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Birthday cards (Or: Marco’s viewpoint)

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Niki

As Niki mentioned she sent me 13 cards in the past few weeks.
It’s hard to explain why that’s so cool.
What I mean is, on one hand it’s sort of cliche to send cards.
But that is probably what makes it so cool.
And then there’s the factor that she didn’t just send one card.
No, she kept a steady stream going. And that’s what makes it awesome! 🙂

The backs of each of the cards, showing the numbering system.

I live two floors up, and the mailbox is downstairs.
So often I’d get home, get the mail (leaving the spam in there) and when I saw the card from Niki,
there were only two choices. Either RUSH (needs to be capitalized) up the stairs and read it once inside.
Or..and this was usually the case, I’d rip it open while going upstairs, and at least look it over, big grin on my face.

Often I couldn’t help but chuckle because Niki has the tendency to write a LOT on those cards.
One of them was written with such fine print that I think she managed to fit about a thousand words
on that tiny piece of paper. But for the record. I love it. 🙂

The first 9 cards, non-birthday themed.

I think it took me until card #3 to realize there was a serious pattern developing.
Probably not coincidentally that was the first time I noticed she had numbered the cards.
Of course she denied everything when I brought it up (and sly-ly asked her if I she would be sending more)
It was after card 7 or so that I realized she’d at least keep it up until my birthday.

So last night, during our chat, I actually asked “Do you have any more cards?”
And I got a “There are no more cards in my home” back. Which of course made me laugh.
Since that could mean “I shipped five more this morning…” but we’ll see.
I do know that for the next two-three weeks I’ll sort of eagerly open the mailbox 🙂

It does remind me of the count down I did when NIki came to the Netherlands two years ago.
I created our own little advent calendar. One picture with a number on it a day 🙂
Maybe that’s another blog?

Another thing that I’ve mentioned to her is that now I cannot randomly send a card back.
Though this is 99% a joke, it does feel like a cheap trick to send her one.
Maybe I’ll think of something else soon. Send her a candy-gram or something 🙂

Categories: Marco&Niki | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Birthdays (Or: A flood of cards)

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Niki

Today is Marco’s birthday! (Well, technically due to the time zone differences it’s already over for him.) But I had some fun with my scheming…

In early June I got the idea to send him lots of cards in advance of his birthday. Someone I knew back in the day mentioned sending cards to a friend of his: one for each of her years (thankfully I think she was only 18-20 years old) to surprise her.

When I first had the idea, I didn’t know how many cards it would end up being. First I went to Shoprite and picked up some cards, with a mix between birthday and non-birthday. That same weekend I went to the mall, and got some more. I ended up with 6 non-birthday cards and 4 birthday cards. About halfway through I went back to Shoprite and supplemented that with another 3 non-birthday cards, for the eventual total of 13. And when I get an idea I try to go all out… each card had both sides filled out with smallish letters to fit more in.

Continue reading →

Categories: Marco&Niki | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Irony (Or: Summer schedules on rain-filled days)

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Niki

There’s just something very ironic about the following photo which Marco gave me a few days ago. It is taken from the inside of a bus, and focuses on an advertisement.

1. “Summer schedule returns next week!”

2. We’re going to promote this with a picture of a smiling happy family at a beach!

3. Don’t look out the bus window, or you might see the dreary rain-filled day which lies in stark contrast to this promise of sorts.

Categories: The Hague, Transportation | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Yellow jerseys (Or: The end of the Tour de France)

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Niki

Hi,
This is Marco again, taking over Niki’s blog.
And once again I’ll talk a bit about sports.

You see, I like sports, but for Niki it’s a way of life.
Every now and then it seems like she doesn’t even care what type of sports, as long as she gets to watch something on tv. Like, the many times she puts on golf.
It amuses me (but in a good way.)

So a few times she told me she is really looking forward to indulging herself into the more European sports. We’ve already discussed voetbal (soccer) and how she wants to watch that.
We’ve already agreed upon me taking her to a few games (I haven’t been to a game in like..20 years?)

As part of her preparation for the euro-sports, she tried to follow the Tour de France this year.
Of course this isn’t easy to do, since it’s not on the radar in the USA.
I gues interest took a nose dive when Armstrong retired (and being under drugs scrutiny doesn’t help).

But even if she had been able to closely follow it, this year was boring.
You see, I like cycling for three weeks a year. The Tour is fun to watch..if the competition is strong.
Now I never like the flat surface races, because they follow the same formula and the sprinters always win.
But the mountain stages can be awesome. This year? Meh..the same team dominated everything and nobody was strong enough to challenge their superiority and threaten the race leader.

So the best thing the past three weeks was explaining some of the ‘behind the scenes’ happenings to Niki,
like race orders and tactics and such.
Like how each team comes with a designated leader, the guy that goes for the general rankings position.
They usually build the rest of the team around his needs, give him helpers for the mountains, stuff like that.
Oh, and I got to tell that the yellow jersey winner (the leader in the rankings) gives the money he wins to be distributed amongst the team. That’s one way of making them cycle for your benefit. 🙂

So that was the fun part. Again, the race itself was boring this year.
Oh well…Now we can get ready for the Olympics. Zet ‘m op, Holland!

Categories: Sports | Tags: | 2 Comments

Unexpected surprises (Or: Dutch kids’ books)

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Niki

A few pages into the aforementioned Dutch children’s book, I was reading along and found something slightly unexpected, at least for a kid’s book. Look at the first paragraph. Two bullies (having been thwarted by the victim’s older brother) jump on their bikes and bike away. Once they get a safe distance away, they turn around and give their retort.

