Outside Looking In

Joie de vivre

2012-02-10T09:53:00.000+01:00

Hot off the presses of controversy comes Bringing Up Bébé, by Pamela Druckerman. Even worse than Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, it makes the assertion that le snooty French are better parents than Americans. Quelle horreur!

Actually, it doesn't seem to be a manual for how to raise kids, as it is another American "OMG the Europeans have got this whole 'living' thing figured out" memoir (though, I haven't actually read the book, only the excerpt). Which should be a genre in itself--Americans realizing that they're not the center of the universe, that the way of constant strife and competition is not the only way, that "socialism" is not, in fact, synonymous with "evil"--and what it all means to their identity as Americans. It's always funny to read these things, because, unlike most Americans who write such books, I've always been relatively laid-back and willing to entertain the idea that people elsewhere might just do and think differently. And when in Rome, as they saying goes, do as Romans do.

One review that excoriates the book raises the point that Druckerman seems to consider "American mothers" until one huge, very-broad brush, one that spans the entirety of "hypervigilent helicopter moms" to "criminally negligent crackheads", and that the degree of involvement spent in parenting likewise spans a broad range of parenting styles. But I think the review misses an opportunity to adress a critical point that Druckerman brings up, which is, "Why do American moms always feel like they're doing something wrong, and why do European moms 'just know' how to parent?" Or to paint a broader picture, "Why are Americans never satisfied?"

To answer that: certainly there is a lot about the US that could be improved--gay rights, latent (or not-so-latent) racism and reverse-racism, better social and environmental policies, more humane maternity leave policies, public transit, etc. But these are not the kinds of things that can be changed by making yourself better--these are not the kinds of changes that can take place simply because you resolve to be a better person than you were yesterday. It is my amateur-anthropologist's belief that Americans, who've grown up surrounded by this myth that you can do anything you want if you just work hard enough, have also absorbed the hidden message that's never articulated: that good people don't rely on others. Which means, rather than fostering cooperativity towards making a better future, people focus on being more/better themselves, and to hell with the rest of the world (see aforementioned about "good people"). Hence, too, the popularity of religion--self-improvement in God!

But there's a lot about Europe that could be improved, too--the coming retirement crisis, for instance. Mass confusion about signage on the roads, an ungodly tax rate (though, in light of the benefits, I'll take an ungodly tax rate), and of course there's that pesky integration-of-new-immigrants issue. But Europeans are surrounded by the myth of destiny rather than self-determination, and the hidden message that's never articulated is: we depend on others to make us good. That does seem quite creepy, actually....

Believe it or not, I did not consider any of these when I moved here. I could only trust that everything would work out in the end--and it has, mostly. There are a few quibbles that I have with my current situation, but then again, I wouldn't be American if I were so easily satisfied, would I?

We Will Survive

2012-02-07T16:46:00.000+01:00

Weather in the Netherlands is never reliable, not even with weather reports. This is, in part, due to the fact that the country is miniscule, but also because the eastern part of the country, where we live, is right at the boundary between coastal and continental weather. You don't really notice the difference, until you get into a train under the auspices of golden rays of sunlight, and step out into a downpour. I've been drier getting out of the shower.

So planning vet visits is always dicey. First and foremost, of course, is finding a day when we're both free, which is hard enough. Then we have to find a day and time when the vet is available, which is even harder, since they charge an extra €20 on the weekends. But lastly, we'd like it to be not-too-hot, not-too-cold, and preferably not-raining. This latter is nearly impossible to plan for, as we usually schedule vet visits weeks in advance. And it's been COLD.

The temperature this past week has been below freezing all week. I've been wearing leggings and long johns to go running and get to work. It's been so cold that wet laundry freezes stiff in ten minutes--after fifteen, it can be used as a weapon (the upside, though, is that it smells INCREDIBLE after it dries). Not that I would know.

So walking to the vet with our Kitty Tower of Terror required a few extra considerations, on top of the usual concerns about bungee cords and figuring out to cram all three fuzzbutts into their respective carriers without having them hide in impossible places. The Tweeb, in particular , is all skin and bone and and thin fur, so she got a hot water bottle in hers(much to our regret, as she was plenty comfortable enough to belt out her own operetta of howls and yowls). The entire KiTT was wrapped in one of our fleece throw blankets, which we thought would convey the added benefit of screening the kitties from seeing the enormity of the whole wide world. Alas, all it did was keep us from smelling Noodle's stress-turd until we go to the vet's. By then, Karel was quite frazzled--and I wouldn't have put a stress-turd past him.

Like Shadow, I bear these trips to the vet with an equanimity that's not quite grace--they're part and parcel of having fuzzbutts, so it must be put up with. Still, even though I'd prepared for it and checked my balances ahead of time, getting socked with an €[ungodly number] vet bill is something that you never really get used to, no matter which side of the Atlantic you're on.

Light reading

2012-02-04T10:20:00.000+01:00

We have one credit card between the two of us, and most of its use goes towards ordering books off Amazon (the UK site). And one of the things that we are now in possession of is Dick's Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes: or, How They Did It in the 1870s. Behind the formidable title lies a formidable book: in it are directions, "in plain language", for how to make cosmetics, soap, and patent medicines. How to preserve meat, purify metals, bleach anything, dissolve bones, preserve wood, polish Alabaster. In short, how to do everything and anything, without everything and anything that we have today.

It's a fascinating read, actually, particularly the section on patent medicines: the recipes range from hopelessly useless to if-this-doesn't-kill-you-then-you'll-probably-survive-the-disease. Recipes call for orange oil, rhubarb root, fennel, molasses...and things like nitric acid, belladonna, and laudenum. "Cures" for things like whooping cough consisted of pulverizing roasted onions and making a poultice wrap and setting it on your throat (alas, this arrived after my bout with Bordatella pertussis, so I did not get a chance to try it--purely in the interest of proving that such sh*t doesn't work). Preserving milk--keeping it "sweet"--meant boiling it with baking soda.

Supposedly, it is a very "practical" guide, assuming that you can get things like hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, saltpetre, etc. And that's to say nothing of some of the more fantastic concoctions, such as "essence of morphia" (morphine), opium, and cocaine (and people have issues with legalizing marijuana!). Try getting your hands on things like brimstone, cyanide, and benzene--the last, incidentally, was a cure for head lice (and the child who was thus afflicted, apparently)--these days. The scary thing, then, is not that all of these things were used. It's that they were apparently readily available enough that a "collection of popular and domestic receipts" thought nothing of including them.

There are two things I have concluded from perusing Dick's. The first is that the days of "all natural" things are an illusion we've made for ourselves. We tell ourselves that things were better off in the days before additives and preservatives with names I can't spell and can barely pronounce, but do you REALLY think using hydrochloric acid to preserve your meat is that much better? Anti-vaccine whackos (who really should be charged with manslaughter by negligence) have got all of us worried about autism, but going back to the days when a mashed onion was all that stood between you and death-by-diphtheria isn't exactly my idea of paradise. People in the 1870s would probably kill to have what we do, today: reasonably safe and effective cleaners (for all that I mislike using Purple Stuff, it is a good deal safer than cyanide), refrigeration for meat and dairy products, and medicines that actually work. "All natural" is overrated, and is the kind of thing that only people who've never actually had to live without can wish for.

The second is that people who wish for less government regulation really have no idea what they're wishing for. The free market in 1870 was probably a lot more capitalist than it is today, but if you wanted to sue your doctor for giving your kid a deadly dose of "chlorodyne" (laudenum and chloroform), you'd be hard up to try. When you read through the lists of recommended "receipts and processes", it's a miracle that anybody lived long enough to reproduce, and had enough functional internal organs to do so.

Schooled

2012-02-03T13:45:00.000+01:00

Karel, for all his wonderful qualities, remains a steadfast luddite in many ways. It was only very recently, for instance, that I was able to persuade him to get an OV Chip card (one of the annonymous ones) and introduce him to the wonderful swipe-and-beep of the OV Chip reader. Say what you will about the loss of personal connectivity between a bus driver and his passenger--when it's colder than balls out, any moment extra spent waiting outside is a moment too long.

Aside: It came to my attention last week that some riders are saying that the OV system is too complicated. That it should be easier--you should just be able to get on and get off the bus without remembering to uitchecken. I get that the loss of €4 for forgetting to check out might be a hardship. But you can only do that so many times before you start remembering. Hell, if Karel can remember to check out, the rest of the world has no excuse.

Lately, though, it's come to his attention that social media might not be the pure evil that the likes of Dr. Phil make it out to be. I'm on Facebook (not under Jules, but under my real name), and I check it regularly to see what's going on in the world, to find out what my friends are reading, and in general just to keep up with people's lives. It's a nice way to keep in touch with people who I don't see frequently. It's certainly no substitute for one-on-one time, but it can keep the embers hot until everybody can get together for the marshmallow roast.

So one of these days, he might just start appearing on Facebook. And then you can ask him whether everything I write here is true, or complete bullsh*t.

Moving along

2012-01-29T09:38:00.000+01:00

After much consideration, I've decided to formally move into the world of freelance work. I've been getting "ithcy feet" for a while, actually--it's what happens when your job can be done by a few trained monkeys, until something goes disastrously wrong (which happens more often than my boss would think, apparently). And also, the financial situtation in the sciences has only gotten worse, and as of March I will be officially unemployed again.

However, until that happens, I will be using the time to set up my own company, and Karel will be delighting in that holy-of-all-holies, the pass to the Makro (Dutch equivalent of a Costco) which I would receive automatically as a small business owner. And of course, drumming up business, post-business. There's a vet visit somewhere in there, too--blood panels and yearly checkups.

So basically, this is a shameless plug for photography gigs. If you or someone you know of is hosting a gathering where they want pics; or if you want photos of something or somewhere or someone, shoot me an email. My sample pics are all over the blog, so if you like the work that I've done and would like me to do it for you, let me know.

Friday Night Light

2012-01-28T06:00:00.000+01:00

I'm not an especially literary person. My favorite books tend to be nonfiction, and I'm having a helluva time slogging through Murakami's 1Q84. The fault might be mine--I tend not to like overly "literary" literature, preferring books that just tell a story and tell it well (Justin Cronin's The Passage is a great one). I am therefore, despite my prolific blogging habits, less than inclined to try my hand at poetry.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy poetry, though. The rhythm and flow of words lulls you into a trance and you connect with the material on an emotional level that poets spend years trying to capture, and English teachers spend years trying to teach. So when our dichter friend invited us to come see him perform his poetry at Nijmegen's Dichternacht, I couldn't wait to go. Plus, my Dutch has finally gotten to the point where I could probably understand most of the poets, provided that nobody mumbled. And as a bonus, I could try my hand at shooting people. With my camera, that is.

It was an interesting night, full of explosive, amusing, interesting readings. I did not understand most of it--too full of Dutch-isms, I guess--but you could get the gist of the poems from the tone: meditations on the seasons, life, love, and medications, and wordplay. Something I never could understand about poetry readings, though, is the need to perform the piece. There were a few poems that needed it, but by and large I've always felt that a poem should speak for itself--if you need to gussy it up with shouting or whispers, to sing a part of it, or to read it the way Kenneth Brannagh reads Shakespeare, in order to get your point across, mayhaps you ought to choose better words, or use better punctuation. That being said, there were a few poems that were improved by foot-stomping and added rhythms, but it should be noted that the guy was a musician before he became a poet, and therefore knew what he was doing.

The Dutch are keen to preserve their language and enjoy being artsy, so the Cafe Otis was packed with people. True to the Dutch fashion, there weren't enough seats for everyone--oh hell, there were pratcially no seats for anyone--and the bar consisted of a single long shelf of multi-colored bottles. Never mind that the Dutch language isn't really suited for poetry--the hard "g" breaks up the ebbs that the rest of the words have lulled you into. It's like having a random cymbal crashes during Smetana's Die Moldau. Working that particular phoneme into a poem so that it sounds organic is, I would imagine, the challenge of Dutch poetry.

The other aspect about poetry nights that I find particularly irksome, as a photographer, is the god-awful lighting. I knew, going in, that it would be low lighting--these sorts of things always take place in the gloom of semi-darkness. I hadn't expected it to take place with red lights, though (reddish, not pure red, but still annoying as bugger-all). Which is why today's posts are black-and-white--I didn't think human-shaped tomatoes would be much appreciated.

Pot and Kettle

2012-01-27T08:53:00.006+01:00

Visitors to our humble abode will notice two things: 1) that we have a lot of candles and things that operate with an open flame, and 2) that our cats are allowed to do just about anything, under the theory that, were we not home, they'd do it anyway. How the two have managed to coexist without creating a towering inferno is one of those little miracles of life.

But despite our propensity for fire, we do have an electric kettle. An electric kettle is basically a kettle whose sole function is to boil water. You fill it up to whatever amount you need (usually around 1 L for us), push a button, and about 2 minutes later, you have boiling hot water you can use for tea, ramen noodles, cooking, etc. It takes about 5 minutes to boil a full kettle (1.7 L), but ours is one of the lower-end models. The kettle turns itself off when it's finished. It's been such an integral part of my life that, like my sneakers, I've simply not thought to blog about them. But as I do follow a few American blogs, it struck me that these must not be espeically popular in the US, whereas they are incredibly popular in the Netherlands. I don't know of a single Dutch home without one, and I'd even go so far as to say that, across the entirety of Europe, every home has at least one electric kettle. Even in my student house in Maastricht, my suitemates kept an electric kettle in the kitchen, free for anybody to use.

I'm guessing that there are some not-entirely-unjustified concerns about safety. Water and electricity have always been an uncomfortable mix for most people. However, I would say without hesitation that, given the placement of our microwave, and the fiddliness of our gas stove, that the electric kettle is one of our safer appliances. Right next to the coffee machine, literally, where ours sits. To be quite honest, it does make some pretty scary sounds while it's bringing water to the boil, but I've never seen one, no matter how old, go on the fritz.

Or maybe it's that there's no way to sexy-up an electric kettle. You can give it whatever shape you want, make it out of titanium, add a filter, brag about how compact it is, but at the end of the day, you have to make it so that you push a button and water is boiled. It's so simple, compared to a space-age microwave or a state-of-the-art dishwasher, that I could imagine that it'd be hard to market: "It boils water! Really fast!" "So?"

Hm. That is kind of hard to sell. I guess it's one of those things you have to experience first, before you realize what an awesome thing it is.

Test Tube Tomatoes

2012-01-25T12:08:00.002+01:00

Those of you who read science journals on a regular basis have probably seen this study, which demonstrates that microRNAs from your food can end up in your bloodstream, and that miRNAs from your food can affect the way you process fats (and presumably other things, but LDLs were what the paper looked at). It's a long, highly technical paper (even for me) and like any good science paper, it raises more questions than it answers: can miRNAs from animals do the same thing? How much plant material does one have to ingest before miRNAs show up in your blood? I don't work with miRNA, so I don't have the expertise to say whether their conclusions were justified. But it is, literally, food for thought.

One thing the paper did not mention was genetically modified organisms. Yet, somehow, a writer decided the two must be linked, and consequently wrote up this non sequitur. Now, obviously, GMOs have miRNAs that can affect your body. SO DOES EVERY OTHER KIND OF FOOD. But apparently the threat of GMOs is so great that this bit of science, as new as it is, should be considered as proof that GMOs are dangerous.

Now, I maintain that GMOs are no different from your average, run-of-the-mill end result of selective breeding, and that given all of the weird things we do with food, a couple of new proteins is the least of our worries. It's strange, isn't it, that foodies worship Ferrian Adria and the things he does with food--vaporizing a tomato, things like that. Yet the moment someone says they modified something--genetically or otherwise (as if nature gives a sh*t where the gene comes from)--everybody freaks out about how dangerous it is and that this is "unknown territory".

But anyway, that's just me. The fact is that it doesn't really matter what I think--the EU forbids the sale of GMOs to consumers, and the use of such products in our consumer goods. And while I'm not entirely pro-GMO (I think the technology could use a lot more oversight in how it's implemented), I'm not rabidly against it. Like I said, we do weird things to food, and treat it as a gourmet item. Foie gras is the end result of a disease we induce in geese--and yet it's only available at the most upscale restaurants.

There is one thing worse than not enough funding for the sciences, and that is scaremongering by uneducated journalists with respect to the conclusions that can be drawn by the research they are writing about. It would have been fair to say that the findings of the paper mean that we will have to evaluate our relationship with food more carefully. It would even have been fair to speculate that Monsanto and other Big Agriculture corporations might have to re-evaluate their claims of total safety for GMOs. But to conclude that the research means that miRNAs in GMOs are different from that of regular food (which would not be the case--if they are different it is because they are introduced, and as far as I know nobody has done this with plants) and are therefore somehow more dangerous is extrapolating a step too far. Scaring people with the idea that Big Agriculture is somehow going to kill you with their mutant tomatoes is just plain irresponsible.

More than Herring

2012-01-22T14:04:00.001+01:00

Those of you who are thinking of visiting and/or living in the Netherlands have probably gotten the idea that it's a drug- and prostitution-paradise. I hope that this blog has dispelled at least some of that image, although even I must grudgingly concede that the Damrak will win the battle for the Netherlands' projected image, simply because it is so popular.

And how could it not be? The Velorama in Nijmegen, while fun and fascinating and undervisited, can't possibly hold a torch to the promise of kinkiness-to-come in Amsterdam's Sex Museum. And who doesn't want to be photographed next to Samuel L. Jackson, Madonna, President Obama, and other interesting (or not-so) of our time? Amsterdam sports team Ajax, a Waterstone's for English-speakers, and didn't get the living sh*t bombed out of it in the 40's. And whatever charms Nijmegen and it's surrounding areas might have, the spelling and pronunciation are probably a put-off to would-be visitors.

At the very least, then, I hope to have shown that the Netherlands is, believe-it-or-not, bigger than Amsterdam, and that there's a whole slew of funny and interesting things about the Dutch that you might not get if you've just been accosted by a pimp. And those of you who are looking for something less R-rated to do in Amsterdam might just consider the theater.

Dutch theater is surprsingly vibrant, which in itself is interesting considering how few people understand Dutch (relative to, say, Chinese or English). You could be forgiven for wondering whether people who speak other languages might be feeling left out while the actors on stage gesticulate and, well, act. To that end, the Toneelgroep Amsterdam has started projecting English subtitles (well, considering that the screen is above the stage, I suppose they're more accurately called "supertitles") above their Thursday-evening shows. The boventiteling is still in it's initial stages, to see if they can't get generate more interest and support in the arts. I met with their publicity coordinator when she asked me to write something about their group--and yes, they are indeed that big that they need a publicity coordinator. It's a core group of 20 actors (some of whom are also famous for being on TV--Barry Atsma, for instance), with some guest actors and some understudies. They play 350 nights of the year in Amsterdam and other cities around the Netherlands and the world, performing plays by international as well as Dutch playrights.

A resurgent interest in the arts couldn't come at a better time: over the past few years, the Dutch in general and Amsterdam in particular have gotten tired of the "hash and whores" image of the Netherlands, and are trying to rein it in. I honestly think they'd rather stamp it out altogether, but as in all things typically Dutch, the need for consensus as to how to go about it outweighs any sense of urgency to do anything about it. A revival of the arts and theatrical night life can only help.

*Disclaimer: I did not receive any payment, in kind or otherwise, for writing this. This was written purely as a favor for a cause I support. Say what you will about the NEA and the uselessness of art--that we humans have a concept of beauty needs to be celebrated, otherwise we're just another animal.

Transit

2012-01-21T10:21:00.000+01:00

This fascinating article in Slate disucsses two factors of public transit: "system", defined as the physical and operational infrastructure; and "empathy", meaning cultural "texture", although I tend to think of it as anything about public transit that doesn't refer to the infrastructure. It's safe to say that Dutch public transit is a high system and high empathy system (yes, I know I used "system" twice in one sentence): you have a thorough public transit system servicing a great range of neighborhoods, relatively frequent services, and the trains/buses/trams/subways are, for the most part, not terribly uncomfortable, and clean. Dutch readers of OLI who wish to take me to task for the last should go visit Philadelphia's public transit system. Our litter boxes after three days are pristine compared to some of the...ah, stuff, that you can see on the subways.

Why is public transit so wonderful in Europe and yet so...well, shoddy in the States? Even the best public transit systems that I've seen (the Metro systems in DC and New York) are bare-bones compared to the worst of the Dutch NS (the older cars they run between Utrecht and Weesp). The easy answer is that public transit is an afterthought in the minds of most people--they have cars. But most people in the Netherlands have cars, as well--in this respect, Karel and I are in the minority 10% of family units who do not own at least one car. The parking lot of the nearby Albert Heijn is consistently filled to the brim on Saturdays, falsifying the statement "All Dutch people ride bikes".

But the buses are simultaneously crowded on Saturdays, and the trains are packed with travelers at all hours of the day. This is, in part, because the files (traffic jams) can be long enough to make a short delay by the NS worthwhile, and parking can be a pain. Briefly, while the door-do-door time of a trip by train versus a trip by car is theoretically the same according to Google, it must be countered by the possibility of a long traffic jam and the cost of parking. Which is also not cheap, and can be quite a walk from where you need to get to.

European cities, in other words, have gamed the system to work against drivers. Timing traffic lights so that cars have to stop at every other block, eliminating streets available for parking, and marginalizing parking structures all serve one thing: to keep cars out of key areas of pedestrian traffic. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Dutch don't have cars, if you looked at Nijmegen's city center on a Saturday. Or Utrecht. Or Amsterdam's tourist hot spots. I don't know if the Dutch have gone out of their way to time traffic lights, but I am fairly certain that the buses that service Nijmegen communicate with some of the traffic lights, so that they don't have to be like all of the other ~~chumps~~ cars and wait their turn.

But more importantly, the public transportation system in Europe tends to make more sense than it does in the US. Trains go to where people are--where there are fewer people, there is less service. This bit of intuition seems to have escaped the powers-that-be at SEPTA, who have plunked train stations at places as odd as Rosslyn, which is literally in the middle of nowhere. The scheduling systems are quick to load and easy to follow--why anybody should even bother loading a timetable to their website these days baffles me (SEPTA)--and all of the information, fares, times, stops, are available at one glance. The Dutch are not exceptional at public transit, although after having suffered SEPTA for three years, it certainly feels that way. They've just done a better job of adapting to how people actually use transit, rather than expecting people to adapt to them.

People in the US, on the other hand, don't use transit. It startled me to learn, for instance, that for the majority of Disneyworld visitors, their encounter with Disney's trams and buses were their first with "public" transit. A public that doesn't use public transportation can't provide information for how to make service better; a service that can't make service better can't attract the public to use it. The public, not having seen any benefits for having a good public transit system in place, therefore refuses to pay taxes to ensure its survival. And things only get worse.

...and this is why the world thinks Americans are idiots

2012-01-14T11:00:00.000+01:00

Being somewhat of a sadist, I've been following the Republican primary pretty closely, moaning and groaning with every idiot (Bachmann) that rose to prominence--and sobbing with every idiot (Perry) that replaced them. There are only three remotely intelligent candidates in the primaries as of this point--one of them is a sleazy politician that will say just about anything to get your vote (Romney), one is a sociopath (Gingrich), and one of them...well, Hunstman actually isn't so bad, but he doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell. Why not, you may ask?

Because if speaking French bas become a liability for Romney, then Hunstman, who speaks reasonable (albeit very basic) Mandarin, is totally and completely f*cked.

No, I don't pretend to understand why Americans find it so unsettling that someone should be able to speak more than one language. I mean, when signs and official papers are bilingual (English and Spanish) and you can go your entire life without hearing a word of English in some neighborhoods, it kind of implies that learning another language might be a good idea. I attribute this to a perverted kind of patriotism: it's the only way, in a very real sense, to tell friend fom foe. Alas, it also means that you keep yourself an ignorant fool.

Which I don't actually have a problem with: learning a new language is hard, and I can understand why people don't want to learn Tonkinese or Hindi. But what I do have a problem with is when the Gingrich campaign takes a video of Mitt Romney asking the Olympic Committee something on behalf of the volunteers (I can't remember that much French), putting some text underneath it, and expecting people to believe that the text has anything to do with the words coming out of Romney's mouth. I don't know what's more insulting: the fact that Gingrich thinks that people will fall for it just because it's French, or the fact that someone out there will fall for it.

I continue to be flabbergasted that ignorance and stupidity are selling points for political candidates in the US, even as President Obama (and just about every other intellectual out there) touts innovation and brains as being the way forward out of the rut that the economy is currently in. I suppose it's a good thing the US has institutions such as Harvard and the Ivies, because the rest of the country isn't giving me much to be proud of.

Koningin Conundrum

2012-01-13T20:36:00.000+01:00

Life in the Netherlands is, usually for the better, pretty damn quiet. I say this because on Monday, Queen Beatrix went to Abu Dhabi and got photographed wearing a headscarf...and the flak hasn't stopped since. Immediately after the pictures were posted, Geert Wilders (yes, that Geert, Dutch-directness-become-@$$hole-ishness-personified) begain ripping on Her Majesty for "endorsing a symbol of inequality and oppression." (Approximate translation)

It is times like this that I find myself wishing for a bit of "real" news--y'know, like heads of state conspiring to teach Intelligent Design as science. Something good and proper to get riled up about, rather than this nonsense. The queen rightfully dismissed Wilders's "criticism" as "echte onzin" (nonsense), but strangely enough he has his supporters. Mostly from people who just don't get why their queen would want to visit a mosque. (Because it's a beautiful building with gorgeous artwork and historical books, maybe?)

I also find it amusing that the same people who are getting their panties up in a bunch about the queen adhering to local customs are the same ones who insist that foreigners should become completely integrated, or GTFO: They don't want the queen to adopt to local customs for a visit, but they insist that buitenlanders learn Dutch and jump for joy over Zwarte Piet. It's the kind of hypocrisy that would make for blood-boiling anger-fueled rants, if the Netherlands were just a little bigger.

