A busy week

I have been so genuinely busy this past week; I didn’t even realize it has been a full week since my last post!

Last Sunday I spent the day with Nina. As she had to get back to studying on Monday and I had some important meetings back in Amsterdam, we had a very short 1 day visit.

Monday morning I boarded the train back to Amsterdam and headed straight for Sloterdijk, a suburb on the outskirts of Amsterdam and the location of the tax office. Fifteen minutes later I walked out with my SoFi number in hand. I was now registered as a tax payer, and legal to stay and work for as long as I wanted.

Monday afternoon I was supposed to have a meeting with my employer, but he postponed it as he wasn’t feeling well. So I checked back into the same hostel I had been at for the previous week. Luckily they were able to put me in the same room as my friend João.

Tuesday morning João and I had breakfast together. João was in Amsterdam for the film festival and his movies didn’t start until mid afternoon, around the same time as my meeting, so we had some time to kill. We walked over to the Artis Zoo and Aquarium to spend a few hours looking at the animals.

One of the more unusual exhibits was a butterfly emporium. It was a tropical room with high humidity and filled with lush plants. Hundreds of butterflies of all colours and sizes flew around the room among the people. They would land on plates filled with cut fruit to feed and occasionally landed on us as well.

On one of my walks I came across a large construction site, to the East of Centraal Station, where they are building a modern block of office towers. I was able to get a good perspective on the method used to hold back the water around the site, so they can dig the foundations. It is a similar method to what they use in Vancouver when they are digging near the water. Here this is used on almost every construction job!

Tuesday afternoon I arrived at the address Stefan, my boss, had given me. It was a canal house on one of the canal rings in downtown central Amsterdam. It was a white building with a brown door, ironic as the company is called The White Door. Next to the door were several company names, each with a buzzer next to it. I rang the appropriate buzzer and a man with an Australian accent answered, buzzed me in and told me to wait in the room to the right.

I opened the door and was standing in a large white hallway with a tall ceiling, ensconced with white mouldings shaped like flowers and vines lining the length of the hall. To the right was a small sitting room. I waited for a few moments until a slim man, around my age, arrived. Stefan escorted me down the hall to the stairs, and up to the top floor. Their office is the lone suite in the attic of the building. Inside the small A-framed office was a tiny lounge with a few chairs and a kitchenette and four desks arranged along the sides of the room. With the windows and skylights, it was a bright room, but very confined. Only four people work there, all recruiters, and all expats. Two were Brits and the third was French.

Stefan and I sat down on the couch and discussed the details of my job. As the office is so small, he doesn’t want me to work there on a regular basis. In fact, he doesn’t really care where I work, as long as it gets done on time. I don’t even need to be in the country! As long as I have an internet connection, I can work wherever I am.

He gave me a copy of the employment contract, in Dutch, then admitted he had no idea what it said as he hadn’t learned Dutch in his 5 years living in Holland.

I felt quite happy with the way the conversation went. They were very happy to have me onboard as they wanted to put their energy into expanding the business, and were looking for aspects of the work they could farm out. I was happy with the flexibility and scope of work I was responsible for.

I met up with João at the movie theatre and watched one of the movies with him. I saw a movie from New Zealand called The Devil Dared Me To. Of all the films at the festival, he thought I might like this one the most. The genre of the festival is scifi, horror and fantasy, which are not my favourite types of movies. But this one film was quite entertaining and I enjoyed it. This particular festival is well known and the key speaker was Tim Burton, who João met. I wasn’t as lucky.

Wednesday morning João and I had breakfast together then headed to the Van Gogh museum for the afternoon. With 200 of Van Gogh’s 800 paintings in their possession, this is the largest collection of his works anywhere in the world.

On the first floor of the museum are a collection of paintings Van Gogh would have come into contact with before becoming an artist himself. He worked for an art dealer in Paris and was influenced by the works around him. It was fascinating to see these pieces, especially as some looked like they could have been painted by him.

The second floor of the gallery is the main exhibit, the life’s work of Van Gogh. It takes you through the different periods and countries he lived in, showing how his work changed over the years. It was a great museum, although overall, the pieces they had on display were not my favourite of his works. Of course, there were a few pieces I had not seen before and was very fond of.

The top floor of the gallery was an exhibit on print media, and how it influenced art. They had a large collection of art nouveau, which has never done much for me.

Wednesday was a beautiful day and as João headed to the movie theatre I went for a walk through central Amsterdam during rush hour. This was a unique experience! Cars are not common in the middle of the city. The A10 Ringroad — the highway that encircles Amsterdam — has 18 roads that lead from it to the city. But as you get closer to the middle, the roads become smaller and many don’t allow automobiles. In fact, in an effort to discourage cars from the city, several years ago the people of Amsterdam voted (again) to reduce the number of parking spaces available by several thousand.

So, the last 4 pictures you see to the left are all different streets, in the same neighbourhood, and the way "rush hour" affects each one of them.

