I have never really been all that fond of holidays; for me the holidays are just like any other day. Yes, you have much more free time to spend doing what you want, but usually by the end you are bored out of your mind and just want to do something, anything.
These holidays however, have been particularly bad for me. A couple weeks before Christmas I had finally reached that point where I had done enough reading and research: now it was time to actually write the thesis. Unfortunately life does not like me that much, and so decided to throw some bricks at me. Life usually throws bricks, but people usually get pretty good at dodging and catching them, and sometimes even are able to throw some back. However, sometimes too many are thrown, and once the first one hits you in the head it gets very hard to get back on balance to get to dodging them again. This is how it felt for me.
I finally start writing thesis, get the introduction down, and write most of the first chapter. Then some idiot, lets call him Mr. R, decides he wants my father’s business to make him 22 doll houses to sell through a toy company. To let you know the size of these evil houses: they contained 4 rooms, 2 top and 2 bottom, each was meant to be able to house Barbie both standing and lying down. So they were not small things! He gives us a week, 5 working days, since that is how long until his deadline. In which time we had to cut build and spray paint these houses. Firstly the wood arrives late. We now only have 4 days, and the cutting with the laser cutter will take 2 days alone, if we cut day and night, which we did end up doing. The parents also want to head up to
We then notice on Wednesday that our dog is so ill that he can no longer stand. He had been ill for a long time before that with arthritis in the back legs so we knew his days were numbered. That Friday we do manage to finish, sticking the last bits on and putting the dollhouses into boxes just before Mr. R would arrive to fetch them. We give him the final printed invoice, which he suddenly thinks is wrong and he decides to haggle. I nearly strangled the bastard. The one important point on the invoice was a deposit he had to pay on delivery; which if we did not have we could not pay worker wages and also have the money to survive the holidays. He brings this late, and then also only brings three quarters of the amount he was meant to bring. This means that we were now living alone without the parents and having to watch every cent that we spent, or having to starve.
His arriving late meant that we were in a bit of a struggle with the day. Since it was now late in the day, and we were worried the vet was about to close. So we jumped in the car, raced to the vet and asked how much longer he would still be open. We had about 20mins. So we rushed to the house, raced back to the vet with the incapacitated dog, to wait in queue to have him put down. It was such a rush that we did not even have time to think about it and say goodbye to the poor dog.
Anyhow, to get to some kind of point: People do not realize that they should plan things ahead. Mr. R. did not think ahead, he should have started this project much earlier so that we did not have to rush, and do a shoddy-ish job on his project. It seems that he had this idea in his head and wanted to have it done for Christmas, and then Christmas suddenly was near and he had to rush to get things done. But, by doing this, he put many other people in trouble, and caused them problems. So the moral here is that people should do more planning so that everything does not have to happen in a rush.
Jon
