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§ ¶26 calls and countingMy new campaign is quite alright. I'm getting through to the right people sometimes and i've actually had some interesting conversations with them about their IT today. So far i've made 26 calls, and have spent a total of 42 minutes on the phone. I've only spotted one opportunity though, and that was from an inbound call, not even from my own campaign. It's the first 'focus day' i've actually competed in, but i'm definitely not going to win it. To win a focus day, you need to make more calls, spend more time on the phone and create more opportunities than anyone else in your team on one single day. I'm nowhere near the front of the field, but hey, I just started. Next week there's another focus day, wouldn't it be nice if I won that one? § ¶CrapHere's a list of 10 things that made my day crap (in order of appearance in my day): 1 Where's the bus? The bus that is supposed to take commuters (and me) to the business park wasn't there this morning. I had to walk to work, so I was late, which was a great source of joy for some of my collegues. 2 A broken coffee machine It's not really a good idea to not provide your sales force with coffee. It's not good for business. 3 Flawed reporting (again) The mystery of the disappearing data has popped up again (sigh), probably because of some higher order mathematics i don't understand. 4 Failure to unsubscribe from a slightly too generously used mailing list Millions of internal e-mails i neither want or need are sent to my adress every day. Help? 5 Linguistically challenged Luxembourg secretaries I finally started my own outbound campaign to explore the Luxembourg market. And that's great! It's better than crunching numbers or preparing marketing lists. Finally a job for which my braincells snap out of hibernation mode (whoohoo!). Just fighting to break through the massive Wall of Secretaries takes a lot of skill and verbal agility, especially when the Wall of Secretaries doesn't speak English. 6 Horrible canteen food Don't try the fish. 7 Careless delivery guys I ordered a plastic paper stand from an office supplies company, and it got delivered to my desk today. How naive was i to expect it to be all in one piece. When i opened the package, it was actually in two pieces. Of course i had blindly signed for the delivery as i was on the phone, and the delivery guy was long gone before i discovered the brokenness of my precious item. This brings me into the wonderful world of after sales complaint handling. I'm looking forward to not getting the call back I was promised, and following up on it myself a couple of thousand times. It'll be time well spent. 8 A chanceless Belgian Job applicant Some Belgian student thought it was a great idea to ring the Belgian free phone number for product information (which leads to my phone occasionally), to ask for a job. Ha, i don't think so! Don't call us, we'll call you! (of course I was a bit nicer to him in the actual conversation) 9 A shower of 'funny' insults from Maurits about me 'working' as an intern
10 Vanishing evening plans Arjen's girlfriend wants to learn Dutch, and i'm going to teach her. But apparently, not tonight. I must admit not everything in my day was as dark as this. As I mentioned I did start my own campaign for the Luxembourg market today, which is a very good opportunity to work on my sales skills. Also some of my friends made several succesful attempts to cheer me up, by sending me funny stuff like this:
I'm also very pleased to look forward to two parties in a row: tomorrow at Christiane's birthday (ooh, I still need a prezzie) and a big company-wide party on Friday. Good stuff! § ¶Oh no!More photo's! That's exactly what you can expect on this site. Today a brand new 256mb memory card for my camera was delivered to my desk. Armed with all this new memory, i can take more pictures than ever before. Also, I can finally use the 'high quality compression' option on my camera, and still make 190 pictures before the card is full. So beware!
