My last week as a monster

I visit the Van Gogh museum, participate in a game of Crazy 88, eat boerenkool, get a visit from Denmark and go to Friesland for the final event of the introduction to Orionis.
This last week has been full of events with Orionis and I have had no time to update the blog. Therefore you can look forward to another long read today, as I will be catching up with this post.
Sunday, eight days ago, I visited the Van Gogh museum, which my colleagues had recommended. I took an audio tour and learned a lot about Van Gogh and his paintings. The museum leads you through a great storyline of Van Gogh's life as an artist and showcases a large collection of his paintings, drawings. The life of Van Gogh is well documented, because he wrote a lot of letters to his brother, Vincent. It is also dramatic as he gets himself into a lot of trouble by arguing with other painters, he becomes mentally ill and he commits suicide at an early age. I think I like the story more than the paintings. His style of art was ahead of his time and I admire him for being able to understand so much about art before everyone else, but I find the works of contemporary artists more interesting and relevant.

Monday, Orionis had arranged an event called Crazy 88. It is a game you win by completing as many crazy tasks from the list as possible. It gives me associations to American Pie: Beta House, I don't know if you've seen it... Anyway, I had a feeling that it would be fun, if we really committed ourselves to it, but otherwise not. So, I did my best to lift the mood of the group and have fun with the tasks, but it didn't work very well. I think there were just too many problems - it was organized poorly. If you ask me what the most crazy thing I did was, then I think you will be disappointed to hear that I didn't do anything worse than climbing a lamppost and get a little ride on the back of a stranger's bike.

Wednesday was much more fun. We had dinner in our group and everyone was there. That's 14 students in one student apartment. We had a traditional dutch dish called Boerenkool, which is the name of a cabbage used in the dish. The dish is made by mashing potatoes and Boerenkool together. It is served with brown sauce, bacon, sausage and apple puree. It's the type of dish you eat with your grandparents on their farm, but it's also had by students because it is so cheap to make.

Friday, my mom and two of her friends came to visit Amsterdam. We arranged to meet at their hotel and I showed them around in the city. We visited Museumsplein, where the Van Gogh museum is located and walked to the center. Here we found a nice place to have lunch right next to Bloemenmarkt, the famous flower market. We had tapas outside in the sun and felt lucky to have found such a nice spot right in the center. After having lunch we walked through the old part of Amsterdam and did a quick step in and out of the Red Light District. Then we crossed the Ij river on a ferry and had coffee on the terrace of the EYE museum. We enjoyed the view of the Ij river, the nice sunny weather and our coffee until I had to leave for Friesland. I've since heard that they went on to take a canal cruise that afternoon and they also enjoyed the great weather Saturday.

I left for Friesland by taking a train to Baarn. Here, I met up with one of my group members who had arranged for his father to drive us to Balk, Friesland. When we arrived, we were greeted by the MoCo (the organizers of the weekend) and we got checked in and unpacked. As there was no dinner arranged for us, we then went to a snack bar and had fastfood. After dinner we all gathered in the main room and got an official welcome by MoCo. They told us to prepare ourselves to show ourselves to show our act (like everyone else we had prepared an act, which mostly consisted of making fools of ourselves for a minute). So we all got dressed up and went to the discotheque in our costumes. The Moco kicked off the show themselves with a great act. They were dressed up as captains and stewardesses, did a good choreography to some nice party music and they had the whole crowd cheering and dancing. Everyone had a lot of fun we all got to show our acts. In between each act the DJ made sure to play some music that got people dancing, so we didn't grow tired of watching the poor performances of the groups. It was great fun and we danced on to around 3.30.

