Life was on the up and up in Amsterdam for me, and I could see things falling into place without the aid of a master plan, but rather just plain blind luck, and a girlfriend that worked for a social housing corporation. I’d started applying around for jobs the week before by getting my CV out into the local job market, and without much effort on my side an IT contracting agency called me and asked If I was interested in long term freelance job at a rate of £50 (GBP) per hour.
“Would that rate be suitable to you”? The nice man on the other end of the phone asked.
When he said the word, suitable, I had to stifle a laugh least he thought I was taking the piss or something. Compared to fuck-all, which was what I was getting as an unemployed foreigner, I thought that was pretty suitable, and so agreed to an interview.
A week later I was working for a European credit management company in their IT department doing software testing work. The job title though didn’t really reflect what I did. Almost immediately after starting with them, I went back to doing fuck-all, but this time getting paid for it. This was solely due to the company assembling the most incompetent senior managers in Europe into a single office space. Projects were never organised and nothing ever flowed through to my department in any way that could be called, regular. Hence I spent most of my day smoking cigarettes in the building common smoking area getting to know the regular smokers crowd. One day blended into the next, and before long I had myself a nice comfortable routine going, free from any financial concerns and work pressure.
Once the job was taken care of and I had some cash coming in my girlfriend M took me to her housing corporation and lied through her teeth for me so I could get my own rental apartment from some of the vacant ones waiting for renovations. The first one I looked at was a fabulous two room flat overlooking a canal only fifteen minutes bike ride from the Red Light District; somehow that was important to me even though I’d never had sex with a hooker in my life. Sure there wasn’t any central heating, and the shower was rigged up so the main electricity line and circuit breaker were just above the water pipes, in a spot where all the condensation gathered. (I was later told by a visiting electrician that I was lucky to be alive because I was washing myself in a stand up electric chair). But none of this mattered to me because the place was right in the centre of everything, and it would be mine. No more having to take abuse because I had dropped spliff ash on her floor, or failed to wash up the dishes to her satisfaction. It was a situation I was getting desperate to be rid of, so at the end of the tour – all 3 minutes of it – I said I’d take it and move in as soon as soon as possible.
The New flat; new job; and Balduino moves in as girlfriend tries to kill him by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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