Wind and Water

2012-01-08T14:21:00.000+01:00

Quickly, now: what does a strong northwesterly wind have to do with Dutch floods?

The picture taken today was of the Ooijpolder, under at least 1 m of water. The uitwaters have done their assigned tasks and flooded accordingly, but it might not be enough: the Waal flooded its banks and it's gotten to the point where the barges have been using trees and other tall objects to determine where the banks are. The Bisonbaai (alas, no nude beaches this time of year) has all but disappeared, and indeed the only indications that there ever was land in many places is the presence of treetops sticking out of the water. The most remarkable thing about the picture is that just 6 weeks ago, it was dry land--indeed, it was nearly in danger of drought--and covered with konikpaarden and those weird little cows.

The rivers in the Netherlands flow from east to west, culminating in a delta on the west coast around Rotterdam. Most of the time, whatever extra water is brought down the rivers just gets dumped out to sea, but this time, a strong northwesterly wind prevented the emptying of the swollen rivers. Add to this the near-record rainfall in December (well, it certainly seemed like a record rainfall) and you have yourself a flood in the making. The flood of 1953, for instance, was caused in part by wind gusts pushing the ocean against the already-weakened dikes. Happily, this time, there is no storm brewing (yet) and the country, while sodden, isn't in danger of drowning.

When you consider what the Dutch have had to do to the landscape to make it habitable--and that, even with 2000 years of water management behind them, flooding remains a perpetual danger--the only logical conclusion to draw is that these people are bloody crazy. Sure, the cows make great cheese and the asparagus is like none other, but I don't think anybody can say, with a straight face, that these were worth the effort, not to mention the lives of all those who drowned when the dikes didn't hold.

Maybe it's all those potatoes.

Klingon and Elvish

2012-01-06T18:33:00.000+01:00

I think I've finally cracked the code to learning stuff--any sort of stuff:

Instant feedback.

Then again, I guess that shouldn't surprise me: it's why I upgraded from film to digital, it's why I love my job (experiments either work or they don't--either way, you have an answer), and it's why I love the Code Academy.

Coding, after all, isn't all that different from learning a language: it's taking the information you want to convey, and turning it into information that someone (or something, as the case may be) else can understand. There are rules, and then there are ways around those rules. The only real difference, in the end, is that unless you're a hard-core coding freak, you get to interact with people with the one, and machines with the other.

I also think that this is why my Dutch lessons at the Radboud have been such a miserable and utter fail, and why going to them is such a chore, rather than a great way to get to know people. The lessons that I had in Maastricht, for all of their shortcomings and inability to handle different learning styles, at least had the benefit of not being so structured, and being able to exercise your newly-learned Dutch right away. Or maybe I just lucked out with my teachers there. But regardless: even though we covered less grammar in Maastricht, I still feel as if I left Maastricht able to speak much better Dutch than I currently do. I suppose it also helped that, in Maastricht, the students were better than the ones in my current class.

It's sort of like clicker-training, really, except without the treat. And the feedback doesn't always have to be positive. But it does have to be relatively quick to follow the event, otherwise you lose the limbic connection and the memory you build doesn't last.

Hey, I never said I wasn't a geek...

Flat World, Flat Country

2012-01-02T08:00:00.002+01:00

A perfect confluence of events:

A Facebook friend of mine pointed out an article that kind of bludgeons the US over the head with a poleax: the reason why Finnish schools are so great and American schools less great (on average) is simply that Finland believes that every child should have the same opportunity to learn the same things. If they fail to pass the test at the age of 18, then it's trade school, or straight to work, but at least they all had the same chances. It's a wonderfully egalitarian system that really brings out the truth in that favorite-of-favorite catchphrases, "All men are created equal".

Undoubtedly the reality is more complicated than the glossy Atlantic article would have it, and indeed, the article touches on a few more points that I won't get into, here. But there is an ugly truth behind it: the gulf in the types of opportunities that the children of the super-rich have, versus those of the middling-to-lower classes, can't possibly be bigger: children who go to schools armed with iPads and filled with breakfasts designed by nutritionists to maximize mental activity, and then children who count themselves lucky to have school that day because they can get the free lunch. There is something seriously wrong when people can see these two scenarios and say, "Yes, that is capitalism at work--things are as they should be." It's one thing for an adult to screw things up--take to drink, do drugs, etc. But it's another to disadvantage a child from birth, and then expect him to pull himself up by his bootstraps the moment he turns 18. I'm not suggesting that every child gets state-of-the-art technology. But it just seems to be common sense that textbooks should not be written by corporations (as Eric Schlosser points out in Fast Food Nation) and that science should not be infused with God, and in a world where there is so much information to be had, it's a crying shame that more people can't make better use of it.

The educational system in Finland is similar to that of the Netherlands, although the process to weed out the educational misfits begins at the tender age of 12, rather than 18. But in any case, the Netherlands still do bettter than the US in the three metrics of reading, math, and science. You can play with the data at the PISA site: it's quite fascinating (although a bit of a pain to use). Or you can just cheat and look at the Wiki page (2009 data).

I am pointing this out because a comment that someone left on my post "Phat" has been niggling at me for quite a while. In the Netherlands, being a much smaller economy, I have fewer choices (the choices that the commenter suggested were bikes or cars). There are 6 brands of peanut butter on the supermarket shelf, rather than 30. There are 4 brands of milk, rather than 10. And there are certainly not 31 flavors of ice cream. The limitation of choices could be construed as a limitation of the freedoms I have (golly, if I want Skippy peanut butter, I should be able to get it!). Or it could be that I am able to be happier. Barry Schwartz explains it much better than I could:

Dr. Schwartz explains it in matters of consumer goods, mostly, but the same could apply to school choices, as well. In the US, the school district you live in can easily raise housing prices by $10,000 or more (at least that's the figure Elizabeth Warren gave in her speech--personally, I think it's more). But the impact of schools is much bigger than mere dissatisfaction with your choice: social and environmental policies are more often driven by pleasant-sounding ideologies than hard science, and we can't vote smart politicians into office unless we are also capable of making smart choices.

Sure, biology plays an important part, too--half of the people have got to be below average, after all. But Finland, I think, proves that good social policy can at least mitigate the effects of an avearge population.

Destination Unknown

2011-12-31T08:57:00.001+01:00

It's that time of year when everybody resolves to eat better and exercise more. To be a better housekeeper, or keep a better lab journal (well, that's me, and that's a weekly resolution of mine). To go skydiving once, fly a glider, ski a black diamond, try a totally new food, go to church regularly. To lose those final 10 lbs (or start with losing 10 lbs), to become eco-conscious, to just be better people than we all were in 2011.

Behavioral experts, however, say that change only happens when you have a measurable metric with which to measure progress. If you resolve to spend less money, for instance, you'd be better off with a concrete goal along the lines of "not spending more than €20/week on lunch". Eating better would be rephrased to "having one vegetable with every meal" (broccoli for breakfast, anyone?). So in keeping with the science, my resolutions for this year don't include eating better and exercising more, though that is implicit in the first one, which is to run the 10k Marikenloop in May of this year. It's a 5k race with a 10k option, in case you're interested. It's also a women's only race (sorry, guys). It's no Zevenheuvelenloop, certainly not in terms of scale or grandeur, but it's a nice way to ease back into running, I think.

Another resolution of mine is to finish a rough draft of a book. I'd started writing a few bits and pieces of it while I was unemployed, but I couldn't get very far. I didn't have any plans as to how I wanted to structure it, which was problem number one. Problem number two was that, between my job hunt and my other little writing pets, it became more of a drag to work on, probably because of problem number one. My NaNoWriMo novel this year ran into the same problem. I am not a seat-of-my-pants writer--I really don't know why I keep acting like I am.

My final resolution this year is to improve my Dutch language skills. This will be awkward, but I think I should be able to get my lab mates on board, as far as the speaking bits go. Fear not, international readers: Outside Looking In will continue to be written in English, though perhaps I will introduce a "word of the week" column. That, however, is not a resolution. I've never been very good about weekly things, whether it's photos or posts or things like that.

But really, the goal is to make it through 2012. Beyond that--where we'll end up, what we'll be doing, who we'll be--the destination is beautifully vague. Enjoying the way there--that's the real treat.

...Number Fifty-One

2011-12-28T16:42:00.009+01:00

First of all: thanks for all the good wishes for my back. For the first few days it felt so terrible that I was almost certain it was a herniated disc, but after a while it became clear that it was a very bad episode of sciatica. Which is also not-fun, but also a lot less serious.

Secondly: a while ago I posted a list called, approximately, "You know you've been living in the Netherlands for too long when..." My boyfriend, upon reading that post, had a few laughs, and then began suggesting other ways to know that you've gone native: random cravings for kroketten; loving patat oorlog; and getting annoyed when people confuse Sinterklaas with Christmas.

I realize that I'm a little late to this fight--the article was posted about a day after I realized that I could no longer sit down. But any expat should have been thoroughly schooled in the difference between Sinterklaas (presents for being good) with Christmas (supposed birth of Jesus Christ--he was, I've heard, actually born in March; the bit about angels singing, though, is absolutely true), especially if you've been living in the Netherlands for as long as Ms. Olien has. Come to think on it, Americans longing to de-commercialize Christmas might take a page from the Dutch (or Spanish and/or Catholic countries) and separate the gift-giving extravaganza from the religious aspect of the holidays. Sinterklaas is shamelessly commercialized; Christmas is a night for fancy foods and family. While gifts are exchanged on Christmas, retailers don't make a big fuss about impending Christmas doom (the Dutch do that to themselves--a weird sort of conformist guilt).

But what I really wanted to write about was the irritating business of calling Holland's Zwarte Piet a racist construction. Which it is, but in the grand scheme of things, it ranks (in my mind) as a relatively mild offense, somwhere along the lines of Prince Willem-Alexander unwittingly swearing to his Mexican audience. Why is this? Because NOBODY (except maybe small children) believes that Sint en Piet are real. They are no longer caricatures--they are characters in a nice little story line that gets told to kids every year. Zwarte Piet, it is true, began as a bumbling servant to Saint Nicholas--if you go back to the original-original story, he was a Moorish convert to Christianity who elected to serve the saint out of gratitude for having a shot at obtaining Grace. But Saint Nicholas has also gone through his own rebranding: Sint, in days of old, ran what was essentially a labor camp for bad children in Spain, and would literally beat the bad ones (try getting that one into a PC-classroom these days). These days, Piet is the one with all the awesome magical powers, and Sint just leaves a lump of coal in your shoe.

"Yes, the story changes, but that doesn't make it any less bad," some people might say. "It's still wrong to put on blackface. Intents don't matter."

I would argue, however, that intention matters every bit as much as the act itself. If not, then movies such as Ghandi, Memoirs of a Geisha, The House of Sand and Fog, and The Good Earth would be deemed terribly offensive (and maybe they were, by some, but I think it's safe to say that, since these are all mainstream movies, they're probably well-acclaimed in most circles). In two of them, the venerable Ben Kingsley gets a tan and magically becomes India's greatest 20th-century hero, or an Arab-American trying to scrape by. Memoirs of a Geisha was noticeably devoid of any lead character who was actually Japanese, while The Good Earth cast Paul Muni (Eastern European, and Jewish to boot) as a Chinese farmer. The outrage at Zwarte Piet and lack of outrage over these characters is, I would argue, also a form of racism: what is it that makes black people exempt from being portrayed by people of other races, but perfectly okay for people of other races to portray people of other races?

Suffice it to say, I stand by my original assertion that as far as racist imagery is concerned, the US has a lot more to answer for than just a bunch of silly white people putting on makeup and handing out kruidnoten to the kids. And that, as far as discrimination and race go, it's not all black-and-white. Literally.

Disc break

2011-12-18T18:27:00.004+01:00

I'm going to ask your pardon again, for putting up with a break in the admittedly-not-very-regular programming. Somehow or other, I've managed to hurt my back, to the point where I can't sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Hopefully posts will resume soon, as my back gets better, but for now, I've got to get up and get moving again before it twangs any harder than it is now.

Tragedy

2011-12-11T15:20:00.004+01:00

Last week, when drawing up the weekly dinner menu, I decided to make a pumpkin soup. Okay--I decided Karel should make a pumpkin soup. In the course of grocery shopping, then, I diligently bought a pumpkin, and put it in an obvious location, the basket where I keep the currently-in-use bread and stuff-that-should-be-at-room-temperature, like bananas and slowly-ripening kiwi.

At least, I thought it was obvious there. Somehow, when Tuesday night came around, Karel looked everywhere but the basket and decided that I'd forgotten to get the pumpkin and went out and procured two more. He used one for the soup, so on Saturday we still had two pumpkins floating around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting to be put to good use.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Dutch pumpkins aren't like American pumpkins. Pompoenen are a lot smaller, for starters, and I believe they are of a different breed than their American counterparts. Besides being smaller and more deeply orange, they are also a bit sweeter. And nobody carves them up into jack-o-lanterns. Differences aside, though, you can pretty much treat them like any other gourd, which is to say "roast until tender, scoop out flesh, and enjoy". Dutch recipes, strangely enough (yet typically Dutch), call for the thing to be hacked apart and/or peeled, and then boiled. Newbies to the Netherlands and pompoenen in general should disregard any recipe advice that tells you to peel a gourd, and just hack it in half and pop it in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. Trust me when I say it's safer that way.

So on Saturday morning, as Karel was about to leave for work, I wondered aloud what to do with the pumpkins. "Maybe I'll try a pumpkin pie," I mused.

"I never had one. What is it?"

I may not be the most perfectly-integrated expat, but I certainly don't go about wishing for things like Thanksgiving and whining about missing fireworks on the Fourth of July. I don't bake apple pies (too much work, peeling all those apples) and I don't go about comparing Nijmegen to New York City. But somehow, Karel's confession that he'd NEVER HAD PUMPKIN PIE brought out a wave of Americana in me and I decided right then and there that he was going to get some. Well, as close to pumpkin pie as you can get with a Dutch pompoen, anyway. Never mind that I'd never made pumpkin pie before and never mind that I had no idea where to start, or even an idea of which recipe I wanted to use. Karel's gastronomic innocence with respect to one of America's finest traditions needed to be remedied, and damned if I would stand by and let him flounder in culinary darkness.

I didn't use a recipe, but trust me when I say making a pumpkin pie from scratch is so easy you almost don't need one. Roast the pumkin for 30-40 minutes, until the flesh is tender, and then scoop out the "guts" (seeds, stringy bits that hold the seeds in place). Separate your pound of flesh from the skin and set it aside. I did all this the night before, but there's no reason you can't do the next step as soon as the thing cools down enough not to cook the egg.

I used condensed milk, but you can also use cream--put the pumpkin and a bit of milk/cream (1/4 cup, thereabouts) into a food processor, and add an egg. Liquify everything--the consistency should be like that of a milkshake. If you need to, add more liquid. Add cinnamon, powdered ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, etc etc to taste. If you were an idiot like me and didn't make sure to get sweetened condensed milk, you can add a bit of sugar. I used dark brown sugar (~ 2 Tbsp) a bit of normal sugar (~ 1/4 cup)/

I go through the trouble to make pie crust, in part because the stuff sold in supermarkets is a bit too fluffy for my taste. Usually it goes off without a hitch, but as you can see from the overbaked bits, somehow I managed to flub it this time. Nevertheless, as the crust plays second fiddle to the divine filling, I decided to proceeed.

The end result was a velvety smooth hunk of delicious sitting in a decadently flaky crust, and every bit as delicious as I remember pumpkin pie to be--better, even, since it wasn't over-sweetened and you could actually taste the other stuff in it. I'm actually kind of hoping Karel will think it's not quite for him, because it'll leave more for me.

Mad Thrift

2011-12-10T16:00:00.003+01:00

It's no secret that I love thrift stores. Even in the US, my preferred supplier of things like coats and hats were secondhand, though that was mostly because I like men's hat--at least, unusually-styled hats--and thrift stores were the only places I could find such things at prices that I liked. In Maastricht, Tuesday nights would find me more often than not at Mattie's Kringloopwinkel, where I procured my furniture. Nijmegen, though, hid her thrift stores well, and it took me a while before I learned enough about the city to find all of them:

By far my favorite is the Ideële Kringloopwinkel. It's well-hidden, but it has by far the most interesting--and most buyable--stuff. I've bought something almost every time I've gone there, which says a lot considering how far out of the way it is from everything, and how small the shop is. Despite its small size, it boasts a good selection of stuff, and I've managed to find such diverse objects as laundry baskets (matching style and color with the one we already had, even!), a wine rack, a trenchcoat--and all at reasonable secondhand prices, too. You cannot pay with a PIN pass, alas, so make sure you have cash before you walk in.

Het Goed is a chain of thrift stores, and as such it has by far the most stuff and the biggest selection, arranged across four floors. It is actually pretty spacious, unlike most thrift stores, and you can look around and poke into stuff without incurring the wrath of a grumbly clerk. I like to buy books there--they have an ever-changing selection of English-language books, and most of them are gently-used. I usually pick up small household items in Het Goed, things like baskets or spray bottles. They have an impressive selection of electronics, which is how we came by our speakers. However, Het Goed almost never has anything truly wonderful, which is why, as useful as it is, it's not my favorite.

Amaretto is a little tiny shop that bills itself as an antique store, though in reality it's another thrift shop. It's where I purchased our Galileo thermometer, and I'm still considering buying a ye-olde otoscope kit that's been sitting in a display case for ages, as a gift for Karel. However, the shop is impossibly tiny, and incredibly cramped--it's a bit evocative of Olivander's Wand Shop, wehere every last nook and cranny is occupied by something or other, to the point where the proprietor has taken to sitting in a chair by the window rather than at the cash register so he can read his newspaper. The prices are a bit higher than you'd expect, but on the other hand, many of the goods are one-of-a-kind, or at least very difficult to come by anywhere else in the city.

The Habbekrats is better known as "the place you get your fireworks from", as every December half the store is cleared of all its stuff to make room for a massive display of explosive projectiles. They have a bit of everything--I bought my binoculars there, a massive set of 8 x 50 lenses with coated glass, and of a surprisingly high quality glass, too. Most of the time, the stuff there is crap, but every now and then you find something good. We bought our coffee table there--their delivery policy is similar to that of Het Goed, in that you arrange with the store owner when you can be there, and he shows up within those times with a truck and your furniture. Unlike most kringloopwinkels, the Habbekrats does not carry clothing, although just across the street is a consignment shop in case you really need a clothing fix.

It's important to remember this cardinal rule if you're thrifting: if you don't absolutely love it, don't buy it. You don't save money if you spend it on something you'll never use/never wear. Happy hunting!

Sugar and Spice

2011-12-05T19:35:00.005+01:00

Despite my reputation in certain circles for calorically-dense baked goods, in my everyday cooking (what I do of it), I don't really pack fats or sugars into my food. Most days, I make it a point to avoid sugar, though I do enjoy a Milk Break during morning coffee breaks, and some cookies with my nightly dose of St. John's Wort (it's seriously vile stuff, otherwise). But Dutch cookies are, for the most part, not very sweet--two Milk Break biscuits have only two-thirds the sugar of three Oreos--and, perhaps more relevant to healthy eating, don't contain high-fructose corn syrup.

I see this as a confirmation of Robert Lustig's theory that fat (consumed in modest amounts) doesn't make you fat, fructose makes you fat. Most Americans who are reasonably educated about nutrition and good eating are appalled at the quantity of carbohydrates the Dutch consume: bread in the mornings, sandwiches for lunch, ontbijtkoek with coffee, and a stamppot loaded with bacon bits for dinner. The terrible nutritive state of your average cloggie is only emphasized by little news bits such as this one, saying that your average child manages to eat only one piece of fruit every week, while your average Jap eats one-and-a-half--while the recommended serving is two. That's two pieces of fruit per week. I don't know which is more appropriate, being shocked that it's so low, or amazed that scurvy isn't an issue any more.

Edit: Frank has now pointed out that the DutchNews site I referenced is a terrible source for facts and that the actual recommendations were for 2 pieces of fruit per day. So really, the Dutch don't do that badly. But it says a lot that I was willing to believe "per week", don't it?

But while most Dutch food is stacked to the ears with starches (simple or otherwise), there isn't any high-fructose corn syrup hidden away in most of it. I've tried to find a food that has high-fructose corn syrup in it, and despite my best efforts, I've failed. I'm certain that sodas, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, are fairly loaded with it, but the fact that I don't know for certain just goes to show how frequently it occurs to me to buy it (which is never). Even the fluffiest of fluffy white breads contains flour, water, yeast, and maybe a preservative and maybe a vitamin supplement--but no fructosestroop, as it's called in Dutch. The powdered soups that I have regularly for lunch, the sauces that you can buy for your patat frites, the cookies stuffed with marzipan and glazed with sugar--they might all have sugar, it is true, but they probably don't contain HFCS.

Of course diets and lifestyles and national trends and nutrition are more complicated than simply not having HFCS in anything. And who knows, maybe the Dutch would keep their elongated physiques even if HFCS were added to their diets (hell, I caught whooping cough here, and I've been vaccinated against it in the US). Genetics, environment--who knows? Our weekly pot of spaghetti, at any rate, hasn't seemed to do us any harm yet.

Allerhande Everywhere

2011-12-03T22:02:00.003+01:00

Every two months or thereabouts, the Albert Heijn publishes another edition of its in store magazine, the Allerhande. Like most free publications, it has more ads than content, and, as expected, is geared to "help" you make budget-conscious and nutritious meal choices for your family--by shamelessly plugging Albert Heijn products whenever and wherever they can. Nevertheless, it is one of the few things that suits my Dutch reading level--hindered more by my lack of patience than my lack of understanding--as the articles in it are short and brief and there are lots of excellent pictures of food. Though stamppot never did manage to look sexy.

The Allerhande is stuffed with recipes: 10 ways to make soup! 15 ways to make stamppot! A week's worth of dinner ideas! Special (but easy) recipes for the holidays! These recipes are not especially complicated, and they actually produce quite a decent meal--what I like to think of as "in-law" level food; as in, something you'd serve your in-laws to show that you can cook, but not something so delicious that they'll want to invite themselves over every day. Much though I love my almost-in-laws, our apartment is small, and stressing about food is something I hate doing.

I am a rather lazy cook, to tell the truth. I'll cheat whenever I can, and there have been days (mostly when Karel's working) that I've taken a can of something from our pantry, and a fork, and called it a meal. It's not that I don't enjoy the process of cooking. It's more that it takes me a while to get into my little groove, and most days I just don't have the time to settle into a rhythm. Karel, on the other hand, loves cooking, but his work schedule is so erratic that we might manage to have dinner together once a month.

But next week, Karel is at home. And that means lots of good eats...based entirely on stuff out of the Allerhande. Even the stamppot that we'd decided to make came out of the Allerhande, and with the sole exception of our weekly spaghetti, there isn't a single recipe on it that we've thought of ourselves. It'll be a strange week, full of food that we wouldn't normally eat--zuurkool and pompoen and spitskool and paddenstoelen fond (actually, the recipe called for a bouillon, but I couldn't find it). That I am actually looking forward to eating these very Dutch things is a bit scary. But not nearly as scary as the thought that, if we like the things, and if they aren't too terribly complicated to make, we might actually start depending on the Allerhande for future meal suggestions.

Southpaw hee-haw

2011-11-27T02:34:00.007+01:00

I'm going to take a moment to squee about my latest acquisition: a left-handed fountain pen.

I wrote about my travails with the writing materials in this country before. Well, it just so happens that in September, I was in the V&D, picking up a few little office things, when I came upon their fountain pen display. Now, it must be said: as a fountain pen supplier, the V&D is hardly ideal. For true lovers of nib and ink, nothing less than a dedicated pen shop will do. For someone who's only ever dreamed of having that delicate, spidery handwriting that seems to come naturally to those who use fountain pens, though, it's a good place to start.

So with my birthday present (€20 in cash--I've never received cash in a card before, and spent a few weeks savoring the sensation), I bought a left-handed fountain pen. I also bought a few refill cartridges, and used one to test the normal fountain pen (behind) that we'd had lying around. And I have to say--writing with a fountain pen is a treat. I never understood why writers refer to the "flow" of ideas, but after discovering that it is possible to write something without mashing the point in the paper, it was amazing how smoothly and quickly I could write. Modern fountain pens, see, don't end in a real point (at least, the cheap ones at the V&D don't). The nib tip is rounded, in most cases, in the back, well-hidden from view. And this enables the pen to write smoothly, and a slight change in the placement of the slit means that I can push the pen along. Surprisingly enough the same was true of the normal fountain pen as well, once I found the correct angle. Writing with a fountain pen is, I would imagine, akin to driving a Ferrari: your own physical skills (handling the car, holding the pen) must be up to the task, but once it is, it's pure love.

As a bonus: the ink dries REALLY quickly--it didn't smear at all for the test page in my journal, which has ballpoint and gel-ink smears all over the place. I think this was the first time in my life when the ink dried in time, all the time.

I think I'm in love.

Hack Hack Wheeze

2011-11-19T14:23:00.003+01:00

This post contains mentions of bodily fluids and functions that some people might prefer not to think about. Consider yourself warned:

It's always so clear to see in retrospect.

The sniffling, sneezing, and cough that I had been suffering for the past six weeks were not, in fact, the onset of allergies gone wrong (more on that later), but, as last night plainly and clearly showed, a case of Bordatella pertussis, better known by its common name, whooping cough.

"But only kids get that!" Of course, that's what I thought, too, when the diagnosis was offhandedly suggested by Karel. But the vomiting at the end of a bout of coughing a few nights ago negated any doubts I might have had about whooping cough. Of course, by then, it had been two weeks since I'd last slept through the night, and it was too late to do anything about it (antibiotics have to be given when you're in the sniffly-sneezy stage). And honestly, who thinks "whooping cough" when a grown woman has a drippy nose?

