For those who've missed the cheerful, inspiring, fulfilling and encouraging rants of this blog, there really are two reasons for my recent absence. One is a lack of internet connection at my house, that should get fixed around Easter hopefully. :party: :lazy: :wallbang: The second is, as people often have encouraged me to pursue, I got myself a life. Since I started school on Tuesday, it's been busy times and a stressful schedule. Exciting though. I did in fact have several blog ideas on the stack last week, some not fully developed, but after doing nothing but studying for four days, I've flushed those out of my mind.

In light of this foreign and funny land, I've decided to open a new category - dutchness, for all Dutch things big and small.

With the formalities out of the way, to the meat of the issue. I open today with an excercise. Get up from the chair, walk to the back of the room and read the following text out loud:

9 - 21

Two numbers and a dash, right? Good. This means you are qualified to go shopping in Norway. You see, in Norway, and many other normal countries, stores plaster their opening hours on the neon board next to the store name and you can see it all from 2 blocks away, day and night. Not so in NL. Over here I suppose they saw that and said "where's the fun in that?". And they decide it to make it 'more interesting'. "Maybe if we make our customers come closer to the store, they will more likely enter it?" So they made charts. That's right, charts. This is how you check the opening hours in NL:

..etc

If you think it sounds silly, I can assure you that it is. The printing is very small, so you have to go right up to the door to read it. A simple 9-21 will just not suffice if you want the semantics to declare opening hours on an hourly basis. You could even fill it in to read (9-12, 14-15, 16-20) just by coloring the boxes.

The Expatriate

Achtung! You are 23% brainwashworthy, 22% antitolerant, and 14% blindly patriotic
Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.

One bad scenario -- as I hypothetically project you back in time -- is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough. But the fact that you took this test means they probably do. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II, because they knew some evil shit was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them.

Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would not have been a Nazi.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 12% on brainwashworthy

You scored higher than 24% on antitolerant

You scored higher than 8% on patriotic

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=17675020579094199926

As a kid, I used to go on a lot of car holidays, driving to France, driving to Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, England. Starting from Norway, no destination was closer than 2 days away. A beat up old '77 Saab 99 pulling a Kip caravan, that defined vacation to me. And I loved it, it was a great thrill to go to a new country, lots of expectation with it. In fact, that's the essence of it, expectation.

Driving to Italy implies going through the Czech Rep and Austria. Well I've seen those before, it's always fun to go abroad but my mind is on Italy. Because it takes so long, you think about it a lot. There isn't much to do in a car, especially when you're not driving, so it's just looking forward to getting there, wondering what it's like. And that counts for more than you may think, it's built up expectation. So finally you do get to the border, across the border. In the Alps now, it's all mountains on either side of the highway. But this is Italy now, *the* place I've been longing to see, this is so cool, the sheer feeling of being here, in this country, 4km across the border. So what is there to see here? A gas station. Oh look, the signs are in Italian. The prices are in euros. The papers are Italian, people talking Italian at the gas station. That was such a thrill. And that's just the beginning, there is so much more to go. So we keep going, this is the region of Trieste, not densely populated, lots of fields, some housing. Moving along down south, Mestre then Venice. Venice is a big deal, spent the whole day there. There is something very romantic about the car and caravan holiday, it's a rich experience, a gradual one. I think it's more enjoyable on the whole, it feels more real in a way. I didn't stop doing it because it wasn't good, it just wasn't practical. There's no way to speed up a car holiday, it takes 2 days to go Poland-Italy, and what you want to see is Italy, not everything before it. So it's a question of time.

Enter air travel. Well, air travel is quick, no doubt. But it's very different. You not only speed up the travel through the "mundane" areas, you land right at the final destination. When you're on a plane, you don't think "we're now in Spanish air space". For one thing, it wouldn't feel natural, because you don't really know when that happens. But it's more than that, air travel doesn't offer anything while travelling. It's just a time machine in a way, you go in, wait for a while, then you go out and more time has passed in real time than the time you spent in there. One thing is very different from driving - you start the journey the same day you end the journey. In fact, it's much less than a day, it's a matter of hours. (Ok, so if you go transatlantic that's different, but we're not discussing driving to Lima.) What's also true is that travelling by air does not really *feel* like travelling, it feels like displacement. Pure physical movement, there is no other side to it. Landmass doesn't look very different from an airplane whether it's Norway or Spain, it's largely the same, there isn't much to see from up there. And you don't feel like you're travelling, you get on the plane in Oslo, your mind in Norway mode, in home-mode, you're still at home. You get on the plane, people still talk Norwegian around you, pilot talks broken English, that's like being in Norway. And basically nothing happens on the plane, aside from killing a few hours. Then you land in Barcelona a few hours later and you're there. Just like that. Suddenly, you're in Spain. Just a moment ago you felt like you were still in Norway. Expecting to go abroad, but not really having departed yet. In your mind it was still like sitting in Norway with a camera on Barcelona. The first glimpse of the city, of the airport wakes you up. Oh, we're here. You step off the plane, into the terminal, out of it. Now you're outside. I can't believe we're here. That was fast. Ok then, let's get going. And you spend your week in Barcelona and that's it, all done.

