A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to help him measure up his new apartment and, despite the fact that it was Desperate Housewives night (how dare you suggest I have no life!) I went along. Partly because helping friends is second nature to me (if you read this, you’re a Nazi… see below) and partly because this particular friend has a pretty lousy track record in apartments and I was rather interested in what he picked up this time.
For instance, he once rented a room with an insane landlady who didn’t allow him to have a fridge or a computer on his room and who demanded that he’d be home each night before eleven. On that point he decided to call the renting process quits and announced he’d move out the next Saturday. When he and his father arrived at the house, the lady had dumped all his belongings in the rain outside.
Currently he rents a small room in a house in the most southern part of the city (there’s cows walking 20 feet away from his place, I kid you not) that ended up not just being subrented to him but also the lady he rented it from, the man she rented it from and the woman he rented it from. When large water bills started appearing out of nowhere this was a nice warning sign to get the hell out.
From the one end of the city he found a place to live on the other side: a room plus bathroom in a big student building in Amsterdam North. For those not into the Amsterdam Know How: North is known as a pretty bad neighborhood with houses built around the 1960´s (need I say more?). An American friend of mine once went there because he thought it would be `nice to see how the working class lives´, to which I replied that the entire problem was that they weren’t working.
But I digress.
According to my friend getting there took only a 10 minute bus ride from Amsterdam’s main train station and so last Tuesday after dinner at the university we went on our way. After 25 minutes in the bus my friend admitted he did not recognize anything and went up to the driver to ask which stop we needed, which we ended up having missed. I believe I gave him the same look I gave The Squirrel when he admitted a secret love for James Blunt music.
After exiting bus 1 we entered another bus which delivered us somewhere in the direction of where we needed to be. But not quite there. We walked through a deserted mall and passed a snack food place with the name Fries Plaza, which saddened me for so many more reasons than one. We climbed up a hill to get to the street because my friend (and by then I was using the term loosely) believed he saw a bus stop. He did, but not one where the bus we needed stops.
In the end he walked into a gas station while I stayed around a DVD rental place to look at the Hooligans poster they had and wonder what the hell Hollywood has done to Charlie Hunnam’s face (I give them one week to undo it).
The apartment was in fact fine, and bigger than what he has now. The measuring took 5 minutes and his view at night is quite good (he’s on the 13th floor and even though North’s a criminal hell hole, with all the lights at night it’s pretty nice). But while I was sitting in the tram, on my way back to my apartment with my own kitchen and my own bathroom and more space than most of my friends former rooms thrown together for only 2 euro 50 per month in one of the nicest parts of the city. I wondered, why didn’t he just get a deal like I did.
Ah, I kill myself.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
Realism Sucks
Last saturday there were protests all around the world against the Iraq War, which recently had its third birthday.... oh those military disasters grow so quickly don't they, but the logic of taking part in these demonstrations was somewhat lost on me. I can understand why people took part in demonstrations against the war in 2003, seeing that they believed that 1) invading Iraq was silly (I believe the term was) for many different reaons and 2) that maybe they could somehow make a difference and stop the invasion, which, obviously, was also silly.
The silly-ness (I'm planning on using the word 'silly' more often, it can not be that my bestest friend Merel's blog is more gay after one Johnny Depp related post than all of my posts in the past year combined have been) continues with these same people, although smaller in number, reuniting this weekend. Not to throw the biggest 'I told you so' party ever (that I could relate to) but to demand that the U.S. and the U.K. withdraw their troops immediately.
The point isn't so much that they're fighting a war they can not win (or even if they win probably did not really influence) the point is the illogicality of their ideas. Personally I have not been in Iraq recently (I'm considering going the Italy this summer, but I hear Baghdad in august is also very... swampy) but from what I've read it's a little civil war like at the moment, you know with the bomb explodings and such. Considering the current situation, can anyone explain to me how pulling out all foreign military and leaving security in the hands of the 20 soldiers and 6 horses the Iraqi regime currently has of their own would make Iraq that wonderful succes intellectuals like George W. Bush thought it would become?
I'm not saying going into Iraq was such a smart thing to do, and certainly not that going into Iraq without a plan of what to do when the country was taken over was a smart thing to do, but the reality is that it happened and now the situation as it is now has to be dealt with. My personal gut instinct is that militarily abandoning a weak country usually does not pay off (COUGH Vietnam COUGH). The other option, sticking around until there is some kind of stable regime and some kind of military force, is definetly not pretty but it almost has to be prettier than the former solution.
However, to all those who demonstrated in Amsterdam last saturday I would like to ask a favor. Could we all get together this saturday to protest the weather? It's frigging March and it's still freezing out here! I'm sure that if we combine our forces and have some good lines (ehm, first shot: "1, 2, 3, 4, sun is what we're going for!) we can break Mother Nature!
Sure as hell got a bigger chance than changing George W. Bush's mind.
