davidii

( My carreer in the stripclub bunsiness )

Ok, so I am going home in 10 days... What have these almost 3 months brought me?

Most of all: a lot of sitting at either the computer or at the front desk of my cousin's club. Both were pretty boring at times, but it was OK.

( Forex )

In one week, we'll know if I really believe I'm ready to become rich as a forex trader or not :) I sure hope so, because me returning quickly to the USA is a bit dependant on that. But more on that later.

I will tell in a seperate post more about working at the club, for those who really want to read everything I write. The rest I will just tell the short version: I've been helping out almost every night for the past few weeks, sitting at the front desk. It wasn't that much work, so I read a lot and hang out with my co-workers. It's a fun experience, one not many people will have in their lives :)

Furthermore I have done some fun things ( like... )

And then... I go home. And still unsure exactly what will happen after that.

( The future )

Anyway, I'll be back in Holland in 2 weeks and anyone who wants to spend some time with me... Let me know!

But my apologies for the Dutch-impaired, I just feel like writing in Dutch right now... You can try an online translator to try to understand it ;) It's about my (lack of) social life over here.

( Sociaal leven )

Oh, and I've added some more pictures at http://www.xlii.nl/da5id/pics/usa (the link is also provided in my userinfo if you ever want to see if there's updates).

Some of Donut Falls which I already told you about, some of Payson Lakes where I went swimming and "pedalboating" (NL: waterfietsen) a few days later, and some of a beautiful thunder sky of last Sunday. I can tell you, on the pictures where the sky looks very red... That is really how it looked like!!!! We've also had some really wonderful thunderstorms the last few days, with beautiful lightning in the mountains when it was dark... So you saw their contours outlined, and beautiful arcs hitting the tops of the mountains... Yes, it's really beautiful here and I haven't seen even 1% of it!

I am so terrible in updating, don't know, sit a lot of the day at the computer but somehow never done a really good update on my life here. Of course many of you talk to me online, so know a lot of it, but often I say to expand on it here and then I don't. Seems I'm just not in a writing mood these days.

But I'll give it a try, I've been here for almost 6 weeks now, longer than last time!

( Long talk about the club, and a little about real estate and foreign exchange at the end )

I just noticed how I start to call my cousin even in here "Dietrick", just because I always call him that to people around here.

On the same sybject, it's great how most people don't have a problem with pronouncing my own name the Dutch way! They pick it up quickly, and most of the time also introduce me that way to others.

And if some people want to be able to call me by my last name and have troubles pronouncing it properly, then it's their own problem :p
Be happy I'm leaving it at the first half!

Still not in the mood of telling long stories, don't know, sometimes I just feel like it, sometimes I don't. So I still owe you the stories of Dark Arts festival, the battle in court for ownership of Raskals/Players and just in general some things I've been doing the last 3 weeks. I hope I will like to tell about those later.

Right now I have the house for myself. Yesterday Dietrick and Catherine left for Moab, to visit some nice places in the area. I would have loved to go there with them, last year it was a blast. But I reckoned that they might like some time together, and actually I wouldn't mind 2 days to have all for myself. Also, yesterday morning I had a headache and didn't feel like a 4-hour ride, so I stayed home.

Though it's July 4th today, festivities were yesterday, sinc today is Sunday. Didn't see much of it, but it was OK. Went to Sugar House Park to finally meet Kearsten, someone I already knew from the internet en numerous phonecalls since last time I was here, but never met. Hang out with her, her boyfriend derek and some friends, watched some fireworks (though from the balcony of the apartment we were at you hardly saw anything) and afterwards I decided to go to Area 51 to dance some energy away. Met some people with whom I headed into the mountains this evening, we went to Big Cottonwood Canyon where we followed a trail to some waterfalls, called Donut Falls. It was great! Pictures will follow soon, and then all of you can see how this guy with some fear of heights did some awesome daring rockclimbing :)

This week is going to be busy, thursday Players will open, and a lot still has to be done. I'll try to keep you informed!

Ok, tomorrow I'll try to write some more about what I've been up to the last few weeks, but here's some pictures from both my previous visit which I didn't post yet, and from my stay here now.

See thm at http://www.xlii.nl/Da5id/Pics/USA

I'm also working on gettin new lay-outs etc. for my new website, which will also incorporate many personal pics, so the link might change the next few weeks.

80% of this was written the day after I arrived, I just didn't get to finishing it... so just read it as if written 2 weeks ago ;)

( The trip )

The last few days there've been about 4 moments where I thought "Wow, finally done... I covered all receipts, reports etc." and then suddenly Diederik would miraculously uncover a new pile at least as big as the previous one. So what I expected to be 1 or 2 day job, turned out to be almost a week's work!