What's missing from air travel is the gradual transition from one state of mind into another. From "home" to "vacation spot". In a sense, I think car vacations are more fun, because you get a fuller sense of experience. Starting at home, crossing the border, getting to your destination and you savour every step of the way (since the border at least), it's all new and exciting. By the time you get to Rome and see the city, you've already seen a lot of normal, trivial things that excite you, the fun started a long time ago, it's not merely Rome that's fun. So you get to Rome and it's amazing and it makes an impression. But if you go by air, you get there and you've missed everything leading up to this. So if Rome isn't quite your cup of tea, you walk around the city and you're kinda disappointed. "How was Rome?" "It was alright." There is less to salvage from a disappointing experience when there is less substance to it.

Of course, there is a case to be made for a car vacation in the sense that you can see all the interesting places along the way. I choose not to dwell on that here, because that's a direct tradeoff in car vs plane, but it's obviously a big benefit. Travelling to Cote d'Azur is a lot richer when seeing Strasbourg, Lyon, Besancon, Pont du Gard along the way (I was 8 back then, I may have missed some places we saw).

Yes, as you can see, I refrained from entitling this post with the more accurate description "outrage!!!". I rarely bother commenting on political issues, as there is so much comment and debate on them anyway, but this one struck a nerve with me.

The origins of this "scandal" are found in the editing rooms of Jyllandsposten, a (minor?) Danish nationwide newspaper. The paper published a series of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. Why? For the hell of it maybe, the motive is not relevant. What followed was protests to the Danish government from various embassies representing Islamic countries, demanding an apology for this blasphemious act. This happened almost 6 months ago, but since then the reactions have magnified and recently there have been tons of protests and uproar, both in Denmark and against Danish embassies in various countries. It's gone so far as to boycotting Danish products in Saudi Arabia I believe.

Leaving for a moment the idiotic stance of boycotting a whole nation for the acts of a few people, what kind of gross misunderstanding of the concept of free speech does it take for a person to realize that satire is an accepted and legal means of expression? If the reactions here were purely an outrage over Jyllandsposten and people started to boycott the newspaper, fine. But to blacklist a country over this, to apply diplomatic pressure, to egg an embassy, to boycott Danish products? That's misdirected energy and passion, religion being the poison which incites it.

I'm starting this with an experimental exercise, please go along. First, get a teaspoon and a plate from the kitchen. Go on, I'll wait. Ok, now get a plastic bag. It can be the one from the supermarket, it can also be that transparent one that you package fruit in, it doesn't matter, as long as it's a plastic bag. While you're at it, get some toilet paper, 50cm should do. Ok, go. Got it? Ok, one last thing, I need you to get a glass of water, don't fill it up to the top so you don't spill it as you race back up the stairs. Go.

Great, now let's begin. Dip the teaspoon in the water, so that you have one teaspoon of water. Dump the water in the spoon onto the plate, don't distribute, dump it all in one place. Now take the plastic bag and dry up the water on the plate. Go ahead, dry it up. What? It's not working? Ok, now grab the toilet paper and try the same thing, dry up the water with the toilet paper. What's that? You got it? Good. Now, let's analyze that experiment. You see paper absorbs water, plastic does not. That fact alone is enough to account for the astounding observations made today. (And you probably thought today would be a complete waste, huh.)

No doubt on the basis of such experiments, a bright, young Polish thinker conceived a product that would take the country by storm - the water tight paper napkin. If you stop by one of the countless "bar's" in the country, in cities, alongside highways, they're all over the place, and sample the local cuisine, you will without fail encounter these unique but omnipresent curious napkins. And they have not changed a bit for 20 years. Their most interesting quality is that they're completely useless as napkins. You spill something, try to dry it up with a napkin, it doesn't absorb water. It's not completely water tight, it's semi water tight. It still feels mostly like paper, but with a significant blend of plastic (or what have you) in it. So what if you get your hands greasy from the food? Napkins sure don't do shit for you, that's for sure.

And you have to understand, this is not a regional phenomenon, they have them all over the country, everywhere it's the same napkins. Go to any restaurant in the country and you'll find them. Perhaps in a real upscale place they will have the normal paper napkins, but otherwise that's what you get. The curious thing is that while this is a nation wide product, I don't think they export it. I haven't seen the semi water tight napkins anywhere else. Perhaps they tried and failed, I don't know. If you do come across them elsewhere, please let me know. If you think you may have found them but you're not sure, ask the proprietor for a teaspoon, a plate, a glass of water and some toilet paper..