My group, dressed up for our silly act

The next day started at 7.30, when we got up and did a little gym routine together. I don't mind that kind of thing, but some people were a bit tired from the day before. We also did a little race, I think we ran 400-600 meters. I won, because I like to compete and I'm not that bad at running. This gave us some more points towards the trophy and I was rather pleased with that. Then we had a horrible breakfast (I don't like dry white bread with ham and I had to drink a lot of milk to get through my sandwich) and then we went sailing. I got on a team with Derek (instructor), Thea (Finnish Girl from my group), Thalina and Rosa. Together we sailed in the Valk and we had a great time. The weather was perfect, sunny all day and 7 m/s. Two times we went past a cafe at a bridge, where many of the others stopped, but we preferred to sail instead. We had lunch on a little island in the middle of a lake (white bread again! What is wrong with you Dutch students?!). I don't think I can accurately describe how much I enjoyed the sailing, but I'll give it a try. I felt happy all over and gave compliments to Derek for being a nice instructor, I talked a lot (a side effect from being very happy I think) and at one point I noticed, how overflowing I was with happiness and decided to just close my eyes and enjoy that...

Back ashore the MoCo had something special planned for us in the evening. It was an initiation ceremony, executed in cult-like style. My overall impression of the event is, that it was very well executed, but I don't think I would ever arrange something like that myself. But you must see it in a context, because all student unions in Amsterdam does this kind of thing. The basic idea is that new members should be treated very poorly by the older members up until they complete the initiation ceremony and become full members. This is supposed to make them feel a sense of accomplishment for becoming a member and a strong connection to the other new members, who suffered the same pains. I had been warned on beforehand about this and I made sure to wear some clothes that I didn't care too much for...

First, they took us outside and had us march up and down the street in silence. They would shout at us like sergeants teaching us to obey orders without question and to stay silent, unless asked to speak. While we did this, I had a feeling that they were just stalling for time. There were only two MoCo present and they didn't really have anything they wanted to accomplish other than put us in the right mood. When we walked silently, in orderly rows back inside the main building we could see why. The whole place had been covered in black plastic bags, there were small candlelights everywhere and we had to sit on the floor in front of an elevated desk with three MoCo dressed in black robes. More Moco were standing around with water pistols in some rather sexy guard costumes (well, at least the girls looked sexy). Intensely dark music were being played, the type of music you would expect in a movie at an execution scene and MoCo and their helpers were amplifying the music by stomping the ground. The effect was stunning, and I must say I was positively surprised again by the amount of hard work they must have put into it, to make such a good execution in the end. After the music stopped there was a long, tense silence before the MoCo finally addressed us and started the games. Groups were called forth to compete against each other. Often the most brave would step forward and champion for their groups in the games. To mention a few examples, the champions did: showcase sexual positions and use them to pop balloons, drink beer out of a shoe, play a quiz game where you could only answer after smashing a cream bun (floedebolle) on top of a group members head and get their hair on the chest waxed off. If your champion, or sometimes your whole team, lost the competition you would be punished. Some of the punishments were: getting 'a pancake' meaning having the ingredients of a pancake mixed in your hair, getting your hair spraycolored (we got that one, green and silver glimmer)... I think you get the idea from these examples. It lasted for a couple of hours and I got a little tired of it in the end. The fatigue from not having slept much last night was also setting in. I was quite indifferent to getting punished or not, unlike some who were scared of it, so I didn't really stay emotionally involved and got bored. In the end we got our diplomas and got declared full Orionis members. Up until that point we had been called monsters. We then went on to party at the discoteque, I guess some people had a shower because I didn't see any pancakes that night, but my group went with our colorful hair and champagne-sprayed clothes. This night the event was a beer relay tournament. Unfortunately the DJ was less successful at getting everyone to dance in between the beer drinking matches, so the event felt too long. The good part was that we won the tournament, but there was a lot of confusion and the other team initially got declared the winner. Only later did it get discovered that we had in fact won. We were very proud of this and we also got some points towards the trophy. This night I went home early. It had already been a long day and I didn't really feel like dancing all night. The house was still locked when I got home, I guess I must have been one of the first, but I climbed in through a window and took a nice warm shower before going to bed. I fell asleep around the time my group members started coming home.

