Wonderwalling
Helluuuu,
It’s been a while since I picked up the guitar. Mainly because I was so busy stressing out about school. But, school is over now. WOOHOOOO!!!! (still can’t believe it!)
So.. there’s time for fun stuff again. Fun stuff of course also including learning some guitar again. I still can’t play Let it Be from the last time very well. Although I do know how to play the whole melody now (but that’s no fun!). I started practicing Wonderwall from Oasis today. It’s such a fun little part to play! Thanks to Joris for telling me it’s easy and fun!
So here is my practice vid of Wonderwall.
I Wonder
I wonder if my friend
My friend of times in past
Is happy in this lifetime
Him with love at last
I wonder if he thinks of me
And sees the things I’ve done
If he regrets the lack of words
Now that he has gone
I wonder if he knows
That all my words for him
I have to swallow whole
That light I have to dim
All I want to share
A message kept unsent
I wonder if he knows
I really miss my friend
BBA
The Dutch might have lost, but I still feel like a winner this week.
It seems ages ago when I stepped into the buildings of the CAH Dronten. When I met Roel, now one of my favorite teachers, and told him that I wanted to enroll to study ‘business administration’. When I told him I only wanted to enroll if I could do the quick program, because I didn’t want to waste a year. (How ironic does that seem now that I have added not 1 but 3 years to the time-table?)
I enrolled. And I did good. I started off by taking the two tests that I had already missed the lessons for by enrolling so late in the year. The two tests that most students still look at as the two hardest tests of all. One of those tests being the one that my friend, ex-roommate and learning buddy took as her very last test to complete her bachelor a little over a week ago. And I passed them.
That first year I didn’t only go to the lessons and pass my tests. I also got introduced to the student association and the sorority. I became an active participant in all extracurricular activities. Both productive (webteam, photography team, family-day organizer, pr team and my last and favorite activity: organizing the introduction week for new students; the ‘KMC’) and the not so productive (organizing and going to a lot of parties).
After my second year (after schoolyear 3) I got kicked out of the student association and it went all downhill from there. I “left” school for half a year, because instead of having to do an internship they allowed me to work on two business projects I was working on for myself. Nice of them, but in those 6 months I adjusted to such a different lifestyle, that I was never able to get back to the student lifestyle again. I bought a puppy and I started working more and more. When it was finally time to go back to school I felt like half of them hated me (for being kicked out of the student association) and the rest of them I didn’t know. I felt uncomfortable at school and started to go less and less. Until, after my third year (schoolyear 4) I practically didn’t go at all.
At that time I only had a couple of reports, tests and my thesis left. I could have finished all that within half a year if I had been able to put my mind to it at that time. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
A year of being miserable followed. I was a student, but I never studied. I had a minimum-wage job where I only worked the evenings. I slept in every day. I didn’t do much else. I felt like a complete loser.
In 2008 I thought my job at the cinema was preventing me from living a good life. I thought the evening-job was counter-productive for me. I decided that to improve my lifestyle and maybe even to be able to finish school I had to change jobs. On April 17, 2008 I started my job at Printweb Media. It was a good job, with good prospects. I worked 32 hours a week, office times. Why I ever thought that would make me do more for school.. I have no clue. But it did make me feel better about my life. I was working.. I was doing something with my life.
But, I still had to finish school, didn’t I?
After 6 months at Printweb I actually felt a little crazy. The office hours, the shared lunches, the Friday afternoon snacks, the coming home at 7, walking the dog, making dinner, eat and going to bed thinking of doing this all again the next day was killing me. Also, I still wasn’t doing anything for school.
So, to everybody’s surprise, I decided I wanted to go back to the cinema. I missed my work, the work-hours, my colleagues, everything. The world of cinema is a very specific one and I was starting to find out that I love everything about that world. Everybody thought I was crazy.. why would I want to go back to a minimum-wage job with no prospects of growth whatsoever? It was very simple. I wanted it because I knew it would make me happy. I knew it would make me feel free again. And I knew I needed that freedom.
Also, again, I thought that I needed to make this change to have a chance at finishing school.
This is what I wrote on this blog on September 17, 2008:
It’s because I want to finish school. I’m so tired of school. And I’m so tired of doing nothing for it. I haven’t attended one single class last year. Oke. Maybe I attended one. But that’s the maximum. I paid an entire year of tuition for NOTHING. That’s 1700 euros down the drain.
