Showing posts with label Life and stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life and stuff. Show all posts
Sunday, 27 October 2013
And then... life happened!
Dear readers,
Well life pulled
another fast one on me not long after I posted the last update. First of all, I
was informed that my deadline for submitting a draft chapter of my dissertation
had been moved up…. By three freaking months! So instead of the end of autumn
it now became the end of September. Can you imagine how stressed/ freaked out I
was? In the same week I was also informed that I would be teaching first year
students for one hour a week. I was to teach a coaching session, in which
students can ask questions regarding the reading they had to do for two
different classes and in which I, together with another teaching and research assistant,
have to teach them the basics for academic writing. So basically, you have to do
the preparations for three classes, rather than just one… And they informed me
of this 6 days in advance. In the same week I was also appointed as the webmaster of the UvA centenary website... I believe that at this point my stress level went
through the freaking roof. By some miracle, though, I was able to meet the deadline… But
not surprisingly, I was so tired after this month had passed that it took me a
while to catch my breath.
Luckily, things have
quieted down a bit. I am currently doing research for my next chapter, which
will be about penny bloods (not to be confused with the penny dreadfuls). As
very little research has been done surrounding the penny bloods I will be going
to London in January for three weeks in order to do archival research in the
British Library. Although I found this a little daunting, since I am not very
good at the whole “going somewhere by myself” thing, my three weeks of being
alone in London have become my three weeks of not being so very alone in London
hahah. Both my best friend and my parents will come and stay at the apartment I
rented for a couple of days and I will be visiting a friend (who is almost done
with her PhD… gosh I really take my hat off to her) who lives in Leeds for a
few days. So now I am actually really looking forward to it. There is something
exceedingly appealing about the thought of sitting in a library whilst looking
at old and obscure texts… I wonder if I will still think this way after I have
spent nearly three whole weeks in library hahaha.
Due to all the stress and
fatigue afterwards, I have not been able to start swimming once a week, as I was
planning to do. I simply decided to put the entire diet on a hold for those 1,5
months. I have started again since last week and thing are going pretty well;
just 3.2 kilo’s to go. Hopefully, I will finally find time to do some actual exercise
though, but we will see how it goes.
Another fun thing
which is coming up is that my best friend and I are actually going to launch
that webshop next year. We were planning to do it mid-November, but as she is
working 6 or 7 days every week and my life isn’t exactly laid back either
(*cough* understatement of the year *cough*) we decided to postpone it to early
February next year. Hopefully, things have settled down a bit by then for the
both of us.
Well that’s it for
now. I hope you will all have a wonderful weekend.
Love,
Blacky
Thursday, 8 August 2013
100 POSTS! :D
Today is a
very special post! :D It’s my 100th post! Although updates have been
slow and irregular I still made it! So for today’s post I would like to look
back at the changes that have occurred since I first created this blog. I
started this blog a little over three years ago, so there is definitely a lot
to look back on.
A major
thing that changed is that I was still together with my ex-boyfriend when I
created this blog. About 3 months after the blog was created, however, we broke
up and I fell in love with someone truly amazing. And as you all know, we got
engaged pretty soon after that. I am still very grateful to have my fiancé by
my side. Really, going out with him was one of the best decisions I have EVER
made.
