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2005-03-29
One year online
A whole year of blogging! How do you manage to do that? I don't know. It is said that if you keep it up for more than four months, blogging is in your blood...
So that must be it. I just enjoy it, I am always proud when I have created another beautiful page. And doing it in a weblog is much less work than maintaining a normal website without the aid of Blogger.
But the talk of the day is of course the Ipod and "PodCasting", I want to start doing something with that as well. If Adam Curry can do it, I can do it, right? It took me two evenings to get it working. Now I just need some finishing touches and then I will start with PodCasting my Gendertalk columns...
So that must be it. I just enjoy it, I am always proud when I have created another beautiful page. And doing it in a weblog is much less work than maintaining a normal website without the aid of Blogger.
But the talk of the day is of course the Ipod and "PodCasting", I want to start doing something with that as well. If Adam Curry can do it, I can do it, right? It took me two evenings to get it working. Now I just need some finishing touches and then I will start with PodCasting my Gendertalk columns...
2005-03-27
Recognition
On the first day of Easter we had lunch at my parent's. There was plenty of good food s usual, but this time the also were... presents! My parents recently visited Scandinavia and they had brought something along for all of us.For me they brought a silver necklace with a goose-shaped hanger. (This is of course the goose Nils Holgersson has flown on.) I was very glad with this present. Not only because I have been looking for a nice, silver hanger for a while, but mainly because this is a recognition of my femininity. They would never bring along a gift like this for their son.
Everybody will understand it must be very difficult for parents to accept the fact that their son wants to become a daughter. And it is a difficult subject to discuss. But with a present like this, words are not necessary.
2005-03-20
Ninth column
Here we go again. My ninth column has just been broadcast by Gendertalk on WMBR. I managed to get some girls from the TSSupport chat room to listen along with us this time.
This column will be available in the Gendertalk archive next week.
You can also hear it, right now, at:
http://www.eveliensnel.nl/UTG21S.WAV
The transcipt is below:
Up Town Girl
I have to admit I am very lucky indeed. I live in a tolerant country. I am relatively rich. I live in a time where gender dysphoria is beginning to become accepted. I managed to start living as a woman without losing my job, my family, my home or my loved one. I have a health insurance that will pay for my sex change operation. In short: You can say I'm an 'Up Town Girl'! Count your blessings, Little Evelien!
In recent Gendertalk programs we have heard a lot about people who were not so lucky. In program number 495 Nancy made the very just remark that the difference between rich and poor classes is a struggle that may be even more fundamental than the struggle around gender. In program number 499 we heard a lot about homeless people and about homeless transgender folks in particular.
Listening to that program made me feel a bit like a spoiled child. Renting a studio here, turning down a great job offer there, while other people do not have such opportunities at all. I am glad there wasn't one of my columns in that program about the homeless, because that would have been very harsh.
Anyway, it has not made me decide to quit these columns altogether. I think there are issues every transgender person will meet in his or her life and it is always a good thing to exchange thoughts, experiences and feelings about those.
The more I explored my transgender feelings, the more it became clear to me that I wanted to live full-time as a woman. But living together with my spouse made transitioning difficult. Our relationship was in serious jeopardy! After living a few months by myself and after my Boston adventure I was living with Julia again and that became more and more difficult for the both of us. We were getting in each other's way and if nothing was done about this, we would probably end up in a divorce.
So we needed to live our lives separately, at least for a while. I needed to move out. This is one of those situations that is causing homelessness amongst transsexual people, but for an 'Up Town Girl' like me, the solution was to buy a house for myself. (There you have it again, most people don't have that option!) I couldn't afford anything fancy, I had to settle for a real 'Back Street House'. It was not in the best of neighborhoods, it was in a poor shape of maintenance and in the back yard garbage was stacked up three feet high. It would require an awful lot of hard labor to make it into an acceptable place to live in, but it was a house and it was mine!
Finally the stage was set. I had created the environment where my transition could take place. All I needed now was the courage to really make this happen. I will tell you more about that in my future columns.
This column will be available in the Gendertalk archive next week.
