I actually only arrived Sunday evening (the 28th of August), and had to drive a car on the other side of the road immediately that night.
Its actually pretty easy.
Not got a motorbike yet, but will be looking this weekend.
The weather has been pretty clear to be honest, blue skies, reasonably warm.
I’ve been lent the company car which is nice, it’s a Mercedes c350e , one of these plug in hybrid kind of things. Pretty cool
I’m living very close to the sea, but about 35 mins drive away from the office.
The office staff are very nice, and ironically I’m speaking more Chinese here than I was back in Beijing.
I think that has something to do with the fact that I was in the ‘International team’ back in Beijing with team members that all spoke English and most of our projects and communications were in English, yet in the Netherlands I’m working directly with my manager (a Chinese guy who I knew back in Beijing) who is looking after the whole of Europe (for the company obviously) and also with the Netherlands Customs Compliance Manager, Roy, a Dutch guy who speaks zero Chinese.
And as there are many things that need to be communicated through to the Chinese technical team back in Beijing…I’m the go to point.
Also, as I told my parents, there’s none of this mental barrier in terms of ‘he’s white, he can’t possibly speak Chinese…so i’m just not going to understand him’
And i think the reason for that is that i was introduced by 2 people of authority (to the Chinese staff) as I was someone that COULD speak Chinese, and would prefer to be spoken Chinese to.
First by my manager – The guy managing European strategic development,
and then also by the CEO of the company as the general staff know that I was in the UK with him for a week translating for him in all of our business meetings.
So that’s fairly nice to be honest. There’s things that they know i won’t be able to understand like the chengyu 成语 = Chinese idioms, yet they seem to be more willing to forgive many things, and i’m honestly thinking that my Chinese will improve a lot more here than it has in recent months in Beijing.
If it wasn’t for my teacher Pedy, i don’t think it would have improved much at all in fact.
Still plan to have the Chinese lessons from Beijing, though its just difficult because now there is a 6 hour time difference.
So, so far, everything has been about work.
It’s busy, and I’ve got many things to do, half of which includes expanding the Netherlands operations, by getting our own Customs e-declaration system and the other half has been about trying to open up the UK operations and understanding all the processes there.
Next weekend though, I have a friend from Bordeaux, Pierre coming up for a visit. I hope to have my motorbike by then so we can do some serious exploring. Or perhaps still access to the company car
I went to the North Sea beach to see the sunset. that was quite nice.
One thing though… Dutch makes absolutely zero sense to me. It really looks like and sounds like a really, REALLY drunk person trying to speak English, there will be a picture coming
anyway, got to go… time to get some work done.
Oh and first impression of the country side of the Netherlands, especially when you’re inside a car, it looks like a country that is doing very well in the aftermath of some kind of nuclear war.
Like a land full of people, ‘the saved ones’ that are committed to changing the error of human ways of the past and move forward in a more environmentally sustainable way.
For instance:
-there are windmills everywhere. Like lining the motorways, and by windmills I mean those big white, power generating ones. They are constantly turning and when you’re on the highway you can see at least 1 all the time.
There’s also the traditional wooden ones that seem to be still in use on the farms.
-There seems to be so much farm land. Where ever you drive, on both the left and the right, there is farm land. And most of the time there doesn’t seem to be anything on that farm land. They can’t all be in ‘clover growing rotation’. There’s a couple of cows, and a couple of sheep… and only a few places have a seen the tulips, but it is definitely very green.
-Other than farm animals there doesn’t seem to be any animals, like there seems to be forests that are just bare.
So far i’ve seen 1 fox, who was just trotting down the bicycle path nearby the beach. But that’s it.
The land seems to be very desolate, quite eery in fact.
So many people are riding bicycles. In the morning as i’m driving to work, I must live nearby a girls school or something because there are so many girls riding their bikes on the side of the road.
Plus, after work, (as it’s still summer here at the moment) so many people are out and about enjoying riding their bikes outside, and enjoying just being outside running or excercising. It’s very impressive to see
-The roads are fantastic. Highways that have a speed limit of 130. Great! Some roads around built up areas are still 50 or 60 which aggravates me because here they apparenlty very strictly enforce the speed limits.
Oh and the motorways.. 130 yes, but also many lanes, and you can undertake and overtake very safely.
This goes with the comment above, but it honestly feels like all of the road infrastructure was built for a country with many more people…then they had this nuclear war or something.. and now they’re left with the same infrastructure but a big feeling of emptiness…or at least just more space.
-Food. It’s relatively cheap I feel. Maybe not to eat out, because I haven’t eaten out yet.. until now i’ve just been by myself, but in the supermarkets i’m expecting to pay 25 euros and the checkout person will tell me 6.50 or something. And of course I end up doing the conversion in my head and thinking….wow that’s around 48 rmb. Prices have risen very quickly in China without the wages going up, which is why it feels quite expensive there.
However the other thing is, it’s not so convenient to eat here, or as compared to China.
The thing that I am learning, is that if I haven’t bought something from the shops to either munch on, or to cook myself,….then it means that i’m just not eating that night / day. Which is pretty shit to be honest.
There is a lunch bus that comes by the office at 11 ~ 11.30 or so, so that’s good.
But unless you’re living in the centre of Amsterdam, there’s no food delivery like China.
And you have to know where supermarkets are…you can’t just walk down the street…and hey look, there’s one. I think just because there’s not very many people.
Everyone seems to speak English perfectly- which is great because as I said before, Dutch seriously sounds like a drunk person trying, and failing at speaking English. It’s exactly like how the muppets portrayed Dutch by the way. ‘Hurby Gloobey doobey’ (that’s difficult to portray in writing)
And yep, I have zero intention of learning it. Zero.
Thank goodness they all speak English so well.
But yes, everyone looks at me ….being the pale white skinned dude that I am, from not having seen the sun for 5.5 years in Beijing…and instantly starts speaking to me in Dutch, and only after a little look of disappointment start speaking English to me in a cheerful voice.
Very, very different from China so far.
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