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I’ve had a good night sleep back home in London, and having just re-read my Wednesday night/Thursday morning entry, I am mightily surprised by the lucidity in my prose and sanity during the ungodly hour.

I mentioned in my diary that I didn’t get stoned. Well, that wasn’t strictly true – not when I was clubbing before, or whilst I was writing the blog. The weed and skunk only hit me at 8.35am when I woke up in desperate need for a piss, and all I could think was that a dog had been sleeping on top of me.

So as I got out of bed – or rather, jumped out of bed - I pushed my duvet away and thought a dog, or maybe the corpse of a dog had been pushed aside.

I stood there for what seemed like forever, trying to decide what to do as I’m terrified of dead animals. I only came to my senses as I went for a very lengthy piss 15 seconds later and knew then – as I looked at myself in the mirror in the bathroom – that “there is no dog, or dead rats or whatever I had imagined. Now just go back to bed.” And I did.

An hour or two later I was up and about as Thursday was my last day in the city, and I spent the next few hours enjoying a bowl of ho-fun with beef tripe in Chinatown – something which is banned in Britain due to BSE – and that was incredibly nice. Come to think of it, I’d had a tremendous gastronomic feast during my stay in the Dutch capital: Indonesian food (which was nice but slightly expensive for the chicken with coconut milk and saffron that they served), fondue, fusion food, danishes, roast vegetable takeaways and Japanese BBQ. Most of these was paid by the boss, who was incredibly pleased that I like eating as it is an essential part of my new job.

The Japanese meal itself was fantastic as I feasted on a French-style menu at Café Tokyo in Spuistraat, gorging down oysters, scallops, fish, prime Dutch beef, rice, lobster and some fish soup. It even ended with a surprise appearance by a little mouse on our opposite table because the restaurant’s cat had done a runner. That just about made Café Tokyo the only place I’d been to all week without a cat inside. These horrible things are omnipresent, and are universally deployed to catch the rodents which run wild inside restaurants.

Anyway, back to Thursday. I was actually trying to re-find Café Tokyo as I‘ve decided to start collecting two things as I go travelling – airplane sick bags (unused ones, of course) and restaurant cards. I’d been collecting the last named on-and-off for years but felt I should start doing it properly this time. But I was quite obviously still feeling the effects of the night before, and never managed to find the restaurant. I knew I was in the right place, and eventually went home empty-handed. A good excuse to go back to Amsterdam again, then.

14.00 and it was time to leave. My perfect timing meant I got to the airport bang on at 14.45, two hours before my flight – just as I’d intended and that was door to door, including the walk to the station, buying the ticket and taking the train to Schipol. How I manage that to work times out so well, time after time, I’ll never know. Probably the only talent that I have.

The day pretty much went downhill after that, however. Check-in was fine, but I had deliberately left my inbound flight’s luggage tag on, thinking I was going to cut myself if I tried to rip it off. Unfortunately, the KLM woman had other ideas: rather than taking it off as she was supposed to, she let it be. In my rather questionable state of mind, I didn’t think to ask her for a new luggage sticker to keep tracks of it. So I walked away to explore Schipol airport instead. It wasn’t until I landed that I realised what I had done. I was finally reunited with the luggage at 21.30 – some five hours after I had arrived back in London. Thank god it was only City Airport.

In between though, I struggled to stay awake for my Mandarin class. The most annoying thing though, was my £4 penalty for my oyster card for ‘not touching out’ at City Airport on Monday. I swear that I did, but somehow it didn’t show up on the machine, and hence, the penalty. I’ll be doing everything I can to rectify that!

So, in effect, the two things which irked me on Thursday were both of my own doing. I think I’m still a novice in flying and in using the Docklands Light Railway (I basically went the long way on my way home last night). Funny how the metro in Rotterdam posed no problem whatsoever!

