hallo

hope you all had a nice weekend. Mine was fun, moved house on Friday evening once it wasn't so hot and im staying in the place that i am moving in to in a few week's time. Housesitting, kinda, cause Jane is away and I am looking after her cat, Vyvian, who i hate. Here are his stats:

Name: Vyvian
Sex: M
Age: 15-16
Health: Average, thyroid problem
Medication: Tablet down throat morning and night (he spits them out repeatedly)
Feed: FOUR times a day, if not more. He's really skinny 'cause of the thyroid and can eat what he wants
Rises: 6-7 and howls, then continues this pretty much all day long

I really don't like him and we are kind of enemies but i feel bad because he is so old. Think about throwing him in the canal out the back, often. Seriously. I really don't like him.

Anyway, there is a large trade off which is that the apartment is amazing - three times the size of our place in Enmore, and applianced-up to the max. Big everything. It's also nice and peaceful with big windows looking out over a canal, which is outside my bedroom door. I felt a bit weird over the weekend rambling around in here, but i have a bike that i'm also borrowing (tried to go and buy one the other day and got caught out in a massive thunderstorm - still heatwave conditions but not that bad) ...so i went out riding and am more orientated now to where everything is in relation to what i know and where i was. It's not really that big a city and you can ride around pretty easy if you are a little bit assertive and use your bell freely. Nobody minds 'cause everybody does it.

Started work here, have wireless and am getting a schedule together. I've actually started writing properly again for this website thing, and it was a slow start but i think, with the help of the kick-arse coffee machine, that i'll be able to get through it. We'll see. I'm going to a gig with some friends on wednesday that James introduced me to, Nat and Dave, who are leaving soon which is a bummer 'cause Nat is good to go swimming with. The pools are packed though - summer holidays - and I forgot about the summer here and said, 'when are the kids going back, it must be next week or something' and the person said 'they're got two more month left'. Bummer for me, cool for the kids. There are so many people running and jumping on each other, tripping, pushing, playing, really, it's quite scary to watch. The lifeguards come around and ask you to move your bag, 'cause they dont like them around the pool (ruins the asthetic, apparently) and meanwhile someone is bound to have a spinal injury at any moment. It's strange. I will keep going anyway, I don't mind dodging people if no one kicks me in the head.

Alright, night. Stayed up till 4 doing work and faffing around and then stupid, stupid Vyvian woke me at 7.

happy birthday girl

hi everybody,

happy birthday to meeeeeeee... thank you very much for all your calls/texts, was so good to talk to everyone and hear your bewdiful voices.

so how did i celebrate?

julzie - yours was the first text. :) i woke up about 9 and my friend james (who was over from london for the weekend) was outside, armed with coffee. then i went to this delicious bakery over the road and got some crossaints, followed by a 10am meeting with the website designers, where i smiled helpfully and drank more coffee. i walked back and then spoke to cliffy, huey, mum, jesse, bretty, trace, joey and kai (in that order) and then went off to the pool for a swim and splash around in this massive double olympic-sized beauty that was packed 'cause it's school hols.

it's been about 30+ here since i got arrived here a week ago and i have already discovered two beaches - although to be honest, they're beaches, but not as we know it, earthlings. i swam in the north sea, which looks like cloudy coke, which it was really warm and choppy as hell. there were kitesurfers and windsurfers belting up and down the beach, was blowing a gale... which i suspect might be the norm for this particular beach, zandvoort zan zee.

back to birthday, so yep, pool, then back here (im staying in a house this week, on the keizergracht, which is right in the centre of amsterdam) for a catnap, then james and i went and had a few beers by the canal, then a few more in the pipe - still my favourite part of town - and then about 10pm we sat outside at this yummy cafe called mastapas that i'd been wanting to try. the tapas was as delicious as i'd hoped and we ate heaps and heaps.

had a big one on the way home, spoke to karmiegirl and fell asleep. someone asked me how it felt to be 28 and i said, well, im exactly where i want to be, doing exactly what i want to be doing*, so if this is 28, i accept. (i was a little tipsy admittedly by then, but you get the idea...) all in all, it was a very good day and i missed you guys heaps but it still felt pretty damn nice to celebrate my birthday in the sun for once.

