World of Jop

Intercultural meetings: I keep on loving them. While last weeks Cathy showed me a lot about Fillipino culture (I made my Karoake debute and ate Pinoy food…Mjam!!!), this morning I met an old friend and her friends.

Well, old friend…actually Sharon is not an old friend at all. First of all she is not old in age yet, and secondly we only learned to know each other in February this year, when I met her and my project coordinator from Malaysia, the infamous Anisha. The two of them have a most interesting friendship, being very opposite in some ways and therefore completing each other a lot, and it was very nice to show them Amsterdam and my hometown in February, when all was covered in a white blanket of snow.

Now, Sharon and some her friends were on their way for an AIESEC conference in Warshaw, Poland, and they would spend the morning in Amsterdam since they had to wait for around 8 hours for their connection flight. I managed to get a morning off from my work and went to Amsterdam to meet them there.

Surely, it would be a very nice morning. Sharons friends turned out to be very nice, like her. There was Yang, a Malaysian; his Malaysian way of speaking reminded of my beautiful moments there many times! There was Adam, a really nice guy from UK who was working for AIESEC Singapore. Not a bad job at all I would say….and there was another girl from Singapore too, who was really nice not to mention very charming, but I am afraid I forget her name…Still quite bad with names :-(.

We met at the Dam, where the royal palace can be found, and how nice it was to see Sharon again. It can make me really emotional to see a friend from so far away again, so I gave her a real Dutch hug :-). We went for some nice Dutch breakfast (fried eggs and stuff) with exception for Adam who opted for a heavy English breakfast. He loved…Don’t ask me why because I could not think of eating beans so early in the morning at all! Hehe, taste differ…

Our discussions on culture were really interesting, and by their questions I learned more about my own culture too. Some of the typical deeper values of the Dutch: a tendency to focus rather on negatives sides than on positives sides, a disliking of those persons showing off too much, the eternal and sometimes time-consuming decision process (cohesion…), the tendency to plan things quite a bit (how different that was in India..;-), and are relative outer oriented attitude ( we have too, our country is too small to be not flexible in international issues).

Afterwards we went for a channeltour. It was nice as always and we passed some of the typical parts of Amsterdam, like Herengracht, the harbour, the Westertoren etc. etc. Considering the many pictures my visitors were making, I assumee they really had a good time and like Amsterdam!

After our boat-trip we went, of course, for the red-light district. I must say, not so many girls were availble at 11 in the morning, and the one we saw were not the most attractive at all, we all agreed, with exception of a typical blond Dutch girl who grapped the attention of some of the members of our group quite a bit ;-).

We finished our trip with a short visit to China-town, allthough little Asia would be a little name considering the variety of Asians shops that can be found there, definitely not only from China. Actually I almost was run over by a car since everyone but me would understand the warning of a Chinese guy in Kantonese there… d:  By than, it was time already for them to take a train back to the airport and for me to my work. I must say time really went fast that morning…Showing it was really nice to spend time with them. Surely I wish they have a great time in Poland and that we will meet again, somewhere in this big world which actually sometimes seems to be so small….

Mmm, can not help to love victory…Allthough always trying to be a good sport, I can not help always wanting to win in any game involved. Wheter it is football, some quiz or a board game does not really make a difference…I just can not stand losing. I hate it.  Well, I suppose that is a good personality, allthough it surely has annoyed some friends sometimes who were just looking for a relaxing ‘friendly’. Hehe….

Last week was such a moment of competition. The venue was the season meeting of my company, which always is quite informal and mainly serves to increase the ties of the different employees, especially the office staff and Management team on the one hand, and the Interim Professional who are send on secondment - like me. As an main activity, this time a table football tournament was organised, obviously continung the recent World Cup fever. Of course I wanted to participate and considering I used to play this game when I was young a lot, having my own table, and also during college-time with my friends, I realised it would be quite possible to win the tournament, depending how rusty my skills would be and how good my partner would be. It also would be a good way to show myself, being quite a newbee there.

Well, no problem with any rusty skills or a poor partner…After some friendlies before the official kick-off my skills weren’t quite that rusty at all, and my partner turned out to have played table-football a lot to during his college time too. Quite a nice team we made…We won the tournament quite easily, with 36 goal for and only 7 against. we shaked each the hand, and waited full expections of the prize. It better be good, considering the good quality-image my company tries to maintain. 

Unfortunately, we had to break up our succesful partnership than…because only one price was there for the winner which could be shared! Of course we shocked by such brutal interuption of our harmony, but hey, this is Holland, we are an individualstic country so what to expect..;-).  Well, it would be a final full of action and excitment, with everyone watching…My started was a bit nervous and my opponent took a 3 goal lead, but I managed to keep track and really got into the game after a while. In the end I started to play very fast and my opponent got tired I guess, he could not keep up with the speed. Final result 10-6: I was the lucky one and won the tournament! And the prize was…..the table-football-table where we played on! I must say, it is quite nice and hughe, so that it takes a prominent place in my humble appartment…Hehe….

Well, surely most of the collegues who so far hardly would have known me, would remember this :-). Now I better stop, already my Chinese friend Cici told me I should not be too proud…:-(