The Netherlands part 2

After I left Groningen I had 3 more days in The Netherlands. I got to stay with my friend Rob and his family in Utrecht, they were all really nice :)
The first day we spendt on going to an amusement park (surprised?) called Walibi. Harm (another friend that lives in the area) tagged along as well. It was actually a pretty cool park, they had 6 big rollercoasters, their own version of a sky coaster and several other rides that we took. After the park closed we went to Harms place for a few drinks, somehow we ended up playing cards with several members of his family as well - was so much fun we forgot the time and stayed for quite some time. We got back to Rob's place so late we didnt even meet his dad and stephmother.


The next day we spendt in Utrecht and the surrounding area. first Harm and Rob showed me arround in central utrecht. Nice city with quite a few canals, a tall tall tower, beautifull church, etc. They also had a pretty cool sign outside of the central station pointing to several citys in europe, including Oslo :) After we had walked arround for a while I got to try some local food - Broodje Mario. Some kind of sandwich-ish thing that they only have in Utrecht, tasted really good actually. As it turned out there is also a really awesome castle just outside of Utrecht from the 14th century called de Haar. I really liked it there, we just missed the last guided tour inside of the castle, but the outside looked awesome too so it was allright. In the evening we went back to Harms place again to say goodbye before we went back and had dinner with Robs dad and stephmum. Apparently they really liked me and wanted to see me before I left again too, that was kind of sweet :) BBQ out in the sun really is nice, and we just made it before a huge thunderstorm came. Bad weather never stopped me though and Rob and I went back to Utrecht in the evening to see a movie.

My last day in the Netherlands Rob and I went back to Amsterdam so I would have some more time to actually see the city. We walked arround for a bit looking at buildings and stuff like that and then we went on a canalcruise.. damn there are many canals in that city, its insane! After the cruise Rob helped me to find one of the very few things I remember from the last time I went to Amsterdam - a pancakehouse that looked like a carousel. I was 5 back then and it ment a lot to me to be able to go back to the same place and see if it was like I remembered - and hey it was still there! :) I even ordered the same pancake - with stawberries and cream.
In the evening it was time to go back to Oslo again, wich was actually very sad as we had made really good friends. Nothing to do about it though I have work and then China so off I went, Rob took me to the airport and then we said goodbye. My plane was actually delayed by arround 45 mins because of a KLM plane blocking it, so that was kind of annoying - especially since it was originally leaving really late. We landed 15 minutes before midnight and I was lucky enough to find a bus to Oslo right away. Got home arround 1.30 in the morning, tired as hell, hehe. Thank god I didnt have a shift today, would have been terrible - am working tomorrow though, but that will be fine :)

The Netherlands part 1

So I didn't blog for a while, as I was on vacation in the Netherlands, the land of windmills, drugs, bikes,cheese, canals and so much more! :)
A bunch of us from World of Warcraft (also known as the guild Bloodline) wanted to meet up and we decided on the Netherlands as quite a few of us live there. I met up with another norwegian, Josefine, in Oslo first. We met a little too early and just had cofee and talked and stuff before we took the plane. She was actually really nice and it was great to get to meet her first. We took the plane to Amsterdam where we met Søren from Denmark. The three of us stayed for one night before going to Groningen as our planes landed a bit late to take the train even further. We didnt have much time in Amsterdam, but at least we got to check out the nightlife. It was pretty special how obviously people were doing drugs, my impression was that the whole city smelled like it, not to mention the red light district, thats just not how it is at home.. at all!
We were going to see some more of the city the next day, but we didn't find anywhere to put our luggage as the lockers at Amsterdam Central station were broken and just accepted dutch creditcards, so we didnt do much before our train left. The actual gathering was a bit outside of central Groningen in a house we rented at a campsite. It was loads of fun to meet up with everyone, kind of weird as well as I have talked to most of them for a long time, just never actually met with them. Mostly we just talked, ate, drank and played cards - but that was actually really nice. The highlights for me was when we went to the playground in the middle of the night and when we made the guys cook dinner for us. Everyone was really nice and Im kind of sad that I won't be playing with them anymore (as I have more or less quit the game now that Im going to move to China and everything), ah well I will just have to try and stay in touch somehow. I left the gathering a little early to go stay at my friend Rob's place in Utrecht, and the others all followed me to the car - making him promise to get me home safe, kind of sweet of them. Will write about the rest of my trip in the next blog entry, laters.

