The last couple of weeks have been a bumpy ride for me. I Crashed & Burned right after I made the Final Cut. I was ready to Move On and had a job interview lined up in Amsterdam last Friday. I’m happy to announce I got the job. Next to that I also got permission to follow my special Graduation Seminar at the university which means I will be working on my bachelor thesis this fall.

Even though things are looking up for me, I won’t be able to relax until I reach December. Until then I will need to live on a very tight budget *gulp* At the end of September I will be moving from my hometown closer to Amsterdam. Without my Student Public Transport card I will no longer be able to use public transport without paying a fee. Travelling to Amsterdam from my hometown will be the same as renting a small room for a student in the city! I’m planning on moving to Amsterdam somewhere next year.

I’m really happy I can finally write my bachelor thesis. I’m following a special Graduation Seminar with a focus on Social Network websites, Videogames & Virtual Worlds. It’s a topic I’m seriously passionate about. I’m thinking of writing a thesis related to identity & videogames/virtual worlds or maybe write about ingame advertising; (reversed) product placement. It depends on how much academic literature I can find of a specific topic :P

Even though the next 3 months will be pretty tough, I’m looking forward to a new adventure. I feel that I’ve grown a lot while living in my hometown and that it’s time to start a new chapter in my life ~

I moved from Leiden back to my hometown in the province about 2 years ago. I quit my job in Amsterdam and focused on my uni classes. But the truth is: I wasn’t supposed to live for such a long time in my hometown. I already started making plans to move to (or close to) Amsterdam after the project at my former job was finished somewhere in January 2011. I didn’t see why I should wait now that I’m without a job. Instead of hunting jobs in Groningen and switch for another time after only a few months, I have started to hunt for jobs in and close to Amsterdam now.

Even though I have only made my first step to apply for a new job, I’m happy to announce I have a job interview lined up in Amsterdam next Friday :D I’m a little nervous about it *gulp* Living in my hometown has been super lovely and it feels a bit sad to say goodbye to that. But, part of me is ready to dive into big city life again!

[note] I couldn’t help but share ‘New World’ by w-inds. with this post #fangirl :P

Unfortunately the tech team can’t get the new system ready for the end of the year. The new system will be implemented somewhere in 2011 *grumble* Management has decided to ditch the extra workforce and only keep the people who are able to work longer than the planned 6 months and work full hours. Even though I already met their requirements to work on the floor, am able to work after January… I signed up for a small contract for 16 – 24 hours. This means I’m out of work together with 2/3 of the extra workforce they trained & hired for the project.

In a way it still feels a bit unreal getting kicked from a job I’ve spend a full month training for *sighs* In a way it feels like a big waste, but I did learn some new things AND met some super friendly people. We’re still planning on getting together this Friday, so I’m definitely looking forward to that!

Steve Jobs: Connect the dots

I received the link to this video by @023MF , it really helped me keep a positive outlook and made me feel less sad about losing my job today.

A new adventure starts for me today. I will be looking for a new job :P I will definitely be posting updates while being busy looking for a new job here on elocutio .nu and via @elocutio. So hang in there with me. I really want to thank everyone who helped me lift my spirits via Twitter, phone & SMS *hugs*

So I finally made it through the second fase of training at my new job. This means I made it through the trial period and got the job! As I wrote earlier I applied for a job as an informer at a big governmental organization. The job requires a fulltime training for about a month before employees are accepted. I applied for a contract for 16 – 24 hours a week, so I’m very happy I have completed the fulltime training. During the training it was hard to find the time for other things such as working on my websites. I will be working 4 days a week with shifts of 4 or 6 hours, pretty sweet or what?

During the training I was placed in a training group with other aspirant employees. Because we had such a good time during the training we have decided to organize a ‘celebration / farewell dinner’ next Friday. I think that’s a truly sweet idea. I really like the fact my fellow colleagues are all around my age which makes it super easy to connect to eachother. It will be weird not to see eachother as often as we did during the training. But I’m happy to have met some friendly new people.

Now that I’m somewhat working the hours of my contract I will definitely be putting more time into elocutio.nu & other projects. I truly missed working on new posts, finding topics to write about, etc.,. Hahaha I REALLY missed working on ‘stuff’ while listening to my fav music *sighs*

University & Work

Unfortunately I failed my ‘Final from Hell’ – again. I’m really getting tired of the course and wished it was all over. I will be able to retake the final in January 2011 *gulp* Even though this is a serious setback, I am still planning on graduating next year. It’s gonna be hard, but I’m up for the challenge.

Work is actually going pretty good. As I mentioned earlier (!) my new job is being an informer at a big governmental organization. Before being accepted you have to follow special training and take a couple of tests. At the moment I’m in the second fase of my training together with my colleagues who started at the same time as I. At the end of next week I will hear if I will really get the job.

Because we all started the training at the same time and nobody has failed any tests we’re a tight group. We’re planning to do a ‘celebration dinner’ once we finish training. After we have finished our training we will all work at different locations so we will probably see eachother much less. I truly like the idea, it’s so cute ~

What’s Next ?