thanks again for making me feel so loved.

xxo

* i didnt mean that literally, ie the financial copywriting business is not exactly my bag, but it's a bag

PS i am sorry i STILL havent got around to returning some emails, i will once i break the back of this new job i started - working from home is hopelessly distracting as it is - especially when i can see the sun shining outside till 10pm

PPS can everyone get a Skype address please, for calls/messenger - go to: www.skype.com
my username is liseygirl

triple PS - i miss my camera, so much. will be able to put more photos up once my insurance claim goes through, sometime in 2008 i think... ;)

new job, new phone number

hello!

got a dutch phone number now, this is the best number to get me on. aussie one is still on for now, and UK number i will check intermittently, but this is the best one for now till the end of august... +31 627 253 853. please update and text me a hello to save me entering all yr numbers again.

so i got the job. i flew into amsterdam yesterday afternoon at 1.30 or so, locked my bag up at the station and went straight out to meet this private equity investment (?) company called gilde, who are based in utrecht, which is about a half-hour away on a train. it was a serious two-hour meeting that was pretty gruelling... i was up late packing in london the night before and had to get up early that morning to get to the airport, so was v tired and a bit spacey by the time i got there. gilde's boardroom was funny - they had about 12 symmetrically placed soft-toy moose heads on the wall, for no apparent reason. the worst part about the meeting was that i was facing the window at this massive table and there were three of them on the other side... was boiling hot and really glarey and my eyes were squinty and started watering after about 10 minutes... was v uncomfortable for a while but then i asked if i could put my sunglasses on (a bit rock star, but i really had no choice) and we went upstairs to another boardroom. the table had a big hole in the centre and a small (working) fountain, with a large kids'-bath style boat in it. v bizarre. but the people i will be working with are really nice - friendly but blunt and direct, which as most of you know is a language i speak.

was a hard meeting. they spent ages talking about what they do, of which i understood perhaps 60% of, but they gave me a stack of reading material and some examples of companies whose style they want me to emulate, so it should be ok. i think. my agent was there with me cause she hadnt met them before so i felt quite important - she was discussing money and expenses etc while i got to sit there and look interested but largely unconcerned... upshot is that the money is going to be really good and the project goes till the end of august so i am going to be in amsterdam till at least then. hooray.

got a house too but dont move in till next month, so need to find somewhere for the next 19 days that isnt too expensive. should be okay. am staying on a boat on a canal at the moment, is really gorgeous as you can imagine and i sat up on deck last night drinking one euro beers and chatting to the first mate, thinking what a lucky little lady i am.

alright, gotta go find home, buy a bike and start reading through my massive pile of homework.

lotsa love
xx

PS dont forget to text me. do it now!

lagos to bounds green

hi, everyone,

im back in london and staying with james for the weekend. caught up with sue again on thursday night and my ole mate si last night, was very good fun. warmed the cockles of my heart to see that even on the other side of the world we have still been laughing at the same things... we just got battered and watched some curb your enthusiasm and the episode of south park where chef gets killed off... so harsh, so funny. damn i love those guys.

im going for a 'meeting' about a two-month contract in amsterdam on tuesday. i think im a shoe-in cause of my lady at the job agency who has basically pitched me (and i think only me) to this company called gilde. the deal is that gilde want a native english speaker to copywrite the text for their new website... i thought it sounded easy enough, so i agreed to get over there ASAP 'cause they want me to start right away. BUT... check out the job brief below, and if anyone has ANY idea what this company actually does, please email me. im serious. Please.

***
As I mentioned, we’re looking for a copywriter to start working on our new website as soon as possible. We’re in discussion with a few people locally but are keen to have a native English speaker do the work. We’ve been working with a design company (Design Bridge) on the templates, UI etc and are now ready to start filling them in. Our current website is dreadful, but does give you an overview of who we are and what we do: www.gilde.nl . As you will see, we are a private equity organization that is divided into 4 (3 really) types of investment entities: (IT), Buy-Out, Bio-Tech and Participations. Although we share the same offices, backoffice and name, we are in essence different organizations each with our own story and team. So the site is made up of 3-4 sites within one overriding Gilde site.

