BasBasBas.com

Category: life

  • Bulgaria – the first 3 days

    Wow! It’s good to be back in Bulgaria.

    The weather, apart for the rainy Sunday, is just great! Very sunny, rather warm.

    Day 1 – Saturday

    This day started with me getting up at 2.45 in the morning. Awesome. My dad drove me to the airport in Dortmund, I boarded a plane that looked great from the outside, but it was like the 80’s on the inside (and it’s the inside that counts). Oh, and it was looaaaded with Bulgarians. As soon as we departed we hit the clouds and after a few minutes it was just the plane and the sun. Wow! 🙂

    I arrived at Sofia airport around noon and met up with Tsvety, my girlfriend. For the first few minutes we couldn’t stop hugging. We tried, but within a few seconds the clutch of our arms returned and we stood there for another few moments. After getting some cash from an ATM we took a taxi into the city and waited in a coffee bar for the lady who would show us our apartment for the next 10 days. The first Bulgarian coffee was a bit strong (especially compared to the water-with-coffee-taste I drank at the German airport), but I’m getting used to it again. We got a call from the lady. Were shown our apartment and stayed in the whole day, because I was dead tired.

    A friend of mine would be DJ’ing at a party in the center that evening and somewhere deep down, I knew I couldn’t miss that party. He didn’t know I was in Bulgaria and it would be a great surprise for him if I suddenly showed up. Especially considering the fact that he simply ‘knew’ that there’s three thousand kilometers between us.

    Soooo, we dragged ourselves out of the apartment, without having slept and went into the center. As I entered the club I immediately saw my friend, with his back turned to me. I walked over to him and then looped around him so that I was standing in front of him. I looked at him with my “hello!” face, but without saying anything… He gave me a blank stare for a second (my hair is longer and I have a beard thing going on now) and then out of this blank stare came an intense expression of enthusiasm! “Bas!” He grabbed my hand to shake it and hugged me. Simultaneously. He was very glad to see me. The extra sleep deprivation was definitely worth it. I saw his set (good job, mate!) and stayed around for another an hour or so, but then around 3 o’ clock I decided that it was really time to go home and catch some sleep.

    Great day.

    Day 2 – Sunday

    It was rainy. We stayed in. Watched a film together. Good times. 😎

    Day 3 – Monday

    Then today we went outside and I saw Sofia again as I saw it in the summer, but a bit colder. Very sunny day, nice and warm. We sat in the park for a while, took pictures, walked around some more and had lunch. Sat around some more in the sun. Just enjoying each other’s presence. Then Tsvety headed home to see her parents for a while and I gave a call to a couple of friends, Miro and Vassy, and made appointments to have dinner with them very soon. As I was walking home I got into the same mood I had when I first came to Bulgaria: don’t sit inside the apartment. Soooo, I grabbed my laptop and a book, went to a coffee bar around the corner, wrote a blog post, and pressed “Publish”.

  • Placement Evaluation!

    Just had a conversation with my academic placement supervisor and it looks like I’ll be getting a very good evaluation for the work placement I did with the Bulgarian National Radio. These are the main things I discussed with him:

    1. what did you learn that you didn’t expect to learn?

    One of the things I really learned was to be flexible. First of all, this was because of working in an institution instead of doing my projects within an academic and theoretical environment. There were a lot of barriers between me and my goals and I had to figure out how to get around that. Another reason why I had to be flexible is because of the organisation being Bulgarian. Meaning that things were often rather rigid and bureaucratic and I had to constantly adapt to the situation and expect to have to adapt and be flexible.

    2. what did you not learn that you had hoped to?

    There was one particular research project I was doing amongst listeners which I would have loved to start sooner, so that I could have executed it on a larger scale and would have learned more about research in the process. I can not go into detail about that on this blog, but planning and looking ahead is the key here!

    3. what would you change about your placement?

    Not much, except I would secure it earlier and prepare more coordination. Have more people who can help me out and secure a part of their time so that they can help me out if it’s necessary. Besides that I would do the research project I mentioned juts now earlier and I would love to do an evaluation of the internal communication of the radio. That is, if there are influential people within the radio who are willing to listen to my findings and are ready to make some changes or do further research based on those results.

