Flourishing In Florida

Miss

2009-04-26T20:58:00.002+02:00

Missed me? Miss America. And She Missed The Beat (click and listen!). You can't be missed if you never go away, or so they say, but I can imagine that my absence might have made few of you reluctant to keep checking. Please forward the message to other readers that there's another post on here, and that my Photo Album has been updated!

Last time I wrote here, my parents had just been here, and I've been shortly describing where we've gone, and not so much what we did. I guess this is going to be another one of those posts, but I've been to three concerts in the meantime, so I'll rate those again.

At work, things have been back to their old state. Even though I had my goodbye postcard and switched departments (on paper, as well as on the workfloor for a good 3 weeks), I've been back in Le Marche for the most part. Like, 98% of the time part. Le Marche has changed a lot, not just because/since Pierre left, and we had to manage things without a manager for a long time, but there are only 2 people left working there that I worked with when I started. And that will soon go down to just one of them. The menu has changed too; our signature pizzas have been replaced by Focaccia bread pizzas, which do seem to appeal to people, but to me, they will never be able to beat what we sold before. Other menu items were taken off, good selling items that I wouldn't have touched myself, but that's another thing. New people came. A manager, another MIT (Manager In Training, like myself), and some Baristas. More people will come. More items have come to fill up shelves. Even more items will be added. It's a constant evolving restaurant, but over half of the changes have not benefitted what it once was. The main thing, revolving around the menu change, as well, is that we don't have chefs anymore. They took them out when we still had the old menu, and I ended up making pizzas and other items all night long. That really pissed me off big time since there were so few things in place for me to work with. Ten or eleven hour shifts were standard that first week. Things have calmed down, everything is now streamlined and the new people have seemed to found their way around everything, but Banquets is still completely dead and with Tina officially being transferred as well, there's not much to look forward to, concerning a change of pace.

In the future, however, there is still the planned trip to New York City (May 15-19), somewhat, and a day trip to the Bahamas again (May 21), as well as my ticket to the Vans Warped Tour (July 25) where I'll be seeing Saosin again (CAN'T WAIT!), as well as InnerPartySystem, Escape The Fate, A Day To Remember, Attack Attack!, Monty Are I, The Devil Wears Prada and a load of others.
I've also been thinking of what I want to do in August, when I get to travel. I'm thinking Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, California for about two weeks, and Seattle, before I fly back home. Any tips and ideas are appreciated.

As for the concerts the last few months, which have basically been the only entertainment I've had on my days off, on which I usually catch up with TV series, do some work, make some music, or just do nothing, here's the list with ratings;

First up was Rockstar Taste of Chaos, on March 17, where I had the pleasure of seeing six bands live on one night. It all started out with a local band, who had apparently won a contest (according to their merch guy) that gave them a spot on the stage. Back To The Party [4/10] was nothing but just another poppunk band. Nothing original, nothing good, just nothing. They got a few people energetic and it's still better than no music, but I guess that's all there is to them. Next up was Four Year Strong [7/10]. People with beards making pretty decent music that got things started nicely. Followed by Pierce The Veil [9/10] who seemed to do almost everything right, except for ending with a cover song of Michael Jackson's beat it, as well as playing another cover of Katy Perry earlier. Cancer Bats [8/10] did what they had to. Go fast, go hard and entertain the crowd. Then it was time for the band that almost all teenagers had been waiting for. A show from UK Metalheads Bring Me The Horizon [9/10]. Great set, energetic, but they didn't overwhelm me as much as they could have, given the air time their latest album Suicide Season got with me. A lot of teenagers then went out the venue to score autographs and pictures with BMTH, but then missed out on the very best band of the evening, Thursday [10/10]. The music live sounds so much better than on CD, and everything sounded so mature and well played.

The next show that I've got to see what Silverstein headlining a nice night of screams. Before Their Eyes [7,5/10] were up first, playing solid, but not impressive. Second show, the next band, where the cover song was actually the highlight of the show. Apart from the 40+ times Fuck the singer mentioned, their Britney - Toxic cover (released on Punk Goes Pop Vol. 2) there wasn't much memorable about A Static Lullaby [5/10]. Third band of the night was BlessTheFall [8,5/10] where their sreaming bass player was actually better than their new frontman Beau Bokan (who replaced Craig Mabbitt after his departure to Escape The Fate). Old songs from Craig sung by Beau went alright, and he's as much of a pretty boy as Craig is, but it all doesn't appeal that much. Silverstein [10/10] ended the night perfectly, playing songs from almost all of their albums, and bringing the BTF Bass/Screamer on stage for an encore with them was well done. I said an encore, but they actually played a 3-song encore that noone seemed to mind at all. The crowd was far from perfect this night (unlike at Taste Of Chaos) which was a slight shame, but it's been a good night.

Then last night, the 25th, I saw Dredg perform again (yes, I did). They were supported by two other bands, first being the instrumentalists from From Monument To Masses [9,5/10] who had an amazing drummer, a very energetic and diverse guitar player and a good bass player to round it off. Great songs live (slightly better than on the CD I bought last night) to get everyone started.
The second band was Torche [2/10] which was a downright joke. Getting things started with some kind of personal party was good enough, but after that one song everything seemed to be ready for fast, loud, hard and without any skill or passion. Dredg [9/10] performed as they did last time, only slightly less active in between songs. Less interaction, slightly less passion, as if they were just there to get things over with. No encore either, but luckily they played Ode To The Sun and Bug Eyes already. They played the same new songs they played half a year ago as well, so no new material this time, really.

I think that's all for now. I'll be updating my photo album and add descriptions to it for everyone to look at, and there's one more youtube video to be posted (but be sure to check out the song And She Missed The Beat, linked to in my first paragraph).

Thursday - Resuscitation Of A Dead Man

Times Like These

2009-03-07T20:58:00.002+01:00

Times like the past month. And two weeks. The past six weeks in total. It's been way too long, and frankly, I still don't feel like prioritizing any of this to share the weekly stories. For some reason I just want to spend my time doing nothing in particular, wasting time with small things that don't take too much thinking or doing. When I'm at home, at least. I do still waste my time on other things when I'm not sitting behind the computer, or downstairs.

So, what happened all these weeks? After I got back from Colorado, because that's how long it has been (and I wonder who kept checking back every now and then to check if I posted an update, I'm sorry to those of you). And this is the thing with not posting things and not really track either. I can't remember everything of it.

I'm going to give a quick recap of the things I do know, and I guess it started with a transfer from Le Marche to Banquets. Getting myself some insight in the world of meetings, weddings and big group dinners. The first two weeks I was there I worked in the set-up team. Changing meeting rooms into the form the people wanted it to be (well, not changing the rooms, but the tables, chairs etc. in them). I got acquainted with the names of the meeting rooms, each of them carrying a translation for Sun (or having the name Sun itself). I still don't know all the languages they're in, but most you can place, being Akala, Aurinko, Del Sol, Jua, Sonne, Soleil, Surya and Tai Yang. Whenever I work in Banquets now, I mostly direct the meetings, together with Waldin, the manager. I get to look pretty in suit, steer things, run around for things that are missing and making sure the people are happy and well informed. Whenever it's not too busy in Banquets and they basically can deal without me, I work in Le Marche still.
That's it for the work situation, I think. If there are any questions about anything I'm pretty sure I'll find them in my inbox or as a reaction somewhere.

Next up; family vacation. I've had some company from the people I used to live with. Mom, Hans and my sister came over for two weeks. Picked them up from Miami Airport on a monday night (after one missed turn at the airport I spent another 30 minutes to try and get back there, I officially hate that place now, so please, fly to Fort Lauderdale Airport if you want me to pick you up - actually, I think I know Miami by now too, but yeah). The Tuesday after I got to work a double shift in both Le Marche (morning) and Banquets (evening). In the days that followed I worked some more, but found some time to hit Sawgrass Mills quickly, for some outlet shopping with all of them. Knowing the size of Sawgrass, I had to warn everyone to shop different than what they're used to. No random browsing, but looking for the things you want or need, and keep going, if you want to see most of the shops in the few hours we had. I bought a nice shirt to wear to work, and some sports clothing. I think there's nothing more to shop for except a few more shirts to expand my leisure collection even further. I seem to be developing an addiction for shirts slowly. Friday we left for Miami to head out on a cruise to the Bahamas. The ship was amazing and easy when docked, but the waves make it a whole different story. Dining in a room that makes your head reach for your food automatically, or pushing your fork away from your mouth, now that's something! Arrived at Nassau overnight, and spent the day walking around the streets, trying to get some authenticity insight by not joining any tours but picking our own streets. The weather was in our favor, as it should be, and we had a nice day. Getting back for docked dinner on the ship, and a night of taking things easy and browsing around. The next day we would leave early in the morning, and spend a day at sea, getting to constantly stuff ourselves with whatever we wanted to eat and drink around there, and playing some mini golf or getting some tan (or should I say sunburn, for two of them), before getting back to sleep again later that day. Early morning in Miami found us without transportation, so unfortunately, a nicely priced cab took us home. I got to work some more in the week after, and had my days off from Friday to Monday, giving us the chance to visit Miami for a day of walking around (visiting Bayside Marketplace, Lincoln Road for late lunch, and getting a glimpse of South Beach). The day after was Keys day, driving to Key West very early, stopping at Key Largo, eating at Islamorada and browsing Key West later, stopping at a few State Parks along the way. Personally, I think the road to Key West is lots better than the city itself, but being there for an extra night and morning might not hurt anyone for later. The way back went about twice as fast, not having to stop anywhere along the way.
Then, a day off to go easy, and departure day, taking everyone to Miami again.

I've also found a new hobby to waste my time and money on (I know, this sounds way worse than it is, or even slightly demeaning, but I assure you all, it's nothing like it), called Valeria. Went to see a concert with her and my sister, seeing five bands perform in Revolution Live, being Anarbor [n/a], Every Avenue [6,5/10], Meg & Dia [7,5/10], Breathe Carolina [5,5/10] and Cute Is What We Aim For [8,5/10].

There has, of course, been way more to the past few weeks. I could describe the concerts, mention events, nights out with Valeria and share some anecdotes from work or home (like one of Georgi's Bulgarian friends ending up on the couch of the neighbours, at night) but that's something for another night in person with all of you reading this.

I also have to share two songs now. First, an acoustic version of Foo Fighters - Times Like These, just because it's one of the nicest acoustic versions ever, and second, the new video from Red, an orchestral hardrock band who have just released their second album, called Innocence And Instinct, the song being called "Death of Me".

Ride

2009-01-21T17:04:00.005+01:00

So, I've just spent my days off in Colorado. Snowboarding. Wonderful vacation, and everything I needed to really have it feel like a vacation. A sunny beach doesn't do that anymore, and luckily, almost every single thing there in Colorado was a complete change from what it is over here.
Instead of everything being completely flat, there are hills and mountain ranges everywhere you look. Instead of blocks of housing, the streets are actually curved and have proper streetnames (instead of 8th, 9th or 10th Street). The weather was freezing and there was snow all over, instead of the sweaty weather with sun every minute. I spent my time off, accompanied by girls only (and Bart, of course), instead of the other housemates and people dropping by, who are guys 90% of the time.

On day one, we left from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport (FLL) at 6:15, meaning we had to get up early enough to actually catch that flight. I had closed the day before, but was surprisingly awake and remained in that state throughout the day. We had one stop to make on our way to Denver, which was in Houston. Everything on the way to Houston was easy, seeing the sun rise on the way there, and having a pleasant trip. Had an hour to wait at the airport, and boarded the next plane. While making our way to take-off, we stop and wait for a short period of time. After that stop we are told that we are going back to the gate to have engineers check on the plane. We are told to wait for 15 minutes. For another 30. Then asked to leave the plane. While at the gate again, we are told we would be getting an update within the hour. After that hour, another hour before they know something. Then they knew they had to be looking for another plane (I saw 6, just looking out the window, but apparently they were no good to us). We were waiting for a plane from L.A. to land so they could prepare that for our flight instead. Total delay on Houston; 6,5 hours! On our way to Denver again. When landed there, we were quick to pick up our luggage and made our way to the CME (Colorado Mountain Express) desk quickly. Marieke had arranged this for us already, with her employee/contacts discount. We were able to get on a bus straight away, and it basically left when we got in. Packed in warm clothing we drove through dark mountains for little over 2 hours (sun went down after leaving Denver) and we were picked up by Kiki, Marieke and Fleur at the Vail Transportation Center. Went to celebrate their housemate's (New Zealand's own Juliet) birthday in town at a restaurant that was all too tropical for the surroundings. Employees in Hawaii shirts and ocean-like carpet on the floor. Had a good meal though, and had a little piece of cake for the birthday celebration.
Found our place in the loft of the apartment, which was a good sleeping place, if it wasn't for that staircase (getting back to that later).

Day two found us waking up at 6:30, to go and arrange our snowboards and other gear around 7:30. All this was arranged with the down payment of a sturdy supply of beer. Ready to go, we went by home again to pick up some final items, and we went with the bus, which stops across the street, to have it take us to Beaver Creek Village, from which we departed up the hill, after using our discount coupons for the lift tickets (normally 92 a day, now 45). Kiki and Fleur were with us, and we went up the mountain, going all the way up to the top, going down a few times and taking that Cinch Express lift up every time again. I got the feel of it quite quick, despite my small amount of experience. Apparently I did better than everyone expected me to do, having only a bit of indoor experience, never being down a real mountain in real snow before. Had our lunch at Spruce Saddle, a (green certified, being the only one in a ski-area) restaurant. It was located between the initial lift we took from Beaver Creek, the Centennial Express and Cinch. We also had to go find Bart once, by the way. We sent him down a black slope and Kiki and I would go take it easy for me instead. However, Bart's slope didn't quite end where we hoped it did, and Kiki went in pursuit mode and talked to him. I went down a nice blue slope there, trying to get to where they were. Kiki found Bart and arrangements were made. Took a few slopes down the other way, and found ourselves in Bachelor Gulch for the rest of the day. One of the slopes goes by Kiki's work in that same village. Later that day we had Marieke join us, but I didn't get a chance to board with her just yet as I made a pretty nasty fall when I was going down with one of my highest speeds of the day. It all felt really good, going down, and I had my confidence with me. At one point, I had a sentence going through my head (I don't know if it was from a song or anything) and the next thing I know is that I use my board to slow myself down. I was lying flat on my back for a minute, trying to get everything straight again, and I went down with broken confidence and a few sore spots. These kind of things don't help the mental state and I just didn't dare to do certain things anymore, making boarding far from comfortable, so that's when I called it a day. They went up for a few more runs, as I waited down at McCoy's restaurant in Beaver Creek again. Marieke went back to work (just boarding during your break, how cool is that?) and Fleur and I had some Starbucks while Bart and Kiki did some runs again. At the end of the day, the three of them went back up for some final action.

Saturday was action in Vail! One of the most famous winter sport places in the States, Vail provided us with big slopes, more beautiful people and the same great weather as the day before. In Vail, the mountain has a double use, as you can use the front side, and the back bowls. These are, as the name suggests, bowl shaped runs down, everything starting from all sides, and ending in a distinct point down the pointing, coming together. We started off with some rides on the front side, as the Back Bowls are usually blue and black slopes (medium to difficult). On our first time down the Back Bowls we used one of the catwalks to get down, very flat paved roads that go throughout the landscape getting you from A to B as well. These roads should be fun, but they're not. Not if you've got my beginner skills of going fast straight. Apart from not being able to steer well when there's no speed, I also had problems maintaining any speed at all, causing me to stop at certain points of the trail. That particular (called; Sleepytime, no kidding) trail took a lot, and I mean a lot of energy out of me. Luckily, like after each and after slope, there's a lift going up which allowed me to recover a little bit. Going down the Chopstix in China Bowl, making me practice those straight speeds and having a huge amount of fun while doing so (without falling) was not worth the Sleepytime ride, but it made for at least some of it. Lunch up on the mountaintop at Two Elk Restaurant (were 5 drinks, 5 cookies and a sandwich will get you to 58 bucks - without employee discount, that is). Did one or two more Bowl runs down and went to the front of the mountain again, finishing up the day.

Day 3 of snowboarding (day 4 of the vacation) brought us, early in the morning, to Vail again. Having sworn to not do anymore catwalks today, we still went to the Back Bowls. Found another catwalk down instead (which was better) and did more Chopstix runs down. Again, went to Two Elk to replenish energy, and had a great day there. Made our way up to another peak and went down Cloud Nine. The best slope I've gone down in all these days. On the top of that slope, the paths were surrounded by trees, and you could take about 5 directions because of all the groups of trees standing on the slope. Was a great sight, great feeling and made for a lot of fun, twisting and turning your way down. The second part of that slope was a steep kind of catwalk. Quickly going, neatly paved and broad enough for all kinds of traffic to go through. Had a great day in Vail, the last day with all of the girls. Or any of the girls, actually, since every single one of them had to work on monday. When we got home, we did some quick groceries, and Bart went to play Pancake Chef.

Day four found us back in Beaver Creek, were Bart and I took the same elevator up as the first day (Centennial), after we got another set of comped passes for 45$ each (instead of the 92 in Beaver Creek a day, or 97 in Vail, where we also got one free day, and one 45$ pass).
Did about four runs on the newly groomed way down from Cinch, as there were hardly any people on the slopes at the time, and they provide for a good warm-up. Did a small piece of black slope there, but had to really keep my brakes on there. After the fourth run we took a left, and followed the slopes and lifts we needed to get to Bachelor Gulch. Before we got there, we had another catwalk to take, and yes, it was a really bad one. Took the Bachelor Gulch Express there, up the mountain, and stayed left as much as we could, following SMS instructions from Kiki, who wanted to welcome us to her work with some hot drinks (coffee for Bart and Hot Chocolate for me). Her work was conveniently located straight off one of the slopes, allowing her to literally snowboard to work if she wanted to. Rested up, enjoyed the hospitality and the nice interior of the place, and went back snowboarding. We spent the day with earphones in one ear, having music downhill. A nice selection of It Dies Today, Lostprophets and Silent Descent being my soundtrack of the slopes. Around 2PM, going downhill, I made a weird fall on one of the blue slopes around Bachelor Gulch, during which I hurt myself quite bad (I think I might have fallen on my phone, which in turn bruised my ribs). I told Bart that was the end of my day, after I had remained in the snow for a minute. Took our time to make it back to Beaver Creek again, and I went to wait at McCoy's again, while Bart took his time for final runs down the mountain. That night it was pizza time at a place called Pazzo's. Which, truly, made the best pizza I've eaten (on a little sidenote, I hardly ever ate it before I got to the States).
After that we went for a little drink in ice cold Vail (it could get down to -5/10 Celsius, or 10 Fahrenheit if you want). During our stay in one of the bars, we were presented with two printed photos in magnetic holders. They are now placed on our fridge for everyone to enjoy. The photos are also up at this photobook you all know so well by now.

Day 6 found us picked up around 11AM by the CME again, taking us to Denver airport for a non-delay flight to Fort Lauderdale, stopping at Dallas this time around. Landed 20 minutes earlier than planned, around 11:20, and had Georgi pick us up.
Great vacation, great experiences, and absolutely amazing hosting from the girls over there. Everything was arranged, everything had a discount, and they were stunning company (and guides) over there. We joked about going there again before the season ends. If work didn't require all the time, and if I had the money, I probably would. They might be coming over to get some beach feeling with us in May instead, so we'll see.

One of my favorite tracks going downhill; Lostprophets - To Hell We Ride

More Running

2009-01-12T00:07:00.003+01:00

So, another week went by. Another post from my side. To keep the people updated that do not spend their time talking to me on MSN. Here's what happened since last sunday;
I had my standard days off again, Wednesday and Sunday. Monday and Tuesday were working days in which I did my evening shifts again. Tuesday, after work, I was hanging around in the kitchen area, and talked with Pedro and Yatha. Made myself some fries in the meantime, and made the deal to go running next morning. Come Wednesday, around 11, no Pedro, and he didn't answer his phone. So it was Yatha and myself going for the projected run. For those who want to live it with us, here's the image. Feel free to look it up on Google Maps yourself as well and zoom in and such;

Route; 1401 NE 9th Street - 901 NE 20th Ave - 505 N Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd - 2317 E Las Olas Blvd - 101 SE 15th Ave - 701 NE 15th Ave - 1401 NE 9th Street.
If you fill these in in Google Maps (find Route and Add Destinations) you'll get the entire route lined out for you. Per street address you can also see photos, I believe.
After that, we went to the bank (in Tina's car) before heading off to Sawgrass Mills. While at Wachovia for the banking stuff, we ran in to Marinka, who was with Tommy (inside the bank at the time), offering up to get something to drink at Borders on Sunrise. Borders is a big book shop which also sells CDs and DVDs, and has a coffee shop in there, which has a terrace on the water. It's on my way to work, but I've never been there before. This time around, I bought a lot of books from Baldacci in English print. I think everyone in the house (and someone at work) have gotten their hands on one of the copies so I'm spreading the virus!
At Sawgrass, we split. Yatha and I went one way, Marinka and Tommy the other. I went to look for some snowboard gear. Pants, jacket and some thermo clothing to keep me warm out there. Found everything I was looking for, basically. Yatha found everything he wasn't looking for, and ended up with 80 dollars worth of cosmetics. Wonderful stuff. I must add, the appearance of the sales lady definately helped. Gorgeous.
Went back to rendezvous point around 5:35, as we would be there at 5:45. Tommy and Marinka showed up a 6:10, with only 3 bags total, from nothing but the Hilfiger shop. How hard can things be? I remember people being there for 11 hours straight. It's not that hard to do it faster, despite the mall being HUGE.
On Friday, after work, I went to McSorley's, the Irish pub, with Yatha, Tony (MIT at the Pool), Nikolay (F&B Manager) and Tyler (bartender). Tony left early, but we ended up playing darts, a game of stones and sand, similar to bowls, or curling, I guess. I won 2 out of 3 games (teams changed every time), and I love that game a lot.
Before going home we stopped by Primanti Bros, one of the most famous pizza places in the city. I think they're open 24 hours a day. Had a good bite of Pepperoni pizza.
Saturday, Bart and I went to the ski shop on Sunrise here, to get out goggles, gloves and socks that we still missed. Got everything but the boards and helmets now, but we'll rent those in Colorado itself. Four more nights!
I did another round of running today, the same one. Did a round in 45 minutes, which felt really well. Wind in my back on the way home on Las Olas made it a lot easier.
Bart is cooking right now. He's chopping up potatoes, and making chicken with onions and herbs.
Almost all the fruit was for sale at Publix, so I have bought two bags of cherries, two boxes of strawberries and a bunch of apples (one bag of cherries is gone already). That's for desert.
I was going to help him, but made him cook as he bailed out on running with me today. He was supposed to make that run for the first time, but he made me go alone today (Yatha went Friday when I was working, and he's working right now).
When it's all done we'll be watching Leverage. We got three more episodes we haven't seen yet. So that's another two hours. Yesterday we watched Will Smith's latest, Seven Pounds. It's a good movie, but nothing spectacular and it has no replay value for me. It's a slow, dramatic, maybe even feel-good movie.

For some music, I have chosen Air Traffic's "No More Running Away"

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T00:17:00.003+01:00

Not even that long since my last post, I guess. I must say that I do find it increasingly difficult to keep this up. It's just being work and hanging around taking things easy instead of making the effort of sitting down and typing this all up.
Last blog was written the day before the concert, so I guess that same concert is where I'll be starting now. I had borrowed Tina's car again, as the last few concerts in the Culture Room had all proved difficult in terms of transportation on the way home. Having your own car solves that, but getting a parking spot on the club grounds itself was a challenge. A few minutes and someone left a spot, where I was quick enough to pick that up myself. Problem solved. Paid 10 dollars to get in, and found the stage to be set up nicely already.
First band that night was Karrigan [5,5/10] who tried to hard to look cool, sound great and just be something. The only reason they still managed to score this high was because their final song was catchy and good enough of a small boost. Next up where The Bigger Lights [9/10], who have recently "lost their drummer to the music industry", 3 days before the show only, actually, which caused them to play an acoustic set with the drums and some arrangements set up digitally. The vocals, even though high-pitched (not that weird, coming from a reasonably small and skinny guy), sounded amazing, the guitars weren't always that hearable, but the entire set sounded really good, and everyone seemed to love their performance a great deal. Then it was the turn to my band of the evening There For Tomorrow [9,5/10]. Played songs of their two EPs, and a song from their upcoming debut full-length album. The songs I knew were done perfectly, and their new material sounded even better to me. Can't wait for them to finish all that and get my hands on one. I had a little something after the show already, as I managed to catch one of the drumsticks from the band, which was more a face-saving reaction than an actual catch. If I wouldn't have caught it I would probably have taken it against my nose or something. Two girls in front of me who didn't catched it gave me a sincere "we hate you" after which I told them I wasn't giving away the stick. Waited for West Palm Beach's own Hey Monday [8/10] to come on stage. These Florida youngsters are going off to Asia soon to tour with none other than Fall Out Boy. First they had to play a hometown show in Fort Lauderdale. Their lead singer, Cassadee, did a nice acoustic song in the middle of the show, but other than that it never really appealed to me. Sure, they sound good (not as good as the other woman-fronted band Paramore) and they deserve to be supporting FOB later, but they didn't convince me. Or maybe I'm getting too old for their music, who knows!