That will do for Amsterdam. Lovely place. Lovely city and I had the most fun I could’ve managed inside four days. I did everything I wanted to do, and felt incredibly lucky to be able to do so. Now, the fun stops and it could well be downhill from here onwards….

It’s 4.30am, and as I failed miserably to get stoned earlier, having also been drinking more than my usual amount tonight, I am feeling surprisingly lucid - eventhough I only slept for four hours this morning.

This lack of sleep has nothing to do with work, and everything to do with being free and unwilling to go to bed early. The appartment my boss has rented for me is slap bang in the middle of town which is convenient to all the evening hot-spots. In short, it’s an invite for me to play 24 hours a day.

Work has amounted to roughly about six hours this week - both on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. The rest of the time was either spent in restaurants discussing the job with the boss, Einar, or me roaming around town to revisit old favourites such as Leideplein, Spui and Damrak.

I even managed to slot in a trip to Rotterdam for the ABN-AMRO Rotterdam Open at the Ahoy Stadium. The journey itself was anything but smooth as the train broke down outside Delft and took nearly 2.5 hours to reach it destination, as opposed to the scheduled 70-minute journey time.

.

However, I still got to the stadium on time and sampled the delights of the Rotterdam metro along the way…yet more pictures for the transport pages, including the walk along the track to the platform at Delft, with the subsequent scramble for the first train into Rotterdam ressembling people running to avoid the Nazis.

The return trip was also late by two minutes so my previous high-regard for the Dutch railway system has been somewhat tarnished. Either way, with comfortable journeys costing a fraction of what they charge in the UK, maybe I shouldn’t be that grumpy about an essentially world-class system.

(The tennis itself was fun, but I was shocked by how corporate sporting events are nowadays. Still great seeing a world class event and a good look at Ivan Ljubicic and Tommy Robredo in action.)

The late arrival back in Amsterdam at 00.35 meant I walked straight into a disappointed crowd of Arsenal supporters who’d also had their own night to remember in Eindhoven. This was followed by a late-night Chinese meal in Chinatown, and my attempt to ingretiate myself into getting more food by talking in broken Mandarin to the waitresses. It sort of worked, and the meal was lovely by the time I left at 01.45. Unfortunately, their English was so good that they could spot I was neither Dutch nor fluent in Mandarin meant I could only be a foreigner. That meant everything was answered in English - as are so many people when I ’speak’ Dutch to them - clothes shop assistants, railway ticket officer assistants to Indonesian waiters. Am I really that bad at posing as a local?

Einar himself is great - he used to buy spliffs at SOAS which somehow sealed our working relationship. Obviosuly, I have to prove myself in the job but he has been incredibly supportive and essentially said to me that whatever I do, do not be forceful or suck up to the clients during the pitch.

What I now have to do is to fully understand the workings of the website, the ins and outs of the betting industry, and think about who to contact. Working hours are self-dictated, and I can make as many sales or set up as many meetings as possible - which means I’ll be able to watch the usual mid-summer fare of Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and Tour de France uninterrupted. As I will be working for commissions, I have every reason to want to sell more in order to gain a higher return on the generous percentage on offer. I’m already thinking of maybe heading out to Costa Rica for the whole of August to meet some contacts there.

Another pleasing thing I learnt over a sensational Japanese meal is that the shareholder who I met at the interview picked me due to my love for tennis: I never thought telling your interviewers that not going to bed the night before until eight hours before the interview to watch Kim Clijsters could result in getting a job. And to think I very nearly didn’t apply for the job just because I never thought I had a chance in becoming a salesman!

So now, the real work starts. Yes, I’ll be making phonecalls, and yes,there will be numeorus trips abroad and within the UK, and yes, there will be disappointments and setbacks, and yes, I’ll have to wine and dine the clients in my unofficial role as ‘the emissary’ for the company, BUT it can be a lonely job, and I know, it could radically change my life in so many ways. Starting with a few more chances to smoke spliff when abroad!