The doctor I went to see last week also missed it. He gave me codeine for the cough. Now--codeine is an interesting substance. Take one, and it's like having had a beer--slightly buzzed, very mellow. Take two (which was recommended), and it's like being on the edge of "buzzed" and "drunk". Both quantities proved powerless to stop the forces at play in my upper respiratory tract, though--it would suppress the cough for about an hour, only to let me be yanked out of the start of blissful sleep by the cough returning for its vengeance.

Seeing the doctor in the Netherlands is, depending on the doctor and the expat, either a wonderful experience, or hell in a white coat. In my case, it was the former: the doctor spoke excellent English (while I could have described what I'd wanted in Dutch, it would have opened the door for a terrible misunderstanding), listened patiently while I described what I had, and gave me exactly what I wanted: a steroid cream for my eczema, a packet of codeine for my cough, and a blood test for finding whether or not I was allergic to peanuts. The only downside was that I had to wait 15 minutes beyond my scheduled time, but honestly, what doctor's office doesn't have that? As a bonus, the guy was cute enough to have been a TV doctor, but I already have one of those ;-)

As he filled out the form for the blood test, he told me that the results wouldn't be in for a week, and to call back to discuss them. It sounded reasonable, so I called back a week later...

Only to be told that my test results were "too complicated" to explain over the telephone. I'm not entirely sure what that means...either I tested weakly positive for just about everything they test for, or maybe they discovered that I've got three blood type alleles and not the regular two. Or maybe they found out that I'm descended from Superman, or that my blood ate through the ELISA plate.

Either way, it was a most unsatisfactory end to a week's worth of waiting. And I have to make another appointment to see doctor. The truth is? Apparently I can't handle the truth....

The Language of Science

2011-11-16T18:18:00.004+01:00

My daily exposure to geek-speak is pretty high: if geek-speak were the Black Death, I'd be near one of the major epicenters. I.e., Milan, rather than Venice--pretty extensive damage, but survival is possible, and on a good day, likely. Monday and Tuesday of this week, though, the Radboud University of Nijmegen held a symposium, which I was more or less required to attend--I didn't even know about it until the last moment, when my boss asked me, "So, are you excited for the meeting on Monday?" Fortunately there's only one right way to answer that. I spent two whole days listening to talks given by the giants of the field, covering topics such as neonatal diabetes, mechanosensory receptors, the latest in crystal structure developments, etc. In short, I entered Venice, and the bodies were piled high.

The truly frightening thing, now that I think about it, is that for the most part, I wasn't dreadfully lost, despite my ignorance in the field. In the sea of graphs and fluorescent images, I somehow managed to find an intellectual footing for all of the talks. There were some truly fantastic speakers amongst the bunch, not the least of whom was the Nobel-Prize-winner Erwin Neher.

My Dutch courses take place on Tuesday night, so immediately after the very last talk on the second day, I hightailed it out of the symposium to the other side of the campus, where my inburgeringscursus takes place. Where I was confronted with my class--and the class clown, who spends the evenings asking the strangest questions and pretending not to understand the most basic concepts (at least, I hope he's pretending). Maybe I was especially peevish, since I normally walk something like 8 miles a day (so says the [Company that sponsored the symposium] pedometer that I picked up), and I'd just spent two days stuck in a chair. Or maybe my sense of humor was taking a vacation to Hawaii.

Aside: those of you who thought high school was over when you turn 18? Haven't been to an inburgeringscursus. High school is never over.

It wasn't until I got home later that night when I finally fathomed the reason for my irritation: I'd been stuck in "Science", when ordinarily, by the time I make it to my class in the evening, I'm so tired that I'm in "English". I've only been stuck in "Dutch" a few times, but it does happen, sometimes. Apparently, for me, Science is a language. It certainly requires a LOT of abstract thinking to make any sense of anything you read in a scientific journal these days, just as it requires a lot of...well, it's not concrete thinking, exactly. For me, putting things into Dutch (and indeed, even Spanish) has less to do with fixating on the grammar than it does with structuring the sentence correctly.

Science and Dutch--they're really just a state of mind.

Fancy-Pants Dinner: Cheat

2011-11-12T07:51:00.007+01:00

This week has been kind of unusual for me: I stopped by the Albert Heijn on my way home on Thursday to get food.

But not just any food, oh no: a friend of ours had been invited to dinner on Friday, which meant that after a long day of doing lab stuff, I would have to come home and make a dinner. Karel, having just come off a night shift, would hardly be in any condition to handle getting food to his mouth, much less the sharp pointy objects that tend to be involved in making food.

So...I cheated.

Here are two things I've come to realize about making nice dinners: 1) Risotto is always impressive, and doubly so if you pony up for the fancy mushrooms, and 2) any sins of the meal can be repented for with a chocolate fondant cake.

Risotto is relatively easy to throw together: chop an onion, and fry in olive oil until translucent. Add the raw rice, and stir constantly for a few minutes, until the grains become translucent. The only real secret to risotto is the next step, which is to add hot broth to the rice until it's covered. If you use cold broth, then the temperature difference "shocks" the gelatinous outer coating of the rice that had been cooked, and it falls apart and you get more of a congee mix than a real risotto. Check on it every 5-10 minutes or so, and add more liquid as needed, but stir it as little as possible. Cook until the rice is tender (~30 minutes). For this reason alone, it's the perfect fancy-pants cheat if there ever was one.

I make risotto with mushrooms, and you're supposed to fry the mushrooms with the onions, take them out, and add them back to the risotto at the end. So far, nobody has complained when I add the mushrooms at the 15-minute mark. Don't slice the mushrooms too thin, and you'll end up with a creamy risotto with chunks of decadently tender mushrooms.

As for the chocolate fondant cake: supposedly a notoriously fickle dessert, one that chefs always screw up on shows like MasterChef and TopChef, the truth of the matter is that once you've gotten used to your oven, it's REALLY simple to make. Recipes abound all over the place, but it doesn't matter which one you use as long as you remember to set the timer when you slide the cakes into the oven. It is simply a matter of knowing your oven: 11 minutes at 200° C in our oven works great, and produces a cake with a thin layer of cake and as much gooey middle as feasible. Dorie Greenspan's recipe says 13 minutes at 400° F. And no, I don't use ramekins: we have silicon muffin cups, which are so much easier to handle.

I always set aside the ingredients mis-en-place before I sit down for dinner (when we have guests--the recipe I use serves 6). Then it's merely a matter of taking fifteen minutes to melt the chocolate, beat up the eggs, stir it together with the flour and cocoa powder, and bake. For truly fancy-pants dinners, Karel likes to make his own ice cream to accompany it, but most people are so agog by the fact that you can make a chocolate fondant cake at home that the ice cream, as tasty as it is, tends to be an afterthought. A bit of fruit syrup (from a jamming episode gone dreadfully wrong) elevates the fancy-factor by ten.

I even cheated on the main course, which was a roasted chicken: I used one of those pre-seasonedbradzakken chickens, which is a plastic bag which the chicken is baked in. The plastic bag traps the steam, and the end result is a juicy, tender bird with as much effort as it takes to turn on the oven.

There are, of course, times when anything less than real cooking will simply not do. But there are also times when spending time with a dear friend is more important, and the veneer of good food is good enough.

I Need Some More Photos of Amsterdam

2011-11-06T09:00:00.005+01:00

Today's escapade in the Netherlands is a guest post by P. Jonas Bekker:

Hash, Whores and Raw Herring

When Jules asked me for a guest post on her blog (about two years ago - sorry Jules), I thought for a while and decided to used the offered space to set some things straight:

For example, those of you who still think the Netherlands are a nice, relatively problemless, liberal and tolerant little country where pretty much everything goes, should take a look at the current government, which is made up of conservative Christians, people who call themselves liberals (but who, confusingly enough, have recently changed their course to something comparable to American neocons) and the scream-a-lot-do-very-little anti-Islamic ‘Freedom Party’.

And you probably heard about legal marijuana and prostitution, the pride of Amsterdam? Not true either.

As for the drugs: technically, marijuana is still illegal. Buying it, using it and selling it in small amounts (in places called ‘Coffeeshops’ for some reason) are tolerated. Be aware that smoking dope in a public street is still a ticketable offense. In central Amsterdam, it may be highly unlikely, but in smaller towns you will still be ticketed for this!
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The growing and wholesale of the stuff, however, is still illegal. It is also controlled by international criminal gangs that have no problem going at each other with machine guns. Needless to say, this creates huge existential problems for Dutch law makers and crime fighters.

The prostitution situation is even worse. The ‘legalization’ of prostitution in 2000 wasn’t actually a legalization, since prostitution per se has never been illegal here. What actually happened was that the law that forbids the facilitation of prostitution (known as the ‘pimp law’) was scrapped. The idea was that if it’s legal, the people in the business will start paying taxes and abiding personnel safety laws.

Ten years along, there is a pile of research showing no such thing happened. Since it is now nearly impossible to arrest a pimp, possibilities for exploiting women have increased exponentially. Along with startling figures (depending on which report you believe, 50-90% percent of prostitutes work in prostitution against their will) come horror stories of incarceration, torture and murder.

Yes, five to nine out of ten girls you see sitting behind those purple-lit windows is probably a sex slave, imprisoned by criminals and forced to sell her body. Now if that won’t put you off paying for one of those fun Red Light District Tours, I don’t know what will.

But that is not what I wanted to write about at all. No, there is one widespread myth about my country that I want to dispel once and for all.

It’s the fish thing.

You see, at the end of a guided tour anywhere near a body of water anywhere in the Netherlands, the guide will often take his or her group to one of those oh-so-Dutch herring carts and encourage them - making a nice commission, no doubt - to get a haring met uitjes. This is a skinned and deboned herring served whole, with the tail fin left on for the purpose of holding it, on a cardboard dish with some finely chopped onions.

Then, when all the tourists have their fish, the guide will grin and say something like: “And oh yes, I forgot to tell you: it’s raw.” Such fun, watching the dismay on those faces as they disgustedly turn away from their typically Dutch snack.

But it’s not true.

When herring is caught, it is subjected to a process called kaken. This is done on the fishing boat, immediately after the catch. All internal organs are removed from the fish, except for the pancreas. The fish are then salted and put in barrels. The salt and the enzymes from the pancreas work together in a unique curing process, so when the herring reaches the consumer, it has actually been slowly cooked (or, more accurately, cured) to the delicious soft texture that is its main attraction. You want raw fish, visit Japan.

So, next time you take a guided tour around here someplace, you just stare that guide in the face hard, pick up that fish and bite.

So that’s it. Some myths about the Netherlands dispelled. As for the clogs, windmills, tulips, bicycles and cheese… Well, that’s all true of course.

On the Old Sand Dunes o' Mook

2011-10-30T06:33:00.003+01:00

I wonder if there's a song of the same title, because it seems like there ought to be one....

Anyway, in the Netherlands, the landscape is dotted with patches of forest that people ride and run and walk their dogs in. Sort of a cross between a wildlife preserve and a public park, these spaces are further puncutated by sandy clearings, where heather grows. This is a sign that, in days of old, sheep had overgrazed the land, and the sand dunes had taken over. To give you an idea of how bad the problem got, Jasper (our ecologist friend) recounted sandstorms blowing off of these dunes. Heather is about the only plant that will grow in sands like this, and indeed, the fact that sandstorms are so rare these days in the Netherlands is because the sand spots are covered with it. That, and grazing policies have been changed to reflect the growing collection of ecological wisdom.

The area between Mook and Molenhoek, then, has what's called de Mookerheide, a vast collection of sand dunes with nothing but heather and sand grass growing in it. I call it "vast" because it certain looks that way when you get there, after putzing about through the typically-artificial bos. Indeed, getting there is a bit of an epic, a nice little adventurous jaunt on a sunny day: for me, on my bike, it starts with following the Veolia tracks south, until we reach 't Zwaantje (a little charming restaurant) and turning right. At first there are some pasturelands, but then the woods start to close in and at some point the road becomes a dirt road. Pressing on, despite the risk of a flat, eventually puts you in front of a massive fence, at the foot of a hill. Walk up the hill, and the picture today is what greets you.

But in fact it's not really all that big. You can scramble around the whole thing in about an hour, two if you stop and take photos of everything. And "scramble" here is definitely the right word, because some of the inclines are steep--even worse than the Manayunk Wall, and because the whole place is just a collection of sand dunes, it can be rather treacherous. Supposedly there are also special cows grazing on the land--the kinds of cows that the Dutch use as wildlife management--but I've yet to see one there (they're all over Millingerward and the Bisonbaai).

The Mookerheide is, for obvious reasons, a favorite spot for the people who live nearby. On clear days you can see Cuijk, which has a cathedral with two towers. The whole place is really quite lovely and I'd encourage anybody who thinks that the Dutch are all about polders to come and take a wander. It's surprising how hilly some spots can be.

The Best Medicine

2011-10-28T19:18:00.003+02:00

When I started taking Saint John's Wort for depression, I accepted the fact that, since I was more or less taking an MAOI, I'd have to give up eating cheese, chocolate, and red wine. The only hard one to stop was chocolate: I've never been overly fond of cheese, and as my good friends know, drinking, in general, has never been my strong suit. Cheap chocolate--the kind that's more sugar than cacao--seems to be all right, so I make do with that.

A comparison of our medical histories is reminiscent of the tortoise-hare fable: Karel's is pocked with episodes of fantastic fevers and epic sessions of homage to the porcelain god. The viruses that render him incapable of more than flailing weakly about in bed, barely able to drag himself the two steps to the toilet, leave me feeling flu-ish for a day or two--if they affect me at all. On the other hand, my medical history is layered with years of dealing with eczema, allergies, nearsightedness, and depression. None of which actually bothered me too much (except for the depression). Life could be uncomfortable, sure (working in a mouse lab and then coming down with an allergy to the little buggers can be inconvenient), but it wasn't like I was ever in mortal danger or anything.

At least, that used to be the case. About two months ago, I was eating some peanuts, and I began to break out in hives. A T1 immune response (the same kind that gives people poison ivy) to cashews a few weeks later, resulting in a huge blister on my lips, confirmed that I could no longer eat nuts. But it didn't just stop at the whole nut, oh no: in the two months since the blister episode, the problem has worsened to the point that anything containing nut oils--which is just about every single packaged food out there--sets off another bout of the itchies.

So far, happily, I've only ever been itchy, and not anaphylactic. It means that mistakes--where I thoughtlessly pop a peanut M&M, for instance--aren't going to be the end of me, and "traces" of peanuts in foods amount to a tolerable amount of itchiness. It's a good thing, too, because getting used to such a huge dietary restriction...kinda sucks, actually.

Stranger Than Life

2011-10-26T06:48:00.007+02:00

It goes without saying that Outside Looking In is largely factual. At least, fact-based, with a heavy dose of conjecture and perhaps an occasional outright lie. The last is with respect to my personal life and people around me--I don't assume that everybody wants to be naked and famous.

Anyway, as you might have seen on the sidebar, I've (idiotically) decided to take part in NaNoWriMo this year again, having won 2010 with relative ease. That is, I didn't go stir-crazy, I didn't lose too much sleep, and I even made a few new acquaintances and got to talk shop with a few other crazy writers. Of course, in 2010, I also had my entire novel plotted out by this point in October, and I was less-than-happy with my day job, and I also didn't have three kitties and a boyfriend to take care of every day. This year, I have a very basic sketch without any details, I like my job, and I'm at home at the end of every day, petting kitties and maybe even talking to the boyfriend (he's been working a lot of night shifts recently), and my Dutch classes take up 3.5 hours a week.

I'm just glad I don't have kids yet.

But if there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's that there's always a story somewhere. I've written about purses, AH Bonus cards, kitty vet visits, beauty products, 50 ways to tell you've been living in the Netherlands for too long. I've got a few more interesting ideas in the works--it's merely a matter of finding time to get them out of my head and onto the screen--but in the meantime, I thought I'd ask: what would you like to read about?

Lady Bags

2011-10-22T08:00:00.001+02:00

Nijmegen and the surrounding villages have a collective population of about 250,000 people, and on Saturdays, it seems like every one of them is pouring into the markt. They buy shoes, clothes, knick-knacks, outdoor gear, books, etc. And sometimes--just sometimes--you might even see a woman buy a purse.

There are a plethora of cheap and not-so-cheap purse sellers, and a decent number of high-end purse-and-luggage stores (sorry, Wenneke's doesn't count). Given the sheer number of €5-purses to be found, one could reasonably be expected to wonder how the high-end stores stay in business. The answer: they're actually in cahoots with each other.

Most women will naturally gravitate towards the less expensive items, because they're Dutch and they're women (we're like that). With purses, though, you definitely get what you pay for, up to a certain price (€200, by my reckoning), and the trick is to get a bag that will last long enough to justify the price, while still spending as little as possible. But at some point, you just get sick and tired of the handles breaking, zippers getting stuck, clasps no longer clasping, and, in some of the really cheap bags, you can even wear a hole right through the bottom.

It is at this point that the woman decides that she IS GOING TO GET A NICE BAG, no matter how much it costs, one that doesn't fall apart and one that will last the ages. And so she visits a high-end shop, looks around nervously, and then, after several weeks of agonizing choosing, makes a decision. She will have put more thought into this one bag than she has for all of her previous bags put together. It may even frighten her when she makes the purchase. But she makes it anyway, because it will be the last purse she has to buy for a long time.

At least, that's how I envision it, because there really is no other explanation for how the posh stores stay in business. And that's certainly what I was thinking when I bought mine.

Young and Dumb

2011-10-19T16:52:00.001+02:00

For those of you wondering: yes, that's a kid inside a giant airtight ball running around on a pool of water. Yes, parents actually pay money to let their kids do this. No, I don't know any, personally, but obviously they exist. And no, I don't know why this hasn't struck anybody else as a terrible idea.

I will be turning thirty at an unmentioned time later this year, and much to my surprise, I really don't feel much older than I did when I was twenty. To be sure, I don't stay up all night anymore (not that I did that much when I was in college), but there are nights when I go to bed at around midnight and get up at around five. Besides my perpetually-knotted shoulder, I don't have any aches and pains, and while I have some stray white hairs, I still pass for someone in her mid-twenties, an image that is only reinforced by the fact that I Rollerblade to work whenever the weather and roads cooperate.

I mention this because my mother, in perhaps what could be called a midlife crisis, has recently started asking me in every conversation whether I feel old, because she certainly does, etc etc, [litany of aging problems here]. I always tell her no, because, well...I don't. And it's hard to feel old in the Netherlands, because no matter how tired you are, how achy you feel, it's terrible form to be passed by a little sweet oma with her basket of leeks and potatoes on the back of her bike. When you have that as your standard for what you should be capable of when you're eighty, a sore shoulder from hoisting kitty litter doesn't seem nearly so terrible.

While there are nursing homes for the elderly, they tend to be inhabited by those who, for whatever reason, have lost the ability to live on their own. If you've got two legs and can make yourself a pot of tea, apparently, you're good to go. Karel's dad, who is nearing eighty, still lives on his own--he walks his dog twice a day, shoots a shotgun longer than I am tall and stocks his freezer with his own game, and is a regular at many dinner tables. Granted, he does have a housekeeper, but there's a long/complicated/personal story that I won't get into. The gyms, likewise, are full of retirees that are "sporting", as the Dutch say. On beautiful days like on Sunday, the woods are practically crawling with people--young and old alike--taking advantage of the beautiful weather to get some exercise and catch a few rays.

Maybe it's naive of me to think that I'll feel this way forever. After all, I haven't been fifty yet. On the other hand, I must wonder how much of my parents' experiences of getting older has been shaped by their relative isolation and life in suburbia, living in a neighborhood surrounded by yuppies with kids. Me? I say, no little old oma is going to pass me for a long time, yet.

All Hung Up

2011-10-17T08:00:00.002+02:00

Our washer gave us a bit of a scare earlier this year, when it spontaneously decided it wasn't going to drain the wash water any more. After it got tweaked by the mechanic, it drained the washer--but then it started forgetting to go to the spin cycle unless we reminded it. In spite of these quirks, it's a good little washer, and Karel and I haven't seriously considered replacing it.

Nor have we seriously considered getting a dryer. First of all, there simply isn't any room in our apartment for one. But secondly, it is amazing how much laundry can be accommodated on two drying racks, two indoor clotheslines, and the balony rail. Since we "only" do up to five loads a week (like I said, a "good little washer")--what with sheets, towels, and all the rags that get used in cleaning the place--everything fits and everything gets dry within a day or two.

The downside, of course, is that we're almost constantly doing laundry. This is especially an issue when I HATE DOING LAUNDRY. It's not the washing or the hanging or even the taking down--it's the specific task of sorting and making sure my socks don't end up in his bin. Yes, we steal each other's socks anyway, but it's the principle of the matter that counts. Not even craptastic TV like Hart tegen Hard can ease the pain.

And the weirdest thing is, it doesn't even take all that long to do. Fifteen minutes, twenty if I'm having a hard time scrounging up stray hangers--tops. It's over so quickly that I swear I spend more time resisting the laundry than doing it. Kinda like I am now.

So, Internet, what are the jobs you have to do all the time, that shouldn't bother you as much as it does?

Invisible Forces

2011-10-15T06:34:00.003+02:00

Here's a little shout-out to the people of Occupy Wall Street. Yes, the math is a little wrong (but "We are 67%" doesn't sound quite as nice) and all you right wingers can despair at the disappearance of good ol' self-reliance (while collecting Social Security). I don't know what they stand for--neither does anybody else--but whatever it is, it's not the current system. Unlike the London "street revolutions", which began with a legitimate reason and then descended into chaos and mayhem, the OWS had to earn its legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and as such, it will not fade so easily.

Ayn Rand--and yes, I've read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged--might have thought that venture capitalists could remake the world if it weren't for nosy bureaucrats and that nebulous feeling of compassion. In her simplistic view, businessmen/-women were honest and fair. As anybody who's ever had to so much as return a faulty item should know, in reality, they are anything but. But incorrect conjectures aside, venture capitalists can't remake the world without the little people a)buying their products or b) working to make them. So really, making sure that you're not screwing over the middle class is a good thing.

In the forest, the mycelia that grow in the forest are largely ignored because they just blend in so well with everything else. But they are actually one of the most critical components to the health of the forest, and they are more pervasive than most people realize. For every single mushroom that you see on the forest floor, there is a network of root-like tendrils (hyphae) that can be anywhere from a few square meters to a few square kilometers in width and depth. These powerhouses of the ecosystem basically decompose anything that sits in the soil long enough--thus playing a critical role in keeping the forest alive...or killing it entirely.

In Western democracies, we like to believe that people have the power--after all, they vote for candidates to represent them in the government, and they trust that the government will serve their needs (I guess this makes JFK a Republican, then). It's kind of awe-inspiring to be able to watch them as they take it.

Phat

2011-10-09T09:30:00.006+02:00

Every now and again I get into a discussion with my sister or mother about the relative benefits of socialism (the Netherlands) versus the insane clown posse that is the US at this moment. It is a peculiarity of the Dutch that, while a lot of things are regulated (i.e., setting out your trash), because everybody does them at the same time, it doesn't feel like it's regulated. The flippant part of me says, "It's the hive mind at work," but on the other hand it's probably the main reason why the Dutch stand for as many regulations as they do.

Something that is common in Europe and the rest of the world, then, is to regulate the advertisements directed at kids, most especially for unhealthy foods. It seems like a common-sensical health measure: the less kids want sugary/fatty/salty foods, the less they'll eat, and the healthier they are. This is not the case in the US, as the film makes clear: and consequently kids grow up with an emotional attachment to a particular brand, basically guaranteeing a customer for life.

In the Netherlands, then, most food ads are geared at adults, and feature relatively healthy food: stamppot met worst, soups, or pasta. TV spots for foods like sweet breakfast cereal are nonexistent--the sole exception is the Nutella spot, but I don't think I've ever encountered a Dutch breakfast spread that included Nutella. It seems to be eaten at every other time of day except breakfast....And of course, you have McDonald's and Burger King ads. But I don't think you could escape those, unless you moved to Patagonia.

The ubiquity of tall skinny Dutch people would seem to indicate that these measures work. But on the other hand, Dutch food culture is extremely zuinig: breakfast is a slice or two of bread-and-something, with coffee, or a small cup of milk or juice. Lunch is a sandwich, and maybe a cup of soup if you're feeling very decadent. More typically, it's a sandwich with an apple or an orange. Dinner will include a starch and a protein and a vegetable--there may be a glass of wine or a beer, but dessert isn't typical.

So, which is the deciding factor in the battle against the bulge in the Netherlands? Culture, or law? It's hard to say, really. But it's easy--a little too easy, so easy I don't really believe it myself--to point at the US and say that that's what happens to people when they have neither.

Shuffle-hop

2011-10-07T19:16:00.004+02:00

Confessions of a blogger:

I rarely know what I'm going to write about before I sit down at the computer and bang out a post. This makes looking for photos (I have about 2000 of them on our hard drive) quite interesting. It also means that, now that my Dutch classes have started, my previous blogging semi-schedule is totally f*cked. It's not that the classes take up so much more time, as it is that my life at home is...let's call it "erratic" and leave it at that.

Ergo, there will probably be another week of putzing about while I try to figure out a writing schedule around my job and my Dutch classes, while I put together my NaNoWriMo 2011 plot plan, and do all of the brainwork involved in managing our household on a shoestring budget. All that, and not having to wake up at 5:00 am. Or going to bed at midnight.

Cone cabbage

2011-10-01T18:44:00.003+02:00

Right around this time of year, the first of the winter vegetables comes trawling in. The Brussels sprout, the beets, the winterpeen (carrots you can build houses out of), the first pompoen (don't be fooled--pompoen are not pumpkins). It's always a bit sad, to taste the last of the tomatoes--they never taste quite as lovely as they do at the height of summer, and are fit only for sauce. And nothing reminds you of how dreary the winter can be like boiled cabbage.

The spitskool is an early cabbage, and despite its phenomenally pointy shape, it tastes much the same as any other cabbage, although the pointy end does allow you to get more tender leaf per plant than you'd typically get out of their normal, round counterpart. Needless to say, this is a favorite of the Dutch for precisely that reason.

