agreement

After  111 days the negotiators made a compromise how to govern Holland. Now the Christian party has to agree upon the compromise.
Sad day for us, beautiful day for the followers of politics. It's gonna be a slap stick, a show, something to follow from a distance to see the mistakes made.

In the last 100 days people not belonging to the inner circle of the negotiators and party members didn't get any information about what's going to happen. Public opinion was on a holiday because there was hardly any detailed news about what was happening. These were the closed doors, the backroom politics Wilders talked about. Now he's part of it. Never talk again about these backroom politics, mister Wilders!

The parties of this minority in parliament has to approve the agreement. This is a slap in the face of democracy. A minority rules Holland. A minority decides on the faith of the nation.
It might be cancelled however a name for the next cabinet will be Rutte-Verhage.  Are these 2 courageous and overconfident men the henchmen of the wizard of the political right wing?

Who knows, the agreement is not yet public and the parties didn't judge it. Saturday everything will be clarified. There is an opera about these political exciting days.... the tenors, alts just sing Yes, yes, No, Yes, no, no. Movies could also be made out of this comedy of political life.

I hear disapproving voices about the in political situation in the Works Council, on the work-floor. I only heard one voter for Wilders. I don't understand why these people disapprove the attitude of the voters for Wilders. The municipality has to accept that there will be cuts in public spending. So we got to take advantage of the negative news. This must not be a threat.

flowers

Friday September 24 was a successful day for me.
Some days are just perfect because at the end of the day it all seems to be so advantageous.
My day was good because it started slow (like slow food you got to take time to prepare the food). I had an appointment with my mental trainer/ coach or whatever you call him, in the morning. We had a good talk about assholes in life (traffic, work, daily life) because of the book I read, talked about 2 incidents and how I reacted on it. I try to use the theory I called the 4 G's theory. (REBT of A. Ellis) in these cases more or less and it works.
It's not that I practice the theory intentionally. When I think of the situation afterwards or discuss it than I conclude that there is a REBT in it.

I told about E. whom I fell in love with and about wanting to work on another department, doing different things. I'm working under my level for years now. That's another story. In the next weeks I got to find out what the ideal job for me looks like. After that I can arrange a conversation with my team-leader about more inciting work.

After this session I cycled back to work and felt better than a week ago. Again 21 kilometers, now without difficulty.
At work it was silent.Only 5 colleagues. And after 3 pm there were 3 of us.
Fantastic. No disturbance, no unnecessary incentives.

Yesterday 29 years back Mr Joe Black didn´t get me. Great how life in 29 years evolves. So I´m happy that here I am so far. It could have been worse!

explosive

I started to read something about the society I live in. For foreigners the Netherlands seems to be not the perfect place to live in.
We are degenerated to a society of assholes. Just ordinary people like my colleagues and I.
Yeah ME, that's the reason I read the lecture about sociology/psychology in relation with society. The book tries to explain where the Dutch dissatisfaction comes from. It tries to explain to the reader why we are satisfied in our personal life but short tempered in society. People have a happy family but going to work they have to face many obstacles. They become explosive devices.

c*mm*n*c*t**n

We had the State of the Union yesterday. The so called Prinsjesdag
On this day the queen had her speech from the Throne.
In this speech the plans of the Cabinet were unfolded. Sad news because the Netherlands has to cut expenses drastically. It will hurt people's spending power. Some more, others less. Of course they take the easy targets first and that are the public spending on health-care, children care, inurement in our society of foreigners, people care, civil services and civil servants. In the next 4 years the expenses have to be cut with 18 trillion Euro!

The new cabinet isn't installed yet. The parties are still negotiating. Maybe the orthodox Christian right wing with 2 seats in parliament will support the new cabinet. It's a rumor. I thought of it and wrote about earlier.

As I am in the civil service I'm supposed not to like it. Do I? No not really. I like a better leaner civil service. That means a smaller one. We need to do the same with less means, meaning a more effective service.
Management has to monitor work-processes more closely. Management has to be on the job when real important decisions have to be made. A unit-manager has more decision-power than just an advisor and the team-leader. In my unit they talk for more than a year about adjustment of the system - work on the department I worked for. Now it comes to an halt? Why didn't management intervene? Seems to be a case of bad communication.
In fact I once said in this blog that I don't like the word c*mm*n*c*t**n.

insanity

I'm reading a book which I could have read for my high school book-list.
The tittle is Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers. Goethe is the author.
The book was written in 1770 as a series of letters from Werther to his brother/friend Wilhelm.