Amsterdam has a population of 750,000 and there are 600,000 bikes in the city! As almost everyone has a bike, they use them for more than just getting from A to B. They are also used to assist people in doing their work. I have seen many bikes here that I have never seen before. Below are some of the bikes you see on a daily basis in Amsterdam:

With the help of Nina’s Dutch skills and an online translation program, I was able to decipher the 5 page employment contract. For the most part it looked standard and everything was in order. There was a whole section on not being able to work at a similar job with another company while employed by The White Door for fear of a 250€/day fine! Stefan agreed to remove that section.

Thursday morning I attempted to open a bank account. In Holland your pay is automatically deposited into your account. Cheques are rarely used here. But, I had to have a permanent address before I could open an account. I wasn’t going to get an apartment until I had a job, I needed a bank account before I could work, but I had to have an apartment before I could get a bank account! This was like an evil catch 22.

I went to the office to meet with Stefan, got the contract sorted out (and signed) and received my first two assignments. Finally, I was able to start working! He was also nice enough to allow me to use the office’s address as my own (as far as bank was concerned) so I could open my account.

That afternoon I met up with João for the last time. We went to a café across the street from Rembrandt’s house in a plaza that bares his name. We sat outside enjoying the sunshine on the cobble stoned street. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. We said goodbye and I returned to the hostel to start working.

Friday morning I got myself packed up and checked out of the hostel. I went downtown to the Postbank and walked out 10 minutes later with an account. Another necessary objective crossed off my list.

Friday afternoon I boarded a train to head to Nina’s place. Friday morning was Nina’s big exam, the one that was keeping us (relatively) apart for the first 2 weeks. Having done really well on it, we went out to celebrate Friday night.

A friend of Nina’s was having a party in her Aachen apartment, so we went. I met many fascinating people and had a really good time. Everyone brought something (we brought a dessert) and one of the girls had brought a punch made from Advocat (egg liquor), champagne and orange juice. It was really delicious and creamy, and went down a little too easily.

Saturday was spent around the apartment, with very little energy I was just trying to feel better. Saturday night we headed to Aachen again with a few of Nina’s girlfriends to a pool hall. We played a few games of pool, a couple rounds of darts and a half dozen games of foosball. This time I was drinking Desperado beer, a French lager with tequila and lime which boasts 5.9% alcohol. I was a little more aware of how much I was drinking this time and limited myself to 2.

I will stay here with Nina for almost a week. I can work here, and during the week she will also be working (on her thesis). Today I am going to start making contact with people who have apartments for rent with the hopes of viewing them next weekend and hopefully moving in shortly after.

I still have people calling me for interviews based on resumes I sent out over my first two weeks here. The most interesting offer I have received was from an internet company in Utrecht (30 minutes south of Amsterdam and the 4^th largest city in the country). They want someone to deal with the distributors of the content they host on their site, and to deal with technical issues as they receive over 1 million hits a day! After talking to them they gave me more details about their company and it turns out they are a porn site!

I am so glad the job hunting is over, that caused me more stress than any other aspect of this move.

This is one of my favourite pictures. It's the reflection of a row of canal houses taken on a sunny afternoon.

I do hope you appreciate the fact that I did not rub in the fact that here it is 22 degrees and sunny. I understand Vancouver is sitting under a new blanket of snow!

Success in Amsterdam

Six days. That is how long I was in Amsterdam for when I was offered my job. And it’s not just any job; it’s the only English speaking technical writing job I saw advertised within the last couple of months.

I have been hired by The White Door (www.thewhitedoor.com), an employment agency specializing in placing English speaking candidates from around the world in IT and Telecommunications positions in Holland. The candidates they deal with are highly skilled and experienced analysts, developers, programmers and project managers. Their resumes are complex and highly technical, which is where my job comes in.

All the candidates are given extensive telephone interviews and have to fill out detailed questionnaires profiling projects they led or took part in, the technologies used, their roles, specific tasks and accomplishments.

I am given a company template in which I have to convert the resumes, collating in the interview and questionnaire information where appropriate. While remaining true to the skills and experience of the applicant, I have to highlight and put forth the skills and accomplishments the specific employer will want to see.

This agency prides themselves on only sending applicant’s resumes for positions they are a 100% match for, in experience, skills and qualifications. Each resume I build will take between 2.5 – 4 hours and I can expect 30-40 a month. This is a part time job with a lot of flexibility, not to mention challenging.

In doing the exercise (read: test) to get this job, I did a lot of Google searches and learned about the information I was dealing with. A lot of the acronyms were lost of me, but I met the challenge with flying colours. After I submitted my exercise, they Emailed me the resume they built using the same information I used and they were very similar.

I may still seek out a second part time job, but for the meantime I am going to see how many hours I am logging with this job and then make an assessment. At the very least, this is a good start.

With this new job came a little bit of freedom. My two primary objectives, upon arriving in Amsterdam, were to get my bearings and a level of comfort in this city. And, I needed to secure employment. Now that those two goals are achieved, I can relax and start to enjoy myself.

