and I wasn't really knowledgeable about it, but it was the only subject that really interested me at the time (also because I've always felt extremely annoyed by all those anti-globalists out there who often don't make sense). But I always felt I was pushed to approach things in a mathematical way, which was precisely what I did not want to do. Maybe it's a weak excuse to never finish my thesis, but I can't imagine spending months of your life working on something you don't really believe in.

Of course, the problem now is that I have a full time job. So I'm a bit disappointed that the University of Amsterdam does have a part time education on literature, but that they do not offer any classes at night or during the weekends. Working shorter hours is not an option for me, at least not on the medium short term.

Alas, knowing myself, this might be one of those things I'm thinking a lot about doing, but never actually pick up in the end. And maybe it's a good thing. I feel exhausted already when I get back from work; I can't really imagine if I have to study an additional 20 hours a week on top of that.

YPF Jazz Piano Concours

2009-01-30T00:20:00.003+01:00

I attended the YPF Jazz Piano Concours (semi finals) last Saturday. One thing that struck me about the performances was how easily classical music often flows ino jazz music and vice versa. Another thing was the obligatory piece (Con Alma), I thought it was pretty cool how each candidate was able give it a totally different feel and experience to the same piece of music, especially considering that the original was played on trombone. In general, each of the six candidates had a very distinct style, and were able to convert existing works to suit their won styles. This is my first true experience with this kind of music, but I really enjoyed it. I really should start attending these cultural things more often.

Well, I'm no expert, but here's my impression of each of the 6 candidates:

Andrea Taeggi

The most experimental of the bunch. He makes some use of uncommon sounds and instruments, and throws in some weird combinations in his pieces. It was pretty good, but I'm not a big fan of experimental music.

Sandro Savino

Probably the one with the largest ego (typically Italian I would say), but a good showman. He brings a lot of enthusiasm in his music, so naturally he generated quite some applause from the audience. He especially had a lot of fun playing In Walked Bud (his version is much more dynamic than in the Youtube clip, and he added a beat which he repeated over and over again, but it was extremely catchy), and that enthusiaism just carried over to the crowd. Not the best in technique and innovation perhaps, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

Jean-François Blanchard

His music sounds more romantic than the others. Perhaps not surprisingly, seeing he's from France. As a result, his music is somewhat more slower and dreamier than the others (which I like), although he did show off more of his skills towards the end.

Anne Guus Teerhuis

At this point of the competition (especially right after the break), my mind started to drift off, so I found it hard to judge him. His own piece was called "Professor Chaos", which does suit his style. I think his style does need some getting used to, but I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about his performance. Bu then again, what do I know, since he did win the competition in the end. I think the judges were also looking for innovation, and he definitely had that more than the other candidates.

Evgeny Sivtsov

Technically brilliant, which he didn't hesitate to show. His demeanor was somewhat more subdued than the others though, and to me the music seemed to lack some passion the others have. Still, I couldn't help but be impressed with his skills.

Sri Hanuraga

Well, save the best for last, I guess. And judging by the response of the audience, I wasn't the only one who had him as my favorite. Very skilled and very enthusiastic player. But what really won the crowd over was his inclusion of more modern elements. His interpretation of Allegro Barbaro especially was a huge hit with the audience. With the inclusion of some heavy drum work along with some bombastic play on the piano, the whole piece turned into a hybrid of classical music and rock and roll. The drummer even got to perform a mini solo towards the end (which may be a bit over the top, seeing that this is first and foremost a piano competition).

2009-01-04T23:32:00.001+01:00

Well, after I wrote the last post, it did make me feel a bit better. I guess I just needed it to get rid of the negative energy inside. I still find it strange though that it's apparently easier for me to do it this way than for example just having a talk with a friend or family member.

2009-01-01T12:58:00.001+01:00

Every time this year, I'm reminded again how much I really hate the holiday season. When Christmas and the new year come along, somehow this whole affection (for lack of a better word) thing become even more important than usual, which in turn makes me even more self-conscious than usual. Despite all the progress I made in the last couple of years, deep down inside, I'm still the same shy, awkward kid I used to be.

In previous years, I've always managed to tough it out, even sending out text messages and making phone calls while actually showing my face around the family. For some reason, I was not able to do that this year. All I wanted was to shy away from other people and hide in my apartment. Maybe I just feel empty after the last couple of months. I like to believe that the move to Amsterdam and the increased pressure and workload at work (sometimes coupled with an increasing sense of helplessness) doesn't really affect me at all, but to be honest, it does. It's an exaggeration to say that the reporting at Vodafone would have collapsed without me, but sometimes I wonder how the situation would have been if I had left the company. On the other hand, I made the decision to stay knowing fully that things would be extremely frustrating for the coming year, which in retrospect might even be too optimistic. Still, I've been struggling to regain the joy and motivation I used to have at work. I just need to stay aware of what we are trying to achieve within our team and within our department. That in itself should be a huge source of motivation. I have to remember: baby steps…

At least, I hope the way I feel now can be as easily explained as that. Lately I've been thinking a lot about myself again. In some ways, I don't feel like a normal person at all. Is it because I hit the big 3-0 in November? I don't really feel any different than before, but it might be a factor subconsciously. I guess at some point, you seriously start to question the things you've done or haven't done, which in my case is mostly in the "haven't done" department. Is it normal that I've never had a relationship in my life? Is it normal that I'm still a virgin? Is it normal I've never kissed anyone before? For that matter, it is normal that I've never even touched anyone before in an affectionate way (or vice versa)? Is it normal that I am utterly incapable of showing any affection whatsoever? And I know the apathetic way I behave is not always fair towards my family and friends, but how to get over the hump? These are questions I've been mulling over and over again in my head…

In the past, I always believed that these are things I would develop as I get older, though it may take me much longer than others. But now, I'm starting to reach a point where it all just seems hopeless. Which of course, sometimes results in an extreme case of "I don't care" mentality. Sometimes I really do wish I didn't care at all, which would make things so much easier.

On the other hand, deep down inside I'm glad that I actually do care. Sometimes, that's the only proof I have that I'm not entirely without emotions…

Teradata Conference – Wish I was there!

2008-10-11T18:23:00.003+02:00

The 2008 Teradata Partners User Group Conference is starting tomorrow in Las Vegas, and two months ago I thought I would be there as well. In May, I sent in a proposal for a presentation and after being put on the waiting list, I was actually invited to go speak at the conference. Needless to say, I was excited. But too bad, Vodafone wasn't willing to cover the expenses. There were actually a couple of reasons, which I'm not going to discuss in public. I could understand the reasoning behind it, and I had a pretty good talk with my boss (well, actually my boss' boss). I was disappointed of course, but at the same time I left the meeting room feeling pretty optimistic about my future. And let's be honest, aside from the usual networking and learning reasons, I also wanted to go because it's in Las Vegas, with traveling expenses being covered by the company! It's like a free vacation! In Las Vegas!

A part of me was actually happy that it didn't go through. The same part which was convinced I would just make a fool of myself in front of an international professional crowd. During these situations, I always realize again just how strong this part of me still is. Even though I really wanted to be there, I also experienced some anxiety and stress. I kept thinking about it all the time, often saying to myself that maybe I should just give up before I start screwing up. Being selected as a speaker obviously helped in my self confidence, but I still felt pretty uncomfortable at times about going there. Of course, I didn't give up, and if the opportunity arises again, I would definitely give it a shot again.

2008-09-30T14:56:00.002+02:00

Well, I finally moved to Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago and I’m happy to say I feel at home already. For some reason, Amsterdam just seems like a better fit than Maastricht. At first I thought it might be the “tourist” effect, especially since I’ve lived in hotels at the beginning. But now after a few weeks living in my own home, I can genuinely say I like it a lot here, even during the days when I'm doing nothing at all.

Before I moved, I’ve also been to Barcelona for a week with my family, which was nice. The first day was a bit hectic, as one of us got pick-pocketed in the metro. The funny thing is that they didn’t speak English at the police station, and we had to come back the next day between 11 and 12. Apparently, the translator works only an hour a day, which is strange, since I’m sure that a lot of tourists get robbed in Barcelona. But it didn’t turn out to be too bad in the end, and I don’t think it affected much of our holiday.

Anyway, it was a nice break away from work. I don’t want to complain too much, but things have just been crazy, and I have a feeling it’s just going to get crazier for the next couple of months. I really have to learn to let things relax a bit; I’m worrying too much about work, and I’m working too many hours. I’ve also been skipping lunches, but then again, I’ve never really developed good eating habits.

At least I’ve been reading more again than I’ve done during the previous 2 years. That’s of course a side benefit of sitting 2,5 hours in the train every time I travel between Maastricht and Amsterdam. I’m actually looking forward to those long trips most of the time now. And the bookshops and library in Amsterdam are fantastic! I’ve been buying a lot of books since I’ve moved. I think I’m becoming addicted.

And last weekend, I actually wrote something again (2 pages)! It’s been months and months already since I wrote anything (apart from this blog). And surprisingly, I’m not as disgusted with my writing this time as I usually am. Of course, I’ve been thinking about changing the whole plot structure again, because I still didn’t like some of the stuff I wrote. I need to change my way of thinking. I need to see the coming weeks/months as some sort of training regime, instead of writing the perfect story. Oh well, we’ll see how long the urge lasts this time.

2008-08-17T01:15:00.001+02:00

My apartment is starting to shape up nicely now. I finally have a floor this week, and I'm really in love with it. I was cleaning my apartment today, and I was starting to feel at home already, and I felt sad when I headed back to Maastricht. I think this is actually the first time I want to show off my home, I can hardly wait to invite people to come over. September 3^rd is the big day, that's when I'll actually move. The last couple of weeks I've been working half in Maastricht and half in Amsterdam. At first, the traveling and living in hotels and eating outside was really fun, but I'm starting to feel tired now, so I'll be happy when I can sleep and cook in my own apartment.

For the first time in my life, I'm starting to feel stressed. It's not just the whole moving / reorganization thing. A lot of old people are leaving and a lot of new people are coming in, which means tons of extra work for me. And that means lately I'm planning everything around my work, including all the apartment stuff, which means running around a lot just to arrange things. But if it's just that, I could've handled it, it's a challenge I've accepted when I decided to stay at Vodafone. It's just that everything seems to be going wrong lately, at work as well as other stuff.

Last week, I lost my car keys and my key pass to the garage. Of course, I only noticed it when I actually needed the car, so that was pretty stressful. The guy who I hired to lay my laminate floor was 3 hours late, and he forgot to call me, so that totally screwed up my schedule at work. And 2 days ago I lost my phone in Amsterdam (I was already back in Maastricht). Luckily my manager found it at the printer (stupid me!). The mobile phone has become such an integral part of my life without me even realizing it. Without it, I feel handicapped, both professionally and socially. And I'm not even going to start about the stuff going wrong at work. I just feel pissed and frustrated lately, and sometimes I just feel like pounding my fist on the table and scream "I don't care anymore! I'm going home and I'm not coming back for 3 weeks! And if you want to fire me, just go ahead!". But of course, I'm not going to that, so I need a better way of handling it.