Not too many days later it was time for a New Year's Celebration. I had the day off, and got Tina's car. Picked up Charlotte from her house, then went to Le Marche to pick up Tina and headed over to Marten's place, where Bart already was. Marten had some fireworks we set off after midnight, and apart from one other blast that's the only thing I've seen all night. Slightly disappointing in that aspect, and I guess this was the first time where I really missed home. Cabaret on TV (which I watched online today, so I caught up with that) and the infamous "oliebollen". And some proper countdown on TV as well, for instance. The night itself was overshadowed by Charlotte being drunk after two glasses and not wanting to go home at any time. She got terribly cold, wearing my sweater and Tina's scarf already, so Bart lifted her in the car and we got her home. Spent some time at Tina's place when Bart got his bike and I went to pick up Georgi from the party (he was at the hotel at the time).

The last two nights, I've been operating a small outside bar, right outside of Le Marche, where we had live music, performed by Juan Areco, an acoustic guitarist who's been in the business for a longtime. Look him up on Youtube or visit www.juanareco.com. He's a great and friendly guy, and a wonderful musician.

Other than that I've been working a lot, catching up on my TV series, and that's about all. Today I've also been spending some time on a Fruity Loops project, but I'm once again not sure if I'll ever finish it as a full song. I'll see what that becomes.

And for a song I've been playing a few times over the last week; "Untouched" by The Veronicas.

18 Days

2008-12-26T17:12:00.003+01:00

Yes, that's a new record. And no, I'm not proud of it. But yes, it really couldn't be any different.
Not only have I just finished an 8 day working streak, I've also been doing a lot of other things next to my work, which have generally reduced my time behind a computer.

What all happened in the last two weeks, I don't know anymore. Not all of it anyway. I lost track of time, but not of events in general. So here's a little update on what's been happening with over the weeks.

Pierre left for Paris for a week, to enjoy his vacation. During his absence, there was a Christmas Gala in the hotel, for all employees. As everyone else wanted to go or had other family obligations, Tina and I worked that night. A lot of pretty people were around, all dressed up as the code said, and still plenty of people came to see us in Le Marche that night. During the event they also handed out a few awards. Pierre became Manager of the Year in the hotel. By far the one who deserved it most, not to go break down any other people's achievements, but that guy is starting to become a legend in the hotel, and to me. I can not count the amount of times where random people came in, just asking for Pierre. Or leaving cards and presents for him.
Now, apparently, from the back I look slightly like him (same length, somewhat, same colour of hair from underneath the cap as well) so I've had people thanking me as well, until I turned around and they seemed to be looking for Pierre. Not quite sure if he is or isn't leaving in February, with all the visa stuff.
During that week off, it's been Tina, Blake and me running Le Marche operations. Pierre had tried to order everything we needed in advance, and everything went great. Had a streak of good days, in terms of sales, so everyone was working towards a goal those days. Was good to see that the operation is running reasonably alright.

Also, we've had company in the house here. First, Robin came by. One of Bart's friends, who is doing his internship in St. Louis. He had gotten a few consecutive days off and decided to book a flight and stay with us. In the 5 days he has seen Miami (as anyone is supposed to) and had a good time around here, as Bart was off for 4 of the 5 days. We played Guitar Hero with the three of us, and even had a day of vocals in the game. Singing along to Michael Jackson, 30 Seconds To Mars and Bart's favorites "Eye Of The Tiger" from Survivor, and Guns'N'Roses' "Welcome To The Jungle".
Georgi's parents have also been here for a while now. They're leaving today, which means I get my own bed back, in my own room, instead of being on an inflatable Queensize bed in Yatha's room. They've mostly been here, around the house, and Georgi took them to Key West and the Bahamas. They've seen Miami too.
Third visitor the last few days was Maarten. One of Yatha's friends from long ago. They've been friends for a while. Maarten was studying in Oklahoma for half a year, and planned this little stay before he had to go back to Holland in general. Stayed here for 5 days as well. Played soccer with us on Thursday, went to Miami, as well. Went shopping in Sawgrass, and saw a lot of clubs and bars.

Now I've also been to Sawgrass Mills last week, with Tina and Charlotte. The afternoon after we did Secret Santa in Le Marche where I miraculously got two presents instead of one. An iTunes gift card (perfect for me), and a miniature version of Guitar Hero (so amazing!). That afternoon we drove to Sunrise to visit the huge outlet mall. Shopping with two girls can go either way, and this was fairly the way I'm used to with my sister. Lot of stores, long searches, lot of deciding. I walked with them through a store, went to the Hugo Boss store next door, and was done well before they even started to stand in line to pay for something. And then Tina changed her mind after all, and went for just one of the two items she was holding. Exactly!
Anyway, it's been a lot of fun there. Seen a lot of pretty things around. Bought a few (three shirts, bracelet, sunglasses, in addition to the pants and blouse I bought at Macy's the other day already) as well. I drove us home, and got Tina's car to lend for the next morning to get to work again.
Last night, after Tina and I worked again (Christmas Day, all other American people wanted to celebrate something, somewhere) and after hanging at the bar for a while, where Yatha got us a drink and chef Craig gave us something to eat, I drove her home again, and she told me to take the car on my day off. I'm not quite sure where I'm going, if at all. Maybe I'll wait for Bart to get home later and look for some snowboard gear after all. I need to watch all the money with the expenses of the last weeks. Rent, phone, electricity and internet are also due soon.

Also, we've had Robin cooking here, with Bart. Like old times. And we owe another Asian meal prepared by Tina and Charlotte soon. Also went out with Marten, Maarten, Yatha, Bart, Tina, Charlotte and Mehdi, to my favorite P.F. Chang's for a change. Hadn't been there in a while.

I guess that sums it up nicely, the last few weeks. A lot of people around, a lot of things to do after work, and a lot of work to be done.
Got a concert tomorrow (5 bands, 10 dollars, among them There For Tomorrow and Go Audio), and I saw that Senses Fail is playing here in a few months. So here's a little video for their 7th single.

The Sound of Madness

2008-12-08T00:02:00.003+01:00

See, a new quick post again! But only because had one of the best days so far, going to West Palm Beach for the Buzz Bake Sale 2008. One day full of great music, and some fine Florida weather!

As you can see in the photo album of Buzz Bake, I took an early train to WPB (these things only go every two hours, during weekends, I remember why I loved train transport in Holland so much). This Tri-Rail had a little delay, leaving around 8:50 instead of 8:40 as it was intended to, and we didn't quite get there with just 10 minutes delay either. But hey, it was comfortable, and only 4 dollars. Try that for gasoline, anywhere. Even with these prices (well under 2 dollars for a gallon - which is about 3.8 liters).

The cab fare was a bit more off, as it costed me little over 30 bucks to get from the train station to the Cruzan Amphitheatre. Well over 9 miles as Google Maps mentioned. That's quite far from a train station still. But hey, everyone has a car here, so who needs anything close to a station, right?

The morning started out with Sponge [7,5/10], playing at 11:00. With a nice sun on the crowd, they played a few nice songs, keeping everybody happy. I was reasonably up front as my favorite band of that day would be playing afterwards.
Favorite band, they were, but the title for Band of the Day definately does not go to Anberlin [8/10]. What can I say? They played the songs I expected, they entertained the crowd a lot (judging the amount of crowdsurfers around, there was enough energy. Or maybe they just wanted to release some hormones in general) but there was something off with the guitars. There seemed to be too much noise on them, almost drowning out their own solo in one of the songs during the set. The vocals were amazing, as good as I know Stephen can deliver, and KNate did an awesome job drumming through the day, but the set-up of guitars just made all a bit less perfect than it should have been.
Went to the Pick The Band stage, where small bands played, and saw two songs from Transmit Now from afar. Didn't really caught my attention, and honestly I wasn't involved enough to rate them. Might be unfair. Back to the second stage to see my favorite pianist. The man I adore for ever leading (and writing for) Something Corporate. His new outfit Jack's Mannequin [8/10], put up a solid performance. There was nothing much exciting about it though, and the music in general never touched the greatness of the music portrayed on the Something Corporate DVD I have back at home. One of the better things about Andrew, next to his energetic piano playing and movements, was that he told people to "in case you missed the message, take your aggression elsewhere as we're not that type of band".
After that, off to the main stage, where I had a seat, rather than a place on the big grass field behind everything else. Sat down and enjoyed music from The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus [9/10]. These guys played a great show. A really proper display of their diverse qualities. Great high-pitched vocals changed with good grunts (all from the same man), and an amazing cover of Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot". Heard two of their main songs, Don't You Fake It and Face Down during the setlist too. Stage activity could have been better, or maybe it's been because of the half-filled seating area that it just wasn't all that impressive in the end, but they have nothing to complain about, music wise.
Up next was Saving Abel [5/10], a hard rock outfit complete missing their chance to make me a fan. Their song "Addicted" is nice to hear, but having a show consisting of songs that all sound alike, with little interaction and a guitarist that looked like he could get an orgasm on stage due to his own guitar playing... Just not that good, really.
Back to the Second Stage to catch a bit of Skindred [6,5/10]. Maybe I have a biased opinion on this one, but from where I stood, the music (except for guitars) wasn't that amazing, and the band tried to play the audience, more than they tried to play their music. Went away after 3 songs to catch some more Main Stage action.
By the time I got there, Flobots [6,5/10] had taken the stage. They played a combination of music I've loved before. Guitars, drums and rap. They even added in a violin, I've also seen that work on stage. However, nothing about the show, except for the violin play, really got to me. Hardly anything good to say about the sounds coming out of the other instruments too. I stuck around because there was not much else to see, and now I can admit I've seen them live and form an opinion, but I wasn't that impressed here.
After that, I got some company on the seats as my neighbours for the night, entered to watch a few bands before their main band Avenged Sevenfold would play. They witnessed Hawthorne Heights [7,5/10] put up a good show. I think I remember seeing them with 3 guitarists about two years ago, on Lowlands, and honestly, I thought they sucked at the time. This second chance, however, was one during which they changed my mind about them. With only two guitarists and a nice display of music (though the vocals, for some reason, just can't appeal) they earned their score. The guitarist (and screamer) missing this time, died of drug overdose a little over a year ago.
Next up was a band I know through their vocalist contributing on a song for a Spider Man movie, where he sings the theme together with Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger. Josey Scott, lead singer of the band Saliva [6,5/10] apparently gained more weight since then, and came up on stage, dressed in black and slight obesity. One of their guitarists seemed completely wasted/fucked up, as he poured a bottle of wine/champagne all over him at the start of the concert, making moves that might have worked for Ozzy Osbourne someday. The clean vocals weren't always up to standard and other than that I also didn't really like the music overall. Their ending song, Your Disease, is the song I knew before their show, and even that one failed to really impress.
Up next, one of the bands I really anticipated seeing. Atreyu [9/10]. I think they owe their score to their music more than their vocals or presence today, or maybe even the fact that I know all songs. The music was good, the vocals were as they should be (though the clean vocals from screamer Alex are not something he should focus on) and the crowd loved it too.
My band of the day was Shinedown [10/10]. With a vocalist/frontman that earned himself a spot in my Top 3 of Stage Presence Musicians (alongside Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl and 30 Seconds To Mars' Jared Leto), everything looked and sounded great, and the interaction between songs were nothing short of great entertainment. The sea of lighters and cell phones that he commanded looked really, really amazing, and the song "45" they played during this event, was really good. I've been listening to their last album "The Sound of Madness" the entire day now. If anyone can catch these guys playing their city/state/country, they should definately do so. Amazing band.
As amazing as they were, as amazing the act of Avenged Sevenfold [10/10] was. The man responsible for lifting the score from [9,5/10] to [10/10] was lead guitarist Synyster Gates (Brian Haner Jr.), who single-handedly amazed me. Up until the time where he took the entire stage alone, to mess with his guitar, play an amazing solo, and then play the introduction to the next song before the rest of the band came up again, the band had been performing perfectly. The music was amazing, the vocals nothing short of extraordinary (both screams as well as clean) and the band was enjoying a marvellous lightshow aiding their conquest of fans all over the place. In addition, I think I've never seen that many people with band merchandising in one single show. Let alone on a full concert day. Avenged Sevenfold (or A7X) can't get much bigger than they are right now.

Next concert for me, seems to be December 27. There For Tomorrow, Go Radio! and three other bands. I'll report back at the time.

Here is the first single taken of Shinedown's 2008 album, The Sound of Madness.
This one is called "Devour", and they opened with this song.

Brand New Day

2008-12-03T17:46:00.003+01:00

Okay, I think I seriously need to adjust the goals for my every-3-days-posting-schedule. There are a few things about it. First of all, I mainly just work a lot, and in between working days I'm usually watching movies with the guys at home, sleeping, or being around town, doing groceries, shopping for other things, or just doing nothing behind my computer. Every now and then, there's a nice little change in that pattern. Every now and then, something worth mentioning happens, and when that does, I'll describe it nicely.

Last week, I had been working for on all days except for wednesday and saturday. I was supposed to be off on sunday, but Pierre wanted to switch, and as I had nothing else standing in the way, I accepted. Even though that meant I was about to start working morning shifts. That wasn't actually the worst thing, since last monday and tuesday (yesterday) I was scheduled for morning shifts as well. And doing a closing shift (getting home after midnight) followed by a morning shift (waking up at 6) isn't really the best thing ever. I never really have trouble waking up, there's a certain discipline to that. But after I drove my bike to work and changed, there is a little something in my body that does start to notice the lack of sleep. I mean, I am used to my evening shifts, meaning I get to sleep at 2AM or so, and I'll be waking up between 9 and 10 in the morning, usually. Try to get from that rhythm and start going to bed at 11PM, while trying to get up at 6. I didn't take it too well (but I'm still here). Usually things get better after 9AM though, when I've been around for a bit, had my chance to drink some tea and have had some proper time to use my brain during talks with colleagues and customers, as well as doing some chores. For today, I'm back to my evening shifts, and I talked to Pierre about it. They want him to work more morning shifts (as most of the managers are there during that time, so they can discuss things and help eachother out etc.) and he didn't see a big problem in letting me keep my evening shifts overall. But since mornings and evenings are so different he wants to make sure I don't lose touch with what's going on during the early hours. Can't blame him for that. Today I'll even start at 4PM by the way.

Which brings me to the following. I can now spend my time on my newly acquired PS3. Last Friday was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving (during which I worked, I only ate a small piece of turkey and didn't notice anything else of the day, in case anyone wondered). During this Friday, a lot of things have special discounts (sometimes related to the time of day; more discounts during morning hours etc). I've had people in stores, helping me, who had been working since 3AM. That's how it is, apparently.
I got myself that PS3 with Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour. With the drum kit and microphone. Total of 2 guitars, a drumkit and a microphone. Four people living in this house. You do the math!
Bart and I have been playing songs together for quite a bit now. It's a lot of fun. Yatha still needs some practice, and Georgi hasn't attempted anything yet.
Next to the games (I also bought Need For Speed ProStreet for 18 bucks last week), I love the network feature. I installed the PS3 on the network, and I can now watch the series that I have on my laptop, over the network, through the PS3, on the big TV in the living room. Wonderful stuff!

In other news, they also granted my request for days off, which means I will be going snowboarding in Colorado from January 15 to 20. Also, I purchased my tickets for this saturday's mini-festival in West Palm Beach. I'll be seeing Anberlin, Jack's Mannequin, Atreyu, Avenged Sevenfold, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Shinedown and 7 other bands that day. I'll be on a chair for the entire day, in an amphitheatre setting. No idea how that's going to be, but we'll find out! I'll bring two memory cards for my camera so I'll be sure to catch some songs on video.

It might be ten days again, who knows. Keep checking back, as I definately won't give up on this completely.

Here's The Drama Club with Brand New Day (just a still, no video, but it's for the music).

Can't Be Missed If You Never Go Away

2008-11-23T23:21:00.004+01:00

I just haven't had the time post a blog. Or, I had, but just never prioritised it for some reason! The last one I wrote was the blog after seeing Hollywood Undead, on a wednesday off, when Marten took Yatha to go to West Palm Beach or Miami.

The day after I was MOD. It's been a really nice day for me. I was in the lobby, welcoming people, having new arrivals behind me while I got people at the Front Office to look up their information before the guest even reached the desk. Helping out with the Valet guys, driving cars to the parking spots or picking up cars for leaving guests. Helping arriving guests to bring their luggage to their room. Checking up on people in and around the lobby, and ending with a dinner in the Ilios restaurant. My steak came a bit late so I had some small items in between. I ate diver scallops and actually liked it good enough. Started out with a great "Sour Green Apple Salad", then got the scallops with chickpeas and some beef with mashed potatoes, before I got my wonderful steak. Ended it with a chocolate hazelnut tart, but I didn't have the room to finish that completely anymore, after also drinking a liter of water and two glasses of lemonade.
Wrote my MOD report and went home nicely on time, around 10:30. Such a change! No overtime those days at all. Apparently I was the last one to do the MOD shift as a non-executive manager. They change the setup now, and Bart and Yatha won't be MOD (at least for a few months).

That Friday and Saturday I had to work from 2PM to close. It's been a while and I can't remember if I actually did anything special those days. I must say I really love closing down though. Sunday was my day off, because I had to work on my regular thursday off.

Monday I started at 3PM because I had been making too much overtime and they need to think of costs too. Blake is off every sunday and monday, so I didn't get to close with him, but with Kara instead. It's a different way of working, but for some reason people are really active in cleaning up after themselves at the end of the shift instead, probably because they can't leave otherwise. Tuesday I worked with Blake again. He closes with me most of the time. He's doing culinary school and goes to school most mornings, to then do an evening shift with me alongside of it. He used to be the one always closing down before Tina and I came in as supervisors. Now we're closing together, usually 4 days a week. And we've got the division of tasks down nicely, and I think we form a good team. Sometimes there is a little tension, because of the way I request things from him. I sometimes just tell him what to do instead of asking nicely, but I'll work on that. Most of the time we just joke around and talk about women and share anecdotes about whatever else.
Wednesday was my day off. Yatha was also at home, and Bart came home early as he always does morning shifts. We went to the barber shop where we met up with Marten, who had already taken a seat. Marten had taken his laundry with him to wash at our place, and we hung around for a bit. Decided to not go out for dinner as planned, but just eat at home, simple. We made the plan to go and see the new James Bond, Quantum of Solace, but Marten had already seen it the day before and took it easy at home instead. When Bart, Yatha and I got there at the cashier, I mentioned not having any cash on me, asking if they could pay for me and I'd repay them (and I asked in English, for some reason). The lady behind the counter then told us to walk on and just watch the movie, if we wouldn't tell her manager. While walking up the stairs we thought that there was a catch and we'd be busted upon entering the theatre hall or so, but nothing like that. We watched the movie for free there, and got back by bicycle again. The movie was the worst 007 I've ever seen. The first few scenes were brilliantly shot, on locations that were simply amazing. After that, the story got somewhat lost, there was no real action anymore, except for overdone explosions near the end. I never heard the sentence "The name is Bond, James Bond" or anything about his shaken martini. I only saw the Aston Martin in the first scene, and the Bond girl wasn't all that spectacular either. The villain was annoying at best. After all we were glad we didn't pay the 8,75 a person to see it.

Thursday was my day off, at first, but I ended up switching shifts with Pierre, doing another morning shift for the first time in weeks (and I have none planned for next week either), getting this sunday off. However, wednesday night Tina had called me to switch shifts, as she'd like her morning shifts so she could spend time with her boyfriend, who is here for three weeks. He's on internship in South Africa (or he works there for a while now) but spends his time here now. I accepted gladly, being able to do another closing shift with Blake. Got some more understanding and did a little paperwork on the side of it, increasing the communication ease. Especially with her boyfriend here and other people wanting to leave early at times, this should help us out for a bit. Pierre made another sheet for communication that completes it all.
Friday was another evening shift with Blake. Nothing really special happened there.

Unlike yesterday. Blake had switched with Garvin, as Garvin missed another day, and Blake could use some time off. Steven was there too, until 8:30, and Ram was in the kitchen (he recently replaced Maria, who went to work for roomservice, and oh, his name isn't Ram, but something really long starting with Ram. He's from India). Steven left when it was still really busy that night. We got swamped with people that night. For the first time in a long while, the first time I can remember, we had better hours at night than in the morning. When Steven left I called upstairs and got Nikolay on the phone, asking him to bring me a steward to clean our plates, and take the cardboard and garbage. Niko brought him down personally, seeing our busy state, and helped us out by handing out gelato (ice cream) samples to guests and handing out plates and cups when we needed it. Ram did an amazing job, making 25 pizzas that night, with 5 at the same time in the oven at one point.
Garvin stayed with me until almost 12 even though his sister was waiting for him outside. Been really busy, and we spent a lot of time cleaning and restocking, as we needed everything in perfect shape for the morning shift, as there were a lot of check-outs coming, and they mostly all want coffees and pastries in the morning. The steward also stayed with us until well after 11, cleaning almost everything for us, as he's supposed to. As of late we had some problems with the stewards and their planning and work, but this saturday everything worked out.
Spent another 3o minutes sending out e-mails and reports to the people interested, and headed home at 12:15. The restaurant had been very quiet, and for the first time in weeks, Yatha was home well before I was.

Today, Georgi and I went to do some small shopping before he had to go to work. We bought a small little table, big enough for four plates for dinner, or two laptops like Yatha and I have now. We're working on our project proposal (if Ale reads this; it's almost done, I'm just waiting for some more information from work, and Pierre's approval). I also bought some binders for my personal paperwork. Receipts, statements and other paper, all organized soon. Tonight, my personal menu consists of oven-baked fries and chicken, with some ice cream and red grapes for dessert.
Most days at work I eat Le Marche-made pizzas. The fresh cheese pizzas with pepperoni are just so amazing.

For a song I picked something that is nothing new in terms of a discovery, or something that fits the week or so, but something I just love and listened to for a few days before I moved to Florida.
Dead Poetic - Narcotic

Oh, and yes! There are new pictures in my album. A map with iPhone photos, a map with photos of myself, and two maps with Culture Room pictures.

Replacements

2008-11-12T20:54:00.002+01:00

So yeah, I was supposed to see Puddle of Mudd and RED on Friday, among others. Not so much though, as not too long after I posted the other blog, I got an e-mail from Livenation, the organiser, that the show was cancelled. Looked on Livenation.com, Puddle of Mudd's website, but found no reason for the cancellation. Still had my morning shift at work (I have concluded that I like evening shifts better, by a long shot) and then then afternoon off. Georgi was also at home, and I ran into Marten in the hallway at work earlier, accepting his offer to go bowling that night. Concert being replaced by two games of bowling with a few acquaintances. Money wise it saved me a lot, that evening, but I'd have loved to see those bands. Who knows if that will happen again?

