Here in the Netherlands, being an office support staff is not a position where you serve others. No, on the contrary it is a position where you can order people around, since you have the information and the keys to office supplies.
I've written something similar about the dutch services before, but let me just add a bit more.
First of all, after having adjusted to the system here more since I've lived here for two years, I was able to "adapt" to their slow manner and impoliteness.
However, one thing I didn't know or forgot maybe was that you should never accuse them of not doing their job remotely wrong or bad. They will just make your life more miserable.
Ex) I have e-mailed our secretary who is in charge of faculty graduate issues to answer a very short list of questions which were needed for a meeting 2 weeks later. One week later, after no response I wrote back, nicely- i.e. please, if it isn't too much of a bother, many thanks in advance etc - to answer it back, and asked if she was alright. No answer and tomorrow being the meeting I went downstairs, to see she is chatting away with colleague.
I ask her if she got the e-mail and she says yes, and I ask her why she hasn't replied, she tells me it isn't her job to answer every single e-mail, and it wasn't something she could answer anyway. I told her it was two weeks ago and two e-mails and I asked her specifically if it wasn't her duty to forward it to someone else, which would've took 30 seconds. She goes, well I was sick and the sort, and I don't like you speaking to me like that. I ask her, well I have a meeting tomorrow with nothing. she starts to get really upset and trying to cry and kicks me out of the office. (in between that somewhere I asked her if it wasn't her job to facilitate the people at the graduate school - she answered "yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but yeah...")
I feel like I am dealing with a small infant, who cries all the time and pisses you off but you have to be very gentle with, or else you will pay for it, i.e. getting nothing done- which I will not be surprised if this would be the case from now on.
All in all, I have no clue what they do- seriously- but whatever it is, it ain't to facilitate people's work.
Maybe it is hiding valuable information in which none of us other workers are not capable of handling. Then again, this reminds me alot like the secretary - Carol- from Dilbert. so maybe it's a secretary thing not specifically a Dutch secretary thing- having said this my experience with Scottish/English/German/Korean secretaries are to the contrary.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Fuck... is it the end of the year already???
Is it me or is the time just flying by?
I mean I've heard it already, how when you are a little child because you haven't lived that many days up to that point, a day relatively seems long, where as when you are my age, - of a certain age, because you are comparing it to a longer phase of life, it just seem much shorter.
1 day for a 5 year old = 1/1825 of his life
where as 1 day for a 30 year old is 6 times faster..
which means 1 hour feels like 10 minutes. a week feels like a day, and birthdays just come like every second month or something!
And seriously, this is becoming ridiculous!
I am getting to the point where before I get used to writing down a year, 2007 for example, it passes, and I have to get used to writing down a new year!
I can't imagine what life will be when I am sixty... it will be twice as fast as now, which means, it will be literally, after I eat breakfast it will be dinner time, and well celebrating birthdays will feel a bit redundant.
Anyhow, for me, after the speed of life increase to a point where I can't control, I have started to keep my expectations of what I can do in a given day abit low. I mean like I feel like to wake up take a shower brush teeth take a dump and have three meals, get back in bed seems like an achievement on its own given the short time we have to do all of this! I mean if I manage to do anything on top of this, like floss for example, that day has been productive. No, I don't feel like I am a lazy person, who dilly dally all day. On the contrary, I am swift and agile- well I thought to be like that but these days, I don't know.
Looking around a bit on this idea of time and age, I realized that it isn't a new thing at all.(of course)
Well we have first of all, the all so famous relativity of time by Mr One Stone.... Einstein.
In his theory of General Relativity and more specifically Gravitational time dilation it is said that time pass at different rates in regions of different gravitational potential. Which means that we as adults being further away from earth than younglings, we feel that time passes much faster. (no just kidding) it is actually about if you were to be in a space ship which travels in the speed of light, what you perceive as a day will be like a year to the person left on earth because you are in that ultra super fast ship- and a different gravitational potential(here is a simple easy to understand description of this). So in these terms, when we are kids we are in space ships, which for them a minute feels like a hour for us. This is why kids move crazy fast and for us seem restless, since their lives are speed up 5 times more than what it is for us. But don't worry they all end up coming back to earth times eventually.
The psychological perception of time and its relativity to age has also been tested and proved by a group of researchers[this paper]. Through survey/experimental studies, they prove that the perception of the speed of time does indeed increase as you grow older. Also in addition to this, time to be speeding up as the Earth we live in gets older as well. In other words, we as in the people who live in current times, feel that time is much faster than people felt in the past.
Of course the validity of this argument and its methods are fully up to yous. But I would imagine you will not disagree with me on the point that time is flying by .. and well what do you know, there goes another five minutes of your life.
I mean I've heard it already, how when you are a little child because you haven't lived that many days up to that point, a day relatively seems long, where as when you are my age, - of a certain age, because you are comparing it to a longer phase of life, it just seem much shorter.
1 day for a 5 year old = 1/1825 of his life
where as 1 day for a 30 year old is 6 times faster..
which means 1 hour feels like 10 minutes. a week feels like a day, and birthdays just come like every second month or something!
And seriously, this is becoming ridiculous!
I am getting to the point where before I get used to writing down a year, 2007 for example, it passes, and I have to get used to writing down a new year!
I can't imagine what life will be when I am sixty... it will be twice as fast as now, which means, it will be literally, after I eat breakfast it will be dinner time, and well celebrating birthdays will feel a bit redundant.
Anyhow, for me, after the speed of life increase to a point where I can't control, I have started to keep my expectations of what I can do in a given day abit low. I mean like I feel like to wake up take a shower brush teeth take a dump and have three meals, get back in bed seems like an achievement on its own given the short time we have to do all of this! I mean if I manage to do anything on top of this, like floss for example, that day has been productive. No, I don't feel like I am a lazy person, who dilly dally all day. On the contrary, I am swift and agile- well I thought to be like that but these days, I don't know.
Looking around a bit on this idea of time and age, I realized that it isn't a new thing at all.(of course)
Well we have first of all, the all so famous relativity of time by Mr One Stone.... Einstein.
In his theory of General Relativity and more specifically Gravitational time dilation it is said that time pass at different rates in regions of different gravitational potential. Which means that we as adults being further away from earth than younglings, we feel that time passes much faster. (no just kidding) it is actually about if you were to be in a space ship which travels in the speed of light, what you perceive as a day will be like a year to the person left on earth because you are in that ultra super fast ship- and a different gravitational potential(here is a simple easy to understand description of this). So in these terms, when we are kids we are in space ships, which for them a minute feels like a hour for us. This is why kids move crazy fast and for us seem restless, since their lives are speed up 5 times more than what it is for us. But don't worry they all end up coming back to earth times eventually.
The psychological perception of time and its relativity to age has also been tested and proved by a group of researchers[this paper]. Through survey/experimental studies, they prove that the perception of the speed of time does indeed increase as you grow older. Also in addition to this, time to be speeding up as the Earth we live in gets older as well. In other words, we as in the people who live in current times, feel that time is much faster than people felt in the past.
Of course the validity of this argument and its methods are fully up to yous. But I would imagine you will not disagree with me on the point that time is flying by .. and well what do you know, there goes another five minutes of your life.
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