Hi mates!
How has your week been? Just as crazy as mine? I’m happy to tell you about how seven days can feel like two and vice versa!
Bear with me, its been quiet busy…
I received the most exciting program possible put together by Tourism Queensland for the days of “The Final Countdown”, up and till the 6th of May, along with the information about the luxurious Stamford Hotel in Brisbane where I’ll be staying from May 1st till May 3rd.

My flight has been confirmed, and Cathay Pacific already ensured me I’d be treated like a princess on board. That’s double nice, as the 30th of April is Queensday, known to be the biggest and everybody’s favourite party in Holland.* This year my Queensday will be particularly special as my stop-over gives me the opportunity to spend an entire day in Hong Kong! That’s a very welcome extra! Can’t wait to discover Hong Kong and sit down with a fishy soup whilst getting acquainted with the ins and outs of Queensland .
(A contact of Tourism Queensland was so kind to forewarn the finalists for some nice “pop-quizzes” in which they’ll be checking out our Queensland knowledge, thrown at us at 9 AM, this happens to make me a bit nervous, knowing my “just-woken up-ask-me-anything-mode”.)

Furthermore I’ve been working on organising a new stunt and everything’s been confirmed! Yiehaah! It´s going to take place Sunday 26th at the beach in Zandvoort. Vodafone will sponsor the event again and other companies have been showing their most cooperative sides as well. Saan decided to make sure my posts written in Queensland will be supplemented with photos of the underwater wildlife, by giving me an underwater camera! Wow! I’m still surprised by the way you can achieve so many things by being positive and creative, as well as having the fortune of being in an attractive position for certain media and companies…

SO ALL THE DUTCHIES LIVING NEARBY: drag your lazy Sunday Bluesy body to the beach for BIG FUN, nice drinks and BIG BEATS! We´ll kick off at 1PM and all I need you to do is JUST BE THERE! That´s easy, even for a Sunday,  isn´t it?
Rapa Nui acts up to its reputation and will spoil our ears with the best DJ´s and bands to get that Aussie-feeling going on Up Here!
We´ll be dancing and cheering until the last DJ has played all his records, while the sun has to awaken Queensland…

* Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about/ which overwhelming event he or she is missing…: Consider this an invite for Queensday next year. All you have to bring is everything you can find which is orange, wear and carry it around on the boat on which me and my friends are having our drinks ´n dance on. You’ll feel like a real Dutchie floating along the canals in Amsterdam, queuing up between all the other boats accompanied by sound systems testing their maximum volume…

How was your weekend? Extended with a Free Friday and a Moody Monday maybe? There sure was enough partying going on in Amsterdam and down the coast, because other beach bars have thrown their opening parties as well.
Saturday afternoon I went to Haarlem, a city between Amsterdam and the North Sea I have been living in for four years. I still love to visit Haarlem. After living in chaotic and noisy Barcelona I couldn´t consider going back to a city with not even 10% of Barcelona’s population and not even near 1% of the chaos and pollution my lungs and I got used to. Now I had a very special afternoon planned with some interesting ladies, named “Stoere Vrouwen” (“Tough Women”, in English) to empower a message worth marching for. Stay tuned, I´ll soon upload a nice movie I´m editing at this moment, along with some hopefully inspiring words.

Later that afternoon I rushed back to Amsterdam to be just on time for work and had some first class sushi, freshly made by the Japanese sushi chef. Yummy! Why is it that my food always tastes at it best after 10PM?

Sunday I went to Rapa Nui, not far from Woodstock 69 at all, to join my friends Meester Moeilijk (Mister Difficult, in English) & Sjonnie Disco who played the most danceble records while making real contact with the audience and dressing up all the time according to the theme of the record. I took photos for the beach bar and of the dynamic duo. More friends came a long and we had an awesome time dancing, singing, jumping and “trying” to look silly for the camera.

Today I had a lovely Easter lunch with a dear friend of mine who did an interview with me for his study and guess what… surprisingly enough it was NOT about the Best Job! So there ARE interesting things going on besides the movements and actions of 16 ambitious globetrotters?

Ok, let’s see…: did you hide ´n find any Easter eggs?

Can I tell you about one of the best spots and where I feel the most “Magz to the max” in Holland?
That sure has to be down the coast, a 30 minutes drive from Amsterdam.
Yesterday evening, after having worked for hours organizing for the next (currently super secret) stunt, doing some blogging and later some shopping, cleaning and other stuff I luckily won´t have to worry about in three weeks from now, I finally got to the beach with some friends. I needed the sea, to feel the sand between my toes and BREATH!

The part of the beach we went to was super crowded by people in a very celebratory mood and for a good reason: what is, in my opinion, the best beach bar in Holland had just opened for 2009! Yeehaa! It´s a place 40 meters away from the first little wave of the North Sea and its name Woodstock 69 tells you all about the atmosphere I hope, and if not you should sure come over and check out the vibe. Every year this place is completely built up and broken down using 80% of the same (recycled) materials. The interior, as well as the exterior has been fully designed to meet your every chill-out mood, as well as when you feel like a dancefloor-rocker or a campfire-starer.

