Drumroll please

So yes. Big news. Today I accepted an offer of a new job in Dublin and quit my job here. I finish up on June 29th and move home on July 8th.

It doesn't seem so big when it's laid out like that. But big it is! It's been some time coming but I am still shocked at how quickly things have progressed. Oran's been at home for a year now and I've said all along that I wanted to move home - just not without a job. Little did I know that I would get the very first one I applied for within two weeks of applying, and little did I know that it would be quite so amazingly brilliant as it sounds. In short, I couldn't have asked for more.

That said, I am gutted to be leaving Amsterdam. I had a minor meltdown in the middle of Nieuwmarkt yesterday evening as the enormity of it all hit me. I have been very lucky to have had the chance to live in such a beautiful city for most of my working life. I'm going to miss cycling to work with my ipod blaring, drinking and playing cards in the park on muggy summer evenings, deep fried bar snacks and a million and one other little things (I'm going to have to make a list, I think of something new every other minute). Most of all though, I've made some stellar friends here who've seen me through a lot and are going to be very hard to leave behind.

But, all good things must come to an end, and there are surely more good things to come. I can't wait to settle in to Dublin life again - it's a different city to the one I left five years ago. I can't wait to catch up properly with old friends I've been snatching snippets of conversation with on my all too short trips home. I can't wait to be close to family again and be able to pop up the road for a Sunday afternoon if the mood takes me. And most of all I can't wait to settle into all of this with Oran. I'm moving on up now... but first, I have a five week leaving party to plan. I'm going to make a list for that, too.

Ahem

Major news alert. More tomorrow.

(And no, I'm not pregnant!)

Shiny

I am writing this from my new MacBook. I may never leave the house again.

Big exciting thing number one

I suppose I can talk about this now - it is happening in two weeks after all.

Flatmate Jenny is leaving. She's got a kickass job back in the UK and flies out on June 4th. I'm gutted to see her go, of course - she's become one of those friends I can't imagine not knowing, which is amazing considering I've only known her a year. Funny thing about living abroad, that - friendships seem to forge faster, which I suppose is because we're all in the same boat and a tiny bit desperate to meet new people. I imagine it's what dating feels like (having *cough cough* extremely limited knowledge in that particular area). On the other hand, in a place like Amsterdam, people come and go all the time, and it's an odd thing to have to adjust to. I didn't think it affected me much - we've had a spate of people leaving in the last year - but I think Jenny's probably the first really good friend I have here who's left. (I'm not counting Oran here, as I still get to see him regularly and we are actively planning to live in the same country again at some point in the future.)

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks between leaving parties and helping her pack and cooking a huge farewell dinner. The end of an all too short era, for sure. I'm still trying to sort out a replacement for her, but I'll probably be rattling around the apartment on my own for a couple of weeks after she goes, which hopefully won't push me over the edge...

Evolution

Not only have I now mastered the Dutch art of cycling while holding an umbrella, I can now reach in my bag, root round for the umbrella, squirrel it out of its cover and put it up, all without stopping my bike. Handy.

Surprise, surprise

The weekend went just as well as I'd hoped. Surprise 1: a guest from Amsterdam in the form of Ben. We didn't get quite the squealing reaction I'd hoped for, but that's partly because Oran's not really the squealing type and partly because he waited outside in the car so we had to knock on the window instead of bursting into the arrivals hall all jazz hands like. Anyway, good surprise, I had nothing to worry about, hurrah hurrah.

Surprise 2 turned out to be fun for all involved - we got in the car on Saturday morning and I told Oran to drive to Malahide marina. A bunch of his family and two of my sisters met us there for a Sea Safari around Dublin Bay. It was rip roaring fun - we were thrown around the waves in a giant rubber dinghy for an hour, taking in Ireland's Eye and Howth harbour along the way. We rounded off the day with a huge Thai meal in Malahide, and a beer tasting/beer drinking fest in Porterhouse North, where the two sets of parents met for the first time (oo-er) and much delicious fruity beer was consumed. Not too shabby.

It was weird having my own birthday bash this year - ours are so close we've had a joint night out for the past five years. This year, though, Julia booked a table for 10 at a really pretty restaurant, and we proceeded to eat rings round some delicious steak and frites and white chocolate mousse, among other things. Lots of lovely presents, too, including Yahtzee (yay!) and a very pretty summer dress (woo!) I completely forgot how wrecked I was from the red eye flight I took back here on Monday morning.

And now, I'm 26, and the week goes on. Lots of exciting things happening round these parts. All (well, some) will be revealed soon...

