Adventures in a parking garage

This week I experienced another adventure in a parking garage. I am what you can call ‘not good at parking garages’. Normally, there’s nothing ‘to be good at’, you take a card and the gate opens, you park your car and you go out. Not for me. Somehow, there’s always something going wrong, I don’t know what it is.

So, this time I have an appointment with a company which is a couple of kilometers from my office. Therefore, I do not need to leave early, I will be there in about 15 minutes, no problem. Well, that is until the parking garage…

I have found the building and choose an entrance that looks like a parking. But not a garage, this way goes up. I don’t know why I’m standing there, I should have known better! Anyway, the guy on the intercom tells me very friendly that this is the runway for taxis and that I need to drive a little bit further to the left, to the entrance of the parking garage. Of course!

Here, I push the button again and tell the guy (the same one?) whom I will be seeing and he says something like: welcome, drive through please. OK, I close my window, drive a little bit further until the gate and wait patiently…. Nothing happens. Grrr…… I put my car into reverse, drive back a little bit, push the button again and tell this guy that nothing’s happening. “Please take the card out m’am, and the gate will open automatically”. Why didn’t he tell me before? Did I miss something there? I take out the card and miraculously the gate opens…. Inside, I have trouble finding a parking place with the name of the company I’m visiting. It’s Cisco all over the place. Finally, I’m so sick of it, I park my car in a Cisco place. What the heck, nobody will know anyway!

After having parked my car, I walk to the entrance of the building. That is to say, what I think is the building. I cannot go in, and nearly bump into 2 glass doors. OK, push the button again, tell the man whom you’re coming to see and that’s it. The man at the intercom (the same one?) explains that I’m at the wrong entrance. Grrr……. I follow his directions to the right building, push the button and the doors open. I want to walk straight ahead to the elevators, but the glass doors won’t open for me. To the right I see another elevator, this one must be especially for visitors. And yes, I can go the ground floor with it. But I’m supposed to go to the 6^th floor!! At the ground floor a man (the same one?) tells me that I need to change elevators.

Finally, I reach the offices where I have my appointment. There are about 12 people in the room sitting at a large table, waiting for me. I am the last one to arrive….

Glowing tea cup

It's Tuesday evening and I'm on my way to my first Vipassana meditation class. My TomTom navigator sends me to the highway for a street in the city center of Amersfoort. That's strange. But when I'm on that particular street, it gets even stranger when the woman's voice instructs me to take a left turn?! Anyway, finally I end up in that street again, but of course I have great trouble finding number 47. Luckily there's a woman on a bike who is very helpful.

After having parked my car in another street, I manage to find the entrance of the building where I should be. That was easy! (people who know me really well, know that I'm not good at finding entrances :-)). There are about 10 people sitting at a large table, mostly in their 50's and 60's. Some have the looks of people who in particular are into meditation, Buddhism, etc. We drink tea (of course there's no coffee, that doesn't match with meditating) out of bright orange and green cups. The group is quiet. I notice that a couple people seem to know each other. We are introduced to our teacher Paul and after that we must introduce ourselves and tell the group why we are here. This is a bit hilarious, as visions of help groups enter my mind. "My name is Caroline and I'm here because my husband suddenly left me...." HAHA But no, this is a different group. A lot seem to have a need for meditation to get more rest in their heads (and lives), just like me. Uf, what a relief to hear that I'm not the only one struggling.

After the introduction Paul explains that we are going to do an exercise in concentration. Wow, this will be a real challenge for me! We all have our bright orange and green cups in front of us on the large wooden table. Now we must only concentrate on this cup for a couple of minutes. The exercise starts and after a while (trying hard to push all other thoughts that are trying to enter my mind, away), the cup begins to glow. There's light all around it, and everything else seems to fade into the background. At one point I suppress the feeling that I want to laugh out loud. What am I doing here? It gets even better. Next exercise is walking and concentrating on setting your feet on the floor. This is hard, as I only hear the sweeping sound of my trousers and those of others and at one point I am thinking "why don't they hurry in front of me, get out of my way!" (we all walk in a circle). This is typically me, so I know that this course is going to confront me with a couple of my 'nasty' habits :-)

Finally we do an exercise sitting on the floor and concentrating on our breathing. I try a typical meditation bench and this sits really well. When I'm sitting there I'm thinking of buying one in a little Buddha store in the city, oeps, I need to concentrate on my breathing again....This will be my homework, concentrating for only 10 minutes a day. But gee, that's hard to do!! Last night, I was sitting here in my room doing the exercise and constantly wondering whether the 10 minutes already have passed....