Saturday I worked my beloved evening shift again, and it had been a busy day already. That night things stayed steady, and shortly after 10 (on weekends we want to stay open to 11 instead) Pierre came in and told me we were close to a milestone revenue mark. Only 65 dollars to go. I told him I'd stay open until we hit that point just for the sake of getting there. A few minutes before 11 we were still 6 dollars short, and Blake and I had already agreed on buying a pizza for us to share if noone else showed up. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the pizzas are really good) someone came to save us by buying a glass of white wine. Closed the restaurant shortly after that, still having a bit of cleaning and a lot of counting to do. There was a woman on the chairs outside, sitting there all the time, looking depressed, with her wine, and she wouldn't say or do a thing. When we were almost done she came in, asking for a refill of her glass of wine. She really seemed to want (or need) it so I gave her one still. Even though the cashier was closed etc. I guess I felt sorry for her. Saw her again on sunday, somewhat in the same state. I should've told her alcohol is not the solution, but I don't like arguments on my work that much.

Sunday was another busy day at work, where we got reasonably close to Saturday's milestone, making it a really nice weekend for everyone to enjoy, looking at the figures. There's still a few things to do concerning the organisation in the restaurant, task-definition-wise. As I got home around 1AM that sunday, I had to go straight to bed as I had to start at 7 on monday, all for the sake of being able to go see Hollywood Undead. You guessed it, going to bed straight from work is hard with a lot of things on your mind, but I fell asleep fast enough anyway. Had a tiring day at work (and indeed I don't like morning shifts that much, because of the nature of the work, all the small coffees and snacks all the time. Just simple production. No time for talks and walking around, checking, doing other assignments). When I got home I tried to do some work on the laptop, but I went to sleep for 1,5 hours instead. Really needed that to get through the night.
Went to Culture Room as Georgi brought me by car. Went in at 7:20 when the doors opened at 7, and was expecting some band to start playing soon enough anyway. Didn't happen. Instead I became the witness of a real bitchfight. Something along the lines of "you stole my best friend's boyfriend" kind of argument with a few punches and scratches here and there. Only to find her hang around the neck of two other guys within the next 5 minutes. Some people don't really get it.
The only support of the night was TV Kills Kids [6,5/10], a local South Florida band, making hiphop, I guess. Electronic samples, guitar and bass guitar, two rappers, one screamer and one singer. That's about what the set-up was. The vocals (except for the guy who sang on only 2 out of 7 songs) were bad. Real bad. But for some reason the guys really managed to make a party out of things, even though the crowd didn't always act like that. I had fun watching it anyway, and some of the electronic music and beats were actually good material.
Headliner of the night was Hollywood Undead [8/10], six guys (and the drummer) making hiphop, with guitars and other electronic samples in those songs. The weirdest thing about it, is that it's 6 tattood white guys. And not just gangster tattoos, but the colourful metal tattoos (on their singer) that I know from people like Oli Sykes (see; http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f188/eskimos15/OMG_Oli_Sykes_faints--large-msg-116.jpg). The music was great, however, the stage presence was cool, the audience loved it, and there was nothing wrong with the music or their choice of songs. It's just that they played too few songs for my liking, as it took around an hour only, if they even got to that mark. Loved seeing them though, and it was well worth the money again, even skipping diner with my placement mentor and a bunch of the Dutch interns.
Took a cab home and went to bed after doing some computer stuff and some Fruity Loops.

Tuesday I had to work at 2 again. My lovely evening shift, closing down the restaurant. We had three people to close, so I had some time to work with Pierre, discuss some things for the upcoming busy weeks, and learn a few things about purchasing. I saw the cost of simple products like lids to close our coffee cups, and I realised how much improvement there still is. Will be my dissertation about cost control in usage, storage and purchasing. Closed at 10, got home at 11. Waited for Yatha to get home to rent a car at the airport, but then Marten cancelled our trip to Busch Gardens because he wasn't energetic enough for a day like that. Took a cab home, didn't rent a car as I didn't want to split the costs in three only (and we had a little credit card issue for Yatha).

This morning Marten wanted to go somewhere else instead, rented a car on his own and then came by. The options provided weren't that attractive to me because it was already 1PM, and few of the attractions would close at 4 already, or 6PM. Not my thing to waste money on that, and have the rest of the day gone.
Currently working on something for school, while writing this blog.

Tomorrow I'll be Manager On Duty (MOD) meaning I get to check the entire hotel, eat in the restaurant and welcome people that check in, all in my own suit (no ties, as it's too warm here). Sunday is my next day off, with a blog again.

Hollywood Undead can wait (I didn't upload my videos yet but don't know if I will), so here is She Wants Revenge - Replacements (live);

Duplicity

2008-11-07T03:47:00.002+01:00

Lovely how I still managed to fit that word in. I just have to share the following song with you all. I received their physical CD in the mail today, and I love them. Such a wonderful, unique sound. I had to get this album and support these new guys. There are Enter Shikari, Blood Stain Child and Disarmonia Mundi influences in this all. So yes, it's hard and it has a lot of electronics in there.

Only 7,000 plays on Youtube. But they should become HUGE. I don't know what else. I'll be listening to them for a while to come.

Anyway, duplicity as their song is called. Duplicity in my days off. For some reason, the past four weeks have been weeks in which my days off have always coincided with meetings, trainings or other lovely events that require me to be at the hotel. Today I was Journey Ambassador, which basically means I stand in the lobby, greeting people and asking how their stay was, and helping out anyone with a problem, like people with an airconditioning issue in a meeting room. Was a lot of fun, for just over two hours, and then I took one of the beach towels, and headed to our lovely Atlantic Ocean. Took off everything I didn't want to get wet, and headed into the water. Only three strokes away I heard a whistle and got directed to the shores again. Didn't notice a thing about no other people being in the water when I did. Got a small story about a "big fish situation" and it would take a few more minutes before the water would be clear. Never seen anything that looked like a shark, but I guess they'd rather be safe than sorry. Enjoyed some sun for a while then, and headed into the water for 25 minutes after that. Really clear water today, and I forgot to bring my goggles. Next time!
Headed home and found my Duplicity CD in the mail. Then took some time off, watching more TV series (you got that right) and went off to play soccer in Hollywood again, like almost every single week. Pedro picked us up at home, like most other weeks again as well, and we had a nice and intensive match. Lost big time (I hate playing against either Pedro or Volkan, those guys keep almost everything out of the net, damn goalkeepers), 23-12 or something. Was fun though! And good for team spirit with people in the hotel, and your physique.

Talked to both my mum and dad on Skype again, and got my webcam to work again! If anyone else, reading this, misses me, feel free to set up something of an appointment or so. I'll have time every now and then.

Yesterday was another day off, and I made some nice music in Fruity Loops again. Something nice and trancy (maybe I should be in a "trancemetal" band too) that I hope to finish soon enough, so I can share it again.

Tomorrow I have a morning shift, 7 to 3, as I had planned a Puddle Of Mudd/RED concert as you know. The concert got cancelled yesterday, however. Monday, Hollywood Undead then.
Wednesday, one-day cruise to the Bahamas, very likely to happen :)

That's it for now! See you later!

Sleeperstar

2008-11-04T16:50:00.002+01:00

And yes, in a way that would be me, having to work a lot of evening shifs, meaning I get to wake up somewhere around 9:30 these days. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? It's also the name of a band whose album I've just purchased through iTunes. My thoughts just wandered off to them lately as I had heard their songs through purevolume.com a long while ago. Their music is so amazing, and I just couldn't seem to get hold of a digital copy so I went ahead to the iTunes store and buy the 7 song album/EP called "To Speak, To Love, To Listen". I'll share their video for Disengage later in this blog. After I've covered the last few days of work in here.

I ended last time with my thursday off. Called my mum and dad over Skype, and watched some TV series and just stayed indoors to rest up. It was my only real day off and with a strak of working days coming up I wanted to take it easy. Took some time to pay my bills and that was it. Somehow I keep saving money from every paycheck nicely, so I guess that's a good thing. Feels good anyway. That thursday I also went to Galleria with Yatha, as we had to pay the check for the monthly rent. Stumbled upon Marinka and had a little drunk and something to eat at Starbucks.

Friday I worked from 12 to 8:30 and I was supposed to go to a birthday/Halloween party, but I had been feeling bad throughout the day. Head and stomach not working with me, so I decided to stay home and go to bed reasonably early. Watched another episode that night and went to sleep before anyone else got home.
On Saturday I had to start at 10, and got off at 6:30, got home and found Bart home again. Went to the Publix for some shopping and I made myself some chicken sandwiches for dinner while we went to watch a movie called Kush. Movie didn't have enough in it for us to want to finish it. So we turned it off after 45 minutes or so. As you might expect, I watched TV episodes instead as I am still behind on quite a few things. Starting to get even with a lot of things now though.
Sunday morning was a lazy one, I worked a bit on a project I have concerning the storage we have up on the fourth floor, and as Pierre said it, that storage is going to be "my baby". Controlling it, purchasing the items we need there, and organise and file everything. It's going well so far.
Yesterday I made a floorplan for the storage, pointing out where all the items are if someone goes up there and they're not too familiar with it. Will also put up some signs on the wall, with the categories on there. Yesterday was a day from 2 to 10 for me. We're opened from 7 to 10 these days instead of 6 to 11. Was really weird to close that early, in a way. And not everyone knowing about it, it also gave some awkward moments after 10. It was really slow yesterday though, and I got to send two people home early. I don't think any of them had a problem with that. Slow days like are more tiring than the ones where you run around constantly.

Will be working from 2 to 10 all days but Friday (when I work from 7 to 3, and then go to a concert from Puddle of Mudd, with RED and two other bands in Pompano Beach). Got Wednesday and Thursday off. Don't know what I'll do just yet. I'm thinking beach...

Sleeperstar - Disengage

Dredg! <3

2008-10-30T04:53:00.003+01:00

Sunday, as mentioned in my last blog, I had to work form 3 to close. Which is usually anywhere between 11 and 12, as the doors close at 11, but there's some more work to be done after that.
Had a pretty decent, fun night, in which I was responsible for a lot of things as Pierre went out the door (that man works more hours a week than any doctor would recommend). Worked with Pierre and chef Dana and had a nice and relaxed night in which I could do every daily task I needed to do while we were still open, and did some managerial work after the doors were closed. Got home shortly after midnight and went to bed straight away as, on monday, I had to work at 10, and the AT&T guy would come over between 8 and 12.

Luckily, he did before I went to work, and I set him up with what he needed to do, and I headed for work. Did a little 10 to 6:30 (PM, I'm sorry if I start confusing people, but I've gotten used to that, I guess) which was nothing special. Just there working with everyone, doing nothing special apart from a little administrative task for Pierre, and headed home. Set up the internet at our place, which took me long enough, but for a first try, setting up the entire connection and network, figuring it all out, I think I did a nice job. I managed to get it secured with a key, so that it's just for our use. And the best thing, I'm the only one who can change that key, so if people in the house really piss me off, I'll just disconnect them by installing a new key. I'm pretty sure they don't even read this :D
We hired a movie in the meantime, The Grand, but we didn't even finish it. Such a lousy documentary-like movie with all the wrong jokes in it. I think the guys hired another one to see instead but I went upstairs, enjoying my internet, and trying to catch up with all the TV series I missed over the weeks. I still have a lot to go at.
Wanted to head to bed early enough as well.

And I did that because tuesday I had to work from 7 to 3:30 (I keep writing tot instead of to, the Dutch version of the word). The day went by nice and easy, opening up was a bit hard, as it was quite busy, as most mornings are (that's what you get for having Starbucks coffee, partially, I guess) and with an even busier lunchtime, where we got a lot of guests from a meeting that went on break to visit us. I don't think that sentence really rolls as it should, but fine. I had a nice day at work and later had a good time going to a concert, with Mark, one of the bellmen.
Went to see Dredg who were supported by Judgment Day and Division Day.
The first band was Judgment Day [8,5/10] who have stringmetal.com as their website. It's a trio, consisting of one cellist, a drummer, and someone playing the violin. As they've said before, none of their songs contain guitars, but these guys are so incredibly skilled (especially the cellist blew me away) that it almost sounds like there are. Was a great, great thing to see live, but I could never to listen to this on CD, in another setting than seeing them on stage. Also, their drummer started out really weak to me, and seeing them one time has been enough for me.
Wonderful experience and really unique thing to witness, but that's it.
Next up was another local (California) friend from the Dredg guys, Division Day [7,5/10] who apparently played their last show with Dredg there at Culture Room. Dredg came up on stage to have a shot of alcohol with the guys in the middle of their set, and honestly, from that point on, they got better. The last three songs from the band really impressed me, but wasn't enough to make me think any better of the start of the concert, which, in a way, was a wall of noise to me without anything outstanding pounding my eardrums.
Then the band where I came from. I had been planning to see them live at Pinkpop (I think) two years ago, but that plan never worked out. This night I had to spend only 15 bucks on a ticket to see them instead of 60 euros to get to the festival to see them though. And it was closer too!
Dredg [10/10] really swept me off my feet in all ways. Drummer going off-record with some of his beats, but they all fitted the songs perfectly, and on top of that, he also played piano with one hand, and drummed with the other, on two of the songs. Those things just impress me.
The guitarist, who does all the magnificent work on all beautiful Dredg albums, really hit everything and it sounded all great to me. The bass just completed the perfect music for me, and the range of vocalist Gavin was amazing, live. They played 50/50 songs from El Cielo and Catch Without Arms, and added two new songs, which also sounded amazing, and really Dredg. Best show I've seen here, and among the best I've seen, entirely.

That's also mainly what I've done on wednesday, after I had a reunion with the people from my orientation day, where they tested the knowledge we had about the resort and such, and could say anything we want in regards to the training. Not many improvement points were mentioned while I guess there clearly are more, for some reason. It's also a bit of a personal thing, because when I agreed with someone, Georgi did oppose. Those little things just make it hard to come up with a general training standard for us.
Got updated on Prison Break and Californication completely, and started watching Heroes too. I hope I'll get even on Heroes today before we'll play soccer tonight.

Just had a talk with my dad on Skype, and will talk to my mum like that later. Should be nice :)

Here is my Dredg live footage!

Keyboard Hero

2008-10-26T04:35:00.002+01:00

It's been only two days since my last entry, can you imagine?
That night we didn't go out to play soccer as expected, as we couldn't get hold of anyone to drive us there, and apparently noone was in possession of our phone numbers or something, so that's something we need to work on for coming weeks (I'm off again this thursday so I'll play).

Friday, which was yesterday (feels so good to say that) I had a regular working day from 12 to 8:30. Pierre was there all the time with us, and after I did a little project concerning names and login codes, I was working behind the counter for a bit. Also did an order to get things from one storage to another for easy access purposes. Pierre divided tasks today. Things he now does daily, or weekly, and wants Tina and me to take over in the coming weeks. Tasks such as scheduling and payroll for Tina, and things concerning storage (that's going to be my main project), purchasing and marketing on my side. It's really good to get some more responsibility on the side of the regular work. There are more things Pierre wants us to take care of in the future and I can honestly say I look forward to those things.
At the hotel, there also was this Quince party. Anyone who's ever seen MTVs My Super Sweet 16 knows what I'm talking about. Another extravagant party, probably for a rich spoiled someone. I honestly would like to state, for the record, that if I'll ever have a daughter, reaching that age, demanding a party like that just because others have it too, and we can afford it anyway, I'll be in need of some serious self-control. Honestly, even though it was yesterday night, I can't really remember what I did.

This morning I woke up around 11, and I found Yatha watching the movie "War", which was a good one, for a change. Usually, since we're out of most big titles, we rent weird things noone has seen yet, and they mostly suck, like tonight's "Banshee". It wasn't horrible at all, but nothing about the movie could ever be nominated for whatever award there is. Before Yatha went to work, I took him to AT&T to join in on our Family Plan and have him get a new phone as well. Unlike Georgi and myself, Yatha decided to take a BlackBerry to use. It's a nice little thing too, but we're content with our iPhones and I wouldn't trade mine if I could.
After that Yatha stayed at home before work, while I went for a run around Victoria Park, almost immediately followed by a swim in our pool. A few lanes of free stroke, a few schoolstroke and a few backstroke, before I started enjoying a bit of fun, heading back to watch "War" and see Yatha off as he went to work.

Had two hours alone at home, finishing the movie and eating some minor things. When Bart and Georgi came home, I first went to Public with Bart to rent a movie, and then had Georgi drive me off to BestBuy, where I bought this keyboard for my laptop!

Loving it very much so far, and after getting a reply from the great Ronald Jenkees himself, I was dedicated to keep making my own tunes. I'll share two of his AWESOME videos at the end of the blog.
I'll try to finish the song I started today, and have it uploaded soon enough again, with some keyboard workings on there. I love it that, whenever there's another program running, the keyboard always finds its way to Fruity Loops straight away. So when I'm typing this and I would also hit a note on the keyboard, I would get the sound next to it. I hope that made sense.
Tomorrow I need to work from 3 to 12, somewhat, so there will be time for another swim, and maybe a run. No movies tomorrow I guess. Monday, the internet should FINALLY be fixed (and otherwise I'm changing providers, no excuses possible). Tuesday the Dredg concert, and after that you'll get your blog again.
Here's Ronald;

In My Memory

2008-10-24T04:01:00.002+02:00

The last few days have been about memories. Trying to forget old ones, from a long time ago, those that make you think twice before going to bed, and trying to hold on to more recent ones, for those are the best you've ever had. I always used to say that the past holds no value for me, as it is only been something that has shaped me up to what I am today, and what I can do tomorrow. However, recently I found that things that might soon be in the past, in certain ways, might be the best thing that I've ever stumbled upon, and it would be too less honor to just say it shaped me, and forget about it. It's still more interesting to see if the future can be different from what I think my recent past will start to look like. Enough poetry already.
Let me share Tiesto's "In My Memory" before I move on to describing my days. After the video there's another thing I need to share though. It's about something back in Holland that also kept running through my head and I've been meaning to share that with you for a long time as well.

About the Dutch thing. Before I left for Florida, I saw these banners on the streets, linked to the annual campaign for safe driving as "the schools have started again". This year they had the somewhat remarkable slogan which said "The schools have started again. Drive with your heart." I'm not quite sure, but I think there were red accents in the banner to link your thoughts to a heart and such. Ever since I saw that first banner I had been thinking if anything like that would actually provide people with a reason to be careful in traffic around residential (and educational) areas. Think about it; when would you be a better drive. When using your passionate heart, or rational mind? There you go.
Change the campaign, because you're not making much sense. Speaking of campaigns (and here I go back to the States again, as it is election time as you know), I'd like to point out a little thing about the Obama campaign. Or one of the adverts I heard on the radio. It was a commercial with different people stating reasons to vote for Obama (or NOT vote for McCain). Most of these reasons were about financial issues, and actually, multiple were about the gas prices. Now I wonder if anyone is actually paying any attention in here. People are complaining about the gas prices in the States. We recently filled up Georgi's Audi, which holds just over 60 liters, for the ridiculously low price of 53 dollars. Try filling up a tank that size, anywhere in France, Holland or Germany, and see how hard that kicks your pennies out of a wallet.
We don't have cable in here, and at my work, the televisions are muted, so I can never hear actual speeches or TV comments, and I just have to do with some commercials and the nutshelled internet articles mostly, but if that's what they're all about, I wonder what makes people move here. Can't remember hearing much about education or healthcare. All I remember is gas prices, paying your bills, stop working at a reasonable age and have a proper retirement fund.
I'm currently reading another Baldacci, about lobbyists in Washington, and Baldacci scetched the thoughts of one of the lobbyists, asking a somewhat naive opposer if he really thought that any congressman from Detroit would vote against any proposal that would harm the car industry, or if people from the Southern states would go against certain Tobacco laws. People vote with their wallets here, it seems. More than anything else.

My region, South Florida, is known for its democratic influences, or so I've come to understand, and I guess that's why I see more Obama merchandise around (last week, there was a little boy, I guess 5 years old, wearing an Obama shirt. I'll bet you ten dollars he couldn't tell a thing about the man without looking at his father lip-syncing something). I still support Barack as well, but honestly, his campaining sucks, unless it's on the offensive, trying to diminish what McCain said to him in the media. That's one of the things I think he and his team have mastered.
There you have my out of line part for the moment. I could probably keep on ranting if I wanted, but I'll leave it here!

Last day I discussed with you was monday, so let's see what I did on tuesday;
I worked from 7 to 3:30, together with Steven only. For some reason, that day had 4 people scheduled to work, and wednesday, my day off, had 7. Don't ask. Steven and I would be replaced by two people coming in at 3PM. We'd had to take breaks in the back, since during small rushes, it would be quite impossible to manage everything on your own, trying to make coffees, get orders in, get the needed pastries and coordinate other things. Decided to have a quick break after 12 anyway, as busy times usually run up to 11:30 for some reason.
Had a great day managing things just with the two of us, without Pierre. Learned a lot about all the sales, coffees and retail products I didn't know before, or perfected those areas.
One more colleague, however, would have made it better for me to also concentrate on getting some storage issues done, and observe a few things, but I guess working like this isn't bad at all either.
During another easy time, I made more pizza bottoms with Dana and I talked with Tina again, who was there on her day off, trying to finish the Questionnaire Pierre gave us to complete, with standard knowledge, general food and beverage knowledge, and Le Marche product knowledge. I'm getting there in general, with my questions and will try to complete it tomorrow. Which is payday again. Yay!

Wednesday was my day off, during which I woke up at 12:30 in the afternoon. Didn't set any alarms, slept through everything and rested up completely, and then did some useful things! Went to get a bike lock for my newly acquired mountainbike, which I bought through craigslist.com, a really useful website, maybe much like eBay if you please, but it's got literally everything on there for the States. Bought it from a man named Cody, who is working as an F&B recruiter for some resorts in the vicinity of Vail, Colorado. Also one of the places I would have went if I never would've gone to Florida. What are the odds huh? Was a really cool guy and I might just call him soon if we decide to head that way later. See if we can meet up for some snow fun. He also threw in a new sleeping bag he was carrying with him but didn't want to move to Colorado, and a flashlight. So all was good.
Went to AT&T for a new internet appointment to get my telephone line working. They're supposed to come on monday now. If noone shows up I'm cancelling everything and move to Comcast instead. When I was on hold, waiting for some representative, I heard a voice say that AT&T had an awarded customer service program. If these guys get a freaking award, I'm seriously scared to do business with other companies, I tell you. I'll let you know what happens on monday.
That night we ate some pizzas (yes, mom, me too. Pepperoni pizzas) and watched National Treasure 2 and The Ruins (the latter sucked) with Bart and Yatha. It was Yatha's day off and he did most things with me (such as AT&T and groceries, and getting those movies), and Bart was off at 3:30.
Also, when being in the waiting line at Publix I was accompanied by a girl, or woman, who somehow intrigued me. She looked a bit too cheap, in a way, but I don't know, there's still something about that. She drove off in a white Mercedes though, so yeah. After the movies, spent some time on Fruity Loops again, messing with the piano sounds, and went to bed after reading some Baldacci.
Oh, wait! Earlier that day I went for a swim with Yatha in our pool, with our 2 dollar goggles so we could do some underwater exploring there, and then we cleaned the jacuzzi which we both used later! Was a really nice day.

This thursday I woke up around 11, and spent the entire day at home, being around my laptop, enjoying time off with Bart. Read some more Baldacci again, and we rented two movies again (three, actually, but I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean more times than I can count). Watched "Meet The Spartans", a one hour parody on 300, which has Carmen Electra in there, and Juncture, a movie about a woman killing people who have gotten out of jail after they've been convicted for hurting or killing children. Was more drama involved in that along the way, and I quite liked it. The lead role player intrigued me a lot, I guess I can recommend this one.

So that's it for now. I guess you'll be hearing from me sooner or later again. Certainly on wednesday again, the day after the Dredg concert. I'll try to pop one in between, but I've got evening shifts the coming days, and might not be willing to write when I get back at midnight.

It's Been A While

2008-10-21T04:07:00.002+02:00

Again, days and days went by without me posting anything on here. I might want to adjust my objectives to posting things every week instead right now. Got another week to go through, somewhat. Wednesday was the last day I shared. My day off. In between I've had one other day off, Friday, but I thought that would be too early to write a blog entry. Two days just don't seem to get me anywhere, and I lack the motivation to sit down and spend time on the two days only. Tomorrow I'll work from 7 to 3:30PM but if I don't do it now, I might not do it tomorrow either.

