*dreaming*

I haven't even left for St. Petersburg yet... but I can't stop thinking of new travels.

Especially now that my life after 1 April is suddenly wide open I have been thinking quite a bit about what I will do then.

Travel is one of the options. This idea isn't helped much (well, it is actually) by reading Jules' Rome-stories who is currently well and truly living up to her blogname, by being excited for Cookie's upcoming America-trip, by seeing amazing photo's of a friend's trip to Sri Lanka, and by virtually travelling the Trans-Siberian express...

*sigh*

At least I'm excited to be in St. Petersburg in less than three weeks, especially after watching Russian Ark a few nights ago. A movie set in the Hermitage, shot in one single shot and covering several centuries of Russian history... Quite extraordinary in an amazing location.

[oh, the current travel-plan would take me to NY, Washington DC and then Mexico to wander around Central America for a bit and to catch up with friends ... solid plan, no?]

Haring!!

Haring!!
Originally uploaded by Liiisa_foto.

One of the things we did on our international weekend with visiting friends from all over (well, Germany, the US & the UK) was to give them an introduction to Dutch streetfood.

Strangely enough, I never really think of the Netherlands as having streetfood (except for maybe Belgian fries with big blobs of mayonaise) but wandering the market with DutchCookie changed my mind.

The herring that we tried was very good, and later on we had coffee with a freshly baked stroopwafel while touring some scenic alleyways of Leiden. In the rain though. Ah well, I suppose that is the Dutch way to do it.

Travel preparation

And in much better news: I'm trying to figure out for what performance I should get tickets for at the Mariinsky Theater for when I'm there in three weeks time!
So far, I've narrowed down the choice to either Don Quixote or La Bayadere.

Woohoo!

On Japan

Japan posts have been few lately, but I've come across a few cool and not-so-cool things today:

First, the weirdness that is Japanese politics. After the 'baby making' comment of Minister of Health Yanigasawa, here are two more politicians who don't quite know their way with words.

Minister of Education Ibuki did not only make a (fairly common) statement on Japan being a homogenous society, but he also compared having too much human rights (huh?) as eating too much butter and as a result being affected with metabolic syndrome. Right...

And then there's LDP policy chief Shin Nakagawa who said:

"If something goes awry in Taiwan in the next 15 years, then within 20 years Japan might become just another one of China's provinces,"

How can senior politicians get away with making stupid comments like that?

Of course, we have our fair share here too, trying to deal with Geert Wilders...

But on to better information - I found Monocle in a kiosk this morning and now regret not buying it... Supposedly this is a new concept "with a keen focus, strong reporting, sharp wit and more classic approach to design". Well, it looks interesting enough so far and the first issue has a surprising amount of Japan related stories.

One huge article on the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces and another piece on the upcoming movie of Haruki Murakami's short story All God's Children Can Dance. I'm a big Murakami fan so am very curious about this!

And the Dutch win the battle!

Or at least, during the Decemberists concert last week the Dutch navy won their battle with the Brits in 1667 or whenever. Which was the encore at the end of their show - the Dutch and British ships being people in the audience. Needless to say, it was a very cool show.

If you really want to know what I'm talking about: watch this!

And now for something different

With all these jobhunting posts of the last few weeks, you'd think I've slunk away in a corner being depressed. Luckily this isn't quite the case, so some highlights of this month:

• movies at the IFFR, with this year's favourite being My mother is a bellydancer, a very cute and touching Hongkong movie about belly dance classes and the lives of the women taking them.

• new discoveries while out in Amsterdam: Studio 80, a club not trying to be very fancy or anything but that just plays good music. And not completely club-related but spending an evening with YouAct was very entertaining too. Not only to finally see what one of my best friends is involved in with her work, but being around a very fun group of Europeans (I think we had 10 nationalities out of 13 people). And it was a trip down memory lane... bad Brits for knowing so many drinking games (and making me be all nostalgic for Australian and Japanese nights out)!

• and there's more coming... The Decemberists on Wednesday and another international weekend after that. Yay for the internet

A lost star is not the lost sky

What do you think of that as a motto for a rejection of a job application? At least it's different...

Well, so far for my update about the phone interview. I promise to stop talking about work soon!

Uhoh...

Either I have done something incredibly stupid... or this will be the push that I need to do something different: I've resigned from my job.

[numb silence]

Haven't heard a thing from the phone interview, but I need out. I have been very unhappy at my current job and it's only getting worse. I just spoke to my boss on the phone but spending the day at the office tomorrow will be, uhm, interesting.

And please, can someone reassure me that it won't be too difficult to find something new as of April 1st?

*help*

More firsts

Another first: I have just signed up to attend a career event.

Pffff. I have this image in my head that I will be wandering around aimlessly amongst all these highly focused and fast-talking and fake-smiling and overly enthusiastic people.

But well, you never know.... :-/

The saga (again)

It recently occurred to me that after 1,5 years of updating cv's, agonizing, writing letters, networking, doing interviews, procrastinating, waiting impatiently and everything else that is associated with the never-ending saga of my jobhunt I could have filled a dedicated blog with my adventures. *

Early next week I will have a new first experience: a phone interview.

I just got home to find an invitation for this interview in my inbox. Very happy of course.

Especially because I was angry with myself today as I neglected to send in the formal application for the job that I'll be interviewing for! I still don't quite understand how this happened and I really really hope that this isn't some weird mistake... (or that I will wake up in the morning to find it was only a dream!) *fingers crossed*

To avoid panicking, I'll put off thinking about potential problems until after the interview (relocating to a different country within three weeks should be, uhm ... , interesting)

* I was briefly considering to start one up for my internet-dating adventures (well....) but maybe I should just focus on one/two blogs for now.