work / no work
Betsy had her birthday on Friday, but didn’t really have a party. As a result, both my parents and Betsy’s friend Miek decided that would be the perfect opportunity to stop by. No reason not to play Dancing Stage and Miek was hooked.
Because I’m a bit of a pauper at the moment, I couldn’t get Betsy a big present for her birthday, so I had to be creative: Breakfast in bed, lunch brought to her office, dinner, dishes, cleaning up, taking care of the guests and a promise of an extensive health spa treatment as soon as I can afford it.
On Saturday, we drove to Amsterdam to check out a job fair organized by the CWI, the combined unemployment agencies of the Netherlands. The theme was ‘working in Europe’, but the whole thing was a bit of a farce. Agencies were typically offering tourism jobs on the Mediterranean, at 120 euros per week.
The site was nice, however: the passenger terminal, the place where cruise ships dock when stopping in Amsterdam.
Afterwards, we went down to the RAI, something of an exhibition centre, also in Amsterdam. Here, too, we visited a jobfair, but it was only marginally better then the one from before. Supposedly the ‘biggest job fair for professionals with a minimum of two years experience’, almost no job seekers had taken the time to stop by the few businesses who had and were lined up inside one of the smaller halls of the RAI. Nevertheless, we did get free icecream, pens and mints. And Betsy started considering a career in law enforcement.
And on Wednesday, I had a meeting with the guys from NIROV. It seems they do have quite a bit of work in the web development department, but they seem a bit reluctant to work with a freelancer.
A good thing I’ll be talking about that upcoming project in Afghanistan on Tuesday. As with Zimbabwe, it’s been in the pipeline for months. Let’s hope it’ll work out well.