The thursday morning I woke up to some bad news. My bike had been stolen from the garage! We had our gate locked, but not the garage door (as it can only be closed from the inside, so going out and leaving for work etc. make it hard, and it's just a weird construction). My bike in the garage, however, was locked. The lock was placed through the frame and wheel, making it impossible to move/drive the bike around.
Whoever took it (and I assume it were multiple people) apparently went over the garden gate, went in to the garage, took the bike, placed one of our bar chairs against the garden gate and tilted it over like that. I wonder how they got the lock through... All pretty screwed up anyway! Right now we're going with two bikes. One of us makes a walk to the hotel (about 35 to 45 minutes) and one takes a walk back. It works for now, as long as the weather remains nice and friendly. In the mean time I'll be looking for second bike through some online channels. That thursday I worked from 12 to 8:30 and I mainly focused on getting the cashier under control, which I think I picked up nicely that day. Guest contact was still a bit weird, being insecure about how, what and where everything was.

Friday was my day off, and I had made an appointment for an AT&T Tech Support guy to install our phonelines. Spent my time at home, looking around, watching movies (School of Rock and Tenacious D; Pick of Destiny) with Bart, before I had to go a meeting at work for a bit. Enjoyed a crepe and some ice cream in Le Marche itself before we had the meeting. Met my new colleague, an intern named Tina (she's actually Chinese, and is named Xiaoyan if I recall correctly, but they all pick English names to make it easier on us). After 40 minutes the meeting was done and I walked back home, after Georgi brought me there by car, as he needed to get things done at the hotel himself.
Upon return I found that there still hadn't been any sign of AT&T around and I took over the watch again. Checked my phone to see if I had missed any calls by any chance, but nothing. The rest of the day, noone came to fix the internet and I got upset with things as they were. Spent a full day hoping and waiting for nothing. That night Marten was around again, but I can't remember much of what happened (and neither does Bart, I just asked) so we'll leave it at that.

Saturday was another working day, which stretched from 12 to 8:30, meaning that you basically throw away your entire day, as there's not much to do before 12, and when you get back home around 9, you just eat a little snack, maybe watch a movie or play a little game, and go to sleep again. Had more training with Pierre and Tina that day and just spent the day working easily. That night there was a party in Miami, organised by one of the hotel's people, but it was held in a 21+ club, so no party for me yet. Apparently (according to Marten) it wasn't as great as parties should be, so maybe it wasn't all that bad that I got some proper sleep instead.

Yesterday, Sunday, I worked from 3PM until closing, which, in that case, was around 11:45. Closing duties include getting everything from outside back inside, cushions and such, turning off equipment and restocking all shelves (putting things in larger fridges if need be) and round off a daily report with all information needed for the management. I spent the day at work making coffees mostly, as I got the register understood completely. Pierre wants me to work on my weaker points as quick as I can to do allround shifts when he's not around to take care of everything from A to Z if I have to. By the end of the day, I knew all coffees (regular or iced) and I got a proper feeling of how to make them, and had gotten a little more speed into my overall service. When I got home around 12 I waited for Georgi to come home, spent a little time behind the computer and then went to bed shortly after 1.
I missed a concert in Culture Room (Hawthorne Heights and Emery among others) but it's not something I desperately wanted to see anything, unlike Dredg next Tuesday (28th) for which I've requested the evening off already.

Today I had to do another midshift, from 12 to 8:30, meaning you wake up slow, around 10 in this case, doing nothing much, socialising with other people awake (if applicable, as Georgi was fast asleep still) in the form of Yatha, and just watching time pass before you can go to work. I took a bike today, and made Yatha walk. I've been walking for the most part the past week, and I must say I actually like it. There's enough time if you don't have to start before 10 anyway, and it's nice having your music on, and the sun shining bright.
Pierre had performed opening duties, and left earlier, and since Blake was gone around 4 as well, I was basically in charge of Le Marche as it was, with first Dana and Shashti performing kitchen duties, and having Kara and Garvin doing bar and serving work. I helped out wherever I could, refilling everything in the store, using the requisition forms Pierre explained earlier (to get things from the general storage to the Le Marche storage).
Worked some more on the coffee skills (earlier today Pete had explained how to make "the ultimate foam" for the coffee toppings) and made a pizza bottom with Dana as well.
Made myself a Nutella Crepe for dinner, ate it quickly as things in Le Marche were busy and I'd rather had the other people take a longer break so I could be around more. In the cafeteria they had some hotdogs left which helped speeding up things.
Was a quiet evening, with a long time with nothing to do, until a group of about 20 people came in instantly, which had Shashti working on 7 pizzas at the same time, for example.
With a little improvisation and customer patience, we got through all and I could go home only a little later than planned. Been a nice, useful day as it is. Tomorrow it's rise and shine around 6, as I need to start at 7 (yes, I'm taking a bike, but will walk back).

Got days off on Thursday and Friday so I'll write a blog on Friday again. I'll be going after some AT&T people too, tomorrow. And will demand a first month rebate as I'm not going to pay for crap service and having a bill starting on the 13th, while there's no internet on the 20th at all.
With that, my phone line seems to be double crossed as I've had a few calls coming in for Sonya (or Tonya) who obviously isn't on my contract. I MIGHT get a change of number but will let you all know then.

Take care, and enjoy Staind's "It's Been A While"

Sorry

2008-10-15T20:46:00.006+02:00

For taking so long to post an update. I wish I had the time to write more, but over the last few days I've had things to do at night, or problems with the internet that kept me from posting anything big at all.
I have six days to cover, and at the end I have the song "Sorry" from Nick Black's debut album Hollow. I know the sorry in that song isn't quite the same as what I'm trying to say, but the title fits and I love it. So yeah.

Friday, the day after the indoor soccer I mentioned last, was the last day I could see Caner, one of the friends I made in the first weeks, the guy who accompanied me to the Finch concert and has just been a great person all around. His training/working period here in the States was over, and he had to go back to Turkey for educational purposes. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye that day, however, as we went to pick up the paychecks earlier than planned, to then pay another month of rent straight away, before Georgi and I went off to West Palm Beach. Georgi bought his car at a dealer over there and had to pick up extra keys. After I checked out quite a few lovely cars out there in the dealer store (took my time to sit down in the grey Audi R8 they had in the showroom. Surprisingly spaceous, really), we drove around the city for a bit, checking out the main boulevard and getting some dinner at a place between the main streets and Lake Worth there. Took some pictures all over, with my iPhone, and uploaded them at the photobook you should all be familiar with by now.
I'll add descriptions to all photos so you can see how, why and what. I'm actually glad I went to that dealer with him as I wouldn't want to have missed the sights of West Palm Beach and just rejuvenate over there instead of doing nothing at home instead.

On Saturday, work for me. The day-before-last at the Housekeeping department. It's been one of those days in which I'd do little in the laundry itself but would just work around the building, helping everyone, everywhere, doing everything. The days go by quick like that and it's fun to have some change around. When I got home I had some problems with internet so I decided to work on my Progress Report for school instead. Managed to complete more than half of it in a reasonable short timespan. No rented movies, nothing that night. Just some work and an easy night up in my room, doing nothing much. Put down a few more chords on piano that might use for another song someday soon. I think I have close to 30 different chords in the file so I can work my way around with those. I believe I used only 5 in Never Again, so yeah.

Sunday was my last day at work at the Housekeeping, and honestly, it felt like any other day. Just like the day before, I had been running around helping people in all places, and I just left, saying goodbye to a few people and heading home, to not return to that office to work anymore, just like that. Really weird and easy, but I didn't need a party of any kind anyway.
That night I went to a concert in Culture Room, alone. Tried to drag down Bart, Pedro or Matt, but couldn't get any of them to join. I'm not one to let go of bands because none will come with me, so I waited in line and got in. Got to talk to other people once I'm there anyway. Saw three bands on stage that night. First uup was The Delta Fiasco [6/10] from Liverpool, England. In all honesty, I loved their music. It was experimental in a way, very refreshing and original, and it also sounded good live. Not too many vocals, but it was alright nonetheless. If I had to rate just the music, I'd probably go for 8 or even 8,5 out of 10. Unfortunately for them, it's not just the sounds that determine my show experience. It's crowd reaction as well, and on a personal level, lights and show elements. They happened to have a light show on there with plenty, and I mean plenty, of stroboscope flashes. Let's just say I'm happy I'm not suffering from any epileptic symptoms, because honestly, I'd have gone straight to the ground there. It was hard to see them at times, it was hard to just keep looking straight at the stage in general. Not at all handsome, and not at all cool. Completely ruined things for me in a way.
Next up was Jonezetta [8/10], a band that didn't really fit on the bill because the other two acts were electro-based bands, whereas Jonezetta is just a rockband with nothing special to them. However, I loved their debut album Popularity and really wanted to check them out. They put up a very solid performance, playing the song Popularity somewhere at the start of their setlist, giving me a chance to sing along and get ready for anything else to come. They played some great new tunes from their latest album "Cruel To Be Young" and ended with the song Backstabber from their debut album. This song has a highly addictive chorus that makes you scream along to the oooh-ooh parts in there. Music was great, vocals too. No action in between songs at all though, and I'm still wondering what that sixth guy was doing on stage. I never knew they had someone just for a few back-up vocal lines and the additional sounds of cowbell, triangle and other shake-based instruments.
Last show of the night, the main name on the bill, Shiny Toy Guns [9/10]. I only really knew them for their poppy electro songs Rainy Monday and Don't Cry Out, but I knew there was more to this band. I've found a new hero in their keyboardist, who also played bass guitar during certain songs that night. I've heard Rainy Monday and Don't Cry Out, as well as a version of Stripped (by , and also covered by Drist on their album Orchids And Ammunition). I'm not quite sure what their third encore song was, but it also sounded really well and gave everyone a nice ending to their musical night. I've uploaded photos of the concert to the photo album as well (link to that is further up in this message) and if any of the videos I shot will be youtube worthy I will also upload those later.
I got to walk back home that night for a bit, and later took a cab. Went to bed at 0:40 and I had to get up at 4AM again as my first day at Le Marche would start with opening duties with Pierre, at 5AM.

That monday I started out in Le Marche as mentioned, and after a slow opening round, looking at stocks and the activation of equipment and the setup of all furniture inside and outside, it was my time to observe, learn and ask. The learning went a bit slow at times as I was really tired on certain moments (yes, I know, result of the night before), but everything I saw I remembered well. The active listening was a little problem at times. Had a nice and easy day that day, learning the basics and just seeing other people work there.
Got home at 2PM that afternoon and slept for 2 to 3 hours. Then wanted to watch the movie Street Kings, that Bart rented from the Publix Moviecube, but after 30 minutes, the power went down in the neighborhood here in general. My laptop and phone were already low on batteries and I didn't have much to do with those, therefore. I couldn't cook either, as we have these ceramical plates, my stuff in the fridge wasn't perfect either, and outside the traffic was being arranged by the police as those traffic lights were out as well. Managed to get some more rest, talk about some stuff with Bart, who came home in a blackened house and just waited.
Marten and Yatha came by later, finding us half asleep, with the power still out, and opted to go out and eat as we couldn't make anything at home and people started to get hungry. They still had a rental car for the night as they got it to go to Sawgrass for some shopping. As we wanted to head out, the power came back on (after almost 3 hours in total) and we went to The Cheesecake Factory. Just had a main dish there, Lemon and Herbs Chicken, which was alright. Not a place I'd go to again for the great food, really. Knowing the four of us, you can tell we had a great time fooling around with everything and everyone. Yatha and I finished Street Kings that night as Marten went to bed early (he had been up for more than 24 hours as he did a night shift at the hotel) and Bart went to bed already as well.

Tuesday I got to work at Le Marche again, and I managed to do quite a few transactions and Blake, the second in command over there (after Pierre) taught me how to make all the ice coffees they have at the place. Met some regular guests (hotel room owners, as it's a condo hotel) or local people that come by almost daily. Then started with a small assignment Pierre gave me, concerning the storage room and inventory lists. I still need to complete that one, but will work on that soon. When I got home I found that we had the modem from AT&T and apparently I'm the most technical one around (yes, Hans, thank you for all that) and I tried setting it up. As I had been trying around several things at several places in the house, I had a feeling that our phone lines were not connected still, and I gave up.
Watched "Don't Mess With The Zohan" together with Bart, Yatha, Marten and Sabrina after Bart made some spaghetti with chicken (with my recipe, but I was still fixing the internet at the time). Had a good sleep as I wanted to use today (my day off) for useful spare time missions.

Went to AT&T today to get the phone line sorted. Mark, the manager of the kiosk at Galleria Mall helped me out great once again, showing just as much patience as I have, as he was being redirected, forwarded and pushed back between multiple divisions in AT&T, trying to solve my phone line problem. He spent more than an hour on this again, and the requisition of the package itself took more than 2 hours, a week ago. I promised him that next time I have a bigger problem, I'll bring him chocolates for all the help he's given us. Requested some information about a family package for my phone, and he forwarded us to another AT&T booth where he is the assistant manager to get Georgi on my phone plan and get him an iPhone too. Now we pay 45 a month each, instead of me paying 75, and we both work with our iPhones, having free calls to one another and more of those easy access things.
Worked out really nice so far.

I'm done with the updates for everyone for now, I'm putting the final touches to the uploaded photos and I will share the video I promised earlier;

Going Through Changes

2008-10-10T02:53:00.002+02:00

Thursday. That means I've once again failed to get it done in three days. I guess I'll make it into every 3-4 days for you all then. Don't worry, I'll keep it up. I should start keeping notes about the days though, especially the evenings as I'm having problems remembering what I did after work sometime. If I manage to figure out what I did, I don't always link it to the correct day, I think.

With a little help from Bart, however, I managed to just assign all events to the right days again, so here goes the review of the past few days, starting with my monday as the last entry was written sunday night. Monday was once again, another day at work in the laundry, with nothing much to do. There were new people from the Phillipines doing their orientation this day, which lead to the request of me being around on Tuesday for a few hours to help them get their uniforms and get started. A little introduction to the department and such. Monday night was spent at home with Marten and Tommy coming over, and Yatha made his noodles/rice/chicken dish, which was good enough. Hired a movie at Publix (they got a little movie vending machine over there called Moviecube, which lets you rent movies for 1,06 per day. No membership, nothing, and the movies are quite new too) called 21, which we all watched. It's a movie based on a true story of a group of students using a self-designed system to win big money at Blackjack. Was a good one.
Think I headed to bed around 11 or so.

Tuesday I had to wake up at 6, getting in at work around 7 as the new team members needed to be all up and running by 8, for a meeting with Andreas, the general manager.
Helped them all out, and went back home again around 9:30. Stopped at Galleria Mall on the way back to get a little, useful, backpack and the belt one of the managers has been screaming about for so long. Seriously, appearance when I'm stuck in the landry? Anyway, got two of those for 12 bucks, so if that makes him happy... For a few hours, we did nothing much, until Volkan and Marten came in around 5:30 I believe, and we went to Victoria Park for a little exercise in the form of a soccer match. First played around a bit, might have been for an hour or so (with Bart and Yatha too, Georgi was at work). Then, three guys came up to us, challenging us for a game. Volkan joined their side making it Holland vs The World yet again. Had a nice game which we lost 6-3 I believe. Their playing was just a little simpler, more effective. But we had fun, and it felt good to be that active again for a total of two hours straight. After the game, Volkan went home, leaving his PS2 for us to use!
The four of us changed quickly and headed into the swimming pool of the compound for some relaxation and messing around. As there's quite some chlorine in the water, I bought these cheap swimming goggles for 2 dollars a piece for Bart and me, the day after. Those are for next time.
When we got back, we watched the movie Untraceable (also from the moviecube again) and then called it a day. At least I did. I think Marten stayed for a little longer and Georgi drove him home when he got back from work.

Wednesday, my drag at work was broken, as Joseph had set up a meeting after addressing me earlier that week. A meeting about me moving to F&B after all! Got a new schedule, effective this coming monday, starting in Le Marche, the food outlet at the boulevard. They make lovely paninis, crepes and ice cream there, and they got Starbucks coffee and homemade Chocolate Chip cookies. It's open for hotel guests as well as people on the boulevard, so it should be a lot of fun, interaction wise. Monday I start at 7AM, with Pierre, the manager there (according to many, one of the best and most knowledgable people around) and the rest of the week I won't start before 10AM. I guess finally some time to sleep late. I won't have a fixed schedule in terms of 8 to 5 anymore, but I'll manage!
Second part of the new rotation will be done in Banqueting, by the looks of it. The meeting rooms and all involved. Hope we can finalise that in some agreement as that would be quite a way to spend the rest of the year. At work itself, I did little laundry as there were a lot of chores to be done itself, in the rooms, on the floors, and for me as a Runner on top of that. Had a great day that I ended with some fastfood at Wendy's and two (yes, two) movies hired from the Moviecube. Action with Jumper, and a no-brainer in the form of Freshman Orientation. Had a nice night. Went to bed around 12, but didnt sleep until 2, because of the warmth.

Today, I was supposed to have a day off. I woke up at 12, and had a little bit of time to do nothing, and wake up at the same time, before heading to the hotel around 1. Did a bit of work as the housekeeping office, waiting for two meetings to start. The first one was a roundtable discussion with all interns about what can be improved in the program. Lots of feedback all around, so we'll see what happens with all of that. The second one was about the MOD schedule. Manager On Duty. It consists of two aspects, concerning the morning or afternoon/evening. It sounds like a lot of fun, a nice change of pace, but I'll tell more about that in November, as I'm listed for morning and evening duties on 6 and 13 November as it is.
Played soccer in the indoor hall in Hollywood again, 65 minutes, but it wasn't as fun as usually. Other people playing, and the entire setting and such was just different. Nice to get some exercise again, that feels rewarding every time, but yeah. Got another day off tomorrow, and I feel like going to that Irish pub again. Hope we can! Depends on Sabrina I guess, who needs to work that night, but who has Saturday off.

For the departmental change, here is Army Of Me - Going Through Changes

I promised myself

2008-10-06T04:37:00.002+02:00

That I would keep writing this every 2 or 3 days. So far, so good. With a few minor exceptions, usually one day more than intended, but I think I'm still doing a nice job in keeping everyone posted what happens here. Not always getting feedback from everyone, I know there's enough people regularly reading this.

I have four days to cover, as wednesday evening I wrote my last entry. Thursday, I had my first solo supervisor day in laundry, as Charlotte went off to New York for a few days. I want to go there in either December, or a bit later, in April/May. Depends on two things, one of them being the possibility to go and snowboard in Colorado instead, or having someone over in New York at the time. We'll see when I bite the Big Apple. The day went by pretty alright, doing nothing much again. Just making sure the laundry rooms (one for the collection of dirty linen and one for distribution of clean ones) are all empty or restocked, respectively, and keeping an eye out for the uniforms of all employees, or Team Members, as they like to call them. That night we played a game of indoor soccer again at AM Soccer in Hollywood. Got the shirt back I forgot there the week before, and played a game of 3 vs 3. Other people were unable to come for one reason or another. It was a little Holland vs The World thing as Bart, Marten and myself played Walden, Pedro and Matt. When we were ahead 17-10 another player joined The World, making it a 4 vs 3 match. Ended up with a draw, 27-27, after an hour of playing.
Pedro dropped us off at the hotel again, where our bikes were, and Bart and me drove back to the house.

On Friday I was off, officially, but as there were new team members coming in (see, I use it too, but won't capitalize it anymore) I had to stop by for a few hours to prepare everything for a fitting session and then finalizing all the assigned uniforms and paperwork linked to that. Couldn't get it all sorted out so left Paris a little e-mail for her to work with, if anything.
That night Sabrina picked up Bart and me, and we had a little drink at her house, with her roommate Valeska and some of their neighbors (notice how I have been using American English spelling over the last few paragraphs. It looks weird not to write neighbours, but well). Later that night we went to an Irish pub with live music. Nothing about the pub was really Irish, but nonetheless I had a great night out there. With my paycheck being issued but not added to my account yet, I had to take it easy on the spending for the night, and I mostly stuck around with the people I knew instead of handing out drinks like I do plan to do next time. Might make new interactions a bit easier at times. Anyway. This place at Riverfront started to get emptier around 2:30 or so, and Bart and I took a cab shortly after 3, as we lost Marten and Nina, who had just headed outside after a little incident of some kind, indoors.
Upon arriving at the house again we noticed Yatha wasn't in yet.

That saturday we heard Yatha story about swimming in the ocean and some random pool along the way, and how not-quite-sober he was that night. He also enjoyed himself anyway!
Saturday was spent with Georgi and Bart going to the library to hire some movies for free (yay for public facilities that way) and Yatha and I went for a little run through the park across the street, Victoria Park. Mentioned that in my previous blog too.
Later that day Georgi, Bart and myself went to Galleria Mall to set up an account with AT&T for internet and TV. Should have our own connection and such at October 13th. Everything should be fine then. Setting it all up took us well over 2 hours by the way, things just went wrong at the booth over and over. Little annoying in general, but it got done in the end anyway. Had a good time checking out other shoppers in the mean time. Remains one of my favorite ways to pass the time.
Went to the Publix on the way back to do a few groceries and Georgi later made a rice-beans-chicken dish for the three of us, as Yatha was at work.

This sunday, Bart, Yatha and myself went for another run in Victoria Park, I then got calls from my mum and dad to my phone, and tested Skype with my dad as well. When I get the internet fixed on October 13th, I can talk to more people. It broke down a few times now, with the borrowed net. Yatha and Georgi went to work, and Bart and me watched The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Loved the movie! Other than that it's been a sunday in all ways. Easy going, nothing to do or worry about, just playing around.
Laundry again tomorrow. I think I might even be looking forward to it slightly.

Song; Nick Kamen - I Promised Myself.
And oh! Hollywood Undead is playing in Culture Room on November 10th. I guess I'm going!

Wash It Away

2008-10-02T02:32:00.004+02:00

Monday, the fun started. I got to work in the Laundry department. And yes, that is as bad as it sounds. First thing about the laundry is that days seems to go slowest there. There's not always something to do, as washes take about 40 minutes, and so do drying cycles. As there are only two washers and two dryers, and all the work before, in between or after takes 5, maybe 10 minutes (if it's dry and you need to fold it) maximum, you'd hope for something in between. Not quite. There's a little rush when people start their shifts and need to pick up their uniforms. Also, when the housekeepers start working, they need to pick up some washcloths to place in the rooms, as those are not provided in the cupboards on each floor. That's about the busiest time.
In between, housemen come in to take new towels to restock the floors. Also, every so often, we get to sort out all the dirty linen into categories and wash the towels ourselves. Other than that I pass the time with doing nothing, fooling around with my iPhone sometimes, and trying to interact with people coming to pick up one thing or another. Sometimes there's the need for pressed uniforms, and you get to operate that machine. Which basically looks like this;
I know. Monday evening I made the pita chicken bread with Bart, as expected, and we had a nice evening off again, doing nothing much.
Tuesday in the laundry, things seemed to go a bit quicker, but still, by far, the hours don't pass as easy as they do otherwise. I learned my way around with all the machinery and the places of everything in the office, and got myself acquainted with the uniforms and such, and had been handing those out and taking those in most of the day. That evening, as it was Yatha's day off, we had Sabrina and Marten over again and we spent time out on the patio, drinking, talking and making fun of people who weren't present. Looked some things up about HDR Pictures and put a few on my phone as wallpapers.

Today, wednesday, was another day of laundry, and it seems like I'll be here the coming 4/5 weeks before I get to train Bart to do his turn over there. As far as I know, the F&B plan is off (at least for now). Was there with Charlotte, who has been training me for the past few days, and we spent 4,5 hours making up the stock levels for ALL available clothing inventory in the fourth floor storage. At least we got that all right now, and I don't have to do it again. Tomorrow there will be new housekeepers from the Philipines and I get to give them proper clothing, just like today. Only tomorrow I will do it alone, as Charlotte is going to New York for a few days. I want to go there too later this year. Really looking forward to things like that!

In other news, I also bought myself a proper bike today. They don't really have city bikes like I'm used to, but either mountainbikes or beach cruises (which, fortunately, I'm used to as well since I had one back home). I'll add some pictures of it to this post to share my new vehicle! (The white one is Yatha's and I got the lovely black thing.)

Got the entire weekend off, friday, saturday and sunday, but things will be easy. Might take a little swim in the pool we have here. Go for a run, cycle around town and play some ball in the across-the-street-fields of Victoria Park. Saving some money for other things that might come later, such as New York.

