World of Jop

Hallo from Holland, where it raining cats and dogs at the moment. Just speaking of course, no real cats and dogs.

Last Friday was a big day: it was the day of my driving exam. My expactations were high; it would be an hughe performance to get it after one month or so of classes, anf to drive in a company car a couple of days later! Many people going for their driving license only could dream of that…But, caught by nerves I made some stupid misstakes, and failed for the exam. Considering my poor perfomance, there was no way I could pass it, so I can not even blame my instructor, who was a sensitive and nice lady anyways.

I was quite sick of it afterwards, allthough failing the first driving exam is not unlikely here in Holland, where the requirements are very strict. I was surprised however, that nerves got me like this. Things would be ok, if the I would drive good the first five minutes…but already while leaving the parking place, the engine went off, as I let the first gear come up to fast. Not a big deal at all….But enough to give you a feeling of focusing on avoiding anymore misstakes…while fear of making misstakes ussually will result in more misstakes. In spite of that I struggled our car over the highway to a hill…where we had to take ‘ mountain-test’. Stop the car, pull the hand-brake…than let first clutch come slowly, pull of the hand brake, and drive away steadily without going back first. It is the most feared of all ‘ special skill tests’  of Dutching driving exams, and the lady was now asking me to do it…I knew a perfect performance now could save the day. I took a deep breath…concentrated…

…And screwed up completely! I let the first gear come way too fast, so the engine went down…I tried again and the same happended. To tell the truth, I did not know why it was not working at all…It happened 4 times and in the end the instructor told sweetly that she would do it. I never felt more embaraced in my life…And I knew that was it, I would not pass this one. I would have preffered to take the buss back, but of course that was out of the question and the torture took 20 more minutes. When I came back, the instructor made a nice story and said I would not get my driving license not this time because of, and I quote, ‘ inadequate vehicle control’ . Grrrrr…Yup, that is one way of putting it.

Needless to say, that todays driving class went perfectly. Made no misstakes in two hours, allthough we took some extra training on the mountain test now. Well, just some practice is the only thing one can do now…practice makes perfect and the more practice, the less pressure at the exam. The other thing I need to do, will be to get better random condiditions…I was quite tired at the time of the exam, and before we had choosen to drive for 3 hours which I believe, one second thought, was a wrong strategy. So, maybe plan the events around it better next times…

ANyways, other subject. These days, the worldchampionship is getting closer and closer…means in Holland more and more people get infected with a disease called ORANGE FEVER. As you of course all know, orange is the national colour of the Netherlands (it is the colour of the royal family, that is why). When the WC gets closer and closer, we Dutch start to become even more crazy than we already are ussual. Suddenly, people start to decorate their houses with orange stuff, like flags and all kind of odd decorations. In the shop, all kind of orange items appear, including coockies, cakes, drinks, and even special organge cigarettes. Most companies try to get some money from the orange fever too…

During the matches, when our heroes will play, the streets will be completely empty, almost everyone will see the match. Many will go to the pub for each other, and we all will sing the national hymn loudly…when we will beat the Argentines, Ivory Coasters (?) and Servia and Montengro’s (??) and continue to the WC-final against Brasil, cars will go horning over the streets, and people do so chanting…

Yes, let us Dutch dream for now ;-).

Orange greetings…

Jop

Namaskar from Holland!

The theme of last weekend was ‘India’. During my time in this beautiful country, I fell deeply in love with it; reason to visit it again after my visit to Malaysia, the other country that won my heart. During that visit, I met my former collegues and friends again, and it was good to see that my Indian friendships still were that warm.

Last weekend, the tables were turned; my Indian former boss, Mr. Sudhir Bhatnagar, came to visit me in the Netherlands. He was in Europe for a conference in Geneve, Swiss, and took effort to drop by for 2 days to visit me, my family and Michel, who he met during our stay this year in India too.

Before meeting him, Michel and I went to a seminar about child labour in India of the Dutch Indian Committee, a foundation I did some small work for recently. The meeting was kind of dissapointing to tell the truth; like ussual hardly any Indians were invited, while the discussion was quite one-side. All the people invited more or less had the same opinion regarding child labour (or just did not want to oppose the general trend in the meeting). Nice was a perfomance of an Indian musician though, who also song some Dutch songs while supported with Indian music.

