Unemployment benefits?

Dear readers,

I had last week the "luck" of discovering the Dutch unemployment benefit system. Not that I am proud of it, but let's say that considering I have now 13 days to find a new job and not one decent lead, it is a bit of a safer approach.

My good surprise was to discover that you can do most of the work online. There is a form to register as a job seeker and another one to apply for the unemployment benefits. Both are on the same CWI website. The good thing is that if you fill them in in the right order, data from the first will be reused from the second, which is a big winner on the time aspect.

The very bad thing is that just the first form takes literally hours to fill in. And considering I am a foreigner, so a bit slower than average, it is a miracle my browser didn't crash in the process. Second bad surprise was that despite the electronic (lengthy) registration, I still have to present myself physically to an "intake meeting" with all the papers you can imagine... So all this time won for... not much in the end. In the best case scenario, I will get 70% of my salary, which is barely enough to pay my mortgage, my bills and my food. :-(