You can also hear it, right now, at:
http://www.eveliensnel.nl/UTG21S.WAV
The transcipt is below:
I have to admit I am very lucky indeed. I live in a tolerant country. I am relatively rich. I live in a time where gender dysphoria is beginning to become accepted. I managed to start living as a woman without losing my job, my family, my home or my loved one. I have a health insurance that will pay for my sex change operation. In short: You can say I'm an 'Up Town Girl'! Count your blessings, Little Evelien!
In recent Gendertalk programs we have heard a lot about people who were not so lucky. In program number 495 Nancy made the very just remark that the difference between rich and poor classes is a struggle that may be even more fundamental than the struggle around gender. In program number 499 we heard a lot about homeless people and about homeless transgender folks in particular.
Listening to that program made me feel a bit like a spoiled child. Renting a studio here, turning down a great job offer there, while other people do not have such opportunities at all. I am glad there wasn't one of my columns in that program about the homeless, because that would have been very harsh.
Anyway, it has not made me decide to quit these columns altogether. I think there are issues every transgender person will meet in his or her life and it is always a good thing to exchange thoughts, experiences and feelings about those.
The more I explored my transgender feelings, the more it became clear to me that I wanted to live full-time as a woman. But living together with my spouse made transitioning difficult. Our relationship was in serious jeopardy! After living a few months by myself and after my Boston adventure I was living with Julia again and that became more and more difficult for the both of us. We were getting in each other's way and if nothing was done about this, we would probably end up in a divorce.
So we needed to live our lives separately, at least for a while. I needed to move out. This is one of those situations that is causing homelessness amongst transsexual people, but for an 'Up Town Girl' like me, the solution was to buy a house for myself. (There you have it again, most people don't have that option!) I couldn't afford anything fancy, I had to settle for a real 'Back Street House'. It was not in the best of neighborhoods, it was in a poor shape of maintenance and in the back yard garbage was stacked up three feet high. It would require an awful lot of hard labor to make it into an acceptable place to live in, but it was a house and it was mine!
Finally the stage was set. I had created the environment where my transition could take place. All I needed now was the courage to really make this happen. I will tell you more about that in my future columns.
2005-03-17
Teenage Sex
Today a report was published about sex teenage experiences in the Netherlands. And it sort of confirms what I wrote yesterday: The average teenager has a first sex experience at the age of 15. And many of those (especially for girls) are against their will. Apparently it is still not clear that if a girl says 'no', she means 'no'...
My first experience was at the age of 22. And that was not really against my will, but it was a lousy experience; that much I can tell you...
My first experience was at the age of 22. And that was not really against my will, but it was a lousy experience; that much I can tell you...
2005-03-16
In Heat
It is Spring and that is easy to see. Since a few days there is a tom-cat with an unusual interest for our pussy. But she has been sterilized. She isn't interested in his attempts to make love to her at all.
It is pitiful to see this. This tom-cat is waiting in our garden all day. He can look at our pussy for hours. She has already attacked him a few times when he came to close to her, but he just doesn't give up!
Is this typical male behavior? Is this how a man wins the heart of a woman? I don't know, I never did. I have never behaved like this. "If a girl says no, she means no", is what I learned and that seemed very logical to me.
But maybe 'real man' keep trying a little longer? I never felt comfortable with male behavior. And lately I can see more and more clearly how rude they can be. It is much clearer now than when I was still trying to be 'one of the boys' myself...
It is pitiful to see this. This tom-cat is waiting in our garden all day. He can look at our pussy for hours. She has already attacked him a few times when he came to close to her, but he just doesn't give up!
Is this typical male behavior? Is this how a man wins the heart of a woman? I don't know, I never did. I have never behaved like this. "If a girl says no, she means no", is what I learned and that seemed very logical to me.
But maybe 'real man' keep trying a little longer? I never felt comfortable with male behavior. And lately I can see more and more clearly how rude they can be. It is much clearer now than when I was still trying to be 'one of the boys' myself...
2005-03-14
What Gender is your Brain?
I did a little test. The results are:
"Your Brain is 66.67% Female, 33.33% Male
Your brain leans female
You think with your heart, not your head
Sweet and considerate, you are a giver
But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!"
What Gender Is Your Brain?
So is this the 'scientific proof' I have been longing for? I don't think so! I even doubt whether the last line is correct.