After the meeting we drove to Schiphol, and after having eaten some delicious pommes frites (very popular fastfood in Holland), we waited for Sudhir. After a while he came, and he was quite emotional to see us again. He even kiss me on the cheeck, which is not common to do for man among each other in the Netherlands at all. But nontheless, I definitely felt touched I must admit. It was very special for me that he came all the way to Holland just to meet me and my family, and my friend Michel. That are the kind of things I never forget…

After having met up again, we drove to Michel’s place, where we had a simple diner. Sudhir had brougt us some beautiful presents; he gave me a beautiful silk shirt, a small clock and some Indian parfum. Afterwards Michel drove us to my plave, where Sudhir would stay over.

To tell the truth, I was kind of worried that he would find my appartment not good enough, at is just a simple and kind of old-fashioned appartment. But Sudhir acted extremely humble; he like it a lot and even called it ‘ Little India’ , because of statues of Hindu gods and Indian paintings on the wall. He even refused my offer to stay in my bed, while I would stay on the sofa; he insisted staying on my sofa himself, since he is far small than me.

The next day, I made him Dutch breakfast (lots of bread, eggs, Dutch cheese, Dutch marmelade, ‘ hagelslag’ (small pieces of choclate..), tea and orange juice), and after that we went for a morning walk (which is not Dutch at all, rather Indian) in Sonsbeek, the beautiful park closeby my house. We had some good conversation for sure; Sudhir told me about his plans to arrange a beautiful Indian girl for me, hehe! He considers finding me a good life partner as a very important thing to me…And to tell you the truth, he might be quite right in that. Allthough I at one hand love my freedom, I also believe such a partner can give you a lot of strength, stability and confidence…Let’s see in future:-).

Afterwards, Michel joined us and I showed Sudhir some of the beautiful places in Arnhem, like the Eusebius church which tower has a great view over the city and surroundings, and the river Rijn which flows from Swiss to the North Sea. After that we took Sudhir for lunch, and had real Dutch pancakes. After lunch we relaxed for a while in my appartment, before going to my family for diner.

Because of Mother’s day, almost my whole family was there; three of my sister (not my youngest, who is mentally disabled; she remains in a special house) and the husband of my oldest sister, my parents, and both my grannies. Sudhir made quite an impression when he greeted everyone with humble ‘ namastes’ , and even touched the feet of both of my grannies! In Indian, that is very respectful thing to do, but in The Netherlands that is extremely uncommon! My grannies did not know what was happening really….The diner was very nice, and both my boss and family enyoyed largely. At the goodbye, my whole family waved goodbye and my boss seemed quite emotional!

The next day early morning, I brought Sudhir to Schiphol airport by train. Again, emotions and tears in the eyes of Sudhir…And maybe also in mines, who knows. It was strange to see him leave through the gate; but this are the kind of visits one never forgets.

The funny thing is that such meeting sometimes result in new ones…It turned out that a friend of Sudhir which I met in India too, is coming to the Netherlands in a while as well; he already approached me to guide him for a day. Maybe I should think of making a profession out of this, I love to guide people in my country…

So far for now; tomorrow will be D-day, as than is my driving license. Hope to be able to put an euphoric post on that soon…

All the best,

Jop

Hello from Holland, were the days are sunny these days! We Dutch love the sun, because it is almost never there…So when it is, we enyoy the fullest.

Last 2 weeks, I started my new job at Yacht. However, funny thing…As already mentioned, I hardly have to work at the moment! Until they find an assigment, I just have to come to office 3 hours a week…Which is not too bad with this kind of weather. Luckily, they have something in mind for me now; I might work for 8 months at the University of Wageningen, which is also the university of my Dutch AIESEC LC by the way. So, that would be quite fun…

The low number of working hours also mean I have some more free time, and therefore last week I traveled once more to our national capital city, Amsterdam. Actually I love that city; the atmosphere is really nice and very multicultural, and the city is dynamic and full of life. I would not mind living there in the future…Let’s see how it goes. 