For the first week I avoided putting any energy into anything other than those two goals. I didn’t visit any museums and I avoided anything recreational. I needed to stay totally focused. Friday night I planned to change that.

Friday was a beautiful day and I decided to go for another walk, similar to the walk I had done earlier in the week and raved about. I went through the same neighbourhoods, this time coming from the opposite direction as I am now at a different hostel. I brought my camera with me and captured most of the pictures in this entry while on that walk.

This green building is Nemo; their science centre for kids. It sits on the Northern most island of downtown Amsterdam. Across the large river behind it is another series of neighbourhoods with water taxis that ferry people back and forth. Below Nemo is the entrance to the tunnel for the traffic to get across. This is one of the pieces of modern architecture in this city. I also located a unique modern condo development. The building on the left is the most unusual of the bunch.

A month before I left home I found a website for people living in Amsterdam who are originally from somewhere else. Members plan events that everyone is invited to and the group is so large, there are events most days of week, sometimes multiple events in a single day. So Friday night I met up with 15 people at the Rijks Museum.

This magnificent museum, one of the “must see” and most famous of all the museums in Holland, is undergoing a huge refurbishment. Only a small percentage of the building and collection was open. However we did get to see Rembrandt’s Night Watchmen, his most infamous piece.

This painting was commissioned by a group of civil militia guards (1642) as a group portrait. It has undergone a lot of stress in its 366 Year life. It was too large to fit into the building it was intended for, so the sides were cut off. Over the years, it has caused some unexplained controversy as it has been attacked by someone wielding a knife and someone who sprayed acid on it. It has long since been repaired and is now on display, guarded in a similar fashion as the Mona Lisa.

The group of people I met were diverse. I was, by far, the newest to Amsterdam as the others have been here between 5 months – 8 years. The group was also diverse in age, ranging from 24 – 50+. Apart from myself and an American art history student, the rest of the group was from Europe, mostly France, Spain and Germany. One of the people brought their local Dutch friend along, which was very nice. As much as I want to meet people from around the world, I would really like to interact with the locals more. That being said, the American art history student was a great person to walk through the museum with.

After the museum we went for dinner and then to an Irish pub. The whole evening was great and I thoroughly enjoyed the company of the people I met. I will be taking part in many more events with them in the coming weeks.

The only dark cloud that evening was when my jacket was stolen from the Irish pub! Luckily, the jacket was getting a little worn, the leather was cracking and I was due for a new coat. My toque and gloves in the pocket were more of a loss than the jacket itself.

When I arrived at this hostel on Wednesday, there were two other people who had also arrived that same day, both Brazilian. As strange as it sounds, it was a complete coincidence as they weren’t travelling together. Daniel has been working in Spain for the past year and came to Amsterdam for a holiday. João is studying Film in Portugal and has come to Amsterdam for the weeklong film festival. They were both in their mid-late twenties, very friendly, with exceptional English.

On my second day at the hostel two young Austrian guys arrived who were on the final leg of a 3 week trip around Western Europe. Having recently completed their mandatory military duty, they wanted to get out and see a bit of the world. They also had a strong command of English. The five of us got along very well and decided to spend Saturday together in the park.

Saturday, in Vancouver, it was sunny with a high of 21 degrees. I know this because I have been listening to CKNW remotely though their website. At 3pm my time the Phillip Till morning show starts, followed by the Bill Good show. I have been enjoying staying ‘in the loop’ on what’s going on at home. The weather forecasts for Vancouver are usually very similar (if not the exact same) as they are here.

So Saturday was a beautiful day in Amsterdam. The five of us walked across town to a downtown shopping strip where I bought a new jacket and hat. I had been warned clothing is not cheap here yet I got a deal that I couldn’t have beaten at home. For a decent jacket and hat I paid 25€. Even with the conversion, I couldn’t have found this at home for $35-40.

Then we headed to Vondelpark, the largest park in the city and very close to my previous hostel. It was a perfect way to spend the day; great weather, fun company and a lot of laughs.

Out of the five of them, there was one person in particular who I really bonded with; João, the film student. I am not tall by any means, but I stand 3-4 inches taller than João. He is one of the most animated and truly happy people I have ever met, with a contagious energy. He has a constant stream of interesting stories to tell, and in his animated fashion with his level of excitement, most of them are very funny. Add into the equation his rabbi-like beard, and you have a real character. Standing behind João in this picture is Daniel.

I am writing this entry (Sunday morning) while on a train, on my way to visit Nina. This will be a short visit as I am coming back to Amsterdam first thing Monday morning. I have an appointment with the tax office on Monday where I will finally get my SoFi number, meaning I can legally work. Then in the afternoon I am heading to The White Door’s office to meet my employer. I was hired solely based on a few Emails, a telephone interview and the test. But it will be nice to meet face to face.

Monday I will return to the same hostel where João will also be for this next week. This week I will start working, but I have been warned the work comes in spurts. I will continue applying for appropriate part time jobs, assessing the amount of work I will have with the new job, and meeting people to create a social network.

I left home two weeks ago and I am now at a place where I feel very comfortable here.