At least I have something to look forward to. We're leaving for Barcelona for a week on Tuesday. Yay! I haven't taken a day off (except if I need to arrange stuff) since my holiday in the USA last year, and I'm really desperately in need for some time off. Hopefully I can get Vodafone out of my mind in Barcelona, but I'm probably going to check my work e-mail anyway when I'm there.

2008-07-14T22:16:00.002+02:00

I finally got to see my new apartment last Friday. They are still working on the main entrance and main hallway, but the apartments themselves are finished. I already expected I would like it, but you're never sure until you've seen it with your own eyes. I have to say, I wasn't disappointed at all.

Luckily, I don't have to do too much work around the apartment. I need to put in a floor, put up some lamps and clean the apartment. Buy some more furniture, and I'm all set. If I want, I even can already cook and shower there. I'm really looking forward to move now.

Here are some pics of the apartment I made:

I Found an Apartment!

2008-06-01T22:39:00.001+02:00

Yay! I signed the rental contract for my new apartment on Thursday. I've been holding off on writing about my apartment search, because I was afraid to jinx it for some reason. And I'm really not the superstitious type! But still, I think I've been pretty lucky. I saw this apartment about 2 weeks ago on the website from the real estate agent. However, the website of the project itself (it's a totally new building) says that all the apartments have been rented out. As it turned out, the apartment has already been (almost) rented out twice. The first person decided to withdraw when he wasn't able to sell his existing apartment. I don't remember what the second person's reason was, but I don't really care. What matters is, that they withdrew, and now it's mine! I actually haven't seen the inside of the apartment yet. I did see the floor plan, and I've been to the area a couple of weeks before to view another apartment. I really like the area. It's still very new, and it's quiet and peaceful there. And it only takes about 15 minutes to get to the city centre with the tram.

I think finally finding an apartment has helped me to calm down a little. For the first time since the announcement is made, I'm actually looking forward to make the move to Amsterdam, instead of looking at it as just a good move for my career.

What still bothers me at the moment is how busy I am, due to all the changes in the organization. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting burned out. Mondays are mostly ok, but on Tuesdays I'm always exhausted by the middle of the day, which I can't shake for the rest of the week. Most of the time I feel like I could just fall asleep on my desk any moment. It doesn't help there are lots of important stuff going on at the moment. When I think about my to do list... It's a good thing I almost never think of work when I'm at home. I have a different, more daunting task at home as it is. When I think about all the books I haven't read yet... I recently came across this book called "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". After a quick count (with the help of Excel ;-)), I am shocked and ashamed that I've only read 23 of them so far! Luckily I have a week off at the end of June. I think I'm just going to sleep and read a lot during that week.

My Brand New Cybook Gen3!

2008-04-13T17:03:00.001+02:00

Woohoo! I just received my Cybook Gen3! I've read two chapters of 1984 on the device last night, and it's true what they say. It feels like you're actually reading from paper instead of from a screen. I haven't tested it yet with pdf or txt files, but it works good with Mobipocket format.

Although it's not cheap, it's still one of the less expensive e-readers on the market. I've also considered the Amazon Kindle, but it's only available in the US (damn those companies who always cater to the US market first!) and you are placed on a waiting list due to heavy demand. Plus it's really ugly, and it doesn't work with Mobipocket or pdf; it uses its own proprietary format. The Cybook works great in the one thing it allows you to do (reading e-books, d'uh!), but it could certainly use a lot of additional functions. One absolute must is folder support, or at least a search function. Actually, I can't believe those are not standard features already; cycling through books in one giant folder can be a pain if you have hundreds of books on your card. The ability to highlight text or write notes would be welcome as well. I also like to flip through pages when I'm reading, which is not easy on the Cybook (or any other electronic device I guess), so it requires a slightly different reading behavior.

Still, I'm pretty psyched about having the Cybook. One of the huge advantages of an e-reader is that I finally have an easy way to read books I download from Feedbooks and Gutenberg, who offer free legal downloads of books of which the copyright have expired. I wish there was some easy and cheap way to convert all my printed books into e-books as well, but for the time being I have enough reading material. I also haven't bought many books lately due to lack of shelf space, which is also not an issue anymore.

I can't wait to make another intercontinental flight on my own. Having the Cybook with me instead of dragging tons of books with me, mmm...

So Sick of Myself

2008-04-01T22:25:00.001+02:00

I'm so sick of myself right now. So sick of this insecurity and doubt gnawing at my insides for the last couple of weeks, and it affects my entire being. I feel like nobody likes me, that I suck at my job, and that I'll never find love. I feel like a total loser and that I don't really deserve the good things that happen to me. And feeling like a loser makes me feel like a whiner. I have no idea where it comes from. But let's try to stay positive:

People like me, right?!? (Of course not! Who the hell would like you?) (Shut up!)

And come on, I'm pretty good at my job, right?!?
(No way! You suck so bad!) (Shut up!)

And I'm definitely going to find um...well, I guess two out of three isn't bad. (At least we agree on this one...) (SHUT UP!!!!)

(In case you're wondering, that's me arguing with myself inside my head. And yes, I do this all the time.)

Every once in a while, this feeling of insecurity comes at me like a tidal wave, and I have hardly any defense against it. The good thing is, I'm still holding on, doing my best to still show myself at work and in social situations. I would have crawled back into my shell and would have completely hidden myself from the outside world. But still, doing so had drained me mentally. I've been feeling tired all the time during the last couple of weeks. Not in the normal, sleepy sort of way (though I'm feeling sleepy already since 8:30 pm), but more in an empty sort of way.

Wow, that was a lot of complaining! I guess I just needed to get that out of my system before I go crazy. (No, it's because you're such a whiner!) (Shut up!)

My M3 Score: 85%

Updating My M3 Score

2008-03-10T20:32:00.001+01:00

I guess I haven't really been diligent about updating my M3 score (since HeeRa likes M3 better than Triple M, and I don't really have a preference, I'm going to use that name for the moment). It kind of defeats the whole purpose if I don't update it regularly. The idea was that I can look back a year later, and see how much my mood fluctuated over the months leading up to the move.

But I guess the important thing to keep in mind here is that the M3 score only reflects my mood, which is hugely influenced by factors that shouldn't really affect my final decision. Last week Tuesday I was a very low point (some of you will know why that is ;-)), but I'm feeling much, much better about it today. Hmm, I can't really base such an important decision for my future on something so fickle as my mood now, can I? I have to approach this in a more rational (For lack of a better word - I really hate the word "rational". Does anyone actually ever make a decision without their emotions playing a role? ) way, and to be honest, I think there are certainly some pro's for me personally if I move to Amsterdam.

My M3 Score: 90%

P.S. I just found out recently that there's a blogging function in Word 2007. So now I just do my writing in Word, press on "Publish" and presto! It's added to my weblog! And seconds later, it's added to my Hyves page as well thanks to a weblink between Hyves and Blogger! Ah, it makes my life sooooo much easier, especially if I want to do some formatting.

Introducing the Moving Mood Meter

2008-02-23T22:18:00.001+01:00

I just want to try something here. Since my attitude towards the move to Amsterdam keeps changing all the time, I thought it would be cool to keep track of that. It's just a rough approximation of how I'm feeling at that moment on a scale from 1 - 100. I call it the Moving Mood Meter, or Triple M (or M3, or M&M&M, the possibilities are endless!).

Triple M Score: 65 out of 100

P.S. Of course, I might tire of this in the future, which means I may or may not continue to do this until September 1^st.

2008-02-15T19:34:00.004+01:00

Emotions are your closest companions.

No matter where you are, in the best and in the worst of times, they are always there with you.

They also require a lot of attention.

Treat them well, and they will repay you tenfold.
Fail to acknowledge them however, and they will make your life a living nightmare.

See this as my way of making amends...

Valentine's Day...

2008-02-14T21:32:00.000+01:00

... sucks when you're feeling lonely.

But it does wonders for your inspiration...

2008-02-10T14:13:00.000+01:00

I’m feeling really unmotivated at work lately. One of the main reasons is that I don’t have the feeling that the company really cares whether and how many people actually make the move to Amsterdam. There have hardly been any attempts to boost morale at all, so I’m a bit disappointed. I was pretty enthusiastic in the beginning, but now I feel a bit down about the whole thing. I do feel appreciation from the people in the department, it’s just that the organization and HR have done so little in my opinion during the whole process.

Also, due to the reorganization, I’ve taken some extra tasks, and I think the workload is starting to get to me. I just feel so apathetic at the moment, which is lethal for your job satisfaction. I just feel like taking 3 weeks off and not thinking about work at all.

Combine that with my non-existent love life, and I’m feeling a little blue and restless lately. I guess I can only fool myself for so long that I don’t need anyone. But I have no idea at all what to do about it. It sounds so easy when other people say it: Just go for it, so what if you get rejected? But it’s just all so unnatural for me.

Maybe the whole problem is that I only feel urge to say how I feel when I really, really, really like a person. But by then, every rejection I get feels like a dagger in my heart, and it affects not just the way I think about love, but also my whole life as well. And then it gets even harder next time to say how I feel, and as a result the next rejection hurts even more. And so on. After a few of those, I just got cynical I guess, and start to believe that it’s not worth all the pain and frustration. Maybe I just need therapy. I’m becoming 30 this year, and I’ve never been with anyone before in my life. I don’t think that’s normal.

Oh well, it probably sounds worse than it is. It’s not like I’m depressed or anything. I’m still pretty happy. But like I said before, I’m trying to be more open about my feelings, and this is for me still the easiest way to do that. Who knows, maybe it will actually help to get these feelings off my chest, instead of cropping them up within myself.

The Inner War Saga

2008-02-03T19:27:00.000+01:00

Apart from a shameless attempt to boost the number of posts, I also intended the previous two posts as a sort of introduction for this one.

However, I hadn’t really decided beforehand on the approach for this article. I was playing with the idea of using fantasy metaphors to describe my “dark” and “light” sides without any explanation beforehand. Something like this, only better worked out:

For years, the dark forces have oppressed the lands of Danteoria, while the light forces were too weak and too disorganized to oppose the dark forces. However, rather than give up, the light forces laid in hiding, building up their strength while waiting for the right moment to fight back. A few years ago, that moment finally arrived, and against all odds, the light forces were actually able to hold their own against the dark forces, and were even able to regain most of the territories. Once again, the people of Danteoria feel hope that one day the dark forces will be defeated.

Of course, this is incredibly nerdy, no matter how much of a nerd I still feel like sometimes :-). And I was afraid people will get confused if I just start writing like that. But still, I like the idea too much to abandon it altogether, so I decided to do this explanation thing as well.

However, despite regaining some key territories like Labouria and Socialia, the capital of Amouria is still in enemy hands. But all attempts to date to regain control have failed miserably, and the light forces suffered heavy losses as a result. The leaders are now discussing whether it is wiser to leave Amouria to the enemy. Most other territories are firmly under Light control, and they are confident that the enemy does not have the necessary troops to regain them. However, if they keep expending too much energy towards regaining Amouria, these other territories will come under heavy pressure. Maybe the time has come to propose some sort of peace, awkward though it may be.

