First day at my new job

I just had my first day at my new job and let me tell you, I have landed the most amazing job. Not only is the food cheap and are the chairs comfy, the people are also really nice and fun and I started together with another girl, which means she and I are now workbuddies. I am a lot less scared of the job now I realise how awesome it is. Got me a whole load of benefits and I'm just very excited about everything. The fact that we ended the day by playing a (not yet released) game on the motion player for an hour and a half because we got through the training so quickly sure didn't hurt!

Update: flat

I recalculated my money and I probably won't be able to move house until end of July. Not too big a worry, though. I first want to pay off my debts before embarking on moving. Also, now I can combine my housewarming party with my birthday party!

Top Three Thursday

With Blogger being down for quite a while, I was really tempted to sort of let this blog wither down and stop writing at all on here. I've recently starting a new blog (www.shredinaglassbowl.wordpress.com) and it seems that I am enjoying it there far more. I'm yet to decide about the future of this blog, but for now, there will be less posts on here. However, I'm going to try and keep up the Top Three Thursdays!

1) I got the job!

Yes, yes, yes, I actually got the job! From the 31st of May onwards, I'll be an employee of Sony Playstation and more precisely a localisation tester. I'll be checking whether the Dutch translation provided is correct (aka, I'm proofreading the games). I'm getting paid a nice salary for it, getting lots of benefits and bonuses, so I'm pretty chuffed. On top of that, it means I'll probably finally be able to move out of this house and into my own little flat! I'll be starting flathunting at the start of next week :-)

2) Free time

With the sudden change of getting a job, my bumming-around-the-house-doing-nothing has suddenly changed to waiting-for-my-job-to-start. This means that what I formerly experienced as wasting my life has now become a bit of a holiday. Therefore, I'm doing whatever I like! Yesterday I celebrated getting my job with two of my close friends, we went for a MacDonald's and then bowling, it was really fun! I also won the second round, but I was using bumpers, so my friends say I was cheating (but I don't think I was). Today the sun is out, so I'm gonna go for a wander around with one of my friends and then tonight I'm gonna participate in a free Advanced Creative Writing workshop. Very much looking forward to that!

3) Moving on

Like I said, now that I'll be earning some good money, I'm looking forward to moving to my own place. I've already started collecting some furniture. One of my close friends moved back home to America in September and put all his stuff he couldn't take at our friends's, and now he's finally decided what he wants of it and the rest of it has been distributed amongst us. Therefore, I now own a double duvet + covers + pillows! I already had a really, really nice goosefeather single duvet which I am continuing to use, but when I want to curl up on the sofa or people are staying over, I'll have a duvet to spare! I'm also getting a television tomorrow, courtesy of someone I don't even know, but who's a friend of a friend and had a television to spare. My friend is going to help me pick it up tomorrow and then I'll have my own television for my new place! Wootwoot! I'm really excited about moving out and I hope it's going to happen when I am planning (start of July), otherwise I'm going to be very disappointed!

I've got the job!

Top Three Thursday

This week a top three of less happy things and more impactful things.

(1) Visitor

An old friend came to visit last weekend. It was tumultuous, overpowering, emotionally draining and it taught me a lot. I'm not going to go into details, but I got to know myself a little better and learned what really matters to me. Learned to accept, learned to let go, learned to put other before myself and myself before others. And now I'm in peace, more or less. At least, I don't have the urge to talk about it with people, which means it's not raging in my mind all the time. Progress.

(2) Job

I went for my second interview with Playstation today. The interview went well, I think, but as it ended I learned that there are two or three other candidates flying in from their homecountry (be it the Netherlands or Belgium) to apply for the job. So the pressure is on, I suppose. I also won't hear whether I got the job or not for another two or three weeks because of the other candidates' interviews. More stress. As I walked him through the slight rain, crossed the park of Wavertree playground, I saw the vastness of it, the houses rounded up around the trees, the sky above me. The wind was blowing through my hair, I felt the seabreeze on my lips and I just sank down. Sat there, for a few minutes. I became calm in the knowledge that this is where I belong. I cannot leave Liverpool. I'll start looking for more jobs tomorrow.

(3) Flat

I've been looking at possible flats in the area of where I work. Found some I would like to go take a look at, but first I need to know whether I get the job or not. Looking forward to having my own place. You can only live with housemates for so long before you start longing for your own place, with or without a family.
Besides, I also want a pet. Fish, guinea pig, rat or cat. Not a dog, though.

The Wicked Witch is dead

I woke up this morning to my housemate telling me "Did you hear? Osama has been killed!". As I had only just woken up, it took a while before it sank in. I logged on to facebook and lo and behold, everyone was of course talking about it. I skipped through the fairly neutral statuses of most Europeans until I hit the jackpot: an American friend of mine who had posted six statuses in about half an hour, all rejoicing about how Osama had been killed, what a triumph, how she was drinking champagne in a American-flag-printed t-shirt while chanting U-S-A! and how she felt America must now feel how Munchkinland felt when they announced that "the Witch is dead".

