Pet peeves

It has been a fairly miserable week. The weather is still cold (and now not even sunny anymore), I've had this cold thing where I have a sore throat and feel shit and achy, especially in the morning, but it won't decide to either go away or develop into a full-blown cold, so I still dragged my ass into work today (I was hoping to stay home), I'm just low in energy and feeling bleh and unfocused. So: the perfect mood to sit and complain about things.

The thing I want to complain about most is how many of my Dutch-speaking co-workers apparently can't tell the difference between "send" and "sent" and always use the wrong one. It pops up quite often in emails - "Could you please sent me the file?" "I send it to you last week" - and it drives me mad. I assume (ooh, another word that the Dutch do weird things with, I'll get to that in a moment) that they know which is which because they seem to pronounce them correctly, but they apparently get confused with the t and d when writing the words. I have contemplated sending around a note to the effect of "People, 'send' is present tense, 'sent' is past tense. Please use them correctly," but it would be a bit rude. Still, I cringe when I read it and now it's permeated my brain to the point where I doubt which is right when I go to type them. "Please sent this on" almost looks correct to me by now.

And yeah, "assume"... For some reason quite a few Dutch people say the word with a "sh" sound in there, similar to how British people say the word "schedule" with a "sh" sound. But I don't know where they got that from. Do any English speakers say "asshume"? I also hear "idear" a lot from the Dutch, though they don't add on a r to other words ending in a.

Leaving language and pronunciation things behind, other things that piss me off:

- not doing the courtesy of putting a divider after your groceries once you've put them on the belt at the cash register
- couples who have joint email addresses that combines their names in the address (like johnandlisa@mail.com) (why would you want to share a mailbox?!)
- people who loudly smack and snap away at their chewing gum constantly, especially when they are sitting behind you on the tram or bus so the annoying sounds are RIGHT IN YOUR EAR

Anyway, it's almost the weekend, I should try to be more positive, even though tomorrow I might be spending time doing my taxes. Spend nearly an hour entering every bit of information about me, answering all these questions - do I own a house, do I have kids, do I have a ton of wealth from a dead uncle - only to be told I get nothing and owe nothing. I tried skipping them altogether last year, but the Belastingdienst sent a letter after me and, considering I'm not a permanent resident of this country, I figured I'd better do as told. Didn't send in anything to the US though (again I owe nothing and get nothing). Debating that one still for this year.

Right, I was trying to be more positive... So, good things: I'll probably leave early because I just cannot be bothered and because I feel like shit, and Sunday looks like we'll be able to go with Steven and his girlfriend to the Rotterdam Zoo. The zoo has a baby rhino. It's not so furry and cuddly, but still, baby animals are nice.