Remember, Remember...

Exactly one year ago today I sat on the train home from my first day in the office as a working man* and I blogged.

 

If I were in a negative frame of mind, I might be disappointed by the fact that I am not joining the rest of the nation and celebrating this momentous anniversary by letting off a few fireworks.   I might also be disappointed that at whatever time in the evening it now is I am in an office of sorts with no windows.  Especially when the rest of my colleagues here have gone out for dinner, and I need to be on shift because of the way the slot chart is.

 

But perhaps surprisingly I am not in a negative frame of mind at all.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  For one thing, I really enjoyed my dinner just now.  That too is perhaps surprising, given that I had to rely on the supermarket on the way to work, the microwave here and a fork which I'd managed to borrow.  Even given these low expectations however, I can safely say that my Tuscany Salad and Hollandse stamppot: Hutspot met hachee** was delicious***, and I feel suitably replete.

 

More importantly, I do really enjoy my job.  Of course, I have had plenty of dull days in the last year, and even the occasional stressful one.  But that's par for the course, and on the whole I have found that I really like what I do.

 

Finally, when I sat on the train a year ago and thought about where I would be now I think I presumed that I would once again have been travelling home on a train, in the dark.  Although I had hoped for a bit of travel, I didn't imagine that I would actually be spending some time in Amsterdam, enjoying the perks of business travel.  OK, so in an ideal world i wouldn't be sat here right now waiting for the computer systems to reload for the umpteenth time, but as Dido sang, "it's not so bad, it's not so bad at all".  This morning I feasted on a sumptious hotel breakfast before strolling in to the centre of the city and indulging myself in a bit of culture at the Rijksmuseum.  Sometimes you've got to take the rough with the smooth, and really I cannot complain at all.

 

Here's to the next year...

 

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*or 'Young Professional' if you like.  "Good to see."
**this was evidently chunks of beef in gravy served with a carrot, onion and potato mash.  Mmm.
***Albert Heijn must be the equivalent of Waitrose or M&S.