As you can imagine I don’t want to repeat such a wastage. So I decided to focus on school for once and stop with all the excuses and just get my idiotic self to finish the damn thing. So. If I do not have my bachelor degree in February 2009 you may all kick my butt and laugh at my face.
Did you all laugh in February 2009?
I think I might have cried.
Because, of course, changing jobs again had no influence on my curriculum activities whatsoever. On the contrary. It even got so bad that I was getting close to giving up. In November 2008 I realized.. the way I’m going I’m never going to finish. That’s when I made a very weird decision to enroll in a new education: HBO Translator English at the LOI.
The idea behind it was:
- i have ’till June 2009 to make improvements at the CAH. I decided that if I didn’t make any progress by then I’d quit. I wouldn’t pay anymore tuition. I’d give up.
- problem with quitting is. You’re left with a gigantic student loan. A loan of over 20.000 euros, which is a gift when you finish school, but if not: BIG LOAN!
- so, to prevent having to pay back 20.000 euros for not finishing the CAH thing, I started the LOI thing. Because if I’d finish that the loan would also become a gift.
That was my thinking. It sounds ridiculous. But in the end.. it did get me to finish school. I truly believe that. Because ironically enough, once I enrolled in the LOI programme, I started working harder on the CAH courses. I wanted to prove to the people around me that I hadn’t given up fully yet. (Even though I really kind of did.)
So at the end of 2008/beginning 2009 I started completing some CAH courses. It got me hopeful again, but I didn’t want to think of school as my only worry. Somewhere during this time I decided that I should not see my unfinished degree as something that’s holding me back to make further progressions in my life. Because that’s what I had been doing the 5 years before that. I didn’t start new things or make new plans, because I always had this little voice saying in my head: no, you have to finish school!! Even though the voice was right I felt that my personal happiness was more important than getting my degree within a certain period of time. So I decided that my life/job/happiness was more important than the time-line of finishing school. I still wanted to finish, but I didn’t want to let it get in the way of making other decisions. I decided for myself: I’m going to spend 1 day a week on school and I’ll just see how far that gets me. If I finish this year great, if not, I’ll do it next year.
At the end of 2009 my contract at the cinema had to be renewed. I still liked my job, but I wanted more. So I asked for a talk. A talk about possible prospects. A talk about wanting to stay there after I’d finish school. A talk about getting more than minimum-wage in turn for more responsibilities.
That talk was the beginning of my career as theater manager of the cinema I love so much. It came at the worst possible time. Because how can I combine a time-consuming responsible job like that with finishing school? Is that even possible?
YES people, it is! After 6 years of doubt about school, doubt about my career and doubt about pretty much everything else in my life, I can now say that I do not only have my bachelor degree, but that I also have a good life. A very good life. And I wouldn’t trade those 6 years for anything. Because all things in life matter. I’ve learned a lot. About myself, about this life, about the things I want and the things I don’t want. I started this bachelor, not to get a good job, but for self-progression. But in the end, it gave me both. I had a blast being a student and I’m now happy as hell that I’m no student no more. Life is good and I’m happy I’m living it!
That’s the story of my 3-year-education turning into a 6-year-struggle. Why did I post this? Who knows! Why do I do anything that I do? Because it feels right. Because it makes me feel good. And I do feel PRETTY DAMN FANTASTIC!!!
Tim Burton Trees
Ever seen a tree completely covered in some sort of web?
Because I have.
I think it’s eerily disgusting and beautiful at the same time. I won’t be walking Murphy near them anytime soon though. They’re house to caterpillars and it could be the ‘processierups’ which causes skin irritations and all kind of other irritations.
Something less eerie/beautiful but a lot of fun, was my b-day party 
. Of course Holland won from Cameroon (which wasn’t even an impressive win since then they went on to win from Brazil WOOHOOOOO!!) and we had a lot of fun celebrating both that and Mirella and mine’s 48 b-day together (i’m just going to ignore the fact that she only turned 22 and I’m *gasp* 26).
we started of with a small bbq
then of course watched the game together
and then snacked (nibb-it!!) together
and posed together.. mother and 2 kids.. don’t they look alike
me and kevin
the birthday girls
say what?
we were supposed to hang this on the front door so ppl’d know where to go. we forgot.
trying to be a smart-ass whilst drinking beer: never a good plan
it’s better to just act like a dumb-ass XD
see ya next year, when we turn 50! woot woot!
