Falling off my bike

Word of the day: met = with

Me on the bike was an accident waiting to happen, and I'd had so many close calls - cyclists swerving out in front of me, trams tinkling their bells at me, dim fathers pushing baby prams on the cyclist lanes - well, I finally fell off the bike, and all on my own doing.

Went out last night on the bike (really nice cycling around Rotterdam by night actually, seeing all the lights by the river), and made a turn too sharply, hit the pavement and my bike came crashing down. Luckily I managed to find the ground with my feet and I didn't fall, but the bike did miraculously hit my leg... on the other side that it fell (??). As in, my bike fell to the left, but hit my right leg instead. Don't really know how that happened, but there was a cyclist behind me, only a few feet away, and thank goodness he didn't hit me. He was pretty concerned with my fall, but I was okay, so he just smiled and left.

Oh well.

Yesterday was also the first time I walked to the city centre on my own. I'm not very good with directions as when I'm with someone else who knows the way, I tend to zone out and focus more on what the person is talking about, or looking at the shops I'm passing without taking any mental notes of direction.

It's the same how when I hear people speaking foreign languages (especially French), I tend to just listen to how the whole thing sounds like rather than try to pick out the words and interpret their meaning. I like how the language sounds, so I just listen to it like the melody of a song. But I digress.

I went to de Bijenkorf to look for a table lamp for Schrobbenmaster. The existing lamp had actually burnt a piece of skin off his knuckle the night before, and it wasn't really in good condition as the glass piece kept dropping out.

I was served by a man in his 50s in the lighting section, and while he offered to help me, he wasn't really very friendly. Just answered my questions about the availability of the particular bulb, and when I asked if he could test the lamp if it was in working order, he seemed to drag his feet towards the testing area. Maybe that's how he always is, but I just felt like I was asking a lot of him by the way he was doing things. Still, he was practically nice compared to the cashier I had.

It was another mevrouw at the cashier who was serving two people in front of me. Both had their purchases gift-wrapped, and she asked if mine was a present, so I said yes. She promptly took my box and pulled out a piece of wrapping paper. She didn't even bother to make sure the paper was straight before taping it with heavy hands to the box. A box is the easiest thing in the world to wrap. And she still messed it up. Didn't even bother flattening out the paper, leaving lots of airy spaces at the corners, and everything just ended up skewed and airy. So annoying. She also had the sort of eyes that look down on the world and she never smiled even once.

When Schrobbenmaster came home and I told him about her, he said, "Maybe she was having a bad day.". Firstly, the day had hardly started for them, as I went at 1pm, and secondly, but most importantly, people who let bad days affect their attitude should not be allowed to join the customer service industry!

Pfft. And I thought de Bijenkorf was one of the upstanding representatives of good customer service.