All things go

Loads going on here this week.

We had a wee party at our apartment last night to celebrate the airing of Rocking Roommate Jenny's first ever TV ad.


After gorging ourselves on the product for a while we decided to take the party outside:


We sort of had a second reason to celebrate too. My promotion - i.e. the reason I stayed in Amsterdam - was finally made official yesterday. I am now an Operations Manager, yo. Just don't ask me what that actually involves.

And now, Oran is here! Yay! He's here til Monday, and then on Tuesday I leave for Paris, where I'm meeting two of my sisters for some sightseeing and some craic in our own inimitable style. I'm sure there'll be lots of photos and stories on my return...

We're in a state of happiness

I'm proud to live anyplace that nurtures Irish musical genius. This ad is currently running on Dutch TV. Behold the boy Johnny in all his blonde-wigged glory...

Wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes

I realised about three hours ago that I'd completely forgotten to include Nik Kershaw on my cheesy 80s playlist, but have now made up for it with the tacky music gods and now have Wouldn't It Be Good blaring in my headphones. It's a pity it's 1.34am or I'd have it on full blast - this may be an old building but sadly the walls aren't quite that thick.

In other news, the ridiculous heat continues. Tomorrow's hot weather activity: watching the lions at the zoo eat blood flavoured ice-cubes. No, really.

Children behave...

It's Friday afternoon, but the minutes are crawling by and I have a huge pile of rather monotonous work to get through. So, I've put together a cheesy little 80s playlist to help me along (although it's probably taken longer to compile than it will to play from start to finish):

Toto - Africa
Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough
T'pau - China In Your Hands
Eddie Cochran - Gimme Hope Joanna
Wet Wet Wet - Sweet Surrender
Queen - Radio Ga Ga
Los Lobos - La Bamba
The Cars - Drive
Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now
Yazz & The Plastic Population - The Only Way Is Up
The Housemartins - Happy Hour
Kylie Minogue - The Locomotion

Quite a few of these songs/artists pop up on Now! 11, which is the first compilation tape I remember having at home (The Hits 6 came on vinyl). Actually, it may be the first pop music tape we had, full stop. My parents were avid tapers-off-the-radio (perhaps my illicit mp3 habit is genetic...) so there were always home-made mix tapes lying about. In fact, in a dusty corner of a drawer somewhere I believe there's still one marked "Catherine's tape" which has my favourite songs from the radio and MTUSA (the world's first music video show was Irish, people!) from when I was about three. I'm not sure if "favourite" means "made me dance and sing along" or "shut me up for three full minutes". Next time I'm home, I'll have to track it down.

For now, I'm checking Amazon for secondhand CD copies of Now 11 and marvelling at the tracklisting. I can't believe I was into Coldcut when I was seven... talk about full circle.

Bring me sunshine

Bliss... it's shaping up to be the Netherlands' hottest summer ever. A great excuse to shop, too.

It's alive

Okay, sort of. It looks like our upstairs neighbour has skipped the country, so short of phoning my landlord and telling him he was completely wrong about the phone wiring in his building and then begging him to lend us a spare key or open the door for the phone engineer himself, I'm not sure there's much I can do. So we are still sans phone and internet, but I finally snapped this evening and bought a wireless card so I can steal other people's internet. Sharing is caring, people. Anyway, I've uploaded some photos, downloaded some music and now I am feeling much more at ease.

Today seems to be a day of firsts. Earlier I experienced My First (and second) Scooter Ride - a colleague offered me a lift to a meeting on the back of his Vespa, and when have I ever said no to doing something new? It was very smooth and not at all scary, and my main worry throughout was how geeky I looked in my big black helmet. Definitely an experience worth repeating.

And this evening, I am finding myself alone in the apartment for the first time - just the bells from the church next door and Oran on IM for company. So far, so good. Next up, My First Bike Ride With A Handlebar In One Hand And A Hoover In The Other. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Edit: the Hoover Manoeuvre was a success! Although my left hand is shaking as I type this...]

More proof that my friends are cooler than me

This is much more interesting than anything that happened to me over the weekend.

My friend Julia was featured on PerezHilton.com! She happened to be in the Noordermarkt area when she snapped this photo. Had I not been running round a hockey pitch 20 miles away I would've pegged it over to get a pic of my own... swoon!

Still here

A shameful lack of blogging from me this week, and I'm sneaking this one in at work while my boss nips out for a cigarette. We still have no phone or internet in the apartment - an engineer came round this morning (he was booked for between 8 and 10am so of course showed up at 9.57) and after half an hour of fiddling about, he concluded that the external phone cable runs through the apartment upstairs, and of course there was no-one home. So it looks like we'll be incommunicado for another week or so, which will send me into full-on Bittorrent withdrawal (symptoms: cold sweat, fidgetiness, mumbling random bits of dialogue from Grey's Anatomy in one's sleep). My laptop is so old and clapped out that hijacking a neighbouring wireless connection is not an option. Worse still, I'll be missing out on all the gossip from home and long chats with Oran.

Even if we were all internetted up at home I'm not sure I would have squeezed in any blogging or even flickrification of photos from the weekend (crazy Canada Day festivities and sunny weather lazing). Since Oran left on Monday night my days have been a whirl of Ikea trips and barbecues and World Cup matches and fajitas and Haagen-Dazs and boat cruises (not to mention practical things like work and unpacking). It's been lovely to get out and about with friends I'm so happy and lucky to have, but I am starting to fret a little that not taking the time to settle into my new apartment and generally process all the changes of the past week in my head will eventually catch up with me and hit me all at once. I know that sitting in every night on my own is hardly healthy either, but there's a line between wallowing in misery and just stopping to think, and spending a bit of time on the latter side mightn't be a bad idea. Trouble is, I'm not quite sure when I'll get the chance.

All moved

Time for a lightning quick post (using a hijacked wireless connection) from my brand new apartment. Well, I'm the new bit, the building's 300 years old. I am still surrounded by boxes and bin bags and I honestly have no idea where I'm going to fit everything, but sure that's half the fun, right? New Roommate Jenny and I will have some craic tonight rearranging furniture and such. It's so hot out (I think 30 degrees already) it seems a shame to be stuck indoors all day. Time to head out and top up the sunburn I got from Canada Day festivities in the park on Saturday and three hours in Sarah's hammock yesterday (photos of both will follow when I manage to unearth my camera cable...)

Eight hours until I have to leave Oran to the airport. :(