Whatever possessed me to put a spitskool on the shopping list this week, though, is a mystery. The C1000 flyer has 10 produce items on sale for €1 per unit every week, so there was no reason to fixate on getting cabbage. Given what horrors my mother used to visit upon me in the form of cooked cabbage, it's a wonder that I ventured to tackle it at all. At any rate, it went on my list and Karel, who did the shopping this week, dutifully bought it and put it away in the fridge, where it proceeded to loom at me and laugh at my naivete for two days: who did I think I was, to try to make a cabbage taste--well, like anything?

Unlike my mackerel fiasco, I had looked up a few recipes for spitskool before this weekend, and even picked out a recipe to follow. Still, as the hour drew near for cooking it, I began to entertain grave doubts about the palatability of the recipe. It was, at its essence, fried cabbage, flavored with curry. And as much as I love simple foods, it just seemed a bit too simple for Karel.

So I set about complicating the recipe: I made a roux flavored with a few spices, chopped some onions, and cooked them in the roux until they were translucent. Added the chopped cabbage, and poured in some vegetable broth (I cheat, and use bouillon cubes). Returned it to a boil, let the cabbage cook until just-tender, and then took out my portion. To Karel's, I added ham cubes. It was a very homey dish, in the end--the liquid ended up being almost like a gravy, which was just as well since I'd also made mashed potatoes. Not particularly daring in any way, but neither did it bring back the terrible cabbage-memories of my youth.

The Pen 15 Club

2011-09-27T17:59:00.004+02:00

This probably dates me in a way that ought to be embarrassing, but when I was a little kid, the height of scandal and humor was to ask someone if they wanted to be a member of the "Pen 15 Club". It didn't take much imagination, even at six years old, to realize that if you write "Pen 15" really close together, it's quite a dirty word (to a six-year-old, anyway) and therefore it was hilarious to write it on your hand in permament marker. Of course, merely being six years old and having a permanent marker was enough to make you cool.

I have a weakness for good pens, especially rollerball pens with a point of 0.5 mm or less. Although I do a lot of my writing on a keyboard, my (paying) job requires me to keep a lab notebook. And because I remain too poor for an iPad, pen and ink and dead trees will have to do for me. There aren't that many rules for keeping a lab journal, but just about everybody everywhere insists on writing in ink.

In any event, one of the things that has plagued me to distraction ever since I moved here is that it's hard to find a decent gel ink pen anywhere. Why a gel ink pen? Because the ink stays put, come hell or high water--and high water is a very real possibility in a lab.

Although corporations have access to the likes of Staples, the little people are reliant on the office supply sections of department stores like the V&D or the HEMA. For the most part, their selections are pretty good, although the Dutch preference for a two- or 23-ring binder continues to flummox me. Cheap ballpoints are sold by the box, while sligtly-nicer-but-still-cheap gel pens are sold individually.

My main issue with the pens available in this country, though, is not that they are expensive, or even their relative unavailability. As a non-hooking lefty, any pen I use will stuck when I push the point along, but the problem seems worse here than it did in the States. I hate writing with a ballpoint--the ink never flows nicely out of those, even for righties. Furthermore, the ink that comes from a fat point (0.7 mm) never dries before my hand comes along and smears it. And wouldn't you know--gel ink pens are only sold with 0.7 mm points.

Weekend Silliness

2011-09-25T15:15:00.003+02:00

While checking out Breigh's blog at Canadutch, I came upon an entry from a few days ago that was something along the lines of "You know you've been living in the Netherlands for too long when..." It was mildly amusing, but as it was plainly posted by a bunch of semi-drunk 19-year-olds on their first study-abroad trip, only a few of the 100 points listed actually applied to people who really have been here for too long. Mark Twain's snide remark about experts being people who've lived somewhere for two days or twenty years clearly applies here.

In any case, you (really) know you've been living in the Netherlands for too long when/if...

1. You covet (or own) a bike made by Gazelle
2. You swear with "Godverdomme" instead of "f*ck"
3. Lunch without a sandwich feels incomplete
4. You no longer need to improvise with dinner on Sundays
5. Frites zonder feels empty and sad
6. You have a favorite stroopwafel vendor
7. "Parking" refers to bike rack space
8. You feel vaguely guilty for skipping a day of housekeeping
9. Tipping is no longer second-nature
10. You know to avoid kroketten and go for the frikandel
11. You know how to eat a tompouce
12. You know what a tompouce is
13. You've gone out wearing leggings-and-boots, or t-shirt-and-blazer
14. You know more about Willem and Maxima than you do Sasha and Malia
15. There are more than one pair of huis sokken in your sock drawer
16. You write time in a 24-hour system, and dates day-month-year (Americans only, this)
17. A "good" lunch means Cup-a-soup...Special
18. You have a favorite apple--bonus if it's Elstar
19. You have a recipe for pea soup (conditional, upon inclusion of vetspek)
20. You have ever bought something off marktplaats.nl
21. You have ever sold something on marktplaats
22. You start getting prepositions confused
23. Your weekly dinner menu includes "meat/veggie/potatoes" more than once. Bonus points if it gets mashed together into stamppot.
24. You have a scarf for every season (men, too!)
25. Nordic walking is a sport
26. Life without an electric kettle is unimaginable
27. "Watching sports" includes speed skating, darts, and dressage
28. The year 1953 explains everything
29. You still pull the door even though the sign says "Duwen"
30. You shop at a store that's been going out of business for years
31. You've ever used "the NS was late" as an excuse
32. You despise Geert Wilders
33. Keeping an orchid is a tour de triomphe
34. The need for consensus begins to outweigh any sense of urgency
35. A sales rep sold you a better deal than what you'd originally wanted
36. An empty day in your agenda throws you into despair
37. You have a photobook printed by the Albert Heijn
38. You are over fifty and still dying your hair
39. You never go into town on Queen's Day
40. You have an orange vuvuzela
41. You make visiting friends try Hollandse Nieuwe even if you don't like it yourself
42. When you see someone buying magere melk, you think they're American
43. You know where the hotel bought their furniture from
44. You can tell the difference between Dutch, Limburgse, and Fresian
45. You know where to find baking soda
46. You have a shopper
47. The thrift store owner knows you on sight
48. You get a free sample of 0.0% beer because it's free, even if you hate the stuff
49. You have a bag hanging by the door for shopping with
50. You never leave home without an umbrella

Day of Cats

2011-09-25T09:18:00.002+02:00

The Netherlands has the fewest national holidays of most of the countries in the EU, so while Americans may grumble and roll their eyes at the luxurious holiday benefits most workplaces offer, you need to remember that there is no Martin Luther King Junior Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, or Thanksgiving. And not to mention the host of other lesser holidays--Presidents Day, Valentine's, Halloween, St, Patrick's, etc. None of these get so much as a token observance here, except via the seasonal decorative kitsch that appears in the Blokker.

But there is one international holiday that is routinely noted, if not observed: Dierendag, or World Animal Day, as it's officially called. It falls on 4 October every year, the day of Saint Francis of Assisi (yes, the guy with all those cats). It's supposed to be a day to appreciate what animals do for us, and consequently it's no surprise that it's virtually unknown in the US.

In the sixty-odd years that it's been celebrated in the Netherlands, Dierendag has lost its religious connection to St. Francis and gained a host of animal rights activism that tags along with any sort of "thinking about animals". On academic campus centers with animal facilities, picketers will demonstrate their opposition to animal research, and you might even get a few crazy souls preaching the virtues of a vegetarian diet. For clarification: the Dutch don't eat much meat compared to the quantities that are common in US restaurants (nobody would order a triple-burger, for instance), but they would never think about eliminating it from their diets entirely.

It's also evolved into a day where you spoil your pet, and to make that task easier, the pet stores all have their sale-of-the-year during this time. The flyers for Dierendag appeared in our weekly junk mail assortment this week (and yes, we do go through our junk mail, because you never know when kitty litter and cat food will go on sale). Yesterday, having learned that it's a bad idea to try to haul 2/3 of your own weight in kitty litter on a bike, I took our little trusty shopper and walked to the Intratuin, with the intent of getting 40 kg (that's 88 lbs) of cat litter.

Imagine my shock, then, to see the store getting outfitted for Christmas. Now, the kruidnoten and pepernoten (seasonal, spicy cookies) are always out early, so it didn't surprise me to see them at the grocery stores. But the Intratuin--where we get our Christmas tree ornaments--was setting up a full-sized carousel, taking down the deck chairs, and putting up Christmas ornaments. In September. Dutch culture purists can't blame the US for this one--Christmas doesn't start until Halloween.

Coffee and Tea

2011-09-20T18:46:00.003+02:00

Tiffany Jansen at Clogs and Tulips posted this funny little anecdote about coffee time in the Netherlands. Everybody knows that coffee time is between 10:00 and 10:30. Afternoon tea in the Netherlands is a less well-studied pheonomena, and is likewise a little less rigid in its timing--it can begin between 3:00-3:15. And contrary to the names "koffie en thee", you can have tea during coffee and coffee during tea.

In academia, coffee and tea are practically mandatory, and bosses have been known to make attendance required if too many people skip too many breaks in a row. Experiments are planned around these time slots. They are typically situated like circle parties, where everybody sits around a table, if there is one--if there isn't, then all of the chairs end up in a circle anyway. Some places have a fancy coffee machine where you can push a button and your desired mix of coffee, sugar, hot chocolate, milk, and hot water come out. Others have a rotating roster of names of people who make up a large pot of coffee and tea and have it set up ahead of time. Most people bring something to nibble on--that isn't as mandatory as showing up and having a drink, but coffee alone can be unsettling to your stomach. Favorites of the Dutch are cookie/biscuit pack or a slice of ontbijtkoek. Personally, I prefer to make a Cup-a-Soup--it's still drinking, at least....

At first (and I mean way back when I was working in Leiden) I thought all of these breaks were silly and irritating, though that was because I was also commuting four hours a day. When you commute four hours a day, you learn to cut everything extraneous out of your life so that you can make the train home. (I did attend more-than-half of them, but that was only after I got good at scheduling my experiments) In Maastricht, I took breaks, but they were random--a combination of when I felt like it and when I had time, since I was the only member of the group for a while. And they could always be interrupted by a random emergency.

So it's only now that I've begun to appreciate the nice division of the day that coffee and tea allow: early morning to get organized, late morning for prep work. Lunch--another quasi-mandatory thing. Early afternoon for the hard work. Late afternoon for the number-crunching. Er...at least, that's what people say labs should run like...

And to be quite honest, I like that there's a set break in the day. Sometimes it comes too soon, sometimes it feels like it's an eternity away. But having it forces you to take a step back from what you've been doing, clears your head, lets you enquire after someone else's opinion.

Now, if all our world leaders would do that, then maybe the world would be a better place. Or else the conspiracy theorists are right, and Beatrix does, in fact, rule the world.

My Country, Wrong, Wrong, Wrong...?

2011-09-17T08:36:00.006+02:00

It used to be that I could tell the international people I worked with that while the politicians and government of the US government were the spawns of Satan, the people--your Average Janes and Joes--were really very decent and nice. And at the very least, they'd have the manners to quietly escort you to the door and send you on your way without an ass-whomping. Not that there weren't any jerks, but they were mostly relegated to late-night Fox News where nobody cared how many times they used the N-word.

Karel likes to say that the facade of humanity lasts only three square meals. I prefer to give humanity a little more credit than that (I say 5), but lately the news hasn't been inspiring. I can chalk up a lot of what people like Rick Perry have been saying about the state of the US government to pandering to a rich and elitist mob that's sick of being "raked over the coals" with taxes (ah ha ha). The short version is that the Tea Baggers (right-of-Republican whackos who have no idea just what the government actually does for them and therefore think nothing of dismantling the entire institution altogether) want to dismantle the entire US social safety net--what the US has of one--and let people pull themselves up by the bootstraps, or die in the gutters. And yes, this includes women, who would be completely screwed over if institutions like Planned Parenthood were to get the ax, and children.

History comes and goes in circles: a look back at the history of the US and the industrialized west shows that, in the days before unions and social welfare, there was poverty of the level we'd associate with Third World countries, child labor, and horrific working conditions for the masses while the elitist few reaped the rewards. The only middle class were the farmers, and that's pretty much a lost cause in this day since only 2% of the American workforce work in agriculture. The issues were rampant--justice by lynch mob in the South, typhoid and cholera in the large industrial cities, and food companies selling chemical impersonations of edible food.

That is, apparently, the state to which the happy mobs want the US to return to, because every time someone like Ron Paul gets up and spouts his rant against "Obamacare", everybody applauds. I bonk my head to the desk: What are the other options, then? Either everybody must buy health insurance or suffer a fine, or the responsible ones that do buy health insurance pay to subsidize care for the ones that don't. Or else you let the sucker die in the street. When the last option was mentioned, the crowd applauded.

If I were the president, I'd be sorely tempted to just cut off all government aid and access to people who participate in Tea Party rallies: can't drive on the Interstate, no more screening in airports, no help for you if your box of frozen pizza makes you sick, no treatment for you anywhere if you don't have health insurance, no unemployment checks, no disability checks, etc. You know, the whole "never knowing what you've got 'til it's gone". Then again, there's a reason why Obama is president and not me. I just hope that people recover their sense of compassion in 2012--I really do want to miss home, but that's getting harder and harder to do.

EDIT: Believe it or not, it gets worse. The crowd booed a gay soldier during another inane debate (and if you want a real puzzle to keep your logic center busy, riddle me this: if Rick Santorum says sexual orientation doesn't matter, then why is he so worked up--into a frothy mix--over the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell?). I sometimes feel like I'm in a dysfunctional relationship: I want to love my country, but she just makes it so damn hard.

Derailed

2011-09-16T19:51:00.004+02:00

I'm back to being a working stiff again, much to my relief--for a while I was afraid I was going to have to convince the Albert Heijn that I'm a barely-literate teenager (which I could probably pull off, given my terrible Dutch and deceptively young appearance) so that I could pay off my student loans. As it is, I found a job after much time and have been quite busy these past few days, between rediscovering Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk and working out a new rhythm to my days.

The greatest luxury for me these days is being able to step out the door and walk to work. It's a pleasant walk there and back again, and oddly enough, instead of tiring me out, I come home refreshed and ready for more--which is just as well, since Karel has been on the night shift this week and has been too zombified to make dinner when I get home. Luxury isn't bathing in a gold bathtub surrounded by butlers and French lovers, luxury is being able to wake up at a not-ungodly hour (6:30), coddle the cats as much as they need it, get a bit of Internet time, tidy up the kitchen, and still get to work on time. Luxury is working at a job that suits both your skill set and your personality.

Or I could have been working at Leiden and Maastricht for too long.

Yeah. That's probably it. But having the energy left at the end of the day to tackle a few pages of my novel still beats the pants off having a butler.

"...you ain't juicy!"

2011-09-13T08:03:00.005+02:00

The title comes from a Jeff Foxworthy skit in the series "You know you're a redneck when...." What, my international readers may ask, is a redneck? Hard to say, actually--it's more of a mentality. Sort of the way being Dutch is, except without the culture, the history, the engineering know-how, penchant for cleanliness, and prudence of almost 500 years of Reformed Church-ness. Offhand, I'd say anybody who likes barbecued opossum is a redneck, but that would be insulting the indignous tribes in weird countries that actually eat those funny animals.

I've never been much of a juice drinker--I like coffee in the mornings, tea in the afternoons, and a cold white with dinner (assuming, that is, we're eating something that should be accompanied by white wine). Occasionally I have a jones for Diet Coke, but basically I'm just not a fan of sugary drinks. I do buy lots of fruit drinks, though, because Karel likes them. But even most juices contain more sugar than I like, which is why it took me so long to realize that there is a difference, between fruit juices and fruit drinks:

In short, fruit juices are found in the produce section of supermarkets, while fruit drinks are found in the aisles next to or around the soda/wine. Even though both are nominally chock full of vitamins (nuts? only smoothies), a juice typically denotes something fresh-squeezed and threatening to go south if not consumed immediately. Next to the juices, you'll also find what Europeans call "smoothies". I'll grant you that they're better than that soured-yogurt concoction the barista at the Selexyz tried to serve me, but I also believe that the whole point of imbibing a liquid is to get more of the liquid inside you than is stuck to the sides of the flask.

A fruit drink, on the other hand, can be bought in large quantities with impunity, and stored away in your pantry for weeks--months, even. They sit in their TetraPak cartons and wait until Karel puts one in the fridge--two if we're having guests. I buy them whenever they go on sale, but they are a pain in the @$$ to lug home.

Fruit drinks, in turn, are a derivative of syrup mixes that used to be popular back in the day, when Karel was a little kid--thick fruit syrups (or thin jellies) that came in huge jars, and you'd add a spoonful to a glass and then add water to it. These are easier to carry, which explaines their popularity in families of Karel's generation. This, in essence, was the equivalent of Kool-Aid to kids--it remains debateable whether Roos Vicee is really as healthy as it says it is, but at least they didn't have a creepy pitcher mascot. These syrups are still sold, but given the popularity of the boxed drinks, it seems as though the trouble of adding water is a bit much.

Something that I do like, though, is mixing the syrup with carbonated water, which is also sold in supermarkets. These delightful bubbly mixes make the most amazing sodas, and even better is that you can adjust the water:syrup ratio to your own sweet tooth.

I actually like the distinction--you don't get any confusion as to which one is healthy and which one is not. Of course, we also don't have that many choices--orange juice is either pulpy or not, there's no added-calcium-vitamin-D-fortified confusion to add to your choice of juice. Or drink.

Wrenching

2011-09-10T08:05:00.003+02:00

The Bike Shop in Philadelphia knew me as a regular. Not because I went and bought so many bikes, but because I often stopped by to pump up my tires to the recommended 80 lbs psi, and it was nice to ask them about stupid little clicks and squeals that my bike, bouncing over the potholes, would inevitably acquire. Plus they were always really nice and if the squeak only involved tightening a bolt or putting a smidge of grease on it, they didn't charge me for it. If it ever did need more extensive repairs, they'd always tell me how much it'd cost beforehand. I eventually ended up buying a book on how to "wrench" bikes, as bike maintenance is so presumptuously called by the author, and doing the basic maintenance myself (I don't remember the name of the book, alas, only that it was yellow and the guy on the cover was not Langley).

In the Netherlands, though, if you set foot in a bike shop, you're going to be out at least €10--that's the minimum that places charge for a repair, no matter how small. Dutch name-brand bikes (Gazelle in particular, though Batavus is also popular) are built like tanks, and in combination with the generally-well-maintained roads, they can be ridden until the paint falls off and the tread is completely worn away--and they'll still work. If for some reason you have to drop by a repair shop, it'll be the last time they'll ever see you for a few years. I've had more flats in six months in Philadelphia than I've had in my entire time in the Netherlands--and none at all with my current bike, which is now entering the second year of my ownership. I'll grant you that at first I didn't know how to change a flat properly, but even when I did, Philly streets apparently eat tires for breakfast. Flat tires are the one repair that, for my sanity, I'll always get done by a pro.

Bike shops are everywhere in the Netherlands, and most of them are reasonably priced for their repairs, although most of them also make you wait a few days or maybe a week or two to get your bike back. If it's a fast repair you need, then take it to the bike shops that are associated with major train stations--they'll get you sorted out in a jiffy. Unlike regular shops, those bike shops are required to be open as long as the trains are running, and they've never made me wait longer than the next day to pick up my bike. Of course, they also charge a premium for speedy service, but being without a bike in the Netherlands is like being without a hand, and in my mind, well worth the €20 fee.

The other major blow to my cycling self-sufficiency in the Netherlands is the fact that all of the bikes I've ever owned (I'm on my fourth, which I have yet to ride to the point of breakage--which is why you never spend less than €200 on a bike) have a gear cover. Most bikes have their gears encased in a plastic shell--a necessity to keep the chains from rotting out from under you in a rainy climate, when most people store their bikes outdoors. The shells are not one seamless lump of plastic, formed over the gears. They just look that way--and for that reason, their dissection is best left to the experts. I love being able to ride a bike without grease stains too much to randomly tinker with that.

Still, the Metro reported a while ago that the number of bike mechanics was steadily dropping, saying that the old-timers were dying or retiring and the young blood just wasn't there--not enough interest. I find that hard to believe, especially given the demand in the Netherlands. Sure, it may not be difficult to do, but there's nothing like three-day-old grease stains embedded in your skin to make you reconsider reaching for your wrench. Unless you're like me, and like that sort of stuff.

Just Blend

2011-09-09T14:30:00.004+02:00

In many ways, you can view this blog and all of its entries as "things NOT to do when you're in the Netherlands". Recipes for scrumptious asparagus aside, the things I should have done but didn't and should not have but did are worthy of a Loreena McKennit dirge. It's not that I'm lax about following rules--to the contrary, I plan our weekly meals out well in advance and recently acquired a white board, which I marked up with permanent marker, in order to plot out a schedule of things to do when and where and with whom. However, I am also terribly lazy about researching things in advance--I blame my career choice, which is technically as a scientist. Research, to my mind, is something you do before you write papers, and not before meeting someone for drinks, even if it is your first borreltje.

The hive mind of the Dutch is something that I've alluded to several times--that inborn ability to know when it's coffee time (10-11), to set out your trash next to the one pole but not the other, and to get a twinge of nostalgia when you see games like "Ganzenbord", even if you've never played it before. Anthropologists call it "culture", but the level of indoctrination runs so deep that if the queen of the hive mind (not necessarily Beatrix) were to croak tomorrow, the chaos (inasmuch as the Dutch are able to withstand it) would be catastrophic. Trains would be delayed, and buses would be dirty--oh noes!

All joking aside, I am a terrible conformist. Oh, I'm more than happy to play along and be a good little Dutchie for a little while, until I get bored. That's when trouble--or rather, inspiration--begins:

Most people assume that I would be biking to my new job, which is a fair assumption, seeing as how it's 2 km away by Google Earth(that's a little over a mile for my American readers). The idea that I would have the audacity to walk that distance, on the other hand, was apparently novel enough that I found myself repeating that intention over and over yesterday, when I met my new colleagues for the first time. It's a twenty-minute walk--not a bad distance, and the neighborhood isn't dangerous, although it is true that I'd say that about any neighborhood that's not North Philly--working in and riding through a notoriously bad neighborhood dramatically skews your perception of what's dangerous. My mother would probably have a fit if she knew I was walking anywhere in the dark.

I suppose it was just as well that I didn't mention my real intention to the inquisitive multitudes, which involves in-line skates and taking advantage of the satin-esque, well-groomed and substantial bike paths between my new workplace and our apartment. It really would be very nice--the paths get enough traffic that they're mostly clear of debris, and the one path stops almost at the door of the very building I'd be working in. I did finally get myself a pair of in-line skates, fulfilling a four-year itch for Rollerblading action, and though it took me a little while to work out how tight everything needed to be and get my skating legs back, I'm at that point where I could realistically go to work on eight wheels instead of two.

But there's a difference between intent and action, and odds are I'd probably do all three--ride on the days when I need to pick up more Tweeb food (hooray for panniers), skate on the days when I have Dutch lessons in the evening, walk on the days when I don't. After all, a life of not-conforming can be boring as well--although given that NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, the extra bit of inspiration might not be a bad thing....

Fluff 'n Stuff

2011-09-05T08:11:00.005+02:00

So about two weeks ago, the Tweeb got sick and we dragged her to the vet for observation and treatment. What I didn't tell you is that, when she came back from the vet, she promptly had her vengeance, and wet the bed. And pooped in it. Twice.

Needless to say, the peas who sleep in this pod were not amused. The bed got stripped, and everything that could be sent to the cleaner's was sent--it wasn't that stinky, truth be told, but since Karel has rarely had his comforter cleaned, we decided that it was time. The cleaner's around here typically charges by weight, but they have special pricing methods for comforters and pillows. It ended up costing close to €50 for everything to be cleaned, but we counted the money as worthwhile, knowing that everything was pee-free and dust-mite dandy.

At least, until I started sleeping in it.

My allergies raised unholy hell that first night we got the covers back. In the mornings, I'd make the bed and then end up taking to it, because I'd sneeze myself into exhaustion. Y'know how your body sometimes knows how to avoid things that you don't necessarily know? For the last few nights I'd been falling asleep on the couch, and then moving to the bed--hoping, I suppose, that once there I'd resume sleeping, rather than suffer the art of falling asleep while my sinuses got progressively more clogged. And to top it all off, the Tweeb peed on the comforter--not on the bed, which was unmade, but she actually went out of her way to wee on the thing--again on Wednesday. Sunday's bed-piddle was the last straw. I did what any self-respecting person would do with a cat that doesn't respect their property.

I went and bought new bedding, of course. In light of the fact that Karel's bedding is older than our relationship, it was probably just as well. The original idea was to go to IKEA and get a new mattress as well, but the new "luxe" mattress protector adds enough plushy-squishy feeling that Karel was happy enough to have that. But I'm happy to say that, after some apprehension, I was able to climb into bed last night, and sleep.

I Call This "Potato Redux....Redux"

2011-09-01T07:31:00.005+02:00

The sentiment that the potato is the national vegetable of the Netherlands never feels more true than at the start of autumn, as the summer produce fades and the winter staples of stamppot and erwtensoep regain their places prominence in the Dutch diet. Your average Dutch diet, that is. Karel, besides sucking at being Dutch, has fallen head over heels for a potato salad that I concocted. This salad is a spin-off of a potato-green-asparagus salad that he'd made in the spring, back before I discovered steamed asparagus and all its orgasmic glory. Like everything else I enjoy cooking, it has only three essential ingredients (potatoes, smoked salmon, a mild onion), only one of which requires cooking. I wish I could say that some of it came from my mother as well, but truth be told her potato salad never quite tasted as good as this, and plus it was string-theory-complicated.

