Author Archives: Niki

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About Niki

I run the blog http://www.lifeinthehague.com

Birthdays (Or: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!)

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Niki

Tomorrow is the birthday of Marco’s mother, so today Marco and her went out to eat at Sumo, a Japanese restaurant.

But Marco devised a scheme – before she arrived, he and I would start up a videochat, and then surprise her. I will say that when she arrived, it was nice to hear her voice again (off screen), with its Dutch accent and happy nature showing through. He asked her to open up my card. After she read it to herself, he took the card back and repeated what I had said in English, line by line. She translated it into Dutch to show that she understood what I was saying.

Afterwards, at an opportune moment he had me say “Happy birthday, Henny!” as he turned around the laptop to show her my grinning face. Her reaction was predictable – instantly flustered, for whatever reason! 🙂 Probably suddenly having to speak English! It was nice to speak with her again, since it has been almost a year since I seen her (last August). Marco and her stayed at my place last year for her birthday, so it was hard to be an ocean apart this year.

Here was the wrapped gift:

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Categories: Friends&Family | Tags: | 7 Comments

Holland edition (Or: Euro 2012 m&ms)

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Niki

If you like m&ms (milk chocolate or peanut) you will like this post! During one of Marco’s shopping trips he came across Holland edition m&ms, for the Euro 2012 tournament.

Holland edition peanut m&ms for Euro 2012… the orange m&m always looks so scared that you are about to eat him.

So much chocolate in one place. I approve.

Red, white and blue for the Dutch flag. Orange because that’s their national sports color.

The set also comes with a brullie, which is head gear sort of like a lion’s mane (since the Dutch “mascot” is a lion). You can see a quick example at this 11 second M&M brullie video.

Categories: Sports | Tags: | 2 Comments

Strange places (Or: Volunteering and summer camps)

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Niki

My friend Roger had an interesting work assignment today …outside. Of course, this meant that Amsterdam was experiencing horrible downpours at times today!

Once a year his company volunteers somewhere. This year, he and his coworkers were asked to spend a day with kids. Most of his morning was spent preparing for their arrival, as the organization decided to host a barbecue dinner outside (but still underneath a party tent). This entailed cleaning out a barn, setting up tables and chairs, and hanging balloons.

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Categories: Friends&Family | 1 Comment

Don’t trip (Or: Larger than life Euro 2012 decoration)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Niki

Here is another Euro 2012 decoration, straight from Marco’s camera. It’s rather unfortunate that the Google Street view car wasn’t passing by this week, otherwise this larger than life decoration would have been immortalized for all time… or at least 3-4 years.

I am not surprised to see that this is nailed down, less someone try to steal it by pushing it down the street. How fast do you think it would take before they get caught? “No, officer. This is my exercise ball, I swear!”

Go ahead. Kick it. I dare you.

Categories: Rijswijk, Sports | Tags: | 4 Comments

Flight plans (Or: The death of logic)

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Niki

The one thing I will never be able to understand is why the price of a one way airline ticket is more expensive than a round trip ticket by far.

Round trip ticket, EWR to AMS = $1,100

One way ticket, EWR to AMS = $2,300

It’s enough to make one’s head hurt!

Of course then you start to wonder if there is any issue with buying a round trip ticket and only using the first ticket, not the second. (Note: I know there’s some issues with skipping out on an earlier leg and getting the entire flight canceled as a consequence.)

I could always book the round trip ticket for 2-3 months out and then just state, if asked or I contact them, that I wanted to have a backup plan in case the  residence permit is denied. Not that I expect it to be, of course. I would also feel more comfortable having a round trip ticket in my possession when I go through immigration at Schiphol, though it’s not a deal breaker by any means.

There’s also the option of flying Aer Lingus, which does offer some rather cheap options, and no upcharge for one way tickets. The only major drawback is that they do not fly into Newark, only JFK.

It’s fun to ponder, however!

Categories: Moving | Tags: | 7 Comments

Apostilles (Or: No record, no impediment, single status…)

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Niki

December is fast approaching. With this in mind, I decided to start looking at the various forms that Marco and I would need to fill out for me to make the move to the Netherlands. The PDF I looked at was the Regular Residence Permit form (without need for the Regular Provisional Residence form, or MVV). The Dutch do love their acronyms.

As usually happens, I find myself surfing the internet, with time always going faster than I hope. I really need to carve out a good weekend day to wrap my head around all of this stuff. One thing I have found is it is one thing to have the form – but it’s a lot easier to visit unofficial forums hosted by expats for the nitty gritty answers you are looking for.

Case in point: I need an official document which states that I am not married (yet! 🙂 ). This form goes by many names:  Certificate of No Impediment, Certificate of No Record, Single Status Statutory Declaration, and more. Lots more.

The form says “your declaration of unmarried status, originating from your country of origin …” Obviously they did not write the form for Americans, so you must assume that they would be okay with a form from the last state I resided in (New York) versus the state where I spent more of my adult life (Illinois). Though I figure either will do. I just do not want them wondering why I have a single status document from New York but a birth certificate from Illinois.

You also need to get an apostille for these (and other) documents, to provide legal backing to your claims. Apostilles are for documents issued in one country but used in another. For the countries which abide by the 1961 Hague convention, an apostille is enough for the foreign country.