If this was a real (real in this case meaning imaginary of course) story, then the protagonist will object against making peace with the dark forces, while in the end triumphing against all odds. Of course, it will take at least three books to accomplish that (somehow it’s not really fantasy when it’s not at least a trilogy), so the road is long and hard.

But since this is a fake (fake in this case meaning real - I hope you’re still with me :-)) story, I’m not sure it will necessarily end that way. I hope the protagonist in me is strong enough. It’s just that I feel that it’s not really worth the trouble anymore. I’ve really tried my best, and it’s far from enough, so why bother? Still, I haven’t entirely given up hope yet, guess that part of me refuses to go away. So who knows, maybe it will still work out in the end like above (though I wonder on which book I am in that case).

P.S. I apologize if this was a bit too weird for your tastes, but I was just experimenting. It’s not something I would do again, I think it loses its coolness(?) after you’ve done it once. And please don't mind the bad writing, I was too lazy to edit the whole story.

... vs. My "Light" Side

2008-01-31T14:46:00.000+01:00

... but life is worth so much more if you care.

My "Dark" Side...

2008-01-30T21:42:00.000+01:00

Life is so much simpler if you don't care...

2008-01-22T21:51:00.000+01:00

I had a nice training last week called Presenting and Motivating. The trainer’s methods sometimes were a bit um… alternative. Still, one of the very few trainings I’ve followed which I can say I really learned something while having a lot of fun at the same time.

Sonja, Bart (my colleagues) and I went to Rotterdam on Friday to visit Maurits (an ex-colleague). That night, we first went to the Level, which was a really nice cocktail bar. I wouldn't have minded staying there for more than one cocktail. After that we went to the Après Skihut, and to top it off, the Baja Beach Club. Haha, those were really terrible places, but despite (or maybe because) of that, we had a lot of fun.

We visited Koen, a manager in our department, in his apartment the next day. Nice apartment with a great view over the Erasmus-bridge. We met up with my cousins afterward to yamcha (literally drink tea in Cantonese, but actually means going for dim sum), where we ordered waaayyy too much. I then stayed at their place until Sunday before heading back home. All in all, a great weekend.

I'm extremely busy at work at the moment. I’ve taken on some new tasks due to the reorganization, while my existing tasks have not diminished at all. There were already more than enough to do in the past, but now I’m really struggling to structure and keep up with all the work I have. And it will only become even busier in the upcoming period now that the first people have announced that they are leaving the company soon due to the move to Amsterdam. Oh well, all part of the game I guess. Might even be a good learning experience. At least I hardly feel any stress at the whole situation, which somehow seems surprising and unsurprising to me at the same time. At most, I feel some annoyance at the increasing and increasingly pesky mails and requests. We’ll see how it all turns out; I'm sure I'll be fine.

My manager also officially announced last Friday that he’s leaving the department in June, though he will work in another function at Vodafone which allows him to stay in Maastricht. That’s really a huge loss; he’s definitely the best manager I’ve had in my still short career. In my opinion, whoever succeeds him can only be a downgrade, but I guess it’s not really fair to that person, so I should keep an open mind about it.

2008-01-06T14:53:00.000+01:00

I spent a lot of time alone during the holiday period, except at work, and on New Year's Eve. It’s been a long time since I’ve been completely alone for more than a day, and I almost forgot how much I enjoy being cut off from the outside world. I was feeling pretty tired and uninspired for the last couple of months, and I think this definitely helped me to recharge my batteries.

Work was pretty fun during that period as well. Since most people are not in the office, that means there are also a lot fewer deadlines to stick to. This allowed me to let go of some of the more boring, standardized work I’ve been doing and just let my creative juices flow and rethink some of my existing reports. Because of time constraints, a lot of my reports are unstructured and inefficient, and I always feel that they are not great, just ok. I wished I had a couple of weeks more to work on my own projects without worrying about deadlines, but I still managed to have a good feeling about it.

My Resolutions for 2008

2007-12-25T22:37:00.002+01:00

As 2007 draws to an end, it’s time to make some resolutions for the coming year. This is actually the first time I’m doing this, so I need to do a lot of catching up. To get a better overview, I’ve divided them into different categories. So here they are, in order of importance:

Family / Friends

Make a better effort to help my brother and improve our relationship again. This is definitely the most important and toughest one for me personally. I hope I actually have the strength and willpower to actually go through with it.
Work harder on my relationships with my friends/family. I really suck at relationships. This one can probably be broken down into many different sub-resolutions, but I’ll spare you the details.

The Wonderful World of Words

Write more, and be less afraid of writing more from within myself. Of course, I’ve been telling myself that for years already. Oh well, maybe 2008 will be different.
Read more.

Health

Eat more fruits and veggies.
Eat less junkfood, especially pizza. Damn, I really love pizza, but one large pizza a week is probably too much.
Keep working out and keep improving my strength and endurance. I haven’t set any specific targets, but a year from now, I should be able to lift more and run faster and longer than I do now.

Non-mandatory (nice-to-haves)

Travel more.
Earn more money.
Drink less coffee at work.
Sleep less. I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping lately.

Of course, it remains to be seen how many of these resolutions I’ll be able to keep. But I had fun writing them, and I guess that’s what truly matters for now :-).

P.S. In case you are wondering, looking for a girlfriend is NOT on the list.

2007-12-13T22:06:00.001+01:00

I've been neglecting my blog for the last couple of weeks. This time it's not because of laziness or because I have no inspiration. It's because I've been doing some thinking about what I want with this. I'm genuinely surprised when people say they like to read my blog. In my opinion, most of it is just pointless and boring rubbish. When you write, if you write, you should always do it with your heart and soul, and that's exactly what's been missing. I was writing just for the sake of writing, and as a result it's all become very meaningless. It's a nice way to let other people know what's happening, but that's about it. I guess I just want it to be so much more than just a way to post updates about my life.

But anyway, I had a nice trip to Brussels last weekend with Gwen and Lino (Btw, I really should start using names more. For some reason, I always avoid them when I'm writing). We had an executive suite for 2 nights for just € 240 including breakfast. So that's just € 40 per night per person, so that's pretty sweet. I guess they normally can't rent it during the weekend, since it's mainly for business people, so they just rent it out real cheap. Brussels was a nice city and we also met up with Wingfa there. All in all, it was a good trip.

Now for an update on the Amsterdam situation. The benefit package was announced 2 weeks ago, and I have to say it looks pretty good. But I'm still not sure about taking the offer. I've decided for myself I'm moving to the Randstad, but not necessarily for Vodafone. I think I'm going to use this opportunity to look around. Vodafone may be one of the best employers in Limburg, but if I'm moving to Amsterdam anyway, I owe it to myself to keep all my options open. Right now, I'd say I'm 99.9% sure of moving, and about 60% - 70% sure I'm staying with Vodafone, though it tends to fluctuate a lot. There are days when I'm thinking: "Why the hell should I stay at VF?" and days when I'm thinking: "Oh yeah! I'm definitely staying at VF." Oh well, I guess time will tell what will happen in the next 9 months. If there's anything I've learnt during this whole situation (along with the reorganization of the entire marketing department), is that nothing in life is certain.

Teradata Conference

2007-11-21T22:04:00.000+01:00

We went with a couple of colleagues to a Teradata conference yesterday at the Louwman car museum in Raamsdonksveer. In case you don’t know (and most of you probably don’t), Teradata is a company that provides data warehousing solutions. It was pretty interesting. I especially liked the first presentation by Stephen Brobst, the CTO of Teradata, and apparently the guru in the field of data warehousing. Btw, Teradata kicks Oracle’s ass (probably something only a nerd would say).

The second presentation, by Dave Schrader (If I remember correctly, he was head of the marketing department. I could Google him of course, but I feel a bit lazy right now), was less interesting in my opinion, since it mainly just involved some case studies, but without really going into the processes. I thought I might have detected a Minnesotan accent, though I’m not entirely sure. It’s just that the way he talked somehow reminded me a lot of HeeRa.

The third presentation by the SNS Bank was pretty poor. The speaker sounded really unsure about what he was saying, and to be honest, I was expecting something more spectacular based on the title (“Towards a single version of the truth” or something like that).

After the presentations, we got a (very quick) tour of the museum. I normally don’t like cars, but even I thought it was pretty cool. There were cars from the 19th century (according to the guide, they actually still work), up to an original Aston Martin from a James Bond movie and a car owned by Elvis, with lots of special cars in between. If you like classic cars, then you owe yourself a visit to the museum.

Crawling back into my shell

2007-11-03T22:48:00.000+01:00

I had a training on Thursday and Friday called “Projectmatig werken”, which basically just means working in a project-oriented way. For me personally, the goal was to learn how to work in a more structured way. It was a good training, with a lot of variety, so it never became boring. And I think there were some very good pointers, but the question still remains if I would actually apply them to my work.

What worried and surprised me though, was how passive I was, and how uncomfortable I felt during most of the training. I thought that I would have more confidence by now, but apparently, you can just drop me in a room full of strangers, and I’ll fall back into my bad habits in a heartbeat. The exercises we had to do in smaller groups went a lot better, apart from the first one. I felt more comfortable and less self-aware during those sessions.

I’ve been staying home a lot lately. I was starting to get exhausted of all the social activities, and of being around other people. I just felt I needed some time all alone. I even had to force myself to get out and do my groceries today! I think it also affects my work (and come to think of it, it might have affected my behavior during the training as well). I really don’t feel like working at all during the past two weeks. There were days before when I didn’t feel like working as well, but they usually only last for 1 or 2 days. Let’s hope I can get some of my energy and enthusiasm back by spending some time all by myself.

Job Interview

2007-10-28T18:17:00.000+01:00

I seem to be writing a lot about my job and my career lately, but I guess not much else exciting is happening elsewhere in my life. Last Monday, I went to Groningen for a job interview as a BI consultant, which would be my second meeting with that particular company. Not that I was seriously looking for a new job, but I was just curious.

During our first talk, I had to fill in a psychological test, and we discussed that at Monday. According to the test, I have a dominant personality at work, and that I get my motivation from my desire for status and authority. I also take decisions without taking other peoples' feelings and emotions into account. My first thought when I read this was "What a asshole!", and then "I'm not anything like that, am I?" I was probably feeling overconfident when I filled in the test, I couldn't think of another explanation.

On Thursday, they called me back, and said they were not going to follow up. They said the talks were very positive. It's just that their functions are related to the technical side of Business Intelligence, while I was much more interested in the business of it. Can't really argue with that. Even though I like doing all the technical stuff, the job would have much less meaning for me if I couldn't relate them to the business. But I'm not too sad about it, I wasn't going to leave Vodafone anyway.

We also had some goodbye lunches/dinners at work lately, because we had some people (including some consultants) leaving us. Which is a shame, because they were good at their jobs, and because they were really nice and fun people. And with the move to Amsterdam coming up, I think there will be more goodbyes in the coming year. But I guess that's just the way it is, so there's no sense in thinking about it for too long.