And how do you score?
"Your Brain is 66.67% Female, 33.33% Male
Your brain leans female
You think with your heart, not your head
Sweet and considerate, you are a giver
But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!"
What Gender Is Your Brain?
So is this the 'scientific proof' I have been longing for? I don't think so! I even doubt whether the last line is correct.
And how do you score?
2005-03-09
Homework
When I went to school, we used to do our homework ourselves. But nowadays many people try to save work by using the Internet. Today I received the following request:
"I am doing a project on configuration management at school. I am looking for a configuration management plan. On your site I read you have made one. Would you please send that to me?"
This is not the way things work of course! The configuration management plans I made (about a dozen of them) are always specific to the customer and to the situation in the project. Therefore they contain customer-specific data I cannot share with others. Besides that I don't think someone will learn a lot by copying somebody else's work.
If you want to write a good configuration management plan, you should write down how you plan to do the ten important activities in configuration management in your project. A good place to find out what those are is the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/).
In this case it was a very polite request, so I gave a decent reply. I have seen worse than this. Much worse. The other day I found the following query someone entered at Google amongst my page traffic statistics:
"1. What do you think about transsexuality yourself? What would you do if you knew someone who is transsexual?"
Have you ever seen the like of this? Someone has literally copied the question from his homework into the Google search window. He didn't even take the trouble to leave out the number of the question, so now we know this was the first question in his homework.
The teacher is obviously asking for the personal opinion of the student here. I think it is utterly stupid to try to find your personal opinion on the Internet! It isn't there! You need to look for that inside yourself.
This student also scores very badly on the way he is using Google as a tool. If you enter this query into Google, you'll notice that he was actually very lucky to end up on my site at all.
One should not make a literal copy of the question when searching with Google. Instead you need to make your query look somewhat like the answers you are hoping to find. For instance: "Transsexuality personal opinion"
In spite of all this, and I hate to say this, the students who were good at cheating at school have often ended up in better positions in society than those who worked hard and came up with the right answers themselves...
No, that is not fair, but our society isn't fair
...
"I am doing a project on configuration management at school. I am looking for a configuration management plan. On your site I read you have made one. Would you please send that to me?"
This is not the way things work of course! The configuration management plans I made (about a dozen of them) are always specific to the customer and to the situation in the project. Therefore they contain customer-specific data I cannot share with others. Besides that I don't think someone will learn a lot by copying somebody else's work.
If you want to write a good configuration management plan, you should write down how you plan to do the ten important activities in configuration management in your project. A good place to find out what those are is the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/).
In this case it was a very polite request, so I gave a decent reply. I have seen worse than this. Much worse. The other day I found the following query someone entered at Google amongst my page traffic statistics:
"1. What do you think about transsexuality yourself? What would you do if you knew someone who is transsexual?"
Have you ever seen the like of this? Someone has literally copied the question from his homework into the Google search window. He didn't even take the trouble to leave out the number of the question, so now we know this was the first question in his homework.
The teacher is obviously asking for the personal opinion of the student here. I think it is utterly stupid to try to find your personal opinion on the Internet! It isn't there! You need to look for that inside yourself.
This student also scores very badly on the way he is using Google as a tool. If you enter this query into Google, you'll notice that he was actually very lucky to end up on my site at all.
One should not make a literal copy of the question when searching with Google. Instead you need to make your query look somewhat like the answers you are hoping to find. For instance: "Transsexuality personal opinion"
In spite of all this, and I hate to say this, the students who were good at cheating at school have often ended up in better positions in society than those who worked hard and came up with the right answers themselves...
No, that is not fair, but our society isn't fair
...2005-03-08
Evvy's on the road again
Yesterday I went to Rotterdam by car and today I went to Amsterdam. I did a lot of miles that way. Yesterday it was 150 miles and today 159 miles. That is a total of 309 miles. Our Twingo only drank 7 3/4 gallons of petrol during that time. That is forty miles to the gallon! Not bad at all! Show me an SUV that can do that! And when I arrived home, Julia jumped in the Twingo and drove to Rotterdam again!
