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Giving Milk

I was born on the 3rd of November, 1988 in a terraced house in a small village in Westland, which is situated in the West of The Netherlands, approximately between the cities Hoek van Holland, Delft and Den Haag. I don't have any brothers or sisters, but I grew up with a dog, so the dog was like my sister. Nowadays I still have a dog. Not the same as twenty years ago of course, but an other nice dog, a Belgian Shepherd (Tervueren), called Daní. Every Sunday, I go to training with Daní. 

My mother is Marian Boeters - van Schie and my father is Jan Boeters. My mother always enjoyed working in the flowers in a greenhouse. Nowadays she still has a part-time job in a green house. My father had is own green house building company. As you can see on the picture on the right, he made a lot of money by selling those greenhouses ;-).

Every year, up to the year 2004, my parents went on holiday to Spain, to Torremolinos. When I was one year old, my parents already took me on holiday to Spain. My parents saw everybody and everything grewed up there, and the Spanish people saw me grewing up. Nowadays, when I go to Spain alone, it's reversed. I see everybody growing up there now. Quite funny, I think.

When I was four years old, we moved to a bigger, free-standing house. I think my father made so much money, so he could afford us a bigger house. When my parents bought that house, there was a large piece of ground belonging to the house. My parents decided to make a large garden of it and they also made some ground apart for some animals, like a small farm. We had goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and ducks there. I always ejoyed being with these animals. Every year we had little goats and sometimes the mother doesn't accept her child. So we have to give the little goats milk by ourselves. Always funny to do that.

Jessie

In the same year, the dog where I was grew up with, died. I think due to elderly reasons. A few months later, we thought it was too quiet in and around our house, so we decided to buy a new dog. This time, a Belgian Shepherd (Groenedaeler) called Fenya. She was a beautiful dog. I think, if we go to expositions with her, she would have won several prizes. In the year 1999, Fenya became mother of her son Jessie. Jessie was a dog who liked the animals on our "small village" as well. Great to see it!

Also in 1999, I applied for my first job. A job as agricultural employee in an Orchids Nursery. I worked there every Saturday and during holidays. I've worked there until 2008. I worked there as a little handyman. But most of the times I worked there at an machine, planting all he little orchids in pots. The most of the time with three other colleagues, who were also students.

In 2001, I finished my Primary School and after a long holiday, I started my continuing at British A-levels, (HAVO) at a school in Naaldwijk, not far from my village. Everyday I went to school by bike. So, a littlebit sportive. But I think it's normal in The Netherlands that you go to school by bike, specially for your secondary school. Normally, British A-levels is about five years studying, but after three years, in 2004, I decided to continue my study at a professional study in Rotterdam. I was able to make this choice, because if you completed three years of HAVO, you'll get a attest 3 to 4 HAVO, which is comparable to a  certificate of MAVO (British B-levels).

Well, at this professional training, I choosed to specialize me in the tourism industry. I decided to study Tourism and Leisure Management. This study was a littlebit like studies in Great Brittain, because at this school, we also had to wear a school uniform. It was a great study. A lot of learning, but also a lot of trips and company visits. During my time at school, I learned a lot about tourism and travelling. We made study trips to cities in The Netherlands, but also to Belgium, Austria, Italy and Turkey. The company visits were about visits to hotels, but also to Rotterdam Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Those trips were very interesting. We were able to see things which passengers will never see. 

work @ RTM

work @ RTM

work @ RTM

During the last six months of my study Tourism and Leisure Management, in 2008, I had to accomplish a traineeship. Because I adored airports and aircrafts since I was a child, it wasn't strange that I choosed for a traineeship at Rotterdam Airport. I worked there as a Ground Attendant for regional business airline, which operates flights with Fokker 50 aircraft to e.g. London City, Manchester and Hamburg. With homebase Antwerp, the hub of this airline is London City. It was a great experience to bring everything I learned in reality. I did a lot of things at my traineeship, like check-in, boarding, disembarking, lost&found, and accompaniments. After those six months, this airline gave me the opportunity to stay working there after my traineeship. That was my real first full-time job. When I "really started working" there, I did some things extra, such as ticketing and I took a seat in the Charter Department.

During every boarding flight, we had to fill in a flight report. On this report, you have to fill in some important details, such as the flight number, destination, actual time of departure, irregularities, etc. But, all these reports were registered in a computer in a MS Word document. Through the years, I learned myself a lot of computer skills, also skills with MS Access. So, I offered this airline to deploy a database for flight reports. This database was completely digital and automatically makes reports about the whole month. I was happy with the result, such as the management of this airline was. Now they have a better view about the irregularities during boarding!

In January 2009, a vacancy for Cabin Crew Member became available at a Dutch charter airline, which is a company of the largest tour operators of Europe. I always thought about how it is to be a cabin attendant, so I applied for this function. Quickly after sending my application letter to this airline, they invited me for their selection day. One day after that day, the airline called me to say that I could start with the internal training, starting on the 2nd of March.