Moving to Amsterdam?

2007-10-20T23:34:00.000+02:00

I wanted to post this earlier, but somehow I've postponed it till now. Some of you may have heard it already, but the department I'm working for at Vodafone is moving from Maastricht to Amsterdam, which is about 214km away. The rationale behind it is that we are too far away from the Randstad, away from most of our customers and external parties, and because it's hard to hire specialized personnel (since most of them don;t want to live/work in Limburg). There are going to be two "waves", one in August 2008, and one in August 2010, with a total of about 400 commercial/marketing functions moving to the new location. We won't know for sure who is in which wave until the 1st of December, though the general opinion is that our department at least is going to move in 2008.

For a lot of people, this came as quite a shock. There will be a lot of people who will decide not to move with the company, especially those who have a family with kids. I haven't decided for myself yet what I'm going to do, but I think there's a good probabillity that I'm going to move to Amsterdam as well, though my opinion on that is changing from day to day. There's only a problem regarding my apartment. I just bought it 9 months ago, and after some thought, I decided not to sell my apartment in any case, since I would make too much loss on it. If I am able to rent it, then the choice for Amsterdam would be easier.

Apart from what it means for the people directly involved, I think this is a bad thing from a socio-economic point of view. The general trend is that companies are moving their commercial headquarters to the Randstad. Even Philips, which I've always associated with Eindhoven, moved their HQ to Amsterdam a few years ago. One of the main reasons is that all the students want to work there. But then again, since all the companies are moving there, you are more or less forced to move there as well if you happen to work in that field. It's just a vicious cycle.

Still, for me personally, this might not be a bad thing necessarily. I', always thinking about the possibility of working elsewhere, so it's not like that I feel particularly attached to where I live. And if it's somwhow possible, I'd even like to work abroad as well in the future. The only difference is that I thought that I would stay here for a couple of years at least before I start looking someplace else, so this is basically just speeding up the whole process.

Busy week

2007-10-08T20:06:00.000+02:00

I had a conversation with two different consultancy firms, just to test the market and what I'm worth. To be honest, I thought I was all over the place during the conversation. But they told me that they were positive about me. Perhaps I sounded more authentic that way, and not I was just telling a story I prepared the night before. Anyway, they were going to talk things over and come back to me. I already told them beforehand that I have no intention of leaving my current job. If they still make me an offer despite that, it’ll be an indication that I have a good position in the market. If not, then I know I have to there’s still work to be done. Either way, it’s win-win for me.

Anyway, work has been both very fun and very frustrating lately. On the one hand, I’m feeling more and more confident, and as such I’m not afraid to engage into discussions with others (something I had trouble with in the past). I have some ideas in my head concerning reporting, but I need to find a way to organize and structure them. Although our department has exceeded expectations lately, I feel that we barely scratched the surface of our potential. It’s exciting to be a part of that. The only downside is that there are so much more things I want to do than I actually have time for.

On the other hand, we had a lot of problems and issues with our data, and we have had a lot of trouble getting the IT department to solve them. It’s just so frustrating that these issues are remaining unresolved for a long time, so we either have to put our work on hold, or else come up with a temporary workaround. And all that extra work just costs so much time and energy.

It’s been a good week as well socially speaking. We had dinner at one of our colleagues’ place on Tuesday, which was a lot of fun. We are definitely thinking about doing that on a regular basis. And we are starting a new tradition with our “Friday afternoon drink”. The plan is to grab a drink every Friday after work. And coming Thursday, we are planning a dinner at my father and uncle’s restaurant. It’s unbelievable how much time I spend with my colleagues lately. It’s a good thing I don't have a relationship :-).

My cousins from Rotterdam also stayed at my place during the weekend. We stayed up till about 6 am playing drinking games and poker. We also played paintball on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. I particularly liked “The Maze”, where people can sneak up on each other, so you have to keep moving. It was a great weekend, though I was pretty beat at the end. I was also starting to get sick, though I felt better today. I was afraid I would have a lot of trouble staying awake at work today, but it went better than I expected. There were times I was starting to nod off, but I still managed to be productive :-).

Fortune Telling

2007-10-01T01:03:00.001+02:00

I went to the Pasar Malam in the MECC today with Gwen and Lino, and there was a medium at one of the stands. I wasn’t planning to have my fortune read at first, but after hearing what she had to say about Gwen, my interest was piqued, to say the least, since she got so many things right.

The first thing she said to me was that I was the only one who really knew myself, and that no one else did. At first I thought that was just a general remark, but then she said that I am very closed toward other people, and that was before she even read any of the cards.

None of that was too shocking of course, but she went on in no uncertain terms. She said that I was someone who was very sure of myself. I know exactly what I want… as long as I’m alone. As soon as there are other people involved, I start to get very insecure. I have this huge barrier (she referred to it as a mountain) between myself and other people, which is something I already had built up since I was six. I almost never show my feelings to others, even though I am an extremely sensitive person, because I am so afraid of loss. That’s definitely true. I’ve always felt that the more you feel emotionally attached to others, the more you have to lose.

One of the funniest (though not in the haha way) things she mentioned was how people would take advantage of me when I was younger. That’s certainly what I used to think, that some people took advantage of me because I was way too shy to say or do anything about it. But that is something I would not let happen anymore, since I’d stand up for myself nowadays. I think it’s something I learned throughout the years, but it’s nice to have some sort of confirmation.

I also had to take care of my health, since I am inclined to feel tired the last couple of months. I do feel exhausted very often lately, though I have absolutely no idea why. But it’s something to keep an eye on.

She went on to mention my career. She said that I was contemplating a move toward something better (see this post), and that I can do so much better than my current position. I just have to rely on my self-confidence (the red thread throughout the whole story), which apparently I have in abundance. She also mentioned that I was thinking about having my own business, because I’m terrible at taking orders. I’m not sure about that one. Sure, I have thought about it once or twice before, but never in a concrete way.

I thought it was pretty bizarre when I drew the “Overseas” card. This is something I’ve never even mentioned to anyone else, but since I’ve been to the US, I’ve been thinking a lot about how it would be like to live there, if only for a couple of years. She did mention that it wasn’t the right time yet, but I kind of figured that out for myself already.

The strangest thing she said was that I had a very strong intuition, almost predictive even. Things I feel often have a tendency to come true. I don’t really notice it myself yet, she said, but once I do, I'm in for a shock. There’s no such thing as coincidence, she said. I honestly don't know what to think about this.

The last two cards I had to draw were more or less “answer” cards. The first card said that “I was ready for it”; while the second card said that “there were no guarantees”. But what is “it”? Does it mean the next step in my career (which coincidentally is also what my horoscope says)? Or maybe it just means that I’m ready for a relationship, but since there are no guarantees, I should just stop focusing on that. Or it could mean something entirely different in my life. I wished the cards were clearer in their answers.

In the end, it was a pretty positive story. The main conclusion was that I someone with a lot of confidence, though not around other people. As long as I learn to rely on that confidence, I would be able to achieve a lot, and I’ll even be able to break through my emotional barriers.

Car Accident

2007-09-26T19:26:00.000+02:00

We got into a car accident yesterday, while we were driving to the Vodafone Sales Challenge with a couple of colleagues. Luckily, the impact itself wasn’t that great, so no one got hurt. But my friend’s car got badly damaged, so that really sucks.

Within half an hour, a lot of people at Vodafone have already heard of the accident. Then again, we were in a very conspicuous spot on the highway. Every colleague who left after us to go to the Sales Challenge was able to see us standing by the road. And speaking of people seeing us, a lot of cars actually slowed down when they saw us, just to get a better look. Never mind that a long traffic jam was forming; let us all stare at those unfortunate people while we have the chance. That is something I’ll never understand. Why are people always so fascinated by accidents??

Monsterboard

2007-09-23T17:07:00.000+02:00

I updated my profile on Monsterboard last week, just for the sake of it, and not because I was looking for a new job. Since then, I’ve gotten several job offers through phone and e-mail. Though I feel very flattered about the offers, I have no intention whatsoever of changing jobs in the near future.

Nonetheless, it does give me some confidence for the future. Of course, there is still work to do if you are actually interested in one of the offers, but it’s nice to know that I can apparently leave my profile at Monsterboard and then just sit back and watch the offers roll in (ok, so that may be a bit of an overstatement). And it's not even like I spent hours tweaking my profile; all I did was add my current function. I think it’s a pretty good indication of how having “Business Intelligence Specialist” as your job title can help your popularity in the job market. Every company nowadays wants a couple of those, while there are tons of consultancy firms specializing in that area.

On the other hand, it also makes me realize even more how badly I was underpaid during my first year, even though it was a big improvement over my previous situation. Ah well, I guess you live and learn, and I have to say that has been largely corrected now. At least now I know I should be much more demanding at the negotiating table next time around :-)

What does writing mean for me?

2007-09-14T21:33:00.000+02:00

In one of my previous posts, I asked myself whether I was still passionate about writing. I’ve been mulling over this question often since then, and I still don’t have a definite answer. But upon reflection, I’ve become more and more convinced that it wasn’t the right question to ask. The real question here is not even whether I have the required talent, though that’s certainly still open for debate. The real question here is whether I possess enough courage to write.

In a sense, writing has become some sort of metaphor of my life. I’ve always had issues with intimacy during my life. I’ve never quite figured out how to deal with these issues, and I’ve always felt that intimacy was sorely lacking in my life. And it is from this sense of missing that my urge – I believe passion may not be the correct word here – for writing has developed. I believe that on some level, I hoped that writing will enable me to express my feelings, which I am not able to in life. And just as in life, I’ve also failed to achieve that in my writing. And just as in life, I get scared and crawl back into my shell, rather than to face those failures. And just as in life, I come up with all these excuses to deny those fears. I’m not quitting because I’m scared; I just feel so secure about myself that I have no need for intimacy. Maybe I don’t even care that much in the first place. I’m just being rational, that’s all. But that’s all just a bunch of bullshit. I’m not secure about myself; in fact I’m scared as hell. I do care a lot. And crawling back into my shell is definitely not being rational.

In fact, when I think about it, I can come up with very specific examples of all three excuses given above. Ever since I got my new job, I’ve slowly lulled myself into a false sense of security. I’ve got a great job which I love, and I’ve got my own apartment. Things are going great, and that’s all I need in life. But my goals and desires in life are not mutually exclusive, or even negatively correlated. Just because I achieved this one specific goal in life, doesn’t mean that my other desires and goals have somehow diminished in importance. Landing a good job should have fueled my self-confidence in other areas of my life. But instead, I’ve used it as a shield to hide behind.

Asking myself whether I have the passion or talent for writing were excuses as well. A part of me was hoping that I would say no to these questions. If I lack the passion, than that means I don’t care. If I lack the talent, than the rational thing to do would be to stop trying. And whether I have the required talent is a moot point anyway. My reasons to write were never about acquiring fame or fortune in the first place. Sure, if writing can provide me with those – which I sincerely doubt – then I’ll gladly take them. Like I mentioned above, the reason for me to write was and is the hope it can somehow liberate my feelings.