I've included a recipe for the mayonnaise that I make specifically for this dish. You could always use the stuff in a jar and just whisk some chopped dill into it; I always make it because we don't use mayonnaise that often, and stuff in a jar always goes south between potato salads. Obviously, know the risks of raw eggs before making this. Salmonella can be delicious, but it can also be deadly. That being said, if you're not pregnant, very young, very old, immunocompromised, or allergic to eggs, you'll probably survive.

Potato Salad

~1/2 kg vastkokend potatoes, cubed

1 shallot or 1/2 white onion (zoete uien)

100-200 g smoked salmon

~~1 Yowling Noodle~~

1 celery rib (optional)

Hardboiled egg (optional)

~1 Cup mayonnaise, with ~2 Tbsp dill mixed into it

string beans or broccoli or asparagus, if making an accompaniment

Peel and cut the potates into cubes no bigger than 1 inch (that's 2.5 cm) across. Dutch potatoes are annoying in that they are sometimes no bigger than a large pea, so when you buy them check the package and make sure it has a decent collection of large-ish ones (size of a baby's boot) to save yourself some effort. I use a cheese-slicer-thing to peel the potatoes, drawing the blade towards my thumb. The advantage of this is that the peels will not fly all over the place and you can save a ton of clean-up time by dumping the peels directly into a bowl. The disadvantage is that you lose a relatively large amount of edible potato, but still less than you would if you used an aardappelmes.

Cook the potatoes. You can either put them in boiling water for about 10 minutes, or microwave them for 7. The advantage of boiling is that you can steam the vegetable (string beans, broccoli, or asparagus) at the same time (8, 5, and 10 minutes, respectively). Regardless of how you opt to cook your taters, you must use vastkokend potatoes--kruimig potatoes will disintegrate when you try to toss them later. While the potatoes are cooking, finely chop the shallot or white onion. Cut the smoked salmon into strips. Do not stab the cat. Do not add his little furry butt to the salad. Do cuddle him and give him a smidge of salmon--outside the kitchen--and then shut the door. Ignore.

Cut the celery into small cubes, and slice the egg, if using. When the potatoes have finished cooking, drain them and let them sit on the counter for about 15 minutes or so, to cool off a bit. Toss everything together and let them chillax in the fridge for an hour or two.

Mix about 1 cup of mayonnaise into the salad, toss well. Rewarm the accompanying vegetable. Serve. Fend off one hungry Noodle. Threaten to send him back to the dierenasiel. Toss him a sliver of salmon anyway.

Enjoy.

Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1/4 tsp salt (maybe less, depending on your taste)

Pepper to taste

1/2 tsp mustard of choice

1-2 Tbsp honey

~1 Cup oil (depends on the size of your egg)

handful of chopped fresh dill

Good strong arm and wire whisk

hand mixer, set to "low"

Heavy bowl

plastic wrap

Whisk everything except the oil and dill together in the bowl. Still whisking, add the oil to the slurry drop by drop. When about 1/2 C is left, you can start adding it spoonful by spoonful. You may need some more oil to get the consistency right. When it's right, add the dill and mix well. Put it in the fridge; cover it with a skin of plastic wrap. I alternate between using the whisk and the hand mixer--when my arm gets tired, that's when I switch.

My choice of oil is either sunflower, canola, or what's called sla olie, for salads. Olive oil, besides being pricey, is very dense, and furthermore it gives the mayo a weird flavor. I suppose you could give it a try if you wanted.

EEEEuuwwww!

2011-08-31T14:53:00.003+02:00

I'm a pretty health-conscious person: I make pretty healthy foods for the most part and I typically walk everywhere--the last is, ironically enough, a measure of pure laziness on my end, because ever since we cleaned out our storage unit, I've moved my bike inside, and the hassle of getting it out for a 3-minute ride to the Albert Heijn isn't worthwhile to my mind. We have a fair supply of junk food, but that's mostly nibbled at here and there, to the tune of a bag of chips a week.

Now that I've signed a contract and we've agreed to a start date for me, I decided that now would be a good time to get a gym membership. There are several within easy distance of where we live, and the university's sportcentrum is open to the public for a really low price. Commuting five hours a day wasn't exactly conducive to making time for running, and the laundry issue in Maastricht managed to flummox me. (Laundry issue being that the basement where the machine was, was so gross and spider-full that I absolutely would not go there if I could help it. Plus, even with workout clothes, I simply don't generate that much laundry.)

So today I screwed up my courage and went in search of a gym. I realized a few things: first, they're really full even in the middle of the day. Retirees and well-off-women have that kind of luxury, so it didn't surprise me to see them all there. What did creep me out a little, though, was the fact that the populace in the weight section of the gyms were solely young men. And all of them were staring at me when I took a quick tour of the place with the instructor.

The other thing I realized is that there are no antiseptic wipes/bottles anywhere. In order to understand why this skeeves me out like no other, you have to realize that in 2005-6, I came down with a mild case of what I suspect to be staphylcoccus, picked up at the gym at Temple (which did have antiseptic wipes, which everybody--including myself--used). It gave me a rash which was misdiagnosed by my family physician as "just another eczema flare-up", darkened the skin around my eyes so that I looked to be wearing permanent eyeshadow (not an altogether unappealing look, to be quite honest), and opened up sores on the corners of my mouth. In the six years that have passed since then, most of the issues have quieted down and gone away, although I still get occasional sores at the corners of my mouth. You might wonder that I actually ventured into a gym again after that.

But in any case, having toured two facilities and seeing nary a spray-bottle in sight, I asked Karel about this when he woke up (late night), and he confirmed that Dutch gyms typically do not require that you sanitize after yourself. Simply wiping off the equipment with your towel is considered enough. The equipment is, of course, sanitized by the staff at the end of the day, but during the day, you could be sitting in the sweat traces of fifty people. I'm not a germaphobe--at least, not a very big one--but that just seems, well, excessive to me. And, in light of my skin conditions, REALLY REALLY REALLY GROSS.

It's strange if you think about how clean the Dutch are in almost every other aspect of their private and public lives (in general--exceptions are students and the hapless sod that ends up on the Dutch version of Hoe schoon is jouw huis?). There is of course the neverending mystery of why nobody picks up after their dog, and why people let their cats poop in other people's gardens, but you could argue that poop is at least biodegradable. The Dutch may have one of the lowest rates of community-acquired MRSA, but frankly, just having regular staph is pain enough. The gym is one place, at least, where you'll not be finding me...

Working working working

2011-08-29T20:27:00.004+02:00

It's taken me exactly six months, but I've done it: I found a job.

Forgive me for withholding the details, but I expect that, as I keep blogging, I'll leak enough little details that, if you really wanted, you could find me with enough time on Google. There aren't that many Americans in Nijmegen. But that doesn't mean I need to make it easy on you ;-)

But I'm really excited about this, not because it's that exciting a job, but because it doesn't involve me taking a train to the other end of the country every day. I'd joked with Karel that I'll probably get an offer from Groningen one of these days--well, thank God I didn't: it's in Nijmegen, and so close to where we live that I can walk there, stop by our vet when the Tweeb is out of renal food on my way home, AND take language courses! It only took four years to work that out...

And honestly, after six months, I was starting to run low on topics to write about. Without a constant diet of low-grade frustration and bureaucratic shenanigans, and only Michele Bachmann to make fun of (and it's so easy it'd be downright unchivalrous) in the news these days, it's been hard coming up with Dutch-stuff. So hopefully there will be a new round of interesting observations about life in the Netherlands in the near future. None of them involving sick cats.

Missing You

2011-08-27T08:45:00.003+02:00

The Tweeb has pulled through! I didn't have to force-feed her (much) this time--once she got the idea behind the rich fatty food, she couldn't get enough of it. There were a few trying moments (especially when she pooped on the bed) but after Friday morning it became pretty clear that she wasn't in any more danger of passing prematurely. And by Friday evening, her squawking had resumed its full volume and frequency. She even demanded a treat.

It was a relief to see that the Tweeb was back in form. It's a bit strange, when you think about how much we grumble about her, and her demands, her ugliness (let's face it, she's not exactly pretty), how far out-of-the-way we have to go to get her food, her vet bills. Why do we love this cat? Is it because, or in spite of, these things?

Back when the Tweeb was Tabitha, her adoption page said that she was "a bit clumsy but full of personality". Her picture? A black cat with a pink cast and her face in a food bowl. I wish I could say it was love at first sight. But it was more like, "Well, we'll see if she gets along with Shadow." And then sort of quasi-hoping that she wouldn't.

Truth be told, she never did--she got along with me. She and Shadow will roughhouse from time to time, and play kitty-ping-pong, but if there's a quiet moment, she will come and sit on our laps, and in the morning, it's her anxious little face we see, peering at us from our stomachs, asking if it's time for breakfast yet.

I wish I could pinpoint a reason as to why we put up with her, and her demands, and her tendency to poop on our bed when she's unhappy. But really, we're just glad she's okay, and that she's just as demanding as ever.

Oh Sh*t

2011-08-25T07:50:00.004+02:00

So much for getting back to blogging...the Tweeb is sick again--horking and dripping tiny bits of diarrhea, with her limp being ever more pronounced. We'll be dragging her to the vet's as soon as they have an opening, but in the meantime, well, let's hope that she'll be okay.

EDIT: I called the vet shortly after posting this morning, and they said to bring her in, and leave her with them for the day. So I did, and went home, and started cleaning up the myriad little gushy-poops that the Tweeb had left. All. Over. The. Apartment.

The vet called back earlier today and said to come pick her up. They couldn't figure out what was wrong (not a surprise if it's viral) and the basic labs they ran showed that she might have liver problems on top of her kidney issues. We're hoping that the high reading is stress-related, but, well...it's the Tweeb. If anything can be explained that simply she'd just be any other cat.

Screwing

2011-08-23T09:54:00.004+02:00

A few weeks ago, I saw a video on YouTube for something that, for better or worse, could be called "hair screws". I immediately wanted to try them, because any product that can hold my hair in place--never mind in an updo, which is my preferred method of wearing my hair, since long ponytails are also annoying to deal with--is worth its weight in gold. See, my hair is straight, thin, and smooth--meaning that any method of holding it in place is bound to slip and fail at some point. When I was eight or nine, I persuaded my mom to let me get a perm, which promptly fell out after a week. Hair products that purport to hold a style in place for hours at a time literally cannot get a grip on my hair. So hair screws, that promised not to fall out and hold my hair without slipping? Too good to be true.

It took me a while to hunt them down--they were hidden on the bottom shelf, behind some bobby pins, at the local Etos (slightly-more-upscale version of the Kruidvat), and they came in only one color, which was dark brown. Fine by me--my hair has only gotten lighter over the years, apparently--but I would have gotten the "blonde" color, because I was that curious, and since it gets buried in your hair anyway, I don't think anybody would have noticed.

I've since found that they don't work that well if my hair is dry--it really has to be damp for the pins to get the traction to hold them in place. If I put my hair up after I wash it, it stays in place for the rest of the day--the rest of the day. Revelation and glory! Most Dutch women either have short hair, or wear it long, so going out with a bun (or a chignon, in my case) seems to be a token of or extreme snobbiness. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn: fiddling with my hair only once--at most, twice--a day is a convenience I will always cherish.

Of course, that means I'll need something else to piddle around with when I have a writer's block. Tune in later to see what I've found...

Don't Mess

2011-08-19T08:17:00.003+02:00

It started about three years ago, or thereabouts--I was curious. I wish I had a better reason to try it, but really, that was it: plain, simple curiosity. I'd always thought I was stronger than to fall into dependence, but with that little bit, I found myself completely hooked and wanting more. Every time I went out, I had to get some. After a while, we'd amassed a good-sized stash, so things were okay, but yesterday, I saw them again, a rainbow set this time, and caved--

Is it possible to be addicted to microfiber?

I'll grant you that I have a compulsive personality to begin with: Karel keeps threatening me with a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle--it's the sort of thing that would (and has, in the past) kept me up at night. And I have a liking for online games such as Jelly Cannon, because they have different levels that can be completed. In other words, leaving things half-undone, simply sits wrong with me, and I'll keep turning over the problem at hand until I finally figure it out or get it done. Having a whole set--and microfiber cloths, coming in sets with bright thematic colors, definitely meet that criteria--of something is simply a variation on that.

But if it's only paranoia if it's wrong, I'd like to say, in my defense, that if I am addicted to microfiber it's for a very good reason: namely, that they soak up everything like a BAWSS, which is quite nice when you have little bowls of kitty water in places they are prone to get kicked. You might think that the obvious solution, then, would be to put the kitty water in places where it wouldn't get kicked, but that's also the places where we wouldn't see the bowl, and would be likely to forget that the water needed changing.

And, well, it's nice not to need to buy paper towels when you do most of your groceries on foot. I have a hard enough time managing toilet paper.

Left Behind

2011-08-18T07:49:00.005+02:00

A few weeks ago I acquired a Galileo thermometer at a thrift store. It's the sort of technology that Karel likes--the kind that doesn't run on electricity--and it's pretty to look at, which I like. Plus I've always wanted one, and watching the temperature transition between cold and hot was never so mesmerizing as when the 22° C bulb is floating halfway, trying to make up its mind as to which direction to go in.

I've mentioned before that the Dutch have some kind of hive mind, where everybody automatically falls into step with everybody else and social unity is maintained. Even with divisive issues (immigration), the locus of discord is often not with whether or not the issue is the problem, but rather the details of the regulation. Nowhere is this more visible than with the inexorable technologizing (is that a word?) of society.

Some time in February, notices began appearing on the buses in Nijmegen that, starting in June 2011, strippenkaarten would no longer be accepted and the only way to get a bus would be with an OV-Chip card. An OV-Chip is a blanket transportation card: you load it up at the train station, and you can use it to take the train, the trams (in cities that have a system), the subway (again, irrelevant in Nijmegen), and buses. And on July 1, 2011, just as promised, bus drivers stopped stamping strippenkaarten, although you can still pay €2 for a one-way ride in Nijmegen. There were probably a few curmudgeonly types who grumbled about this newfangled technology, but by that time the OV-Chip system had been in place for about two years (I was an early adapter--I never did figure out how to stow my strippenkaart in my wallet so that it wouldn't fall out, but still be easy to get to) and about half of the bus riders had already adapted it by the time it was made mandatory.

A more visceral, perhaps, example of how uniform systems are enforced, for instance, lies in the TV: TV in the Netherlands was completely digitized by 2006, thanks largely to nearly-universal cable television. All most people had to do was get a converter box, and Karel's TV service sent one to us when we subscribed. They sent us another one a few years back--somewhat more reliable, but we lost the Nostalgia Channel (footage and commentary about life in ye-olde Holland). But these days, most TVs are LED or plasma screens with built-in digital tuners. In the near future--maybe another five years or so--we'll probably need to get a new TV, not because the CRT will have stopped working (it's been kicking for over 10 years now), but because we won't be getting the converter any more. And TV companies will only broadcast in HD.

Maybe I'm a little pessimistic, but it seems that when we make things more convenient, more dependent on technology, we become a lot more vulnerable to things going wrong. If someone steals my strippenkaart I'm only out whatever I paid for it. But if someone steals my OV-Chip card, I'm screwed: it's linked to my bank card, so they could renew the subscription without my being aware of it, and they could, in theory, use it however they want and have me foot the bill. In the old days (God, I love that I can say that!) if your TV broke, you just took it to the local TV repair shop and they either fixed it or told you to get a new one. Now, if your plasma-screen goes belly-up, you need to send it back to the factory, wait for their response, hope customer service respects your warranty, and wait a few weeks. Or take scientific research: I honestly don't want to know how people wrote anything back in the day, because the amount of time they would have had to spend in the library looking up sources would be a full-time job in itself.

It's awesome what we can do online these days--send money overseas instantly (my bank in the US, alas, is stuck in the stone ages and transactions that ABN Amro approves in one day takes 7 days to complete)--send messages to people halfway around the world, translate Swahili to Japanese with a click of the mouse, and ask others for opinions as to why our cats are deranged. But we do have to ask ourselves, when we invest so much of ourselves online, what happens when the power goes out?

Golden Days

2011-08-13T08:53:00.008+02:00

The Dutch word for "old-fashioned" is ouderwets, a word that is laced with connotations of being stuck-in-the-mud and unwilling to change, rather than being antiquated with dignity. If there is such a word for that (in either English or Dutch) I can't think of it right now, but then again, I've also just spent the last 15 minutes baby-talking the Tweeb, so that's not saying much.

In the Netherlands, ouderwets is sometimes used to describe the cheap/tacky blue-and-white decorations you can find sometimes in places like the Blokker or Xenos: items meant to invoke the Delft blauw of ye-olde-Holland. I think most of these items end up being sent overseas to Dutch expats or given to tourists--but only because I've never seen anybody buy such a thing. We were given a cushion decorated in the blue-and-white tile motif, which the Tweeb promptly appropriated. Even if the word is used in a positive sense, it's not entirely rid of the extreme industriousness, thriftiness, and Reformed-ness of times as recent as fifty years ago.

So it probably isn't exactly correct to describe jamming as ouderwets. Even if it has its origins in the need to preserve fruit against the rot, with the herbs/spices/liquor that Karel adds to his jams, they become too decadent to be simple preserves. I don't think it even saves us that much money: what I spend for the fruit (besides the berries, which I get from the woods) and gelei suiker--or regular sugar adds up to the cost of two pots of jelly/jam from the store, one pot if it's the fancy stuff, as Karel is oft wont to make. Whatever we do save from the extra pots that Karel makes gets detracted from the cost of Karel's time--though he considers it entertainment, much the way I consider sewing.

All I know for sure is that a row of translucent golden jars in the window is a lovely sight, especially since this summer has been cold and rainy--autumn practically started in July this year. Nothing quite like that to remind you of a summer you never had.

Campbell's

2011-08-10T07:51:00.004+02:00

One of the quintessential school lunches that I loved as a kid was grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. The grilled cheese was white bread and Kraft's Singles (which has no business calling itself cheese, but makes a grilled cheese like none other), fried in butter. The tomato soup was red salt from a can. And to top it all off, it came with chocolate milk.

It was heaven.

It still is.

These days, I can't imagine that schools would dare serve this stuff to their students and call it a "lunch". More like a premature serving of hypertension. And yet, the combination of grilled cheese and tomato soup is still embedded in my mind as the equivalent of Mac 'n Cheese from a box, or whatever you think of when it comes to food that's terrible for you but hits all the right emotional chords.

I still make grilled cheese, and I still make tomato soup, but it's marginally healthier, in part because I rarely make them together, but also because the grilled cheese is usually made with whole wheat bread, real cheese, grilled in a sandwich press, and might even have a tomato slice or two melted in. The tomato soup is made with real tomatoes, fresh herbs, and one or two charred red peppers.

Grilled cheese sandwiches are called "tostis" by the Dutch, and oddly enough--or perhaps, it should be expected, as the Dutch are a people of sandwiches--they are more refined here. You can have brie-walnut-honey tostis, or salami-mozzerella tostis, with all kinds of fillings melted into the cheese. The bread is spread with butter before grilling, but it's not smothered, and if you're especially hungry, the Tosti World makes theirs with three slices of bread, and two layers of filling. They are not served with tomato soup, unless you're at a sit-down place. And in any case, Dutch tomato soup is sweet and contains meatballs (horrors!), and is all wrong for a tosti.

Just Like Mom's

2011-08-07T23:22:00.003+02:00

My mother is a simultaneously wonderful cook, and a very bad one. She can make really good food if she wants to, but most of the time, since it's just her and my father, she doesn't really want to. Most of their meals, near as I can tell from our weekly phone conversations, involve lots of vegetables, a little fish and rice, and no sauce. Healthy stuff--boring stuff, even by my standards, but as this was what I ate growing up, mostly, I'll make something similar for myself if Karel's out working. Karel, on the other hand, was spoiled by his professional-chef-brother-in-law since he was eight, and a main course of vegetables without adornment is not only boring, it's damn near inedible. Personally, I'm willing to put up with boring if it means getting things chopped, cooked, and cleaned up in 30 minutes or less. Karel would rather eat cardboard.

But when she wants to cook something well, oh boy--not even Karel, finicky though he can be, can resist her dumplings, though now that I've learned how to make them, I suppose they really should be "my dumplings"...like all other family recipes, there is no recipe, just a bit of this and a smidge of that and a whomping serving of some other thing. Happily, I've been able to replicate the dumplings and the dipping sauce even in the relatively food-restricted Netherlands, and when we have space again in our freezer Karel can stuff his own damn dumplings.

One of the things my mom used to make very infrequently was something that you can call "Chinese Pancakes", although they only resemble pancakes in the sense that they're flat and made with flour. The translation literally means "onion and oil biscuit", and if you're going "eewww" right now I can't say I blame you. But to me, these chewy bits of fried dough were like manna from the heavens when I was little, mostly because my mom only made them every few years at most. I loved the way the chewy layers peeled away from each other, and no matter how many scallions she put in, they were always a delicious sweet rarity in the dough. For whatever reason, I got a craving for them last week and called my mom for the recipe. I was afraid she wouldn't remember, as the last time she'd made them for us, I was in high school or something like that. She, in turn, was surprised that I remembered what they were.

But it turns out that she did remember how to make them, and, unlike the mind-maze of instructions required to replicate her dumplings, they're actually pretty easy to make:

Make a dough with flour and water. The exact proportions of flour and water don't really matter, but it's about 3:1--as long as it sticks to itself more than it sticks to your fingers, it's fine. Add a bit of salt. The recipe that I've linked to recommends 1/4 teaspoon; my mother made it without salt.
Roll out the dough into a thin sheet. My mother was terribly vague as to exactly how thin the sheet should be; my own sheet ended up being about 3/8 of an inch thick. Spread both sides with a layer of oil.
Sprinkle green onions (sesame seeds, if you're using them) all over the sheet, and roll it up tightly into a long thin rope. I
Coil the rope into a circle, and then flatten the circle into a pancake.
Coat a skillet with oil and pan-fry on a medium flame until each side is mottled, crispy, and slightly burnt. If you're doing this on a cast-iron skillet, it takes a little longer than 5 minutes per side.
Let it cool and enjoy. Or, if you're like me and haven't had this in a million years, don't let it cool, burn your fingers, and enjoy it anyway.

Karel, as expected, was less than enthusiastic about these. It's one of those things you really just have to grow up in, I guess. But yeah, it tasted just like Mom's.

Remembering the Acorns

2011-08-06T08:56:00.004+02:00

Overall the job climate sucks everywhere these days, but that's more true in some fields than it is in others. I've been simultaneously applying for writing positions (not a one of which has bothered to so much as send an autoreply, grrr) and lab positions, mostly to no avail--so far. I've had a few interviews in the past and few more coming up. I'm sure there are hundreds of sites out there in the world about how to land a job in the Netherlands, so don't take the following as gospel. The fact that I've been reasonably successful getting interviews, but far less successful getting offers (I think it was that funk that I'd been in--we'll see next week!) should be an indicator that I don't have all the answers worked out just yet.

But what I have worked out is simultaneously good and very bad news. The very bad news is, most hiring people get a small blizzard of applications for every listing, even when the economy was good. Now that it sucks all over, that's more true than most, so that means your CV and "letter of motivation" (what they call a cover letter, here) has to be VERY VERY good. The good news is that what constitutes a VERY VERY good CV/letter has little to do with your actual qualifications, though that assumes that you actually are competent and not a jerk.

There are a few things that you have to do before you even start looking for a job in the Netherlands. One of them is familiarizing yourself with search terms in both Dutch and English. Job listings could be placed under either word, especially those from multinational companies (which are most likely to hire expats with shaky Dutch). The second is to move to Amsterdam--okay, so it's not something you have to do, but it goes without saying that the coast has a lot more opportunities than the German border.

I've spent most of my career in academia, so most of the job listings that I am interested in are not on the Dutch Monsterboard. I mainly use Academic Transfer to find listings (AT has the added bonus of being one of the Dutch websites that translates well). I've also signed up with several recruiting agencies, but have yet to make use of them--because they often don't list the companies posting the job, it's impossible to write a detailed letter specific to the position. The BCF jobs website is another that I've found somewhat useful, but again, it pays to pay attention to whether the listing is done through a recruitment agency or directly through the company. For me, recruitment agnecues have been nothing but a waste of my time--with the exception of the one person I had a good talk with at the career fair, I have never gotten a good response from any recruiter. So go ahead, try them, but don't say I didn't warn you.

I've found that rather than filling letter with buzzwords like "fast learner" and "hard working", it's more useful to mention the time you got drafted into planning the company skydiving trip--and extra bonus points if you can work in a terror of heights. Of course, such an example would be useless if you were applying to do data-entry work (been there, done that) and didn't have to learn new things constantly, and so you'd have to come up with a new example. You may have figured out the point by now: you cannot get away with writing a blanket letter filled with vague promises of being awesome. You have to show how awesome you are by writing a letter filled with the awesomeness that the company is looking for--and yes, that means writing a new letter for every application...and then, if you are lucky enough to get an interview request, to remember what you wrote.

As for the CV/resume part...well, I've read more than I need to by way of craptastic resumes. The best advice I've ever gotten about CV-writing is from Kerry Taylor--although she blogs mostly about personal finance and money matters, her resume and CV advice is right on and I really can't say it better myself. I have a standard CV that I send to lab and lab-related positions, but for writing positions and other sorts of work, anything goes, really. The question is, "What does the hiring person want to read?"

It's a full-time job, looking for work. I wonder if squirrels don't feel the same way about interview requests, snuffling about in the forest floor, and randomly coming upon an acorn that they'd buried oh-so-long ago...

"And then a hero comes along"

2011-08-03T08:05:00.004+02:00

A few months ago I snarked about a show Hoe schoon is jouw huis? which was about as useful as nipples on a breastplate. I didn't realize at that time that it was a Dutch spin-off of the British show How Clean is Your House? And as strange as it may seem, I've become Kim and Aggie's self-declared biggest fan. Ever. I mean, come on--cleaning uncleanable windows is infinitely more useful than making sure your electric sockets are germ-free.