    4. what advice would you give to a student going on placement in order to help him/her ave a better experience?

    – Be flexible: expect the best and prepare for the worst!
    – Be proactive: don’t sit around waiting to get tasks handed out to you. Create your own job! This will make things A LOT more interesting for you as well as for your employer.
    – Be valuable: make yourself an asset to the company. Be of value to the company, so that when you leave, the company loses something valuable that they would like to keep or get back. No matter what your plans are, do this! Even if you don’t plan on coming back or are actually planning to never come back; do it!
    – Be original: don’t go and don’t do what everyone else is doing. Pick an original company or organisation for your placement. Pick an original destination. This will make you learn so much more, will make you have so much more fun, will make life so much more interesting for you. Besides that, it will impress your host organisation, your professors, your social environment, as well as potential future employers when they see this on your CV! However, if you are not willing to be flexible and proactive then forget it. Go do what everyone else is doing or you will not make it. If you don’t feel like having to make the best out of situations, but prefer to be passive, then you are not fit for the exceptional.

    I hope this helps you out, whether you’re a student looking for a placement or currently on a placement or just someone interested in career strategy. Make sure to come back for more!

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  • A Time Experiment

    smile clockAs some of you will know, I recently moved back to The Netherlands from Bulgaria after finishing my placement with the Bulgarian National Radio. This meant that I was moving from a GMT +2 timezone, to a GMT +1 timezone, so in Bulgaria it’s always 1 hour later than here. I had no trouble adjusting, but my laptop did. Every time I put it an hour back, it would jump an hour forward. It annoyed me, but I didn’t care enough to actually figure it out and really do something about it.

    So then something started happening. I would actually get tired earlier, I would actually start doing what I should be doing at an earlier time (read: stop procrastinating sooner) and for a while, every day had an extra hour to it. That effect has worn off, but still, time is less ‘fixed’ as it is when your clock is telling the right time. Time’s such a strange thing, isn’t it?

  • The Usual

    When I came back from Bulgaria, I got drowned in school work, so the only thing I’ve really done besides that is set up this website as a continuation of the former one. Although not officially, yet. The course I’m doing is about the evaluation of internal communication processes and what’s most exciting is the lecturers involved; Dr. Guido Wolf, from the conex. Institute, and Dr. Nina Schuppener, from Hering Schuppener. It almost feels like it’s the first time I’m actually learning something in my university, or at least motivated to learn something.

    Anyway… I just spent four days in Germany, meeting students from the University of Duisburg/Essen, and setting up a way to start working together to analyze the internal communications of one out of four selected companies. The group I’m in was assigned to carry out a rather specific research with a big, German energy company. Very exciting!

    This Sunday I’m playing a couple of DJ sets at the DUPLO Festival in dB’s, Utrecht. There will be six bands performing between 3 in the afternoon until 10 in the evening… Between the performances, I’m taking care of the music and I have a set of an hour at the end (unless everyone leaves of course). To check out some of my work, go here.

    I should also be writing an article for Rethos.com, a website with articles dealing with activist and ideological topics, which will probably be about an organisation an acquaintance of mine has set up, called Live-Build. Keep a close eye on my Twitter updates if you’re interested.

    But for now…

    Flyer duplo festival

     

    Be there, or be square!

  • Wow Czech Airlines, wow!

    DEAR MS -last name spelled wrong even though it was at the bottom of the email they’re replying to-
    YOU HAVE TO DECLARE EXTRA LUGGAGE AT CHECK-IN DESK AT THE TIME OF DEPARTURE.
    PLEASE BE INFORMED 1/ONE/ EXTRA KILO COASTS EUR 16,-
    BEST REGARDS
    CSA CZECH AIRLINES SOFIA-D.SKENDEROVA

    Caps Lock + misspelling my name + calling me Ms. while I’m sure I’m a Mr. = a forward to the main desk of Czech Airlines + blog post 🙂

    Seriously, if they weren’t sure if I was a Ms. or Mr., there must have been a way around having to address me as either one. I signed my email with my first and last name. Couldn’t they have just made it “Dear first + last name”?

