For ...

... the first time in ages a post from the trenches, that is, my 'work'.

Once again the services I provide for this institue have gone unappreciated by it. The annual christmas gifts thing was not bestowed upon me. Apparently, that is too expensive. The present as such is crap, but the appreciation would be nice. Instead I was sitting here with three colleagues, 1 regular, two others, like me, hired from elsewhere. The gentleman giving out the presents enters, gives the regular employee her gift, states: 'well ... there are no others of your team here' and proceeds to leave ...

Even our presence here is denied.

Luckily, my own boss, Karin, came almost instantaneously to the door bearing gifts of champagne and mugs. Just to let us know that we too are loved.

What a set of wankers here. I feel it ... unwise to reveal some of the things that go on here but let me tell you: investing in a small gift for borrowed personel would be the least of the waste around here.

Wankers.

With my direct colleagues, however, I have a good contact. Yesterday we went to a nearby museum, which was nice and afterwards we had a high tea. Which was nicer. The museum was the Hermitagein Amsterdam. There are paintings by Casper David Friedrich on loan there. There were some nice pieces there, but all in all, the vast majority of the paintings failed to convince me. Also, there were four rooms in the museum, so, it's currently very small. One room was dedicated to paintings by people before Friedrich, one room was dedicated to paintings by people after him, one room were his own paintings ... and then Fiedrich had a stroke and could no longer make oil paintings so one room is filled with drawings made by him. All in all ... weird. Little Friedrich in a Friedrich show.

Also weird: most people disappeared beneath headphones for an audio tour making discussion about the works mostly impossible and also sort of defeating the idea of doing a team excursion.

The high tea was fun, though. I actually drank tea! Weird ... Loads of nice yummie things ... Unfortunately I got a bit of a headache afterwards so it all ended in misery and non-training but still it was a good day.