Back from the dead!!!

I HAVE SURVIVED THE EUROPEAN/AMSTERDAM FLU FOR THE 2ND (and hopefully the last) TIME.

I have never experienced more pain. Constant fever (39-40 degrees Celsius), aches and pains, nausea, dizziness, headache, chills, lack of appetite, total inability to do anything but lie in my totally wet clothes drenched in sweat, and of course this lasts for more than a whole week straight!!!

Maybe I'm getting old, but what happened to the days where flus lasted 1-2 days and then I am well again??? Before I knew it, I've missed over 1 week of work, and for the record did not enjoy my days off as I could not leave my room for most of those days.

Of course, I got the dreaded recurring nightmare that I always get when I'm delerious (the one where I almost always wake up totally disoriented and ready to jump out the window hysterical) but luckily this time, I didn't actually have to die in my dream...which is a good change to say the least... :) Something's changed!!

Tomorrow will be my first day back at work after my sickness. I'm not looking forward to it but it will be nice to do something productive after lying around for so long. Oh yea, I've also moved apartments!!! and it is GREAT!!!! I have a king-sized waterbed (fyi - king-sized in amsterdam is more like a Queen bed back home), but hey I ain't complaining as my bed back home is just a Twin (oh but how I love thee Obusforme, we shall meet again soon, I hope)...

Housewarming will come soon... :) I hope I never get the flu again in Europe. My European friends don't seem to be affected by the strain of flu I got at all, it must be something they've grown up with and have fought thru before as a kid. But seriously, I am determined never to get it again! It was the worst experience ever and I really thought I was going to die!!!! :(

PS - super super tak to freknar for saving/sustaining my life the past week... :)

Friday the 13th

Hm... I just noticed that it's Friday the 13th and no one here has mentioned it! SO, I decided to turn to my colleague:

E: HEY! It's Friday the 13th today! :)
M: ...so?
E: You know! Friday the 13th! *making claw-like gesture* Y'know, Freddy Kruger, Nightmare on Elm Street...*baring teeth* rowr...
M: Ohh.. yea...
E: No walking under ladders, avoiding black cats-
M: I have 2 black cats.
E: Oh...so.. I guess it's not a big thing here, eh?
M: ...nope.

Because I was curious and hoping to enlighten my readers about Friday the 13th (translation: i wanted to avoid working), I decided to find out more about this funny date.

Some facts:

• In North America and Europe, a significant portion of the population won't fly in airplanes, host a party, apply for a job, get married or even start a new project today. Some people won't even come into work.
• The medical condition for being afraid of Friday the 13th is known as paraskevidekatriaphobia.
• Thirteen is significant to Christians because it is the number of people who were present at the Last Supper (Jesus and his 12 apostles). Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th member of the party to arrive. Jesus was also crucified on a Friday.

Well, that's enough educational material for me to last a while. Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

About work

So life has returned pretty much 'back to normal,' or back to 'business as usual' if I should use company lingo. :P Since I am currently out of ideas on what to post here, I thought I'd maybe give you a glimpse into what my workplace is like. (Mouse-over the pics to see captions.)



Embarrassing moment van de dag (of the day)
In Holland, it's hard to find a water cooler in the office. However, you can bet that in every office, you can find a coffee machine. This coffee machine gives small dental sized cups of coffee, tea, hot water, hot chocolate and sometimes soup. Dutch people can have anywhere from 2-10+ cups a day of this stuff, and it's a social custom to ask your colleagues if they would like a drink when you are getting one for yourself.

Sidenote: The quality of drinks from these coffee machines is quite crappy, but the Dutch don't seem to notice. Hence, the lack of quality coffee in this country.

Anyway, I had just gotten a round of drinks from the coffee machine and rounded the corner back to our section to distribute them. Noticing that one of our colleagues, an older British man had returned from a meeting and I hadn't gotten a drink for him, I said in an overly sweet tone: "Oh! I missed you!"

It took only a second for me to realise how wrong that sounded cuz I saw a strange look on his face as well, but then I quickly blurted out, "I mean, I didn't get you a drink!! Ha..Ha.." -____-