* today i got to work under a snowstorm that lasted for 15 minutes. snow in april? yes, i wouldnt believe it as well but it was true. i hadn’t put my rain trousers on, so i got all soaked. at least i brought capuccino and brazilian music today.
if i can’t have the trousers dry, at least the heart is warm ( of course now there’s hardly a cloud on the sky. )
* in the office, there’s a map on the wall that i’m facing, when i’m at my computer. it shows the netherland’s national and regional gas grid, with its pipeling accross the country, transfer stations and other bits and bytes. it also shows what is called the Groningen gas veld – the biggest gas field in the netherlands- which, you might have guessed, is sitting somewhere under my butt, miles deep down in the ground. scary? well, no. by a lucky quirk of fate, this natural underground storage has enough gas in it to keep the netherlands working (and i mean factories, homes and exports) for at least another 20 years – and that’s a lot, specially if you think it has been being explored since the 70’s.
* i secretely hope they’ll take me to the control room, deep underground, one of these days. or (even more daring) to one of their drilling platforms in the northern sea. that ought to be fun (though not very likely).
meanwhile, i was invited to the company’s birthday party, more than 2 months away. (the dutch plan with their lunch with months of advance. everything must work perfectly)
no one knows where it will be, or what will be done. a well kept secret, with the promise of dinner and party afterwards. looking forward, though slightly scared.
* i read somewhere on the wikipedia quotes that “dutch is not a language, it’s a throat disease”.
i apologise to my dutch friends, but i couldn’t agree more. it hurts to speak (amazing, i can actually say a couple of things by now!) and to hear. making out a few words per phrase is a hard exercise of concentration. today they put a poster on the wall by the koffieautomat, something about a workshop by the ict department. due to the high concentration of technical words (which for me are much easier that the others), i could actually make out what it was about. another victory against the forces of evil!
* it’s been a month i’m working here now. yay to me. i survived the indifference, the unberable language wall, the age gap. i also survived the amount of new information and methods, vb code produced by a non-programmer and windows.
you gotta have a sense of humour, i’ve learned, and you definitely have to have the nerve to make a lot of questions and fuel as many conversations as you can. it doesn’t matter that everybody speaks english – most of the time it’s just too troublesome for them to bother. i can tell they have never been in my shoes.
* last sunday there was an openday in the company, and we were encouraged to bring friends and family to see a photoexhibition they have on the ground floor. it was rather nice. first of all, because i got to show part of my workplace (and i’ve always liked to peek at people’s work place) to my friends, and they got an oportunity to enter the building without having to show their id or other burocracy.
and then, by the exhibition itself. it’s about “golden oldies”, and the beauty in the 3rd age. a lot of wrinkled closeups and old madonna’s statues mixed with funny one person sequences (from waking up to ready-to-go). some rather unexpected works involving not-so-dressed grannies. :| that must have been fun to shoot.