Our headquarters are in Utrecht in the Netherlands and the idea would be for the copywriter to spend some time with us at the beginning of the project to get a full briefing but then it would be up to her/him where to do the writing – obviously, there’d be frequent contact through email/phone etc and if necessary, further face-to-face meetings.

Two key requirements we have are:
1) to start as soon as possible to meet our deadline of new website live by end of August
2) that the person is available to work in one stretch from when he/she would start (so that we don’t get bogged down because of holidays)
***

so yeah, im gonna go for it, the dates are perfect for me and i get to work from home. and earning some euros will come in very handy indeed for my next adventures.

alrighty, that's it, i gotta go do some research now on this company/industry/Dutch business practice... i'll leave you with some more pics of portugal. hope everybody's good and keeping each other warm.

port-chi-gal

yep, you're going to really hate me now, im in portugal. im on holiday with my friend mich from macc and two of her friends, sarah and amanda, both english, too (from L to R in the photo). they're really good fun and i havent had such a nice ladies holiday in i dont know how long. i must look like their german chaperone, however, the tallest of the three is seven inches shorter than me; i call them my little hobbits.

we are staying at mich's mum and dad's place in a golf resort, of all places, in a place called Lagos (LAgosh), which is in the algarve, darling... at the south of the country. it is beautiful; coastline on two sides and about fifty beaches to choose from which are all beautiful in their own way, although the water is damn cold 'cause it's the atlantic. we're swimming anyway.

we've been here for six days in our home which we have nicknamed the compound, due to the fact there is a disturbing lockdown process we go through when leaving the house and going to sleep. there are switches on every wall and these metal shutters slide up and down over the glass, rendering the inside pitch black, which is confusing when you wake up at eleven and it feels like it is three in the morning... anyway, so our daily routine consists of waking up around midday (i usually wake a little earlier and go for a swim in the resort's pool), drinking coffee on the terrace and then heading off to a yet-another-new beach for the afternoon, before coming back, eating cheese and olives, having a few drinks and chillaxing...

we have been out a few nights, friday, which was huge and very, very fun and we made some friends with some locals, who last night took us to a beach party and then out on the town (we were eating hot dogs with salad, sans dog, at three this morning). i also seem to be following the world cup teams around the place, 'cause saturday was the england vs portugal game, which we watched in a beach bar while eating piri piri chicken (which wasnt hot at all and i'm going to try somewhere else). it was a good game and our crowd was maybe 50/50 english-portugese (there are waay too many brits here), but of course, portugal won and the whole town erupted into this massive street party. we smiled bravely as people screamed happily into our faces and retreated hastily to the compound. we saw some disgraceful english on the way back which i wont go into, but yeah, it's been interesting and relaxing and a v nice break from, well, nothing, really. i have a great tan. :)

yesterday we shook things up a bit and played tennis in the morning, and i had a unfortunate blowout on my favourite pair o shoes (one of only two, cliffy, i need my boots. mum, can you send me more?)... still, there's a good action shot. im going back to london on wednesday for a week or so, then back to amsterdam to find a home and some work, which i need urgently now, but the good news is i got registered in amsterdam, my visa has been officially stamped and i am good to go. even more so after this delicious break.

i am feeling a little homesick here and there now, was talking to someone about sydney last night and got a distinct pang. huey is flying home on wednesday, back to sydney, so im miss him and NJ already and am just trying to steady my fetlocks for the next adventure. so keep those emails coming, faz favour, and tell me im being silly and that nothing's changed and it's all fine. g'arn. i dont know where i'll be for my birthday yet...

xxo

PS If the photos look a bit pose-y, it's cause they're meant to. i have been insisting that we take 'band shots', requesting the mood be dark, sultry... with mixed results as you'll see. i am pleased however with the readiness with which everyone has embraced the rockstar within. i got a dog in a shot last night; he's not in the band.