The plot around Amstelveen, dear readers, continues. You all know that I’ve been going pretty regularly to be Amsterdam language café English night for about six months. I go there primarily because I like the people and because I could possibly get myself some students as has happened. Janice was one of those. At the last one, I met a man who believes in English language learning through the use of play and games. his organizations called The Conversation Playground. What he does is go into primary schools in the Amsterdam area and set up after school classes for English language where the focus is simply on playing word games. We met for coffee last Wednesday. It was a productive meeting. We were able to share ideas and the upshot is that he wants me to join his team. I am kind of looking forward to being in a classroom with children. The bonus is that the money is a little bit better than TEC. And, dear readers, you guessed it, he is based in Amstelveen.
Over at the English Center, I was able to convince my Dutch student to sign up for 18 hours of lessons with me starting in February and instead of every two weeks like he wanted, he agreed to my suggestion of once a week for an hour. So I figure since I’m going to be here anyway a lot I’m going to keep my Japanese students and see if I can consolidate the two into Monday nights. It would be great if I could keep my real estate guys on Monday afternoons and then I can take Mondays off from VIPKid. Speaking of, I have added Sundays into my schedule again. While I am not loving the extra three hours, I might as well turn Sunday into a regular workday as I have Felix from 11 to 1. Therefore I have opened up 8 to 11 to VIP kid. That still gives me some semblance of a Sunday because I end at one and can do other things.
Despite an upgrade to macOS Catalina, My issues at the bookshop continue and I still cannot get online. I am not sure what the problem is but it’s been four months that I can’t use the Internet. This is becoming ridiculous. This on top of my issues with my Mac is causing me quite a bit of concern. I guess I just need a new computer. It turns out that I also need a new phone. The battery life on my iPhone 6 has gone down to almost 0. I can be off power for about an hour using my iPhone as a radio and then it goes to 0%. Even I know that that’s probably a little bit too fast of a drain. I think I’m going to take the opportunity and get out of Apple completely. So, dear readers, any suggestions for a new phone that is not Apple, I appreciate it. Ideally, I would like to spend less than €500. And really somewhere far south of €500 because I think that kind of money is ridiculous for a phone.
But as ever, the tech issues that I experienced were great for my writing. I was able to get quite a bit of writing and editing done on Thursday. Though I really do wish that I could type a little faster. It makes 500 words seem like an accomplishment when you only type about 36 words a minute. And I for one get distracted by other people typing really fast around me. I need to learn how to turn the sound of other people typing quickly into either white noise, or inspirational sound so that I can actually get to their level. At my age, however, I’m not so sure that it’s possible. The fingers don’t work as quickly.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
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