Another thing
that changed is that I had just gotten my bachelor degree when I started this
blog. As my dedicated readers know, I have now also completed a research master
in Literary Studies and have made it through to my first year as an externally
funded PhD student! :D I sometimes complain a bit about all the work I have to
do for it (who doesn’t complain about their job once in a while?), but I am
still greatly enjoying it! I am currently working on a chapter on detective
fiction… I read Sherlock Holmes for research! I honestly believe it doesn’t get
much better than this! Though I have to admit that I miss having a summer
holiday T_T. Anyway, for those of you who are interested, I have created a
tumblr account on which I post some stuff on what it is like to be a PhD
student. Most of it is just me poking fun at myself, so it’s pretty exaggerated
(again: being a PhD student isn’t all THAT bad). Here’s the link: http://aphdstudentslifeforme.tumblr.com/
Just after
I created this blog I was accepted for an internship at the Athenaeum
bookstore. This internship made it clear to me that editing is not for me… I am
simply too slow of a reader. So partially thanks to doing the internship that I
decided to go for a PhD instead. After the internship had ended I went to
search for another job, and I ended up at WoningNet. I still love working
there. My colleagues are simply awesome (everyone is sooooo nice!) and the
company really looks after their employees. Last week when it was super hot,
they had someone get lots of fruit for us, just to cool us down and make everything
a bit more bearable. :D How awesome is that?! Also, although I have been hired
as a call center agent, I have been mostly doing a lot of other tasks for the
past year. So that really keeps things interesting.
Something
that has not changed AT ALL is my love for Victorian literature, cutestuff and
Disney! Well, it is good to have some constant factors in your life right? ;) Hahaha I honestly think that some people would believe the end of the world to be near if I suddenly stopped liking Disney or Victorian literature for that matter.
Anyway, I really
want to thank all the readers that have stuck with me for such a long time! I
really hope that I will be able to keep you interested in my blog. :D I will
most definitely try!
Love,
Blacky
Saturday, 3 August 2013
Trip report Shrewsbury (with pictures!)
Long time
no see! A lot of things have happened since my last update; some really great
stuff, and some not so great stuff. Today’s post, however, will be dedicated to
my six day trip with my fiancé to Shrewsbury.
The first
thing people have been asking me when I told them I want to Shrewsbury was “why
Shrewsbury?” Well, my fiancé has a friend who lives in the vicinity and he
really wanted to visit him. At first my fiancé wanted to go to Birmingham… As
you might remember from my Birmingham trip report, I did not like that city at
all. So I pretty much vetoed that we would not be staying there. So he asked
his friend which nice towns were near Birmingham and we settled on Shrewsbury.
My fiancés
friend, who I will refer to by his nickname Beswick from now on, promised to
pick us up at the airport when we arrived. He was such a lovely person! As many
of my readers know I am a very shy person and don’t usually say a whole lot
when I meet someone for the first time. However, Beswick is a very open and
kind person, so it didn’t take long for me to open up to him. Perhaps it was
because he greatly resembles my fiancé, characterwise… Anyway, we stopped for
some drinks and dinner, had a chat and stocked up on some much needed water and
sunscreen in a humongous supermarket. ^__^” Although they had not had a heat
wave in 7 (freaking) years, we ended up right in the middle of one. >.>
Just our luck.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Disneyland Paris and the Louvre; a shopblog.
Well it has been a while again. I have been
really busy and just when I was planning on writing a trip report on
Disneyland, I got a throat infection which pretty much forced me to stay in bed
for 1,5 weeks... You can’t imagine how glad I am right now to be able to do
something other than just watch tv or a movie. After a couple of days that
really gets old. I am still on anti-biotics though, so I apologize if there are
a lot of typo’s and such in the post.
As I have already provided you with a
number of Disney trip reports, I thought it would be nice to do something a
little different. I will be writing a shopblog instead.
Before going to Disneyland my best friend
and I had decided that we will not be going to Disney for the coming 1 to 1,5
years. We have been to the park quite often and we do not want it to lose its
magic for us. So, as I was walking through the stores I noticed that they had
some really awesome table ware. Now seeing that I will hopefully be living
together with my fiancé before my next trip to Disney, I thought it would be a
pretty good opportunity to buy some essentials for our yet to be found home. I
called my fiancé to discuss this. I even had a picture at the ready, but he
pretty much gave me the get go without ever seeing the picture. His reaction
was: “Well you know my taste” and “If I don’t like it.... well I guess we will
then just have some ugly dinner plates. That’s not the end of the world. So
just buy them if you like them”. So having received the get go (and having called dad
just to make sure my parents wouldn’t flip if I came home with a boat load of
stuff) I bought the following items:
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Chipmunk cuteness and high tea pictures!