This time I went to meet my Indonesian friend. Well, friend is kind of an understatement one could say…We met some weeks ago, and both being single agreed to meet up for a date. From the first moment there was magic…Would it not be that she will leave in some weeks from now to Indonesia, who knows we would have a relationship by now.

Anyways, we still had some very nice and special meetings, and last week in Amsterdam was one of them. After walking around besides the channels, she took me for Indonesian diner in the evening. In Malaysia, I met the first Indonesians of my life (allthough there are many in Holland, and my own father even was born in Indonesia), but I did not know anything really about the culture, allthough some things got into Dutch culture because of the colonial ties of both countries. Here, everyone for instance knows what ‘goreng pisang’ and ‘nasi’ is. Other way around, Dutch words like ‘toch?’ (is it? Is it not?) are common in Indonesian.

On the menu card, I recognised some things from Malaysia too, like pisang goreng, rendang and several nasi-dishes. It was fun to hear her talk in Indonesian to the waitress, allthough there of course are many Indonesian languages. At one point of time the waitress said Terima Kassi and of course I was able to impress everyone by saying Sama Sama. Hehe, how proud I was. She ordered some very nice dish for me, with nasi, vegetables and meet, and I really enyoyed the diner. It was very nice to learn some things on Indonesia from here, and in future I definitely hope to go there one day…By now I have some really good friends there, and it would be interesting to track down some family roots, I think.

After the diner we went for a channel cruise through the channels, which was quite romantic with the sun going down :-). The girl also had bought me a very nice present…A beautiful Indonesian colourful shirt. I think I look quite good in it, allthough I would not easily wear it one the streets here; the common style is too different…Will put a picture in friendster soon.

This weekend another intercultural meeting: my former boss from India will pay me and Michel a visit! Morover, we will attend a seminar of the Dutch India Foundation, for which I do some work sometimes….Can become an interesting weekend for sure!

All the best from Holland!

Jop 

Goedenmiddag! (That is Dutch for ‘goodafternoon’. These days I got lots of request from people who ask me to teach them Dutch, maybe I could make a living out of it…)

Last week was an important one for me; the first week at my new company, Yacht. The first two day I came smootly in my best suit, looking not too bad at all. Allthough most of the office staff was dressed in suit too, I noticed that the interim professionals like me are dressed a little bit less formal. So, after day three I adjusted and left my colbert and ties at home.

Ussually, one wants to show off and work really hard when he or she starts a new job, but for me that turned out not to be possible. Because the only thing I have to do now, is to wait until I will be matched with some company or organisation…Than I will start my work and Yacht will start sending bills to that company or organisation for my unmatchable amoung of financial expertise. Ahum. In the meanwhile, before being matched (sounds quite Aiesec-like by the way), I just have to be in office for around 3 hours a day. The first two day I spend my time with putting my resume in the matching system, and introduce myself to some people; the others day I did some self-study on new governance. That was about it…first I felt quite guilty about it, but my fellow IP’ers (that is shortcut for Interim Professional) told me I will have to work hard enough when I got matched. So, just trying to enyoy a little bit now…

Last Saterday was Koninginnendag in Holland, which means ‘Queens Day’. It ussually is celibrated on the birthday of our previous queen, 30th of April, but as tis was on a Sunday, this year we Dutch celibrated on 29th. Sunday still is the day to rest for Christians, allthough by now at least 70% of the Dutch is ‘freethinker’, following no religion at all. But, in spite of that Christian values still can be found everywhere in our society, often unconscieusly.

During Koniginnendag, many people will be dressed in orange, our national colour, and during day all kind of activities are organised (games for the children, markets, performances..). In the evening, many people go out and drink a lot, while some big artists give perfomances in the open air. Ussually it gets quite a mess, drunk Dutch everywhere, and not uncommon riots are there at the end of the evening (allthough this year not so much). I went in the evening with a new collegue and my friend Michel, and yes, we had quite some fun and probaly drank a little bit too much too. But we quite behaved, no worries

Oh yeah, I also passed my theory exam for my driving license…this week will be the big thing, my practice exam!

Best regards from Holland,

Jop