G's repair shop : you break it, we fix it!

Hospitals can bring me so down. I hate the smell, I hate the overly cheery people celebrating another birth, I hate all the pain and suffering I see, I hate the tasteless food, and I hate nurses who hate their job. I love the little yellow ducks in the pond outside though. And maybe also the newspaper shop, where you can pretend for 5 minutes that you’re outside, in the “normal” world.
To me, this hospital is a factory, or more accurately: a giant repair shop. What part is not working? Can we fix it? Do we have to replace it? Done. Thank God for it of course, but is it really so hard to remember that they’re dealing with feeling, thinking human beings – and not, let’s say ...bread toasters?
Hopefully my mom can go home today – and that’ll be the end of another week on Planet Hospital. I hope the next trip to this unfriendly galaxy is a million of lightyears away...

Cornetto

After a crazy week, I can finally sit back and relax a bit. On my terrace, with an ice cream. There was my little London-flu, basically pounding my head every single second wit a huge hammer. There were a lot of lessons to teach, and then there was a lot of rushing to hospital to visit mom in between foresaid lessons.
This morning was the last lesson of the week, and mom is finally doing better. And my flu is almost history. Pfew. I still have a ton of prep work to do for next week’s intensive course – but for now it’s just me and my ice cream. Zen.

Despite all the “setbacks”, I realised once again this week how much pleasure my job is giving me (sorry if this is beginning to sound boring). On Tuesday I dragged myself to my little group of 8 female immigrants to give the last full day of their crash-course. I came home with a fever, but feeling so happy and satisfied. On Wednesday there was another “first” : I taught someone who reacted on the blogpost in which I “promoted” my Dutch lessons! It was a great lesson, with a very motivated and talented student and I’m really looking forward to our next lesson (I have to write this, as he’s probably reading this ;-). And today another student decided to postpone all her lessons until after my holidays – she doesn’t want a substitute teacher :-).

All the fun of the new job aside though, I stumbled upon my “old job” today. In a rather strange way. At the language school around the corner, they have a magazine stand. Every week, there’s also an issue of “HR tribune”. Which I’ve refused to read ever since the beginning of “Episode 3”. Today I thought : “Hm, one of my students has his own recruiting company – an HR related article might be useful lesson material”. So I grabbed the HR Tribune. I opened it at a random page, only to stare at a huge picture of my former boss. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I couldn’t believe all the lies in the article either. All the blahblah sounded so ridiculously untrue.

Conclusions of the week: there’s not only a Mexican flu; there’s a London one as well. Teaching is great fun. And don’t read the HR Tribune; it’s a load of crap.

All in one afternoon

Nurse 1 : (semi-agressive) Have you *refused* painkillers today?!
Mom : Uumm, no they just didn’t give me any. That’s why I’m in pain. That’s why I’m asking them now. Please.
***
Dad : Shouldn’t you check her sugar levels?
Nurse 2 : Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought about that...
***
Mom : I haven’t received a certain shot today. Is that normal?
Nurse 1 : Uuum, nooo, I guess not. Oh, you’re right : you still need to have that shot.
***
Nurse 2 : you will have to drink lots of sugar water to improve your sugar level
Mom : The doctor told me yesterday I’m not allowed to eat or drink anything...It’s in my file.
Nurse 2 : Oh yes yes you’re right. Well, no sugar water for you then!
***
Nurse 1 : Why are your baxters still full?
Mom : I don’t know....
Nurse 1 : Let me call nurse 2
Nurse 2 : ah, I see. It’s because *you* vomit all the time. *You* block the tube when *you* do that.
Mom : you know, I have an implanted catheder from the chemo. Normally they use that...
Nurse 2 : No no no, we don’t use that here. It will have to stay in your neck. If *you* stop vomiting, it will be okay.
***
Nurse 1 : Look at you, you’re covering yourself completely with the sheets. It’s 26 degrees outside!
Mom : Well, I am cold, I pay for this room, and if I want to cover myself, and even turn on the heating in here – I’ve got every damn right to do so.
***
As you see, it was another beautiful day on Planet Hospital.
To be continued.....

Kleenex anyone?

