Monday, April 16, 2007

It's my record and it made my weekend

Almost forgot to write about the first weekend with temperatures like in summer.
After last episode in this blog I wrote about temperatures of 17 degrees. Not much later, on April 14 and 15 we registered even 27 and 28.9 degrees Celsius. My parents, grandparents and their ancestors never experienced so early such midsummer highs. The keukenhof, with the famous tulips, is booming business.
Actually I went there together with my club on bicycle. It was the bloembollentocht, formerly known as the LSD-trip.

We departed from the locally famous cafe Ledig Erf at 8.00 am sharp and rode in western direction. After 90 kilometer we reached our goal Bloemendaal-Overveen, known in Dutch as het kopje van Bloemendaal. After climbing these dunes (I think our Sunday afternoon hill de Amerongse berg is much heavier) we headed to the North sea, Zandvoort was the place to be on this hot Sunday.

It felt like being in France, the colors, the perfume and the chaos. Yeah, it was like a day in my first holiday in France, in Perpignan.

Back home I cycled 200 kilometer in Dutch heat. It's a record for me.
On the day the Rotterdam marathon was cancelled after 3 hours due to the heat I cycled in a pack of 40 cyclists 7.5 hours. That's my record and it made my weekend.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Power struggle

As my last post didn't mean much at least it meant a change in lifestyle. After that picture the sun came back and temperatures rose to 15,17 even 19 degrees C today. Together with the rising sun and summertime it gave me the chance to bicycle more often. The club rides have begun too. So momentarily I am a month ahead of last years schedule.

Also I am very busy at work. We got to report budget overdrawings and we got to find an explanation for this. Actually in my view the interpretation should be work for the coordinating officers who exceed budget.
Today I heard a staff member introduce the new word "lump sum". 17 Years ago I heard about it in lessons about accounting at school. It was very unexpected that today I heard about it again. The staffmember is new for us so we (my colleague, someone from P&C and I) had a talk with her.

She gave us more information than we expected. I know now that there are 2 scenario's of what will happen with my department. I critized the 2 scenario's and said that there was a third way. Sadly that was a passed station. It's the reason why our former boss left her position, and in a way I agree with her.

The 2 scenario's are almost a secret. She asked us not to talk about because it could give unrest in the organisation. It'll take some time before it will be effective and until then everything will be business as usual. That means that the pilots we are doing because of a change in organisation format will go on.
In the worst case scenario it might be work for nothing.

I think that policy-makers and management have to tell us what will happen and what is going on. It is a power struggle between 2 or 3 people.

Today I heard that a colleague of my age died last weekend. She did different work but I met her at an instruction-day. Very scary news.