Murphy the moviestar
My apologies for my last post, which is full of typos and bad sentences. I blame it on my exhaustion of the moment that I typed it 
.
I spent the last hour photoshopping Murphy for a contest our cinema wants to win. The movie Marmaduke is coming out this summer and the distributor challenged every cinema to promote it in the most original way possible. In turn the cinema can win a GIANT marmaduke dog (a stuffed dog, mind you). Of course, we want to win!! So I tortured Murphy for a photo shoot and this is the result.
Shini, you will probably cringe at the bad photos and photoshopping. But hey, I had no time and even if I had it would still be cringe-worthy ’cause i suck at it :s. Murphy makes them hilarious nonetheless though .
Budapest
After celebrating my birthday with my friends yesterday I thought it’s about time to post about my birthday celebration with my parents. For my birthday they bought me a ticket to Budapest for the weekend. They were already in Hungary on holiday so they’d drive to Budapest and meet me there. It was an awesome weekend and an awesome birthday!
I’ve passed Budapest loads of times by car and saw some of the beautiful landmarks driving by them (like heroes square). So I was really curious to explore the city for a couple of days.
I’m too lazy to shrink and upload all my pictures so here’s only a few. You can check out facebook for some more photos: Facebook Photo Album.
I arrived at the Ferihegy airport on sunday afternoon and was met with a blazing heat. It was 35 degrees celcius!! After checking into the appartment (where we first met with the reception by reading a printed A4 stuck on the door ‘be back in a minute’). After waiting for 15 minutes we could check in . We spent the rest of the day walking the streets of Budapest. Which included me almost getting mugged!!! I’ve never been mugged in my life! This was so weirrrrd. I was carrying a … errrr.. how do you call it??
A thingy like that. And I always wear those things to the back.. which is asking for it, I know. My mum always tried to tell me. Of course I never listened. Anyway, after we walked through a subway station and took the stairs back up I suddenly felt a little pressure on my butt lol. So I turned around and there was this guy really close to me and staring at me if I was crazy. When I looked at my bag the zipper was open. At this moment I thought “FREAKIN FUCK THAT GUY HAS MY STUFF’ so I actually put my hand on his chest and said ‘hey, what you doin’ lol. he just kept staring as if I was inane. I then checked if my stuff was actually still there and it was.. so I guess I was just in time with noticing. But.. that was weird!!!
Soo… I was lucky and my iphone and wallet was still safely in my bag, which I carried on the fron from that moment on. As ugly as I may find it.
Anyhoo.. after that kind encounter with the people of Budapest we c0ntinued our walk to the Donau and had a nice beer there.
cheers!
The next morning we set out to find a Dutch pub for the football match that afternoon. According to my city guide we had to find the pub Old Amsterdam. It was pouring rain this morning, but we set out like real troopers anyway.
walking in the rain…
Only to find that the pub is no more. We continues on to drink coffee in a really famous coffeehouse (almost all budapest’s coffeehouses are famous, or so it seems). But this one was really pretty. It was/is a literary cafe and it has been there since forever. I’d really love to go back there some day. It was a really nice place.
enjoying a cup of coffee with hungarian chocolates
The rest of the day we walked some more and more and more. In the meantime trying to find a Dutch pub.. in the end we decided to settle on an Irish pub so that we could at least understand the commentary. But, we had no luck, because when we wanted to make a quick stop at the apartment to drop the stuff we bought we miscalculated the time and ended up missing the beginning of the match before we even reached the apartment lol. We actually had a really nice time watching the game from our apartment room though. Mumzy even tried to understand the commentary in magyar (with not much luck).
That evening we went for another walk to Pest.
But not before eating at a nice little restaurant where my father claims to have eaten the best chicken he has EVER had. That’s impressive!
restaurant with best chicken ever (according to dad)
The next day we decided to go by car to heroes square, because my mother had been walking with blisters for 2 days and couldn’t take the pain anymore. It was actually really nice to drive there though, because it meant we could take some picnic stuff. Heroes square is next to the city park so we ended up chilling in the park for a small hour afterwards. Also ate some pie at this famous restaurant. Somehow I ended up on a picture with our waiter. Weirrrrd.
heroes square
city park
at Gundel restaurant. i think me and waiter look like married rich couple (apart from his name badge)
In the afternoon we took a little cartrip along the Donau and ended up in the city of Budapest again (after enjoying some more drinks on a boat).