§ ¶The beginning is half of the workI know this expression doesn't really translate to English, but I'm sure you get my drift. I've just recieved approval from my professor for the first part of my traineeship report! According to my professor my problem definition and research approach make sense and the first eleven pages I wrote are solid. For me this is a milestone, because it tells me i'm on the right track. All i have to do now is to execute the plan i've described, which should be a piece of cake with three-and-a-half months go. I can't sit back though, i have loads of stuff to do. Not just on my traineeship report, but also some other tasks like analyzing team performance, identifying the fruitful sources of business and building marketing lists across different Northern European countries. Also i need to find out why the CRM database is playing hide-and-seek with half of the Norwegian sales pipeline when i run my weekly query. The accuracy of my Norwegian report just went sub-zero, which pisses me off. Enough about the office, it's time to get out of here and celebrate my milestone! Sam Sara or Cafe-en-Seine? A tough decision. § ¶Poop machineIt's about time! I haven't posted anything on this site for so long, it almost looks like i've been busy doing useful things. And to be honest, i have. Some might refer to it as 'work', but that expression incurs my displeasure. Besides, 'work' is O.K. for the stuff i do at the office, but it doesn't really cover the pub or restaurant visits that filled up my evenings. But after taking the Friday off and spending a weekend with some of my family, i feel inspiration to speak to the masses once again. I want to speak to the masses (or anyone else who will listen) about my cute little nephew. He took his first breath 4 months ago and already he built up a decent mileage. He flew all the way from the Netherlands to Dublin, and not a lot of babies can say that. Of course he wasn't alone, he was escorted by my three sisters, their three boyfriends, a pilot and an Aerlingus jet. Once he arrived in Dublin he decided he didn't much like the city, so he added something to it by throwing up all over it for a couple of days. Quite a nasty habit, really. His only function in the world today is to convert milk into poo, and he won't even do that right. But that's a bit harsh of course, he's still the cutest poop machine on earth and he has stolen many ladies' hearts. When he learns to talk he has to tell me how he does that sometime. I've studied his behaviour intensively and the only thing i could discover is that he smiles at the right time when he is being tickled. I can do that as well, but somehow it works better for him. I'll just have to wait untill he's old enough for this stuff (requires Media Player) and this stuff (requires RealPlayer) before I learn his secret. I hope the rest of my visitors from the Netherlands had a good weekend as well. I know I have.  § ¶More pictures!Sander & Barbara sent me their pictures of their long weekend in Dublin. Check 'm out! There's also some video's here, here and here (right-click, Save Target As...). And while you're at it, take a look at Sander's post on Superolog.
§ ¶How to break in to my houseI didn't expect all of my experiences in Ireland to be nice and happy. But I didn't expect a strange man to come into my house at 3am to look for stuff to steal either! Last night a burglar broke into my house through the kitchen door, which is one floor above the ground level. He made his way down the stairs and unlocked and opened the back door from the inside to make for a quick escape route. He then proceeded to Lilia's bedroom where she lay asleep. His flashlight woke her up and she was understandibly startled and immediately sat upright in her bed. Her movement scared off the burglar and he fled through the back door. By this time Mario was woken up too and he woke Alex and me, but the burglar was long gone. We had some tea in the kitchen and Lilia was of course still very upset. We jammed a stick in between the kitchen door and the sill so it was impossible to open the kitchen door again. He didn't take anything with him. We have no clue as to why he went into Lilia's room. He walked right past the TV and the VCR in the living room! This guy really made me very angry by being so incredibly rude that it's impossible to describe it with existing (sensible) words. F****** B******! ******* ****** ******* **** ***** ***** **************** ******** ************! The kitchen door and it's locking mechanism are being fixed and upgraded today, so don't you dare try this approach to my house yourself! Anyways, i never leave any of my own valuables in the house when i'm away and i sleep with an empty whisky bottle beside my bed. So BEWARE! And to whoever visited us last night: *** F****** B******, ***'* **** **** **** **** ***** or I'll **** *** ** *** **** *** ***'* ** **** ** **** *** ** ***** * ****** ** *****! F****** B******!!! Bottom line: Don't worry about me, Mom and Dad. I'm allright and security measures are being increased as i write this. This guy isn't getting back in again! § ¶To my familyI'm excited, some of my family are coming to Dublin in about a week! In order to give them a point of reference, here's a picture of my front door:  If you get lost, try to find the door with a big red arrow above it. (actually, I just fixed a bug in my site that disabled popup thumbnails and I wanted to test it. I think it works now) § ¶Dublin to the max!This weekend I had the honour of spending a couple of days with Barbara and Sander in the metropolis that is Dublin. After they had travelled across two seas to get here, we headbutted the city like die-hard tourists and payed one or two pubs a visit. OK, maybe three. I already put some pictures online so you can check them out. Be alarmed though, because there's more where that came from. Sander is going to send me his digital pictures and, if I'm lucky, also a movie or two. Stay tuned! § ¶Dublin to the max!This weekend I had the honour of spending a couple of days with Barbara and Sander in the metropolis that is Dublin. After they had travelled across two seas to get here, we headbutted the city like die-hard tourists and payed one or two pubs a visit. OK, maybe three. I already put some pictures online so you can check them out. Be alarmed though, because there's more where that came from. Sander is going to send me his digital pictures and, if I'm lucky, also a movie or two. Stay tuned! § ¶Brasil! (lalalalalalalala)Feliz anu novu! Flavio organized a little party on New Year's Eve. Gostoso! He has a lot of Brasilian friends and family and they all tried to teach me Portugese. As you may have noticed, it worked and I can add Portugese to my list of fluently spoken languages. Watch this: A loira gelada is a cold blonde, meaning a beer! Also known as cerveja. See? Portugese is easy. All I have to do now is learn that samba... Also, check out the other pictures too!
AduC.nl wishes everyone a happy 2004! |