Well in my previous post I promised you some chipmunk cuteness, so here it is! Below you will first find a (very) short video in which you can see me (well you can see my hand and legs lol) feeding a squirell! :D I was so surprised that it dared to come so close!
Please note: the cookies were simple biscuits.
Some pictures of the squirells in Hyde Park!
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Update and a trip report of London! :D
Dear readers,
I solemnly
swear that I will NEVER EVER write that things are starting to calm down in my
life EVER again. My gosh, the past couple of months have just simply been insane
(hence the lack of updates). In February my aunt had a heart attack, causing us
to have to travel to the other side of the Netherlands to visit her. She had a
bypass operation and everything seemed to be going well, until two weeks after
the operation. She was hospitalized again and the doctors were not sure if she
would make it… So we ended up traveling back and forward a while as we were of
course very anxious about her health. Thankfully, though everything is going
really well with her. She is currently going through rehabilitation and is
doing just fine.
Well a lot
of other things have happened in the meantime, but for today I will be focusing
on my trip to London.
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Thank God january is over! :P
Dear
reader,
Gosh, am I
glad that January is over. I have told you I was busy before, but this month
really took the cake. However, before I will get into all that, I am first
going to write a bit about Christmas and New Years! :D
I had a
lovely Christmas. The first day I just spent with my parents, which was as nice
as always!... Except that an ant colony had made its home in our tree and
suddenly started to roaming about when we started to open the presents in the
morning. So whenever I went over to the tree to take up a present I wacked some
ants hahaha. I must say I didn’t feel like it was very much in the spirit of
Christmas (with peace on earth and all that), but what can you do?
I got some
really awesome presents, such as the DVD Arthur Christmas (which is one of the
most fun Christmas movies I have ever seen!), a paperblanks notebook (these are
rather expensive. I use those whenever I go to conferences, so I will always be
able to find the notes I took easily) and a book entitled Writing Death and Absence in the Victorian Novel by Jolene
Zagarovich (I really needed this book for my research). The best gift, however,
was my mom’s reaction to her present: I had gotten her tickets to a New Years
concert by Wibi Soerjadi (a famous Dutch pianist and composer).
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Finally another update
Well... what can I say? ^__^" It has been over 4 whole months since my last update... That's a record even for me. I have just been super, duper busy. To make it up to you I will post two posts today; one will be my very much overdue report of my trip to Sheffield and this post, which will contain an overview of the things that have been keeping me busy.
After Sheffield I have visited my aunts for a weekend (which was very, very fun), I have been on another trip to Disney (and got my free year pass... OH YEAH!)... I have done so many things I have forgotten half of them already! O.o
The reason why I could not get round to writing blogposts is that I have been either too busy or too tired to do so. During my trip to Sheffield I received an e-mail informing me that funding had become available at the English Faculty for two PhD students in the form of a research and teaching assistant possition. I, of course, immediately applied for the job. As a result, I have been a research and teaching assistant since October 1. I got hired for 16,7 hours a week. Of those hours I have to spend approximately 3,5 - 4 hours helping out teachers and staff members of the English department. The rest of the hours I can use for my own research. So far teachers have asked me to scan course materials, to order and archive certain documents and I have been asked to help out with a new project called the Writing Studio. The Writing Studio is aimed at first year students who find it difficult to write essays. By asking them to send in an essay beforehand we try to give them feedback during 30 min. appointments, which they can in turn use to improve their writing. Due to some administrative difficulties, however, I have been only able to help out one student so far.... I hope to be of more help soon though.
Basically, my research, the assistantship and my other 16 hour job have pretty much been swallowing up all my time. The only free time I really had was when I was with my fiancé (which is about one day a week).
Things seem to be settling down a bit now though, so I really hope that I will be able to put up blog posts more frequently again. I have really missed writing T_T.