The next day I woke up feeling much better rested than the day before. We slept until nine and had some nice breakfast served, because the MoCo wanted to emphasize the difference from last night when we were still monsters. After breakfast I was ready to go sailing, but unfortunately it was very windy and the MoCo decided we should stay ashore. That could have been a good decision if they had planned something for us to do while staying ashore, but they didn't. We ended up doing a lot of waiting, spending a lot of time among ourselves and doing a few silly games. It felt like waiting for the bus to arrive and I guess it was. I think they should have let the experienced sailors have their fun instead or at least have a proper backup plan, but ok nobody's perfect. I still think they did a great job overall and I feel inspired to take some things home and see if we can make something happen in Denmark. The final thing before the bus arrived was the trophy ceremony. I felt confident that we would win, as we had won the notable competitions and we were also ahead before we came. However, we ended up in second place, behind a team with a somewhat different strategy for earning points. Points are also awarded for kissing and this team apparently did a lot of that, one of them even managed to kiss with a MoCo (that's a lot of points, you see). But even though we didn't win, I felt quite good at the ceremony. We got a special applause for winning the beer relay and the best thing... Do you remember the t-shirt I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? How I said: "I bet it will turn out great and end up as a famous t-shirt"... Well, I'm not sure if it got famous or not, but it won the best t-shirt award, so at least it got the attention of the MoCo (I'm proud of it, so what? It's my blog).

The end of a this great weekend was the trip home by bus. I had expected everyone to sleep, but in fact the mood was still good. We sang along to a few songs and had ourselves a little afterparty as the bus-driver suggested. I've never had such a cool bus-driver before. He was playing music for us and encouraging us to party. At one point we were in a queue, so he left his seat and went upstairs to talk with us. When the queue started moving he had to run down and start the bus again. We all said our goodbyes at the Amsterdam central station Sunday evening.

So much to tell, so little time

At the office there are guests, presentations and Katie is arrested, with Orionis there are parties, sailing and a little happening and on the last days of the week I go bowling and join a pub-quiz.
A lot has happened in the past week and I want to tell you all about it, so please make yourself comfortable and prepare for a long read. I would have liked to tell you some of it earlier, but I haven't been home any of the evenings this week, so I haven't had the time to write.

The talk of the week at the office is our Happen colleague, Katie Crilly, who was dismissed with immediate effect this week. She has been convicted in UK for stealing from her previous employer. It appears she was hired as an accountant in Happen a couple of months ago, while she was still in the process of a 'minor legal case' with her previous employer. Well, it turns out she pocketed just short of a million danish kroner... After that her LinkedIn description seems a bit ironic: "Katie Cryllie, Directing money into all the right places".
The rest of the week I have been working on rather simple tasks again. It is a bit frustrating, as I want to show off and become trusted enough for some interesting assignments. To show off I have definitely been doing my part. This Monday I did a great presentation of my work with the macro I told you about last time. I framed the story really well, had them laughing in the right places and kept it short and exciting enough for them to continue talking about the macro later that day. But the in truth, it was only a minor project and one that I came up with myself, so although I feel like I did well, it still wasn't that big of an accomplishment.
This week we had the whole sales team visiting Amsterdam. They work for Winkle in offices around the world and it was nice to meet them in person. Thursday, I got to know more about how they work and the business model of Winkle from a presentation by Hanneke and our American colleague, Eve.

Like last week, I have been busy in the evenings with Orionis events. I have decided to show up to all of them, because I can and it's fun, even if a little exhausting at times. The Monday event was a pub-crawl to the favorite pubs of the Orionis commisions. The commisions are sub-groups, who manage different assets and events for Orionis. Examples are the Bar commision, the Skûtje commision, the magazine commision... you get the point I'm sure. On the pub-crawl we greeted all of them and spent about fifteen minutes with each. Most of the time it felt like rushing around, but I did get the time to sit down and be convinced to join a few events. Most notably a Skûtje competition in Friesland.