I felt sick.

Does America really think that by killing Osama, terrorism is all of a sudden going to disappear from this world? Kill the frontman, kill the network? Because the last few years must have shown them that it isn't just Osama saying "oh, let's fly in those towers", making one executive decision, and boom, the whole world changes. In the real world, evil isn't simply rooted out by taking out the frontman.

I see it this way: Either killing Osama has no effect whatsoever, as he is merely a frontman and there are more than enough other to take his place, or killing Osama has a massive impact, as he is the leader, and terror attacks on the US will only get worse. Revenge is a bitch, right?

Either way, whatever the US were trying to accomplish by this (A power vacuum that leaves Al Quaida in shambles? A magic fix to all evil in the world?), the only thing that will come from this is a positive election result from Obama. Cos no matter how much the Americans might have hated Obama in the last couple of years, nothing can touch him now, cos hey, the With is dead.

Top Three Thursday

I know it's technically Friday already, but as I got confused over the day I was flying on, I am still in confused mode and still think it's Wednesday. When it is clearly not. Anyway, time for Top Three Thursday! This week, it's Belgium-themed, as I spent the past week at home.

(1) Family

I was in Brugge (and surroundings) most of the week, spending time with my mom, sister and brother, and also with my other sister and her family and my dad and his family. It was really great, just being a part of their lives for a few days, being immersed into a family life again. I really miss it in Liverpool and it gave me a lot of energy to keep going for a while now! The main event of my trip was of course Easter and with that came Ciska's Confirmation in the Easterwake. It was a wonderful ceremony in the Brugian Cathedral. I saw the bishop and whole bunch of priests and I really enjoyed the mass. Then on Sunday we first had some traditional Easter breakfast (with me cycling to the baker's last minute cos we didn't have enough bread) and after that we had a nice BBQ at mum's, just relaxing in the warmth. It was a laidback day and a really nice family moment - though I must say I slept for a lot of it. For some reason I felt so tired in Belgium! Luckily it was a lot better the next day, when Ciska had a party to celebrate her First Communion. Some of the family came over, including my amazing cousin Delfien and my pregnant auntie whose babybump was just wonderful to see. And then on Tuesday, I left for Liverpool.

(2) Or so I thought...

I had a nice leisurely trip to the airport, arrived at the passport control, give them my boarding card and... *PUUUUUT*. "I'm sorry, Miss, do you have another boarding card on you?" "Erm, no?" "Well, I'm sorry, but this ticket is for tomorrow. You're a day early."
Yes. That actually happened to me. A rebooking of my ticket would cost me 170euros (a new ticket was cheaper at only 135!), so I used my last euro in cash to call Bieke, who was wonderful enough to let me stay with her in Leuven. I actually ended up smiling all the way to Leuven, as I didn't want to leave for Liverpool yet when I left Brugge and now I could stay for a day longer and see all my friends in Leuven! I said hi to Bieke, put my stuff at her room and then she had to go to her evening class so I went to Preparee (after eating an icecream at 't Galetje first, of course). It was great, I laughed til I cried and afterwards I met up with Bieke again, talked for a bit more and went to bed. Spent the next day reading for four hours in my old faculty building (thank God for the series of Eden Hall I brought from home - thanks Mom!), before meeting up for lunch with Anne, for a chat with Katrien and for a quick drink with Nina. In between I chanced upon some more friends, resulting in quite a catch-up day friendship-wise. I really enjoyed my mistake in the end, and as I made the whole passport and security check that evening in ten minutes, I could very leisurely enjoy my flight home. What an end to a great holiday!

(3) Fantine

Last time I was in Belgium, I met for the first time the new cat my mum took under her wing. It is a stray cat, which means she is incredibly shy and barely ever allows to be petted, let alone comes when you call her. I spent the smaller part of a day in the house last time and she avoided me like the plague, so I went away feeling terribly disappointed to not having been able to pet her. This week however, change came about. When Fantine (the cat) wants food, she comes over and acts "nice", so you'll give her what she wants. So when she started curling around my legs again, I decided to take advantage of the situation and picked her up, petting her all the way to the back-kitchen (where the catfood is kept). At first she was very reluctant and tried to get away, but as the days passed, she let me pet her more and more. Two days before I left, I managed to put her in my lap after she had been fed and petted her for a good ten minutes (after which my cat was terribly jealous, so I took him on my lap, and the moment he jumped off again the two cats started fighting - I must say, I secretly felt really loved!) and the next day she actually stayed on my lap for thirty minutes (after which Kamiel - my cat - didn't want to be around me for a fair while, but luckily enough ear-scratching turned him round again). But the true miracle happened on the very last day, just before I left. I sank down in a chair for a few minutes and Fantine, who had been sitting in the other chair, actually lept to the ground, came over and jumped in my lap. She now comes when I call her, she lets me pet her, give her little kisses on her head and will happily sit on my lap and roll round in cuddles. Mission achieved!