Blogger's block

I've just posted a couple of hundred photos to Flickr of all the things I should have been blogging about over the past few weeks. There are also quite a few things I don't have photos of and wanted to blog about, and a few things I don't have photos of and don't want to blog about, and I suspect the latter has prevented me from writing about anything whatsoever. So in the interest of catching up, this was April:

- a very lazy Easter weekend (so lazy as to be completely unphotoworthy)
- The Shins (so so so so good, second favourite gig this year so far, Ben Folds just about hanging on to the top spot)
- CSS/Tilly & The Wall (crazy hulahooping tapdancing fun)
- a surprise last minute visit from Helen and a trip to Keukenhof (her first, my fourth)
- freakishly good weather, lots of time spent basking on my lovely balcony and even some gardening
- lots and lots of swing dancing. I can now charleston!
- Queen's Day, my fourth and the best by far. Less beer, more sun, less pushing through crowds and more orange.

And now, it's May. I'm heading home this weekend for Oran's 30th birthday party this Saturday. I have a couple of MAJOR surprises up my sleeve for him and I am feeling quite nervous - in over six years I don't think I've ever pulled a stunt like this. Hopefully all goes to plan... I feel a bit like Cilla Black and there'd better be a lorra lorra laughs or I'll be the one crying!

After the party it'll be a very quiet Sunday, then back here on the red eye on my birthday and straight into the annual embarrassing office cake ritual. Last year was the worst yet - I can't imagine this year will be much better but I'm buying cheaper cake this year in the vain hope that my discomfort might be proportionally reduced. We'll see how that goes...

Yo soy happy

So, Madrid. What a lovely city. I wouldn't call it beautiful in the conventional sense - there are quite a few fading tacky remnants of the 1970s dotted around the city still - but it does have a quirky kind of vivacity to it and there are some gorgeous buildings in the old part of the city. We spent our four days there wandering round the various plazas near Sol and Santa Ana, taking in the city's galleries, riding a cable car through the main city park, eating plateful after plateful of tapas and paella and drinking some really great rioja. The Madrileans do seem a slightly strange bunch in some respects, though, and we encountered some rather unusual things along the way:

- Facial piercings. So, so many facial piercings. Nostrils, lips, labrets, eyebrows - every second person we encountered on the street had some kind of metal in their head.
- Chirpy street crossings. I don't mean disco lights instead of the flashing green man, I mean actual chirping - every street crossing made a starlinglike 'cheep cheep cheep' sound so realistic I wasn't sure where to look at first.
- Lots of hanging around in public. Oran (who's seen more of Spain than I have) tells me this is a generic Spanish habit but I found it amusing all the same. The idea seems to be that one suggests a meeting place (in Madrid's case, the overwhelmingly popular choice is the bear and strawberry tree statue on Puerta del Sol) and then proceeds to loiter in said place's general circumference for at least an hour or so with one's friends, engaging in animated discussion and possibly quaffing a can or two of beer in the process. Oran said he's visited one tiny village in Catalonia where, on pretty much any given night of the week, the entire population decamps to the fountain in the village square, drinks in hand, for chat and craic. Brilliant.

The best thing about Madrid, though, has to be how unbelievably cheap it is. Unless you were to go looking for every Michelin-starred place in town, it is nigh impossible to spend a fortune on food and drink. Even our last (decadent and unbelievably filling) meal on Friday came to way less per person than we would pay in either Amsterdam or Dublin, and we spent most of the preceding nights in various tapas bars where dinner cost less than a tenner each. We also did pretty well on the hotel and shopping fronts - although I maintain I would have spent much more in the shops had the shoe selection not been quite so tacky and PVC/patent leather-ridden. Definitely a place to visit in the next couple of years before it reaches Barcelonaesque popularity and price.

(Photos on Flickr soon, I promise!)

Post Paddy's day pleasantry

Well, after the utter washout that was Paddy's day, it was lovely to get to Paradiso this evening for a decent dose of Irish music, thanks to the lovely Bell X1, who played out of their skins for an hour and a half in the kleine zaal. If the rumours are true and they have been dropped by their record label I'll be truly appalled - they're possibly the best Irish band on the go at the moment, with more stage presence than Snow Patrol and better songs than The Frames. Hopefully some A&R tosser somewhere will see sense and give them a new record deal - they deserve to be huge.

I'll certainly be listening to them tomorrow on my two hour plane journey to Madrid - don't think I'll be fit for much else at 9 in the morning (definitely not work, ha). Matt was kind enough to recommend The Incredible Adam Spark to me but sadly it seems that our local Waterstone's doesn't stretch to quality Scottish fiction so I went for Starter For Ten instead. Should keep me going until Oran arrives tomorrow evening!

Updates and photos next Sunday when I'm back in the country.