In the city we were treated on a real cultural festival, with dance and music and everything. A nice way to end the little weekend . I feel like we did a lot of other things as well, but it was a lot of being there is more than talking about it. Like the endless amount of times we sat down on a terrace and enjoyed the beautiful buildings and places in Budapest. It really is a very beautiful city!
Next day I already had to go back. The flight back was the worst I ever had!! We had so much turbulence it wasn’t funny! I’m not that afraid of turbulence, but this time they didn’t warn us in advance and it was during the landing.. so you’re already getting closer and closer to the ground and the plane was making a lot of curves so sometimes it really felt like we were just crashing right then and there. The turbulence was so bad that my stomach literally dropped (you know, like in a roller coaster) a couple of times. But, of course, we made it to the ground safely.
I actually did some studying as well in Budapest. Every night I read 2 chapters of the book I had to learn for my test I had the day after I returned. And I passed that test .
I had my colloquium yesterday and I passed that too . Handed in another report today. Am still waiting on a grade for another test, but if that’s a pass as well then I only have one test left on July 7th and then I’m no student no more!
Like I said in the beginning.. I celebrated my birthday with my friends yesterday, which was a lot of fun as usual. More on that later!!
BTW, I’m LOVING the weather in Holland lately. Sunshine is a real good friend of mine .
See you’zzzz!
Livin’ the life
I’ve been on a ridiculous amount of holidays the last couple of months. And I had a blast all the way through. In the mean time I have also been spending a small amount of time on school and got a PASS for my thesis . Which means that if I pass my test tomorrow and then another one on July 7th I’ll be graduating on July 8th. I don’t think anyone can imagine how happy that will make me!!
Seriously. It wasn’t long ago when I thought I would never ever get that diploma. Ever!
But.. I’m not there yet. Still have to do some (a lot!!) of learning to pass those tests, because those 2 tests have been haunting me forever and there’s a reason I haven’t passed them yet: they’re too friggin’ difficult!
But, about the more pleasant things… picco’s of my holidays . I went to Calahonda, which is on the Costa del Sol in Spain last month. My sister and her boyfriend had just gotten their new house there (they moved from another place on the Costa del Sol: Mijas La Cala). It was a really relaxing and nice week. Did a lot of nothing, a lot of reading and a lot of tanning . Also had a nice tennis lesson and we went to Gibraltar for an afternoon, which was really cool! It’s so weird to drive a little more than an hour and suddenly be in Britain! lol
Robert and me in the streets of Gibraltar
Linda en Robert. The owner of the pub we were at (The Horse Shoe) offered me a job at the end. lol. It was a funny British guy who kept making word jokes. Gotta love the English!
Typical British mailbox.
Having fun
When you drive/walk/bike into the city of Gibraltar you have to actually cross the plane-runway.
In front of the rock of Gibraltar, which is said to be one of the columns of Hercules.
Back in Spain XD. Burning some crap in the garden. Purrrrty fire.
Buster! We miss him!
Getting a tennis lesson in 30 degrees. (y)
My sister looks like a tennis rockstar. Look at those arms! She plays like crap though :p.
Picco’s of my trip to Budapest coming soon!
Jo reggelt!
Budapest was awesome! My B-day was awesome! And… dum dum dum… I think I might very well be graduating on July 8, because my teachers found my thesis awesome!
I’ll post more soon with pictures from my holidays in Spain and Hungary.
Celebrating my b-day chilling at the Donau
Reaching
I reached out for your hand
You didn’t seem to care;
I can only reach so far
When no one else is there.
I wish I could reach further
But I am only so strong;
I hoped your eyes would open
So that you’d see you’re wrong.
It hurts to have to reach far
When you once were so near;
It’s hard shouting out for you
With a voice that you don’t hear.
I wish you’d extend your hand
And sense the friendship there;
Knowing what our memories mean
Showing me you still care.
I realize you don’t reach back
Instead her hands with yours;
You can’t handle both the worlds
So you close common doors.
(by Jill Leenderts)
A-ma-a-a-a-zing
American Idol is not always pop-tart-crap.
I reallllly hope she wins!!
She’s up against this guy though.
Ok. I want him to win too!
They’re both so good!!!