Snif. Snif again. Cough-cough. Sneeeeze (x 6).
That’s right, another visit to a cosmopolitan city, and I catch another cosmopolitan cold. I’m getting old. INSEAD-weekends ruin my health (and my bank account). Or maybe it’s just my body warning me : working – partying – running to hospital – not sleeping - worrying : DON’T you dare do it again!!!
So I’ll listen. I’m off to bed, I won’t do any more work tonight (first improvised lesson starts tomorrow at 8.30 am), and I’ll skip hospital tomorrow.

Doing a little bit of London

For the first time in more than 10 years, I made it back to London. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t buy a city guide, I didn’t make a list of things to do and see, and I almost didn’t pack a bag (this was done in the 30 minutes between coming home from work, and grabbing a taxi to the Eurostar-station).

The main reason to be in London, was another INSEAD reunion. We stayed at our friends’ place, who live just behind Primrose Hillpark. If I ever move to London, this is the neighborhood I want to be in! A huge park, overlooking the entire city, cosy streets with quaint shops, lovely houses, etc.

After arriving on Thursday evening (bringing the obligatory Belgian chocolats and Belgian beer to our lovely hosts), we got up on Friday to do “some shopping”. We got back home, carrying several huge bags. With the nice Euro-to-Pond rate, and the start of the sales, we let ourselves go completely wild. So wild we weren’t able to close the door of our bedroom, because there were simply to many shopping bags.

Friday night was the first INSEAD party, Saturday was INSEAD visit to Saachi Gallery, Saturday night was INSEAD dinner + party, and today was INSEAD pic-nic. It was good fun to see everybody, especially my dearest K, whom I hadn’t seen in one year! Seeing her again made me realize how much I miss my INSEAD-girls...

And with that, I’m more tired than ever. Tomorrow is another working day, my mom is in hospital, and I still have to do all my prep work for this week.

A lot of ifs

*If* my mom didn’t get ill, maybe I wouldn’t have crashed.
*If* I wouldn’t have crashed, maybe I would still be stuck in my HR job.
*If* I would still be stuck in my HR job, maybe I would never have considered going back to teaching.
All this to say that, at this very moment, I’m sooo happy that I lost my job, that I started rethinking my life from scratch, and that I ended up teaching again.
I can honestly say I haven’t felt this good after a day’s work in, let’s say, the last three years. I mean it.
A) I got stuck with the most dysfunctional boss on the planet.
B) I never got thanked or rewarded.
C) As a consequence, my self-confidence was always below zero

An example: even if I managed to recruit the so-called “sheep with five legs” in an overheated job-market, there would still be complaining ‘cause She hated to make time in her planning for contract-negotiations (No, no way she would let me or anybody else do that). Forget “well done”. No, instead She would postpone and postpone making an appointment with foresaid candidate, after which this one would, of course, be of the market by the time She finally called him. Next : an e-mail from the general HR director to ask me why I hadn’t managed to fill in the damn vacancy yet.
I once had the nerve to tell him that it was because She had no time for contract negotiations. Next : full scale war. And guess who the victim was? Right.
This was your daily menu. And I ate it for three years. Now the mere thought of it makes me throw up.

I went into HR to be able to work with people, to help people on their career track. I never had the feeling that I did those things. Maybe only in the beginning when I worked in a temp agency, and got a lot of people their first job – but on a corporate level? Forget it. It was all politics.
Now, I see the difference that I make – instantly, with my own eyes. I get gratitude, loads of it. I get rewarded, not with money, but by seeing that all my efforts are never lost. And my self-confidence? I feel it growing day by day. I’ll never let anyone bring me down like that again. That is...*if* I can keep that promise to myself :-)

Crash course

Here we go again. It’s 10.30 pm – and I totally forgot to eat. The reason behind this, is that I get so lost in lesson-prep work, that I completely loose any sense of time (the fact that it’s not getting dark outside before 10pm is not helping either). But the result is something I feel proud of : my own crash course Dutch for people who have zero knowledge of the language. And I really mean zero. I just wonder who is going to crash first here : the teacher or the students... 4 days of intensive teaching, morning till evening, to 8 women from all over the world. Challenge, here I come!