I've never been a fan of harsh chemical cleaners. Not only are they terrible for you--nothing like aerosolized SDS to destroy your lungs--but it's known that phenols are toxic for cats. Much more pleasant, to me, anyway, to slice open a lemon. Vinegar is a little strong, admittedly, but it's merely unpleasant, rather than toxic. We still keep a single bottle of Uber-Strong-Like-Bull cleaner in our cupboard, for the truly irremedial spots, but overall it's amazing what vinegar and baking soda ("By our powers, combined!") will do. Therefore, any show that shows you clever new ways to use things like cornstarch and ketchup is awesome by me.

There's been a slight paradigm shift in the content and marketing of cleaning product adverts recently: Stuff-That-Puts-Sarin-Gas-To-Shame is being marketed as "something so simple even a man can think of it, and so easy he might even help you clean!" And indeed, whether it's hot 'n hunky men, goofy guys, or procrastinating dads (I cannot find that particular advertisement anywhere, sorry), men are taking a front-and-center role in cleaning. At least, as the advertisers would have you think. I wouldn't know whether to be charmed at the thoughtfulness if Karel ever bought a bottle of Toxic-Purple-Stuff, or offended on his behalf...

The simplicity of "one-bottle-everything-cleaner (while the fumes melt your face)" is, I must confess, an appealing one. And it's a whole lot less intricate than figuring out when to use a lemon, or how much salt to sprinkle on a red wine stain (note, this only works with the cheaper reds). I have to wonder, though, whether guys--who are presumably the ones buying stuff like that--actually like using them, or if they just don't know about homemade fixes. I mean, when was the last time you saw any advice on how to clean your bachelor pad in Men's Health?

If I Had a Hammer...

2011-08-01T08:12:00.003+02:00

One of the things that continually frustrates me about life in the Netherlands (at least, the corner of the Netherlands I live in--maybe it's different in the Randstad) is the lack of baking soda in the supermarkets. Baking powder is sold in little handy-dandy packets, but soda is conspicuously absent from the shelves. I typically have to go to a toko to get some, and even then there's no guarantee that they won't be out.

I have to wonder if this is the reason why Dutch cookies and cakes all taste the same. Besides speculaas, all Dutch cookies and cakes are the same buttery, sweetened confection, in different shapes. Some might have pink icing on it. Some might be decorated with sugar crystals. But for the most part, once you've tasted one, you've tasted them all, and that's a huge part of the reason why Karel's been pestering me to make him more chocolate chip cookies.

Baking soda is how you achieve the phenomenal levels of fluff in American-style pancakes, the secret to getting cookies to crumble properly, and clearing slow drains (carefully dump some soda down the drain, and flush with vinegar, followed by a kettle or two of boiling water). It neutralizes and bleaches armpit sweat stains from white t-shirts (don't ask how I know this), and keeps our litter boxes smell-free. It cakes and takes off baked-on-goodness from the inside of our oven, and when we had a porcelain stove-top, it cleared off the the mess from that. Combined with aluminum foil, it cleans silver. It is so useful, so innocuous, and so cheap, it's strange that it's not everywhere.

I have a theory that the coporations--Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble--have entered into some kind of agreement with the major retailers in the Netherlands to never carry baking soda, in order to drive up sales of the next Super-Cleaning-Oxygen-Bubbly-Antibacterial-Chemical Crap. The loss to Dutch food is, apparently, not a concern.

Finnessing the Cat

2011-07-30T22:11:00.003+02:00

One of the mistakes many dog owners make is to treat their dog like a child. I can hear Cesar Milan's voice, saying, "When you take things out of nature, they become unablanced." Happily, cats take to being treated like a human child the way a duck takes to water: it's their prerogative, after all, being the true lords of the universe. The Mayans were right--the world will end on December 21, 2012. Because the Tweeb will die that day, and take her true form as the Goddess of Fickle.

The Tweeb has been on a prescription renal diet for the past two years. She eats both kibbles and wet food, getting about two tablespoons of kibbles for her breakfast, and a packet of wet food at night. We cheat a bit--she'll get some fish when we have it, and every night I lace her wet food with some of the normal kibble because otherwise she won't eat it--but overall we're pretty strict about making sure she stays on the prescription diet.

About two weeks into the regime change--we didn't change her food until her blood values remained elevated for two tests in a row--she started getting, well, bored with the food. And every night since has been a comedy of errors, to try to convince her to eat her food. It comes in two acts, repeated over and over again: the suspenseful build-up of squawking increasing in both frequency and volume; and the granting of said food. The last requires you to act like a teenybopper who's just been kissed by ~~God~~ Justin Bieber, and getting her to eat it required administration of constant praise and occasional--but not too frequent--pettings.

It took us a while to work out the twisted map of the Tweeb's psyche. OK, I exaggerate. It's quite simple, really: CAT-MOMMY MUST BE WITH ME ALL THE TIME OR ELSE. Cats were once revered as gods--and while I'm an atheist, frankly...well, given the Tweeb's ability to break glass with her voice and throw temper tantrums, the "or else" bit is probably best left undiscovered.

Babies and toddlers eventually grow out of this stage, I'm told. This must be why we've started discussing children.

Hang Time

2011-07-20T07:47:00.003+02:00

The hardest part about sustaining a blog is coming up with relevant topics and making them interesting. It gets even harder when, for whatever reason, your brain decides that clouds don't really count as daylight. I've been in a bit of a funk for the past two weeks, and a bit glum for the entire summer, so while I take care of that the blog will be on a bit of a hiatus as I start achieving functionality again.

I'm guessing it will be another week to ten days before everything starts working again. Until then, this is your host Jules, signing off.

Buried Alive

2011-07-16T07:43:00.004+02:00

I've been a fan of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, ever since a friend of mine pointed it out to me (unfortunately, during finals week of medical school). The series, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a ripping fantasy rife with scheming, backstory that's as good as the plot, cruelty that makes waterboarding look like a dip in the kiddy pool (not saying that makes waterboarding okay, but I think I'd rather be dead than Reek), unlikely heroes, and a healthy dose of literary irony. What makes it so appealing is that the story just as often progresses through the eyes of "the bad guys" as much as it does through the protagonists, so you end up with an incredibly nuanced story that makes ripping through the first 3200 pages a breeze--it's not light reading. Equally appealing is that you can't count on your heroes surviving, nor can you count on your bad guys dying: like the real world, our heroes are mortal, and they do die. And sometimes evil (or really, better poisoners) does prevail. But more often than not, good people make bad decisions, while even the worst characters can find redemption.

The first four books (out of a planned 7, supposedly, although I suspect it will end up being 9) came out in relatively quick succession--1996, 2000, 2005--if you consider the length, depth, and scope these stories encompass. But A Dance with Dragons only came out this year, and only after some 2 years of "It's coming next month". Karel surprised me earlier this week when he handed me an Amazon.com box filled with a 900-page tome, and, well, the rest is history. I tend to get a little compulsive about these things.

This was a (very late) Christmas present, but the fact that I got it so soon after it was released is one of those marvels of the Internet that, if you think back just 10 years ago, would have been unlikely. 20 years ago--impossible. Karel and I aren't that much into movies--I might have been had I stayed in the States, being fed on a constant diet of indie movies at the Ritz--so not being anywhere near HP7B fans on opening day was nice. Film culture in the Netherlands doesn't seem to make the distinction between the cheap thrill and the highbrow art affair. Some movie theaters are more devoted to the European art-house flick than others, which import subtitled trash (sorry, but it'll take a director of Chris Nolan's caliber to elevate Transformers anything more serious than a 30-minute after-school cartoon) directly from the US, but even those theaters will still show "serious" (not necessarily "good") movies like "Sonny Boy".

Ostensibly I'm talking about books and not movies, but when you live in a country where English isn't the first language, you have to learn to accept that your book selections will be limited, both in time (not-so-recent recent releases) and scope, as most books tend to be fiction (unless you live in Amsterdam and have access to Waterstone's, which I do not). These days, with the Kindle and other e-book readers, you don't need to go to a brick-and-mortar store to get a paper-printed book, but I have always been attracted to the methodical passage of pages and a bookmark's creep down the length of the spine. For huge books like A Dance with Dragons, it feels like more of an accomplishment. I don't doubt that one of these days, we'll get an iPad or an e-reader--it's a question of commitment, really, and whether we'd use it enough to warrant the €700 price. But I'm sort of saddened to think that my generation might be one of the last ones in which you can, somewhat literally, be "buried in a book".

Squawk!

2011-07-07T07:58:00.006+02:00

Actually I should have posed the eggs with the Tweeb, since she actually does squawk, but she's also a fussbudget and got up and stalked off, so Noodle had to be the hen in this picture...

Anyway: I've been buying our eggs from the nearby boerenboerderij, because they come from organically-fed, free-range chickens. Even at €0.20 each, they're still substantially less than the same eggs at the supermarket. I don't think they actually taste any better (or maybe I'm too much of a Luddite) but it does make me feel a little better not to be buying scharreleiren.

Eggs are rated from 0-4. The higher the number, the more confined the chicken. The number is stamped on the egg itself, along with a country-of-origin (NL usually), a 5-digit code that corresponds to the farm it came from, and a 2-digit code that corresponds to which chicken (or at least, which part of the farm) laid it. So a 0-rated egg comes from those chickens you see scratching happily in the garden on all of the egg commercials, while a 4-rated egg comes from a box-chicken in one of those massive factory farms that animal welfare activists are always protesting. Even if you don't give a rat's @$$ about chicken welfare, chickens are pretty dirty birds, and having so many side by side is like putting a shit-factory next to your eggs, so you're braver than I am if you like buying eggs from such a source.

Most eggs in the Netherlands are rated a 2--scharreleiren, meaning that the chickens have some room to roam, but are still kept closely confined. So closely, in fact, that sometimes they are de-beaked to prevent them from injuring each other when they fight. I'm sure the chickens are, if not okay, not too badly disrupted by the process, but even so--it's kind of squicky to think about. A 1-rating means that they are afforded at least some outdoor time on a regular basis, but really, if you're concerned about poultry welfare, a 0 is the best way to go.

In the EU, the European Commission (very good website!) has a set of guidelines which govern all organic produce produced in the member states. For something to be called "organic", it must at the very least comply with the EC rules, and some companies and countries have even more stringent guidelines. Although the rules have been in place since 1992, the EC only mandated that a standard logo must be phased in starting last year...at least their priorities are straight?

For us, buying meat, dairy, and egg products from humanely-treated animals is more about a philosophy than food snobbery. Ever since we got Noodle, Karel has been paying more attention to where his food comes from, and he insists on buying meat with the "puur en eerlijk" (pure and fair--in this case, humanely-treated) label on it. If I had my way entirely, he'd be a vegetarian right with me, but I can live with this compromise ;-)

Calender Gurl

2011-07-05T07:49:00.003+02:00

*
I spent the Fourth of July having perhaps one of the worst job interviews, one of those interviews that gets cited for "How NOT to Have an Interview" articles on job-hunting sites. To be fair, what the people were looking for wasn't clearly expressed in the advert, so I didn't feel too bad about losing it once I realized they wanted someone with a lot more chemistry in their background. It was not a celebration, unless you count the beer I had at the end of a draining day as my version of a drunken orgy, and it most emphatically did not have fireworks.

I had a few problems adjusting to holidays in the Netherlands. Because Karel works shifts, he has a very irregular schedule and is just as likely to have to work a weekend as he is to have Wednesday free. When I lived in the US, holidays were a way to mark the passage of time: New Year's was the start of the new year; St. Patrick's meant spring was just around the corner; Memorial Day meant I could start wearing white; July 4 was the midsummer; Labor Day meant school started; and Thanksgiving meant that I was in deep trouble if I hadn't gotten together my Christmas list.

Most of the holidays in the Netherlands are religious, with the exception of New Year's and Liberation Day. And as such, it is impossible to set them to any date, as Easter Monday, Ascension Day, and the second day of Pentecost are X days after Day Y. These are more-or-less universally Christian holidays, and thus are recognized by the entire country, but Carnival and St. Maartens are more regional. Carnival is mainly in the south--in Nijmegen we have a token celebration, but most of the shops don't even bother to close--while St. Maartens is observed in the northern provinces as well as Maastricht. The latter is explained by the fact that Sint Maarten coincides with the harvest; the north is largely agrarian. The Dutch version of the Wiki page says the tradition (making lanterns, singing songs, getting candy) is spreading throughout the rest of the Netherlands, but it could be that the writer is getting confused with Halloween celebrations, since some small enclaves of expats rig trick-or-treat routes for their kids.

The funny thing about holidays in the US and in the Netherlands: in the US, people purport to be Christians and say "God Bless America" and all that stuff, but they don't celebrate the Ascension, or the Pentecost; and indeed, unless you're a priest, I doubt you'd know when to do so. In the Netherlands, religion is one of those things you're expected to have but not to share, lest you be mistaken for an evangelicizing prick, and yet the Ascension and Pentecost are marked holidays.

*This jellyfish shot is the only one that has red, (a little) white, and blue.

Summer mackerel

2011-06-29T08:04:00.007+02:00

I joke that the Chinese and the Dutch get along so well because they both love good deals. Of course, we don't have the storage space to stockpile things the way extreme couponers do (seriously, most of these people are sick in the head), and besides, I like to think that the key to happiness is moderation in all things. Including moderation, which explains why there's a dead fish in our fridge.

A few days back I came upon a smoked mackerel at a substantially lower price than normal. I'm normally pretty good about sticking to my list of things to get, but in a moment of weakness (I must've been hungry) I put it in my basket, thinking, "Well, there's got to be some recipe online somewhere. And it's cheap and healthy and not on the list of overfished-fish, so yay!" I've been meaning to wean Karel off of salmon, which comes mostly from Norwegian fish farms, but that's only possible if I can create a MasterChef-worthy dish to introduce mackerel with. He's like Anton Ego: "If I don't love it, I don't swallow." When it comes to trying new things, it's double-or-nothing: either he'll love it and want me to make it over and over and over again, or he'll hate it and it'll be years before I can reintroduce him to it.

However, it turned out that finding good recipes for smoked mackerel is a sight more diffcult than I would have thought. Aside from variations on the paté theme, there doesn't seem to be much that you can do with a smoked fish. There are a few decent recipes floating around for fresh mackeral, but fresh mackeral is not smoked mackeral, and in any case they all amounted to the same thing: cook something up and put the fish on top. Mackeral isn't that pretty to look at to begin with--and, given how my mom used to prepare it (chopped into hunks and boiled in soup), it only gets worse.

Fortunately, being a smoked fish, it will last a little longer in our fridge while I dredge through gazillions of recipes for promising eats and not too many weird things. In the mean time, well...I try not to look in our fridge.

"The world's a better place when it's upside down"

2011-06-26T07:37:00.005+02:00

I am not a girly-girl, nor have my jobs encouraged me to be one: when you're running amok in a lab, high heels and expensive silks lose out to the more pragmatic jeans-and-t-shirt. Even so, in high school, a spate of hyperactive oil glands and a small crush on one of the guys (Matt, if you really want to know) encouraged me to venture beyond my geek-bubble and explore the world of prettifying things.

One of the somewhat more daunting things about moving across the pond is how the definitions for things like "cream" and "lotion" change. That "cleansing milk" is very different from "body milk", and that neither of them have a drop of dairy in them. A scrub, thankfully, is still a scrub--that is, if you're talking about the grainy stuff that supposedly exfoliates as it cleans.

Here, a "cream" is a moisturizer for your face, unless it specifies that it's intended for your hands. Trust me when I say that, given the prices of most of these products, you'll only be able to afford to use them on your face. Personally, I've never believed much in Q10-this and regenerate-that, so I stick with the most basic of generic moisturizers. A "lotion" is actually not a lotion as it's known in the US (for those of us who didn't frequent the Clinique counter, anyway), but a toner.

It gets a little more tricky with "cleansing milk" and "body milk". Even though they're both milks, cleansing milk is a cleaner. It doesn't foam up the way products in the US do, and it doesn't make your skin feel tingly and clean. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it stops my breakouts, I wouldn't even know that it did anything--which is actually what dermatologists recommend in a soap. Body milk, on the other hand, is a moisturizer for the rest of you. Why the obsession with milk? Back in the day, women would soak their skin in milk (their hands, if they could, the rest of them if they could afford it) to get that radiant lush glow of youth.

These days, things are much easier, and a lot safer: belladonna is recognized for the poison it is. White lead is no longer found in makeup. One no longer needs to grind his own lapis lazuli (just as well, because where do you find it?), and the most complicated part of makeup is picking out the right shade of foundation. I sometimes wonder if we've made things too easy--if that might be the reason why beauty magazines would have you think that being gorgeous is a lifestyle more artificial than Splenda: morning and bedtime rituals of washing, moisturizing, toning, and scrubbing; an exfoliation/mask treatment/facial schedule as tight as the op that brought down Bin Laden; for the truly dedicated, a lifestyle that involves no caffeine, sugar, alcohol, fat, carbohydrates, red meat, or for that matter, anything that's not celery. Men purport to like "natural beauty", but one wonders if there ever was such a thing.

Legal Rule (rant)

2011-06-23T07:58:00.006+02:00

Immigration is complicated--just the paperwork alone is often enough to snow people under for weeks. "Oh, you didn't get this piece? Well, you'll have to resubmit your entire application, then. It'll mean that you'll be past the deadline? Too bad. Well, I don't care that you didn't get that when you first came in. It's not my fault you didn't check...okay, then, it's not my fault you didn't know." The questions of identity, fitting in, deciding which bits of your own identity to keep, which ones to shed--well, books have been written about that.

But as exasperated as I am with the Dutch authorities (mostly the gemeente; as long as I don't end up in prison I'm pretty sure the INS is more than happy to forget about me), at least I am here legally. I have documents to prove I am who I say I am, and that I can live here. But for a brief time, I was technically in the Netherlands illegally--though we started the process of getting my residence approved before I would have needed a visa, my 90-day grace period ran out before my residence permit arrived. It was a jittery period, if only because I couldn't do anything by myself--and I'm a law-abiding person.

The idea that "the law is the law and if you break it you pay" forms the core of most "dialogues" (I use that word loosely, as most discussions tend to devolve into name-calling and what-all) on the subject of illegal immmigration. But the law isn't black-and-white: many examples in history show plainly that the law can be wrong (Dredd Scott) and lawbreakers (Rosa Parks) can be right. Does anybody who's not a white supremacist disagree with Brown v. Board of Education? People still fight--hell, they'll happily kill others--to bring us back before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. How many people wouldn't talk their way out of a speeding ticket if they could? Laws are not immutable (see: gay marriage), nor can they encapsulate the full extent of human morality. And that's the point: the law may indeed be the law, but it's not always what's right, or what's good, or what's just--and unfortunately, it takes good people breaking bad laws to make us realize that. If it were as simple as black-and-white, then Nelson Mandela should never have been released, and Ghandi should've gone down in history as a thug. If the law were the law, there would be no Arab Spring.

When you're talking about human lives, it's much more complicated than black-and-white. People hide/cheat/lie about something as mundane as money, for Chrissakes, pretending to spend a lot more or a lot less than what they did, all in the name of preserving something so nebulous as "status". The stakes in immigration are much greater than "just" a bank account: they're families, employers, communities, colleagues. When the stakes are so high, you have to tread carefully, especially given the "shoot first questions later" mentality that pervades most bureaucracies. To lose everything because of a simple misunderstanding is, I would imagine, more gut-wrenching than to lose everything because of something that you actually did(n't) do. To ignore what's just and what's right in the interest of observing the letter of the law does not always better a people or a nation. After all, Hitler had an army of law-abiding model citizens, too.

/rant

Happy Ten!

2011-06-22T10:18:00.002+02:00

Today marks the day--10 years since we met. Since then, it's been mostly ups, a few downs, but overall, I couldn't imagine a better guy to spend the rest of my life with.

I'll save you the gushy-happily-in-love shpiel, because frankly, there is no gushy-happily-in-love shpiel. Just two people, living and talking and loving and discussing things in bed over breakfast and watching Masterchef with baited breath and manhandling the Tweeb and doing each other's laundry and trying to divine what the other wants for dinner that night. Love really isn't much more than whatever makes these little trivial things worthwhile.

A Glass of Milk

2011-06-20T16:23:00.005+02:00

I've achieved a certain degree of notoriety amongst Karel's friends, families, and colleagues for my calorically-accomplished baked goods. I only bake about once a month--a combination of laziness (not for the actual baking, but for the cleaning up afterwards) and apathy: I rarely get a chance to eat whatever baked good I make in the manner in which it was intended, which sort of decreases any inclination to make it. Cookies and cupcakes are more fun for me, in that respect--nobody's counting (I hope, anyway) so a few missing probably won't damage Karel's reputation. Much.

Karel's birthday bashes these past three years have been, for me, an orgy of baking. So many cakes, so little time. The trick is timing: icings can be made as early as a few days in advance, depending on which variation on the buttercream theme you're going for, but the cakes need to baked as close to the start of the party as possible. Cream puffs are a perennial favorite--the pate choux isn't very difficult to make, although it's always nerve-wracking to watch the oven as they rise--but they can only be made the day of serving, or else they'll lose that bit of crunch. (You can freeze them and "refresh" them with a brief baking, but there was no way we were getting 60-some puffballs into our freezer)

This year I elected to make cupcakes. The theory was that we'd have a ton of kids over, and cupcakes would be easier in general to handle, as you don't need a plate and a fork. However, since just about everybody canceled at the last moment, we had some 40 cupcakes and some very puzzled Dutch people eyeing them askance, (probably) wondering a) how did I get the icing so pink (food coloring), and b) what went into the icing?

Needless to say, we had leftovers. Lots of leftovers. And to compound to our death-by-excess, one of our friends brought over a far breton. So this morning, when I posted that I had about another day's left of cleaning to do, it was mostly wailing over what to do with all the food. I had to dump some of it, because it couldn't be kept, and freeze others. And then I got to the far.

Never mind that it had the texture and consistency of potting clay--a characteristic of Brittany cakes, and not an actual fault of our friend--when you've been living on snack food for two days, yet another cake becomes more liability than asset. But, well...we didn't like it that much, and it does take up one of our burners, and...At times like this, I like to imagine that even the Dutch would think twice about blurting out the truth.

Up and outta here

2011-06-20T08:46:00.003+02:00

Things have been crazy busy here: this past weekend was Karel's yearly birthday-bash which, as usual, turned into a madhouse of baking, cleaning, more baking, and oh-yeah-there-was-a-job-interview somewhere in that mess, as well as a repairman who came by to fix our water heater.

I've got about another day's worth of cleanup to do--not that the mess was that big, but having guests for two days straight means not being able to vaccuum as thoroughly as I need to, which means that my allergies to Noodle have kicked up and, were it not for loratadine, I'd be a lot more miserable than I am now.

Plus, for some reason, this entire month has been raining. I want to get to the kaasboerderij to take some pictures of the place, but it's a twenty-minute bike ride, and not something to idly risk when the clouds are as ominous as they are. So maybe we'll get lucky today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, there are a ton of leftovers that want dealing with, so I'll leave this post at that and wish you all a happy week. Regular post coming at some point soon.

Green Green Green

2011-06-14T07:18:00.003+02:00

About two years ago my brother sent me a t-shirt with Woodsy Owl on it, with the words "Give a hoot, don't pollute!" It's a t-shirt that I wear surprisingly often around the house, as it is the perfect "I haven't got any other clean t-shirt" t-shirt. But South Park spoof notwithstanding, it also perfectly illustrates my Green side, mostly because I like to hope that people are smarter than apes, and will not ruin the planet (by which I mean all of the arable land) out of sheer greed and willful ignorance. Tall order, I know. But it makes more sense than believing in God.

The Netherlands were extolled in Jared Diamond's Collapse for their forward-thinking environmental policies, implemented by a top-down model that's only possible after generations and generations of hive-mind living. It's everywhere: the advertisements that link being Green to getting it on, billboards that encourage you to hold on to your trash rather than litter. Dutch culture, being as clean as it is, makes littering one of the easier vices to police. God knows there are more terrible public service announcements than suggesting Green is the new sexy.

Things I like about the Dutch environmental policies:

The statiesgeld: the refund you get for bringing in empty bottles. Ten cents for a beer bottle, and 25 cents for a soda bottle. It's so simple: you feed your empty bottle into a machine, and it spits back a receipt telling you how much money you've gotten for your trouble. Then you present the receipt to the cashier, who knocks the amount off your final grocery bill.
Bike money: yes, you can actually get an employer to help you pay for your bike, if you use it for commuting to and from your place of work. Policies differ--where I worked in Maastricht, I could get €300 back. Karel basically got his folding bike for free--it's a bit of a hassle to fill out the paperwork, but given how much bikes can cost, it's a pretty good incentive to push pedals.
Thrift culture: it's de rigeur to shop at thrift stores, to get furniture off Marktplaats, and just generally not throw anything away that can be patched up and sold off. It's also because if you don't like what's on sale at the Xenos, you're pretty much screwed because everything new looks like that. So thrift stores it is, for people who want things different.
Trash cans everywhere: by necessity, they're around to prevent people from littering. And y'know what, they're not in the way and they are regularly emptied and they actually keep people from littering! The NS, on the ends of the intercity train routes, where the trains are at a stop for 15 minutes, has teams of cleaners that go through the train and empty out the trash cans on it. One wonders how this concept has evaded SEPTA.

Things I don't like so much:

Why can't I recycle cans anywhere? Plastic bottle recycling drop-offs are common. Paper-and-cardboard recycling day is clearly marked on the special afvalkalender we get every February (one month too late, DAR...), but if I want to recycle a can of soda, I shouldn't have to bring it all the way to the dump.
The road tax: the Dutch have one of the most extreme car taxes in Europe. When you buy a car, you pay a 14% tax for pollution, and depending on how big the car is, every month you get dinged for road usage. And that's not even covering the insane cost of gas. My current estimate of gas prices and conversion rates puts it at a hefty $9/gal--and if that's not an incentive to get a Prius, I don't know what is. You might be wondering why I'm complaining about it, since I don't even drive, but the road tax is actually a serious impediment to our even considering getting a car.