Yes, I went to the VU in Amsterdam again. I had a talk with my psychologist and another one with the endocrinologist. My blood pressure was measured and I pledged the usual 35 ml of blood. I was weighed as well and the scale indicated 64 kilograms, with my shoes and all my clothes on! Last week I weighed myself at home, all nude, and the result was 65 kilograms, so one of these scales must be wrong! Or could this be because my stomach was all empty? I was very hungry...
After 18 months of 'Real-Life Test' you need to add another 9 months for the OR waiting-list at the VU. If I add up all that in my case, the answer is March 2007. It seems like the date of my SRS is getting further and further away...
What else can I tell? I'm doing great. I am very glad I'm on female hormones now. I wouldn't want to miss those for a day!
Today I met Chantal at the VU. Nice to meet someone you only know from the Internet 'In Real Life'. On the private forum at transcommunity.nl I promised her to massage her shoulders, but I only had time to pat her on the shoulder. Maybe it helped: Her appointment today was successful to: She has reached an agreement with the VU about the date she can start taking estrogen at last.
Yes, I went to the VU in Amsterdam again. I had a talk with my psychologist and another one with the endocrinologist. My blood pressure was measured and I pledged the usual 35 ml of blood. I was weighed as well and the scale indicated 64 kilograms, with my shoes and all my clothes on! Last week I weighed myself at home, all nude, and the result was 65 kilograms, so one of these scales must be wrong! Or could this be because my stomach was all empty? I was very hungry...
After 18 months of 'Real-Life Test' you need to add another 9 months for the OR waiting-list at the VU. If I add up all that in my case, the answer is March 2007. It seems like the date of my SRS is getting further and further away...
What else can I tell? I'm doing great. I am very glad I'm on female hormones now. I wouldn't want to miss those for a day!
Today I met Chantal at the VU. Nice to meet someone you only know from the Internet 'In Real Life'. On the private forum at transcommunity.nl I promised her to massage her shoulders, but I only had time to pat her on the shoulder. Maybe it helped: Her appointment today was successful to: She has reached an agreement with the VU about the date she can start taking estrogen at last.
2005-03-07
A heavy day
Well, I have moved! I have left the room I have been working in for years and I now have my desk in a large room with cubicles where all the victims of the re-organization are being herded together. I could have stalled this a few more days, but what would that bring me in the end? Now I still had the opportunity to choose my own chair and my own cupboard. The people who will move in last will have to use whatever furniture happens to be left.
I made a very early start today, because after work I wanted to attend the Humanitas support group in Rotterdam again. Unfortunately we often don't know when these will take place until a few days in advance. That leaves far to little time to take the afternoon off. But thanks to our flexible working hours I was able to attend this time without asking for leave.
We had a good meeting this time. Fortunately our usual group leader, Els, had recovered from her illness. And this made the whole schedule of the evening a lot different from last months, when Els's colleague was the leader. She left the group after five minutes with one of the members who got too emotional and only returned at 8 o'clock just to tell us it was 8 o'clock and the meeting should end. I thought: "OK, so we still have half an hour." But no! It was really the end of the meeting. The group members felt very unsatisfied and decided to put the subject "Work and Transsexuality" on the agenda again for the next meeting.
For that I traveled 80 miles to Rotterdam and 80 miles back! I intended not to visit these sessions again if today would be like last time. But fortunately that was not the case.
Today we started with a round of introductions... And that was as far as we got! No problem. These introductions offer so much to be discussed, the intended theme of the evening is forgotten! I told the group I have been living full-time as a woman for 31 months now and the VU gender team only recognizes 3 of those: The three months I am on estrogen under their supervision now. And I told them I was doing speech therapy now. So they persuaded me to do a little feminine speech... Before I knew it, I was talking about reading out stories and about my columns at WMBR... So I have been plugging my website again. I couldn't help it, it just happened...
Someone said my voice sounded quite sexy. That probably means there are still too many low resonances in it. "Yes, I will soon start doing telephone sex too!" I reacted...
But once again the theme "Work and Transsexuality" is shifted on to our next meeting.
I made a very early start today, because after work I wanted to attend the Humanitas support group in Rotterdam again. Unfortunately we often don't know when these will take place until a few days in advance. That leaves far to little time to take the afternoon off. But thanks to our flexible working hours I was able to attend this time without asking for leave.
