Today’s amusement: More camp counselors got on the bus today to go to the Palisades Center. There were about 7 or 8 of them, and most of them seemed to be from the UK.
After seeing that the price was $2.10, the first girl asked “That’s a dime. Which one is a dime again?” as she quickly scanned the change in her palm. A helpful counselor behind her piped up, “Just look for the smallest one!”
How much can you get for €10, $.25 (quarter), and $.10 (dime)? Not a lot, but it’s a start.
Of course I breathed a sigh of relief, since I at least know the euro coins carry the denomination printed right on them.
While I am talking about money, what’s the point of Dutch ATMs dispensing €50 instead of €20? If you ask for €60, you get €50 and €10. I would hate to be the poor shopkeeper that had to make change for that (but I guess some just refuse).
Number of days (straight) I have studied Dutch: 4.
(See? If it’s anything like this blog, that means I will never go a day without studying Dutch. When I first started this blog, I never thought I would go post every single day. But then it gets into my routine, and good luck getting it out again.)
Speaking of blogs, here are some blog posts that I have found interesting lately (note: just a sampling).
Guy loses camera while vacationing in Europe. Another person finds camera. Posts pictures to Facebook. Lots and lots of people share said pictures in hopes that the original guy sees it. Guy is found. – That post inspired my blog post.
Ah, the joy of inburgering. And getting screwed out of getting a good class so you have to work three times as hard to keep up. If you are an expat (or a native Dutchie) with advice feel free to stop by her blog.
I’ve decided that pluperfect is a very interesting English word. English might have been my major in college, but even I admit it’s hard to remember what the pluperfect tense does exactly. I don’t recommend going to Wikipedia, since the language pages tend to be a bit too much.
So I looked up some other random websites and determined that it is an action which occurred before a point in the past. I had already gone outside when he came home. I think this tense would be a lot easier to remember if it was always called ‘past perfect’ rather than ‘pluperfect’ – you see it mentioned both ways.
For the Dutch version I looked at Dutchgrammar. It didn’t seem that different after all – you also use the pluperfect in Dutch when you want to refer to an event that occurred before another past event. Most verbs use the past tense of hebben (to have) with the verb’s past participle. – ik had gewerkt. I had worked. Occasionally you use zijn (to be) instead – ik was gevallen – I had fallen.
Final verdict: Think of it as ‘past perfect’ rather than ‘pluperfect’.
The pluperfect was last night. Tonight was the (simple) future. As this tense doesn’t need participles, it already seemed easier! There are generally two verbs which are used – zullen (i.e. ik zal or I shall) and gaan (to go). Generally if you are promising something, or you give the probability something will happen, or you use it within an if-then conditional…
If you give a mouse a cookie, then he will want a glass of milk. If you give a mouse a glass of milk… Als je een muis een koekje geeft, wil hij ook een glas melk. (Google says this might be a Dutch proverb?) Regardless, one of my favorite if-then books.
…then you use zullen. Otherwise, if you’re not promising anything, or giving a specific frame of reference when it will happen (today, tomorrow, next month), or you aren’t using an if/then startement, you can use gaan (to go – so ‘I am going to go to the club’).
Verdict: Makes sense to me. Now let’s see if it sticks . . .
There’s more mentioned at the Dutchgrammar pages, but I’ll leave that for you to find!
It has been a productive weekend in some ways, not so productive in others. But do you ever have a day or two where you say “Okay, no matter what, I am putting my enjoyment first?” That was pretty much theme of this weekend. I think I did pretty well.
Usually there’s projects that need to get done. Sometimes this means I work on them from dinner until it’s about time to go to bed, minus a bit of time at the end where I write the nightly ritual of an email to Marco of course. Occasionally with a cup of tea and speculaas cookies. But after a week of 2-3 hours a night, I said no más! The weekend is mine.
Before one of my trips to the Netherlands, Marco was trying to be a good boyfriend (note: he passed with flying colors and double rainbows). He knew that I use cotton balls to wash my face each morning. So he had the bright idea of getting me some cotton from Albert Heijn:
Yes… he got me a bag of watten (cotton) … but it was not in ball form at all. Nope.
As it turned out, I also brought some cotton balls on the trip, as I didn’t know that he had gotten anything for me. But, as unluckiness would have it… I had packed my cotton balls and my face cleanser in a sandwich bag. But I didn’t realize that the cleanser wasn’t fully closed, so all of the cotton balls were wet and ruined when I opened the luggage. So Marco’s odd zigzag cotton saved the day!
But let me tell you, it was a bit weird to pull apart bits of cotton to use. Usually I got a piece that was three times larger than I needed! I think that stuff was better intended for arts and crafts projects.