    I wonder if Czech Airlines is like this everywhere or whether it’s just Bulgaria. Not that I really care. My question got answered, but I can’t help but wonder how much they’re paying employees like this.

  • Money, money, money

    Two days before I finish my work here, I decided to calculate how much I actually make per day. I work full-time in a decent paying job, I’m around the national average.

    Make a guess in your mind.

    Any guess.

    Don’t read on until you have made a guess.

    Okay, ready? How about less than sixteen per day, but that’s in the Bulgarian currency… Converted to euro’s that’s less than eight. Is it more or less than what you guessed?
    I’m so happy I didn’t look at it this way earlier 🙂

  • Conversion rates

    When going to Bulgaria, don’t just take financial conversion rates into account. If you’re used to a rather punctual society, or culture, there’s another conversion rate into account.

    When someone says “I’ll call you at 7.30”, that means they’ll call you somewhere between 8 and 8.30 in Bulgarian time.

    Just a note for if you ever go here… or plan on dealing with me when I come back to Holland 😉

  • Is it too late to say Happy New Year?

    Okay, it’s been a while. Actually, it’s been three weeks. The longer I waited with posting, the more I had to tell, the less I felt like making time to tell all of it. This kept looping and looping, until now. I present to you…

    .
    Three weeks of Bas – in bullet points
    self-indulgence
    • Bouwe & Roos arrived at the airport only 45 minutes late. I say only because a lot of flights were canceled or had 4 or 5 hour delays. On Christmas eve! How cliché!
    • Needless to say, there was a lot of partying and playing around. On the second day of Christmas we went to a restaurant and as we were walking home I said “I have to show you guys a really, really bad club. It will be funny.” We all had a beer… then we decided to have another and move to the dancefloor. Two or three beers later we were talking to some Bulgarian guy who invited us to some party on New Year’s Eve. As we were getting our coats, ready to go home… a friend of him came up and said there was a drum ‘n bass party going on in some club and if we wanted to come. Fuck yes. We get to the club, club closed. We go to another, club closing. The Bulgarian guys and girl knew one more place that was open… it was called Kama Sutra and it was a stripclub (original name though). We decided that Christmas is a good time to visit a stripclub for the first time in your life so we went there. It was rather boring. We never spoke to those Bulgarian guys after that.
    • The next day, completely hung-over, we went to mount Vitosha. Took some great pictures, check it out.
    • We celebrated New Years Eve at a club where they didn’t bother stopping the music for a countdown. I left the club at 7 though, so apparently the party was not so bad… after all.. there was drum ‘n bass (and hardtechno… oh, and friends).
    • Then I decided to show Bouwe & Roos Plovdiv. This time around, it was snowy!

    Okay, so what else?

    • I have stopped using MSN Messenger. See you on Skype!
    • I have started updating my Photoblog again.
    • I have installed PeerGuardian and found out everyone’s watching me.
    • I’m still a vegetarian.
    • I’m getting more serious about DJing. I’m playing in Utrecht on the 24th of February. Details to be announced!
    • I’m looking for a place to live in Amsterdam. If someone knows a really good deal in Utrecht, tell me.
    • Radio Bulgaria interviewed me. Check it out here!
    • A Bulgarian national newspaper named Trud interviewed me. I’ll put the article up when it’s published.
    • Radio Sofia interviewed me. I have no record of this.

    Expect updates to be more regular from now on. I’ll be busy here though since it’s my last weeks in Bulgaria and I mostly want to spend time with the people I’ve met here.

  • Merry Christmas from Sofia!

    18-12-07-025.jpg

    Hi everyone!

    I’d like the chance to wish you all some happy holidays! I’m waiting for Bouwe & Roos to arrive at the airport here. What else? I uploaded pictures to my Picasa album. I’ll start updating the daily photoblog also. After all, I said daily. Not much to add really. Enjoy the week everybody!

    Oh, and check out the digital card.

    !
    Bas

  • Xmas Gifts

    If anyone feels like doing something special for me this Christmas, please do me a favour and get me a gift here.

    Now that’s a special gift.

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