We had a good meeting this time. Fortunately our usual group leader, Els, had recovered from her illness. And this made the whole schedule of the evening a lot different from last months, when Els's colleague was the leader. She left the group after five minutes with one of the members who got too emotional and only returned at 8 o'clock just to tell us it was 8 o'clock and the meeting should end. I thought: "OK, so we still have half an hour." But no! It was really the end of the meeting. The group members felt very unsatisfied and decided to put the subject "Work and Transsexuality" on the agenda again for the next meeting.
For that I traveled 80 miles to Rotterdam and 80 miles back! I intended not to visit these sessions again if today would be like last time. But fortunately that was not the case.
Today we started with a round of introductions... And that was as far as we got! No problem. These introductions offer so much to be discussed, the intended theme of the evening is forgotten! I told the group I have been living full-time as a woman for 31 months now and the VU gender team only recognizes 3 of those: The three months I am on estrogen under their supervision now. And I told them I was doing speech therapy now. So they persuaded me to do a little feminine speech... Before I knew it, I was talking about reading out stories and about my columns at WMBR... So I have been plugging my website again. I couldn't help it, it just happened...
Someone said my voice sounded quite sexy. That probably means there are still too many low resonances in it. "Yes, I will soon start doing telephone sex too!" I reacted...
But once again the theme "Work and Transsexuality" is shifted on to our next meeting.
2005-03-06
Eighth Column
First there is no new column to be heard for weeks and now all of a sudden there is a new one two weeks in a row! I haven't been able to hear it myself, because it was broadcast while I was cleaning up in the community center after the guests on our T&T-evening left.
I am very curious to hear how it blended into the program when this installment will appear in their archive next week.
The column itself can be heard online right now at this URL: http://eveliensnel.nl/audio/MV2MA13.mp3
A transcript of the text is below:
Move to Massachusetts
I was living by myself in a little studio in Rotterdam. I could only rent it for four months and that turned out to be far too short to work out all my gender problems.
But then I got a real 'once in a lifetime' opportunity: I was offered a job in Boston. We would be working on a very interesting project and we would also be building up a Boston branch of the company.
It sounded like a great chance to start a completely new life in a completely new environment. But would Boston be safe enough for an inexperienced transgender person? Unfortunately I didn't know Gendertalk yet, because in this case a question to Gendertalk would have been appropriate! I posted some entries in newsgroups to find out and soon I managed to start an email conversation with a Boston cross dresser.
Ze told me there was quite a nice trans community in the Boston area. I learned a lot about the differences between different states in the USA. And I learned that Massachusetts was one of the most liberal ones in gender issues. I started to get a real appetite for this job. I signed the contract and made arrangements with my new employer about the timing of my move to Boston. The plan was I would be starting my work in Holland in January and move to the USA in April.
But soon things started to go wrong. The first thing that went wrong were the presidential elections in the USA in 2000. I didn't expect the climate for transgendered people to improve with Mr. Bush in the White House.
Then the project we were going to work on was cancelled. So we would still be setting up a Boston office for the company, but without the guarantee of an abundance of interesting, well-paid work.
At the end of February 2001 I visited Boston to have a good look around, to meet my new colleagues and to have some meetings with a customer. I haven't tried to go outside in female clothing while I was in Boston. I didn't feel confident enough to do that. Instead I did experiment with some eye-catching androgynous outfits like a pink leather jacket with matching nail polish. I wasn't lynched, but I did get quite a lot of reactions. The two fifteen year old boys who helped me at the check-out counter at Market Basket had such a good laugh, they probably still remember me today!
Of course I also planned a rendez-vous with my email contact. We were to meet at Jacques' in Church street. Unfortunately we missed each other by a few minutes, but I did have the opportunity to talk with some nice people over there. So I got the impression there was indeed a lively transgender scene in Boston, but it was just a niche. Out on the streets the acceptance of gender-variant behavior appeared to be more difficult in Boston than it is in Holland.
And then the company decided to give up the idea of a Boston office altogether. Oh yes, I could still work for them, but that would have to be in California. Well I know almost all Americans want to live in California, but this was too big a step for me. If a company moves your workplace so easily by 5000 miles what will be next? Ohio? Pennsylvania? So I decided I didn't want this job any more. I wanted to stay safely in the Netherlands and that is what I did.