But thank you, Marco, for saving the day yet again!
A long time before there was Marco in my world, there was Colonization.
1994, in fact.
It was my first time learning about the Dutch (who knows how accurate it really was). Colonization is a Sid Meier computer game where you can choose from one of four nationalities (Spanish, English, French, or Dutch). Your goal was to leave the Old World to come colonize the New World of the Americas. As it was a ‘city building’ type game, it was right up my alley, along with the Civilization series, Sim City, Caesar, and Pharaoh/Cleopatra.
You see a pattern of what games I like to play? I don’t like to fight much, though I’ll tolerate it if it’s not the main focus of the game.
In Colonization, every nationality had its own perk. For instance, English was into immigration, so you got an extra immigrant at the start of the game plus more immigration bonuses later on. The French interact better with the native Indians, while the Spanish get a bonus when fighting the Indians. But the Dutch… the Dutch get better prices, and they get an awesome Dutch galleon ship at the start of the game which can carry 6 units of cargo.
From colonizationfans.com. The Dutch look to be taking over the world… or at least this part of South America. There’s some Indian cities on the left (the grey cities with the cross and exclamation points) plus an Indian in a loin cloth, and an English settlement in the upper right.
So for most of my time playing Colonization, I played the Dutch. I am all about trading and cargo and getting money. Although my second favorite choice was the English for their immigration benefits.
A view from the city’s production screen. Note on the lower half in the middle, they are currently loading a Dutch galleon with its coveted 6 cargo spots. Currently it has muskets in the first cargo hold.
The one thing you always have to be weary of is making some cheap money by selling muskets and horses to the Indians. You think they won’t use them against you 30 turns later? Ha.
The goal of the game is to declare your indepence from the Old World… but when you click the revolution button, you better be prepared for the wave of revolutionary army units which appear right off your shores 1-2 turns later. The more cities you have, the more units will appear. You’ll see that this particular city is not looking for a revolution that much, as in the lower left only 2 colonists (19%) want it, whereas 11 colonists (81%) still prefer not to rock the boat. But that will change. That will change.
It’s almost enough to make me want to download a copy of the game again. Hmmm…
If you’re interested in a nicely detailed strategy guide, check out the Civilization wiki (both games are Sid Meier titles).
Heat: Two days of soaring high temperatures where frying eggs on the sidewalk is not completely out of the question. Both were 36C+ with temperatures feeling like 40C+ (105F) today.
But only two days’ worth. It breaks tonight, and then the thunderstorm rolls in. Of course today the bus was a bit late due to an accident around the Lincoln Tunnel, so standing at the bus stop in that kind of heat for 40 minutes was… not fun. (Of course, this is where I have to admit the driver of my bus occasionally reads this blog, so if you stumble across this post Mr. bus driver, I know that you are not to blame! :))
Heat: Here’s hoping the Miami Heat don’t win the NBA championship tonight. I would at least like it to be a series.
Not Heat: Continuing the fountain theme of the last few days, here’s another picture of the fountain at Rijkswijk. Marco took it for me last month.
Would you jump into this fountain on a 36C+ day?
The amusing thing about this fountain is they do clean it about a few times a year… and it goes back to green within 2 days of the cleaning. It’s near the Bogaardplein.
Another busy night! But I did receive an email saying that someone had found my Where’s George? dollar bill and put it in the system. Someone from New York City.
It started in Maryland back in June 2006. I was only a year graduated from college at that point. Hadn’t met Marco yet in person! It got to Pennsylvania in January of the following year. Then me last month (over 5 years later!). Then someone today in NYC.
It’s a hot day here. With that in mind, here’s a nice cooling picture of the Binnenhof fountain. Just don’t drop money in. It can’t be tracked if you do!
I found myself working on another project for the game I play. Of course, that meant the night slipped away faster than even I could have imagined! The good news is I got a lot of work done and am almost about to wrap up the project. Which is a very nice feeling.
In the meantime, while I salvage the last few remaining minutes before bed, here’s a picture I took last week of the beautiful landscaping around work:
Yesterday I was idly looking through my WordPress widgets – the things on the right like the categories, search box, signup, etc. I came across the Milestone one and decided to open it. This is the widget that says how many months/days are left until the big day. Currently it counts down to Christmas day, but I will change that once we officially book the plane tickets.
When I opened up the Milestone widget, I found myself chuckling a bit at the message that will be displayed on the day the countdown expires… but I will leave that big reveal until the big day. I am trying to imagine December 18, but it’s sort of hard even though it is so close.
Life in the Hague 