This six weeks of theoretical training were very heavy, because safety is the most important thing on board. They really drilled us in everything about emergency and evacuation procedures, inflight, but also on ground. The last week of this training was about "Inflight Service". During this course, we learned everything about the service concept of the airline, like the catering (what do you serve when and, how do you serve it) and selling duty free items.

After these six heavy weeks of training, on the 9th of April, me and the fourteen other students of my group have passed all the exams and we had the official occassion of the "Wing presentation". The course for our coach- and check flights could begin!

Slide training		Aircraft Visit		Wing presentation

Dolphinaris

My first familiarization flight was on April 11, to Cancún (Mexico). I had a rest of five days there. Normally it's four days, but the aircraft had a technical problem, so we had one day extra! I was really delighted to be in Mexico. I enjoyed every minute of it!

I always said before: "Once I am in Mexico, I would swim with dolphins!" So, on the second day of my "rest" in Cancún, we went to Dolphinaris in the Wet 'n Wild Water park to swim with dolphins. It was quite expensive, but really an experience for a life time! Great to do it. Also the pictures and de movie are great!

Well, I enjoyed Cancún so much that I'm sure I will go back to Cancún soon for a long holiday

 

Alright, back to business. To be short, officially you have to perform two familiarization flights and one check flight. When you have performed your check flight correctly, you'll be certificated as a real Cabin Attendant. Unfortunately, it didn't became so far for me. Because of medical reasons, after two flights I became sick and during every flight I had a terrible pain on my chest. I went to the doctor and the hospital for it, but they didn't find anything. During a test-flight, with a medication, I tried it for the last time. The doctor thought that it was an allergic reaction. Well, the medication didn't work for me. The pain was getting worse. So, on doctor's advise, I had to end my carreer as Cabin Attendant. I was sad about it, because a dream grew up in flames. But, your health is the most important thing to your life, so I think I made the right decision.

Well... after six weeks of being workless, I finally found a new job. Being back in the aviation, at a service desk at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Here I did ticketing for serveral airlines and I was the representative for different travel agencies, tour operators and airlines. The only nasty thing of this all was that I didn't like the job, so I had to search again for a better one. Just a month later, I was happy that I found something else, out of the airline industry. I applied for a job as receptionist in a hotel in Scheveningen. It's a very varied job. Because it is a small hotel, with just 88 rooms, my job is not only being the receptionist. I also do some work at the bar, some administration, reservations, banqueting and room-checks. During weekends we have a lot of tourists and during weekdays, the most guests in the hotel are business men.

I like my job in the hotel very much. It's very nice to get compliments, I'm valued by my managers, colleagues etc. etc. But, after everything what happened, about changing career, etc. etc., I have to say that I am still missing my old job at Rotterdam Airport. But... at the group "Accor" I'm now working for, I will have a lot of career opportunities! In the future I'm planning to be promoted as Supervisor or Front-Office manager.

So, that's it. I never thought it was going to be such a long story. I hope you enjoyed it. And maybe you think: "Why isn't he telling me something about his love life?" Well, there is a simple answer for that. I never had a "real" relationship. I'm still looking for my dream man... So... maybe you'll be the first?

Project World of Rick Air

Anywhere in 2000 I think, we got a connection to the Internet. I discovered the world wide web and I was suprised that you could really find everything on the Internet. Just name it and you'll find it! But, as a little computer nerd, I also wanted my own website. I found a program on my computer, called Frontpage Express. This was a MS Word based webdesign tool. I enjoyed makeing websites and for my birthday, my mother gave me  book called "Making websites, for chilren". With help of this book, I learned everything step by step about HTML.

Later on, when my father bought a new computer and there was MS Frontpage installed on it. That was the moment when I really started designing my own website. Then I published it on the webspace that I had of Internet provider, so the URL was http://home.hetnet.nl/~rickboeters/ or something like that. Later on, well, to be more exactly: a couple of years later, HTML became a littlebit bored to me. I was looking further and I discovered the PHP and MySQL techniques. But, I couldn't publish it on my providers webspace, because they didn't support those techniques. So, I decided to register a domain name with some webspace at an external provider which supports PHP and MySQL. Well, that was the moment when WORLDOFRICK.NL came in the air. I started this website with a lot of photos and nonsense. Later on I also added a weblog to it. Through the years, I changed the layout a couple of times. My friends and "outsiders" enjoyed my website, I think, because I've had many visitors on my website. World of Rick became more and more commercial.

Because my knowledge of webdesign became more and more, I also made websites for other companies and persons. And of course, I made some nice money with it :-). If you would like to view some other websites I have made, just visit the page "Work" on this website.

Now, after five years of blogging, blogging became a littlebit sad and boring to me. I had less visitors and I didn't had the intention to post articles in my weblog. So I decided to make a whole new website, a new World of Rick, with slogan "It's personal again". I stopped blogging and made my website more personal. Just with information about me and some nice pics. I hope you'll enjoy it!