So now what? Coming to this insight was a revelation for me, but it’s far from enough. The barriers I’ve erected for myself are still standing strong, and it will take a lot of time and effort to break them down. That is when I’m even trying to break down those barriers. The thought of them crumbling down still terrifies me. The safety they provide me may be illusory, but I still feel it nonetheless.

I also have to keep in mind that when it comes to my writing and my life, that the one reinforces the other. Being more receptive to my own feelings and emotions will benefit my writing, while at the same time writing about my feelings and emotions will make it easier for me to become less afraid of them. But the same also applies in the opposite direction. By shutting off my feelings and emotions, I will never to able to truly write as I want, while denying my feelings and emotions in my writing will only reinforce the fears I have for them.

My photo's in the USA

2007-09-09T22:35:00.000+02:00

To see the photo's I made in the US last month, go here.

My vacation in the US Part IV: Chicago

2007-09-01T21:16:00.000+02:00

I spent the last 2 days of my vacation in Chicago. One great thing about Chicago became apparent immediately when I went to buy my subway ticket from the airport to the hotel. For just 4 dollars a day, you can buy a visitor’s pass, where you have unlimited access to the buses and subways. Sweeeet!

It was about 6 pm when I met up HeeRa and Curtis again at the hotel. During the first evening, we walked around Grant Park, which was close to our hotel, and visited the Buckingham Fountain there (some of you may know it as the fountain in the opening credits of Married with Children).

We walked to Navy Pier afterward, where we walked around and had dinner there. We also went to Rush Street afterward, just to have a look and a quick drink. I’ve never heard of Rush Street before (but then again, I knew next to nothing about Chicago), but apparently it’s really famous, and is the place to be in nightlife Chicago.

The next morning, Curtis and I took a walk in Grant Park, for a large part alongside Lake Michigan. The lake is really beautiful, not at all what I expected. If you didn't know better, you’d have thought it was the sea, and the water is definitely much cleaner than at the North Sea. There are also lots of museums close to the park, which look really interesting.

We went to the John Hancock building to the 94th floor, where tourists can look out over Chicago. We then had pizza at Gino’s East, which is apparently a legendary place in Chicago, where you have to wait 2 hours in line when it’s busy. The pizza was pretty good, but I didn’t think it was that special. And they made us wait for 10 minutes outside when the restaurant was half empty. *sigh* Why do they do that? It doesn’t make sense, and just pisses customers off. At night we went to see Wicked, which was the first time I’ve seen a play. I really enjoyed it, and it was definitely worth every penny we paid for.

We had dinner at Chinatown afterward, since I had to try American Chinese food before I left. We had Crab Rangoon (deep-fried dumplings filled with cream cheese and imitation crab), General Tso’s chicken (tastes a bit like Kou Lo Kai in my opinion), and beef with broccoli (which we also have in the Netherlands actually). I didn't care much for the Crab Rangoon; the cream cheese - dumpling combination was a bit weird, but it seems to be an American favourite. I liked the other two dishes though.

On the last day, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. We saw an IMAX movie of mummification, and also looked at the U-505 submarine exhibits. We then walked around the museum for a while. The museum was enormous though, I think we just saw a small part of the museum.

After that, it was time to go back. *sniff* On the one hand, I definitely wished I could stay longer, but on the other hand, I was getting pretty tired of traveling around, and I was looking forward to going back and just relax at home.

High Point: Wicked
Low Point: Leaving…

P.S. Transferring at Heathrow sucks. It took almost two hours from gate to gate due to all the safety measures and long lines. A lot of people were freaked out about maybe missing their next flight. At least the terminal was nice.

My vacation in the US Part III: New York

2007-08-31T19:29:00.000+02:00

The train ride to New York pretty much sucked. To be honest, the train ride itself was pretty good. The chairs are pretty comfy, and the first train (Denver - Chicago) had a nice lounge where you could just hang out and have a snack. As such, I prefer it compared to a plane, since it’s much easier to just get up and walk around (though the plane would only take a couple of hours instead of 2 days).

The bad part is that the schedule apparently never works. My first train was more than 2 hours late in arriving, and it was more than 4 hours late when we arrived in Chicago. I was planning to have dinner in Chicago (since I originally had 5.5 hours till my next train), but now I just had time to grab a quick burger at McDonald’s before going to the gate.

I was willing to give Amtrak another chance though. If the ride from Chicago to NYC went well, I’d be willing to forgive that first delay. But this time, the train would arrive 2.5 hours late in NYC. It’s not so much the delay itself that annoyed me than the fact that the staff doesn’t give you proper information. In the first train, they told us at one point that we would arrive in Chicago around 7 pm, and it turned out to be 8:15 pm. And in the second train, when someone asked how much longer it would take, the staff said one more hour. It turned out to be 2.5 hours, and in both cases, we didn’t experience any extra delay as far as I could tell (since we didn’t make any extra stops). Even so, nobody bothered to inform the passengers of the correct time afterwards. I’m just hugely disappointed at the level of service. Next time, I'll probably just take the plane.

Thanks to the delay, I had trouble meeting up with HyeWon as well. Her phone died when I messaged her about the delay, and she went to the wrong station at first. But we finally managed to meet up at 10pm (the original planning was 7pm). We had Japanese for dinner, and afterwards, she brought me to my hotel. Next time, I’m definitely getting a more expensive hotel. The hotel smelled like piss when I first entered, and I had to share the bathroom with the entire floor. And I saw a mouse (or rat?) scurrying around when I was just getting ready to leave. Good thing I didn't see it during my first day, or I’d have felt more uncomfortable sleeping there.

Still, the location was good. It was a 2 minute walk to the bus stop, and the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan was just a ten minute bus ride away. From there, it’s just another 2 minute walk to Broadway/Times Square, and a lot of different subway lines also run from Port Authority, so travelling around is easy.

Anyway, HyeWon was busy with a bunch of other stuff (she also just bought a new house), so we only met up for a couple of hours. She showed me around Times Square, and afterward we walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and visited Chinatown and Little Italy.

I was pretty disappointed in Chinatown. I expected to see a lot of typical Chinese stores (i.e. grocery stores, cake shops, herb shops and restaurants), but instead most shops there sold stuff like jewellery, perfume, handbags as well a bunch of “I love NY” t-shirts. Every few minutes or so, someone would ask you if you’re interested in buying anything, and I couldn’t even understand what they were saying, or even in which language (I assume English, since they were mainly directed at HyeWon). And of course, there were lots of people selling bootleg DVD’s. If anything, I think it just reinforces the stereotypes Americans may have for Chinese people. It’s such a shame that there weren’t more typical Chinese stuff there. Still, I haven’t walked through whole Chinatown; it might be that only the main street was like this, and that the outskirts are better.

After that I spent a couple of hours at Central Park, which was huge. It would probably take a whole day if you want to walk around the whole park. After that, I went to Battery Park, where you could take the ferry to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Only problem was, I got there at 5pm, and the last ferry departs around 4:30pm, so I couldn’t get to Liberty Island, which was the reason for going there. I spent some time walking around the park, and at night I walked around Manhattan a little bit more, and had dinner in Little Italy.

The next day, I went to Battery Park again, and this time I was able to take the ferry. I didn’t get off the ferry at Liberty Island, since I was on a tight schedule, so I didn’t see the Statue up close. I wasn’t able to go into the Statue anyway. You have to make reservations beforehand via phone or internet, which was a safety measure since 9-11 according to the lady at the ticket counter.

After that, I walked to Wall Street and the World Trade Centre site, both of which were pretty close to Battery Park. There wasn’t really much to see at the WTC site. They are starting to rebuild again, and the building site was naturally closed to the public. There were people there selling photo albums, where you can see the planes fly into the Twin Towers picture by picture, which seem a bit ghoulish to me. Anyway, there was a sign there urging tourists not to buy anything.

After that, I did some souvenir shopping, and visited the Toy ‘R’ Us and Virgin stores before I headed back to the hotel again.

That concludes my 2 day stay in New York, and I would fly to Chicago the next day.

High Point:Central Park
Low Point: The hotel…

My vacation in the US Part II: Denver

2007-08-29T22:36:00.000+02:00

The ride from Ankeny to Denver took about 11 hours including stops, if I remember correctly. I was afraid it would be exhausting at first, but it was actually a pretty good ride.

We stayed at Seve’s place in Denver, who was living with her boyfriend Nathan. We didn’t do much in the first evening. We went to a Korean restaurant, and afterwards had a couple of beers while watching the videos HeeRa made in Korea, and doing some catching up. I still often find myself thinking back to the time I spent in Korea, and it was just so much fun reminiscing.

We went to the Garden of the Gods the next day, which was just amazing. I did some souvenir shopping at the visitors centre, and Seve and HeeRa gave me a shot glass and a souvenir penny. We walked around the park for a while, enjoying the beautiful sights. I really loved it, definitely one of the highlights of the trip. At night, we went to a club and had some fun.

To be honest, we didn’t do a lot the last couple of days in Denver. I think we were all feeling a bit tired. We did walk around downtown Denver. We mainly walked down 16th street, which was the main street. There were free buses riding up and down the street, which I thought is a great idea. You’ve got to love free public transportation. We also had dinner one night at Rialto, where Seve works. The food was pretty good, and I really liked the atmosphere there.

We also watched the Simpsons movie at the theatre, which was largely disappointing. To be honest, I actually expected the movie to be disappointing, but still, it’s the Simpsons, so I had to watch it. The show used to be such a perfect blend of sarcasm, satire and just plain silly humor (and even the silly humor always had a hint of cleverness to it), but somewhere down the line the balance shifted more and more toward silly humor (without the cleverness). Just watch the rooftop scene in the movie to see what I mean, it’s just so unfunny that it just saddens me to see what this once great show has degenerated into.*sniff* Ok, so it wasn’t really that terrible, but still a huge disappointment nonetheless.

On Sunday, HeeRa had to start back home early, while my train left around 8pm (though it would be more than 2 hours late in arriving). Seve and Nate took me to Waterworld, the biggest water amusement park in the US. It was fun, though the lines were very long, and 30 bucks is way too much money to pay for an amusement park.

My last dinner in Denver was at the Cheesecake Factory. They made us wait for 10 minutes, even though there were still a lot of empty tables in the restaurant. They were probably doing this to improve their stature or whatever, but I think that’s pretty stupid. In fact for me, that’s enough reason to never go back to the Cheesecake Factory again.

After that, it was time to say goodbye to Seve, and to start my 2-day train ride to the Big Apple…

High Point: The Garden of the Gods
Low Point: Not really, there were maybe some minor annoyances (e.g. the lines at Waterworld, making customers wait for no good reason at the Cheesecake Factory), but nothing that qualifies as a low point.

My vacation in the US Part I: Iowa

2007-08-27T22:45:00.002+02:00

I just got back from my 2 week vacation in the US, which was a lot of fun. Seeing HeeRa, Seve and HyeWon again was great, and I hope it won't be three years again before I see them again.