And, we lost

Today is probably the closest Ireland have come to winning the SIx Nations in my rugby watching life... but, we still lost. Just about. A combination of rubbish Irish team decisions and an unbelievably controversial French finish means that we've lost on points difference and I am inconsolable. I'm currently attempting to cheer myself up with chocolate mini eggs and Bridget Jones's Diary 2, but I've still got a killer headache and am supposed to be heading out again in less than two hours and would really rather stay in and wallow and finish the mini eggs. Who knew rugby could make a girl so moody?

Hello there

Here are some things I have been doing lately instead of blogging:

- yelling at the cable company until they finally reconnected our cable
- working
- working some more
- not writing up the interview and gig reviews I've got to submit before the 29th
- reading lots
- learning how to lindyhop... in Dutch
- watching six nations rugby
- planning a trip to Madrid (six days to go)
- attempting to wean myself off chocolate

And still on my to-do list:

- deciding whether I should bite the bullet and go back to the gym or bin my membership, save the money and go running instead
- getting four days' worth of work done in the next three days so I can go to Madrid and not worry about people calling me on my non-work pay-as-you-go phone while I'm in the middle of the Prado
- buying some new books (recommendations, anyone?)
- blogging, now that I don't have to be sneaky about it at work

Mushy

Happy V-day everyone! Yes, it's a day to celebrate love and all it offers, but please remember that there are 364 others where showing your appreciation for your other halves is most welcome, even by throwing your dirty laundry in the basket, putting the loo seat down, taking out the rubbish on a rainy evening or SMSing on an unexpectedly late night out to let them know you're not face down in a gutter somewhere.

This is the first Valentine's day in the six years I've been with Oran that we've not been together (aw!) We don't go all out to celebrate it or anything - our various V-days have ranged from low-key (home-made steak sandwiches and a DVD) to outright disastrous (a trip to the cinema in Stirling to see About Schmidt, easily one of the worst films I've ever seen). So I wasn't expecting much from today - maybe a phone call or a text message or an email, and likewise hadn't sent him a present. But... about five minutes ago I had a phonecall from reception and have just made my way back upstairs with a heeyyoooooge bunch of flowers. A dozen red roses and more besides - I could have hidden behind them on the walk back up if I'd wanted to. Cue lots of oohing and ahhing from my flowerless colleagues and complete mortification from me, although secretly (sh!) I am having a complete girly mushout. Dankjewel, schatje!

It's snowing!

It's been bucketing down for about two hours now. My bike is already under about two inches of the stuff and people are already going home. I've never cycled in the snow before, but chickening out and getting the tram isn't really an option as I have a gazillion things to do in a short space of time this evening. Hopefully the bike paths into town will be gritted, otherwise it's very possible I'll end up going arse over elbow into a canal...

Normal service will resume... sometime?

Any form of blog posting has been pretty much impossible for the past week, which is a shame because I had lots of lovely things to write about, including more on the Ben Folds concert, and the fact that I'm interviewing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (please don't call them The Clap) tomorrow, and our wonderfully relaxing but gluttonous girlie long weekend in London. But alas and alack, my marvellous phone/internet/TV provider decided to once again cut us off last Thursday, so a) no blogging and b) my first blog post in over a week is going to be a bilious rant about how unbelievably unhelpful and illogical and completely all over the place they are. I'm just off the phone with them, and to paraphrase:

Me: "Hi, I've been cut off, can you tell me why?"
Crappy Cable Company (CCC): "What's your address again?" (even though I'd already given it)
Me: "Okay, it's blahblahstraat blahblahnumber"
CCC: "Oh, it looks like we accidentally moved your service next door, sorry about that"
Me: "Er... okay..."
CCC: "We'll reconnect you asap at no charge"
Me: "Er... thanks?"
CCC: "No problem, Mrs. Javanowitz" (or a name to that effect, but NOT MINE!)
Me: "Eh? I am not Mrs. Javanowitz"
CCC: "Er... can you give me your full name and address before you moved?"
Me: "Sure... blahblah, blahblahstraat"
CCC: "Oh... per our records we never moved your products and there's a note on your file saying that we couldn't because there was a problem with the signal"
Me: "?!?!?!?! I've been able to use all three bits of the service since I moved!"
CCC: "Er... okay... we're not sure how that could have happened... oh and you owe us 71 euro"
Me: "I didn't receive a bill"
CCC: "Okay, but you have to pay it before we can reconnect you"
Me: "Fine, as long as you can guarantee you can reconnect me"
CCC: "We'll keep you posted, what's your mobile number?"
Me: "06-blahblah. Thank you, bye bye now"

Bad enough on its own, but thirty seconds after hanging up I had a head-meet-desk moment upon realising that I didn't have the payment code for the bill (duh, because I never got the bill). So I wearily phoned up again:

CCC: "At this time we can only handle general queries as our systems are down"
Me: "Well how long will they take to fix?!"
CCC: "About three hours"
Me: "What time do you close?"
CCC: "7pm"
Me: ".................."

