UEB: Unemployment Espresso Bar

Before reading this, I have an assignment for you; go get a cup of coffee. Or tea. And a spoon; no, it doesn't matter if you drink it without sugar. Just do it. Please.
Ready?
Monday was the first day of the rest of my unemployment life. Although I hope it has an expirydate, it was so special, it deserves it's own blog.
The world, or better yet, the office is divided on the matter, but words like 'brave' and 'gutsy' (the women) were more used than 'crazy' or 'stressfull'. Because it is something else, giving up a set contract with steady income for... well, nothing concrete yet. But the freedom I felt on monday was incredible.
I sat in the Urban Espresso Bar stirring in my glass of cafe Latte and it hit me:'this is all I'm doing; stirring honey. With a spoon. In some milky coffee'. You should try it (see, there was a point to the assignment, I'll give you a few moments).
It doesn't get more 'NOW' than that. No worries about self-imposed to-do lists, deadlines, dishes, the judicial system or even Japan. Just stirring coffee.

Off course I don't plan on spending the next few weeks or months or God forbid, years doing nothing but meeting up for coffee and taking up space in the UEB. On second thought, I could live with 'weeks', though. But for now it's lovely; I feel relaxed, full of ideas, I'm getting my head round my future. For now.
Hook thinks it's hilarious. Apparently I said I wasn't going to do anything (no letters, no job agencies, nothing) for two weeks. Today is wednesday and I already worked my ass off on a large event in Ahoy, re-installed my Mac, attended my fabulous leaving-do, wrote two letters in addition to the dozen I wrote in the last few months. Unfortunately I received an equal amount of rejections. But in all fairness I'm not schooled as a communication expert, staffing employee or web-editor. And some of them are probably right when they turn me down 'because they are afraid I'll be bored shortly' and 'I'm overqualified'. In addition to that, I explained my disastrous meetings with temp-agencies in a previous blog (the NUT). I'm not worried yet, but ask me again in 3 months time.
Secretly I'm hoping for an experience like Renee Zellweger. Rumour has it that she worked in an office in order to prepare for her role as Bridget Jones. I would love to do the same, but than to get some inspiration (or should I say: dirty workplace secrets) for my Criminology freelance project; the Right Trace. But for now, I've got places to go (Prague and Russia), coffee-cups to stir and blogs to write.

Broken Windows

I was cleaning up my Outlook-inbox at work, when I came across this little blog I wrote about 1.5 years ago. Because I giggled when I reread it, I guess it's still postable. I couldn't publish it back then, because it is a bit critical regarding my job; but that's all changed now. I decided being critical could be a job as well. So here's a little insight in what the study of criminology means in practice. And hopefully I'll be able to do more under the name of 'the Right Trace'.

My favourite colour is purple.
My favourite Indian curry is the chicken Korma.
My favourite criminological theory is the 'broken window theory'.
Now, I don't want to start a whole discussion on 'what is a criminological theory', I've heard enough of that in the last couple of days on the Common Sessions in Rotterdam (presentations by criminology students). You know what I mean: If a window (or door, or picnic-bench) is broken (either destroyed, vandalised, graffiti'd or just kaput), you need to repare it. Otherwise it will 'provoke' people to destroy other things in that neighbourhood. If you leave it unrepaired, it it will lead to more trash, upset neighbours who stop caring about their street and eventually you will end up with one of Rita's Prachtwijken.
I love the theory's practicalness, because I am a practical girl. It offers handles to the ones who are in the field doing something about crime, more than merely discussing it in an academic atmosphere (which was lovely by the way).
What it boils down to, is this: fix it. Now you do not get more practical than that, you would think...

As a practical girl I was reading the daily 'juvenile nuisance' reports last week and I came across the logging of an incident. The police officer received a phonecall from an attentive neighbour who had noticed a car in his street with the window smashed (those of you who paid any attention know what you should do by now). The police officer did a lot of things, but fixing it, was not one of them.
He wrote down why it would be important to tow the car away (in accordance with 'broken windows'). He ran the plate and found out that the car belonged to a junkie. He concluded that this fellow would not (be able to) pay for the towing of the car in order to have it repaired. The police officer decided to leave it as it was.
I was confused, this was wrong on so many levels, I started typing an email to the officer in question straight away. Knowing the impact of the emails that I send when I am, let's say, inspired, I decided to take a look at it again, crossing some words out, rearrange the message and eventually deleting the whole thing. I didn't want to hurt the police officer and get any more complaints in the form of X's behind my name.
I would have been happy to leave it at that, would I not have gone to the previously mentioned Common Sessions, where I realised that I should have just send that email, it's okay to be critical, even if it means upsetting my colleagues.
So thank you for that. My workload just got increased by a tenfold.