I have 5 more lessons to learn the in's and out's of Vipassana meditation. Hopefully it will get better in the end!

New car!

It's a long time ago since I updated this blog. Now that the new year has started it is a good moment to start again. Hopefully I will hold on..... ;-) This morning I picked up my new car at the garage. At the same time this meant my last trip in the Renault Mégane. But first I filled up the tank at the gas station. When I arrived at the garage I was brought to a part of the garage where I had not been before. Obviously they use this part for the issue of new cars. Everyone I met wished me a lot of fun with my new car. Clearly they must have had training to tell that to every customer. Anyway, Frans the salesman, did the routine explanation of the car, but of course I knew everything already, as I had just recently drove a similar car. While I was waiting for him to get me a cup of tea, I was looking around and saw a car under a cloth. Hmm.... strange.... why would they put a car under a cloth inside the garage?? Hmm...... Not much later I found out that it was my car under the cloth! It was meant as a kind of 'ceremony', the cloth being taking away, a sign in front of the car which read: Mrs. Terstegge. I thought: "cut the crap, it's only a car!" :-) Tomorrow me and the car will have the first ride to Amsterdam! (as long as it is not snowing.... like it is right now).

Lazy Sunday afternoon...

This is how Radka spends her afternoons. She is very much attached to all things that come from Norway, like her new basket and the Go'Biten fishbites. Unfortunately, the fish bites are not for sale in the Netherlands.... I rang to the importer, but he told me they didn't get as far as importing, although their name as Dutch importer is on the bag... :-( The only thing she can do is wait for someone to go to Norway again.

Radka also likes to drink out of the watering can, as she likes to drink water in all kinds of strange places. We never have to wipe the water from our garden chairs, Radka licks them dry for us!

At the end of the afternoon, Thelma, the cat from next door came to take a look at our terrace. Thelma is a very special cat, because she has no tail. She's very sweet and regards us as her 'fosterparents' since we looked after her when our neighbours were on holiday.

For me this Sunday was not so lazy. Again, I took care of some management of my wardrobes and storage boxes, resulting in 6 bags full of clothes! There's hardly anything left. Losing weight can be veeeery expensive! haha But I know that these 12 kilo's will stay off forever, that's a promise!

Maybe there's a chance to fill my wardrobes again, as I'm off to Nice coming Friday :-)

Bicycle trip

For the first time (!) this summer we went on a bicycle trip yesterday. A total of 33 kms according to the route description. But we knew from experience that this will always be longer! So we did a trip of 45 kms, also because we went for lunch in Epe (of all places...). At the local party centre we had an extremely good lunch. Another salad recipe to add to Daan's famous salads. Besides Zuiderterras (Antwerp) salad and Hattem salad, we now have Epe salad. Yummie!

Our 'bottoms' are in less good condition ;-), we definitely need to do more cycling trips, in order to get some hard skin there!

Here are some pictures we made along the way.

Flower fields in August?

The heath is blooming at this moment, what a wonderful sight!

Cannenburch Castle

Internet connection restored

Just this afternoon our internet connection was restored! I'm so happy!

Now I can recount of my adventures in Norway the past weekend, when I visited Mandy lou. It was a great weekend, even more since I can speak some Norwegian words now ;-) It was fun to be able to communicate a little bit with family members who cannot speak English. Hopefully they will remember my famous chocolate mousse for long. I will surely remember the chocolate mouse (or better yet: mice :-))

Radka was very happy with the gifts from Mandy lou. She immediately tested the 'basket' and the fish bites. Of the latter she cannot get enough. But I have only two sacks, so we must not be too generous. Otherwise, we can always call the Dutch importer. Thank you Mandy lou for a wonderful weekend! Tusen takk for alt! Jeg vil gjerne komme tilbake nesten år!

No internet.... (grrrr)

It may take a while before I can update my blog because since 2 weeks we have lost our internet connection at home. The relevant parties don't seem to know what happened and are not able to reconnect us (grrr). Hope to be back soon!!