Monday, March 21, 2011

Monday blues

Hi everyone, I'm back. Sorry for the lack of posting, but I was enjoying my well earned long weekend. First one since I started working, and it felt good. The hardest thing to get used to when you start working permanently after college is the lack of holidays. School and college provide so much time off, that 20 days vacation time in a whole year when working really sucks. All you have is weekends! And they pass insanely quickly. 20 is not a lot. City jobs give a lot more holidays, my dad works for the railway and he has like 45 days off(or more), lucky bastard. My mom has like 40 too cause she works for the commune. Embassies are not the city :(, so although I really like this job it does have downsides. These are: too damn far away, too few vacation days, only half of my train subscription is paid (which sucks cause it's a whopping 293 euro a month) - city jobs pay the entire thing- and too few co-works + nobody my age. Those are the downsides.
So I wouldn't mind a city job one day! But you need to do an exam to get it nowadays, and they are hard, and you need to be lucky to be to one to get it. I didn't need to do an exam for the embassy, just a job interview, although a difficult one, mad situational questions, hate those!


Anyway back to work today :( not another long weekend till end of April for Easter. Had another stressed morning due to the train being late again, 20 min! It really is starting to get on my nerves, Belgian trains suck, they are barely ever perfectly on time. And if you already have a four hour commute a day, those extra minutes really make you want to punch a trainperson in the face. Beware dad.
Last week was the same thing, some crane fell right on the tracks of a often travelled section, completely destroying all the cables and blocking everything. All the trains going to and from Brussels had to take a giant detour causing every train to be massively delayed. Gah! I was muttering swears on the train a lot last week, I am not a patient person when it comes to waiting on public transport. Also I hate slow drivers, when I finally reach the station at night, I hop in my car and want to race home, so when this old or talkative person drives 45 km/h in front of me I get really really annoyed. You dont want to be in my car then :p MOOOOOOOOOVE YOU
Commutes are not got for my stress level :D

Oh Saint Patrick's day was alright, bit hectic! Didn't enjoy the festivities organised by work much, as I was set in the cloak room with someone from the Permanent Represtation of Ireland to the EU, for three hours. So saw lots of people, but not much fun was had! Nobody even brough us a drink! That kinda sucked, it was insanely busy and not at all like the First Secretary had said that once everyone was there we could enjoy the celebrations and someone else would take over. We were stuck there and nobody came to take over! Stupid recession, they can't even get someone else to do the cloak room. There were plenty of students carrying drinks and so, why couldn't they do it! Ok, it wasn't really tiring, and I mostly chatted away, but I had expected to get some drinks in me to celebrate Paddy Day! Very dissapointing! They got me all the way to Leuven on a holiday for three hours of standing in a cloak room and no perks? Me no likey!
Everyone travel to Ireland and spend lots of money so I don't have to be cloakroom lady next year!

Hope some of you got to be drunk in honor of St Paddy at least :D

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