Werther went to the countryside, probably because he was stressed. He had to find himself again, his authenticity and passion for drawing and painting. There he was melancholic and sharp as well in observations and philosophical thoughts. For example about the relation between feelings and behavior.
After a few letters he fell in love with Lotte. Lotte was a woman I compare with the woman I call E. in this blog. No wonder that Werther fell in love with her.
Werther thought, hoped and knew that she loved him.

Problem was that she was the fiance of a certain Albert. Werther and Albert had no problems with each other. But Werther could forget his love to be answered.
In the letters he describes the process of almost 2 years until he was completely possessed by Lotte, the unanswered love. How it ends, is described on the backside of the book.

It's much like Dostoyewski's the Gambler in which the main character would jump into a ravine if she asked. He would do anything for her.

I bet Werther would do anything for Lotte too.

I said that I would do anything for E. too.  However I'm not insane. (I told her once when she asked me something, I would do anything for her. She never asked me again.)

emotions

This week I had a feeling being tested in life.
I told about the theory I learned from my mental trainer (4 G-theory).
This I learn(ed) because my emotions goes from 0 to 10 very rapidly.
These emotions could be everything, from being afraid to being very angry and I should control them.

Well, in daily life I had 2 opportunities to test it.
The first opportunity was a request to have a list of the colleagues of my old department I still work with. I know there is a digitalized list with also the weekly schedules and telephone numbers of appr. 40 colleagues.
I think it's normal that this information can be given to colleagues who have close contacts. In my opinion this information should be even in the address book in Outlook. In fact all kinds of information should be accessible for employees.
The answer I got was that it wasn't necessary because: 1 I should have no contacts with them directly; 2 the list of colleagues changes constantly.
I couldn't get a worse excuse. Next Monday my coordinator will exchange views about this with my old department. It's just to silly to spend words on like in this paragraph. However it's an example of what gives a boost to my anger.

It's openness of information you know, for our citizens and employees of the municipality. If a Governmental body doesn't show openness can the Government expect that from their citizen? I can put it on paper and address it to the Works Council.

The second test was Friday, yesterday. I had an appointment with my mental trainer. I took my time to go to the address because it was raining cats and dogs. When I arrived I learned that my appointment was cancelled. They tried to reach me but I didn't answer the phone. I don't when I'm at work.
I was sweating because of the biking and an uncontrolled illness (I've been ill for a few weeks, still worked around though) and learned that my coach was ill. At first I was puzzled, didn't they phone me nor email me?
My anger grew. Then I was told that they couldn't reach me at home and they didn't have my email address.


But is my problem with angriness not really simple?
I just wanna speedup things.

faster.... watch this video

9-11

When I say... I am a Muslim
I'm not shouting
"Down with the Christians and Jews."
I am whispering, "I seek peace"
And Islam is the path that I choose.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
I speak of this with pride,
And confess that sometimes I stumble
And need Allah to be my guide.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
I know that makes me strong
And in those times when I am weak
I pray to Allah for strength to carry on.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
I not boasting of success,
I'm acknowledging that Allah has rescued me
And I cannot ever repay the debt.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
I'm not claiming to be perfect.
My flaw are indeed visible
But Allah forgives
Because his followers are worth it.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
It does not mean I will never feel pain.
I still have my share of heartaches
Which is why I invoke Allah's name.
When I say... I am a Muslim,
I do not wish to judge.
I have no such authority.
My duty is to submit
To Allah's all-encompassing love

This poem Hadiya, aka Hnk, read in december 2004 before her book was published. If you replace Muslim with Christian and Allah with God then the poem still goes. Aren't all religions eventually based on the same universal love?
Isn't that what people need?

dog-sledging

Climbing the Maslow mountain is indeed a climb with risks.
Getting tired, altitude disease, accidental fall, headache, aching muscles, dizziness. Then there are external factors such as traffic which makes this imaginary mountain huge.

The behavior theory says:
occurrence -> thought -> perception -> behaviour
Infact it's like economics.
If something happens then you have a thought about that which gives you a perception. This perception tells you how to behave.
Next step is to change the thought on an occurrence.
Is it a kind of crisis management?