I am very curious to hear how it blended into the program when this installment will appear in their archive next week.
The column itself can be heard online right now at this URL: http://eveliensnel.nl/audio/MV2MA13.mp3
A transcript of the text is below:
I was living by myself in a little studio in Rotterdam. I could only rent it for four months and that turned out to be far too short to work out all my gender problems.
But then I got a real 'once in a lifetime' opportunity: I was offered a job in Boston. We would be working on a very interesting project and we would also be building up a Boston branch of the company.
It sounded like a great chance to start a completely new life in a completely new environment. But would Boston be safe enough for an inexperienced transgender person? Unfortunately I didn't know Gendertalk yet, because in this case a question to Gendertalk would have been appropriate! I posted some entries in newsgroups to find out and soon I managed to start an email conversation with a Boston cross dresser.
Ze told me there was quite a nice trans community in the Boston area. I learned a lot about the differences between different states in the USA. And I learned that Massachusetts was one of the most liberal ones in gender issues. I started to get a real appetite for this job. I signed the contract and made arrangements with my new employer about the timing of my move to Boston. The plan was I would be starting my work in Holland in January and move to the USA in April.
But soon things started to go wrong. The first thing that went wrong were the presidential elections in the USA in 2000. I didn't expect the climate for transgendered people to improve with Mr. Bush in the White House.
Then the project we were going to work on was cancelled. So we would still be setting up a Boston office for the company, but without the guarantee of an abundance of interesting, well-paid work.
At the end of February 2001 I visited Boston to have a good look around, to meet my new colleagues and to have some meetings with a customer. I haven't tried to go outside in female clothing while I was in Boston. I didn't feel confident enough to do that. Instead I did experiment with some eye-catching androgynous outfits like a pink leather jacket with matching nail polish. I wasn't lynched, but I did get quite a lot of reactions. The two fifteen year old boys who helped me at the check-out counter at Market Basket had such a good laugh, they probably still remember me today!
Of course I also planned a rendez-vous with my email contact. We were to meet at Jacques' in Church street. Unfortunately we missed each other by a few minutes, but I did have the opportunity to talk with some nice people over there. So I got the impression there was indeed a lively transgender scene in Boston, but it was just a niche. Out on the streets the acceptance of gender-variant behavior appeared to be more difficult in Boston than it is in Holland.
And then the company decided to give up the idea of a Boston office altogether. Oh yes, I could still work for them, but that would have to be in California. Well I know almost all Americans want to live in California, but this was too big a step for me. If a company moves your workplace so easily by 5000 miles what will be next? Ohio? Pennsylvania? So I decided I didn't want this job any more. I wanted to stay safely in the Netherlands and that is what I did.
2005-03-05
Better Barmaids
On Saturday it was my turn again to work at the bar on our monthly T&T-evening. Last time I had complained about the performance of the girl who was supposed to work with me. I didn't want to work with her any more. And this has helped. This time I could work together with someone who is very experienced and who does work hard. Great, this way the job is a lot more pleasant. It is still hard work, but without annoyances. It is really a nice work this way. You take hundreds of orders on such an evening and you help the people in a friendly way. They appreciate that! It is so different from my normal work...
By the way, I also got to know the other girl, with whom I don't want to work anymore, a little better. Now I know she has lost her spouse due a an nasty disease and she is now, while doing a full-time job, responsible for running a whole family with four kids. On top of that she is in the same I process I'm in: She has recently started taking female hormones. If you take all that together, it becomes a little easier to understand why she didn't perform so well behind the bar. I am no longer angry with her.
Due to the condition of the roads the laser hair removal ladies didn't show up today. And our disk-jockey Sylvia was present, but she didn't bring her equipment, so she had to improvise with the community center sound equipment. Also one of the guests who was supposed to give a demonstration cancelled this appointment. So we had to miss some important elements this time, but still we had a nice evening. It was quite busy and the atmosphere was very pleasant.
