Uncle Biek

A new guy started at work today and one more last Friday and I’m the lucky soul who gets to brake them in on how Philips works. And though the ‘lucky soul’ part usually sounds a little cynical I’m really honored to be allowed to do this. As it seems I’m fairly good at teaching stuff to people and I can really enjoy doing it. Passing on knowledge is a true privilege.

It’s just that the timing is so terrible right now. We’ve been insanely busy as it is over the past few weeks, with all the problems our mail system has generated. So to now leave our always busy phone queue at the service desk and take care of these guys is hard on me. Part of me want to do it all I guess, support the new guys so they have a good base to go and work with us, and on the other hand keep on picking up the phone and make that queue go away.

I guess you just can’t win them all …

Yesterday evening I was over at sis and Stevie’s home once again and we had a very pleasant evening. At first I was asked to assist Stevie with the girls because my sis wouldn’t be at home last night but surprise surprise: she was there too! So what was going to be a nice evening turned into a very nice evening with the whole family. Got to love that. Sis even liked the new Transformers movie, how about that? ;-)

And Eva was … well, sweet little Eva. What an adorable angel she was yesterday, absolutely amazing. To be honest it’s been a little while since I’ve seen her so playful, relaxed and feeling at home and it suits her so well. It was a real treat having her around, simply marvelous! The way she went about her business last night really made me think back to the vacation we had together and the fun we all had. Sweet memories folks. :-)

Little Sofie is also growing up fast and is definitely past the stage where she would just look around and do nothing much. When that little one wants something done or doesn’t like what’s going on, she already knows how to open her mouth and get the attention pointed to her, no problem. Amazing how fast those little ones seem to know how to play us grownups, especially since we’re supposed to have all this experience in life and stuff, see it all coming and should just know better. Well … not! ;-)

It was good to be with them again. Somehow every time I’m there it seems as if it was just too long since I’d been there before. I guess, in a way, that’s even a good sign.

Have a nice weekend all.

You know, when you’re really busy, time seems to fly a lot faster than it does under normal circumstances. And the past few weeks have blown passed in a heartbeat. When you’re busy at work and after that pretty busy at home too, -swoosh- weeks pass fast. Just like that.

Apart from our lovely snooker evening there is little I can remember from the past week. I’m not sure I did anything useful at all … Maybe it’ll spring to mind. If so, I’ll let you guys know.

Right now it’s almost weekend (it’ll start at five) and I’m looking forward to it very much. I’m going over to Bas’ place again for a race weekend. For a number of reasons we hadn’t done one in a while now but with the last Formula One race of the season, the one in which the question who will become Formula One World Champion will get answered, we thought it was time we did one again.

Talk to you all next week!

Last night we have been playing snooker at Jaap’s house and I tell you, it had been a long time since I’ve played snooker in such a calm and relaxing environment. Absolute bliss.

When Eric, the manager of our snooker centre in Nijmegen, mentioned that he was planning on removing yet another snooker table to make room for even more dart lanes (after all, that’s what snooker halls do I presume …) Jaap made him a deal and bought that table.

So now that the construction at his home was finished Jaap had the table set up and last night was the first time Bas and I could go play there. I tell you it’s a boy’s dream to have a billiards or pool table of your own at home, but a snooker table is even more special. Just the sheer size of one makes the number of people who can actually place one very limited. And now our Jaap is one of them.

So we played our frames just like it was a normal Tuesday night (I mean with all flukes, lucky pots and lots of fun as usual :-), accept for the marvelous peace and quiet we could do it in now. This is simply how snooker is supposed to be played, absolutely marvelous.

The weather forecast for today in one word: foggy. It started out this way when I left for work this morning and when I walked back to the car at around four the sky was still grayish. During the day the sun was able to penetrate the clouds only a few times so for me it was a perfect day for work. :-)

Only one day left and then it’s time for the weekend again and I’m really up for that after this week. It’s no fun when we have mail servers going down by the bunch day after day, leaving us no options but to tell the customers that – yes – we know and – no – we can’t do anything about it but wait until they are back up again.

Our mail environment was rather stable for a reasonably long time but something like this week and the one before is worse than anything I’ve ever had the fun being in the middle of. *grin* Oh well, we’ll live, and I’ll cope.

It’s just that I’m sensing that a lot of the customers are beginning to loose their patience a bit (a lot actually, and quit frankly: who can blame them) with the whole situation. And that is very bad news since we’re going to have a huge migration on our hands (from our mail system ironically enough) by the first quarter of two thousand and eight. Trust me on this, we’ll need all the patience we can get from our customers, and this isn’t helping. At all.

‘Hard to see, the future is.’ Yoda, Jedi Master