And of course, there were a lot of double occurences of the same transaction (both a receipt and a check, an invoice and a credit card report - and I even had to go through two almost identical credit card reports), so I couldn't just enter everything, but had to check all items if they hadn't been entered before... And the difficulty here were some discrepancies between the date on an invoice and on the credit card or check report, or sometimes an invoice had been paid in two terms or the name of the company turned out to be different on the cc report! But luckily, with my keen memory of numbers, I managed to uncover a lot of those, even when sometimes I had entered the earlier occurence of the investment a few days before! Probably I have missed some, but it can't be more than 5.

And now, it's really done. All investments of Diederik in one of his clubs have been entered into the spreadsheet, so his accountant can sort out some tax stuff and prepare it for an audit. And for the next few days I don't want to see any bill, invoice, check report or whatever!

You can't say I'm not earning my right to be here right now ;)

2 minutes ago, a deer was standing in our garden and looking in through the window! It just stood there, munching grass and looking at me, less than 2 meters away! I didn't have my camera in reach, but could take a quick snapshot with my phone, although it just bowed it's head down behind a pane. Before I could take another, it slowly walked on to our neighbours.

Isn't that just amazing?

That's one of the beautiful things of being here... First there's this fabulous thunder & lightning (I saw 2 beautiful lightning forks!), and when it's over, a lovely sunset over the mountains right next to the dark clouds covering some of them.

That's for sure, it is here so much more beautiful than the flat Netherlands. But then again, at moments like this, the "missing" suddenly pops up it's head again as well...

and yes, I still have to finish my story about my trip, and I also have some stories to tell about the last week... including seeing an American court room from the inside!

Well, I'm still writing about my trip to get here, when the story has been finished, I'll post it! For now, just a short message to let you all know I arrived sound and safely in SLC last saturdaymorning (a bit later than planned...) and I'm doing fine!

I feel better than expected, seems like my mind is finally finding some peace with the situation, though it'll take a long time to really settle down completely. But I think the distance and all the work that I'm going to do here will help me out with that, and to be honest: last wednesday's visit also helped a lot to at least feel as if not everything has been lost. It made me feel less distressed about going away, since now at least it didn't feel as if I was leaving a big black hole behind me. Thank you!

And now... we'll see how it goes. Already busy with helping out with the clubs (helped varnishing the walls that Diederik's has painted to look like marble in Raskals->going to be Players) and reading into forex (foreign exchange) trading, something that Diederik is thinking about venturing into.

Raskals is still running only 2 nights a week, and it seems the planned June 24th re-opening won't be possible, since Michael (investor) is still late with turning up the needed money. He pays bills that are extremely urgent, but for the rest it's hard to get hold of him. So Diederik is now talking to other possible investors, to see if they can help out better. It'll all come around, it just takes a bit longer. However, last weekend was a HUGE succes for Club Utopia (former Axis) so it seems that one might finally get back on track as well.

Also settled into the house now, unpacked today and made my room a bit more really "my room"... for as long as it lasts, since Diederik hopes to sell the house soon. But only to be able to buy a cheaper but quite bigger house, half of the costs of this house goes to the status it provides... Something he could afford before, but not anymore.

And even my social life is picking up, kept in touch with a few people in SLC and hopefully will meet some of them this week already. And the weather is great, about 27 ºC but with a nice breeze. At the end of the week it might even get a bit hotter. So mid-day won't be a good time to venture out into the moutnains again, but later in the afternoon and beginning of the evening will be fine!

So, seems like life won't be that bad... Not as I'd dreamt for a long time how it would be, but still, something to be content with for now.

There I go, back to Holland. My last days here seem unending, my mind is focused on Monday or actually even Wednesday...

My mind is going nuts, it's hard to find distraction, concentrate on anything. I can only think about the last 2 weeks, what happened, how it was possible, how it coyld happen so unexpectedly, why I didn't act when I started to think I should, and what to say/ask next week and on what grounds we then will continue...

So until this is over, I'm just useless. Afterwards, only time can tell.

I'll be back in Utah sometime in June. The business is actually kicking off, the financer finally came through after a long time of contemplating, not with as much money as hoped first, but enough to start! Lots of changes which actually originally were his ideas and we got excited about, can be implemented later.

So when I'm back, the new club might actually be running.

My future now is so totally different from what I'd dreamed about lately, I need a lot of time to adjust to it. One day, new dreams may pop up, but I'm afraid that for a long time, if ever, they can't beat the reality that even beat my best dreams I ever had before.