My first stop in the US was in Chicago, where I had to transfer at O’Hare International Airport to Des Moines. Before I went through Customs, I had to fill out an immigration form. One of the questions was whether I was a terrorist. They must have caught hundreds of terrorists already. That form has definitely made this world a safer place.

I wouldn’t recommend O’Hare Airport to anybody. It took me about 1h 40min just to get to gate where my next flight is. Part of this however, is due to Chicago being my point of entry in the US, so I had to pick up my luggage, have security check all my bags, and I had to check in my luggage again. And the train connecting the different terminals was pretty bad. You only have a couple of seconds to get in before the doors close again, and they are usually fully packed. They actually have employees there shouting behind us when the doors open. *You only have a couple of seconds before the doors close!!* *You have to hurry up!!* God! I’m already fucking irritated as it is. I don’t need those people shouting at me while I'm fighting through the throngs of people in front of me. Fortunately, I always pick a connecting flight which gives me a couple of hours to check out the airport. If I have picked an earlier connecting flight, I would’ve been totally stressed out. Which brings me to the terminals. They have the worst terminals of any airport I’ve ever been to, in terms of eating and chilling out when you have time till your next flight.

But anyway, HeeRa and Curtis picked me up at the airport in Des Moines, and I stayed at their house for a couple of days. They made me some typical Midwestern food, and some of those dishes were good (I liked the green bean casserole for example), though I didn’t care much for the Rice Krispies Bars.

HeeRa and I went to Minneapolis the next day, where we went to the Sculpture Garden and met up with Ryan, a friend of HeeRa’s. Afterwards, we went to the world famous Mall of America, which is in fact the largest mall in the US. After that, we had dinner at Hooters. After all, what is a trip to America without going to Hooters, which is a shrine of American culture. Seriously though, the whole concept is as brilliant as it is ridiculous. And you’d have to admit, anything that manages to pull that off should be admired. As for the food, it was way too greasy for me (welcome to America!). I just felt unhealthy after a while, and I wasn’t able to finish my order.

We went to the Iowa State Fair the following day, which was pretty cool. Agriculture plays an important role in Iowa, which is reflected in the fair. We saw plenty of livestock, including the world’s biggest bull, pig and sheep. They were enormous, though all they did was lie around all day, which I suspect is about the only thing they are capable of due to their size and weight. Other attractions included the butter cow and the butter Harry Potter. If you ever need to come up with Iowan stereotypes, the state fair is the place to be.

We went to a Barnes & Nobles afterward, which had been a lifelong dream of mine, and it was everything I expected it would be. They actually let you take books from the shelves and just read them in one of their comfy chairs, while enjoying a nice cup of coffee from Starbucks. People actually stay there for hours reading without buying anything, and the staff don’t even get mad! This is truly a bookreader’s heaven.

On a sidenote, even though HeeRa already mentioned it in her blog, I want to express my outrage that the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die does not include anything from Korea. Surely the DMZ cannot be excluded from a Top 100 list, much less from a Top 1000. It does include the hawker centers in Singapore though, so I can’t stay too mad about it, even though I’m way too biased about this. And it has a couple of entries from the Netherlands, i.e. the TEFAF (in Maastricht!!) and the Red Light District.

The day after, we met up with another of HeeRa’s friends. We walked around the Iowa State University campus (where she attends college), which was huge. After that we had lunch at a place whose name I can’t remember (Update Aug 29: it's called Hickory Park, a tradition in Ames -- thanks to HeeRa!) . But I just wanted to say that I had a huuuge lunch. I was already full before I was even halfway through my order, but then the waitress called me out by bringing us take away boxes *before* we asked for them!! And 2 minutes later, she brought another one, and again, *without* us asking for it!! I guess I just had to prove myself. It was one of the toughest challenges I’ve ever taken on, but I finally managed to eat it all! After lunch, we looked around Drake University, where HeeRa works. We also visited Curtis at his office, which is in the only tall building in the whole of Des Moines.

Which concludes my stay in Iowa, since we would head out to Denver the next morning…

High Point: The State Fair
Low Point: The humidity

P.S. I watched 2 movies during my stay at Iowa, Hot Fuzz and Napoleon Dynamite. If you haven’t watched them, go rent (or download) them. They are absolutely hilarious.

2007-08-11T02:08:00.000+02:00

Just 9 hours left before I’m on the plane to the USA. I’m probably not going to sleep anymore tonight, since there’s only less than 4 hours left till I have to leave for the airport (it’s 2:13 am now). Of course I haven’t done any packing before tonight, and I still had to do some ironing. And since I worked until 10 pm tonight just to finish up some reports I promised I would do before my vacation -- and no, I did not finish everything I wanted to finish -- that explains why I’m still up so late.

Very excited to see HeeRa, Seve and HyeWon again, but I have to admit, I'm also pretty nervous as well. We had such a great time together back in Korea, I’m just afraid that the trip won't be able to live up to the high expectations. I know I shouldn’t worry about it. Even if it’s not going to be exactly the same as before, it’s still going to be a lot of fun.

Anyway, it’s going to be a very busy two weeks. I’m flying to Iowa first to meet up with HeeRa, then we are driving to Denver to Seve. After that, I’m taking the train to New York, where I’ll probably meet up with HyeWon for 1 or 2 days. And then I’m off to Chicago to meet up with HeeRa again, and then I’m flying back to the Netherlands. It’s a pretty crazy schedule I think. I’ll probably have to visit New York again at a future date, so I can enjoy the sights at a more leisurely pace.

It’s 2:32am now, so that’s another 19 minutes closer to my departure since I started writing this. Really looking forward to it!

2007-07-19T19:57:00.000+02:00

Holy crap! I didn't even realize that it's been more than 2 months since I last checked my blog. Let's hope my readers haven't all abondoned me by now :) . Well the good news (or bad news, depends on how you see it) is, that my fingers are starting to itch after this long period of inactivity (OK, technically that's not true, since I've been doing loads of typing at work, but I'm sure you know what I mean).

Speaking of work, it's been a madhouse lately. My June horoscope actually said that from June onwards things would become much less hectic at work. Which did come true actually, for about two weeks, but I didn't expect things to pick up so soon.

Not that I'm complaining. I see this as an indication that I'm doing a great job. My reports are traveling throughout the whole company. And it's not just limited to the Netherlands either, apparently they even found their way to Vodafone Group, who are responsible for the worldwide operations of Vodafone. Scary? Yeah, but very satisfying as well.

I'm also starting to get more and more requests from people from other departments. So now our area is not limited to Marketing, but is also expanding into Sales and Finance. We probably just need to be careful not too take too much on our hands (which I'm prone to doing), and also remember that our main responsibility is still the department we work in.

It's now almost exactly one year since I started at my current job, and I feel that I'm really starting to come into my own now. The first year has basically been one huge learning experience. Not that I've stopped learning of course. I still learn new stuff every single day, and there is still so much more I want and have to learn. It's just that I've now reached a level in which I really feel confident about myself (at least from a work related point of view).

Btw, just three more weeks before I fly to the US of A. It's my first time, so I'm really excited about it. Not to mention seeing the friends I made in Korea again after three years, which is of course the main reason I'm going. And it'll be nice simply to take a break from work. And let's hope I have enough material for my blog afterwards :)

2007-05-17T18:35:00.000+02:00

Why do I like to write? It’s a question I regularly ask myself, and to be honest, I haven’t been able to form a definitive answer yet.

But perhaps I should ask myself a different question first, one that is more relevant, one that will touch much closer upon the core. Do I even still like to write? And might the fact that I deliberately avoided the phrase “love to write” and instead chose to use “like to write” already be part of the answer? Maybe the passion that I once felt just isn’t there anymore. Or even worse, maybe I’ve lost that passion a long time ago, and that I’ve been lying to myself.

Either way, I’m afraid of the answer. If the answer is yes, then what does that make me? Someone who is too much of a coward to chase after his dreams? If the answer is no, then what does that leave me with? I thought for such a long time that writing is my passion that it would leave a huge empty space in my soul if I’d ever decide to abandon it, despite all the other things going well in my life. It’s probably the closest thing I have to a dream, and everyone needs dreams.

The truth is that I haven’t done any serious writing for months already. One of the main goals for starting this blog was the hope that it would help me in stimulating me to write more often. A goal which I completely and utterly failed to accomplish. The first few months were still ok, I think. But lately I’ve basically been neglecting it, and I even did it consciously more often not.

Whether what I wrote is any good at all is something I will ultimately leave to others to judge. I do think there are some good posts here and there, but in general I think that most of it is pretty meaningless, which was something I was hoping to avoid. But that is all beside the issue at the moment. It doesn’t matter if my writing is the most rotten, stinky pile of garbage in the history of the written word, what matters is that I simply need to keep writing if I’m truly passionate about it.

Of course, I still need to answer that second question. Do I even still like to write? But then again, I am pretty good in convincing myself that I hate to do something, when in reality it’s because I’m too afraid to actually go do it. So maybe I shouldn’t even go anywhere near that question. Maybe I should just leave it for the time being. Time will probably tell what the real answer is.

2007-03-27T23:00:00.001+02:00

Last weekend I got a poker game set as a housewarming gift. So we started playing, and before you know it, we were addicted. In fact, we stayed up till 7am two nights in a row playing poker (though one of those nights was due to daylight savings, so it’s actually till 6am then).

I think the beauty of the game lies in its simplicity on the one hand, and in its deep psychological implications on the other hand. You are constantly trying to second guess your opponents’ thoughts, while knowing that they are doing the exact same thing. Luck is definitely a factor, but being able to keep your cool in the middle of all those mindgames is just as important.

Which is something I definitely have to work on. The first few games in a round usually go pretty well. That’s when I am able to look at the game rationally. That's when most of my bluffs work, and that’s when I’m able to get other people lay in more chips, even if it’s just a couple extra, if I have a good hand. And things may not immediately go my way during that stage, but I tend not to get too worried.

But for some reason, during some point in a round, I invariably start to get impatient. I just start to play a bit too recklessly, especially if I feel the game is starting to drag on a little bit. And when you play recklessly in poker, you almost always make stupid mistakes. Which is the reason I almost never win the entire round (in fact just once in more than 15 hours of poker, or twice if you count the first few games when we didn't play for money yet).

2007-03-15T21:07:00.000+01:00

Yay! I finally have Internet access at my home. I now also have digital television. It really looks great, especially on the flatscreen my parents bought for me (I know, lucky me!). I can't wait to watch the Champions League games on my tv :)

Socially speaking, lately I have been busier than normal, with the different housewarmings (with one more, and probably the most important one coming up!) and appointments with family and colleagues. Not that I'm suddenly painting the town red, but it does take some getting used to for me, and I really appreciate it when I have time for myself. Not that I'm complaining of course, as I really do enjoy all the social engagements.

2007-01-26T19:29:00.001+01:00

Woohoo! As of yesterday, I'm officially an owner of real estate. Or as a colleague of mine said, welcome to the club of the high debtors. :)

2007-01-22T16:38:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I wonder if there is any truth at all to my claim that I love to write. Can I say that I have ever done it consistently over a longer period? Can I say that I am ever pleased, or even satisfied with what I have written? Can I even say that I have ever derived any pleasure from it?