Even though it’s summer vacation I’ve been waaaaaay too busy with work. I really want to blog more in August and publish some more YouTube video’s. Gaahhh! Still so much to do … but do not worry, I’m definitely blogging more next month *wooofff*

University & Work

I’ve decided to retake my ‘final from Hell’ in July so I will face my biggest fear on July 7th *gulp* I did manage to finish my paper for my Quality of Online Journalism class and score the highest final grade of my class which I’m very happy about. Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for the university life, but a part of me really enjoys the academic life. I’m still trying to decide if I should go work in a ‘normal’ company after graduating or follow an academic career…

Since I’m following just a few classes I decided it’s again time for me to find a baito. At the start of June I got a job at a local restaurant. Even though I did like working with customers I noticed the late hours were hard to get used to. I kept my eye on other jobs and decided to switch jobs from the restaurant to the customer service of a governmental organization. I will start my training next week, so at the moment I can’t say much about the new job.

Family

In June we finally decided to get our family picture done. Posing was a bit painful, but the end result was very nice. I shared a sneakpeek via Twitter earlier. I also enjoyed the company of my family while celebrating my 26th birthday. The older I get the more practical I seem to get when it comes to presents, so I received a large sum of money from my family *blush* I must say I did get a little offended my parents were as practical as I, mostly because I love to buy gifts for others. Oh well, don’t look a given horse in the mouth :P

I also got the EXILE Live Tour 2009 ‘MONSTER’ DVD which I truly love. I will probably do a special unboxing video & review of it later next week. You can view footage of the DVD in my Music Monday: EXILE Generation blogpost. I also received ‘Dragon Age: Origins’ for PC. I already played a bit of the game earlier this year and shared my First Thought: Dragon Age Origins. Now that I had more time with the game, I’m really hooked! Hahaha I will do an unboxing video for this game later this week now that I’ve also gotten my hands on the pretty gameguide.

Oohhh I also went clothes shopping like a mad man … er, woman. But instead of just taking pictures of what I’ve bought I’m actually looking into doing a few LOTD photo’s in the near future. I’m still a bit shy, so I need to contemplate that option a bit more.

What’s Next ?

I still have a lot of ‘projects’ I need to wrap up and develop. Things are never really finished for a creativist I guess. As soon as my summer vacation truly begins I will probably spend more time here on elocutio .nu and get a bit creative on YouTube. So hang in there with me ~

Woah tomorrow it’s already June, I can’t believe how fast time goes *sighs* June has always been my favorite month, mostly because of my birthday and all the usual fun stuff that happen in this month.

A Dark Month

Last year, June was a pretty stressful month. My laptop had died and I wasn’t able to go online to work on a big project I was trying to set up. Next to that I was forced to say goodbye to my 12 year old chocolate lab due to a tumor in his throat. My dog was a special gift for my 13th birthday, he was born on June 6th which is my parents’ wedding anniversary! Unfortunately he passed away just a couple of days before my 25th birthday. I always thought my 25th birthday would be a special one since I would turn 25 on the 25th. It turned out to be a special day, since it was the day legendary artist Michael Jackson passed away. And again I failed my final from hell. Needless to say, June seemed a bit of a dark month.

Things to look forward to

This year June seems to have the potential of a great month. I still have to finish a paper for uni and of course ace that aweful test *gahhh* But the month kicks off pretty good with me getting a new parttime job at a local diner. I’m still in my trial fase so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I will also be attending Festival of Games which is Europe’s most effective business event for everyone who wants to make a profit with digital games. I’ve looked at videogames as a gamer, as an academic student … I think it’s nice to learn more about the commercial side of videogames.

I will also launch a new blog project called KITCHEN84 a lifestyle website dedicated to delicious food, marvelous tunes & celebrating life. In a way it is a reborn version of the project I was working on last year. This time I have already pitched the concept to a couple of friends & family members who are happy to help out. I will probably dedicate a full post to this new project here on elocutio.nu later in June. I’m really looking forward to trying new food & flavors and write about them.

On June 6th my parents will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. We always wanted to make a professional family photo with my dog included. Even though my dog isn’t with us anymore we finally decided to get a family photo done. Everybody is very excited and of course already worrying about what we should wear so can somewhat match *lolz* Of course life has a habit of throwing stuff at us which we don’t expect. But I’m keeping positive and I’m sure things won’t get as worse as they did last year ~

Lately I’ve been busy with assignments for university. I’m currently following the ‘Quality of Online Journalism’ bachelor seminar at UvA. In this seminar we discuss journalism, traditional media, participatory journalism and implications of online journalism. I shared my blogpost assignment last week here on elocutio .nu :D I still have only one 1500 words paper to go before I can wrap up this course. I also have to retake a final from hell *sighs* It’s been keeping me back from graduating since I’m not able to do a special research course nor write my bachelor thesis with a sufficient grade for this final *very big sigh* I have failed this final a couple of times now, so I really hope to get it right this time. I have been able to score some great results for my bachelor seminar so I hope I can keep it up and finally pass this final *growlz nerd mode onnnn*

Of course one can not study hard without the much needed relaxation. I’m really looking forward to watching some great movies in the cinema such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) which I’ve been looking forward to since last year. I’m also very interested in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010) starring one of my fav actrices Cate Blanchett. And last but not least, I definitely have to go and see Sex & The City 2 (2010) *tee-hee* Of course I will write a full review as soon as I caught them in the cinema!