More work (department meeting)

thats right its another blog entry about my job - but hey the next one will most likely be about my trip to the Netherlands (I leave in 2 days).
Anyways, today I worked at the pool area and it was a really slow day so it was pretty slack, hehe. After work I had well.. more work :P We had a meeting for all of us working at the rides department. First we took spaceshot (thats the tower ride in the middle of all of the photos) and ate pizza then we discussed numbers, rules, etc. We also had a few awards - employee of the month and winners of the 4 truths, etc. Im pretty surprised, but I actually got an award myself as well. I won the best at interaction (best translation I can find but it means Im easy to work with basicly) - yay :)
Then we had a poolguard meeting and then a sky coaster meeting so yeah long evening for those of us working those places, but those last two didnt really take all that long. Anyways Im just working one more day, then Im off to Holland, not sure if I will be blogging from there or just blog about it when I get home - think it will be a lot of fun, meeting quite a few people I know down there :)

Back to work

Another saturday another day at Tusenfryd. Today I decided to bring my camera - just because I didn't bring it to work yet this season. Worked at sky coaster today and at the beginning of the day we didn't really have that many guests so we tried to fly to attract customers.. first I tested it then both Kirsten and Oda did promo flights, so we got quite a few nice pictures :) Another awesome thing is that we now have a new wireless phone that we can bring up to the actual ride, rahter than the old one we have down by the cash registry area. Eventually all our fake screaming did attract a good wave of customers, and noone got sendt home - happy ending! :)

After my normal shift I had agreed to work at an event (as in someone had rented the park and also some rides we needed to operate), but in the end Intern Service needed help, so I got to work there instead. Cool to try something completely new for a change.

Day off :)

So like I said yesterday, Tusenfryd was closed today and I was determined to actually do something usefull. Alltho I will need my passport for Holland in less than a week I decided to go to the Chinese Embassy and see if they had an express visa solution so I could fix it before leaving. My classmate Thomas tagged along as well. As it turned out none of us could actually hand in our application tho - as he didnt bring a passport photo and they said they didnt do the express visa right now (even if it said on several signs and also on the actual application that you could pay a fee to get it quicker.. ah well).. at least now we know where it is and have the applications ready right?

A little later i met up with Nicolai and his friend from Australia downtown and then went to Hannah and Emils place for dinner. It was Nicolai, Guro, Hannah, Emil, the australian girl (damn I hate to forget names and she was so nice as well.. =/ ), Rolf and me. They had made awesome taco for everyone, tasted great. Hannah breeds hamsters and one of them was actually giving birth while we were there.. damn hamsterbabys are tiny.. and pink Oo and cuute :)
Somehow we ended up watching the second pokemon movie, wich was kind of well.. yeah so bad it was funny. Best part was:

"why are they here?"
"to see if they can help."
"but what can they do?"
"they don't know, thats why they are here."

um yeah cause that makes sense..

Apparently Nicolai and Guro play pokemon cards quite a lot as well, Hannah has them too.. they even gave me some cards, perhaps its time to become a pokemon fanatic? After the movie we played some wii, great fun even if Im still pretty bad at the wii version of Mario Cart :P Tomorrow I will be working very late, as someone rented the park again - more money for China ^^

BBQ in the park

After a rather slow day at work (almost no guests at all, and I actually had a poolguard apprentice the first two hours) a few of us went to Frognerparken (the biggest park in Oslo) to BBQ. We were kind of worried about the weather, but it worked out - clouds, but more or less no rain and sun every now and then. We grilled, played various card games and frisbee and relaxed in the sun :) Great evening. Tomorrow Tusenfryd is closed and this time I will use my day off for usefull stuff - like fixing my visa for China and meet friends ^^

Worketi work

Still working more or less all the time - today was a rather long day, almost 11 hours in total. Had my normal shift first and then somebody had rented the park so some of us stayed for a few hours longer. Because I basicly had nothing to do between the two shifts I got to pick trash - A LOT of trash. At least I didnt have to work alone, me and Mariann (from work) actually spendt 2 hours on trash picking :S Seriously why cant people just throw it in one of the hundred trashcans rather than UNDER our rides? Ah well, more cash for me ^^ Oh AND the third day without cola today. Had a bit too much cofee though and we got to take a few rounds in SpinSpider while waiting on the next shift as well, so now I feel pretty bad.. I hope its just all the cofee and not something more =/

"Sober" for 24 hours!