I found the instructions for getting a birth certificate from Illinois, though it expires after 6 months so I will probably wait a bit longer. Unfortunately, for the single status document that I need, the Google results are heavily dominated by the New York City instructions, but I do not live in NYC. I think it’s time I contact the county I live in to get things answered!

Categories: Forms, etc., Moving | Tags: | 5 Comments

Dissecting Google (Or: What kind of information do you need?)

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Niki

At least this Monday did not see any floods at work. Small things to be thankful for!

I spent most of the afternoon working on a handout for the Forms section in Google Docs, which I and other librarians use for some library related things (reserving group study rooms and requesting journal articles, at the moment). I am a fan of Google forms, since it’s a free option which also sends you email updates if someone submits a form. You can use it to collect all sorts of information, from the best time(s) for a group to meet up to quizzes, to comments and suggestions, and everything in between.  The only thing I don’t like is the lack of formatting (bold, italics, and similar).

The reason I am working on the handout is because I have a two hour presentation to give on Wednesday to some faculty. I am not quite sure how I can make it last a whole two hours, but we’ll see…

Of course while working on the handout, I had a tab open to keep track of the Euro 2012 scores. I forgot how much I missed that perk with the World Cup. I definitely work best if I can keep a “fun” tab open that I can stare at for a minute every so often. Ultra mini breaks!

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Zondag (Or: Not enough sports)

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Niki

Eek. It’s Sunday, and there’s a Monday staring right at us! But it’s still miles above winter and darkness falling at 5pm.

I added two more apps to the Dutch apps page based on some suggestions that I received. Feel free to keep them coming! It’s always a bit interesting to search for apps, since the Dutch iTunes page doesn’t filter out English results. And since English is spoken by a lot of people in the Netherlands, most of the results on the page seem to be apps written for English speaking persons. (Which is why any suggestions you have are definitely helpful.)

Yesterday was definitely a sports filled day — but for some reason, all of the teams I hoped would win did not. (The Netherlands, and then hoping for a tie in Germany-Portugal and not getting one, and then the Miami Heat won in basketball, and the New Jersey Devils won in hockey… you get the idea!)

On the other side, there wasn’t that much sports on tv today, although I did find the Italy-Croatia game Euro 2012 game interesting. I wasn’t rooting for any particular team, so that probably helped! Usually it’s dead in the summer after the basketball and hockey seasons end. But at least we have Euro 2012 and the Olympics. Of course, I can’t really mention Tour de France since they never show it live on on American tv anymore, since Lance Armstrong retired.

But tomorrow it is back to work… My alarm will be going off very early in the morning, I fear.

Categories: Apps, Sports | Tags: | 2 Comments

Dutch apps (Or: Building blocks for the blog)

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Niki

Today I added a new page for the blog: Dutch apps. It has always been my goal to create different pages across the top of the screen (look in the upper right near ‘About’) that talk about different Dutch things – language, moving, daily living, etc.

These are the apps that I use on my iTouch, mainly to help me learn the Dutch language. Here’s a sample:

DutchWord (Apple) –

This app gives you 1 new word per day. They give you that word in an example sentence (English and Dutch).

They also have a game where you are asked how to spell a word (random words it seems). For example, you might see on your screen:

decent
f-ts–nl-jk

And you have four letters beneath. i, e, a, o. You have to fill in the blanks from left to right. Once you start getting used to Dutch spelling rules, you will start to see patterns. For example, the end of the word is probably -lijk, so you don’t want to click on the i just yet.

With some trial and error you click the a (clicking the wrong letter just says ‘Opps’). So now you have fats–nl-jk with i, e, o left. ‘oe’ is more likely to be a letter combination in Dutch than ‘eo’, so try the o next then the e. Finally put in the i – fatsoenlijk. Sometimes the game is hard (you have to fill in all of the letters) and sometimes it is easy (you only have to fill in two letters, and both happen to be o!) but at least you see the word again.

* * * * * * * *

Feel free to post your favorite Dutch apps in the comment area! Anything related to the Netherlands – it does not have to be about learning the language only.

Categories: Apps, Learning Dutch | Tags: | 3 Comments

Vrijdagen (Or: Chili, voetbal and videochats)

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Niki

It’s been a rather relaxing Friday. I went to Shoprite to get some ingredients for chili. It’s been a while since I have fired up the crock pot. The only thing better is pasta at Marco’s. Good times. But there’s nothing like letting chili slow cook for hours. When you come home and open the door, the entire apartment smells like chili…

I made it a point to watch the opening of the Euro 2012, so I saw the game between Poland and Greece, including both red cards. Crazy ref! It was a good game – and ending in a tie seemed so apt somehow. I watched about half of the 2nd game, though at some point I went into my bedroom to have a videochat with Marco (to celebrate the joys of Fridays!).

There’s still some stuff I need to do tonight – cut up the peppers and onion for the chili, perhaps heat up the ground beef and onions in advance. But hopefully everything gets done at a sane hour so I can relax for the rest of the night with a good drink – probably a caipirinha since I did pick up some limes and lime juice at the store. You can never have too many limes.

Of course, I could just stop and stare at the latest Simpsons episode instead, which happens to be a Treehouse of Horror episode…

Categories: Food, Sports | Tags: | 4 Comments

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