Last few days I'v been a bit ill, it started saturday but sunday and monday I really started to notice how I was a bit tired and moody. Monday I also got a harsh throat, and last night I couldn't sleep that well, and got some headaches on top of that. So this morning I stayed in bed for a long time, and in the afternoon I felt a bit better.

( Food and ammo )

( And I work as well! )

Yaaay!

I finally got my cellphone! Due to some wrong information they gave me, I cannot use it to make any international calls nor use the contract while in Europe, but for the rest it can do everything I want and more :) Luckily I can send text messages (sms) to Europe, though I'm not sure yet if it costs me 15 cents or 1 cent per message (local costs 1 cent, but read further for some curious details about USA cellphones...). I also can receive calls and messages, so who wants to give me a call or send me a text message (sms), please do!

My number: +1 801 792 0735

I even can make pictures with it, and I can use it for my Dutch contract (so my mom can keep my old Dutch phone :).

Some curious details:

1) in the USA, you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls (not sure what about ), but most of the time it is still comparatively cheaper when your calls are 50% incoming and 50% outgoing. And you can get deals where you have unlimited use for weeknights and weekend. I pay 40 dollars a month which gives me 600 minutes anytime and unlimited during nights and weekends. Not sure if I have to pay for international calls, or if they get deducted from my monthly total etc. I guess the latter.

2) You also pay for incoming text messages, that's really ridiculous. However, it's much cheaper, from 0.6 to 5 cents (on t-mobile, others maybe more expensive) both for sending and receiving, so with a 50%/50% ratio it's cheaper again.
Not sure about international, it's more expensive (15 cents for me) but not sure if I pay for incoming international text messages...

Gonna have dinner, so that's it for now... Cya!

OK, I decided I'd make this a seperate entry. The other was all about my work and business, this is about some things that happen in my "private" life...

I've been visiting some other local clubs, including the local goth club, which was fun! Also visited a few of the "competition" of Axis, and though that was kinda from a business aspect as well, it was also fun to just go out and talk to some people. The weather has been a bit on and off, after the first sunny week we had some days of rain and even snow just a bit higher up in the mountains, then beginning of this week some sun again and now it's rainy again.

Tuesday I crashed the garage door. It's a door that slides up, you activate it with a remote in the car. I was borrowing Diederik's truck to pick someone up for a nice picknick in a park. Normally the doors slides up in 10-20 seconds, and I'd been busy with changing a CD etc. so that had taken at least a minute. I also didn't hear the door anymore, so I just drove back... and heard a crashing sound. Turned out somehow the door hadn't slided up all the way, there was about 30-40 centimetes sticking down, and because the truck is very high (especially because of the rack on top), that was enough for it to crash into it. A whole wooden panel had been crashed, and some of the metal had been bend as well. In the end it turned out not as bad as we expected, but still... I felt very guilty. But ah well, it wasn't really my fault, it could've happened to anyone. Luckily we could get it opened so I could drive the trcuk out, and despite the bad start the picknick afterwards was very nice, good weather, some icecream, nice bagels and donuts and good talking.

For the rest I haven't done a lot the last few days, just a lot of reading, internetting, listening to music... I also try to spend some time with Sophia, Diederik's 6-year old daughter, watching movies etc., to take some stress away from Diederik.

And it's good to find some rest, although sometimes I do miss my busy social life in Holland. I hope I'll get to know some more people around soon, and get to go out a bit with them. Visiting clubs on your own just isn't the same when you don't already know like 100 people who'll be there :) But I guess that's a matter of time. I'm just not used to not having so many people who visit me or whom I can visit anymore. And of course there's one special person that I miss particularly... But we'll manage.

So, time for an update again... I promised to tell more about what kind of work I;m doing here, but for now, it's all still just a bit of this and a bit of that. Most of the time helping Diederik our with brainstorming and attending meetings...

( Club Axis )

( Raskals )

Here's the pictures that I made during my walk in the mountains yesterday:

http://www.xlii.nl/Da5id/Pics/040321%20SLC%20Mountains

Here's also a picture of Diederik's girlfriend and their less than 2-weeks old son:



Also look at that sunset! I will try to post some pics I made of it that day as soon as possbile.

And I'm so happy with my new version of J Album, I can make so much nicer picture sites with it!

For those who are thinking about using the address I posted earlier... I totally forgot to take liquorish (NL -> drop) with me! And since only the Dutch, Northern Germans and Scandinavians like, sell and buy the stuff, I probably won't be able to buy any over here. So if you really feel the urge to make me happy...

I especially like it salty (salmiak or "dubbelzout") though a mix is also OK.