I most certainly missed somethings. Possibly many things. What're your favorite or not-so-favorite aspects of going Green in Holland?

Kidney Kitties

2011-06-10T07:24:00.001+02:00

Yesterday morning, rather than breakfast, Noodle got ambushed and keel-hauled to the vet's, where he got his teeth cleaned. Dentals are all-day procedures, so we'd also booked a late-afternoon checkup for the Tweeb, with the idea of bringing both cats home at once. Cost was rather--and surprisingly--modest, given that Noodle needed pre-anesthesia blood-work done, and that the Tweeb got some antibiotics (she's been having this weird little cough that makes us worry about heart failure).

One of the things the blood-work revealed is that Noodle is also on the brink of renal failure. His kidney values, while still within the normal ranges, are approaching the point of worry, and falling in the "high normal" range. Right now, the plan is to monitor him, which means keel-hauling him to the vet AGAIN in six months for another blood test.

It's one of the cardinal rules of owning cats, that the ones that need to see the vet most often are the ones that are the most problematic. The Tweeb, for instance, has taken to piddling on me when we put her in her carrier. Noodle just hates his carrier--in fact, he infinitely prefers the vet to his carrier, and I strongly suspect that the only reason they could get him into his carrier yesterday was because he was so strung out on ketamine. Shadow, on the other hand, goes to the vet about once every other year and is as pretty and as perfect as a picture, and always goes in her carrier with a minimum of fuss.

What's so daunting about the prospect of Noodle having to see the vet as often as the Tweeb, then, is not the cost--it's unpleasant, but affordable. It's the emotional toll that comes from dragging a whining, howling cat to the vet and back again. It's figuring out how to outsmart the cats and get them to a place where you can catch them. It's waiting for the vet to call and tell you that the Tweeb is still normal/better/worse than she was the last time. Costs may increase in a linear fashion for every sick or borderline-sick cat, but dread goes up exponentially.

Cleansed

2011-06-07T07:56:00.001+02:00

It's commonly said that the Dutch have no fashion sense. This isn't true. Most people do have an idea that mayhaps the yellow rain boots will clash with the hot-pink feather boa, and to be fair, I like the whole leggings-and-boots look during the winter (practical, and sexy!). However, it only takes one person to perpetuate the stereotype, and that one person belongs to a peculiar class of women who inhabit the C1000 and Witte Reus commercials. Thankfully their real-life counterparts are a smidge less tacky--they are the women who are likely to show up on your doorstep if you hire a housekeeper.

So explains Karel, anyway. I was skeptical at first--after all, who cleans a house wearing a pencil skirt and a full face of make-up? But then I caught an episode of Hoe Schoon is Jouw Huis?. Like most Dutch realtiy TV, HSIJH is less about horror and ridicule and more about empowering the hapless victim/clueless kid. Marja and Liny travel the Netherlands spreading their cleaning magic on downtrodden domiciles, teaching the inhabitants such life-enhancing skills as...wiping electric sockets clean, sterilizing door frames, and scrubbing walls.

Up until now, I thought we did a pretty good job at keeping our place neat and clean, since I'm not sneezing every other minute. Our floors are pretty clean, our litter boxes don't stink, and the closets are reasonably tidy. I dust the furniture and clean the windows as needed, and the colony of dust bunnies under the bed has retreated to the far corner that I can't reach with our vaccuum. But apparently our apartment is still filthy. God forbid that we should have bacteria on our electric sockets.

Bugs

2011-06-04T08:19:00.001+02:00

For those of you watching the E. coli outbreak unfurl across Europe, it's a grim reminder of just what globalization can mean: shared disease as well as shared profit. Fortunately E. coli is no bubonic plague, but it's frustrating as well because there doesn't seem to be any known source for the outbreak. Unlike the incidents of contaminated spinach/peanut butter in the US, there doesn't seem to be a centralized source for the outbreak, and indeed, right now, there's not even a suspect food to be aware of. It seems to come from produce, but that could mean anything.

What we do know is that this is not your normal, everday E. coli that sits in your gut and plays nice. It's not O157:H7, perhaps the most deadly strain of E. coli known to man, but rather a version of the strain O104 that picked up a nasty trick or two in its evolution. Most worrisome is that multiple news sources (BBC, Guardian) are reporting that it appears to be antibiotic resistant. Germany has started to request blood donations to treat their patients, because apparently that's all that will work.

On Monday news sources were reporting that it was produce from Spain that was problematic, but as of Wednesday Germany was determined to be the source of the outbreak, and today the Nu website is reporting that they finally have "ground zero" for the most severe outbreak, a restaurant in Lubeck where 17 of the 18 dead in Germany ate. And apparently so did the two Americans who came down with symptoms. Lubeck is a popular tourist town, so it wouldn't shock me if that were the source of all of the cases.

In the Netherlands, fortunately, most of the produce is labeled with a country of origin, and very little of it comes from Germany. But you have to remember that, just because the outbreak began in Germany doesn't mean that the infected food was German to begin with. For all we know, it could have come to Europe in a haggis, or made its way in a maggot-cheese.

Eric Schlosser has a scathing commentary about the US food safety recall system in the book Fast Food Nation, and it's interesting to see Europe's response to contaminated food: there is no recall, mostly because there is nothing to recall. Ever since the outbreak was reported, stores have been dumping their potentially-infected produce, and farmers are being forced to raze their crops because they cannot be sold. All this--billions of euros' worth of produce--without any idea of what might be the source? It's nice to know that we're safe. It's still mind-boggling, how much food is being lost.

In spite of all this, I'm not all that worried, frankly. Oh, I'll cut back on fresh salads and cook veggies as a precaution for now, but avoiding the best parts of summer is simply an abomination to me, especially given the Dutch winter diet. It helps to remember, in all this, that merely getting out of bed is a defiance of natural law, and going to the market is a dare. We just don't think of it that way. So I'm not going to let a couple of bugs get me down.

Edit: As of 6 June, evidence is pointing to sprouts as the culprit.

The Skinny on the FatBoy

2011-06-02T08:31:00.001+02:00

I'm a bit of a meanie in real life: I get a kick out of shocking my mother with seemingly mundane aspects of my life when I call her. Things like having to vaccuum every day, for example, make her positively upset. Explaining how to make yogurt--you let a jar of warm milk sit under a blanket for six hours--makes her inner food-safety inspector positively ill. Perhaps the most fun comes from explaining just what is a boterkoek (cake made with butter, flour, sugar, and a bit of salt) and what goes into the pea soup that Karel makes every winter (lard, lard, bacon, and lard).

Dutch food, in short, is full of the stuff that makes food taste good--and perhaps more importantly, actually triggers your satiety centers, unlike, say, low-fat foods. (I link to the video because it's thought-provoking--it all makes sense, which is a little frightening. It's interesting, that's for sure.) In most other aspects, life in Europe is similar to life in the US: the government is trying to get people to eat more vegetables, while people are steadfastly sticking to their fries. But whereas dietary advice in the US starts with cutting back on fat, in the Netherlands it begins with increasing your veggies.

Ultimately, it's a balance between what you eat and how much you eat, and that's true even for cats. These days Noodle (because not-so-FatBoy is too long a name) is at a healthy weight (just shy of 5.5 kg, or 12 lbs) again, without the use of special diet foods or "indoor" cat diets. Noodle came to us a proper little butterball, tipping the scales at a little over 6 kgs. Losing one pound might not seem like much, but considering that a) this is a cat, who can spend up to 18 hours a day asleep, and b) that he had zero inclination to play and his arthritis was terrible, it's really a marvel that he is the goofball who skitters around with his toy mice these days.

It's worth mentioning this because so many people have fat cats (one of our friends had a cat who died, largely because it was obese) and they don't seem to realize that they can, in fact, do something about it. Noodle, granted, wasn't as badly-off as some, and it was simply a matter of restricting his food intake--same as Shadow's, who weighs 11 lbs on a good day. The health risks for obese pets mostly mirror those for obese humans, but you don't need a general anesthetic to see the dentist.

Life is hard for Noodle: just when he finally becomes active enough to play, he gets put under and taken for a dental.

Not a funeral

2011-05-30T14:04:00.001+02:00

I've been on a bit of a mental holiday, as you might have gathered. I tend to get wrapped up in projects (one of which will be done in collaboration with Dan Potter at Walking the Lethe) and lose track of the days. I've discovered that I really like drawing blueprints and perhaps should have gone into architecture, after all. Writing has been going well, for once, and I think I may be slowly swinging into another bout of OCD because I'm sorely tempted to try macrame.

But yesterday I was thankfully forced from my mental hidey-hole, in the form of a family gathering. There's a morbid joke in Karel's family that they only ever get to see each other when there's a funeral, and it's true enough that this year, for the first time since I've been here, a couple of people decided to have a gathering without a burial.

It was a little weird, because everybody remembered me, but I didn't remember anybody. I attribute this to the fact that every blood-relative of Karel's father looks the same, and that when there are a thousand people talking all at once, it's hard to catch names. By the time you've finished shaking hands and start saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that," they've already started a conversation with the person next to you.

The family has video clips from the thirties through the fifties, which were digitized and then played in a continuous loop through the day. It's one thing to know, intellectually, that the dignified old man that Karel calls "Pap" was a child at one time in his life. It's another thing to see the video of a blonde little boy building a sandcastle, and getting sand everywhere except where it was supposed to go. Photo albums of the family had also been assembled--it was fun to pick out who was in which photo and, if they were around, compare that picture to the person at the party.

I've got a few more job applications to send out, but after that, it should be back to blogging as usual. Subjects to be covered in upcoming posts are cheese, art supplies, and Noodle's dental.

Zen Moments

2011-05-25T09:02:00.001+02:00

My boyfriend is asleep, and I am trying to figure out how LinkedIn works. I'm alternately startled, appalled, and thrilled that I "know" so many people, even if it's just one email, and the whole thing has me rethinking what networking and staying connected means, when everybody is just once Facebook link away from everybody else.

Otherwise it's been a quiet day so far. In a moment the busy-ness will recommence: groceries need to be gotten, litterboxes scooped, job applications sent out, those two stories in the back of my mind written down. But for now, it's just me, alone at the computer, enjoying the calm before the storm.

Eighth grade all over again

2011-05-24T13:06:00.001+02:00

Every year or so I take a picture of our apartment, as a way to document what happens to it as we remodel, redecorate, and upgrade the furnishings. It's kind of fascinating to watch the place change over the years, as we've settled in and put our own signatures on this place.

Part of the reason why it's taken so long is because we're exceedingly fussy about what we want, and part of the reason for being so fussy is because we don't have much space (or money) to keep trying. The other reason is because our local Gamma (scaled down Home Depot) is irritatingly far away and expeditions to it need to be planned well in advance.

These past couple weeks have taken me back to my middle school years, as we learned how to sew, use a jigsaw, pour molten aluminum, and make pizza, while trying not to looke like we cared (because it wouldn't be cool). Drafting a design, doing the math, cutting the pieces, figuring out how to put it all together, praying the math works out...and when it does, and when you see the final product, life is beautiful. Still.

I'm not delusional enough to think that I could ever be a master craftswoman--our curtains stay up and my skirts stay on and the shelves are standing, but I don't have any Fingerspitzengefühl for these things. But it does make me wonder whether we'll ever go back to those days when people who worked with their hands were respected for the skills they had, rather than disparaged for the knowledge they didn't.

Unknotted

2011-05-22T09:10:00.002+02:00

About two years ago the muscles in my left shoulder, neck, and back went into one hell of a spasm, completely incapacitating me for the pain. Not even paracetamol and ibuprofen worked, and Karel, after several hours, gave me Tramadol. I can't remember whether it worked--I was that woozy from having a quarter dose, and then I had a rebound-anxiety attack later that night--but I haven't been in a biking accident yet, so I assume that I could turn my head to check for traffic the next day.

The aftermath of that unpleasant spasm was a sort of semi-permanent state of constant tightness on my left side. It's not always painful, but it is unpleasant and more often than not a source of grumpiness.

Enter Evert: last year, he got certified as a masseuse but had not yet built up a clientele. To stay in practice, he and Karel made an arrangement, which was that whenever he wanted to stay the night, he'd get a human guinea pig to practice with--namely me. Karel gets a chance to show off his cooking skills (and a night in which I'm not pestering him to rub my shoulder), and Evert makes a small fee. Win-win-win all around. All I can say is, there are worse ways to spend the night than tripping on your own endorphins, and few things better than having your neck-back-shoulders be completely relaxed, even if it's only for a few hours.

Evert lives in the Hague and can be reached at info at wellnessmassages dot nl. He comes with his own massage table and all the relevant accessories, including trippy new-age music (not my personal favorite, but surprisingly suited for a massage), massage oils, and clean towels. He charges €50 for an hour's worth of full-body massage, though there is also the bits-and-pieces option. If you can get over his physical appearance--this guy looks like he can eat linebackers as an after-school snack--you'll find that he's very professional and very, very, good at unknotting all those weird muscles you didn't even know you had.

Elevation

2011-05-17T09:20:00.001+02:00

When people come to the Netherlands, they're under no illusions about the size of the country: it's a small country, and often they leave thinking that Amsterdam is all there is to the Netherlands (as far as pot, hookers, and tourist tripe, they're mostly correct). The same is not true of Scotland: Sure, you could drive from one end to the other in about a day...if you wanted to end up with your brains spattered on the side of a cliff. Scotland is one of those countries that looks small on a map, until you get there and literally have a mountain in your backyard. Then you rethink the whole "size is relative" thing and take a sip of whiskey.

Stephen (marine biologist) and Vicki (inorganic chemist) have been moving around the world ever since I first heard of them--Karel had gone to visit them once or twice in Canada, on his way to or from visiting me--and earlier this year their careers took them to Scotland. Since they move so frequently, it was agreed by all parties that arranging a visit while they were still within non-International-Date-Line-crossing-distance would probably be prudent.

The weather was rainy and cold the whole time we were there, but we did manage to get in one relatively short hill walk on Saturday, walking from somewhere around Dunollie Castle to the castle at Dunstaffinage. The terrain was sufficiently hilly to get impressive views, but not so challenging that you needed walking shoes to get by on it (though it would have helped with the "wet feet" part of the day).

We also took a tour of the Oban distillery--it was interesting to see where the famous Oban 14-year whiskey is brewed, and learn all about how the cask affects the aging process. It was fun getting to smell (and, for those with liver enzymes, taste) cask-strength whiskey. According to the guide, 98% of the bottles made at Oban are destined to become the standard Oban 14-year, 2% get re-aged to make the "distillery edition", and 6000 bottles' worth get bottled at cask-strength. (Whiskeys are not typically bottled at cask-strength, as they are at 50-60% ABV in the cask) You can guess which one Karel bought.

It was an excellent weekend away--the cat-sitter came when she said she would and there wasn't too much sulking when we got back (although I suspect Noodle got fatter again). The trains screwed us only slightly on the way back, and not at all on the way there. Stephen and Vicki were wonderful hosts and introduced us to the phenomena of Georgian Cheese Pie and Killer Bunnies. And it has convinced Karel that he must travel abroad more often, if only to prevent his ATM cards from being blocked once he crosses the Dutch border.

Seeing Glass

2011-05-11T08:05:00.001+02:00

My userpic is a lie. I wear glasses. I'd tried wearing contact lenses before, but putting them in and taking them out every single day turned out to be a bigger pain than expected. It's a little vanity of mine, being photographed without my glasses--people change, but a photograph is forever, so you might as well send forth your best image.

Amanda has detailed the experience of buying glasses on Maastricht Minutiae. My own 2009 experience was similar, except that I opted for the Eyes + More rather than Het Huis Opticiens--they had oval-esque frames. And yes, it really is that simple. Some small glasses stores in the US (Designer Eyes, in Philly, where I bought my silver pair that I wore for 5 years, even though I needed a new prescription about 2 years in) operate in a similar way, but price-wise the Dutch stores are much better, as "extras" like non-reflective coatings and thin lenses don't cost extra. I have a pretty strong prescription, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that yes, €85 glasses do, in fact, cost €85.

The other major benefit of buying from a store such as Eyes + More is that, when you do, all of your data ends up in the system--your prescription, the set of your eyes, distance between your pupils, etc--so that, if after a year or two, you want prescription sunglasses, you can just walk in, point to a frame, pick out a lens color, and two weeks later pick them up. Obviously this only works if your prescription hasn't changed noticeably, and mine hasn't. Most glasses can be made in one or two days if the store has the lens in stock, but sunglasses usually require special lenses that need to be ordered, hence the long wait time. You can also ask for sunglass lenses in any frame, including the daintier wire frames--I chose the sturdier plastic ones because I'd be carrying them in my purse.

It was a major revelation to ride home without squinting into the road glare. Being able to read a book in the sun without going blind was also nice, and having an extra pair of normal glasses lying around is nice for the days when ~~the cats hide my normal pair~~ I forget where I put my red ones. But mostly, it's a relief to know that I can afford glasses if I need them.

Country Road

2011-05-08T06:51:00.001+02:00

Yesterday was the Nederlandse Vereniging van Jachthoornblazers bugling contest. The Dutch don't have a strong gun culture, but shooting, hunting, and the skills that surround shooting and hunting are kept alive by nature-lovers. And also by crazy old coots who long for the good old days :-) Yes, Karel has a funny costume and an even funnier hat. He's expressly forbidden me to post pictures, though, so you'll have to get your kicks from the photo gallery on the website.

Aside: Not that I could have gotten many decent photos, anyway. Yesterday was a beautiful day in Neederweert, which was great for getting a nice tan, but the sun absolutely murdered any chances of getting the lighting right. Not without screens, at any rate.

But I'm digressing. The Dutch countryside, it turns out, is apparently peppered with small musea staffed by volunteers demonstrating daily life in the days of old. It's sort of like a Renaissance faire, except without pretty dresses and far more quaint. Ladies spin wool, and men demonstrate how to operate the bandsaw from hell. There were lots of hands-on exhibits for the kids, such as "how people did the wash back then", which invited you to wash some modern clothes in a zinc tub, with your choice of a washboard or a hand-agitator, pass it through a hand wringer (ye-olde version, but same idea) and hang it up on a line. The one the bugling contest was at yesterday was based primarily around the late-nineteenth century, but others, like the one around Arnhem are themed earlier.

In the US, there's the cult of the working man, which explains the popularity of shows such as "Deadliest Catch" and "American Chopper". People like watching underdogs come out on top. In the Netherlands, you have the cult of the farmer instead, which is kind of weird in a country where there isn't much land...but subconsciously, every Dutch person wants to be a farmer, wear wooden shoes, and milk cows.

I'm exaggerating less than you might think. Dutch culture--the food, especially, but also the frantic cleaning and brick roads and high degree of cooperativity--is essentially a farming one, and more specifically a dairy farming one (Dutch butter was renowned back in the day). During the Golden Age, Dutch society was comprised of many small farmer, each with his own cows, so in order to generate butter and/or cheese in the quantities required for sale, they pooled the milk. This meant that everybody had to adhere to the same strict qualities of cleanliness, and timing, or else nobody would get paid. A lot of Dutch culture can be traced back to the days of milk and honey. Well, mostly milk.

But I like these kinds of museums, too. I do admire the skills and ingenuity involved to craft a bucket out of wood, for example, or how to tell the temperature of your steel by the color. Don't get me wrong: I couldn't imagine my life without the Internet or the computer. But I could imagine life with some chickens.

When Life Hands You Basil

2011-05-04T10:36:00.001+02:00

It's hard to find a perfect lemonade on either side of the Atlantic. Here in the Netherlands, the Dutch (and Europeans in general) don't believe in ice. In the US, you'll get lemon-flavored sugar water instead of lemonade that puts you into a hyperglycemic coma before you've finished a glass. The obvious solution--to make your own--is hampered by our willingness to believe that we could possibly use that much sugar in our lemonade.

Fortunately, I've been baking for a long enough time to get used to the idea of "cups" when it comes to measuring out sugar. And fortunately, you don't actually need whole entire cups to make a liter of lemonade. Unfortunately, ever since I introduced Karel to the concept of basil-flavored lemonade, he's had an unsatiable hankering for more, and every summer, he follows me around the house whining for more--er, no wait, that's Noodle. But he does make a point of keeping me well-stocked with lemons.

It's not that difficult to make [herb-of-choice]-flavored lemonade, so I'm not sure why he insists that my lemonade is somehow "different". If you were to ask me, I think it comes down to the fact that I don't use a citrus-juicer, or a fork, to juice the lemons. No matter how careful you are with those instruments, it seems that you always scrape a bit of the pith into the juice, and that gives the lemonade a bitter edge. I use a tea spoon to extract the juice.

Basil, dragon, and mint all go great with lemon, but the trick is to cut it up very finely and work the juices into the sugar, first. Then you dissolve the sugar into the lemon juice, plants and all (the plants will not dissolve), and keep on brusing the leaves and stirring. I've never had the patience to wait for the sugar to dissolve entirely, and usually end up washing the whole thing into the pitcher, and finishing up the stir-job there. Straining the leaves is optional--if you leave them in, obviously the flavors will continue to infuse--and I leave them in on the principle of working in more fiber ;-)

It really is a lovely drink, but be forewarned: you may never drink lemon-lemonade again, and if you have a significant other, you may never hear the end of this.

The Universal Man

2011-05-02T08:02:00.001+02:00

Karel is only half-joking when he says he bought his apartment for the dishwasher. Our apartment had very little else to recommend it when we first moved in (more or less simultaneously), what with bare pipes running througout the walls and death-by-boring beige paint. But it did have a dishwasher, and the Tweeb spent many a cold night huddling on top of the thin metal counter, conducting the warmth of the running dishwasher into her tiny little body. (Those of you who have been to our apartment have only seen the remodeled result and not the el-cheapo predecessors.) The dishwasher itself isn't even all that impressive, either, being a relic of the '80s and guzzling energy and water at a rate that would make a BP executive blush.

But if you've never had a dishwasher before--and Karel didn't, not growing up, not in any of his previous apartments--anything that flings hot water in a circle can be a godsend. Apparently a dishwasher-less kitchen is still fairly common, as until recently most houses were built with a super-cheap kitchen that did not include extraneous applieances. The housing industry stopped the practice of building kitchens entirely in recent years (says the Biotech Guy who just bought a new house) because most people would just remodel the kitchen anyway, so if you do buy a new house, be sure to get recommendations for kitchen stores. Dishwashers these days are more efficient than hand-washing, provided you use them right--and that leads me to the point of this post: that there are certain universal male characteristics, and amongst them is apparently the utter inability to properly use a dishwasher (there's a reason it's narrated by a woman).

I'm not sure what it is about dishwashers that seems to flummox the male brain. Not covering the water jets so that the top rack can get clean just seems like common sense, but then again, people did vote for George W. Bush twice...It could be that I, growing up spoiled rotten (we did have a dishwasher, but my mother was terrified of it until I was about 8 years old) have, over the years, osmosed the logarithmic calculations juggling the size, dirtiness, and space available required to yield the maximum number of clean dishes were dishwasher run. No other appliance--granted, we don't have that many--has been the object of so much discussion about the whys and wherefores of its use.

Now, this is not to say that Karel is a Typical Guy. He's so very not-typical, in fact, that if he ever did learn how to use the dishwasher correctly, he might lose his last stake in the world of men. Then again, if you can be bossed around by a six-pound cat, you probably never belonged there, anyway.

Unholy Moly

2011-04-29T10:28:00.003+02:00

Spring in the Netherlands is heralded by many things: the appearances of "Do You Believe" [in Jesus, not UFOs] posters in preparation for Easter, pollen coating every flat surface it can find, coin-sized strawberries in the market, and white asparagus.

The asparagus in this country, like leeks and carrots, are enormous. So huge, in fact, that it took me until now to work up the courage to buy them, never mind clean and cook them. I'm not afraid of most vegetables, but up until I moved to the Netherlands, asparagus were green (and occasionally purplish), no thicker than a dime, and had a funny taste (that I now know comes from undercooking them). They were not these monstrous, white abominations. And what did you do with them? My mom (to whom I owe a lot, but not what cooking skills I have) had always snapped off the rough stem end, gave them a wash in water, and sautèd them. But these looked like they would break my arms if I tried that.

Here's another way my boyfriend sucks at being Dutch: he had no inkling how to slaughter and gut (let's not pretend these wouldn't eat you alive if they had a chance) one of these creatures, either. His first attempt a few years ago ended with white worms swimming in a pot of boiling water. They were deemed unedible, even for him, and we consequently resigned ourselves to a spring without white asparagus and Hollandaise sauce. Since then, I've looked upon these things with a mix of suspicion and curiosity--how does a simple vegetable flummox Karel's cooking, and what does it taste like?

I'm happy to report that they taste delicious, thanks to a certain degree of hubris on my part, Masterchef for demonstrating the proper use of an asparagus peeler, and Julia Child for pointing out just how deep the asparagus peel really goes. You need to get rid of all of the tough, fibrous layer on the outside, or else the inside will cook but the outside will stay tough, so shave away until the plant becomes "juicy" to the touch.

The hubris comes from my electing to steam the asparagus, instead of following the countless generations of Dutch omas before Karel and boiling them. Actually, it wasn't so much hubris as the fact that these suckers wouldn't fit into the biggest pot we had, leaving me little choice but to steam them. With steaming, it doesn't matter if the food sticks out a little--a foil seal around the food will trap the steam and everything cooks evenly. After 10 minutes in the sauna, they were juicy, and so sweet I could have served them as a dessert.

Now, to attempt the Hollandaise sauce...

Whatcha Say

2011-04-26T09:50:00.001+02:00

There was a question on today's Dear Prudie column that asked, essentially, "All my coworkers socialize in Spanish and leave me feeling left out. What can I say to get them to speak in English?"

