May 12, 2003 : a promise
I know it seems that I have dropped off the earth, but I'll have you know that you should expect an update later on in the evening.
To put it simply, I've been really really busy. :)
Tot ziens,
Andrea
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To put things simply, Bobbie's visit saw me running to the far reaches of Belgium for various reasons, job interviews, freelance possibilities, dinners with friends, and more. I felt rotten about Bobbie's being here. Not that it was bad that she was here, it was bad that I was so busy and poor when she was here! If only she had come 2 months ago when the biggest highlight of my day was writing a journal and eating pumpkin and tomato soup!
Today, as well, was just as busy. I got up with Eva so that I could finish printing the mock-ups I had to take to Gent. They were supposed to be there by noon, but after making a trip to Carrefour's to buy a round of black ink, well I was running behind. Good ol' glue-stick and exacto knife in hand, I printed, glued, pressed, and before I know it, it was 12:30, I was still in Antwerp, and the two pieces were finished.
Not wanting to be completely out of line, I called the lady at the agency to let her know that I was running behind. She didn't seem to mind at all, and so I hopped in the car and sped all the way to Gent. It's terrible to have to take a road that you know is under road construction. It's ok when you can drive away from the destination knowing full well that you have several hours to make it back to where you want to go, so it doesn't matter if you take a side-route into Germany or over to the coast, you'll get to Antwerpen soon enough.
It's not that the road construction stops traffic, they've just made it that two narrow lanes business, where the white-knuckled people ease back into straddling the center line after someone passes them. It sure feels like you don't have much room, but in all honesty, when a big BMW passes another it actually appears that they have gobs of room. Granted, they're sided by concrete, but still, there's room. That's what I keep telling myself when I'm the person wanting to go the prescribed speed limit instead of hanging out behind the white-knuckles. There's room, Andrea, there's room.
In Gent, I twist and turn and pull up to the exact point of where I want to be. I park, I pay for a parking stub (out of 10 cent pieces!) and ring the doorbell. I try three times. No answer. What to do? Finally I ring again, and I walk in only to see that only one person is there, who asks me to kindly leave the package and write out a quote.
Funny part of the story goes as follows. Last week I emailed a quote for the entire project, creation, mock-up, and post-production. I knew it had been a low number, but after consulting with friends and Eva, I realized it was REALLY low. This morning I wrote another email that said, "well look, I have to re-quote it, as I've been told that I would be ruining the global freelancing trade by having such low numbers" and promised a new quote...to which she responded that she had never received the first quote.
So there on a piece of paper I scribbled out a price (lump sum) and made my way back to Debbie and back to Antwerp before heading out again to Hoboken for school.
After arriving home, I get a phone call from the money-person at the agency who tells me that my quote is extremely high and that they can't pay that much. That the price was fine if it had been for the whole project, but not a price for the dummies...to which I replied, well it was for the lump-total, and not just for the dummies. (apparently I had misunderstood completely)
So much for my attempt at legally freelancing in Belgium. I most likely have botched the opportunity for me to work with them again (do to stupidity and misunderstanding) and who knows if I'll get paid for the creation and making of dummies.
On at my dutch lessons, I humbly apologized that I had missed the infamous couscous cook-off last week and I promised that I would attempt to bring something American in to eat. (not bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, and not ribs drowned in barbecue sauce!) That was, of course, a joke, as our resident Taiwanese is vegetarian, and the rest of the group minus a couple of people, don't eat pork.
We, of course, had great fun. I asked Lut if we were going to talk about the elections coming up in Belgium, and before we knew it we were in a great discussion about it. One man who rarely speaks at all, went on and on how not every black-haired youth is a Moroccan. That everyone things if someone has black hair that they must be an immigrant from Morocco. He went on and on about it. I suppose he made his point when he said that Abu Ja Ja wasn't Moroccan either. Most of the rest of us said, "no? he's not?" And the man said, "See? just because he's got black hair..." :) To which we all chuckled a bit.
I thought it was dead interesting. I almost didn't want the class to end.
I came home and Eva and I went up the street to get fries. She waited outside talking to one of her friends, and I went inside to order and chat-it-up with the lady inside. When we first moved here, I thought she was sort of mean. Now, however, she's so nice and is really patient with me about my Dutch. It's funny how I was standing there thinking "what else can I tell her?" whenever there was a pause. I suppose I was having a fairly decent nederlands day, and I just didn't want the English to take over. (which it did, when we started watching Inspector Frost.)
IN THE NEWS:
Hours before a visit by the American secretary of state, four explosions rocked the Saudi capital late Monday, including car bomb attacks at compounds housing Americans and other Westerners. The attack that killed more than two dozen people, including eight Americans.