Well that is all for today. I wish all my (extremely loyal) readers a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Love,
Blacky
Well overdue Sheffield trip report with pictures!
Dear
reader,
And now, for my very much overdue trip report of my visit to Sheffield! I have to say I really enjoyed my visit to Sheffield. We traveled from Schiphol to Manchester by
plane after which we took the train from the airport to Sheffield. There we
took the tram directly to the B&B. After walking around for a while and
cursing the google maps printout which I made (which is always super confusing,
since you never know which way is up or down… we almost went the wrong way
because of it) we were debating whether or not we were in the right street. It
did not last long before I spotted the B&B though…. at the top of a very,
veerrryyy steep hill. Imagine this: three people walking up a steep hill of
which two are dragging a really heavy suitcase behind them. I am sure that the neightbours
had a good laugh.
(It's the Victorian house on the left... Yep, steep hill is steep)
Saturday, 28 July 2012
Dutch Musical Wicked review
Dear
readers,
On Saturday
the 14th of July I went to the musical Wicked with my parents. I had really
been looking forward to this show as I had some raving reviews on the West End
version. Needless to say, the Dutch version would undoubtedly be a little
different, but usually the Dutch adaptations are very good as well.
When you
enter the room you are confronted with the following decor:
(sorry for the bad quality: I took this picture with my phone)
I really
thought it was highly impressive and it immediately grabs your attention. The
rest of the decor that is used during the show is subtle without too many embellishments.
The plot of
the musical relates the story on how the girl Elphaba became the Wicked Witch
of the West. I really do not want to give anything away on the plot, because it
is very well thought out and because I think people will be able to enjoy the
show more if they do not know the entire story. Just prepare yourself for a few
very interesting twists! :D Though I would strongly advice against taking
children under 9 years old to this musical, as some parts are rather frightening.
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Trip report Ghent
Dear
reader,
On July 5th
I went to Gent for three days with my parents and fiancee. We stayed in the
hotel Cours St. Georges, which is located directly in the city center. We went
there by train (which took us about 3.5 hours, which is doable).
We bought a
Museum Pass as this will grant you access to multiple museums and is also a
three-day public transport ticket. The Museum Pass is really quite cheap (20,-
euro's). However, if your hotel is located in the city center, you are better
off just buying a one way ticket for the tram, as everything is within walking
distance.
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Disneyland report: New parade + evening show with pictures!
Dear reader,
Yes, I once
again went to Disneyland Paris.... And it was awesome! Because Disneyland celebrates
its 20th anniversary they have a new parade and a new evening show when the
park closes. Especially the latter is freaking awesome! :D They also have a new Park show: the Adventures of Tarzan.
As I have
already written so many Disneyland reports this blog post will be a bit
different. :) I have chosen to describe the new parade (with pictures) and
write a bit about the new evening show rather than tell you what we did, when
we did it and where we ate haha. Of course I will also write a short paragraph about
the things which I have bought ;).
Sunday, 24 June 2012
My super pretty bag! :D
Dear readers,
Just a
small blog post this time about my truly awesome (and super expensive!) bag. As
those who have been following my blogs regularly know by now; I really love to
have a unique bag. Whenever I need a new bag I really spend my time searching
for one that not everyone one has. Well this bag definitely ticked all the
boxes.
As I will
be going to conferences and will be starting a PHD next semester I thought I
was in need of a bag that was a lot more formal than the backpack or messenger
back that I usually use... Or well that's the reason I used to convince myself (yes
I had to convince myself because of the price hahah).