At this rate it's going to be at least another five or six days at this stage before I'm reconnected. And maybe five or six gins (or half an hour with a punchbag, I can't decide which) before I've calmed down.

Not the same after that

The very lovely and very music-geeky Nick Hornby maintains that, if you really truly love a song, it won't remind you of anything in particular when you hear it.

But if tonight is anything to go by, he's talking through his arse. Because every time I hear Not The Same from now on, I'll be picturing the Paradiso house lights illuminating the faces of a thousand people singing along in three part harmony.

Two hours of nostalgia and mind-boggling riffs and bowel-loosening (not really) synth chords and disturbing stories about Las Vegas hotel rooms and almost every song I wanted to hear in the two and a bit hours we were treated to. The standard's been set high for the rest of the gigs I'll go to this year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go gargle with some Disprin before I lose my voice completely...

Rock this bitch

So the past week has pretty much gone thus: work, work, stress, work, work, exhaustion, work, work, utter bewilderment, work, work, weekend!, shopping, gin, Belgian beer, steak frites, sleepsleepsleep. This week: far more promising. Work's not kicking my arse nearly as much as it has been and I'm finally feeling like I'm on top of things and being a decent boss. Plus I'm breaking in the killer knee high boots and leather bag I snaffled for a grand total of 40 euro on the weekend, and the Christmas poundage appears to be shifting (finally! maybe eating less does work...) But the cherry on the icing on the top of the triple chocolate cupcake that is my week has got to be Ben Folds tonight. I appear to have regressed to my 17 year old self, at least if my excitement level is anything to go by. I just had a full-on rockout on my bike ride home, much to the alarm of anyone cycling towards me, I'm sure. Just an hour to go until I'm lining up outside Paradiso in the freezing cold with the rest of the freaks and geeks... Photos galore later!

I'm my own brass section

[First off: Oran made it, we had a lovely weekend, and he's now back at the airport. Sigh. Lebanese food was delish, cinema was a no-go, and we rounded the visit off with full on Sunday roast for 9 chez moi. Lots of fun, and not really hard work at all as I appear to be programmed to cook for large numbers of people.]

Anyway. I think I mentioned a couple of months back that I'd done an interview with the lovely Tapes 'n Tapes for an interweb publication. It's finally online as part of their January/February issue - check it out here. I think I'll have a couple of reviews in their next issue too, maybe including Ben Folds (next Tuesday! woo!), although Suse may have stolen a march on me there. Only eight days to go...

Brewing up a storm

Oran's due in this evening for a blissfully long three day visit. I have all kinds of plans made - Lebanese food in my new neighbourhood, a VIP cinema trip complete with champagne and food and oversized armchair seats, Sunday roast dinner at home with friends, maybe even Club Rascal on Saturday night. Sounds like a close-to-perfect weekend, no? I thought so too.

Except there's just one teeny tiny miniscule little problem - Amsterdam is currently smack bang in the middle of a crane-toppling, roof-tile-lifting, small-child-flattening force 10 windstorm. There are gales howling round our building so loudly I can barely concentrate on my work, even with headphones in and the volume cranked up. Plus I have the added distractions of hitting refresh on the airline website every five minutes to check if his flight's still okay (so far so good, but a bunch of others have been cancelled) and getting local transport updates to make sure I have a way home, although if I were to attempt cycling I might be able to do it E.T. style and get there in record time. Or I might end up face down in a canal. I'm not taking that risk.

Fingers crossed he makes it...

Wondering

1: How on earth was Gwyneth Paltrow persuaded to do Shallow Hal?

2: Why am I incapable of reaching over for the remote and switching it off?

Yet another post about food

One track mind? I think so.

I keep leaving all my change at the pub. This is Good because tipping is nice, even if one is mates with the barman, but Bad because right now I am desperately craving chocolate (a green Balisto to be precise), and last time I asked the guy I sit next to to change a fiver for me he tortured me for about ten minutes before finally giving in, and then proceeded to refuse a share of the Milka bar I bought and laughed at me as I ate the entire thing and then moaned about having done so for the rest of the afternoon. Inconsistent? Moody? Me?

Anyway, it's finally the weekend (hurrah!) and I have decided to have nachos for dinner tonight, not only because they are delicious and moreish and perfect for munching while vegging out in front of season 1 of Father Ted, but also because I can make them with Doritos and use the coupon in the bag to enter this. I haven't a pup's chance of winning, but you never know. Baby needs a new MacBook...