It is a next step into the death zone.

Well another way to find some peace is buddhism or.....
watch this video...peace man

books

The 3 parties who cancelled the negotiations 2 times are talking again.
The party who sacrificed one of their negotiators goes back to the table to negotiate.
The informer can only warn the parties not fail another time.
It's now 3 months after the elections and nothing happened.
Wilders has a wild-card and he plays the card as someone who doesn't know the rules of the game. I think he gambles, like the the old Russian woman in Dostojevski's the Gambler. In the end she lost everything.
Why don't the political parties tell him the rules? Remind him what the rules are. Then we'll have slap sticks and Geert Wilders is the man in bonus.

On September 11 mr. Wilders will come to the 911 ceremony in NYC. He will speak there and will say probably something which is the opinion of himself and his movement. He does twitter as well. Today he twittered that the plan of a reference in Florida to burn the Koran is not a good plan.
Burning books is a symptom of the growing dissatisfaction among the natives. If you are going to burn books, there are so many books which could be burned. The environmentalists wil have a problem with book burning and not only them.

heart

Wilders is eating the confessional conservative heart out of the political nation. He is minimizing the conservative party. He's playing as a predator with his prey. It's funny to see how he sees politics. It's astonishing how the informer of the parties lets it all happen.
The confessionals are eager to govern the nation. They sacrificed the second negotiator as the well known lamb to please their God.

But in this confessional party there are also other religions present. Wilders is against their believe. At least in Holland. So he creates tension in society. We can't use that. It's a civilized world now but if we gonna expel people because of their religion or opinion it's not so friendly anymore.
Maybe he still lives in the past when his father was young. The seeds may be even sown back in an earlier past of his family. Read in Wikipedia some about Geert Wilders. It is intriguing.

Today it's September 7. This week real work started again. Meetings with the Works Council, with the director, courses to keep knowledge up to date.
The workload increases in my job but also on other departments. My old department has a shortage of employees. In the summer-period several chose to work elsewhere. From one person it is said that he could leave because he argues decisions of the team-leader. It is a sad story.

On the 16th my old department has planned a birthday party for those who had their birthday in the past year. It was told when we had a meeting with the former department. In the morning we just received a mail that my new department planned a trip with a dinner. A kind of teambuilding.
I'm not so keen on parties so these are planned well.

Another party is tonight, I wanna say happy 68th birthday to Fennie Brouwer. Fennie I send you my heart.

swarmdemocracy

Early this morning I heard a theory about starlings.
The number of starling that is necessary to make a swarm is the square root of the total number starlings. For a swarm of 1,000 starlings only 33 must have the same idea. These are social animals you know. You must have seen them on a rooftop, crowding in trees or on a high voltage cable above the ground.  In September, October they'll be grouping to make the flight south, to south Europe and Africa.

Humans act the same way. The guerilla marketing is based on the same principle. Only a relative small group of people make a complete population follow the large number. Often it works better than expensive advertisement campaigns. Some brands are ruined by the geurilla marketing.

Maybe the Dutch democracy is based upon the same principle. One party which got 1.5 million votes decides the faith of 16 million. It's a swarmdemocracy in the Netherlands nowadays.
A relative small group can decide. We saw it with Fortuyn and his legacy. We see it with Wilders this time. The other parties don't want to  miss contact with the mass who voted for him.
The other parties follow the small one.

Politics

It's almost 3 months ago when we had elections and still we don't have a new cabinet.
It's a bit complicated and the different parties are not quite honest to themselves, to the voters, to democracy and the rules we have in our democracy.
The game is played by amateurs: Wilders, Rutte and Verhagen. The leaders of the 3 parties which have a 1 seat mayority.
Now one party can't guarantee that all their members will vote in the line of the cabinet.
This is for Wilders a reason to quit negotiators.

In the Conservative party there are 3 member who can't go with the line set by the 3 negotiators.
Wilders want these 3 to sign a statement in which they promise to vote with the party.
This is forbidden in my country. Every Parlementarian should vote for themselves, what they think is wise. Not what the party thinks.
Wilders and his followers will be in the opposition and will criticize the new cabinet in every combination.

Paulus converted himself from a prosecutor of christians into a follower of Christ.  Can Wilders change himself? I don't think so.