The answers to those questions are: Absolutely not, on very rare occassions, and only if you regard “a constant struggle with your inner self” as a form of pleasure. So let’s recap: I haven’t done that much writing in my life in the first place, and when I do write, I only manage to produce a few crappy pages, even after hours of frustration. Even in all my imaginations (and boy, do I have tons of those!), that is not how I would define love.

Yet I always feel uneasy inside whenever I haven’t written for a while. This blog is a good example. I’m not updating it as often as I originally thought I would, but I keep thinking about it EVERY SINGLE DAY. It’s so frustrating. I can have a very satisfying job, lead an extremely rich and full life with all my friends and family around me, but as long as I don’t write, I will never feel as if I am ever really complete.

Writing. I can’t live with it, but I sure as hell can’t live without it.

Hmm… On second thought, maybe what I feel isn’t that far off from “love” after all.

2007-01-10T09:27:00.000+01:00

Yikes, it’s almost been a month since my last update. I have been busy, but not in an excessive way, so I can’t use that as an excuse. It’s just that I don’t really know what to write about lately. I don’t think my personal life is interesting enough to justify updating 2 or 3 times a week. I’d probably just bore you to death with my ramblings (much like I’m doing now). And to be honest, some things are still too personal to share with the entire Internet community. I’ve been very open in some of my previous posts (for me anyway), but it always scares the hell out of me to publish them.

Work has been great lately. I’m working on several reports which the marketing department will use in their strategic decision-making (in case you’re wondering, yeah, I used the phrase ‘strategic decision-making’ just to sound important). But the best thing is that the company is developing a new database, which we recently started using. There is so much more data available in the new database than in our current database and we just barely scratched the surface on all the potential possibilities the database offers us (and it’s still a work in progress!). It gives quite a kick every time we discover something new we could use (I guess getting excited about databases now officially makes me a nerd. Btw, did I mention that Excel really kicks ass? :). I just need to radically improve my time management skills, they really suck.

The funny thing is, about 10% of the skills and knowledge I’m applying at my job is acquired through my education (and that is a very generous estimation). The other 90% is acquired through work experience and personal interest. I’m not saying that an education is totally useless (because it’s not), but I think it’s subjective for every person. Modern society is way too fixated on degrees. My ability to write a thesis has absolutely no correlation whatsoever to my ability to write an SQL query. In fact, I’m willing to bet that 90% of all graduates will never do anything that’s even remotely similar to writing a thesis in their entire future careers.

But I’m boring you to death again with my ramblings. This post certainly ended up being totally different, not to mention much longer, than I originally intended. Must be the effect of not writing in such a long time :)

P.S. See how cunningly I managed to write a conclusion that refers back to the beginning? As some people would say, the circle is round (or is that a Dutch expression?) And you thought this post was jumping all over the place and going nowhere.

2006-12-16T21:06:00.000+01:00

As 2006 draws to a close, I can't help but reflect upon the past year. A lot of people actually don't know this, but I was without a job at the beginning of the year, after having been fired due to budget cuts. Not to sound too cocky, but I know for a fact that I was one of the better employees of the whole department, so the lay-off wasn't justified in my (and others') opinion. At first, I regarded it as a minor setback, but after being rejected for tons of other jobs (even mundane ones), I was really starting to lose my self confidence. It took me 27 years and a lot of effort to build up that confidence, and it was threathening to crumble down in a matter of weeks.

The reason I heard over and over again for being rejected was because I was too passive. I was really pissed about that. I know I can be quiet and reserved at times, and I know that's the way things works, but why do people think that they know how I am after a 45 minute interview?

But lucky for me, I was asked for the same job again soon afterwards. My pride was telling me not to go back, but I really needed the cash, and to be honest, despite the mismanagement going on there, I was really happy working there because of my colleagues. Going back turned out to be a good decision, as it gave me the opportunity to acquire a much better position within the company. So now I'm a reporting analyst for 5 months, which I enjoy doing very much.

And now because of that, I'm able to buy an apartment. I had doubts about buying at first, since I'm not sure what I'll be doing or where I'll be over a couple of years, but now that I've actually took that step, it really feels good. Buing definitely beats renting. I expect to move to my new apartment around New Year, and I'm really looking forward to it.

So basically I went from having no job and no confidence at all to having a great job and apartment and feeling pretty damned good about it in less than a year's time (seems like so much longer ago). It was by no means a perfect year, since I still have several unresolved issues, which I'll keep to myself for the time being.

But still, as Frankie probably would have said: "It was a very good year".

2006-12-05T15:36:00.000+01:00

While browsing at my favourite bookstore the other day, I came across several books on the Gospel of Judas. My attention was immediately aroused, since I've been fascinated by the person Judas for several years now. I've never really agreed with the canonical Gospels, which depict Judas as a traitor to Jesus. My personal theory was based on the assumption that Christianity would never have reached the heights it did had Jesus never died as a martyr. Which leads to the logical (?) conclusion that Jesus, and his favourite disciple, concocted the whole plan together.

Not that I'm an expert on this subject. My knowledge on religion is rather limited, so I don't pretend to know the truth. My opinion is based in large part on gut feeling; the whole "Judas as traitor" theory just never clicked for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, since again, my knowledge on this is shaky at best, but I thought that Judas was the disciple with the most faith in Jesus initially, and that Jesus also considered Judas to be the disciple who most understood his messages and lessons.

I was actually pretty disappointed that my theory was in large part reflected by the Gospel. I never imagined that my ideas were completely unique, but now the whole theory is apparently a huge story in the religious world and is the source for tons of books. I was actually hoping that someday I'd be able to work out the whole theory into a plot for a novel, but now the whole idea seems much less special than first. I guess that doing so now would require me to ask for permission, or else I'll be accused of plagiarism. Ah well, it's not as if the probability of me actually writing the novel was great in the first place, so I guess the loss isn't that big.

Anyway, I think I've done enough babbling for the moment, so I'll just leave it at this :).

2006-12-02T16:42:00.000+01:00

It's been waaaayyyy too long since I last updated my blog, but I guess I've been lacking the inspiration and energy to write.

Anyway, I bought an apartment last Thursday, so that's pretty exciting. It's not official yet, still have to sign the papers and handle all the financial and legal stuff, but nothing which is a potential dealbreaker I think. Here are some pics taken from the broker's website, you just have to think away all the furniture :)

2006-11-18T16:31:00.000+01:00

The previous week has really flown by. One week of leave is definitely too short. But at least I was able to clear my mind a little. I think I was way too obsessed with my own feelings and thoughts lately, and the previous week really gave me the opportunity to just loosen up a little.

I didn't do a lot during my vacation. I celebrated my birthday on several different occassions with different people, which was very nice. I don't normally care much about my birthday, but it does remind me that there are people out there who cares about me.

I also worked out a bit, and I thought the last workout went a lot better than the previous ones. I'm still not quite at the same level I was when I was in Korea 2,5 years ago. I definitely never felt better physically than back then. But like my little brother said, that was probably because it was a much more relaxing period with almost no obligations whatsoever. It is different if you go work out after a long day at the office. I also finally had time to make use of the sauna facilities at the gym. That was great, definitely have to make time to do that more often.

I spent the rest of the week reading or playing computer games. I didn't manage to read as much as I liked to, but it was still more than I managed in the last couple of weeks.

Ah well, it was a pretty good week, too bad I have to go back to work on Monday again :).

2006-11-12T22:01:00.000+01:00

Being in love is the worst feeling in the world. The first couple of weeks may be great, when it's still exciting and when you still have genuine hope that it will all work out. But before long, that hope is bashed in and will quickly turn to disappointment, frustration, sadness, pain, etc.

If that was the end of it, it wouldn't be a big problem. But once you're in love, you'll do anything to maintain a false and unreasonable hope for yourself, which you cling onto with all your might, because the alternative is even worse. This causes you to think, talk and act in an increasingly irrational way. When I look back, I know I've done some incredibly stupid things in the past, all in the name of love. Things that I would normally never do.

And besides, even when you're doing all those stupid things, you still know deep in your heart that you're waging a losing war. And yet you can't stop doing them, because the alternative hurts even more.

Being in love sucks. That's why I hope I'll never ever fall in love again.

Or at least, that's what I've been telling myself for months, and there are times when I almost started to believe what I said. But who am I kidding? Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I still believe that being in love is the greatest feeling in the world, even though I haven't found the ability yet to actually do something about it. Sure, it brings with it a lot of pain and sadness, but the alternative is even worse.

And I know I'll keep on doing all those stupid things even if I know deep in my heart that I'm waging a losing war. Because the potential rewards of winning just one battle outweigh all the pain and sadness by so much more (or so I would imagine, since I never actually experienced any of those rewards before).

Being in love definitely sucks. But I hope that I will always be in love with someone special.

P.S.
If I fall in love with a married woman and who has two kids, does that make me a bad person?

What if a (small) part of me is actually hopeful and happy when she decided to leave her husband. Does that make me a bad person?

And what if that same part of me is insanely jealous when she decided to give her marriage another try? Do I qualify then?

I really want to believe that being in love, even the inappropriate kind, is never bad. But I'm just not sure.

2006-11-10T10:29:00.000+01:00

Yes! The last day of work before I have an entire week off. It's been a while since I had more more than 2 days off (the last time was when I got sacked about a year ago, so that one doesn't really count). Not that I'm complaining, since it was a conscious decision to earn more money as a temp as opposed to having time off. Now that I am contracted, it would just be plain stupid not to take some time off, since I get paid anyway.

The last couple of weeks especially has been a huge drain on me mentally, and I desperately needed some long-overdue quality time with me, myself and I to recharge those batteries. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on my reading, since for 2006 I'm actually behind my not-so-ambitious schedule of reading at least a book a month on average (I know, a terrible score for someone who presumedly loves to read). And who knows, I might actually even do some writing.

2006-11-04T19:28:00.000+01:00

A while ago, I suddenly realized that I have barely written anything in the past year or so, or even so much as thinking about writing. Not that I was a consistent writer in the past, but at least it did it more often than now.

The one thing that worries me the most is the lack of ideas I have nowadays. I used to have thousands of thoughts swirling in my head all the time. I would mentally write a new scene while walking to the train station for instance, or make up new characters while lying in my bed. I just had to figure out how to make all those separate ideas into a coherent whole while filling out the many gaps.

I believe the reason for this was when I consciously put a temporary stop to those thoughts, because I thought they were hindering my personal progress in the short run. There were days when I really tried to work on my thesis, and wound up spending hours giving in to my creative urges. I figured it was more important to concentrate on finishing my thesis (which I decided to drop anyway) and finding a steady job first. Once those worries were out of the way, I could start concentrating on my writing again.

As it turns out, it doesn't work that way. In the past, the reason for my lack of writing was that I tended to dwell too much on the details, and because I hated what I did manage to write. But now I don't even know what to write about. Which is one of the (many) reasons I started blogging. I hope that by forcing myself to write on a regular basis, I would to able to lift the mental block I put upon myself.

