TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

In light of the great performance of the Dutch economy – more and steady job biddings on the market; a crackdown on unemployment, 400,000 new jobs between June and August (5.3% unemployed compared to a 6.5% a year ago); uitkering (individuals on unemployment benefits) has drastically plummeted down; higher buying power, I think an increase of 1%; crime has been low in the meter too; and a 0.2% unspent fund from the governments budget *shock look* - can you actually tell me of another country who spent below their budget!?; anyway --- those are not really what I’m going to write about in this post. I will, however, talk about their consequence, particularly on the simplest significance, these positive economic indicators has brought to the trade and industry climate of the Netherlands, from a regular civil servant-worker perspective. Foto by learnovation.com Job mediators, job placers, job recruiters, headhunters, whatever the names you wish to call them, they come in 3 popular groupin...

To those of you who blog – have you ever experienced the lazy attacks (that now seemed like an endless, down spiraling, hole) when you don’t know or want to write anything? Or, up to some point, you have become tired of blogging? I have been blogging for a full 2 years now. And, I have seen people who have blogged longer and more than I did, and are still in the pinnacles of bloggamania – um, something that I really wish to understand right now. I am not saying that I will stop from blogging, but I just noticed that as the months passes by, the blogging hype has finally reached to a dwindling curve in my system. I still want to blog - I mean, I just can’t give up blogging = writing, as this a sort of hobby for me (especially when you have no kids, you have more time to yourself) and its also one of my ways of de-stressing, but perhaps, not as frequent as it used to be. Back then, I wrote every damn single day in this blog. I wrote about mundane things, like what transpired during my (b...

There have been many posts and threads thrown at forums, long discussions in the office kitchens and coffee machine hallways, hush-hush talks in the cafes, e-mails and posted mails were seen flying to the recipient, in this case, Starbucks mailbox bin, on the perennial question --- Why the hell is there not a single Starbucks in the Netherlands? The oxymoron of this NO Starbucks outlet in the Netherlands: THE EMEA HEADQUARTERS OF STARBUCKS IS IN THE NETHERLANDS! “Starbucks heeft rekenmeesters die tot drie cijfers achter de komma becijferen.” – Did you know that Starbucks have accountants that calculates even the last three decimals after the comma? In short, they are looking into every cent the company spends. Waar blijft Starbucks? [Where is Starbucks?], says the article about Starbucks in Carp magazine. Some of the educative answers featured in this Starbucks article [Carp issue of 23 August 2006 #10, pages 22 and 23], a local magazine that services the career-minded-like people, ...