The bag is
from a Japanese brand which specializes in Gothic Lolita clothing and
accessories. I have ordered it through a Dutch Gothic Lolita store called
Mfashion (www.mfashion.eu). The bag is handmade, faux leather (no animals have
been hurt :D). Because of the ruffles it looks formal and yet cute! Aaannnddd.... you can use it both as a shoulder bag and as a backpack! :D
Pictures:
I really
really really love the bag! Let me know what you think about the bag guys! :D
Love,
Blacky
Monday, 18 June 2012
PHD position! :D
Dear readers,
Yesterday I received an e-mail which stated that I was
admitted into the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis as an externally funded
PHD student! :D I am just over the moon! (And super hyper for that matter).
As an externally funded student I will not receive any
funding from the University itself, but I will not have to pay any tuition fees
either! Moreover, I will be able to make use of all the facilities which the
University offers to funded PHD students as well. Amongst others, I will
receive a desk at one of the offices which have been made available for the
ASCA PHD students (insert a squeal here) and I will be allowed to follow the
courses which provided by ASCA and the Graduate School of Humanities. They even
have a teacher training course, which I hope I will be allowed to attend.
So, I will be doing research for at least 3 to 4 years
(if not longer) into the denial of death in British Victorian Novels. If that
is not happiness then I do not know what is (I am sure my fellow Victorians
will understand exactly what I am saying :D).
As it is not a funded position, I will be looking for
funding outside University so I will be able to generate an additional income.
As things are now I will have to continue to work for two days a week, which I
do not mind doing at all. However, ideally I would like to spend 5 days a week
on my research. I am definitely planning on applying for a funded position with
ASCA for next year. Who knows: if I work really hard, they might decide to fund
me :D (Not like I would not have worked hard otherwise… lol I believe my system
does not have a setting other than ‘working hard’ hahah).
Honestly, part of me did not dare to hope that I would
actually get accepted, as it seemed like such a long shot. I know that for the
funded positions there were about 400 applications (and only 5 positions!). I
am not sure how many applications they had for a non-funded position, but I am
sure that I should be lucky to get in.
I honestly cannot wait for the start of next year… and
this year is not even over! I am currently still waiting for my supervisor’s
feedback on my Master thesis. The prospect of a PHD really does give me a huge
motivational boost.
Well that’s it for my hyperactive rambling about
getting the PHD position.
Love,
Blacky (prospective PHD student *squeal*).
Friday, 15 June 2012
All kinds of things to write about
It has been a while (again!) since my last update. My life has been rather hectic lately. Well
let’s get to it, cause I have a LOT of catching up to do lol ;). I wrote this blog post a week ago, but forgot it at work... So here it FINALLY is. :) Expect a couple of blog posts more during the coming couple of days!
I have been suffering from a severe back ache for about a month now. In the beginning it was
so bad that I could hardly sit behind my computer, but fortunately, it is hurting a lot less. I
will be going to the doctor again this week, just to make sure (since it is still hurting >.<).
About two weeks ago I started the process of writing my Master thesis after having read a
loooottt of books. I have pretty much finished the writing of the thesis, so now I am waiting for my supervisor to get back to me with feedback. Currently, my thesis is about 13500 words.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Another busy bee update
Dear
readers,
I am truly
sorry for the lack of updates really, but as usual I have been idiotically
busy... So I guess this will be another of those apologetic updates in which I
explain what I am doing and why I don't update hahah. Please bare with me.
First of
all, school really is getting to me right now. At the moment I am working hard
to finish a book of 558 pages (e-reader format) before the end of this week (I
set myself the task to finish this book in one week... >.> what am I
putting myself through?!). The book that I am reading is called The Doctor's Wife and is written by Mary
Elisabeth Braddon. It is without a doubt the most boring Victorian novel I have
ever read (there is no action in it what so ever!) and the heroine definitely
deserves the Oscar for most annoying wretch ever. But thankfully I only have
about 140 pages left hahha. Some of you might wonder: why bother to read it
then? Well, because I have no choice. I have to read this book for the course
Sensation and Gothic Fiction, I will be doing a presentation on it for that
course and I will be using the book for my Master thesis. Honestly, the book is
boring as hell, but it's a damn good example to support my argument with
^__^".
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