As a little ode to the laundry, I looked for songs with "wash" in their title and found a pretty nice cover of Black Lab's "Wash It Away" on YouTube.

House vs. Hurricane

2008-09-29T01:37:00.002+02:00

Finally, there’s some proper weather to distort the perfect image of the sunshine state. As it is right now, it’s pouring outside, lightning and thunder all over the place, and when it hits every so often, it sounds like there’s a bomb going off. The temperature in the house has finally come to an acceptable level, as for some reason the airconditioning will not do the best job ever. Fans on the ceiling to their work at night to let you sleep, but still.
I’ll add two or three rainy pictures to the photo album, even though they were extremely hard to take for some reason. I tried a few options, but never really succeeded.

Back to where I ended things last time. Friday. Bart and I still had to work, as schedules were changed somewhere along the way. The day was quite busy on my part, and I didn’t feel all too well. My body was pretty drained and I felt extremely warm most of the time, a bit like the fever. Decided to just keep working anyway, and switch free days with Bart. He would have Saturday off, and I would have Sunday, but we switched that around. So, yay for flexible housemates. That Friday night we had Volkan over at the house. Volkan is one of the Turkish guys (just like Caner, see the Finch blog) who works in housekeeping. He’s a houseman, you know, the job I couldn’t do because I couldn’t distinguish all the different kinds of sheets etc. Yatha and Georgi were working that night, so Bart, Volkan and I quickly did some groceries after which I made some hamburgers according to my mum’s recipe. Ate them outside on the patio with the three of us and just did some talking and socializing in general, before Volkan headed home a little after 10, and Bart and I spent some time behind computers. Yatha and Georgi still slept in the hotel that night, for the last time.

Saturday was my day off, but just like all the others, no chance to really sleep in. They came to collect the garbage around 7:45, and I happen to live at the side of the collection (it’s looking towards the inside of the gated compound though, whereas Bart and Yatha look out to the main street (15th)).
Managed to get back to a light sleep and didn’t get out of bed until 9:45, when no one was around anymore as Bart went to work, and the others were still at the hotel. Took my time to unpack all my suitcases when Georgi and Yatha came in to do some groceries for the house (we have now decided to do collective cooking and cleaning groceries twice a week or so, and everyone can just get their private drinks, fruits and snacks across the street at Publix supermarket whenever they want) and we also went to Home Depot to get some cleaning utilities and additional house keys so that everyone now has their own pair. The boys then went to cook their spaghetti meal. I decided to wait with the pasta until Bart came home from work so we could cook for the both of us. Made some spaghetti with chicken, parmesan cheese and some tomato sauce. Watched some Saturday Night Live DVD while eating and took it easy for the rest of the night. I managed to complete a song of mine in FL Studio again, and I have uploaded it to YouTube right HERE. If you go there, there are lyrics in the description to the right (click “more info” in the box on the right to get a little story and the lyrics itself). Went to bed around 11:30 as I had to get up at 7 this morning to start my day. Heard Georgi come in, though he was very careful to not make a sound. Can’t remember anything else from that night, I must have dozed off straight away again.

This Sunday I had to work as a Runner in the hotel, the guy who delivers all the requested goods to the guests. Had a nice and easy morning with ten calls between 8 and 11:30. And then all calls stopped. Nothing else for the remainder of the day! I had been reorganizing and refilling things in the first floor storage all along already, so it started to get quite boring. Later that shift I went to check some rooms and evaluate the work done by the ladies cleaning. Went home by bike, just like I arrived there this morning. It’s a little different from getting into the elevator and being there, but the 12-15 minute ride isn’t all that bad. I’ll get used to that. Found Georgi and Bart at home, as I had already seen Yatha at work. Discussed my possible transfer to F&B with quite a few people today, and I’m getting my hopes up slightly. I really don’t want to set my mind on that just yet, because it might be disappointing if I don’t go, but I just can’t help it.
The guys are watching a movie downstairs and I am typing this and I just watched an episode of Eureka. Ate some Honeydew melon (how come I never saw those in Holland? They’re good!) and had some good old Ben&Jerry’s after that to complete my mail. Want to make some pitabread with curry chicken tomorrow, and I’ll see whoever joins.
Speaking of tomorrow, I need to start working in the laundry, just organizing all the uniforms and the stocking of towels and such. I’ll soon start to read up on my contracts and such to see if there’s any way for me to get out of that if they sign me up for another week of laundry, and it also helps me think of the move to F&B, possibly. I’d rather be in Stewarding (dishwashing) instead of laundry like this.
I know I already linked you to another YouTube video (my own) but I still want to share another thing with you. Here’s House vs Hurricane with “Forfeiture”. The first part of the song might not appeal to a lot of people, but at least check out the last minute of the song where they go all techno. Reminds me of Enter Shikari in a way, and it’s so weird that it’s cool.

Fanmail

2008-09-26T03:58:00.002+02:00

Just a little update I forgot. Those who want to reach me in case of an emergency (if a hurricane hits Fort Lauderdale and I haven't posted for a week or whatever), or those that just want to send me a postcard instead of the other way around, feel free to take a look at the following information.

Rick Pleij
1401 NE 9th Street, Apartment 54
33304, Fort Lauderdale, FL
United States

(001) 954 4949066

rick.pleij@hilton.com
rick4488@gmail.com

and for MSN purposes; rick_4488@hotmail.com, though be warned, I'm not online that much.

If you want to find me at Skype, send me an e-mail and we can make an apointment as there probably will be timezone differences and I work when you are off, mostly.

No video for this time.

We Ride

2008-09-25T23:12:00.003+02:00

It's been four days since my last entry, and for that, I apologise. I know I said I'd do this every two or three days. After reading this blog you'll have a nice idea of why it took so long though. I think I have a pretty good excuse as it is! Here comes;

Monday we had our day off, and we started moving. With the keys to the gate, the garage and the house itself, it was time to get the furniture from a few Dutch interns who had done their year here, and had to go back to finish things up, end school, take a vacation or whatever else they had planned. Early in the morning we went to Steven's place. Steven worked here in F&B (Food and Beverage, only time I won't shorten that) and had a lot to do with implementing the pool service that now runs. The last few weeks he's been around Le Marche, the outlet store I told you about earlier. We had hired a van to get as many things as possible from one place to the other. Put everything in the garage at first, and then went to get the second load. As the garage fits two cars, a lot of stacked up furniture was no problem either. Second house to empty was the one from Stach and Majda (I think it's spelt that way). Took us less effort than with Steven, as he lives on fifth floor and had this really annoying sofabed where the springs would give us a hard time all the time. Not to mention his elevator is SLOW. Seriously, real slow. Walking the stairs goes quicker if you haven't got a desk or bed to carry around.
Stach is already out of the country so we dealt with Majda mostly and took some drawers, chairs and matrasses from their place. When we had everything in the garage after four drives in total, Georgi and I went back to the hotel to get a vacuum cleaner and later buy some hygienic wipes to clear all the furniture before moving it in completely. Bart and Yatha, in the meantime, carried up as many things as possible. It was somehow easier to hand things over, up from the patio to the balcony on the second floor, rather than moving it through the stairs. That's how we got most couches and beds in to the house. After we ate in Le Marche and got more great crepes (with strawberries, banana and blackberry, three pieces total), Yatha and I went with our rental van to the Fort Lauderdale airport to pick up another car for the next day. Had to perform a little trick with the parking garage as Yatha lost the parking card for the van, and we got out with two cars, paying only one dollar (don't tell anyone!). While Yatha went to his car that he parked a little from the garage, I drove on, thinking he was further out. I couldn't find him naturally. Upon returning to the hotel we found out that both of us drove the wrong way trying to get back to the city. The exit to either I95, the city centre, or Port Everglades (anyone fancy a cruise?) is really short and hard to read, so I drove off to Port Everglades instead. Had to go back to the airport and try again. Along the way got past a "Random Vehicle Search" from the police, but I guess mine wasn't random enough. I accidentally had left my wallet in the other car, with my drivers license in there, so I'm glad I could drive on.

Tuesday morning we took our newly hired Chevrolet Malibu two blocks further, to pick up Tommy, who works at the Front Office as a Dutch intern as well. We headed off to Orlando! Universal Studios Orlando, and even more precise. Islands Of Adventure there. According to quite a few people that park would suit us best. Drove all the way over the the I95 north bound. Missed the turn to the Turnpike that would lead straight to Orlando, and hit the I95 further until we could go right to Cape Canaveral, or left to Orlando, basically. After 2/3 of the drive, Yatha took over and tested the maximum speed of the rental car. Got to Orlando in 3:15 hours.
Time for Universal Studios that opened at 9, while we came in around 10. As we had ordered them online and printed the barcodes, there wasn't much to wait for. Hold on. The entire day, there was nothing much to wait for! No attraction took us more than 10/15 minutes in total, from the moment you walk in to the moment it started.
First one was the Hulk rollercoaster. A green one with plenty of corkscrews and loopings in there, and a little dive through a tunnel of mist. The first ride we took was a bit harsh with the mist, as we went from that cold, wet mist, straight into the full sunrise. After two rides in the Hulk, both of which left me groggy upon leaving my seat, it was time to move on to the next one. Dr Doom's Fear Fall. For all the Dutch people who've been to Six Flags, it's similar to the Space Shot. As all of us had been in the Space Shot before, and this one was actually less exciting than that one, we decided to leave it at that one ride. Next up; Spiderman! It's not really a rollercoaster, but it sure leaves you flabbergasted. You get 3D glasses on, and get in this seat, which can best be thought of as a cabin for a flight simulator. You then go from hall to hall, seeing different Spiderman scenes in each of them. In one room, a waterbased villain attacks, and you get sprayed. In another, fire comes out of Dr Octopus arms, and the room heats up instantly. Whenever another bomb exploded, a flame entered the room to make it more real. It all ends with a "free fall". It's all visual deception as the car isn't going anywhere I think (or some belongings would not be safe in that very cart), but it seems and feels so amazingly real.
Time to eat something, and then go to the water attractions. And these aren't fake water attractions. These get you soaked real bad (see pictures in my photo album). Had a lot of fun, both in the logs, which had an amazing dive in there, as well as the Popeye ride, which consisted of these round boats with lot of openings in them to let the water in and soak the people in there. Was hilarious to laugh at people at the other side of the boat getting drenched at some parts of the course, only to be up next yourself. Did both the logs and the Popeye ride twice.
Then took a ride in the Jurassic Park boat. Took us to see some dinos, and then got us a great free fall. I'm thinking of uploading some of the videos I made, onto Youtube, and share them later. Once I do I'll link you through of course :)
More food in between, and then the Duelling Dragons. One big attraction, two different rides. Red and Blue/Green. Both had a different course, as the red one had more loops and the blue one had more screws, but somewhere halfway through, both rides go head to head, seeming to crash into eachother, to then both make a looping. It may seem like your legs hit the ones from the other side at some point. Such an amazing ride. Did I say you were below the track already? For those in Six Flags state again, think El Condor. Did those quite a few times. The later it got, the easier it was to get into the front row, and that is sooooo worth it. Makes everything about the two rides, so much more intense, especially where you seeming crash into the other, and where you head straight to a wall to make another looping there.
Ended our day with two more rides in the Hulk and took one of the pictures made in that ride as a souvenir.
Got home around 11 or something, after dropping the car at the airport and taking a cab back.

Wednesday I started at 8, to find that, luckily, I did not have to work in the laundry, but could check floors again as Bart was doing computer training again. Nothing much happened that day. I worked a lot as I had 8 floors to take care of, but it was all alright, as there weren't too many occupied ones. Took Marten, Wendy (his girlfriend who is here for two weeks this time around) and Sabrina (did I ever mention her before? I hope so!) to see our new house and impressed them all, I think. Admitted, it just looks better than the places Marten and Sabrina live in themselves. Marten flat out admitted he was jealous. Got back around 12, and that's when Bart informed me about an e-mail from our HR manager, consider a possible switch from one of the MITs (Manager In Training) from Rooms Division to go to F&B for the rest of the year. As I love working in restaurants too, and love setting up meetings and such at Banqueting, I applied and it might all happen next week. We'll see what goes on here. I don't want to get ahead of things so I'll leave it at this.

Today, thursday, I started at 8 again, not knowing if I had to laundry this time around or not. I got to inspect rooms straight away, as someone from an external audit came to visit and inspect everything. Walked around like crazy today to get things done in time, and I was dead tired already. Got the report a little later and I think we scored a full 97% in general, so everyone here is happy enough as it is.
Just got back from another hour of indoor soccer in Hollywood again and finally found the time to write this blog. Will now upload all the pictures to the photo album so you can all enjoy a bit. I didn't take too many as most attractions require you to store everything in lockers somewhere in the park to keep it all safe and easy.
Thought I'd be off tomorrow, but I need to work again. Need to see how and what we're going to do with all the moving now, but you'll hear that later.

As Universal was full of rides, and I said the word quite a few times already, I'm sharing Lostprophets' "To Hell We Ride" for today.

a little p.s. I LOVE my iPhone.

Heat Of The Day

2008-09-21T01:20:00.002+02:00

I forgot to mention something in my last blog, and I want to share it now. We moved to our fifth hotelroom! We had this great room up on the 24th floor. Lovely view I must say, but no pictures taken. Thursday evening, it started to get hot in our room. Temperatures inside started exceeding those outside, even with the air conditioning on. Bart found that the airconditioner was only sending warm air into the room, despite it being set to 72 Fahrenheit and Cool. We started at 80 somewhere that night, and went to 86 before we called engineering. Bart then went with Georgi and his new car, to get something to eat, while I waited for an engineer while watching Snakes On A Plane. Ika, one of the Russian engineers, and one of the greatest people around here, couldn't fix it in half an hour and decided to let it go. Apparently there was something wrong with the cooler, the vent and the entire machine, for that matter. I asked him if we could leave our belongings in this room, sleep somewhere else and get back when he had it fixed. I didn't want to give up the view.
It all ended with us going to the 16th floor instead. Had to wait for Bart to get back to tell him the good news and he started packing when I had already moved most of my things.

Today was a busy day at work, as the hotel is quite full yet again. Met some people I've seen over the last few days, in their rooms while asking if everything's alright and if I can help them still. Mostly, the answer is something along the "thanks, I'm fine" lines. Not today, on one occasion.
In the city center there's a convention about AIDS/HIV going on, and it hosts about 3000 people, of which quite a few are staying here. Funny thing at that, a few of the housemaids thought that all the people that were staying here, were infected, rather than attending for a lot of different reasons!
A woman from the pacific island of Guam asked me if I could open her door for her, as her card seemed faulty. I used her card and got it on first try, explaining the exact workings of that keycard. Asked her if I could do anything else, and she said she didn't want to waste my time. I was close to the end of my shift and had one room left to go, so told her it would be no bother.
She showed me her suitcase and asked for some tape to keep it together, as it let her down earlier that day. Had Ika bring the remote control to another room as I was about to do myself, and I fixed her suitcase. Then talked a bit about my English (which she consider rather amazing for a foreigner, while most people still get a hint of it and ask me if I'm German. Really. A lot of them do that, if it's not me, it's with Bart) and the internship I do. Finished the conversation with information about Guam, and travelling (apparently it took her 26 hours to get from Guam to Fort Lauderdale) before Bart paged me to gather and round off our work.

Currently I'm sitting here in one the hotel's bathrobes, with the hotel's slippers on, after I took a bath in the jacuzzi in the bathroom. I never realised that the water had such a weird colour. After all, when it just comes out and fills a glass, there's not much too it. Fill an entire bath tub, and you start to notice it's a bit yellow/green. Then, with the bubbles turned on, and a little bit of body wash in there, it's easy to create a miniature sky in your bath tub, filled with dense clouds. Makes for great pictures though!

So here's that very picture, of me in a whitened bath, and after that a 9 minute youtube video of Pat Metheny Group's "Heat Of The Day"

Eternity?

2008-09-20T04:16:00.004+02:00

Not too long ago (three entries back - Sunny Day In The Park) I mentioned composing a song in Fruity Loops, and naming it after things brought up in a conversation with Robert Huntley, one of our great bellmen. I've decided to add some photos as a slideshare, and publish the song on Youtube, then adding it to my blog. For those who already want to know what it's about, play the video at the end of this entry.
The song is, unlike most of my earlier works, actually built up in a way that I COULD add lyrics to them in a verse-chorus distinctive way. Still having huge difficulties, writing texts that go with melodies, I don't see it happen in the near future for this one. But maybe later I'll be able to make something out of it.

Also, the last few days I've been thinking about eternity in general, and how I've never liked the word. I mean, you can last a lifetime with someone, and it's still not eternity, as the world will not stop spinning once you're gone. As once quoted to me, after Charles De Gaulle; "The graveyard is full of indispensible men". Though I accept Robert's vision, I do not agree with it. It comes down to this: whatever you do in this life, can not be lost. Your thoughts, your knowledge and ideas will somehow live on as you keep spiralling towards other places in other forms. As caterpillars become butterflies. Somehow, I think it's linked to the chemistry in your brain and that just all stops working when your heart fails, ultimately.

It's been fun and inspiring to listen to it that night, but it's hard to get a proper discussion on the subject as it's all about beliefs. There are no factual differences for anyone to use. I don't even know what to say about it anymore, so let me go on with what happened the last few days.

Tuesday, the second day off, was spent in the room with some TV watching and doing nothing at all. Wednesday was another day at work, in which we yet again did some things related to our new house. Headed to Galleria Mall after work for some food with Bart and Georgi, and finished the evening watching some Wipeout, or was that the day before?
Thursday, Georgi bought a car and Bart and I worked our asses off, as the hotel was nearly fully booked. It's fun that way, but things don't go as precise anymore, and you spend way more time alone, just checking, checking, checking, instead of discussing things with people, and learning some new things on the side as you're overhearing conversations, finding new things in the computer programs and figure out something to do in a room that you were supposed to do since day one. That idea.

Today, we got a notice saying that the owner of the house is now completely moved out and we can move in whenever we want. So that's going to be on monday. A lot of our friends around here are off that day, and so are we, so we'll have people to help us move, point us in the right direction with a few things and just be of great value overall. If I manage to get myself that state ID before monday, I'll also have my iPhone, finally! It's about time, though it hasn't even been a month yet. Also, we just ate out in Le Marche, the retail-minded restaurant (you can buy quite a few things they used as ingredients). Prices there are generally high, but the food is sooooo good, and the ingredients are great I must say.
Then, to finish it, we got crepes (we pronounced it differently here in case people thought we were talking about "crap" instead) with banana-chocolate fillings. With whipped cream and caramel ice cream. Apparently people are having a dessert making competition there for fun, at times, and we got to play jury for one of them. We'll go there more often now, I guess. It's located in the hotel, we get employee discount and free desserts like this. And we haven't even touched the ice cream buffet. That's what I mean!

Sorry for the lack of information this time around, but it's just been a lot of work, staying at home arranging things and watching series and more of the routine things mentioned before.
Next week the moving. We got three days off. Monday, tuesday and friday. Friday we are probably fully set so we might move out to do something exciting again. Not to mention that that next friday is, once again, payday.

Arcane Daguerro - A Concept Through Eternity. And yes, soon I will explain the entire "Daguerro" nickname idea that I've been associated with for a few years now.

Miami!

2008-09-16T16:56:00.002+02:00

Last night I was too tired to type this up as well, but there's a new morning, another day off, so I'll share everything! I also just put all the pictures on my laptop, and will soon sort them out and upload a batch of them. You're going to love them! As you know, they can be found here, at my photo album.
We woke up around 9, and headed down to the reception to rent ourselves a car. The ever helpful Christian, who usually drives us around, lives in Miami and he demanded we'd take a convertible, as the weather was just amazing that day. Ten dollars per person extra, and we'd be set. Am I glad that we decided to go for that option. Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats driving Miami on a lovely sunny day in a Mustang Convertible (there are photos of the car, obviously).
Anyway, before we were able to get away, we had to sign yet another few papers for the transfer of the house, which should be imminent now. This morning we went off to settle some payments and I hope that's the last step for a while.
Before we hit the Interstate highways, we stopped at a 7/11 store to get some quick lunch and a drink, as we hadn't had anything proper just yet. Yatha was driving on the way there, which gave me time to take a few picture from in the car already. We parked our car at First Street, straight in from well-known Biscayne Blvd. Headed a few streets inland, before we took the free "skyrail" kind of transport vehicle (google image search; "Mini Rail Miami" first two photos, as I didn't make those myself).
Crossed Biscayne Blvd later, to find ourselves at the Bayside Marketplace. We all got great fresh smoothies at one of the stands over there, and after being fed up with all the small tourist-like shopping booths, we decided to take a boat trip that would take us through the intercoastal waters of Biscayne Bay, passing Fisher Island, Star Island and along the Miami Port (photos of the huge houses on the islands and the cruise ships docked in the port will all be uploaded into the album). We came along houses used in Scarface, Rocky Balboa and The Specialist, saw residences of Gloria Estefan, the founder of Parker Pens (Ed Parker) and one of the many mansions of both Puff Daddy and Julio Iglesias. On that tour, we also passed Monument Island, which has its name from the lovely monument on the middle of the public island. It looks like the Washington Monument, one of those Egyptian pillars. You'll see what I'm talking about. Anyway, that island is public, but only accessible by boat or jetski, so not that many people actually get on there. There are no facilities on the island so it just looks nice and quiet, and I guess it's somewhat exclusive like that. Might be something for later. I could tell about what kind of amazing things we've seen there, but it's better to just look through the entire photo album and look things up for yourself. I'll once again, add a little description to the photo as good as I can, so that should help.
After the boat trip we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, also at the Bayside Marketplace to get ourselves a drink. Worst lemonade ever. The stuff was way too sweet, and not even nicely flavored to start with. Needless to say I didn't finish the glass. I guess that was a one-timer there. Next time I'll just take a Coke or something. Suppose they can't screw thát up.
Bart's turn to drive, as we went from Downtown to Miami Beach! Yes we did! As we crossed the bridge over Biscayne Bay, our 93 Rock radio station played Paradise City by Guns N Roses. Feel free to suggest other songs, but I'd like to think nothing else would fit better when you're heading towards sunny Miami Beach in a convertible. Entered the island way up north, as Bart took another exit than the one most suitable, but we managed to get around nonetheless. After we took a drive over Ocean Drive by daylight (there are a few photos), we parked our car at 17th street, and from there went straight to South Beach to enjoy the ocean water over there. The sun started to set and clouds looked a bit like this. We were quite far up north at South Beach, so it was reasonably quiet (add to that, it was monday afternoon/evening, everyone probably went back to work/school after the weekend). Next time we'll try it further south, because there definately will be a next time in Miami.
For dinner we went looking at the Lincoln Road Pedestrian Mall. This part of Lincoln Road is limited to pedestrians only, and is kind of like the Barcelona Ramblas. A nice median with fountains and art and such, and boutiques and restaurants on both sides. It also reminded me of Tunesia, as people were out on the streets, trying to talk you in to coming to their restaurant with all kinds of promotions etc. We ate out at Locanda Sibilla there. Entrees for all of us were good. Bart loved his melon with ham, Yatha once again has some seafood I believe, and my roast bread with balsamico and tomatoes also really worked for me. The main dish, however, was a bit weak for me. I had penne with spicy tomato sauce and it was just, really plain and simple, and it got boring after so many bites. Paid around 90 bucks in total for all that, and went to Ghirardelli a little further down, to get some ice cream. I saw them on the way and remembered their store and everything, so I told them to have our dessert there. Great chocolate chip cookie dough stuff there. Reasonable expensive, but really good.
Also, on Lincoln, I found this Energie store and got myself a grey t-shirt.

After dinner and all that, it was my turn to drive. First stop, Ocean Drive by night! As I drove there are no real pictures of this as parking was impossible, and we had been walking enough already. Drove up north to just cruise around town, and decided to go to Nikki Beach, at the south most point of Miami Beach, as we heard something about parties in weekends there. Looked the place up, saw how and what, and noticed that it looked brilliant. We'll head there some weekend for a proper party. Drove over Ocean Drive a second time, and Yatha made a few pictures while I was driving down there. They're not perfect, but they will do. Next time, if walking, I'll try to make a few proper ones to share. Then again, you can look up lots of nightly photos of Ocean Drive online already. I'm sure there are tons!

