Life in the Hague

Disconnected (Or: Lack of internet)

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Niki

Yesterday night I called to disconnect the internet, effective Friday morning. Thankfully I have had it for three and a half years, so I don’t have to worry about an early termination fee! Originally I thought I would have to cancel it last week, as Verizon agents said typically they want their router back. Most people request that a shipping label be sent to their house, but that takes time to arrive in the mail. And the label cannot be generated until the account is terminated… Coupled with a less than quick mail service (things tend to take a while to get into my hands) I thought I would have to cancel things much earlier.

But in the end I made some calls and figured out exactly what Verizon stores the router could be sent back to. One of my coworkers graciously volunteered to return the router to the store in person for me. One less thing to worry about! A few more to go.

It is going to be weird not to have any internet. As a society, we have definitely gotten used to internet at our fingertips at any given moment, although I only have a prepay phone (not a smartphone) and an iTouch, so I am not as embedded as some people are outside of the home. While I will have internet at work, after Friday afternoon there will be no more of that. Thankfully we are staying in the New Yorker hotel near Madison Square garden this weekend and they have a free check-in service for flights, so we are covered there!

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Counting Down II (Or: #finalcountdown)

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Niki

From Marco…

Yesterday Niki wrote about her final days ‘here’.
Today it’s my turn to give you a bit of insight..

While I’m a hothead and usually not a patient person,
I am actually quite cool and relaxed under pressure..but not this time around.

Last week when I was working on my apartment I felt overwhelmed, no clue how to start and what to do..
This week I’m much better. Well doh, obviously.
With the help of my friends & family it all worked out fine 🙂

So now the final countdown is really on. Niki got her mvv, my place is ready..
We’ve had fun so far at the mall and just hanging out etcetera.
But there’s also been some “serious” moments .. we’ve done a trial run of packing our suitcases.
It seems 90% fits in Niki’s and my own luggage. So that means that if we use the extra space in Roger’s luggage too we won’t need to use any extra space and thus pay for it.

Time’s going fast..today it’s already Wednesday (oooh new comic book day) and Roger and I will head into New York for some random fun. Once we get back, we will pack our suitcases for real this time, and then head back there WITH Niki on Saturday.

Yup. Time to put ‘the Final countdown’ on repeat on my ipod.

Categories: Moving | Tags: Expat, Moving | Leave a comment

Counting Down (Or: Under a week)

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Niki

Three more days of work, three and a half more days in Pearl River… the countdowns are getting more numerous by the minute it seems. (In fact, today might have been the last day I needed to trudge up the hill, as I am probably getting rides home the rest of the days. But we’ll see…)

Work has been going pretty good. I still need to clear off parts of my desk, but I did the major bits of it last week. I finished a long-ago-promised project for the psychology department, and can deliver the .avi file tomorrow at some point. I still have 10 or so reminders popping up every so often in Microsoft Outlook, but the number of those is dwindling as well.

After work entertainment has also been good. Yesterday was a relaxing day at home eating beef stew (prepared the night before and placed in the slow cooker in the morning) and watching various tv shows. Tonight we went to the Palisades Center. I got a hair cut and we visited our favorite stores and said our final goodbyes to the mall. It’s been a good place to go over the last few years, all four floors of that gargantuan warehouse-like building. Mainly I will miss the convenience of tons of stores in the same place! One stop shopping to the extreme.

Categories: Moving | Tags: Expat, Moving | Leave a comment

Lower Manhattan (Or: On my way to Penn Station)

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Niki

So on Friday I went into New York City to pick up my Dutchies from the Penn Station, as their flight was coming in from JFK. I ended up hitching a ride with a coworker who goes into the city every weekend to take care of her mother-in-law. We left home for the city at 5PM.

The interesting thing was we made it into the city fairly quickly – maybe a half hour or so. But we ended the city via the George Washington Bridge, so near 180th street or so. But as we needed to get to Chinatown (near the southern tip of Manhattan) we had a-ways to go on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The traffic was definitely the heaviest near the top of Manhattan, but the views of the Hudson river and New Jersey on the other side at night were spectacular. (For that matter, George Washington Bridge also looked pretty when lit up.)

After about 90th street or so, the traffic eased up slightly. By the time we got to 34th street, traffic had begun to move at a mostly steady clip, only slowing down for the various exits. Although I was headed for 34th street & 7th avenue, it is too much of a pain for her to exit at that point when she really needed to go to Chinatown instead. So she ended up exiting on Canal Street and heading east to Chinatown, letting me off at 5th avenue.

After about 5 or so minutes getting my bearings, I began to walk north through the named streets (not even at 2nd street yet). When I hit 4th street, I found my way blocked by the Washington Square park, so I decided to cut across it rather than going around. I did get a nice picture of the Christmas tree there, from a distance:

I kept walking north until 14th street, before I headed west to 6th avenue. I took the F/M orange line to 34th street, and then walked west to Penn Station. (All of those Rangers games over the years definitely helped me get my bearings! Thanks Roger! ♥)

After that, it was just a matter of waiting around in the NJTransit area for about 10 minutes before the Dutchies arrived. Just in time too – we had about 6 minutes to get the next train. This was the last train to get before we would have had to wait an hour at the transfer point. But we made it!

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Dogs (Or: New York Oktoberfest

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Niki

In October I went with my coworker to the New York Oktoberfest in Bear Mountain. Lots of fun was had, and lots of beer was drunk.