No pretentiousness, no clothing rules, not so many rules at all actually… Just “come in and sea” as they say. I worked there during the summers of 2005 and 2006, just before I emigrated to Spain and at the end of last summer when I got back from Spain. These summers, these working shifts flying by, these inspiring people who aren´t aware of being inspiring, these cosmopolitan, crazy colleagues, these records they are playing, the spontaneous jamsessions… There might just be other bars in the world that look a lottle like it but the atmosphere of the place and the energy of the people are not only unique but authentic to the bone. That authenticy, the joy, openess and the feeling of freedom while making sure teamwise you give people the time of their lives, made me decide right there and then not to settle, jobwise, for less than the feeling I got when being there. Wherever, doing whatever.

There are some words and sentences said over the years that have left a lasting impression on me, or simply sound really clever and its nice to repeat them to others and try to sound just as inspiring, you hope, as the person who said them to you in the first place.
One of the sentences I remember is very simple, but effective and said to me by the owner of Woodstock last year when I was complaining about my current job back then in an office, being an account manager. He said: “If it doesn´t make you happy, don´t do it. Quit. Now. There is ALWAYS something else that you can do and you will find it when you quit putting effort into what you don´t like.”
So a month later I quit my job, I was looking for jobs in Australia to get as as close to that “Magz to the max”  feeling as possible, and the rest we now know: here I am, a finalist for, and read carefully now: “The Best Job in the World”!

Now you shout! Share your Best Spot wherever it is on this globe. In or close to nature? A certain village, house, park, garden, chair, couch, bar or car?… I can´t make it up for you, so please help me out! You never know, you might end up as a candidate for the “Next-Best Job in the World”!

This morning I got to meet Mr. Hill.
Not just any Mr. Hill, but James Hill, one of two Aussie finalists.
After packing and shipping his life from London back to Australia, he somehow managed to visit some friends in Holland and Belgium, and so he and his friend Monique passed by Amsterdam to (re)energize themselves by having ginger carrot juice and a typical Dutch sandwich (“wow, this brown bread is actually soft”) with me and Lluna.

We complimented each other for the efforts and shown creativity as been published and talked about ISLANDS (Interviews, Successes, Life changing, Applicants, Nature, Dreams and Stress). He now knows first hand I am his biggest fan when it comes to to his creative photography and he gave some attention to my dog Lluna, so we are best mates now! No seriously, James is a down to earth kind of guy and as I already wrote on this blog I’m a both-feet-on-the-ground kind of girl which of course means we see eye to eye on a lot of things! We pictured all kinds of scenarios for the exciting days to come in less than three weeks, talked about the amazing programme that’s waiting for us in Queensland and laughed and cheered and ordered another juice, tea and coffee.
Then he had to get moving for his train to Brussels and we said goodbye and all the best until we meet again, Down Under! James will already order a juice or a glass of wine for me and I will sure bring loads of one Holland’s specialities that he became addicted to… Stroopwafels, that is! These are delicious flat syrup filled biscuity/cookie type things. In Dutch, by the way the word is pronounced like you would say “Strope varffles” – there,  now you can’t tell me you don’t get educated on this blog!

Earlier today I received a call from John Wright, a journalist of the Courier Mail which is Queensland’s largest daily newspaper.
…Oh boy, do I love the Australian accent…!
Oops, back to the story. He has been following the Best Job in the World closely and now he’s writing a profile piece on each finalist.*
He asked a lot of questions amongst which was what my current profession is and whenever this is asked during interviews, it’s hard to explain I don’t really have a job, because I quit the last one in January, went travelling in Brazil in February, landed in Holland to get immediately on my next trip called “The Best Job in the world”! Let me tell you it’s hard to apply for a job when you have to tell, during the first interview, you MIGHT need to get two weeks off pretty soon, not to mention the 1st of July – option. So the fact that they know who you are and what might possibly happen, all of a sudden the possible finalist-status has become something the company you want to work for, can use against you, isn’t that ironic?

In the end, MOMO Amsterdam, consisting of a trendy bar and high quality restaurant in the centre of Amsterdam, adopted me as Hostess on very flexible hours, being free to be in Australia for the whole month of May AND including lovely colleagues from all over the world.  This should get me in good training for my next job which will have flexible hours, lovely colleagues from all over the world (mostly of the antipodean variety) and will involve me spending a lot longer than a month in Australia – ha ha ha!

By the way I told an English friend of mine about the current job being a Hostess the other day and he looked at me kind of worried and said “err…. really?” Apparently ‘working as a hostess’ means something a little seedier in some parts of the world (or maybe just his world!) so before you all get the wrong idea, here in innocent little Holland it just means exactly what it says!

*Note for John Wright: my sincere apologies for making it a bit hard for you to get a two-to-three-words-answer to the profession – question by naming what I feel passionate about in life and what I have been working on in the past, I hope you are not bounded to a 500 words article about me! Next time I will eat less sugars and sit down while being interviewed…