When I moved to Holland I got myself a local cell phone subscription. I had no idea which one to choose so I went with the one that seemed to be fairly cheap, the vodafone prepaid deal. Prepaid means (in case the terminology is non standard) you buy cards with credits and only pay for what you spend.

I rarely use my phone at all, so it had been working fairly well for a while. (I noticed cell phones work the best when you don't use them.) Then I went to Poland for Christmas with about 20+ yuros of credits, and calling from inside the terminal to a Polish cell phone outside the building ate about 15 bucks in a minute and twenty seconds. I would have made the call much shorter, but the connection was rubbish. Then I noticed to my chagrin that sending an sms back to Holland cost me about a buck each. Insanity. In contrast, with my Norwegian cell phone subscription sending an sms from Barcelona to Holland cost me about 30 yurocents.

So when I got back I was on 5 yuros. And that's not a lot, so I was going to buy some credits, only to realize that they don't sell them anywhere anymore. In Albert Heijn they have a variety of cards for other providers (€10, €20, etc), but for Vodafone they only sell cards of 40 bucks. What the hell is that, a down payment on a house? I'll retire before I use up those credits.

Sometimes it's the simplest problems that are the most difficult. Like buying socks. In the last month or so I've looked all over the place, spanning three different countries, and come up with zip. How hard is it to find socks? Hard. The socks I own were rare finds in the first place, and it's times like these that make me wish I had bought 4 times as many of them. It's not that socks wear out, which they do. But they also have a way of going missing. A couple years down the line you suddenly have fewer pairs than you used to, for unexplained reasons.

This is what I'm looking for. Cotton socks. Cotton, okay? Not polyester, polyamide or any other plastic-like sweaty fabrics. When you pick up a pair you can tell right away if the fabric is good, or if it feels more like it's plastic mixed in that will make your feet sweat. Even 20% polyester will do that. I don't mind elastics, though, that's fine. But the rest has to be cotton, or the deal is off. And while I've bought cotton socks lots of times, they're always rare. So rare for the moment that I can't find them anywhere. Maybe I should look on ebay.

I say acquaintances, because the people I call friends don't really express themselves in this way. People have approached me in this manner for ages, and while I always found it a nuisance, it's only now I've come to realize just how plain stupid it is.

The Nazis were out in force today. As I was returning from the grocery store, which is a few blocks away, I watched in horror how a cop was writing this woman a ticket for not having a light on her bike. His partner was loitering in wait for another victim. Thankfully I was on foot, but I halfway expected to be pulled over myself, even though there didn't seem to be any reason for it. The horror, I come to the end of the block and there too there's cops. I glance across the street in one of those "what would I have done" moments and I see more cops. It's a trap.

It's obvious they're trying to catch as many people as possible. Dressed in black, you don't seem them from far away and it's just after dark, so they're stopping a lot of people who probably thought they would be home before dark. And for what? I could understand this rule about lights after dark. If you live on a farm. Or cycling cross country through a forest. Then it would be impossible to see you. But this is a city, the streets are relatively well lit, and there are no high speed roads, no big intersections, and no speeding by motorists.

Fining bikers for not having lights is akin to fining soldiers for having dirty uniforms after battle. In fact, maybe if bike theft wasn't so rampant, people would actually have nicer bikes, with lights, brakes and the works. How about doing something that? Then you'd actually be helping us.

I had to show my passport four times traveling from Warsaw to Amsterdam. First at the check-in counter, where I got my boarding pass. Then at the passport control that separates the main hall from the waiting area for travelers. Then at the gate my luggage was scanned, but before I could board the plane, I had to show my passport again. Is this really necessary? If there's a *hello* passport control, how about we let them worry about passports? What is the point of checking the same document over and over? If the check-in process denied us boarding cards without a valid passport, wouldn't that be enough? On the other hand, if I check in online, I don't have to show my passport, so why do I have to do it at the airport? Get a grip, will you.

Then I arrive at Schiphol, and I have to go through another passport control (just one this time) to get to the baggage claim. Little did I know when she asked me the most unexpected question. "What is your destination?" "Huh?!?" Did I end up in Transfer instead of Baggage Claim? No way, I did follow the right signs. "Uhm, I just arrived." "What is your destination?" What the hell are you talking about? For a moment I thought she needed to know where I had come in from, so I said that. Now I was positively stumped. I'm *at* my destination, why would she ask me a question like that? "Do you want to go to Amsterdam?" Look lady, I just got off a plane, right? *In* Amsterdam. If I had a connecting flight, I would go to Transfer. If I had a connecting flight, my baggage would also be routed to the new flight, so there would be no reason for me to go to Baggage Claim. *Everyone* who goes to Baggage Claim is headed to Amsterdam. So what the hell are you on about?

It occurs to me that perhaps someone has a connecting flight with an eight hour stopover, and they want to go into the city in the meantime. To get out of the airport, they have to pass through the Baggage Claim (and show their passport), but obviously without claiming any baggage. So that's only explanation I can imagine. But if so, isn't there some more logical way of asking that question, other than to confuse all those who have arrived in Amsterdam without planning to leave soon? *But*, even if this were the case, once they leave the airport, they are breathing the sweet, sweet Dutch air. It doesn't matter what their plans are after that, cause if they desperately wanted to come to Amsterdam, and used a pretext of a further destination, they've arrived anyway and there's damn all you can do about it. So in _those_ cases, they would just run the passport, and if it came up positive for Extremely Objectionable Person, they would just deny them exit of the airport. There would be no need to ask any questions anyway. So.. get a grip.

On a different note, they refuse to tell you why you have to unpack your laptop and run it through the x-ray separately. I asked the guy at Schiphol, and the joker that he was, he said "if you come work for us, we'll tell you". How witty. So I say "but it still goes through the same machine". "Yes, but then we can't see it booting." I *think* that's what he said, I don't remember the exact words. I was playing them back in my mind and I couldn't make any sense of it. I'm guessing he had no idea what he was saying.