Day 42 & 43 - Presentatie and Kadootjes

Monday. Unfortunately, i will miss the uitsmijter today at lunch, because i have my big presentation!! i thought i would be nervous, but i really wasn't. I had worked really hard on the slides and the presentation and i knew it would be great. i wore my grey pinstripe pants and black heels with a navy blue shirt made of very nice silky material. i thought about wearing my glasses but i thought that would be overkill. me and wil got everything set up in the Basalt conference room. about 35 people showed up. lunch consists of sandwiches and milk (or course!!). for the first 30 seconds of talking i'm a little nervous but then i feel fine. i was supposed to only talk for 1 hour but it went to 1.5 hours. i had so much to say and so many things i wanted to talk about!! the only crappy part was that my laser pointer died part way through!! everyone seemed interested and had some really great questions, and afterwards adriaan (most importantly) and my other co-workers said they really enjoyed the presentation. yay! i feel great.

after the staff meeting i had a quick meeting with adriaan and maarten (interrupted by a little hallway celebration for mark-peter's 44th birthday), and we talked about some upcoming projects i will be working on. i'm really looking forward them, the first will be some plaxis modeling of a surcharged roadway embankment, and the surcharge effects on a nearby existing pipeline.

after work i was supposed to go to kickboxing at 6PM, but i ended up working late, so i missed it bummer. no dutch class today; we are on break until the beginning of january. so, i just went home and finished my post cards and my christmas cards, caught up on my facebook and emails, and still did not manage to make to bed before midnight!! oh yes, i also booked my flight to berlin!! i will be going for 3 full days in january! there's so much i want to see in berlin i'm really looking forward to the trip :) i'll have my personal tour guide, a berlin native (thomas - who worked for fugro west for about a year and a half).

On tuesday, it was VERY foggy in the morning. i had to wait about 10 minutes to warm up my car in the morning becuase i didnt have an ice brush. brrrr. traffic was the worst its ever been this morning, probably due to the fog. it took about 45 mins to get to work!! (normally it takes about 15). today at work i mostly ran a bunch of plaxis simulations for roadway embankments, tomorrow i will work with ben to model the water pumping and trenching and the pipeline. in the morning, we had some pie (including cherry pie from multi vlaai!!) to celebrate maarten's graduation from the master's program. here, they don't have professional licensure, so to be able to say you are an engineer, you must have a master's degree. so this is a big day for maarten and we are all very proud of him. he started at fugro as a CAD operator, and also drove the CPT trucks, then went to school part time for his master's. so he's really worked his way up.

i also got some good news that i won $100 as the fugro west christmas party! for submittng more than 10 work/process improvement suggestions over the past year. sweet! i also talked to eric to see how things were going in dubai. one of my colleagues here in leidschendam worked with him in dubai for a few weeks last spring so i wanted to make that connection. i also told eric that he looked like jesus and he should try out for a christmas play or nativity scene. he said he'd never been told he looked like jesus. come on!! don't you think eric looks like jesus???

when i got back from lunch (pea soup... my favorite!!! i wanted to get two bowls but i thought that would be greedy. flip agreed.) there was a big box on my desk. a christmas present from fugro!! so i waited for robin to come back, and we turned on our little christmas tree, and i opened the package. most other people took thiers home, but i wanted to open mine then. inside it was 'breakfast' themed. there was a breakfast cookbook (in dutch but i can figure it out!), orange juice, cereal, champagne, special breakfast cakes and cookies, tea, and at the very bottom, a big blanket!! the blanket was by far my favorite.. it has little pockets for your feet how clever is that?? see the pictures below :)