Blogging has not been a big priority recently. I spend too much time behind my PC already – running a business, coping with what seems like unnecessarily large amounts of administration (much of it in a foreign language) and sometimes just doing fun things (like playing around with
last.fm ). But yeah a whole month has gone by and I might lose readers.
So here are the highs and lows of this month. And I will try harder next month (I’ve been saying that to my Dutch teacher all year).
Highs 1. I finally got to take my Dutch (NT2) state exams. These will officially give me the level of fluency needed to apply to work as a pizza delivery boy. I’m moving up in the world! It also means I get about eight hours a week of my life back (not going to classes and doing homework). But I didn’t quite finish them all. I missed one. I got there late. And for once it wasn’t my fault. There was a ‘collision’ on the rail network (I think that’s a Dutch euphemism for ‘someone threw themselves in front of a train’). No trains to Utrecht for who knows how long (it turned out to be less than an hour). So I had to phone the central office of the exam committee and tell them that I was going to be late, etc. I vene got past the menu that told me ‘alle onze medewerekers zijn in gespreek’ (‘all our operatives are busy right now’) - one of the first phrases I learned in Dutch. That afternoon in my speaking exam we got a question: ‘you are going to work and your train unexpectedly stops. You have to call your boss and tell him you will be late. What do you say?’ Bang on! Real life imitates (and prepares you) for exams. Though it was possibly the first useful ‘situation exercise’ I had to face in fifteen months of studying Dutch. (Read
Dave’s hilarious blog about being asked what to do when you get pregnant). There’s something about these free Dutch classes that is incredibly patronising – and in stark contrast with British culture (confident in its linguistic hegemony) which will provide health and administrative advice in 27 different languages (I kid you not - the 2011 census form was available in at least that many languages).
Going to the exam centre was something of an anthropological excursion. You could see the people whose future in the Netherlands depended on their linguistic skills (I could say oral skills – but for reasons that will become obvious - that would be a hugely inappropriate choice of adjectives) . Let’s just say that a fair number were drop-dead gorgeous young women of south Asian, African, Caribbean and Eastern Europe descent, the majority of whom were chaperoned by gentlemen ‘of a certain age’, most with white hair (if any) and some with walking sticks. It put me in mind of a Beatles song: ‘Money can’t buy me love.’ True, but perhaps it can provide a little comfort in one’s dotage
2. I’ve never really participated in ‘Queen’s Day’ celebrations before. I’m a Republican (in the English sense as opposed to the American or Irish one). So I find the idea of celebrating an outmoded feudal institution to be distasteful (to say the least). But, with the encouragement of a friend, I agreed to participate in this Queen’s Day celebrations. We agreed to do a stall together to sell horticultural produce – which felt a bit like selling coal to Newcastle. So in March I started making little trays of mixed herbs – trays about 3cm * 12cm, with a mix of 6 or so kitchen herbs to transplant into balcony boxes. In March and April I diligently transported them in and out of my flat – to catch the sun in the day and protect them against the frost at night. I had forty or so trays – with a few marigolds thrown in to add some colour. And I sold the lot! It wasn’t so much the money was important. It was more selling something that people really enjoyed buying – my customers ranged from eco-conscious students to equally turned-on grandmothers (but were conspicuously female). A fair few customers were acquaintances from the nine (long) years I have spent here – but many didn’t speak English at all – so I had to sell my concept in Dutch – a good exercise for the exams to come the following week.
My friend, in the meantime, did a roaring trade in selling marijuana seeds. He had a few plants on display and was knocking out bags of seeds like nobody’s business. Again it was another strange anthropological experience – seeing who buys, and wants to grow weed- not all restricted to the age / cultural group you might expect!
Most of the stallholders were kids – and I wonder if the real purpose of Queen’s Day is not to inculcate ‘the trading gene’ into the Dutch youth at a young age.
3. I’ve got a new flat – at least temporarily, for the summer- four times the size (at just twice the cost) as mine – and with a garden – and in Brussels. I don’t know if its going to be a prolonged French speaking, French eating, European culture enjoying (working) vacation or the start of a new phase in my life – but I feel incredibly happy about the prospect of it – even though I haven’t yet found someone to sub-rent my
chicken coop flat in Wageningen. More to follow on this topic I’m sure.
4. Finally a note of gratitude to the banking system. There may be a lot wrong with it (I should put some radical link in here) but they are very good at detecting fraud. I was happily sitting at a seminar on Fair Trade in my adopted town when I got a message from my English bank asking me if I was in Nepal and had made five cash withdrawals today. The answer to both questions was no. They had picked it up within a few hours. The worrying point from a consumer point of view is that I have never used that card on the internet and only very occasionally use it to withdraw cash or buy petrol. Somewhere, somehow, someone ‘skimmed it.’ But the opportunities were very few. How do banks keep up with that level of sophistication – and trust their customers?
Lows Let’s not dwell on them. I got stood up twice in one weekend, and that made it difficult to pick up the baton on Monday morning. But it wasn’t much worse than that.