Drove over A1A all the way up north, to Hollywood. At one point we crossed a bridge and there was just all straight road with no other cars on it, right in front of us. As I hit the gas driving down that bridge, on to the straight, I hit 85 miles an hour when noticing the 40 mile speed limit. Just was so amazing to have the wind strike your hair going that fast on a great road like that. I'd do it again! Parked at a 7/11 in Hollywood where I met Bob The Limo Driver in the waiting line there.
Told the guys about Bob, and we decided to ask for some close view of the interior. Bob took our pictures, Yatha took the driver's seat for another photo and we went on again. Bart drove us back to Fort Lauderdale, where Yatha took over for some late night cruising through the city, not always minding the speed limits. Drove past our new house again and then went back to the hotel. Upon arrival we heard that Yatha had to change rooms still. It had been a week for him since he last moved. Nice way to end your day, moving all your stuff. But well.

As I wrote another blog and got myself the album from Carolina Liar, Bart went to bed already. Did the same thing as soon as I finished writing the one from last night.
Then, today at 9:40, the phone rang. Time to settle the payments and such. That call woke me up. And the rest of the week is work for me. No easy mornings for me anymore, it seems.

Of course, with a blog like this, I need to share Will Smith's "Miami" with you all. I'm off to upload all the Miami pictures! Check them out if you haven't already.

Letters To You

2008-09-15T07:08:00.002+02:00

I told everyone I'd be going to a concert, and that's what happened. After a normal day at work. Actually, a reasonably busy day at work where I needed to get permission to leave at the "normal" time of 5:30 PM. Work had ended and my colleague Volkan took Bart for groceries, and dropped me and Caner off at Culture Room. Big line of alternative/emo people all around. Some younger than others, but luckily, things went rather quick, getting in. Paid 15 dollars each and got ourselves these paper wirstbands. The unbreakable kind. Anyone who's ever been to a similar event might know what I'm talking about. I know they used them for camping wristbands at Rock Werchter when I last went there for instance.
We got in while Our Last Night [rating; 9/10] had already been playing one of their songs. Could hear it outside for the most part, so I knew what I missed. When I got there it started out amazing. Band with a guitarist who did clean vocals, and a guy being the center of attention, screaming his way through. The sound in general was amazing, and the songs seemed to get everyone going, despite the early hour (just past 7 PM) and no warm up before that.
After a small soundcheck, during with we went up to the balcony for a drink, Tickle Me Pink [5/10] started playing. I liked the song I listened to before, and knew they'd be playing in the same venue again in 6 weeks, so I hoped for something good.
The only good thing about the show they put up, was the fact that some of their songs had parts that sounded familiar. Sounds that reminded me of other bands. I basically give them credit for being unoriginal, but stealing proper enough. And oh, their vocals during their last song, in which there actually was more force in everything they did, were way better. If that would've been the general standard I'd have liked it more. Much more.
The next band "Scary Kids Scaring Kids" [8/10] is a band I've known for quite a while, and loved too. They've got a rather unique singer in terms of vocal sounds, and they have keyboards in their songs, lovely fast-paced keyboards. All members were actually scary kids in their youths I think. They all looked less than fashionable to me anyway. The sound they put up, and the atmosphere they created worked very well though. Vocals throughout the concert, however, were a little too low in terms of volume, and as they didn't reach the level Our Last Night (and Finch) managed to get, I'm not awarding them a 9 as well.
Then, ending the evening, Finch [9/10]. What can I say? They played a lot of songs of their earlier (and better) EPs and albums. They managed to break down the entire place. They played songs of their new album. They put their heart and soul into it, and I'm glad they decided to not end the band completely, but get back together after a break.
They played my favorite song, Letters To You, which I caught on camera and posted on youtube (will also share the song in here later, the sound isn't too great, but you can hear things, and especially if you've known the song already, you'll recognise it all). They played Three Simple Words, What It Is To Burn and the new songs Daylight and Famine Or Disease. Best thing of all, they used Perfection Through Silence as an encore. Honestly, I thought they should've quit after that, as there is no better song to leave everyone speechless and content.
They played Awake after that, however. The song got some people moshing like crazy again (for some reason, people here seem to put more energy into moshpits than Dutch people do/did), but it just didn't surpass Perfection Through Silence.

Today, Yatha, Bart and I went to Miami in a rented Mustang Convertible. It's 2 AM here now though, and I haven't put the pictures on my laptop just yet either.
You'll get the story and the pictures tomorrow :)

By the way, when I was at Culture Room, they played "I'm Not Over" from Carolina Liar in between bands, during one of the soundtracks, on the big screen (see photos in my photo album as the screen is on there too). Great band and I love the song to pieces.

Here's my Finch video!

Sunny Day In The Park

2008-09-14T03:06:00.004+02:00

Today was a great day, but let's just keep things in chronological order for everyone to keep up with what's happening here.
Last time I ended describing my Thursday, so, logically, Friday is up next. Had a normal day at work with Russian breakfast this time around. One of my colleague supervisors is Russian, and so are three of the room attendants. Yes, three of them, as Kate and Lana were not fired after all, so it seems, but just expelled for a short time. The breakfast ended with some rewards. All nametags of the room attendants were placed in a big box, and both Joseph, the Human Resource Director, who is responsible for hiring us here at this very hotel, and John S., the Rooms Division Director, got to pick a nametag. The first tag would hold the name of the woman (no male room attendants) who'd win a two-day stay at the Hilton in Orlando, Florida. Have a quick guess who won this?
Right, Kate! I'm actually glad she's not gone by the way, she's the cutest of them all, and speaks English, unlike a huge batch of Latinas. I'm learning new words in Spanish every day, and that's also fun, but sometimes quite hard when things need to be done instantly.
That Friday, actually, I also needed to see if one of the room attendants found something in one of the rooms she cleaned, as a guest claimed he left something there. Tried explaning that in several ways and means, together with Bob from Security, but nothing of that seemed to work, so we gave up when she gave us a found item of the room she was currently in. We figured that if she found more, in the room we needed, she'd have also given that.
Second prize given away was some purse.

The day at work was just easy, for the most part, as I also needed to do some Houseman work next to it. Making sure all floors are stocked with all the right linen etc., as I explained in the previus entry. I really admire the guys that do this daily, because I had huge difficulties, keeping apart the King and Queen sheets and other material that looks alike. I wonder if I'd ever be able to keep them apart, but I won't be doing that that often anyway. I hope.

Straight after work, Yatha, Georgi and myself went off to a meeting with people from the home owners committee of the compound (gated society) we will be renting our house in. We dressed up in suits, for all the right reasons (Yatha was at work and was wearing his own already anyway) to find two people in shorts and polos near the swimming pool of the compound, but well!
We signed agreements stating the houserules, which are all common sense rules anyway. And honestly, the place just looks too neat to even want to make it look or sound bad there. Walked in suits until we finally were able to get hold of a cab. Willie (as his permit in the front of the car told) drove us back to the hotel.
Watched some episode of Greek and then went to a garden party at the place Marten, Tommy and Marinka are staying in. They're the other Dutch students there that started half a year ago, I think I said that somewhere before, right? And also that they've got a big garden?
Anyway, we had a party there with drinks, a barbecue again, and plenty of cool people from the hotel. Got home at 2:30 to find that the keys weren't working anymore, as there was some electronic failure earlier that day. Had security open my room and waited for Bart to come home, meanwhile completing a new song in Fruity Loops. I named that song after the theme of a conversation I had with Bellman Robert Huntley. For some reason I accepted what he said, as it was too spiritual and far-fetched to me to completely support it, but it was fun to think about it during the talk in general. Robert is a great guy by the way, he'll show my some of his paintings soon, as that's his hobby, so we also got to talk about artists in general, which was good.
Bart got here at 3:15 and we went to bed.

This saturday we had our Annual Team Member Summer Picnic. Went to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, just around the corner, basically. I feel bad for not taking my camera today, as it's a beautiful park. I'll go there some other day soon, and take photos so I can share the scenery.
There was plenty of food throughout the day. Hamburgers, sausages, chicken, watermelon, salads and a lot of cold drinks, ranging from mineral water to coke, sprite and even Gatorade.
We needed the Gatorade as a lot of sports activities were planned for the day.
We started off with a game of soccer, first time we managed to play half an hour, but everyone got drained. The weather today was hot around here, and it's hard to be active all the time under those circumstances.
After a 20 minute break we went to play another, 15 minute, match. Had lunch after that, with some good hamburgers and chicken. Next up; volleybal. There was a sandy place with a volleybal net present. The sand hurt my eyes so I was glad I could borrow women's sunglasses from Marinka to make it possible to play in the first place. Won all matches except for the last one we played. By that time I had spent quite some hours in the sun, and I could feel my calves being sunburnt already. By that time we still needed to play Flag Football. American Football without tackles, but ribbons around your waste instead. When someone takes one of the ribbons, it counts as a proper tackle, and the play is stopped there.
Was fun, but I didn't understand much of the Football part in general. Ah well!

In general, it's been a great day there, with a lot of people from Housekeeping, a lot of people I've talked with before, and the guys I played indoor soccer with earlier. Good day out that we (Bart and I) ended with a small ocean visit.
Took a shower and have been putting lotion on my calves ever since, trying to have it ease. Also, you can see the outlines of my shirt at my neck and arms. Front and back. I've got some colour on me. I'll just go easy the next 2/3 days and I should be able to hit the sun again, I guess.

Tomorrow, I'll be seeing Finch, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Tickle Me Pink and Our Last Night in The Culture Room, about 4 miles from here, together with Caner, one of the Turkish guys working in housekeeping. Caner is our standard runner. He's a great guy, so I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy the time there. Should be great!

I have both a photo and a video for you all. The photo was taken right before I wrote this blog. The moon casting it's light on the ocean, reflecting (6 seconds shutter time, for those interested).
By the way, the photo is also in the picasa photo album of Week Two.

And for a video, to complete the celestial theme, not another moon view, but Dredg's "Ode To The Sun", live in great quality.

Routine

2008-09-12T03:58:00.003+02:00

There's nothing new going on here these days. At least, no big changes have occured. Here's a short recap of the last few days (three to be exact) we've been living here in windy (that's right, not sunny, but windy, as the outer winds of Hurricane Ike are being a bothersome force to consider) Fort Lauderdale. On tuesday, there was a slight change in programme as we did computer training that we started earlier. Being past the explanation of "operating a pointing device" we spent the day learning a lot about the aspects and functions of the central Rooms Division system that deals with guest information for check-ins, check-outs and people "In House", with all options for that. Information regarding statuses of all rooms available, past and future statuses of that, frequent guest information and requests and anything else you might need to look up to be of assistance. Learned a lot, repeated a lot of things we already knew, and almost got headaches from all the reading on the screen.
Honestly, the training itself is a bit of a pain, as it's all explanation and just following steps instead of really being able to browse around the entire program and try things for yourself, which, I think, would help more. We'll get to that later though, and I'm already trying to just mess around in the office with the real program (always pressing Discard and Cancel, don't worry, I'm not screwing things up, yet). That evening I did nothing much in my room, put my purchases Chicken Tika Massala in the microwave (got that from the proper food store we went to with Patricia "mum" Restrepo). Found another new album, the debut from Hollywood Undead. Those guys got 44 MILLION!! plays on Myspace since they started that, and I can understand why. They've got rock/pop/hiphop/gangsta rap all on one single album with 14 songs. I even like their gangster stuff, while lyrics about "bitches with fake tits" usually leave me searching for the "Next" button.

On wednesday we woke up nicely with a breakfast part of the International Housekeeping Week. That's right. We're being treated right! Ate French toast before work. Who'd have though? I'll definately be making that in the kitchen of our house soon.
That day during work we got a change of pace as Bart was Houseman, providing clean linen to all storages on each floor, and keeping the corridors clean, and I was Runner. That means you're acting upon all guest requests within a set amount of time.
If guests request extra packs of tea with sugar, or a little crib for their child, you get that from the storage and bring it to them. It allows for some interaction, and if you're lucky, tips from the guests. Unfortunately, with the low room occupancy we have, there wasn't much for me to do, so I went looking for chores, helping people if I could and just making hours pass easy.

That night we went out to eat at PF Chang's again. With the three of us this time as we decided to let Yatha experience how awesome that restaurant is, first hand.
Had those lettuce rolls again for starters, together with some tuna that I even liked (it was just like beef carpaccio, really) and chicken flatbread.

Took Dali Chicken as a main course, one of the spicier chicken variations they have. It's prepared with red peppers and I think there was a hint of sambal too. Bart had Beef with Brocolli, which was a nice change from my burning chicken. It was nice and sweet, proper meat for me to eat.
Yatha went for seafood yet again, Hot Fish, that I decided not to try. As ever, the dishes were accompanied with rice, and I tried to eat most with chopsticks again, but I'm glad they've got forks there too, unlike at the Sushi Rock from last week.
We'll definately be back at that restaurant yet again.

Today, thursday, we had another Housekeeping Breakfast, burritos they got at McDonalds together with juices (orange and apple). After that it was back to our routine work of checking rooms on floors again. A lot of vacant rooms, and little action in general. Had some fun with the ladies cleaning the rooms on my floors, as I helped them out at times. Got to watch how one of them transformed a Starbucks cup into this dustpan-and-brush combination to clean the balcony of a certain room.
Speaking of certain rooms, I now know why they call suites, suites. That's because they are SWEET! Went to check the presidential suite, #224, and was completely knocked over. It was huge, with amazing furniture, and this awesome master bedroom and bathroom. Next to that, it has a private entrance to the garage so that leaving and entering of celebrities can be done without much hassle. Loved that part of the hotel so much.

Tomorrow we'll do some more routine work. Get some more Housekeeping treats (I forgot to mention we had these great Haagen Dasz ice cream, Magnum style. These were way better than Magnums, actually) and then, get paid! Payday tomorrow, my first hard-earned dollars, yay!

And to complete the routine entry, here's Thirteen Senses' video for "The Salt Wound Routine".

Black And White

2008-09-09T01:25:00.004+02:00

Black and white for two reasons. First, I have decided to change the background theme from black to white, by request (and I also made the blog a bit more broad, if anyone has any viewing issues, please let me know), and yesterday (sunday) has been a day of opposites for me. It started out like most others last week, working in housekeeping, getting my own floors to take care of. However, not everything turned out as planned. One of the girls on my floor, Lana, was supposed to clean 7 rooms on the 16th floor. She usually hangs out with another Russian girl (Kate, I suppose something along the lines of Ekaterina normally) and they add all their rooms together and do them together. Honestly, I think that can work faster than doing your rooms alone. After I had lunch, no rooms of Lana were touched still. After an hour long search, we decided to give the rooms untouched, to the ladies of the afternoon shift to clean them instead. Letting your team down.
As I went to check on all the untouched rooms, I found two of the rooms with their beds made, but nothing else was done there. Had the girls prepare those completely and went on. Found both Kate and Lana in one of the rooms but sent them down to the office as the manager was far from pleased with them already. As the manager fired them from work, I went to check a room that I checked earlier that morning, for no apparent reason. I'm glad I did though, as the bed was being slept in. That morning at 11 AM, the room was "Vacant/Ready". Security would look into the keys used to get into that room that day, and if it seems that the key used was one of the girls' ones, I guess we know where they've been all day long.

Straight after work we grabbed all the paperwork needed for the house, make copies, fax our stuff and such. Today we got another pack of forms to fill in for the contract. Not feeling like paperwork right now, so we'll do that when the other guys are back from work so we can help eachother out with the forms and get it all done at once. After that it should be as good as done. Hopefully!

Anyway, with the signing of the papers, yesterday didn't end yet. As we wanted to do our laundry in the room Yatha and Georgi are staying in, one of the water hoses snapped, complete soaking the carpet and everything on it, dripping down a few floors! We did what we could to get it done as soon as possible. Using towels to seak the carpets dry and then wrench them out in the bathroom, time after time. Used hot and cold air to work the carpet and try to get it as dry as possible. Yatha and Georgi have been relocated and we're not allowed to use the in house washing and drying anymore. So next time we'll walk up to one of the laundromats around.

Today, Bart and I were off. Slept until 11 something, did nothing pretty much the entire day. I spent some time chatting with people on MSN for the first time in ages, and I watched some series. Started watching The Orphanage (El Orfanata, Spanish horror movie, 2008) as I was pointed towards that by a movie critic in my inner friends circle. Decided to suspend that movie to write this blog and go watch both Gossip Girl and Prison Break on TV soon.

Also took a little run down the beach to get some groceries today. As there was a reasonably strong wind from the ocean, I got sand and salty air thrown my way, which made breathing not that easy, but it wasn't that far out. The weather here is pretty windy right now, and the ocean's a mess. Have seen nothing but 2 kitesurfers in the water today. I wanted to wrestle with the waves, but everyone told me not to, so yeah, I stayed inside safely.

Spent some time looking for new music today as well. Found that the new albums from All That Remains and Anberlin (LOVE THEM, and guess which shirt I was wearing today, coincidentally) had leaked on the internet, so I got my hands on them to preview them before they come out.
Also found that I Am Ghost placed a new song on their Myspace, and will be posting another preview song from their new October album on there tomorrow. Can't wait for that album!

As I expect to share some Anberlin with you later anyway, I decided to post a slideshow video for the new I Am Ghost single. Here's Bone Garden.

Week Two

2008-09-07T02:27:00.003+02:00

A few days ago, I got a comment about the videos and people wanting to see more photos. As I used to take my camera everywhere, it never really was a problem. Out here, right now, making photos just isn't a priority yet. However, at my photo album there is a new folder, named Week Two, and it hosts a few more pictures taken from my hotelroom balcony (we moved rooms this wednesday night). It also hosts a batch of pictures of the house we went to visit today. A three bedroom house around 2,5km from the hotel, with a Publix supermarket and WholeFoods shop, which sells a lot of fresh (and ecological) food and other items for the environmentally friendly people (with a lot of money, I must add. It's not cheap there) at walking distance. Straight around the corner, actually.
It's the best option we've come to find in two days of full-time checking and working with the people at Kensington & Company, a real estate broker located at Las Olas, of which the three women were very, very helpful to us.
One of them, Patricia, was branded as "mum" already. She has boys our age and has been kind enough to drive us around the two days, help us out by looking while we were at work, and just helping us out a great deal. She currently contacting the owner of the place to see what we can have, need to have, and want to have, and at what price.
Yesterday we also found an amazing place, a little further out, close to Broward Blvd, which had everything we could ask for, in terms of furniture and design, neighborhood and pricing, but it was just too small for the four of us. Speaking of our new mum; her sister, Mimi, works at the Chrysel dealer closeby and has been kind enough to call around, going through her contact list to help Georgi get the second hand car he wants to buy (and later ship out of the country to keep using). We also heard that her brother owns an ice cream store at Sunshine Blvd, and another sister is in web design. Quite a family.
Anyway, take a look at the photos of the place we visited, and let me know what the thoughts are. Except for the master bedroom furniture (the great dark wooden bed and matching items) and two major plasma TVs, everything will stay there as it is, by the current looks of things.
The living room TV will probably stay there when we move in, so that's not too bad, is it?
More news on the house will follow as we'll get closer to completing the transfer, or not.

Last blog ended two nights before my days off. Four days ago now. The wednesday itself wasn't much. Worked again, and during those working hours (it's low season, not that much to do in the hotel) Christian, our damn amazing Guest Service Director drove us to the Social Security Office. Got that all covered that day and spent the night in the rooms. Didn't go out for dinner, didn't cook anything special here either.

Thursday was our first day off. Bart, Yatha and myself all had some time off and we went to open up bank accounts at Wachovia bank, I got myself a hair cut, which isn't even that bad, but I still love my old me way better, and we walked around the Sunrise Blvd area, getting something to eat at Subways before we went back to the hotel. Around 6PM we went with a guy named Milan to play indoor soccer with other colleagues, 6 vs 6 for an hour at this place somewhere in Hollywood (the Florida version, it was only a 30 minute drive). Totally drained myself there, and went with 8 (or 10) people to Sushi Rock. They mostly sold seafood there, but I managed to find chicken on the menu, and I started out with a wasabi-infused entree, with pork. Everyone was waiting for me to burn badly with the wasabi, but the technique of gentle chewing and swallowing bigger pieces worked out just fine. Didn't even need to touch my bottomless drink.
Went with Paris, Marinka (another Dutch intern who's been here for a few months) and Bart to a bar closeby for one last drink and this touchscreen game.
Got home after midnight and went to bed after reading another chapter in Baldacci's debut novel.

Friday was a day in which Georgi rented a car to drive us around and see houses all over. We started at 9, with rain, drove around, tried to call and make appointments, until we hit the office of Kensington, were the ladies were helping us out a lot. That day they showed us to 3 places we looked up, meeting our demands, and we stayed in touch. That took up pretty much the entire day. That night we went over to the house of Marten, Marinka and Tommy, the Dutch people that have been here for half a year now, living just two blocks from the hotel. Their house is way less attractive than ours and they end up paying more, per person per month, I think. It's well close though. Had a barbecue at their place, but as I was exhausted I went home early, read some more, watched an episode of Eureka and went to bed.

Today then, finally, Georgi and Yatha needed to start at 3, so Patricia took them for a drive, showing them more properties (among that, the one I took pictures of). When they got to the hotel they contacted us for a quick meeting, and made sure that Bart and I could also visit the property with Patricia later. Work was really easy, with hardly anything to do. We did some computer training (Chapter 1 - Basic Skills, operating a pointing device (a mouse), and no, I'm not joking!) and other daily work next to that.
Went to visit the house as I mentioned, did some groceries with Patricia and spent the night, so far, at the room. Just watched an episode of Wipeout and will now enjoy some computer time here, and will probably read again later.

I wasn't planning on sharing a video, but weird as it gets here with all these hiphop people around me (everytime we go for a drive with Christian there's the satellite-driven nationwide Hiphop radio station playing) I actually started to like a few songs.
Here's my current favorite, one of the bigger hits in the States at the moment (not sure how big this is in Holland, for example).

T.I. - Whatever You Like

Feeling The Moment

2008-09-03T04:41:00.002+02:00

Another two days past, and I'm trying to keep up with the blogging. As work stays pretty much the same, at least for the first day I'm going to describe, I'll keep it short.
Started the monday at 8, instead of 9, and had breakfast in the restaurant yet again, as we still hadn't moved rooms at the time. Work was long and rather fun, though we had only two supervisors to help us out as others were off, or doing the afternoon/evening shift. The supervisor I was supposed to help out hasn't got the best reputation out there, resulting in the manager telling me "to do everything completely different from how she explains" or something along those very lines.
I ended up just taking some of her work to do it all alone instead and later report back to her with what I've done on her account. Spent the day without much hassle, working on getting my own act together and develop my own ways in here.

That night Bart and I went out, during Labor Day, to find out pretty much everything was closed. However, next to Galleria there's a place called Seasons 52, with P.F. Chang's in the same building. We took a glance at the menu and decided to eat in.
This oriental restaurant had a really great, authentic setting and after we were seated, our waiter for the night explained a little about the restaurant, and more important, the menu card. He seemed to know a lot about the items on there and also told us what the signature dishes were, and what other things he'd like to recommend.
We followed him completely, and after he got Bart his Coke and me my freshly made Lemonade (in it's purest form, water with lemon's squished in there, filled with ice. It was sooooo good) we went to order what he pointed out. We started with chicken-filled lettuce rolls for the both of us. Receiving a plate with stir-fried noodles and chicken and a few pieces of lettuce to wrap it in to make our own little rolls. Really was a great thing with crispy noodles, soft pieces of chicken and warm and cold contrasts. Loved it.
Almost instantly after we were done we received our main courses. No waiting involved, perfect timing and great food.

Bart went for Honey Chicken, and I took Chang's Spicy Chicken. Both were restaurant recommendations/specials. Both were served with white rice. Both were damn tasty.
Eating most of it with sticks (I managed nicely after Bart explained) and drinking two glasses, getting really full, we decided to skip desserts, for then.
We'll have a chance to get those later again, as we'll definately be back!

With the bill, we also got some fortune cookies. For a little more fun, the waiter told us to add the words "in bed", which resulted in me getting the already famous line "An exciting opportunity lies ahead if you are not timid (in bed)". We'll keep that in mind!
Best thing of all, we ended up paying under 40 bucks with the two of us! That with great service, good food, a great server and just a nice night out.
Walked back home, went to bed pretty much instantly after we got back.