Tuesday the board of Orionis had a meeting and our group decided to show up and disturb them a little. Forty minutes into their meeting we knocked on the door and entered. In an apologetic tone, I told them we had something we wanted to tell them from our hearts, but we were too shy to just say it openly. So instead we arranged for a letter to be sent by special delivery... (theatrical silence) ... "Kukeroo!" Laurens says from outside the door, showing the tip of his wings (!?) and in he comes. He is dressed completely in the dove costume I made for him and is wearing a nice little beak as well. In his mouth he is carrying a big letter. He is performing the role of a "Postduif" (homing pigeon) and he is making everyone laugh. He is a natural at flapping his wings, while singing "Kukeroo" (dutch pigeon sound I suppose) and he even mixes it up with a couple of bird-jokes. The board members are all laughing, flabbergasted at our behavior and when we talk later they reveal that they had no clue there were points to monsters who delivered mail to them by homing pigeons. Anyway, it was great fun to do and they appreciated the sweet words in the letter.

Wednesday I left the office early for yet another Orionis event. This time we went sailing on the small lake, Sloterplas. I had been looking much forward to it and I definitely did enjoy myself, but not before taking things in my own hands... At first when I arrived we were only four and we formed a team. Although I wanted to sail in the Laser Vago, I went with the team decision and started out in the Valk. Now, I am comfortable in any boat, and I am very good at enjoying the weather and just sailing regardless of what crew I am with, but somehow this one girl managed to ruin it for me. It was really odd, and I thought about it a lot later, because I usually find that my personality goes well with everyone and it is usually easy to relate to fellow students. Later this week I took a personality test for work/fun and I think I finally understood what was wrong with the Valk trip. According to the test (and I believe it) my way of interacting with others is highly relating as opposed to controlling. I seek influence directly, when I am comfortable, but more indirectly in ambiguous situations like the one I am in now as a foreigner. The problem with this is, that it will take me quite a while before I communicate what I want myself, because I need to figure out what everyone else wants first (odd, but true). This works with most people, because I don't dominate them, so they will tend to relax and usually ask me what I want, but it turns out this girl couldn't care less about what I wanted. She used to sail competitively in the Valk, so she was able to handle the boat pretty much by herself and that's what she did. I have no idea why she would assume that the rest of us were not interested in steering the boat or the main sail. At one point she even belittled me with her explanation of how to control the push pole after I told her we don't use that kind of thing in Denmark. Well, I'm not going to rant any more about it, but I left her and the boat as soon as I thought it would be socially acceptable (she complained, but I was relieved). Meanwhile I had made a friend of another one on the Valk and we had great fun in the Laser Vago the rest of the day. It's similar in handling to a 29'er, but smaller, less spacious and less stable (strange, but I believe it is because the sword is too little). I think I will have lots of fun in this boat in the weeks to come.

Thursday evening I had dinner a group of eight of my colleagues including Eve and her mother. We had a traditional dutch type of dinner, where you cook for yourself at the table. You get your own tiny pan and then they serve a big plate of small pieces of raw meat. There are also a few vegetables that you can fry a little salat for you to eat raw and some french fries you can take. I think the hygiene of it is quite miserable compared to Danish standards, but I see that often here so I keep that thought to myself and dive in with everyone else (but unlike some I couldn't help being very careful separating tools for raw meat and food that is ready to eat). After the meal we went bowling (nothing of note happened here, especially the score is not relevant to inform you of) and then some of us went to a bar. I enjoyed the evening and I am looking forward to the next time we do something like that. It happens at least once a month and I think it's one of the things that contribute to the 'family-like' feeling of Winkle.

