Happy Christmas and Peaceful 2006

Bloody spam bastards....didnt realise some people are sad enough to spam on blogs, especially mine which I've been terrible enough to leave dormant since I started my traineeship in Amsterdam!

So sorry for spam and sorry for no news.

I'm on holidays for Christmas back in Dublin after the first 4 months of a deadly traineeship with ABN AMRO. I'm not in the bank a such...its part of their sponsorship of the Volvo Ocean Race where the bank has two boats competing. The crux of my job entails the editing of the TEAM website: www.abnamro.com/team which I am proud to say has thousands of hits a day from both bank staff and the general public. Other work is distribution of high resolution pictures to international media interested in the race as well as working with Internal Communicatons on builing interest in the race amonst the staff. Its fun work and I'm gonna be 'lucky' enough to be followed to Amsterdam by not one but two previous AIESEC in Ireland presidents...yes Arthur and Russell are both setting up camp here come January 2006!

Amsterdam is fun...lovely city. Of course its got the red light district and its not the safest after 2am but all in all its very pleasant. I arrived mid August and had an amazing summer/autumn getting to know all the trianees who are there..which numbers about 50 at this stage and finding my way round the city which when you're used to it is similar in size to Dublin and has only a few less pubs than Dublin...most of which are Irish pubs so I'm not sure whether I can count them or not!

Digs, you may remember Colm Mc Getrick from when you came to Ireland?/ Well he's one of my best mates from college and he too followed me over to The Netherlands and is working for a finance company in Maastricht and has been over there for a month or so now. So we're planning trips to each others neck of the woods over the next few months which will get me out of Amsterdam to see the rest of The Netherlands which I havent really done yet.

I guess thats all for my update thus far. Having a great time on my trianeeship, have great people around me and all in all I'm a Happy Chappy!

Wishing everyone a Happy Christmas and Peaceful 2006 where ever you may be!

All the best,

Eoin