Which brings me back to my days in Leiden, when coffee breaks were scheduled and quasi-mandatory, and chit-chat between everybody happened in a mix of languages (English, Dutch, Hindi, and Chinese). It was the unspoken rule that you only conversed in the language you were introduced in, and after a year of Dutch classes I finally realized just how weird it is to do otherwise.

That being said, I can't deny that it was sometimes very isolating to be in a room full of Dutch conversations and not being able to understand a word. I could still piece together the basic gist of the conversation from the words that I knew and the tone of voice and body language, but at that time it wasn't enough to actively participate in the conversations. Still, though, it felt wrong to ask that people switch languages, even though I knew they could. Well, perhaps not "wrong", per se, but it would have contradicted my stated goal of learning Dutch. Besides, it would have felt rude--I don't think I'll ever get over the whole "manners" thing.

But that does beg the question of how to include people who don't speak the language into a conversation with people who do. It's slow going to translate everything--I used to play translator for my mother, and it wasn't easy, particularly where doctor's visits were concerned. Not to mention, the burden of making sure the one side's intention is understood by the other can be a heavy one to juggle. I don't have any answers here. Etiquette is difficult enough when only one language and one culture is involved.

Stranger than Fiction

2011-04-23T13:04:00.001+02:00

I'm in the middle of Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. It's a rip-roaring adventure story of life in the late-1600s, as the Enlightenment was coming about, the scientific method was developed, calculus was invented, and finance took shape. The main critique of the books (3) is that they tend to be a bit logorrheic, but they are amusing in their own way, and, because it's so steeped in history, has me constantly typing search terms into Google to see just what was true and what Stephenson made up.

A fair amount of the story takes place in the Netherlands, which is worth mentioning because there are several instances in which a modern reader, modestly acquainted with Dutch culture, thinks, "Tja, ik hou van Holland."

Instance the first: Jack Shaftoe gets conscripted into the task of digging more land out of the North Sea, for reinforcing the dike. I'm not sure if the Dutch actually did this--my superficial research into the matter suggests that the democratically-elected waterschappen (water boards) were responsible for collecting the fees and the labor for maintaining the dikes, but has been inconclusive as to whether or not any random, healthy-looking stranger would be grabbed off the steets and handed a shovel. You don't run the risk of being forced to do a hard day's labor any more, but people still pay taxes towards maintaining the dikes.

The second instance is in the description of the VOC. At one point the VOC had more ships than the entire continent of Europe. But that's not what makes the VOC so recognizably Dutch. In The Confusion, Jack Shaftoe explains, "'It seems that in the days of Vroom's apprenticeship, shipwrights were held in high esteem by the VOC and Admiralty, and given a free hand. Each ship was built a little differently, according to the wisdom--or, as some would say, whim--of the shipwright. But recently the VOC have become prideful, thinking that they know everything about how to build ships, and they have begun specifying sizes and measurements down to a quarter of an inch--they want every ship the same.'" The modern-day manifestation of this desire for uniformity lies in the everyday miracle of being able to tell which black omafiets is mine in a rack of 50 similar bikes.

The last example is when the Bob Shaftoe (Jack's brother and sergeant in the English army) realizes that the main reason that the Dutch aren't dropping dead from dysentery is because they keep their camp so clean. I haven't had any luck verifying the cleanliness of the Dutch military (historians, feel free to chime in), but the cleanliness of the Dutch had been alternatively admired and ridiculed for some 200 years by the time the story takes place, and would continue to be admired and ridiculed for another 150 years or thereabouts after the 1700s. My own experience in the Netherlands has left me with mixed opinions about the fanatic cleaning--I like being able to coexist with Noodle without antihistamines, but I don't think I'll ever learn to keep the kitchen as clean as Karel would like it.

It's fascinating, to be immersed in another culture, and then read about what an outsider sees fit to comment about. It's also a bit funny that what outsiders have been commenting on hasn't changed all that much in 300 years...and gives me pause to wonder what on earth I will be writing next.

Plastic creep

2011-04-19T17:33:00.001+02:00

On the list of "You know you're going Dutch when" includes such things as: waiting for a parking space--for your bike, cruising Marktplaats.nl for furniture, and wearing leggings-and-boots (ladies) or blazer-and-t-shirt (gents). Women, in particular, will carry purses that can outfit an entire army platoon, and sometimes does--Karel tells me that, on more than one occasion, when he was little, his mother would pull out a sweater from her purse for him.

But perhaps one of the definitive "You know you're going Dutch" signs is having an Albert Heijn card. As one of the most ubiquitous supermarkets, what makes the AH (pronounced "ah-ha") unique in a land of penny-pinchers is that it's actually not the cheapest, and the generic supermarket brand of stuff is a cut more expensive than the truly generic stuff. Actually, the last is not unique to the AH, and I've noticed the same at the C1000. The difference is that you don't mind it at the AH, but you do mind at the C1000, and I think it's because the packaging of C1000 stuff looks so tacky cheap, and if you check the price, you expect it to be lower than it is.

One of the first things integrated expats will have learned is that getting a Bonus Card will save you lots on your groceries. This little piece of plastic lets you take full advantage of sales, and get the lowest prices on items marked with a "BONUS" sign. Whether or not it's actually the lowest price you can find is debatable, and framed by the greater question of whether it's worth the twenty-minute bike ride in the other direction to find out.

About three years into my stay here, the Bonus Card was joined by my Ringfoto card, where I'd bought my DSLR. 1% cash back made sense at the time: I'd spent about €1500 over one month for all the stuff associated with a DLSR, and that netted me a set of free prints. Since then, it's not seen much action at all.

Then my boyfriend went on a survivalist kick and procured a Bever Zwerfsport card: Bever is kind of like REI in the States, selling fashionably styled Gore-tex--because we all know that, when you're in the middle of nowhere, pink is "in". But they also carry a lot of really handy things, like water bottles and (good) flashlights, carabiners, heavy-duty walking shoes, climbing gear, and Sporks (handy for lunch). Why do I have it, if he's the survivalist? Because he never remembers his :-D

We didn't mind: Outdoor gear and photo prints aren't things we get regularly, and the time between purchases is long enough to allow us to forget that we'd signed away our annonymity for 25% off retail price. We don't buy from those stores often enough to be considered "valued customers". If it'd just stopped there, we would have been golden.

But I draw the line at Kruidvat. Kruidvat is sort of like a cross between a dollar store and a CVS--it's always fun to browse the crap racks in the back of the store, because every now and then something nice will pop up. It's where I buy things like shampoo, so I go there pretty frequently, the better to stock up on name brands at generic prices. Imagine my surprise, then, when the cashier did not ring up the price on the sign, but something in between the advertised price and the full price. When I pointed out this discrepancy, she merely handed me the flyer for a Kruidvat card. "Use this to get the full discount."

I'm not sure why this annoys me so much. It's not like you have to give out your bank information with anything--unlike a credit card, these are basically just bar codes that get scanned at the time of purchase. Maybe it has to do with my ego asserting itself, saying, "I'm ME, not Every Other Dutch Dude." Maybe it's because my wallet is that much heavier. Maybe it's that the Kruidvat card is so virulently red--and that's just the one side; the other side is silvered, so that it can reflect "your smile when you see how much you've saved". Because really? Who smiles at a bottle of shampoo?

Describing the Tweeb

2011-04-17T14:58:00.001+02:00

On Friday, we met the cat-sitter, an interesting experience, as neither of us had ever used one before. We've got a trip to Scotland coming up next month, and after buying the tickets, we started working out the kitty logistics. The last time I traveled extensively, Karel had stayed at home (well, he was working, but the fuzzbutts still got their usual care). They're accustomed, to some extent, to having us disappear overnight, but we've never left them alone for more than 36 hours.

Most of that is because Noodle is a snarfer. He'll eat himself into an explosion if we'd let him. We've slimmed him down since his adoption, but that was only by sheer force of will, feeding him twice a day and strictly regulating his diet. Needless to say, leaving food out for the whole weekend would not be good for him.

The second, not-insubstantial obstacle was the litter box issue. The boxes are scooped every- to every-other-day, the better to encourage the cats to use them, and not, say, our sofas. We've had a few piddle-and-poop incidents, typically involving cat carriers and trips to the vet, but when one has renal failure and the other is a boy (male cats are more susceptible to urinary issues), you really want to make sure they can pee freely whenever they want.

Our vet has a few flyers in the waiting room from people offering pet services, so I took one and followed the directions to arrange the initial meeting with the cat-sitter. It was late in the afternoon, when they were more-or-less awake and somewhat more active, so some actual introductions were possible. The first thing she did was ask us to describe the cats, because then she would know what was normal for them. Now, Shadow and Noodle are pretty typical cats--i.e., their lives revolve around finding the perfect sunbeam, swatting at each other, and food. They are perfectly healthy, perfectly pretty, and, couch notwithstanding, very well-behaved.

But how do you begin to describe a cat that looks like a very large rat that was cut up and glued back together with Elmer's? A cat around whom we've built a separate vocabulary....whose physical, psychological, and medical needs could fill a book...it was at that point that we realized what crazy cat people we'd become. I mean, we've always loved cats, but when you care for the Tweeb, you get sucked into her world. There's no getting out of it--you're in it, 'til death do you part. Makes getting married look like a breeze.

A Bridge Too Far

2011-04-14T08:27:00.001+02:00

If you've heard of Nijmegen prior to reading this blog, it's probably because you've seen the movie A Bridge Too Far. When the Allies cross the Waal, a substantial portion of the film takes place on the Ooijpolder, right next to Nijmegen's Waalbrug. Yes, that bridge was there in World War II (okay, maybe not the exact same bridge--as I recall Nijmegen was bombed pretty extensively towards the end of the war, so parts of it, if not the whole thing, have been rebuilt since then). And yes, it looked as out-of-place then as it does now.

It's always strange to watch places you know pop up on screen. When I saw Ocean's Twelve (yes, I'm a bit tardy when it comes to watching movies) and watched Amsterdam roll by, it felt a bit like playing punch-buggy on a long car trip. If Cold Case is on, I'm always watching for the bits of "real" Philly that get inserted into the scenes. Lately, Karel has been taken like a virginal bride by the show Masterchef, which takes place in London. Admittedly, I don't know London nearly half as well as I know Philly, but we walked around quite a lot and it's always fun to point out places we've been to. Seeing places you've been to opens up a slice of your life to the rest of the world, even if the others watching it don't realize it. It feels like a connection in some cases--and a betrayal in others, in the sense that some places feel like they belong to you, in some way.

Ultimately, it boils down to the people you know--they are the ones who make a place feel like home. It's why, I think, I feel more at home in Maastricht than I do in Nijmegen. Hopefully that will change soon. I can't be wandering around forever.

Wanderlust

2011-04-12T15:38:00.001+02:00

These past few days have finally been warm enough for me to get out of the house and go on some pretty epic bike rides. Contrary to the true polderlands, the area around Nijmegen is actually pretty hilly, which makes for an interesting ride when you're also weighted down with a DSLR and assorted birding gear, and on an omafiets, to boot.

I am not alone in getting out and about, though most cyclists on nice weekends are the overweight-dentists-in-spandex sort. There are several serious cycling teams, denoted by their corporate-sponsored uniforms, and in the ultimate nod to irony, mountain bikers also hit the paths in not-insubstantial numbers. To be fair, thee last group probably do most of their biking on the woods in between the paths. Even so, as hilly as Nijmegen can get, it's hardly Swiss, and I can't help but think of the I'm-so-tuff-I-got-springs-on-my-bike wannabe gangsta bikes in Philly when I see them.

You have bikes, and then you have Bikes--i.e., motorcycling club-types who, given a free reign, would have ended up rightfully spoofed on South Park. As it is, Harleys are not quite as popular as their speedier, zippier counterparts, and while those are still loud, they're not quite obnoxious.

But in about another week or so, when the weather is REALLY nice, the owners of vintage cars--cars that look like they were built in the 30s, with corresponding leather-and-brass luggage--will start coming out, forming strings of nostalgia leisurely motoring their way towards some little out-of-the-way brasserie.

Exploring new paths is something uniquely suited to spring, and the turning of the year: things seem more inviting in the light, and paths seem more like possibilities than hazards. It's a good time to wander.

No muffin for you!

2011-04-10T07:50:00.001+02:00

We were invited to Karel's sister's birthday party this weekend. She'd requested, for some strange reason, that I bake her a batch of muffins. I do understand why she asked for muffins: in the Netherlands, for some reason, everything pertaining to a baked good in that particular shape is called "muffin", as if it never occurred to anybody to put cake batter in it. I know it has, because I've seen demo cupcakes, but cupcakes in general, like your good ol' PB&J, seems to have evaded the Dutch hive mind. And, in her case, I'd made them for her before, when she'd stayed with us for a night.

Not that there's much of a difference between cupcakes and muffins, anyway: both overly sweet (I'd never call a muffin breakfast food, unless I cut out 1/2 the sugar) and loaded with butter. The only real difference is that icing a muffin is kind of weird, but nobody eats a cupcake without a great glopping heap of icing on it.

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, and Karel and I are standing outside Heeze. The cupcakes are sitting in their boxes--I'm feeling thankful that I'd chosen a sturdier icing--and we're wondering where the hell Someren is. Probably, thinks us, at the end of the road Somerensweg. We can't be sure, because it's not on the map.

A brief moment of panic: Karel had planned this trip as far as Heeze, but from there, he was counting on being able to catch a cab to Someren--a hope that, as soon as we got off the train at Heeze, vanished. Heeze is one of those cute little Dutch villages where people have huge houses and nice gardens and everybody is prosperous and things like what happened at Alphen aan de Rijn simply cannot happen, because there are no malls. But nobody gets off at Heeze and decides to go anywhere; six taxi companies called, and nobody wanted to work this particular trip.

We were about to resign ourselves to walking the entire way--that would have been tragic, given how far Someren turned out to be--but Karel was able to call someone for a ride. Lots of Dutch was spoken, lots of vlaai was eaten, and a good time was had by all.

On Moons, Mariken, and Nijmegen

2011-04-04T15:53:00.001+02:00

This is a picture of one of the presents that I sent to my family in the US for Christmas. It's three different teas: Moenenthee, Marikenthee, and Nijmegenthee. The thought process at that time was something along the lines of, "If I'm going to send them Nijmegen tea, then I need to send Moenen and Mariken as well."

The legend of Moenen en Mariken has several versions, and if your Dutch is good enough you can just read the Wiki page. The gist of the story is that a girl (Mariken) was led into a life of sin--which at the time the legend was conceived, meant being educated and well-read and worldly--by the Devil, who was also known as One-eyed Moenen. After seven years, she sees the error of her ways and tries to repent, and is successful because her name, Mariken, is derived from Mary, and that somehow allows her enough leeway to escape her pact with the Devil.

At least, this is the version I was told. On the Wikipedia page, we learn that Mariken had an argument with her aunt, and prayed that God or the Devil send aid her way. That the Devil made her change her name. That he tried to kill her by throwing her off of the roof when she saw the error of her ways. That she was allowed to atone for her sins with three iron bands around her neck and arms, and after a long time spent in a convent (in Maastricht, incidentally, where the stadstheater is now), was finally received into the Lord's Grace again, just before she died.

On the whole, I can't say I like either version much. The first is a bit too pat, the second reeks of that brand of holiness that makes the Book of Job tedious reading. Both of them are consistent in perpetuating the idea that women shouldn't learn things like philosophy and Latin, which makes a little sense if you think about the times: The legend was started at the beginning of the Reformation, when Martin Luther had just nailed his heresies against Catholic dogma to the door of the Wittenburg Church. That a common man should be able to understand the Bible--might as well propose that women should learn to read! Nijmegen would have been especially divided at the time, being a city on the rivers that divide the Protestant north from the Catholic south, so if you read the legend as a piece of Catholic propaganda, with her eventual return to grace, it makes perfectly good sense.

Even today, the legend lives on in things like the Grand Cafe Moenen on the Grote Markt, with it's locally-brewed Moenenbier (highly recommended, by the way, very tasty and rich, and available only in multiples of 500 mL. It is not recommended that you drink more than 1). It's strange, how long this rather banal--let's not exaggerate the merits of the story--morality tale has persisted. But it's also interesting that, as little as it's mentioned, it's so well-known.

So close

2011-04-03T15:30:00.001+02:00

Two days ago I started making croissants, in anticipation of having a human guinea pig (Karel's friend) staying the night and wanting breakfast the next morning. It actually doesn't take a full three days to make them--it's just easier to do the timing that way: make the dough and mix the butter on day one, rolling and turning on day two, and bake on day three. It amounts to maybe 90 minutes of work, total, but in between is a lot of letting the dough chill in the fridge.

Except that I'd utterly and completely failed to read that the dough needs to rise for three hours before baking. This was my fault, of course--but I feel compelled to add that the recipe was 3 pages of single-spaced typing, full of typos (someone had just literally transcribed Julia Child's directions), and did not include directions on how to slice and dice the triangles. On top of all that, I don't have a rolling pin, so while I should have been reading ahead, I was busy flattening some fairly substantial dough packets with a glass jar. .

In spite of all that, I nevertheless managed to churn out some fairly decent-looking croissants, and just when I was fit to burst with pride, I read, "Let them rise for 3 hours at room temperature." It was 9 am. Breakfast was at 10.

We ended up having the croissants that come out of the carton instead, but I've still got half a recipe of dough. Picture posting soon, I hope :-)

Following the leader

2011-03-31T08:17:00.001+02:00

Conventional wisdom goes that Americans are more likely to binge drink because Americans don't have a culture of drink, so when they get to college and alcohol is suddenly everywhere, they have no idea how to handle it. Like so many other pieces of conventional wisdom, it's wrong, maybe: the question is how frequently the subject drinks more than 5 drinks in a row. I'm not entirely sure if a few glasses of wine with dinner, followed by a couple beers with friends as you gripe over the local soccer team, necessarily counts as downing five in a row in the same way that American students tend to think about it. Healthy? Unquestionably not. But it's definitely not the same as doing vodka shots on an empty stomach.

The report has its shares of flaws (bonus points to people who pick them out) but it does make you wonder how important behavioral modeling is, in terms of adopting bad (or good) habits. I mean, Karel's parents are both heavy smokers--graciously abstaining or going to another room when young kids are around--but you'd never see him within ten feet of a cigarette. My mom always had a healthy (and ample) dinner on the table at 6 pm, but I really can't be arsed to cook when we've got a freezer full of leftovers. Okay, I do make a fresh hot dinner for Karel when he's home, but that's only about half the time, and half of that time, he's not hungry.

The question is increasingly relevant when it comes to the issue of childhood obesity. As of two years ago, although obesity issues had stabilized in adults, it continued to increase amongst kids, the latest numbers showing that a (relatively modest) 15% of boys and 18% of girls are too big for their britches. Dieting shows in the Netherlands are therefore a bit less ego-centric than their counterparts in the US--the emphasis is on the whole family and being healthy, rather than straight-up losing weight. The most outrageously-titled show "Help, Ons Kind is te Dik" (Help, Our Kid is too Fat--Dutch openness at its best, eh?) has dieticians, doctors, and cooks prescribing their cures for an unpleasantly-plump child, and counselors to formulate productive reactions to temper tantrums and incorporate physical activities into their daily routine, and on top of all that, support groups for the parents.

The show itself is quite dull, and the most interesting aspect of it is that the parents are often not the paragon of active, healthy adults themselves. Moms have a hard time incorporating vegetables into the dinner, and parents also have to fight the malaise of biking to work in the rain. While some parents are indeed the fit-and-healthy kind, most of them look fit to burst an aneurysm. And yet the kids do well by the program, losing anywhere from 3 to 12 kg (modest first steps).

It works, I think, because the show leaves no stone unturned when it comes to tackling childhood obesity. All the angles are attacked, and the result is that kids are the better for it. Could such things work in the US? Possibly, though I'm doubtful of it. There's no question that everything we know about what makes children fat can be addressed. It's a big, and open question, as to whether we have the drive to fix it.

The Hell of Small Cats

2011-03-29T10:47:00.001+02:00

Our cats, despite being spoiled rotten, are actually not terribly-behaved. They shred the couch and our bedframe, but have left the antique-y furnishings alone. They will not go up on the dining room table, save to explore new things left there. And they will eat just about everything, from raw meat to the most exquisite canned food. Their favorite is raw beef--God help us if Shadow ever tastes lobster.

There is, in fact, only one thing they do that we absolutely cannot abide: skittering through the apartment at 5 in the morning. Every. Morning.

We theorize that Noodle, who sleeps in the living room, gets hungry at around 5 (which is expected), and thus goes to the bedroom to whinge at his humans to feed him. Alas for him, the bedroom is deep girl-country, the domain of Shadow (under the bed, windowsill) and the Tweeb (top of the bed), so she chases him out, to the living room, which is his part of the apartment (having staked out some kind of presence on all of the sleeping surfaces there). Then he chases her back, and we have kitty-ping-pong, at five in the morning. Usually this is resolved when I close the living room door.

For the most part, the Tweeb is left out of this civil strife. She has staked her own claim on her humans, and barks commands for food, attention, and turning on the heater independently of the other two. However, this morning, she decided to be somewhat more imperious than usual, and took to jumping on the bed and yelling at us.

So I banished her from the bedroom.

Banished from the bedroom, barred from the other kitties, locked in purgatory between an empty kitchen and the empty bedroom--the cat who can make stones weep blood when she cries for me when I leave to get groceries. Hell can be many things, but for the Tweeb, I would imagine that this might just come close to hers.

Never fear, though: the Tweeb exacts her vengeance in many ways--some of them stinky. At the bottom of our pantry this morning, next to the potato sack, a tidy lump of Tweeb-turd.

Poof!

2011-03-27T14:09:00.001+02:00

Poof: March is almost over, and so is my month of not taking myself or anything else too seriously. I'm pretty happy with what I've managed to get done--renewing my baking skills, some financial planning-ahead, flexing the writing muscles, rediscovering how to draw. Time certainly flew by, and now it's time once again to buckle down and get sh*t done.

Poof: 'Tis the season, sadly, for posters of missing cats. I love cats (obviously) and while I completely sympathize with someone who's lost theirs, I also tend to think that they got what's coming. For Chrissakes, you let a small, furry, oft-dark-colored animal run around next to a busy street; it gets into other people's gardens--people who have no compunction about using pesticides and herbicides and God-only-knows what to get beautiful plants; where people regularly walk their dogs without a leash...seriously, it'd be more of a miracle if they didn't disappear.

Poof: An hour of my day has vanished. Usually I'm pretty aware of the start of Daylight Savings, but this year it caught me by surprise. Fortunately my boyfriend had the wherewithal to adjust our alarm clock, but it's been a little discombobulating all day.

Poof: Changes to the area around Millingerward mean that there were no signs of the released beavers this time around. Was I just not looking hard enough? Or have they gone, migrating to less industrialized places along the Waal? Hard to say; I'm planning to do another epic ride (+20 km) in a couple weeks to find out for sure, and maybe shoot some snails in the bargain. I am definitely looking forward to the start of baby season, when the konikpaarden start foaling. It's amazing to watch a baby basically fall out of its mother and then get up 15 minutes later--from a safe distance, of course. The wild horses of the Ooijpolder aren't really all that wild--you can walk through a herd and they can get quite close while snuffling for foliage (unlike most horses, they eat leaves as well as grass)--but going near a momma and her baby is just asking for trouble.

Poof: While I've always liked tea, these past few weeks I've become convinced that nothing magicks away problems like a nice hot mug of good, loose-leaf tea. We have two tins of it from a gift basket that I'd constructed by never managed to give, and recently I've started making some every day. I may not believe in God, but heaven is a cup of good tea.

Going greener

2011-03-25T20:26:00.001+01:00

We're not really "green" so much as we're broke. We don't recycle because we're good people--we recycle because the statiegeld saves us a euro here and there on our groceries. So eating organic regularly is out of the question. About the only thing I do get with any degree of regularity is organic herbs, and that's because they are, surprisingly enough, cheaper than the supermarkets' pathetic excuse for plant matter.

Right before I left Philadelphia, I had toyed with the idea of joining a CSA group. Community supported agriculture was big a couple years ago--basically you pay a few hundred dollars in May and get a big box o' food every week for the next six months. Subscription plans vary in the details, but the basic gist of CSA is that you get organic produce fresh from the farmer, and cheaper than from Whole ~~Paycheck~~ Foods.

I'd wondered if such things existed in the Netherlands. I mean, I assumed there was such a thing, given how ecologically sensitive the country is (individuals, not so much). But if it did, I certainly wasn't hearing about it. Thus, dinner with the Bekkers was enlightening, not only because we learned how to make a quick 'n dirty Hollandaise sauce, but also because P. Jonas told us about his groete abonnement: every week he gets a bag of organic greens and fruit (his apparently included fruit; some of the ones that I've seen also offer organic meat) that included such things as salsify and winter purslane, which were both incorporated into the delectable meal.

So of course, one of the first things I did upon getting back was google "groente abonnement". It took a little searching, since the first thing that pops up is the website of the Netherlands' Green Party, but eventually I turned up the website for sustainable living and with it, the link to how to get what is essentially a CSA subscription. Except they're broken, so what you really do is do a search for the pickup points and go from there. For the life of me, though, I'm not entirely sure what to make of a website that thinks I'll go to Amsterdam to pick up a bag of vegetables.

It's not a CSA the way most of the Americans I know would think of it, not exactly. Rather than paying for six months' worth of food at once, you pay for a weeks' worth--okay, three meals' worth--of fruits and greens at a time. And while the cost is actually pretty low, it does concern me a bit, because Karel sucks at being Dutch, and no Dutch bag of veggies would be complete without a pillar of leek, which is the one thing we do not eat on a regular basis.

All the same, the idea of just dropping by Brakkenstein on a Saturday morning, rather than pedaling all the way to the market, is very appealing. And fresh purslane--well, that's worth whatever it costs.