For several people this was the first time they ever visited a T&T-evening. Probably this had to do with a program that was broadcast last week on local television. Our hostess, Yvon, who normally goes to work dressed as a man, appeared in the program and told about her transvestism. She was to be seen both in male and female attire in this show. The program has had an immense impact! Everyone has seen it and Yvon has received lots and lots of very positive reactions: At work, in the neighborhood and also from people she didn't know at all!
For people who come to a T&T-evening for the first time it is often a huge step and they feel very uncertain. Julia, who is at the entrance with the cash register, is the first person they see when they arrive. Julia has a natural talent for making people feel at ease, so that is good start. Once the people are inside, Yvon takes care of them. If necessary she takes time for an elaborate private talk with our new guests. A lot of good work is being done by supporting these people on T&T-evenings.
I also met someone, who knows me from the workplace. I didn't know him, but that is no surprise: The gossip-circuit makes sure everybody knows me, of course... Anyway, an encounter like this one proves that I am not the only person with transgender feelings in my work environment. Most people who have this will not tell anyone at work of course. There is no need to do that if your transgender feelings are less intense than mine...
Previous T&T-evenings: February, January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May and April.
By the way, I also got to know the other girl, with whom I don't want to work anymore, a little better. Now I know she has lost her spouse due a an nasty disease and she is now, while doing a full-time job, responsible for running a whole family with four kids. On top of that she is in the same I process I'm in: She has recently started taking female hormones. If you take all that together, it becomes a little easier to understand why she didn't perform so well behind the bar. I am no longer angry with her.
Due to the condition of the roads the laser hair removal ladies didn't show up today. And our disk-jockey Sylvia was present, but she didn't bring her equipment, so she had to improvise with the community center sound equipment. Also one of the guests who was supposed to give a demonstration cancelled this appointment. So we had to miss some important elements this time, but still we had a nice evening. It was quite busy and the atmosphere was very pleasant.
For several people this was the first time they ever visited a T&T-evening. Probably this had to do with a program that was broadcast last week on local television. Our hostess, Yvon, who normally goes to work dressed as a man, appeared in the program and told about her transvestism. She was to be seen both in male and female attire in this show. The program has had an immense impact! Everyone has seen it and Yvon has received lots and lots of very positive reactions: At work, in the neighborhood and also from people she didn't know at all!
For people who come to a T&T-evening for the first time it is often a huge step and they feel very uncertain. Julia, who is at the entrance with the cash register, is the first person they see when they arrive. Julia has a natural talent for making people feel at ease, so that is good start. Once the people are inside, Yvon takes care of them. If necessary she takes time for an elaborate private talk with our new guests. A lot of good work is being done by supporting these people on T&T-evenings.
I also met someone, who knows me from the workplace. I didn't know him, but that is no surprise: The gossip-circuit makes sure everybody knows me, of course... Anyway, an encounter like this one proves that I am not the only person with transgender feelings in my work environment. Most people who have this will not tell anyone at work of course. There is no need to do that if your transgender feelings are less intense than mine...
Previous T&T-evenings: February, January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May and April.
2005-03-03
I have to move
Another unpleasant situation at work. I have had my own room in the building for many years. But that is quickly coming to an end now! They already brought the boxes for my move. I will be banned to a large, boring, uninspiring room where 23 people will be working. All the victims of the reorganization will be herded together in this room, like sheep who are about to be taken to the butcher.
It is like our former employer is saying: "When will you finally buzz off?" But meanwhile he is still hiring all of us from our new employer, because he needs us to keep doing our work! There is an abundance of work! This is another piece of evidence showing this whole reorganization was a stupid decision from a failing management. Of course they would rather drink all of the fuel out of the petrol tank of their posh cars than admit a mistake like this. They would rather swallow gasoline than swallow their pride. In their view, there is a simple solution: Kick us out, out, out...
It is like our former employer is saying: "When will you finally buzz off?" But meanwhile he is still hiring all of us from our new employer, because he needs us to keep doing our work! There is an abundance of work! This is another piece of evidence showing this whole reorganization was a stupid decision from a failing management. Of course they would rather drink all of the fuel out of the petrol tank of their posh cars than admit a mistake like this. They would rather swallow gasoline than swallow their pride. In their view, there is a simple solution: Kick us out, out, out...
© 1985-2006 E.G. Snel
