I know that the Dutch pride themselves on being tolerant and accepting people, but I feel that I must unburden myself and report a case of overt racism perpetrated in this otherwise fine town of Utrecht. Ever since I got here I've been looking to get a plant for my apartment. Afterall, the Dutch are famous for their plants, n'est ce pas? Right, so the national pride, the tulip, is omnipresent in this part of the world. To be fair, there aren't a lot of florists here, but it is very evident that certain plants are not considered 'good enough' for this town, perhaps they don't 'fit in' with the others, perhaps they don't 'get along' with their peers very well. But whatever the reason, and I suspect foul play :lazy:, there is not a sign of a cactus around here. :(

There's nothing quite like feeling alone in a crowd of people as you watch them not feel alone around you.

A tag, how exciting *mixed feelings after a long day*. Anywho, this one's for Ash.

Four jobs that I've had

1. Paper boy. Not so much delivering papers as it was selling them. On Sundays. Mornings. Ah, fun. It was the first job I ever had, I got sucked into it through my classmates, cause a lot of people did that back then. So they recruited us to sell Dagbladet, I think we got about 20% of the price of the paper to ourselves, that was 2kr on 10kr. I sold about 30 of them every Sunday, in the same neighborhood, to the same people. I heard others sold in the 60s-70s. I've never pursued a salesman job after that. Did that for about 6 months, including one winter. That was fun, walking in 40cm of snow.
2. Painting the daylight lab at the university. Got that one through *cough* contacts. So basically there was this room that was all white, they wanted it black. I bought the paint, got a ladder, got to work on it. Took me quite a while to cover the walls and ceiling (obviously I dripped lots of paint on the floor though I wasn't supposed to). I believe it took a full weekend and then some.
3. Scanning photos & making web pages. Summer job this one, lasted me about 2 weeks I think. Got to work on scanning pictures mostly, that was an incredibly bore (well duh), but I did have some relaxed days in my office doing that, no pressure on efficiency.
4. My only "real" job to date. Just left that one a few weeks ago, I worked for the High Performance Computing group at the university. Real jobs are no fun to talk about.

Four movies I could watch have seen over and over
No matter what the movie, I get sick of it.

1. Bad Boys - looooooved the movie score
2. Ocean's Eleven
3. Independence Day - it was cool at the time
4. Con Air

Four places that I have lived

1. Łódź
2. Mysen
3. Oslo
4. Trondheim

In that order.
Four TV shows that I watch
Well I don't actually watch anything that's on tv these days. But here's some picks for ya.

1. Seinfeld (number one needless to say)
2. Scrubs
3. Frasier
4. First Wave - an old classic

Four places I've vacationed

1. Paris
2. Amsterdam
3. London
4. Barce Valencia

Four of my favourite dishes

1. Fruit salad
2. my spaghetti torinese is famous in a few obscure places
3. Coffee flavor ice cream
4. I'm out

Four sites I visit daily:

1. http://www.google.com/ig?hl=en
2. http://www.cs.uu.nl/
3. http://reddit.com/
4. http://rss.slashdot.org/ - not religious about it though

Four places I would rather be [than a computer lab]:

1. Netherlands Antilles - looks like a really cool place
2. Coffee Heaven
3. at home
4. on a soccer pitch

No more walking, count me in alongside the priviliged upper class who ram into pedestrians.

See, I never made that announcement, I didn't walk around the city with a megaphone, I didn't take out an ad in the paper, I didn't spam people with that message, I didn't put it on my website, I have never uttered those words ever. Yet it seems that the world is under the impression that I did. Several times everyday people are talking Dutch at me. In just under three weeks in this country, people have asked me for directions on three separate occasions. Sometimes even after I start a conversation in English, a person will attempt to continue it in Dutch. At times the opening statement is so long that I have to interrupt it to interject "sorry, I don't speak Dutch". It happened to me in the computer lab the other day, some poor sap couldn't figure out how to ssh to a linux box (prolly a bachelor student), so he launched this tirade of Dutch words at me. I ended up helping him do it.

Thus it seems clear that as people look at me, they think "this guy is obviously Dutch". It may be because people in NL are so assimilated that there is no stereotype for how Dutchmen look. Or it may be that there is a stereotype and I somehow qualify for it. In any event, it's obvious that I fit in here without making the slightest effort. If I happen to learn Dutch some day, I could actually keep it up all the way through. I don't suppose I could pull that off in say Italy, somehow Italians always know that I'm not one. Not that it bothers me, I'm Dutch afterall.