Tuesday was another day without any supervisors so I did the same tour as I did before, only coordinated some more with Bart and his supervisor Nataly, a girl from Belarus who's just really funny and good at what she does. Liked being around the both of them, joking around all the time and working in the meantime.

We switched rooms today. Bart and I now share one, and we spent the night in the room, looking up comedy fragments on youtube and enjoying some laughs. We'll head to bed soon I guess (it's 11 now, and even though we have an offer to head to the Irish pub, we do need to work again tomorrow, and haven't had a day off to rest ever since we landed, yet).

For a song, since I wanted it to be about food and memories, I picked Feeder's "Feeling The Moment".

This Day And Age

2008-09-01T04:18:00.002+02:00

Yesterday, during my first day at work, I read a survey mentioning something along the lines of "the ridiculousness of having to pay for internet in a hotel this day and age". As much as I was surprised by that in the hotel in Brussels (read a few entries back), I agreed with this comment.
That's where the title comes in, and also the song I'll share later (This Day And Age - Slideshow).
That first day at work yesterday was a lot of fun, and a lot of hassle. New information all over the place. I started out in the Housekeeping Office to learn a few computer programs they use and just check how things are going at the heart of the operation there. As I sat there in my Front Office outfit, as there were no clothes in the sizes Bart and I needed (they're being ordered) I quickly had to run with Paris (the one who fitted me into these clothes, she's one of the Housekeeping Managers) to check upon the VIP amenities in the penthouse, as we had the General Manager of another big Hilton property coming in to stay over. The penthouse, with 3 bedrooms and enough living space and bath rooms to literally get lost in, was all cleaned up in time. Way in time, as we got a wrong call. The limousine that was at the driveway wasn't his, but from another person staying over. Then went to check upon the room for the guest of our penthouse VIP, and Paris made the decision to not use this room, and change him around to the suite below the penthouse, to have them stay close to one another. After arriving at that empty room to check and prepare that, the call was made to go for the initial set-up room after all. After all going back and forth for a few times, things were settled and I could head back to the office to be around some more, shadowing people and learning along the way.
Lunch at the cafeteria is more of a social happening than a great meal (no offense, but it's a canteen setup after all), meeting up with people from other departments at times. Especially the guys from security are hilarious.
The afternoon was spent with me messing around on the programs to see how, what and where. After that, as things went kind of out of control with people missing and phones and pagers not being checked, I took it upon myself to play "Runner". The runner handles all guest requests that are put in at any given department. Glasses, plates and cutlery they want delivered up to cribs for new guests who checked in with a baby or little child or another tube of toothpaste.
WHen I got back from that quickly, everyone was into place again and I sort of spent the rest of the day at the office. Got an explanation about all the room types we have, with all the abbreviations they use. There are about 15 different types of codes each meaning something else for whatever room it is, and I'm still nowhere near knowing how and what, but yeah, that'll come!
After work I went to Galleria for some food at the food court again, got my final information concerning my iPhone (two weeks away, by the looks of it) and walked back to the hotel, with the heavy winds going against us. No worries, as we had it in our backs when we went there, which was quite an easy walk. To our left, miles and miles away, there was a thunderstorm going. It looked amazing to be honest. With the wind blowing in that direction and it being so far out, we were unable to hear anything, so we just got to enjoy the flashes.
Spent the evening doing nothing much else. Read some Baldacci and headed to bed.

Today was the second working day (that usually follows the first one, I know) and I switched places with Bart. He now took the office tour, and I went to check rooms with Georgi (the guy who we might be living with) as supervisor. He's not one for explaining, but leading by example also works, so I basically followed him around, watching what he does, and how he does it, to be able to do it alone at the end of the day.
The day started of slow in terms of checking and cleaning from the women's side (I really need to work on my Spanish!) which wasn't really for me, but well. After lunch things started to look up, we had more to do, and later on Georgi and I used to split rooms to check as I got a pretty good idea of what to look for and what needs to be in all the rooms.
For some reason, we found a room near the end of the day, which had a scale, iron and fire extinguisher missing. I'm not quite sure how big suitcases get these days, but they were all missing! That was pretty much the thing worth mentioning most.
It was just a lot of learning and doing yet again, without any really noticeable things for me to share with you.

Those concerned with the Gustav Hurricane in the region, all we notice are strong winds and some additional rains. It actually looks like fun to have some fun fighting the waves crashing the shore right now.
The weather outside is still warm and sticky, as I'm getting used to.
By the looks of things, it will hit New Orleans or some Texas shoreline, and people are being evacuated there. The next storm, Hanna or something, will not even make it to hurricane status, but seems to be headed our way a bit more. It will cross the Bahamas and hit the east side of Florida somewhere. Just don't know how far down south or north that will be. Shouldn't be too much of a hassle though!
I'll be safe.

Also, for those of you that contacted me as of late. I'm sorry for the inpersonal approach from my side. I've got a lot on my mind and not that much energy to put into things after work, I apologise. Still love you all.

The first time

2008-08-30T01:18:00.003+02:00

Arriving at the hotel was a first US hotel visit. Sleeping there was a first, waking up there on your first real day there is another unique experience. Over the hours I've built up many more firsts.
On August 28, we were picked up in the lobby around 7:45 to have breakfast in the Ilios restaurant, where breakfast, lunch and dinner is served. Ilios is the Greek word for sun. The sun is a huge influence in Florida itself (being the Sunshine State), but also in the hotel (though you won't notice that with all the airconditioning blasting around) as all the meeting rooms carry names which are translations from the word sun in some language. Sonne, Soleil and Jua are some of the names I've come across during a tour I got on my orientation day.
That orientation day started after we had breakfast with John Saglam, the man who also picked us up from the airport. Just like the night before, I treated myself on some fresh bread with creamcheese and red onions, finishing it all with a bowl of fresh fruit. The lovely waitress was keen on keeping our glasses with orange juice filled at all times, so in total I had 3 glasses of that to flush all the food with. After that we were escorted to the third floor, where we were seated in the newly opened training room (before that, trainings were done in meeting rooms, which, honestly, would look better than this room, but anyway). In here we got to watch quite a few videos, fill in a lot of forms, and listen to almost all department directors around. People from security, Food & Beverage, Front Office and Human Resources were all around to tell us something. With two small breaks (a lunch in Ilios included) in between we ended our day at 3PM. At least, the day in the meeting room for our training. After that we were taken to Paris (and yes, I made the same link, with her working in the Hilton) to fit suits to see what sizes we'd need for our working attire. As we (Bart and I) had rather unusual sizes (for the department we'll be working in at least, as there are mostly women MIT -manager in training- around) we were scheduled to start working on the computer systems instead, and not go to Housekeeping as those suits needed to be ordered for us.
With that done, we went over to Joseph again, who has been helping us with a lot of things ever since we got accepted into this hotel. He helped us filling in the last forms, gave us some more information on bank accounts, social security numbers etc., and made the deal for us to be able to have breakfast in the Ilios for the next few days as we have rooms without fridges so we'll have to get fresh food instead of food being brought to us, to have it stored in the fridge. Not at all bad, having to enjoy your breakfast in the restaurant. Not at all.
After that Bart, Yatha and myself went for a little walk. Over the Beach Blvd to Sunrise Blvd, heading to the Galleria shopping mall (where they have gone off to now as I'm writing this. Bart is going to purchase a laptop, and Yatha needs some tidy shoes). In this shopping mall we browsed around, I got myself some information about the iPhone which I'm thinking to buy this month, and we went for dinner in the food court there. A large space with lots of booths next to eachother, all with different types of food. Pizza, thai, sushi, chicken/turkey and more. Got ourselves a good meal there, stayed around for a little longer and then went past the hotel again, to walk over Las Olas Blvd, one of the more vibrant streets in Fort Lauderdale. The eastern part of the boulevard is all residential, with (private) streets to the left and right everywhere. Houses with yachts docked, Mercedeses on the driveway and pretty girls jogging with their dog. Rich neighborhoods closeby. Walking on, we passed the first restaurants, some fashion stores (which were mostly closed as it was past 9 already). Walked past Johnny V, a restaurant I remembered reading about in one of my travel guides, and took a look at the menu card. Not at all as expensive as I figured it would be, despite the fact that they parked an Aston Martin straight in front of it. The appearance seems pretty alright over there. Might want to take my placement mentor there as he is supposed to pay for dinner when he comes to visit. Wouldn't mind that.
Anyway, walked on, past more lovely sights, and came to the Riverfront. A little place at a river, yes, really. With a lot of nice bars there, including and Irish Pub that we might visit soon. Need to start at 9AM tomorrow, so might not be tonight, but we'll see about that.
Was a pretty long walk to get there in the first place (4,5 km) so we took a cab back. Paid 10 bucks for this little peace of convenience and said goodnight to eachother, each heading back to his own room. That's when I wrote my blog. It seemed like living two days in one. First the training, and then the spare time, all within 17 hours or so.

Decided to not put any alarms for the second day, and woke up around 9. After heading to bed at 0:30 I think I can say I'm pretty done with the jetlag already. It's 20:08 now and I feel like it's that time as well. All set.
Had breakfast around 10:15 until 11 or so, outside on the terrace, in the shades though. Ultimate vacation feeling, but having your work in the back of your mind kind of makes that less interesting (need to start tomorrow at 9:00). After that Bart and I watched a little episode of Wipeout on my laptop and had a few good laughs about it. We've got all the great TV channels on here anyway, so we need to get on schedule with a few things. Currently got CSI Miami running on the side here. Fitting.
After that we went to the drug test, and were brought by the Director of Guest Service, a great guy named Christian. He took us to Quest something, who took urine samples from us new people (Bart, Yatha, a German Front Office MIT named Sabrina and myself) and after that we went off again. Went with Christian to a store he needed to visit, after which he took us to Best Buy, a large electronic store, to see if we needed anything. I tried looking for a proper convertor plug as the one I brought wont work for my laptop, as I can't get the screw out (it's a 3-point screw. Most screwdrivers I've seen. Correction, all I've seen either have 2 or 4 points -line or cross). Didn't find one. Then went to Verizon where Yatha bought himself a phone he could use.
I'll look for the iPhone later this week when I've got a bank account worked out too.
Then went back to the hotel as Christian needed to work again. I asked where the closest supermarket was and then Sabrina offered to take us by car. Went to the valet to get her car and we drove off. Got something to eat and drink, but as we have no fridge yet, didn't take too much. Then went to get something to eat at the Subway and Sabrina dropped us off at the hotel again.
She's got an appartment already as she moved in with a German friend of her who has been living here with her boyfriend for a while already. She's got a pool at her house! Anyway.
We went to the beach then, had a bit of fun wrestling with the waves at sea and went back in to the hotel again.
Took a shower with some great shampoo, I didn't even need the conditioner. It's called Crabtree and Evelyn - La Source. If you can ever get your hands on that, do so, as it's magic. Then got a phonecall from Bart who was in a room with Bulgarian new worker Georgi, who studied hotel management in Switzerland and who has been here for two weeks. He was looking in to apartments and such for a while already and was wondering what we thought about 4-bedroom houses that he found in the neighborhood (one of them on one of the private streets left of Las Olas as I said, for 1750 a month. That would really be nice with the four of us, and he'll get to know more about that tomorrow, hope that works). It looks like we'll be living with the 4 of us somewhere. Georgi has got 19 more days in the hotel at best, so in two weeks we might be out of here too. He's been in the area before, has got himself a car (and an American license for 20 bucks, which is easy to get here apparently) so it might be a great thing living with him in general. He's a good guy too.
After the meeting with Georgi the guys went to Galleria again to shop and eat a little bit, and I went back to my room, working on photos, which, in the future, can be found at THIS little online photo gallery for you all to see. Keep it bookmarked somewhere, and I'll let you know when I've uploaded a great new batch of photos.

Now almost done writing the blog, and I found a song with it in the meantime.
Here's Loser's "The First Time"

Flights

2008-08-29T05:25:00.011+02:00

I'm writing this around 23:30 local time. Seems like I'm already over my jetlag, after just one night of sleep and one day of action. Today actually seemed like two days, really.
But more about that later. The flight, yesterday, is worth mentioning too, and I've got some photos to go with that (you'll all love me for sharing those!) as well. It's going to take me a lot of time to write that already, so you'll hear more about the the day in Fort Lauderdale later (tomorrow is my last day off, so I figure I'll use that to comment on things).

Bart, his brother (who drove) and his mum picked us (that is me and my mum) up at around 7:40 or so. Had a quick greeting session and put all my stuff in the trunk of their large-enough-car. Did I say all my stuff? After 2 minutes or so, I came to the conclusion that I left my jacket on the couch. In my jacket was my passport with my visa, so I had Thomas (Bart's brother) turn at the next roundabout and stop at the front door again.
My jacket was literally the only non-furniture item still in the living room! I took it with me and sat down on the backseat again. After a reasonably easy drive of around 3 hours, we arrived at Dusseldorf International Airport. Waited around for the car to be parked, meeting up with everyone again, to take some action.
I got instructions to head down to terminal C, walk all the way through and check in. After another confirmation of having the proper course, somewhere along the way, Bart and I were ready to check in after he filled in one last piece of paper (for the time being). Bart, being as easy going as he is, only needed a small suitcase and a backpack to take everything he wanted/needed. Me, on the other hand, packed a little more than allowed, but the total weight of all our suitcases was still acceptable for two people, so no actions had to be taken.
Went on to eat something at Leonardo's (Ninja Turtles, anyone?) with all 5 of us, and just had an easy time there for a while. Called to see where Yatha was, to find out he was still on his way to the airport.

Went to go through the customs officers and everything, after saying goodbye to the relatives we left behind. It seemed like a really hard time for my mum, so I hope she managed to get through the day and everything, as she wasn't really looking forward to anything of this at all, the closer it got.
Sat down at gate C46 and after a while heard a familiar voice. Yatha also made it! Had to verify something, and found out that Bart was the odd one out, in terms of luggage, and that my suitcases weren't all thát bad.

Boarded the plane 30 minutes later than the expected time, but it all seemed fair enough anyway. We weren't due to take off for another 30 regardless. Then, the fun kicked in. We waited, and waited. And stared out of the window. And waited some more. And then got word from the captain (first in German, later in English) that there was an unidentified piece of luggage around that made it necessary for all of us to personally identify our suitcases so we could figure out what didn't belong in there.
Waited for a longer time to see what we needed to do exactly, but apparently they went on to scan all the labels again and connect those to the passengers that had borded to then see what they had, or didn't have.
About two and half hours later than planned. We took off! (see left side for a photo that was taken when we just got in the air, it's on of the airport's landing strips we flew over).
Had a lovely time flying, and it took a while. In between I saw a load of lovely air sights. A lot of clouds, in all shapes, forms and with lighting backgrounds. I'll share my favorites here too. Should be quite a few! Nothing else to see than clouds and water. Endless water. Really, whenever water becomes a problem for whoever, all they need to do is move to the grounds where the Atlantic hits land, and drink, use and save however much they can, there's plenty, I tell you (and please, don't go all serious on me for this).
Anyway, photos!

There, a bunch of aerial photos I loved taking (at least, I love the result of me hitting some settings and pushing the shutter button).

After a long, but not boring while (watched the movie "What Happens In Vegas and made puzzles with Bart) we finally got around to hitting land. We were approaching Florida itself after we had flown along the coastline (be it quite a few miles out, I never got to see anything but water, after all). We flew over Fort Lauderdale on the way, and I managed to get a little photo of that too, but just missed the hotel on there, by the looks of it.

Went through the customs at this airport too, had fingerprints scanned again, and a photo taken, and went on to pick up the luggage, which was nicely there when we arrived. Put it on carts and walked towards the exit, where I passed a girl with a Dutch looking name on her badge, with a Hilton logo on it, to later realise that might have been there for us, despite the fact that we were told we'd get a male "collector" there. Addressed her and had my ideas confirmed. She then took us to mister John Saglam, the man with whom I'll be working a lot the coming year. As expected, we were picked up by a huge car. A nice Cadillac Escalade. Honestly, there are no small cars in this country! Up to now I've seen a few VW Golfs driving around, but other than that they don't get any smaller than your average family car. Lots of SUVs around and such.

After a nightly drive, taking around 30 minutes, we arrived at the hotel. I was sore, as I had to sit in between two seats in the back. The damn thing only had 4 seats, and we were with the 5 of us. I volunteered, and never gave in! Might not have been a bad idea to accept Yatha's offer to switch for a bit when my legs went numb, but still.
When we arrived we were greeted by a number of people. Got a very small tour to start with, and had something to eat in a newly opened restaurant/food market concept, which had only been in opration since monday. Had some really nice food there (baguette with cream cheese and red onions - I can recommend that to everyone, so simple but so good! - and later a Cuban Panini with all kinds of lovely ingredients on it as well).

Went to bed in my 2-person bedroom with five!! pillows on the bed, after I did everything I think I had to do. Will post some pictures of the room in my next entry. It's 0:15 now and I'm glad I don't need to write about today already, as that's also going to take ages for me to do, luckily I resized all the pictures already, so that helps.

Anyway, time for me to head to bed while most of you are about to get up, or have been awake for a bit already. Damn timezones at times.

I wanted to find you a song with a video, like everytime, but unfortunately, the band I picked (Falling Up) has never released this song in any way, and the live footage was in crap audio quality, so here's a still of the song "Flights".

I Got To Leave

2008-08-26T14:48:00.002+02:00

Suitcases packed! Two filled with mainly clothing and some other useful and necessary items. Both are slightly over the max weight, but we'll get that done at the airport if needed. Won't be too much trouble. Also got everything set on the laptop now, including some last minute changes made to the system, as I wanted to install my dear music making program Fruity Loops Studio as well!

Tomorrow around 7:30 or something, I'll be picked up and drag my mum along with me to Dusseldorf as well. Flight LT1900, on wednesday 27-08-08 is scheduled to leave at 13:40, as mentioned before.

Currently, things are overcast and 20 degrees over here, while tomorrow's destination is looking at 28, also with a nicely cloud-covered sky, but still.

As soon as I get there and got things worked out, I'll post a little something, mentioning my safe flight, fine welcoming committee and lovely hotel room. Last minute calls, for those who read this, can be put through to 0618521728, but remember I'll be in Germany for most of the day tomorrow, and I'll have it switched off during the entire flight.
One of the priorities for me there, is to get a new phone with local number and I'll have that shared with most as well.

I'm thinking about writing a song about what it's like to leave like this, as I had troubles finding a song that really matched my ideas at present. It's not perfect, but it definately works.
"We Got To Leave" by Swedish party musicians Caesars.

Work

2008-08-24T20:28:00.003+02:00

Dinner with the family. The restaurant I know so well. The menu card I can still dream, and the familiar faces of the people I've worked with over the last months.
Today it was time for a goodbye dinner in the city, and I chose to have that celebrated in Rhodos, the Greek restaurant that employed me as their waiter for a while. After walking in yesterday, writing my name down in the agenda, getting myself and my mum a little drink while talking to the men who work in the kitchen (and own the place), it was now time to show up at the proper time.
At 18:00, the time I jotted down, no other guests were in the restaurant yet, and I got to wake up (figuratively speaking!) everyone in the building.

As none of us really drinks any alcohol, we decided to skip the appertizer, the traditional aniseed-flavoured spirit drink from Greece called Ouzo and other drinks were brought instead. Got some baguette with home made herb butter from the house, and we ordered our starters and main course.
Mum had a little mix up with the numbers and got salmon instead of melon, which I only remembered after the dish was brought up, and I started to think about items 4 (melon) and 5 (salmon) on the menu card, clearly recalling she ordered number 5, so it was her own fault.
Some filo with spinach and feta cheese was on the table for Hans, and both my sister and I had meatballs with tomato sauce for warm starters.

To not bother everyone with more technicalities, we had a great main course, which was, frankly, a little much for me to bear, as I shared the two person main dish with Hans and we had some slight leftovers. I could finally relate to the people who sometimes mentioned the portion size of their meals while I was still serving.
Helped with taking out all plates and dishes to the kitchen, had a little chat with the guys again and brought the dessert menu cards to the table to let everyone pick. Just like before, my sister had a hard time picking out anything at all, but everyone managed to make a decision.

Enjoyed my own little mix-up of desserts, the special plate with fresh fruit, vanilla ice cream, baklava, greek yoghurt and truffle ice cream. Said my goodbyes to everyone in the kitchen and restaurant currently present, as I brought everything to the kitchen myself, pulled out the bill and showed the kitchen to my sister.

Just like on the way to the restaurant, I drove the car back, and can now wait for some reactions from my former colleagues as I left them this blog address to keep track of what I'll do next.

Frankly, I'm a lot more calm than I was earlier today. I keep telling myself I'm not bothered by the move and the changes and all that, but my body is tense as can be. Transpiration all over the place, an upset stomach, fatigue in general.
Really hope that's all gone after I've also managed to shake off the jetlag this wednesday.

For some music, I managed to find something that combined both eating and working, and also belonging to one of my favorite bands, instead of other songs that just fitted for whatever reason.
Here's Jimmy Eat World - Work.

Not A Soul

2008-08-23T11:26:00.005+02:00

Thursday and Friday were my last days in Alphen aan den Rijn, the city I was born (well, technically not) and raised in, and spent every single day of my life up until I was 12. For years after I left, I used to be there every two weeks, being driven there by my mum, and my dad taking me back to Steenwijk by train mostly. It started to wear down at times, due to sports or such, and later due to work from either me or my sister.
The Public Transportation Card you receive when being a student made it a lot easier for me to head there on a friday and get back on a monday, straight to uni for example. Used to meet up with friends all the time, going out every single weekend I was there, to Querelle, 99% of the time.
The good old days in which they still had their Photoplay machine over there. Doing quizzes and memory games with the bunch of us. Never taking the blame yourself when it was Game Over.
These two days I spent meeting up with people with whom I've also been at Lowlands, so that was a bit odd, but fun nonetheless. Others had obligations that made it impossible to have a proper goodbye, but it's fine as it is. Can't go around announcing I'll still be there, the day before I arrive, and expect everyone to show.

After we went to get some fresh vegetables from this farmland just outside of town, I spent the afternoon at home, doing Wii Fit games in the living room, breaking records, learning new things, and just have a good time with my stepbrother. That evening my favorite dish there, was being made. Greek food from Jeannette. You'd think I'd get bored of the food in general, after eating it weekly at work, but that's far from true. Besides, this still tastes slightly different (and oh so good as well). Not that we used to eat that all the time, but I'll miss the chance to eat it if I would request it sometime.
Then went to visit the grandparents, and I drove. Got some new driving lessons from my dad on top of it, since I just couldn't get things straight! Hope it's solved a few future issues now then. Had some great photos taken this day overall, at the farm, at home, and at the grandparents' house. If I get those by mail, I'll share!
That night I went to the cinema to watch Get Smart. I enjoyed the movie, I must say. Jokes might not always have been the best to be found, and it also was far from a serious attempt at anything, but it kept me amused throughout.

On Friday I headed into town with my stepbrother, Tom, to try and find him a birthday present. After some complaining and begging decided to go for GTA IV after all, but once I held it in my arms he backed down saying it might be a waste since he's on the Wii way more than his Xbox 360. Ah well! Didn't manage to find something else in the meantime, so went for some food and drinks and headed back home for some more Wii entertainment. Found him a present after all, in the form of Wii points (after I somewhat made him purchase Mario Kart 64, woooh!). That night we ate pancakes as I wanted those. For some reason I always love them there, and never eat them here in Steenwijk. Don't ask.
That night I met up with another Lowlands friend who was, unlike (I think literally all) other moments, wearing high heels! Self-proclaimed hooker at the time, just kidding there of course, dragged me along to find some travel tags to attach to her suitcases for later, and after some more walking, we went for ice cream!
Parted ways at the train station, from where I walked back home (a minute away) to get my last goodbyes at home and take my dad to the train station for the last hug in a long time.

Was, apparently, on the last train that day in general, and from Amersfoort onwards, I had my very own private cabin, as, from the 34 seats there, none were taken except for my own. Reminded me of the last trains home I took from Leeuwarden when I'd meet up with someone there without staying over.
Had to change trains in Zwolle as they were cutting down on equipment (smaller trains are easier still) and got at the station at 23:45, after being called if I made everything and didn't get stuck somewhere along the road, with that last train thing.