Basically their response is Vuile hufter! (dirty bastard!). And then it says terwijl ze hun middelvinger opsteken. … (while they raised their middle fingers.) They then go on to talk about the kid’s dirty filthy clothes.

A bit unexpected for a book written for 10 year olds (or so). Though I realized a while ago that Americans tend to be a bit more… reserved in some instances. It was interesting to work at the public library shortly after And Tango Makes Three was published. This book is about two male penguins who seemed to have a relationship, and exhibited nesting tendencies. Eventually they were given an egg to “mother” and they did a great job of it. (Of course, penguins tend to have different sexual habits, and eventually they “broke up” when one of them doted on a female penguin.)

Someone in town complained about the book being in the picture book section, so all copies were moved to the parenting section. Though I can understand this – parents like to let the children roam and pick out what they want to read. Unknowingly bringing that book home could lead to some awkward discussions before the parent wants to bring them up.

But in the Dutch book – it’s not the only example of “real world” actions of kids that age. On page 1 the older sister was admonishing her brother to keep up when he whined he couldn’t get up the hill*: “niet lullen maar fietsen!’ which is basically “less bs’ing, more biking!”.

* = must have been man-made, since I haven’t seen any hills yet!

But hey, at least it makes the book more interesting to read. I am just used to children’s books being slightly more censored. I was reading a lot of them between 2006-2007 for the library job so I don’t think I am THAT out of touch.

Categories: Culture, Learning Dutch, Reading | Tags: | 9 Comments

July 2009 (Or: NYC fireworks with Marco)

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Niki

One of my favorite trips with Marco was going to New York City in July 2009 to see the fireworks. It’s odd to realize that it was 3 years ago today. Only two days removed from the job interview that would eventually secure me the job that I have now (July 2, 2009, a Thursday).

We waited at 12th Avenue and 34th street, as that year the fireworks were on the west side in the Hudson river. There were actually 6 (!) barges setting off fireworks from the river, so that millions of people could see them. Both from the New York side of the river and the New Jersey side.

The crazy thing was how fast the area filled up.

Looks like there is a lot of space, right?

(Above) This was the area right after we arrived (around 4:30PM, or so?)

This was the area just over an hour later (not kidding).

The crazy thing to realize is this is only 40% of the action… only 2 of the 6 barges are pictured (we could see another 2 or 3 of them).

You were actually penned in – once that section filled up, the police closed off the area so no one could easily enter (or leave!). After the fireworks were over, the police opened up sections one at a time, so we had to wait around about 5 minutes before they let us out. Nice crowd control.

(Below) Here is a view of Times Square (different day).

This was probably shortly after they opened the pedestrian areas in Times Square, giving us more room to roam and lounge around.

And here was a picture of Offspring, another awesome memory from the trip. Roger found out the concert was happening, and Marco dutifully took me along. Of course he was happy, since Sum 41 was the opening act.

Woot. Awesome concert… awesome memories.

All and all, a fun trip.

My local town is actually shooting off fireworks in a few hours, at 9:45PM tonight… if the rain holds off!

Categories: Holidays | Tags: | 5 Comments

Euro 2012 ends (Or: A Dutchie’s perspective)

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Niki

This post is from Marco who has been clamoring to write a blog post of late…

* * * * * * * *

So the European championship soccer–nay, voetbal, has come and gone.
Obviously the Dutch team didn’t make it. 3 Losses in as many games. A disgrace! 🙂
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, Niki posted a lot of pictures of how we got ready, turning everything orange.
Well, as you can imagine things quickly turned back to their regular color after they got ousted.
But don’t worry, they were the talk of the country even after being eliminated.

Rumblings about why the team couldn’t work together, what the coach did wrong and what not.
Hours and hours of tv were dedicated to the situation.
Eventually, after some evaluation talks with the KNVB (Koninlijke Nederlandse Voetbal Bond – Royal Dutch Football Union) the coach resigned.

But that’s not why I asked Niki if I could write this blog.
I wanted to take the time to point out some fun differences in how we do things surrounding the game.

Continue reading →

Categories: Sports | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Snack addictions (Or: Another one for the expats)

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Niki

Seen at the Amsterdam Centraal Station [Edit: this is actually at Schiphol airport at a store called “Food Village”, see the comment below]:

On the bottom you can see the Cheez-It crackers. It is one of my current addictions. Sometimes (not often) I also go to the local deli and get some fresh cheddar cheese slices to put on top. I definitely prefer salty snacks. Oh, and yellow mustard, which is thankfully at Marco’s local Albert Heijn.

Number of days (straight) I have studied Dutch: 0. Whoops! Forgot all about it on Friday. We’ll see what I can do about making that a 1 again.

Categories: Daily Dutch living, Food | Tags: , | 3 Comments

Sticky! (Or: What can you make from 450k post it notes?)

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Niki

Artwork for the Tour de France, of course! The race is starting from Liege, Belgium this year, so their local mall used 450,000 sticky notes to create a collage of bicycle related art.

Laurent Dubrule/Reuters

Of course, it would not be Belgium without the MediaMarkt store in the background of the next photo… MediaMarkt is also somewhat visible in the picture above (you can see the red text at the bottom).

Laurent Dubrule/Reuters

Of course, I don’t really follow the Tour de France. This is mainly because the television coverage isn’t that great in the States. Only two of the dates are airing on NBC. The rest will be shown on the NBC Sports Network. I heard that channel is $20 a month extra!

Categories: Sports | Tags: | 2 Comments

Deciphering money (Or: Euros, quarters, and dimes)

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Niki

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.

Yesterday’s lesson: Verbs: future perfect.

Categories: Culture, Daily Dutch living | Tags: | Leave a comment

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