Marlies Dekkers exhibition

Yesterday, ex-colleague Agnes and me went to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, for the exhibition of 15 years of Marlies Dekkers (http://www.kunsthal.nl/en-22-591-15_Years_Marlies_Dekkers.html). We had won admission tickets, so as a real Dutch(wo)man you want to have everything that's for free! :-)

Who and what is Marlies Dekkers? Marlies is a world famous Dutch lingerie designer, who has stores in the major cities of the world and has won a number of important prizes. Both Agnes and me are fans of her bra's. The exhibition was a little bit strange, a mixture of paintings, sculptures, dolls with lingerie and large photo's. There even was a chair built completely of high heeled shoes turned upside-down! In half an hour we were through, and hungry! Up to the delicious sandwiches of De Bijenkorf, our favorite department store (http://www.bijenkorf.nl/BijWeb/)

I bought a present for a new born baby, whom I'm going to admire next Wednesday, a couple of books, a CD and some nice chocolates! Of course, a day out isn't complete without buying chocolates, mmmmm...... :-)

Although it took us nearly 2 hours in traffic jams to get home, it was a nice day!

New dishwasher!

Today finally our new dishwasher arrived, since it stopped functioning complete about 2 weeks ago. They were supposed to come between 10:00 and 13:00, so I had to work from home for a while. Luckily at 10:20 the doorbell rang! It was a man with tick glasses and a heavy dialect I could not follow. Well, nevertheless, he was here to save us from doing the dishes by hand hehe :-)

I asked him if he would take away the old dishwasher, which he did. Then he started to work on the replacement. I went upstairs again, but when he left the frontdoor open to exchange the dishwashers I went downstairs. You never know when Radka thinks it's time for a little walk outside... But she was fine, she even liked the man (hmm...). I sat in the living room and listened to the sounds he made when replacing the dishwasher. Funny how your ears are strained for sounds that doesn't sound right, like something that breaks. But no, everything went well.

He left the debris behind unfortunately, he could not take them, he told me. :-( But the good news is that we don't have to do the dishes any longer! :-))

Theater

After an exciting football evening (we beat France!!), I had to get up 'early' this morning because today is the big day for ordering theater tickets. For many years now, they have tried to come up with a system that gives everyone equal chances to buy tickets. The first time you could buy through internet, things went wrong very often. But now everything works very well.

This is how it works. At precisely 09:00 you will see a special internet page of the theater (www.deflint.nl), in which you enter your mobile phone number. When you have done this, you can do whatever you want while waiting for your login, which will arrive through an SMS on your mobile. Very handy! So I could have breakfast in the meantime, while waiting for my login code.

I was lucky this morning, because the webpage was already in the air a little before 09:00, so I only had to wait for 15 minutes before my login came in on SMS. Then you may enter your ordering on the website. So now we have bought tickets for 6 performances throughout the new 2008/2009 season. Hopefully they're all good!

Request

Yesterday I found out that Mandylou had a request to me. Although it is not easy for me to carry out this request (the closest book is in Dutch and besides that my blog only has readers, there's no other person I know with a blog but Mandylou), I will do it in my own way. So here's my text. It's from a book that was recommended to me by someone who is special to me. The book has given me comfort when I needed it.

"To serve in the highest way anyone who you cannot be with physically who is in need of care or who you might otherwise worry about is to hold in your mind the highest vision for them, of their radiant, joyous, healed, vital self, that is their True Self, and which they will become when they make their transition. Do not focus upon what you see as the decaying of their physical and mental self, nor upon the limitations of personality that push your buttons, for all that will pass away. The eternal part of them that in this lifetime has been committed to helping you on your journey needs now your recognition, your gratitude and your highest vision".

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).