The silly-ness (I'm planning on using the word 'silly' more often, it can not be that my bestest friend Merel's blog is more gay after one Johnny Depp related post than all of my posts in the past year combined have been) continues with these same people, although smaller in number, reuniting this weekend. Not to throw the biggest 'I told you so' party ever (that I could relate to) but to demand that the U.S. and the U.K. withdraw their troops immediately.
The point isn't so much that they're fighting a war they can not win (or even if they win probably did not really influence) the point is the illogicality of their ideas. Personally I have not been in Iraq recently (I'm considering going the Italy this summer, but I hear Baghdad in august is also very... swampy) but from what I've read it's a little civil war like at the moment, you know with the bomb explodings and such. Considering the current situation, can anyone explain to me how pulling out all foreign military and leaving security in the hands of the 20 soldiers and 6 horses the Iraqi regime currently has of their own would make Iraq that wonderful succes intellectuals like George W. Bush thought it would become?
I'm not saying going into Iraq was such a smart thing to do, and certainly not that going into Iraq without a plan of what to do when the country was taken over was a smart thing to do, but the reality is that it happened and now the situation as it is now has to be dealt with. My personal gut instinct is that militarily abandoning a weak country usually does not pay off (COUGH Vietnam COUGH). The other option, sticking around until there is some kind of stable regime and some kind of military force, is definetly not pretty but it almost has to be prettier than the former solution.
However, to all those who demonstrated in Amsterdam last saturday I would like to ask a favor. Could we all get together this saturday to protest the weather? It's frigging March and it's still freezing out here! I'm sure that if we combine our forces and have some good lines (ehm, first shot: "1, 2, 3, 4, sun is what we're going for!) we can break Mother Nature!
Sure as hell got a bigger chance than changing George W. Bush's mind.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Proud
I would like to get political for a moment. Granted I get political a lot (for instance when I call high school friends Nazis, see below) but usually on this blog I keep the focus on American poltics (my hilarious letter to John Bolton for example, see archives). But today I would like to talk about Dutch politics. Americans, English people and Finns (hi Jari) feel free to skip this and go straight to the picture below, Dutchies; this is mandatory for you and I will ask questions about it during the test.
Last tuesday we had local elections here in the Netherlands. During those elections about half of everybody who is allowed to vote goes to a local school or old peoples home and votes on parties that will then, together with other parties, rule their cities or villages for the next four years, screw up majorly and then get reelected during the next local election. The system usually works the same: the Christian Democrats get a lot of votes because their people turn up to vote and the other parties don't because it rains.
In 2002 we had a big political shake up here; Labour had been in power for 12 years and had been the biggest national party for 8 years. Lower middle class people felt the party wasn't listening to them anymore and they got their asses kicked in the local election and later on, after the murder of one of the right wing politicians rallying against Labour, during the national elections a few months later. In 2002 I was not allowed to vote since I wasn't 18 yet and so I had to sit by and watch the Labour party get the shit kicked out of it by the general public.
In 2003, after the government collapsed, we had new general elections and Labour made a huge comeback thanks to the new guy (Wouter Bos) in charge, unfortunately not enough to actually take over government and they've been in opposition since having the right-wing government screw up health care and social security.
Last tuesday we (I say we because I pay them 3 euro a month and I campaigned in Amsterdam) won 617 seats throughout the country, that's about 417 more than we had in 1998 (in which Labour did quite well). I, together with a good friend of mine, was present at the official Labour party where people gathered to watch the results and we was muy happy as the following picture, which was published in the Dutch newspaper NRC shows.
Last tuesday we had local elections here in the Netherlands. During those elections about half of everybody who is allowed to vote goes to a local school or old peoples home and votes on parties that will then, together with other parties, rule their cities or villages for the next four years, screw up majorly and then get reelected during the next local election. The system usually works the same: the Christian Democrats get a lot of votes because their people turn up to vote and the other parties don't because it rains.
In 2002 we had a big political shake up here; Labour had been in power for 12 years and had been the biggest national party for 8 years. Lower middle class people felt the party wasn't listening to them anymore and they got their asses kicked in the local election and later on, after the murder of one of the right wing politicians rallying against Labour, during the national elections a few months later. In 2002 I was not allowed to vote since I wasn't 18 yet and so I had to sit by and watch the Labour party get the shit kicked out of it by the general public.
In 2003, after the government collapsed, we had new general elections and Labour made a huge comeback thanks to the new guy (Wouter Bos) in charge, unfortunately not enough to actually take over government and they've been in opposition since having the right-wing government screw up health care and social security.
Last tuesday we (I say we because I pay them 3 euro a month and I campaigned in Amsterdam) won 617 seats throughout the country, that's about 417 more than we had in 1998 (in which Labour did quite well). I, together with a good friend of mine, was present at the official Labour party where people gathered to watch the results and we was muy happy as the following picture, which was published in the Dutch newspaper NRC shows.
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