But one thing that was very surprising was the amount of dogs that were at this event. Easily dozens – from very small breeds to very large breeds. (And sadly one small breed that was veryyy overweight.)

Here were a few dog pictures that my coworker took:

Possibly my favorite dog that I saw that day. The poor thing was so tired. Its owner was waiting in line for a beer refill. Every minute or so the line would advance, and the owner would tug on its leash to get the dog to move. It eventually would move the required few feet – and then plop down again tiredly after. Repeat a dozen times.

For this picture, I liked the dog framed against the human walking past in a blur. I actually saved it from the delete button on her camera, I liked it that much. 🙂

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Alcohol, Dogs, New York | 2 Comments

Goodbyes (Or: Wrapping up at work

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Niki

Friday the 14th is my last day at my job. It’s going to be very weird to not go back there again. I have walked the entry cobblestone path countless times, in warmth and cold; rain and snow.

This past week I wrote up a form letter of sorts to send to various faculty members that I have worked with over the past three and a half years on my job. The goal of the email was twofold: one, to let them know when my last day was, and two, to let them know a few details about my replacement. What her experience was, where she worked last, and similar things.

I put a lot of work into the information literacy aspect of this position and have spent time building up my relationship with the faculty for the benefit of the library. I don’t want to see things slide backward too far before they take off in a forward direction again… to be clear, she has a lot more experience than I do, so I am really hoping that things move forward even faster now. Hopefully.

I have also started to clear out my work drawers, but that is always an uphill battle! I was never a person who liked paper on my desk, but sometimes it is hard to escape it…

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Moving | 4 Comments

Fridays (Or: The Dutchies arrive…)

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Niki

It seems like only yesterday since I saw Marco (early October), but he and Roger are returning again today! I suppose that’s the benefit of scheduling uneven breaks between trips: April to October, and then October to December.

But it is a break from routine in some respects: they have to fly into JFK on Aer Lingus rather than into Newark on Delta, so that I could secure a one way ticket to the Netherlands on an Aer Lingus flight. That airline sells cheapish one way tickets. Unfortunately this means landing at 6:20PM or so rather than 1 in the afternoon. No more getting back home by 5PM!

Because of this, we’ll be meeting at Penn Station as it seems a good not-quite-halfway point for all of us. I was able to get a ride into the city with a coworker, so I don’t have to battle the crazy bus traffic that crops up on a Friday afternoon.

Regardless of when we get back home, it’ll be fun to be back in the company of the Dutchies again. Even if my apartment is more of a mess than it usually is when they arrive…

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: Expat, Moving, New York City | Leave a comment

Weight (Or: Red plates from Macy’s

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Niki

A few years ago, around the time when I first moved into this apartment, I decided I wanted to have some “real plates”, especially as Marco and Roger would be stopping by a lot. I had my eye set on some red plates at Macy’s, a department store. So the next time they were in town, we took a trip to the Palisades Center to get said plates.

We grabbed three of them (since there are only three of us!). But after we got them to the check-out counter, the sales woman said they were buy one get one free, and did I want a fourth one? Sure…

And the check out counter was actually in the children’s department, which wasn’t that far off from the area the plates were in, I believe. But they weren’t really set up for wrapping fragile items, something I hadn’t considered. So the sales woman had to disappear for a minute to get wrapping materials. By then a line started to form. But we survived.

The question, though, was how Marco survived. As we knew we wanted the plates, he had brought his backpack to carry them. But carrying all four plates on your back up a hill is torture. (Or so I have heard.)

The only downside to these plates are that they are heavy… which is not something you consider until you have to wash and dry them a lot. It hurts the wrists! The plates were also a bit on the large side – they fit in the microwave but were too large to rotate, and they fit on the dining table… barely.

Categories: Marco&Niki | 1 Comment

Celebration (Or: My Dutch MVV sticker!)

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Niki

So I went back to the city yesterday morning to pick up my passport from the Dutch consulate.

And finally, after not-quite 5 months, here is my MVV sticker! (Well, I photographed part of it.)

The entire MVV sticker is large enough to pretty much take up the entire passport page. It is a temporary visa which allows me to enter and leave the country as needed (though it’s not in the plans to come and go THAT early on). Within 8 days of arriving, one needs to apply for permanent residency. So oh joy, back to the IND again.

But at least we have a break for a few weeks!

Yayyyyyyy.

Categories: Forms, etc. | Tags: Expat, Moving | 8 Comments

Red glitter (Or: Christmas wishes)

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Niki

The first Christmas card of the season has arrived from one of mom’s friends. This particular friend always sends out her Christmas cards the day before Thanksgiving, so that people in the local area (Chicago) get the card two days later on Friday.

Legend goes, she only missed that goal once, when she was down vacationing in Florida and everyone’s card didn’t arrive until Saturday… But otherwise, a perfect record.

Those specks of light you see should make it clear that the entire front of the card is covered in glitter of the red variety, minus the letters and decorations themselves. It does make me remember my childhood, when I absolutely adored glitter cards. I remember my parents finally got me a card much like this one…

But I am wiser now. I can hear the telltale scraping before I even open it, letting me know that glitter is in our midst, waiting to strike.

It’s a fun card to look at. And the few bits of stray glitter do match my red couch.

Categories: Holidays | Tags: Cards, Christmas | 5 Comments