Had already decided to walk home when I took a late train, as I didn't want people up and running and picking me up from the station. First minutes weren't much, but then I started thinking a lot, as I walked on. At 23:59, there was this streetlight flickering, going off for a few seconds, to then resume duty. I walked past the local cemetery at that same time, waiting for my watch to hit midnight. Ironically, the song on my mp3 player was The Appearance - Not A Soul. Quite fitting, realising that the only thing to be found on a cemetery like that, are bodies. Not a single soul is left there. I've wanted to sleep at a graveyard around midnight some time, but I figured I'd save that for another time. There's still a certain fascination in that for a reason.
Hit a roundabout and walked past a garden party. Lots of party tents gathered, people in suits, champagne glasses and the like. It seemed rather posh to me. About 30 meters from there, four young people are smoking, judging the orange dots lighting up every now and then. As I walk past the pond they're hanging around, I look up at a clouded moon, and a lot of bright stars and think of lines in a song I wrote a very long time ago. One of the first songs I've ever written with a melody attached to it instantly. It was so cheesy and such, but I kept singing it to myself.

Every night I'll write your name in the stars,
for at least a thousand times.

And as that's running through my head I see the first letter of your name up there. As I notice a few snails along the road, I keep thinking about what all happened. The photos I took today, and how much better I'd look with you around me. As I walk on, I keep looking into the few houses that still have lights on. One of them has a puppet in the middle of the room. One of these that you put in your front yard when you turn 50 (or turn Abraham, as we call it here, not sure if that's an international something). There's an old man sitting close to the window, and he sure looks old enough for that.
The house next to that, has a kung fu movie running. Another old, bald man is watching here.

As I skip a song on my mp3 player I feel my left foot going a little off, and I realise that I just stepped on a snail. There seriously are a lot of them out there tonight. A car comes my way and passes slowly. I walk by the house of a girl I used to adore to pieces, but haven't talked to in ages. I changed songs on my mp3 player once again, and get myself to Taking Back Sunday - What It Feels Like To Be A Ghost and instantly have to think about sleeping on a graveyard again.
As I turn right to enter my own little neighborhood, I hear the intro to The Classic Crime - Abracadavers. The song I've listened to most the last few days. The only song I've been playing with my phone, actually. Except for my self-made ringtone.
I get closer to the place I've first really called you, and I look up to see your initials written in the pitch black sky again. The Classic Crime is almost done playing, and after a 32 minute walk, I put my keys in the front door, twist, and open the door. As I walk upstairs I'm being welcomed by my mum. I try to get my computer connected to the internet, but it just won't work. Cables and such are checked and nothing seems out of place.
I quickly write down some keywords of this walk home, but as I am done writing this blog now, there's nothing I can't remember from last night.

I'm listening to Abracadavers yet again, here at home, and I have now decided to share two youtube videos with you.

The Appearance - Not A Soul

The Classic Crime - Abracadavers

Shoppinglists

2008-08-21T09:55:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, I went to Arnhem to pick up my sister by car, as she'd been staying over with family there for a few days (she left somewhere during my stay at Lowlands). Drove me and my mum over there (another route in the country I hadn't taken before) to pick her up and spend some time in the city centre over there.
Parked the car over at the Gelredome Stadium (used for soccer matches from Vitesse, and a load of concerts that do not fit regular venues) and then took the bus to the centre, just one stop away.

As some people know, my general idea concerning the people in Arnhem, is that they belong to the prettiest of the country. Something went wrong during the distribution of those lovely faces, but you won't hear people in Arnhem complain, I bet. Always great to see and be seen over there, walking from shop to shop and street to street.

Walking from shop to shop, and street to street, I found myself gaining more and more items in the bag (and later two bags) I was carrying.
Managed to go easy on the spending, yet still get a pretty nice collection.

Here's my shoppinglist, followed by a song from a Belgian band called Mint, "Your Shopping Lists Are Poetry".

- Two books from David Baldacci I haven't read yet
- Season Two DVD Box from Futurama
- New high-top shoes
- A black pullover
- Beige shirt with dark red print
- Orange/Dark Grey striped shirt
- Orange scarf
- Black and white leather wristbands
- Sunglasses
aaaaand... Chocolates

Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays

2008-08-18T19:30:00.005+02:00

Song from way before I was born, but thanks to parental influence, still managed to get to know this song pretty well. The issue seems to be around for quite a while already then, and today is no different. Monday is the end of the weekend. Or the start of a new week. Or however you want to read your weekly calender exactly. Anyway, today it marked the end of the Lowlands festival.

It started out in a rather traditional fashion. Before I get to enter the festival grounds, things go terribly wrong and delay my presence on Camping 1. Last year it was a group of people being way late thanks to public transportation from their side of the country (damn you!). This year, it was a group of people late thanks to a more private form of transportation. Using your own car. My ticket was in one of the designated cars. The only car, out of 3 or 4, that got involved in a little accident, disabling the car to get any further than its current stance. Which was not at all at the edge of the parking grounds I can tell.
As they waited for professional help and a replacement vehicle (I think they got a taxi) to get to the entrance, I waited at the entrance. With my bag, mattress and sleeping bag, as I gave my tent to friends wíth a ticket instead, so they could set it up for me, claim a little spot for it to spend the days and nights. Last year it might as well have been a few hours, and this year. Again!
Arrived at 12:30 or so, was reasonably proper timing. They, the accidental main roles, came around four hours later. At which we finally started to get in line.
The waiting line kept us outside of the grounds for another 45 minutes or so. We went through faster than most, with proper routing tactics. Headed over to Camping 1, which is furthest from the entrance, but it's the place we've been at for the last 3 years now.

On thursday itself, it's just a matter of socialising, eating, drinking, getting your gear ready, make joint schedules to decide who you'll want around you on which particular date and time, and more of that. Went to meet up with some people and went to bed around 2:30, I think.
Friday started off with a very, very proper imitation of a freaking rooster! Now I love the wake-up sound itself, for it's cliché background, but seriously, it's not funny when it goes off at 8:15, when the owner of that imitation is pretty awake as he went to bed earlier. Easy morning, with some dairy to start the day with, a bit of relaxation in our yard (I think there were around 8 or 9 tents, having their entrances all pointing towards our central yard, imagine) and some newspaper reading and some more last minute planning.

Doors to the festival area opened at 12:00 and we went in around that time, waiting for Henry Rollins to give a spoken word performance. Nice bit of warming up, decent jokes and stories and just nice to have on my last. Next up is Killswitch Engage. Talking about waking up. Metal all the way, starting at 14:15 already. Best thing about their stage presence must be Adam D. The lead guitarist, providing screams along the way, is dressed in shorts, wears a simple shirt and a headband, and keeps walking across the stage from left to right in the weirdest marching movements I've witnessed up until now. Loved their performance. After KsE, it was time for The National to get on that same stage in the Grolsch tent (to all foreign people reading this, try pronouncing it a few times, no hints from my side). Really impressed by their performance, and has definately got me interested in their music again. Decided to put up a video from them at the end of the story.
After The National I went to the India to go and see Thrice. Alone. With at least 7 stages it's not all that weird that people have other ideas too. Last time I saw Thrice, they had a pretty bad way of doing their soundcheck, cutting their airtime back from over an hour to just 30 minutes. What I heard then, struck me as being much more raw than their album tracks, but I loved every bit of that. I guess they just picked the best songs to be play in that remaining half hour.
This time, everything sounded raw and hard again, even the new songs from The Alchemy Index concept album which, in essence, should be way more accessible in a way. Also heard The Artist In The Ambulance and some work from their previous album Vheissu, so I was content after all, but there's no need for me to see them yet another time, really.
Took some time off to later join in on the fun at Bravo, where Pendulum was playing their first Dutch live show, instead of the DJ sets they normally have. A lot of energy despite the last album being rather poppy instead of the energetic drum'n'bass they used to make. Still came out rather soaked from the heat and action in the tent, and I loved that. Really great performance to me, though some journalist wasn't quite impressed. Then again, if thousands go crazy over the tunes, who is he to grade their performance as insufficient?
Next up, in the Charlie tent, Late Of The Pier. I hadn't heard about them yet, but trusting the judgment of others, I went to see them. Honestly, this band was awesome. Got soaked beyond Pendulum-levels and got myself a cut in the arm that I didn't even notice until the show was over. That intense, fun, busy and interesting that I was really into it.
Went to see DJ Scotch Egg for a bit. A tiny bit. This man makes breakcore, or so it's called, and that basically comes down to no fixed rhythm longer than 5 seconds, and a speed that's too fast for dancing to start with. Didn't last that long and went back to the camping to change clothes. Get something a little warmer to get through the night, as temperatures dropped quite a bit later those days. Went through some places with resident DJs and walked, talked and danced until it was time to go to the camping and get some rest.

I knew Saturday would be a day with little organised entertainment for me. Not much I really wanted to see, so I've been all over the place that day. Saw and heard things I never noticed before, and that won't stick with me for very long after the weekend either. Then, later that day went to the mainstage, the Alpha, for some N*E*R*D, and I can't help but to agree with all the journalists. This show was on a whole different level from the rest. Was out in the grass on the side of the tent, watching the screens instead. At times, looking into the tent itself, I noticed how huge these guys were. Moments in which the entire tent, from front to back, and from left to right, would jump up and down at the same time, sing along to lines they knew, or do whatever they were asked to do. Must have been amazing to see that from the stage itself, as an artist.
Furthermore, saw some comedy that night, Raoul Heertje had a rather serious but interesting performance. It resulted in someone complaining about the tone of the show, and the lack of positive news. I could have personally bashed the person for having such a mindset, but Raoul knows how to take care of the smart people too.
Did some more walking, talking and dancing through the day, and that was it. Missed Night Of Comedy as people were heading back to the tent to change into warm clothes and get something to eat or drink. Should've been in line alone after all, to at least see it, but well.
Oh, earlier that day, at 11:00, I also did Tai Chi in the Lima to wake up and get ready for a day of festival survival, but really, after 10 minutes that was enough for me and the people I went with. Too intensive if you've underslept.

Sundaaaaaay! Went to the festival area pretty early to hit the toilets there (as the ones on the camping are filled with lazy people who don't want to walk that far yet), dropped off my phone at the docking station and went to the internet cafe for a bit. They have these bit beanbags there to lay yourself to rest and watch some TV as well.
After a small while, they were starting to organise a backstage tour. Most people had signed up, but as there was still some room, we were asked to join in too, and we accepted.
Got ourselves a nice little Nederland 3 (tv station) shirt. Black with lime text and logo. Oh, also played Rock Band on stage there before and a shirt from that too! Anyway, backstage tour. First went to the Beugelbar, a small comedy place with limited access. Went through the back door and looked at things from the stage instead. Saw more behind the screen material. The artist cafe, where all performers could eat, drink and relax, the 3FM studio on site, a small peak backstage in the India when Lucky Fonz III was playing (didn't like that at all, but was fun to see the tent from the side of the stage instead). After that we headed back to the tent to drop the shirts and pick up some people to go to We Are Scientists with us. Took us two songs to jump all the way from the side to the middle of the tent, at the second row. Managed to stay there the entire show and loved everything about it. Couldn't sing along to that much, but did raise my voice with their Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt and Chick Lit.
After that I went for a festival run, seeing some Plain White T's, Textures and Danko Jones, all within an hour and a half. Went back to the camping for something to drink and just take some time off. Then went to MGMT because others recommended that to me, but I seriously didn't last longer than 3 songs. First a bad soundcheck, delaying the start, and then music I really didn't like. A drummer that annoyed me with his simplistic playing and weird movement while being at that. Went to Grolsch instead to see Elbow. Such a huge sound, really beautifully arranged songs that kept my attention from the downpour nicely. As it was rather wet outside, I manage to stick around the Grolsch to see Sigur Rós. Anyone who has never heard about them should look up anything on youtube or anywhere else. Just maybe, someone knows this song? I didn't manage to stay until the end, as I really, really wanted to see Stephen Lynch. Managed to drag someone along and found a place in the waiting line. Had so much fun messing around with other waiting people, also playing a game with a beach volley ball with the entire mass. The show itself, what can I say? Great songs, great sense of humor, a little harsh at times, but nothing I mind hearing, and some great new material from his side. If you ever get the chance to catch this man live, go do so. Especially if you can't sing along to his songs yet. Guaranteed laugh!
After that show went straight back in line for Comedytrain, and had some more stand-up comedy that night. Went back to the tent, enjoyed the time there, despite the appearance of a bunch of people, in our little yard, being really out of place.

Went to bed at 4, ultimately, to wake up at 8 to start packing. All the equipment was wet as can be, and it was still softly raining, but noone had any problems packing and moving out.
Managed to get on a bus pretty easily, and then took a train home.
A bit of resting and catching up with mails, messages and TV series today, and now done with the report of last weekend.

As promised, here's some The National for you.

Tickets booked!

2008-08-13T22:13:00.002+02:00

Tickets to Miami are booked! On Wednesday, August 27, Bart and I will depart from Düsseldorf take a non-stop flight to Miami, leaving at 13:40. We'll arrive in Miami at midnight, or what's actually 18:00 there. Might be a slight jetlag, but nothing we can't handle.
Booked ourselves a trip with airberlin.com, and everything is set and confirmed as it is!

It's getting closer and closer now, and I'm excited as can be. Not before I've spent my time at Lowlands this weekend.

As there is flying and music involved in this post, here's "Airway - Get On The Dancefloor". And yes, there are screams in this one again as well.

Nothing Good Has Happened Yet

2008-08-12T23:41:00.004+02:00

Alright, I'm lying! Good things have happened over the last week, and I'm not complaining. It's just that I could link this to a single from a new band I found the other day, UK rockers We Are The Ocean (video below).

Good things started last tuesday with the passing of my drivers exam, thursday it continued, as my visa was granted. Saturday it continued with our street BBQ, people from my street all gathering in front of my house, at the little roundabout that marks the dead end of our dead end street, all talking, drinking, eating and having some social time, whereas I only really see the people a few times a month, while going to university/work or whatever, and I never really get beyond "hello!" or anything similar. Then, also, I got word of the possible transfer of a Lowlands ticket, and I was ready to head to Belgium for a stay in a luxury hotel.

That stay started off with the little story described below. What I haven't mentioned yet, is that I managed to say the sentence "Damn, what a hotel!" for about 5+ times within the first two hours of my stay there. Later, when I'm on my laptop, sorting all the photos, I'll give a slight impression.
The breakfast (as I remember ending there last time) was really nice. Everything was fresh and aplenty, with croissants, pain du chocolat, bacon and eggs, all kinds of spreads and a proper selection of fruits and yoghurts. Usually I'm a fan of melon, but this one could've been better. Needless to say, it was still welcome! The pineapple and oranges really stood out as an early morning dessert, and the view from the breakfast room wasn't that bad either (no pictures of that, unfortunately, as I haven't been rude enough to take my camera in there).

On monday we went to the city of Brussels. Visited the Atomium (feel free to Google Image for those, it will probably look the same as my not-yet-stored-and-uploaded-pictures) but didn't go inside. We went to see the Chinese Pavilion and Japanese Tower, but to our surprise, those attractions were closed. As far as I can tell, August is still tourist season in Europe, but that wasn't the worst about this just yet. A small open chapel was being closed down with some easy wires as apparently, the doors weren't holding that well!
Then went to see Manneken Pis in the city centre. Might be hilarious if the mindset is still close to someone who has just hit puberty, but it really is nothing much to me anymore. There's quite a bit of crowd to be found around the tiny (in more ways than one) statue over there, and that showed me that, as expected, it indeed is tourist season. Made a photo of the statue with its crowd too, as well as one with just the statue for those who never saw it before (then again, I advise you to do some online searching).
Walked around the city for a bit longer, saw nothing interesting there, and bought close to nothing. Got myself "A rough guide to Miami and South Florida" for a few Euros to browse and occasionally study information about my future environment.

Tuesday got home after a long drive, which I didn't do as I was quite tired. Managed to complete David Baldacci's "Last Man Standing", listened to some music on the way back, and then we stopped in Breda for some shopping and some lunch. Didn't buy anything there again, but had a better feeling walking there than in Brussels. No offense.
Got home around 3 or something. Went to pick up my passport at the postal office since they came to deliver it when we weren't here, and I needed to identify myself and sign for it. So I did, and I became the proud owner of a passport with a great J-1 Visa Sticker in it.

Around 4, a sweater arrived, which I ordered online. Suits me well, and looks good, and it will be used later during the day (or night) at Lowlands and might be useful for the relatively colder nights in "winter" Florida later.

Went to watch the season finale of I Survived A Japanese Gameshow and got reminded to really sign up for any active gameshow at some point (as I've already been on a lingual gameshow called Lingo, with my mum, last summer).
Now, after some more internet related waste of time, I'm writing this, and am going to share yet another youtube video with you. Don't turn it off when the screaming starts. Or, do it if you please. The song is nothing special in terms of lyrics either, but I still love listening to their demos.

Lifestyles

2008-08-11T08:26:00.006+02:00

So, I'm in Brussels right now, in my hotelroom with pretty decent wireless internet! We found ourselves a hotel through internet promotions from hotelspecials.nl.
It stated being the only 5* property in the French-speaking part of Belgium, but I never imagined much until I came driving down the other side of the lake, looking at the hotel (pictures will be taken today I suppose).
After a 3,5 hour drive -which I did completely, yay for more practice- I got to park the car at the hotel. Our Fiat was a bit out of touch, looking at the Hummer I parked it next to on the first try. Not to mention the Audi TT Abt on the other side. Oh, and did I mention the Bentley next to the entrance already? Right, that kind.

Soon off for breakfast and I'm a bit scared, almost. This is so not me, though I hope I'll get used to it someday. Wouldn't be a bad thing to have bedrooms this size, standard, with all the hotel's amenities available like that.

Will head into Brussels' city centre later today, after visiting some sights we'll probably head out for dinner again.
Yesterday we went to eat at Coyote's, a pizzeria/grill/winery idea. Three over-the-top guy gays being waiters (according to my mum, she had never seen a guy wobble his ass that bad) who weren't always as attentive and sharp as one could expect, but the food was very nice, and plenty, and the desserts. Oh my. We're seriously thinking about just going back there for ice cream alone, to finish the day.

Low Level Flight

2008-08-08T18:56:00.002+02:00

So it seems I'll be going to the Lowlands festival after all! It's been a pretty uncertain event ever since I went last year and plans were made to give it yet another shot. Last minute miracles of people in your extended network, not being able to go, led to the opportunity for me to get my hands on a ticket still.

Now, all preparations need to be made, schedules checked, things packed and myself in a festival state, to have a great weekend over there.

The weekend will include a lot of social activity (not just the people from last year, but some new people to be met as well), all the wrong breakfast, lunch and dinner items, as it's going to be fastfood and ice cream all over the place, and a lot of entertainment. Mostly musical entertainment, but I'll try to squeeze in some comedy too.

What's it going to be like for me? A friday with;
Killswitch Engage
Thrice
Pendulum
Infadels
Sven Väth

Saturday at least;
Korpiklaani
Nightwish
And a lot of comedy
Which, in terms, all leave me with a lot of social interaction time, yay.

Sunday I need to see;
We Are Scientists
Editors
and, thanks to that last band, just a little of Sigur Ros and Stephen Lynch.

Should be plenty of fun over there!

As I was going to link the titles to songs and such, I've decided to go for a song by Low Level Flight, as the Lowlands slogan has been "A Campingflight To Lowlands Festival" for quite a long while.
Here's "Say".

Time to Start

2008-08-07T21:55:00.004+02:00

So, it's Thursday, August 7, and I've just gotten home from my trip to the US Consulate in Amsterdam. After getting my driver's license last Tuesday (and picking it up on Wednesday after requesting the quick -though costly- one-day service) I drove the entire family from home to the parking garage at Museumplein in our capital city. Guess that's some pretty decent practice to start with.
Had my appointment at 14:15, and arrived at their doorstep around 14:05 (yes, I'd like to think I'm punctual most of the time). After being searched for dangerous items, of which none were found as I was only carrying paper, and my wallet full of more paper, and plastic, I had to wait in a small line outside. Luckily, they put a neat little plastic roof over the courtyard there so that I was safe from the currently falling rain. Got in to the building, went through a metal detector and said to the guy that it didn't went off for me. Funny as he was, he told me it went off for sure, just not with an audio signal for me to notice, smiling with every word. Got my waiting line number and went into this small room.
It has CNN on a TV in the corner, about 24 seats in there (26 if you count the places in what used to be the fireplace, I think) and four booths that could be used to draw people to, and help them out there. The current waiting line number as I walk in, is 11, as I remember getting number 30 myself. Not bad. And I know bureaucracy, it might take a while.

The audio signal man has walked into the room with a stapler and asks if anyone needs their special size passphoto (5x5 cm) stapled to their paper. It's obligatory to have it attached either by his method, or by glue, so I accepted the offer and brought him the needed documents. He asks if I'm the only one, as he simply can't imagine, and two others follow. He helps me out with sorting all my documents that they'll need at the booth later and I take my seat again.

Not that much longer, after the TV channel has been changed to Nederland 1, hosting the Olympic football match Nigeria - Netherlands, it's my turn to walk over and do my thing.
The sorted papers are being transferred through a little ditch below the window, to the other side, and after filling in one more forgotten signature, and paying yet another fee, it's time for me to have all my fingerprints scanned. I don't think I've ever done that before, but now they're officially on the record with my name attached to them. So far, my plans of committing a perfect crime someday. I get directed back to a seat, and have to wait.

They are processing my forms as it is, checking for irregularities or alarming information or something, and about 10 minutes later I get to go to booth 3 (where 1 and 2 were for handing over your papers, and 4 was not in use) to talk with an officer who asks me how my day was. I replied that it's been good so far, and it's his job to make it an even better one. I think I got some charm points right there. Have a little chat about what I'm supposed to do there, hand over my training plan for him to study, and then he asks me if I know this Chinese exchange student who's also going to the same hotel. Told him I knew there are more people apart me from Bart, Yatha and myself, but never bothered to go much into detail about them to start with.
The officer does his work as expected, and my visa is granted. They stapled some stuff into my passport (e.g. they ruined it!) and told me I should get it back by mail within 3-4 working days (after I provided the envelope with stamps myself).

I head outside, feeling accomplished, say goodbye to the security people outside, who, in the meantime, have helped my family to get some shelter from the rain too, and we walk outside again.
I had to pee before I even entered the consulate, and after the additional hour it hasn't quite become any easier, so I rush over to the public toilets. Through the rain, with a nice pace. I reach the building and as I head down the stairs, I notice the 50 cent fee. I left my wallet with my mum to place it in the car already, so, no relief for me just yet. Another sprint back to the garage entrance and I find a normal toilet there, free of charge, for me to use.

Next stop, Alphen aan den Rijn, my dad's city (or my birth town, but I never really refer to it that way). We're off to see my uncle (mom's little brother) who recently became a dad for the second time, and his wife (who, consequently, become a mom for the second time!). I hadn't seen the little Mara yet, unlike the rest of the people in the car. Speaking of which, I'm not driving this time, and maybe that's a good thing. I think they cracked open the skies for us to watch a pretty heavy downpour and sight on the highway is pretty much limited to pretty much nothing. And yes, I'm aware of typing "pretty" in that last sentence, three times.
Once we get there, streets partially flooded on some parts, I get to see the little hump and her brother, who can walk and say a few words, before asking my uncle for the keys to his car to go for a little drive in that.
Car number four in the two days that I've had my license, not a bad average, but I don't think I can keep that up.

As my dad is on a campsite somewhere else, we go back home, me driving all the way from there to here, stopping at a McDonald's halfway through to get something to eat and drink.
It's been a pretty useful day, and I'm nowhere near tired, despite the slight stress (what if the application got rejected for whatever reason) and the driving (I think I did close to 200 miles today).

As I want to use titles of blogs to match song titles, and then find a way to share that song with you, I've got a nice little link to a Youtube video from Blue Man Group - Time To Start.
Enjoy!

And oh, as I do expect this blog to be mainly about Florida related issues, I have a feeling I might use this as an outlet to share some frustrations too, at times.