My submission to “Your One Day in History” at http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/Page97.asp
I woke up at 6:30am thinking I got hours more sleep to do yet as I felt I wasn’t recharged. A quick glance at my watch tells me my alarm clock will vibrate under my pillow in half an hour. I buried myself under the duvet, ignoring the alarm clock, and laid in till 8.30am. It was too late for a shower, but still made the time to dutifully clean my teeth and rinse it out with mouthwatch.
I slowly walked down a main street in The Hague, to my tram stop, admiring the morning sun and golden sky and the buildings basking in its warm glow. Luckily I didn’t have to wait for long for my number 17 tram to Rijswijk, where I work – a journey around 40 minutes. I usually read a book, but this week I was reading Newsweek magazine – an article about Estonia. Seems they are screaming for people to come to work there as they got a serious shortage (very low unemployment rates there).
Dragged myself into work, 15minutes late. That means I’ll finish 15 minutes late tonight – no problem. Worked tediously through well data in a methodological manner to check all the information is present and correct – a form of quality control and auditing. Not the most exciting job in the world, and nothing remarkable happened today. I usually browse BBC News Online, check the Random Acts of Reality blog written by a London Paramedic and update my own blog – Living a Simple Life – this helps break up the day and prevent me from grinding down to a halt in the repetitive job. I also usually interrupt this by drinking copious amount of water from the machine, being careful to reuse my plastic cup to save the environment.
Lunch was early at 12:15, promptly arranged on our work Messenger service, a departure from the usual 12:30 because some of us were hungry. I had chicken filet in some an impossibly orange-looking curry source that had no flavour, with white rice and far too much petit-pois and downed with Coke to perk me up somewhat (usually I drink water, but I needed my caffeine today and I don’t drink coffee).
The afternoon continued on the same mundane fare – made slightly more interesting as I couldn’t identify some data off a 30-year old log. A little debate in our team, followed by calling in our team leader didn’t really resolve anything – and decided to make a note that “possible coring data on electrical log but not backed up by metadata” in our audit report. I had a bounty, needed a sugar boost at 16:30.
I left work at 18:00pm, usually it’s 17:30 (supposed to be 17:45 today as I was late). So a bit of more time to take off in lieu. Hurah! Back on the number 17 tram to the centre of The Hauge, glued to my Newsweek magazine – an article about the Kurdish terrorist group- blissfully unaware of what’s going on around me.
I got into my house at 18:30, to see a Dutch card in the letter box, I recognised it’s a tax thing from my limited Dutch and suspect our ex-flatmate has cancelled his council tax early, and then watched my daily dosage of Neighbours for a bit of light relief and typing this blog in.
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