Friday the Thirteenth

It is now Friday the Thirteenth… and just one of those days because I had to spend the whole day in the office without my computer as it broke down on the way to Fred’s school yesterday evening and took one of the IT guys at work the whole day to fix. Thanks, guys for fixing it and for saving my documents, including the text I wrote in the train yesterday evening. I also laid my hands on my new BlackBerry, which is not black and can only be used as a mobile phone as yet. This little machine promises to greatly add to the general level of stress in performing my job, as it purrs and vibrates every time a new e-mail arrives addressed to me at the company’s servers in the UK. Switching it off will help and I intend to be quite strict about that.

It was a good opportunity to talk to a few people in the office and read through the major part of the company’s accounting manual. Better to do it now, in my first month, than at any other time, when I can also ask quite naïve questions about what they actually mean, without sounding stupid.

I’d had time yesterday to receive an e-mail from my UK counterpart who passed ona tip for today, namely Dandy Man in the July Cup at Newmarket this afternoon. An Irish horse who had done all his running over five furlongs the past couple of years, he was due to run against the very best over six furlongs. This is the reason why he was available at 12-1. It is not often that I get a tip, so I thought I would pile on what I have left in my Betfred account (the remnants of my winnings on Serbia in the Eurovision Song Contest, having lost some money yesterday on my favourite Ivy Creek, for whom the ground had all of a sudden dried up far too quickly). With no computer, I had to phone Mum up to find out the result and, sure enough, the race was won by the favourite Sakhee’s Secret. Oh well. Another One Bites The Dust. At least I am earning proper money now.

It stayed dry today and has been getting steadily hotter and more humid as the day goes on. It is going to be a sultry weekend, and a weekend in which I hope to be able to relax after all the hectic times of the last couple of weeks.

The party last night in Oegstgeest was not really the best end of year school party I have been to, and I was just in time to get some food as supplies were depleting rapidly by the time I arrived at 7.30 pm. The food was OK, but people were sitting at tables, the music could barely be heard and there was no real entertainment. Still, nice to see many of the same faces from previous years and a few new, and very young looking ones as well. I could not stop myself form making a remark about performance related pay for teachers to Fred’s ex-boss, to which she replied that it depends how you measure whether or not a teacher is good or not. Well, since they are constantly measuring how good the pupils are, through exams, tests, homework and so on, I would have thought it’d be quite easy for them to review a teacher’s performance.