Ok, so what’s happened this past week?
I’ve moved into my new place. Not the most ideal place to be honest. It’s a house that was designed by an architect, and I think built by him as well.
Now architects have their fun, but I think when you’ve got a building that is truly amazing is when the architects and engineers work harmoniously. That means, everything that is dreamt up is put through engineering processes to see if it would be structurally sound and would actually work in real life.
This house, I think has not. (I will take some pictures and put them up soon)
Basically though, there are 3 floors, kitchen, lounge room area downstairs, huge space between the kitchen work area and the cupboards… strange different heights for the ceilings for pretty much no reason, other than I think he must have just thought…’ah because I can’
The 2nd floor has 2 bedrooms, and the bathroom, of which is kind of joined to a master bedroom…which by the way, doesn’t have a door….so that’s cool…or not.
The 3rd floor has 3 more bedrooms, with zero sound insulation, they all have a sink, but there’s no landing light…oh and no bathroom, so if you need to go to the bathroom during the night you have to walk down the very steep stairs. Or…I guess pee into the sink.
What a design though. It’s as if you gave some crayons to a kid and said ‘draw a house, and we’ll make it’
It’s definitely not I would have done.
Anyway, the rent is cheaper than the allowance I’ve been given for housing, so it means that once a month I can go visit Pierre in France or something. But I think I will put up with this for 6 months or so, and then find a nice place for myself, because otherwise I will go mental.
The housemates? It’s like a typical share house, so as Leiden is a university town, there are obviously many students, and I have 4 housemates. Only 1 of them is actually Dutch. There’s a guy called Arnas (I think) from Lithuania, a girl called Chloe from France, a Dutch girl called…..I want to say Lindy, and a German American girl…called….actually I have no idea.
All of them are around 23~24 years old I presume. Everyone here seems mid-way through their master’s degree or something, and all about to move onto better things apparently.
And this is one of the reasons that whilst I’m glad to meet new people, and I DO relate better to the younger kind of people that’s still at university and keen to talk about more open topics and what-not, I’m a little hesitant about people that have a certain degree of naivety about the world in which they live.
Basically I would prefer to have somewhere were I don’t have to worry about being myself. I want to play the piano, listen to music whenever I want, sit in the backyard reading a book… I can just do it , not disturbing anyone.
But in share-housing…you always have to be thinking of other people…and to be quite honest, this gets tiring after a while.
I’ve almost convinced myself that if it’s a year of this, I will eventually come to a conclusion of ‘fuck it, I quit, Australia is 1000 times better than this, if I can’t be in China, yet I’m putting myself through this shit just because other’s say “it’s a good opportunity” , then I’ll go back to Australia, and enjoy a much better standard of living.’
Oh, so the guy’s room that I took over told me “I’ve found that the Netherlands is quite flat, ….in everything” He went on to explain not just in terms of land, but also for cultural and lifestyle and everything.
Any lifestyle no matter where you are obviously depends highly on how you position yourself in the country you’re in, and what you find to do that will better your own life.
My China life improved substantially when I started hanging around more like-minded people with a passion for motorbikes, Louis, Clement & Adrien are big influences in making my China life better.
So, don’t worry I do intend to join some motorbike groups here, and do some exploring.
Same as joining a squash club, and hopefully trying out a gym for once.
One thing I’ve already given up on though is the Dutch courses.
I wrote about that last week, that I had my first lesson. I understand why there’s an English phrase of
“It sounds like they’re just speaking Dutch to me”
to exhibit when you really have no comprehension of what someone is talking about.
I sent the tutor an email this morning to basically say that as I don’t need Dutch at my office, nor do I really need it in my everyday life, because people speak English so well here… I honestly don’t think it’s important.
And on top of that, even if, as I originally planned, that I’d do it for a bit of fun, a bit of socialising etc, it comes with homework and expectations… and it’s a commitment of time, and to be honest I’d rather spend that time doing something I’d really like to do.
I’ve been listening and practicing French from an audio book in the car each day after work with one of my colleagues that I give a lift home.
And while I can only really say some basic things like reserving tables in restaurants etc, it IS refreshing the French that I learnt whilst in France previously.
Also a fair amount of my good friends in Beijing are French, as well as one of my good friends in Australia, Edward taking some classes as of recent. So I honestly think that learning French whilst in the Netherlands, whilst obviously ironic, is a better use of my time than learning Dutch.
Plan for this coming week? Whilst completely stressing out about work, and the many things that have to be dealt with there, is registering at the house, and then registering my motorbike…and then maybe if that actually gets done, booking a flight to Bordeaux and going down to visit Pierre.
Oh and recommendations, the French book that I’ve been listening to – Collins French, I would highly recommend.
And the audio book that I’ve been listening to as of recent is Super Powereds- Year 2. Part of a 4 part series, and I would highly recommend that too. Please see the half way through review of Year 1 here.
Currently I’m sitting at a café next to a round-about which is on the street this new house is on, and I’ve got to say there are so many awesome looking bikes that are driving past. To be fair, it’s like 1/3rd are BMWs, it seems Europeans love their BMW adventure bike for which they just use them to drive to coffee shops to…. Yep, well done Europeans; then 1/3rd are Custom bikes ; and 1/3rd are more old school bikes, like old Hondas and what not. There are very few brand new motorbikes, but to be honest this makes is a lot more interesting.
Oh and I’ve seen quite a few Citroen DS’s (olden version), the Palace Royal kind of thing that the President of France used to be drive around in.
It would be my car of choice if I were to buy a car here. It really was a car that made history. And even though Audi fans think Audi was the first one to come up with swiveling headlights, it was really this car, Citroen from 40 or so years ago that made this kind of innovative jump. A lovely classic car, and such a pleasure to see them still on the roads and being driven.
Oh and tomorrow, October 17th is my dad’s birthday, so happy birthday dad! Hope you have a great day.
I’ve heard he’s got a trip to the accountant planned which I’m sure he’s ecstatic about, but I hope the rest of his day is relaxed and makes up for that part.
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