Online Shop-a-holic

I’m a big fan of shopping in online stores. I actually buy most of my things online except food, stationary & beauty products. I’ve been an early customer of Bol.com (first order in 2004) which has grown into probably the most succesful online store here in The Netherlands. You can compare Bol.com with Amazon. Before Bol.com we didn’t have something similar to Amazon. I usually order my DVD’s, CD’s, books, videogames – I even bought my PlayStation 3 online through Bol.com!

Next to Bol.com I’ve als been a customer for 6 years at ECI. Unlike Bol.com ECI is a club which can offer it’s members a discount on the fixed book price (?) . When I became a member of ECI at the end of 2004 I was able to pick out 5 welcome gifts (books, CD’s, movies) for free. The only rule of ECI is that a member should buy 4 club products during the year, preferably one each quarter.

ECI is much older than Bol.com and used to communicate with it’s members by sending them a catalogue with products to choose from. With the evolution of the internet and more webstores popping up ECI also decided to make it possible to order online and get a broader range of products. Not just music and books, but also more movies and videogames.

The ECI Problem

I never really ordered something very expensive at ECI because I usually get my videogames at Bol.com without much trouble. I recently decided to look at other stores since they were selling the special edition of Heavy Rain for almost € 85,- excluding shipping fee! I was able to pick up the same game at Dixons for only €72,99 with free shipping. At the end of Februari I spotted the Final Fantasy XIII Collector’s Edition for only € 69,99 with free shipping instead of € 74,99 + € 1,95 shipping fee over at Bol.com! Because I’ve been a customer of ECI for 6 years I decided to place an order. The game was released on March 9th, 2010 – on March 10th I received an e-mail I would receive the game within 24 hours. It was never delivered.

On March 12th I contacted ECI customer support to ask about the not delivered product. They said it was too early to start an investigation and I should wait till the weekend was over. Of course no delivery on Monday either so I called them again. ECI would send me a special form I had to sign and had to send back to them so ECI could start an investigation at TNT Postal Services. Funny thing is, the form should have come with a special reply envelope, but it seems ECI was too lazy to include the envelope with the form.

In the end I got my form back to ECI by using the registered mail service of TNT and by faxing a copy of the form to customer support. But what really irks me… ECI offered me FREE shipping because the order was expensive, but didn’t bother sending it using registered mail and getting a ‘track & trace’ reference number. I actually expected ECI to use ‘track & trace’ because both Dixons and Bol.com use this as well. ECI even has a special column for ‘track & trace’ reference numbers on the order status at the website (above) ! But there is no number to be found *sigh*

The Solution

I’m guessing ECI has started the investigation to the missing parcel. Customer support didn’t get back to me yet. My order status at the ECI website says the game is send back (retour), yeah whatever. In the meantime I decided to take a peek at the website of Dimension Plus a specialized videogame store that has been around since 1995. It was at Dimension Plus I saw a demonstration of the PlayStation for the first time. And my big brother said to me: “We should get that one, it’s so cool !!!” (back on topic) They still had a copy of the Final Fantasy XIII Collector’s Edition and I decided to pick it up in one of their stores.

Even though I never had any trouble with online shopping the whole thing with ECI really put me off shopping in webstores. After 6 years of hardcore online shopping I have decided to go offline and simply return to the regular stores (not just for videogames). I’ve also decided to become a loyal customer of specialized videogame stores such as Dimension Plus … cause hey they even gave me 25% discount on the game guide, now that’s something you won’t get at Bol.com nor Dixons!

Bol.com is still a good webstore to check out if you want to order online (not sure if it’s available in every country). But please be careful with ordering at ECI, I seriously can’t recommend it due to their idiotic shipping method.

Ok I must be honest: the video above has no relation to the topic of this post .. but well … I actually ‘go Dutch’ (?) pretty often *blush*

Lately I have been thinking much about the language I’m blogging in. Even though I have been blogging in English for the at least 5 years I’m not a native English speaker and I’m sure I don’t write perfect English 100 procent of the time. I have always surrounded myself with things in the English language, I prefer books written in English and on a young age I had a preference for watching the Disney films in their original form. I actually still own a few VHS imported from the UK without any Dutch subtitles at all!

But as a blogger I noticed I started to get more interested in writing about things here in The Netherlands. Of course I could write this in English too, but I think a post about my thoughts on Dutch politics (with the elections coming up and all) is more relevant for the Dutch speaking visitors of my website. I think I realized not all Dutch people who are active on the internet are sufficient enough in English. I also think it would be good for me personally to write some articles in Dutch again since I noticed my Dutch writing skills have become a bit ‘stale’. Nowadays I only write Dutch for my academic essays and stuff *gulp*

Don’t worry though! Elocutio .nu will still be a 98 procent English written blog. I will also keep my Dutch blogposts friendly for International visitors, by placing a short summary at the start of a post. This way international visitors will still be able to read in a nutshell what I’m talking about ~