Im trying (again) to quit cola, starting today. It was starting to get out of hand when I went to the store just to buy cola, and this was pretty late in the evening as well. I generally buy at least 2 small bottles of cola every single day at work, then I most likely have a big bottle at home as well - can't be good for me at all. Generally if I don't drink any caffeine I get headaches and feel super tired (wich is bad), but I have decided to at least try and switch to cofee for now - after all its not AS unhealthy as all the cola, and the cofee at work is free so I will save about 30 kr every day I work - thats about 150 kr a week.. not that much, but this is a whole summer so there are a lot of weeks! Last time I quit cola it lasted for about 1 month, lets see if I can do better this time, hehe. The last cola I drank was yesterday arround 23.00, so that means I have been "sober" for 24 hours - at least it's a start right? Wish me luck!

Summer party :)

Another saturday, another day at work. Still tons of rain so not a whole lot to do. After work I went to JJ's Summer Party. Always nice to be social and hang out with friends so it was a great evening. Today I actually have the day off, but its a sunday so everything is closed and most of my friends are either working or studying for finals (not everyone finished in may sadly).. guess I will just end up slacking at home, not that I mind that either :)

Random update

So yeah, I didn't blog for a while.. nothing much to blog about though. I have mostly just been working. Today was a rainy day with hardly any people in the park so I ended up in charge of three rides. It actually worked pretty ok, I felt a little lonely at times tho when there was no guests or employees in the entire area other than me. I got kind of hungry because I didn't have time for breakfast this morning and my lunch was kind of late (3).. but hey that was my own fault for oversleeping. The few guests that wanted to take my rides were all real nice and they respected all of the safety regulations, like they understood the smaller kids had to go together with an adult, etc. And yeah stuff like that is what my life has been all about lately, thypical summer for me. The day isn't over yet though, going to meet up with JJ later on and go eat at Max Burger, wehei! :) Tomorrow the park is closed so I am considering to go to the chinese embassy and apply for my visa.. yeah, not much else to say really :)

Busy Weekend

This weekend was pretty crazy. Friday you already read about, the rest of the weekend at work I was kind of in charge of the pool area and the other poolguards working there. It was most of the others first days as poolguards and also the opening of the pool area this season so I was a little stressed out about it to be honest. Saturday when I opened the gates the guests actually raced eachother to get to the sun chairs.. thats how crowded it was. Somehow nothing big really happened even with that many guests though and all the new poolguards did really well. After work I met up with Ludvig (my brother) and went to Victorias place as she was having a party. It was great fun even if a lot of people canceled and we even played some Risk :) Today it was back to work again - the weather was nice, but not AS nice as yesterday so we didnt have a lot to do (or perhaps we were just used to having more to do after yesterday). In the end we decided we didnt need to be all of us there. When I told the bosses about this I ended up leaving for Sky Coaster (shock) to help train one of the new guys working there this season. This was actually a pretty slack job as the new people who work there need supervision for quite some time at each task even after they have understood what to do. After work I had about 1 hour at home before heading out again, this time to watch another movie with The Shadow Project. I got to say Im impressed with X-men First Class, I loved the storyline, the effects, the humor, just everything - awesome movie. You dont have to have seen the other three to understand whats going on either as it is a prequel. After we got out we saw the line to buy tickets for Harry Potter - people are sleeping in tents and everything, not very long line yet, but a few of them are already there. Apparently you can't leave the line for longer than one hour and you HAVE TO say that you are going, you can't smoke.. etc etc. Seems pretty harsh just to get to see it first :P But I guess some people like this kind of thing as well, hehe.

A long day at work

Today was one long day at work. OBOS rented the entire park so the opening hours were a lot later than normal, but as I am a poolguard and the pool area opens tomorrow I had to complete my yearly training. The training was directly before my actual shift, so it ended up being a pretty long day at work (from 10.30 to 21.15 ish) with a lot of different things to do. I was going to work at Sky Coaster (like always), but we didn't really need a third person there so I ended up giving people breaks and then preparing the pool area for tomorrow. There was a lot of random changes in what I was supposed to do today, but it wasn't really a big deal for me - apparently this was a good thing though, cause when I got back to the office I got a little dimploma saying I had done really well today, etc.. haha :) Always fun to be appriciated, especially when you don't realise your doing a good job.