Friday evening I went to a pub-quiz with Orionis, but I was getting tired from a long week, so I left early. On my way home I saw an ambulance team perform CPR in the middle of the street. My first instinct was to move on and let them do their job, along with sending some negative thoughts to the people in the crowd who were watching as if it was some kind of entertainment. But then I decided against it, stepped off my bike and watched the scene. It is the first time I see CPR performed in real life and I thought it might be educational for me in relation to lifeguarding. The facts I picked up were: one person had an accident on a motorbike, he was clearly unconscious and not breathing, he had been moved away from the road and police had sealed off a large area around him. There were two ambulances present and everyone was attending to the unconscious man. Their procedure was a little different from the one I know, because they were somehow able to ventilate him, while doing compressions. I saw them do CPR for at least 10 minutes without giving any shocks, although they were clearly monitoring his heart rate with an ECG. I'm sure this experience is somehow positive for me, because I got to see a lot of things that I might eventually experience myself such as: the desperate friend who had to be restrained by the police to keep him from interfering, the eerie stillness of the body aside from the motion of the stomage up and down in the opposite rhythm of the chest. While watching I felt nothing emotionally myself, not for the patient or even his desperate friend. I don't know why that is exactly, but it gives me good confidence in myself for being able to act utterly professionally if I ever get the chance to rescue someone. When I got home I did spend a little time reflecting on the emotional side of it and concluded that I was feeling 'intense' or 'aware' or something along those lines that is definitely related to elevated levels of adrenaline.

Today I am having a quiet day after a busy week. I hope the guy from yesterday makes it, but I don't think he will. I hope the next week will be as much fun as the past week and I look forward to having my mother visit from Denmark and to the introduction trip of Orionis in the weekend.

Nightlife

I win a trophy with my team, welcome some more members to the team and make a costume.
This week I have had a lot of fun with my friends from Orionis. Monday we met up in a bar and got to know each other, while participating in a quiz-type game. Most of the time I could understand the questions (they were in dutch) around the time someone else had answered them. Anyway, I don't think it would have made much of a difference if I understood the questions, because they were all related to the history of Orionis or popular culture / common knowledge in the Netherlands. As it turned out, the rest of my team was about as bad as I was, and we scored a total of 10 points throughout the entire game (2 correct answers). At the end of the game we were awarded with a trophy that looked like a small dick. We happily celebrated our 'triumph', and after I while I figured out that 'the-little-dick-of-the-week trophy' is handed out to the losing team in events. Well, well, who's to say we can't celebrate that, so we had fun the rest of the evening and went home around half past eleven (it was Monday afterall).
Wednesday is the weekly 'open borrel' night, which is where new members sign up and meet the Orionis members. This Wednesday was the last opportunity to sign up and the place was packed. More than forty new members signed up that night! All teams 10 now consist of 12 members (I'm really impressed). Most of the team was there, so we could welcome the new members of our team as they joined and buy them some cheap beers.
Friday we met up again, this time in the apartment of our team's 'parents'. They live far to the south, so it was quite a long ride from my home. We had dinner there and practiced singing the Orionis song. We also discussed how to get additional points for our team. By closely examining the points-list, we decided to go for 'send a letter to the Orionis manager team by carrier pigeon'. But we don't have a carrier pigeon and we have no idea how to get one, so instead we are going to dress someone up (Thea and I managed to talk Lauritz into it) as a carrier pigeon and have him deliver the message. As you may remember I did some sewing last week and in the end I felt like I was getting the hang of it, so I proposed to make some wings for our pigeon. It was a lot more difficult than sewing patches onto a t-shirt, but now I have a full pigeon-dress in the closet (by the way I'm using a really nice sewing machine that I borrowed from my host). I hope it will fit Lauritz well. Others from the team have agreed to make a huge letter and a beak for the pigeon, so when we put it all together on Monday we will hopefully have our handsome carrier pigeon deliver a letter to the managers. I'm hoping they don't require some kind of flying of the pigeon, because then we will really have to get creative!