2006-10-31T17:32:00.000+01:00

Woohoo! The tip-off of a brand new NBA season tonight, which is always one of my most anticipated dates of the year. Not that I'll be able to catch any games, since NBA coverage is pretty lousy here in the Netherlands (you need one of those pay tv channels), but reading the recaps, analysing the box scores, and watching the highlight reels on NBA.com is at least as much fun as watching the games :)

It will be even more exciting this season since I'm playing some of those fantasy games for the first time. I have no idea if I even know what I'm doing. I'm just picking players and hoping that they'll score lots of points for me, but it sure is a lot of fun!

2006-10-28T10:47:00.000+02:00

I've been surprisingly positive about myself for most of the year, but due to certain circumstances I find myself falling back into the same old pattern as before, and I'm starting to feel negative about myself again.

One of these circumstances concerns the thing I wrote about at the end of my last post. I know I'm supposed to do so much more about that situation than I'm currently doing. But I just have such a strong resentment toward the situation, and much worse, to the person involved. This resentment is so strong, that I wish I could just let it all go, and don't care about it anymore. Coupled with my tendency to hide behind my self-erected walls, this makes it nearly impossible for me to really do more. This makes me feel really guilty, and it sometimes makes me question the kind of person I am.

The other circumstance isn't nearly quite as dramatic, though my feelings certainly won't agree. I really believed that I had a pretty good connection with a certain someone, but that belief has come under fire the last couple of weeks. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, it wouldn't be the first time, but I just can't shake the feeling that that person has grown distant toward me. And I just can't stop wondering if it's something I might have said or done. What makes it much worse is, again, my tendency to hide behind my walls in situations like this, even towards other people, instead of talking about it. Maybe I'm just afraid of the truth.

I know I shouldn't form such a negative opinion of myself, but the truth is, despite all the progress I made over the years, I still don't like myself that much. If something goes wrong in social situations, my first thought is still always that it must be my fault, even though I have absolutely no clue what that fault might be.

At least I'm glad I have this blog, which in some ways I can consider as my therapy. Writing seems to be able to provide me with a release that talking could never do.

2006-10-25T12:13:00.000+02:00

We went offsite on a teambuilding session on Monday with the whole department at work. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, as I tend to be a very individualistic person. Nothing brings out the skeptic in me more than having to attend a teambuilding session.

But it turned out pretty well. The people holding the session clearly know their stuff, and the things they talked about made sense. The funny thing is that 90-95% of the things that were brought onto the table are already widely known within the department. So the session didn’t provide any shocking revelations. What the session did provide is a framework and starting point for the discussions, so it was very good in that sense.

Too bad I became sick during the session. I had an upset stomach, and I had to go to the bathroom all the time. After a while, I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I had to go home early. I missed the self-cooking part which was planned for the evening, but I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

During the session, I also got a phone call. I’m not going to say what’s it about, but it definitely wasn’t good news. It involves something that has been dragging on for years, and perhaps even much longer than I realize. It’s something that I often find myself incapable of coping with, and to be honest, sometimes I just wish I didn’t care anymore, which only makes me feel guiltier than I already feel.

All in all, not a very good start to the week.

2006-10-17T08:01:00.000+02:00

Well, I was actually planning to limit this blog to my own experiences, but since I lead a rather uneventful life, it was getting very hard to come up with an interesting post 2 or 3 times a week. So I decided to broaden my scope dramatically, and just write about anything I feel like writing about.

For today, I thought I’d write something about the bill that France approved last week which makes it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915. Apart from the question whether this is really any business of the French government at all, and whatever the hidden motives of the French may be, this bill represents a serious violation of freedom of speech and thought. Furthermore, this law will not be able to alter the opinions of other people. The only thing this law will achieve is to oppress those opinions, and to generate more anger and hatred among the Turks toward the French.

This is not to say I sympathize entirely with the Turks. I can certainly understand their outrage, but it seems somewhat hypocritical in light of Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. Writer and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, for instance, was faced with charges under the article for stating in the Tages Anzeiger that “Thirty thousands Kurds and a million Armenians were murdered. Hardly anyone dares mention it, so I do. And that’s why I’m hated (source: Amnesty International).” Also, Turkish comments that the French should look at their own history of violence may be a good point, but is totally irrelevant to the discussion. A country which denies its own history of violence, is not a valid excuse for another country to do so as well.

I have to admit I’m not too familiar with the relevant history to form a definitive opinion. However, the Turkish attitude toward the Armenian killings reminds me of the Japanese denial of the atrocities committed in Nanking during the second World War. Iris Chang, in her excellent book “The Rape of Nanking” states that “Japan not only carries the legal burden but the moral obligation to acknowledge the evil it perpetrated in Nanking, (…) and to educate future generations of Japanese citizens about the true facts of the massacre, (…) which is crucial for Japan if it expects to deserve respect from the international community – and to achieve closure on a dark chapter that stained its history.” If there is even an inkling of truth in the allegation that the Armenian killings amounted to genocide, then the same applies for Turkey as well.

2006-10-10T13:33:00.000+02:00

Today is exactly three months since I started at my new job, so time for a short recap.

The first couple of weeks have been pretty hard. I was just overwhelmed with so much new stuff, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the responsibility. It also has been hard emotionally. I really missed my old colleagues. Luckily we still have lunch together (since I still work at the same company), but for weeks, I found it very hard to cross the street back to my department after my lunch breaks. Pfff, I’m glad that phase is over, I felt so stupid about the whole thing.

I’ve really learned a lot during the last three months, and there is still so much to learn. I think I’ve made a good impression so far (or so I hear). I seem to be starting to make a name for myself in the company, which I owe in large part to certain people, who have been dropping my name around to others (if by any chance you are reading this, I really appreciate it a lot J).
It’s also been soooo busy, it’s almost crazy. There are soooo many open requests lying around, and there are soooo many things I still don’t know. Our department is looking for new people, which we desperately need. At least I can’t say that it hasn’t been interesting the last couple of months, and I have the feeling that it will stay that way for the time being.

2006-10-05T10:59:00.000+02:00

If love is blind,
Why then do we keep looking for love?

Because it is better to be blind
And not be able to see what you have
Than to have your eyes wide open
And be able to see what you do not have

Sometimes I wish I was as blind as a mole...

2006-10-04T08:44:00.000+02:00

I feel depressed today. Several people I care about a lot have some major issue they have to deal with. I wish that I could just do something magical and make everything ok, but that's not possible. These are issues only they themselves can resolve (which I think they are entirely capable of, since they are very strong people, perhaps even more so than they themselves think). I guess the only thing I can do is lend a friendly ear should they need it.

The fact things are going great for me at the moment somehow makes me feel guilty. I know it doesn't make any sense at all. But then again, I've always felt that most of my feelings don't make sense anyway...

2006-09-29T10:36:00.000+02:00

It’s been a while since my last update. Sorry about that! It’s been so busy at work, that I just want to relax when I get home. And however much I love to write, I can never really say that I find it relaxing.

My social life also seems to be picking up lately. I’m actually spending more time on the phone the last couple of months, and I have a busier schedule than usual. And as some of you may know already, I’m also planning to buy a new apartment. I recently had a talk with the mortgage advisor, and a lot of the concepts are much clearer to me now. I just need to think about it for a while, and maybe talk to other people to get a better impression.

I visited my cousin on Wednesday because her twins just had their first birthday. They are soooo cute! They also seem to be much more familiar with me now. I was able to be more actively involved in playing with them than the first couple of times.

By the way, I’ve received a lot of positive comments. I want to thank everyone for reading my blog, and in the meantime, I promise I’ll try to update it more often.

2006-09-22T09:26:00.000+02:00

I attended a PL/SQL training at Oracle near Utrecht on Monday and Tuesday. The subject matter was interesting and useful, but the training itself was kind of boring. Too much theory and not enough practice. But hey, I did receive a certificate, and isn’t that what we all want?

I made use of the opportunity to meet up with a friend who lives in Utrecht. We had dinner at a Korean restaurant. The food was good (but I still don’t like the kimchi!), and I even drank soju for the first time in more than two years (14 euro for a bottle! I can remember paying less than a euro for a bottle of soju at the Family Mart!). Hearing the Korean language around me again, and tasting the food brought back a lot of memories. It was such an amazing time in Korea. Unbelievable how time flies.

The evening was a great success in my opinion. I thought it would be nice to see my friend again, but I didn’t think that I would enjoy her company that much. I was actually sad when I had to drop her off at her home at the end of the evening. Haha, probably just another sign that I’m changing inside. At times, I can even almost convince myself that I’d rather be around the people I care about than spending some quality time with myself. That’s probably a good thing, but it’s just a strange and unfamiliar feeling for me.

Back in the office, I found that I was invited for three or four meetings for the rest of the week (Ugh! I hate meetings!). It’s going to be busy and hectic in the coming period. People in the company seem to have faith in me, but the cynic in me keeps wondering if I’m up for the task. Oddly enough, I don’t really feel any stress or anxiety as a result. Seems like you can even get used to feeling insecure about yourself.

A personal victory

2006-09-16T11:56:00.000+02:00

I have to admit that posting my first entry to my blog has been somewhat scary for me. It is one of the most personal things I have ever written, and it is certainly the most personal piece of writing that I've ever shared with other people. After having written it down, I had doubts on whether to publish it or not. And even after I've put in on the web, I still needed a couple of days to convince myself that I wanted, maybe even needed, to share it with other people.

Fortunately, the need to share my thoughts and feelings proved to be stronger than the fear, that same fear I've been struggling with for as long as I can remember. I have already acknowledged that that fear will forever remain a part of me. Though there will still be many occassions that I will feel hampered by it, I try not to let it rule over my life anymore, as it has often done so in the past. I know I still have a long way to go. But if I compare myself to how I was as recent as ten years ago, I also know that I've come a long way already.

Here's a final note to those who read my first post and are worried about me being too negative about myself. Don't. As paradoxical as it may sound, that negativity is an essential step for me to acquire a more positive attitude towards myself in the end.

First things first

2006-09-12T14:43:00.000+02:00

Before I proceed, I have to get something off my chest first.

I hate myself. And the feeling’s mutual.

There, I finally said it. Actually, I’ve said it many times before, but always in my own head, where I’m the only person who can hear it. But now I said it out in the open, where everybody can hear it. If they’re interested, that is.

Why do I hate myself, you ask?

I hate myself because I can be so shy.
I hate myself because I can be so boring.
I hate myself because I can be so anti-social.
I hate myself because I can be so insecure.
I hate myself because I can be so indecisive.
I hate myself because I can feel so much safer within my own little world, instead of in the “real” world.
I hate myself because I can seem so uncaring towards the people I care the most about.
I hate myself because I can feel so passionate about so many things, and yet not have enough courage to act upon them (and yes, even including something as stupid as love!).
To sum it up nicely, I hate myself because I can be such a loser.

But the one thing I hate most about myself though is that nagging voice in my head, who keeps repeating the above lines to me over and over again…

Like I’ve said, the feeling’s mutual.