Necessities

I learn how to write VBA macros, sew patches on a t-shirt and receive a bag from Denmark .
This week I have become involved with the most hated project at Winkle right now. It is a project for a 'difficult' client, who seems to always want something other than what is delivered. The unusual requests are a problem, because they make it impossible to present the data using the normal, automated procedure. Making the data presentable manually is a tedious task, which my colleagues seemed to think were fit for a new intern. Great... A boring task with no way of showing creativity or learning new things. Not exactly what I was hoping for. Being dropped into a corner of the project, I didn't really understand what was going on in the beginning, but I did know that excel is not a program that is meant for a lot of clicking. So, I decided to try to automate the process and make my task a little easier, faster and more fun (I like to come up with new methods much more than I like executing the methods). First I tried using excel formulas and conditional formatting and even though my speed improved and the risk of mistakes disappeared, I was still far from a good solution. As I started using VBA macros I discovered that there was huge potential here. In two days, I got a crude code written, that could select the whole sheet and do my tasks in about ten seconds (a good improvement over the 40 minutes of manual work/sheet I started with). This was such a success, that I have been asked to present the method on the weekly meeting for the whole office. I feel particularly good about this, because I thought it would be such a lousy task, but ended up enjoying it quite a lot and learning how write VBA macros.
Aside from working I have been planning my introduction trip with Orionis. The student sailing organization starts each year by welcoming the new members for a whole month. That means a lot of events are going on all of them leading up to a weekend of sailing in Friesland (renowned to be a great place for sailing). Also, I expect there will be a lot of beers and fun games involved. One of the games is a contest of who has pimped their Orionis t-shirt the most. To me, that felt like a good challenge, so I went ahead and spent today sewing patches on my t-shirt (yes, I spent a full day doing that). I kept the shape completely original, I didn't even make a v-neck, but I think that might actually help my shirt stand out. Most of the girls quickly got rid of the sleeves and some have also opened the neck of the t-shirt to make it look like a top. However, I don't think that would be very fitting for a boy and I was also concerned that my execution would be so poor that it would disturb the look of the shirt. So instead I opted for a safer option of sewing on patches. On the shoulders I now have two good-looking (in my opinion) Danish flags. The rest of the shirt looks mostly unchanged at first glance, but when you look closer you can see some stitches in rectangular patterns many places on the shirt. The thread is red on the blue t-shirt. If you turn it inside out, you can see that the stitches are not just for show, they also hold white patches in place. The idea is, that I will ask people to write messages inside the white squares, much like the notes you can write inside a student cap. I bet it will turn out great and end up as a famous t-shirt (in case you don't know, I'm always this optimistic about the future).
In relation to that same trip, I anticipated the need for sailing clothes and sent a message home. The same week I received a bag filled with all of my sailing clothes and a glass of homemade blackberry jam (thanks mom!).

The North Sea

I visit the North sea and the city of Haarlem with Martijn.
This Sunday I visited Martijn in the city he grew up in, Haarlem, which he had kindly invited me to see. On beforehand he had told me that Haarlem is a small city close to the sea. Martijn was already in Haarlem to visit some friends, so we met on the train and continued through Haarlem to the sea. Going to the beach was actually my request, as I was curious to see what kind of coast it was. I didn't know if I would get the same feeling as I can get from the Danish west coast on a good day. It is a feeling that is only found when the circumstances are right. Don't get me wrong, I always love being near the sea, even a pond nearby makes me happy, but this feeling is different from happiness. It is felt in a place deeper inside you than happiness. I cannot express the feeling more accurately, but I can try to bring you to the beach with my words and perhaps you will feel the same...
You are stepping off the asphalt now, onto the sand. You have been stealing glances at the sea from afar and you have felt sudden gusts of wind blowing through the streets. A mild and fresh smell comes to you with the salty air. You walk in deep, fine sand with feet that still remember the solid ground of the asphalt streets. When you glance up you can see the sea ahead of you. Wind and sand in the air makes your eyes blink and you shield them with your hand. The wind is pushing against you, as if gently leaning on you for support and each step you take has a little more determination to it than usual. You reach the harder, wet sand near the water's edge and this is where you stop. You let your breathing slow as you take in the view. The sea is white from foam and waves are crushing onto themselves and into each other. You send a thought to the many kite surfers who take full advantage of the weather and to the board surfers who enjoy themselves in the waves. You stand still, take calm deep breaths and you feel it. You feel the sea on a good day.
After our walk by the sea we had drinks in one of the beach bars. Then we went back to Haarlem and Martijn gave me a fine tour. The 'small' city turned out to be about the size of Aarhus and quite beautiful as well. We ended the tour on an Indian restaurant, which served some really good food and even some foods that were completely new to me. It was a great way to spend my third weekend here.