The Dutch Experience

That’s funny…..you know what’s meant by failure?!

If you google it, you’ll find the first match is Mr. Bush’s biography

1. Please do not read the contents of this newsletter loudly in public. 2. Ensure unsupervised minors cannot access this document. 3. Expats in Rotterdam should be careful to avoid even thinking in their native language or languages.4. All expats must shed the notions of right and wrong learned from parents, schools or their religious community and adopt 'Dutch norms and values' instead.5. Expats parents, regardless of whether his or her partner is Dutch or not, must abandon any idea of passing on their native language to their children. It is best not to tell the children there are any other countries in the world at all.Failure to observe these guidelines will leave you a half-person; a wretched allochtoon, if you like.Embracing the rules of conduct of the 'Rotterdam Code', and the 'Nederland Code' being planned by Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk, will, on the other hand, enrich your life immensely and save the Netherlands from vanishing into the sea.Remember: the Dutch identity is very fragile; it is under threat from evil foreigners. The only way to fight these nefarious influences is for everyone to speak and think Dutch at all times. This week we will examine the latest attempts in the Netherlands to deny we are all part of an international community. It’s a very smart strategy for the drive to turn all residents of this land into guardians of Dutchness.

Today was one good day. Started by our weekendly activity of “wood chopping” from a nearby forest to grap some wood for the weekend’s party’s fire, and despite the way back loading the back space of our bikes with wood, and hitting few things on the road as bikes were originally not designed for that!! The point that at the party some Dutch friends were really surprised that we’ve got all that wood, as according to the Dutch “LAW”, we should pay a fine of €2100 for each piece of wood, as it’s banned….Fags!! after having this as our lovely habit for the last month, we should have paid millions for that. Anyway, despite looking like douchebags riding bikes loaded with wood, I think we should develop new techniques for that :)



And then, after having a long call with a friend that made me feel better, comes the party, which was the biggest I had here since I’ve arrived to Holland, with too many people as we had a double bday parties for Christina from Portugal, and Christian from Germany, at Christiana’s house, my German neighbour……that’s true, we had a lot of CHRISs at that night, but it was quite cool that lasted till 3, and having Izabelle, another Spanish neighbour cooking, was quite impressed that she’s fond with Egyptian food, and she prepares foul, falafel, tahina, and homos!!



Anyway, now after the party, I’ve graped 2 hours of sleep before I’ve been waken up by the loud post party’s party. I would like to join them again, except that I need to sleep before tomorrow’s day at Amsterdam, meeting Romas and Soad. I’m so excited for the friends reform, hope tomorrow’s weather won’t be a normal crazy amsterdamian weather.

Well, quite actionless were the last 2 weeks, despite being a frequent customer of Arnhem’s hospital, as I’m going there for the periodical check-up for my eye, and then went there again this week, for the cold that I’ve got which was interesting. After passing by the normal standards of Dutch bureaucratic systems, and getting to the doctor’s clinic, who’s a nice middle-aged lady started the interview…..i mean the appointment, by breaking the ice, which reminded me by AIESEC’s interviews….what are you doing in Holland? For how long? Where are you staying? With who? Why? How? What? Kind of questions that I get pissed off easily with. I explained to her what I’ve got, and she asked me if I’ve an allergy toward something, and replying positively that dust and pesticides do, seemed like her quickest solution to skip the maze!! She told me, so what you’ve got is an allergy, but toward what?! Can be anything, and ended-up writing me 2 antibiotics, which sums up with my eye thing of 3 antibiotics for the next 10 days!!

Despite the exam that I got totally screwed up in, this week was hilarious working on different case studies with my lovely Ghanaian group mates!! Was having a chat with Stella yesterday about that, and discovered how funny working with those people!! Other than that they’re way underprivilieged in terms of using computers, as it was their first time to handle the sophisticated technology represented in LAPTOPS here in Holland, and that they don’t have much experience in the construction field, and that they’re not keen to learn, and they don’t contribute much in the brainstorming, implementation, and presentations phases, their best hobby “bey7ebo yefto keteer” as today we were having a meeting with the tutor and he started asking about some points in the project that we’re not done with yet, and I’ve found one guy answering all of them in the “Fatey” way, and of course in a wrong way which made us look like group of fools watching the latest space launch for NASA on TV and asking when the referee will end the soccer match!! The people who know me well, know that I’m kind of person that can’t hold his god damn tongue at such situations, which made me having a big exclamation mark drawn on my face, and started pulling the trigger……..hope to end up those projects safely with my brain in one piece and in its place :)

Today, I’ve went to the Egyptian store which is so interesting for me, but the problem that everytime I go there, I’ve to be “PREPARED”!! weird, ain’t it? No, it’s not, as whenever I enter the store, whoever working there have to welcome me warmly in the Egyptian way which I like so much, BUT…..do7’oul el 7amam mesh zay el 7’oroug menoh (   I can never get there, pick what I want, pay and leave, it’s more complicated…..the main stars there are Aly, the owner, Karim, his son, and Rostom the Syrian worker, and although the store Mashalah is always busy with other Egyptians from Arnhem or the surrounding cities, or even some random middle-easterns, who are mostly friends of the people working there, but when they see me, it’s different. It’s as if, they’ve seen somebody from the outside world of ARNHEM, and this means of course, offering coffee tea and everything that’s available in the back room of the store within hands’ range, where all the business dealings take part, as I’ve found myself today a part of the business dealing discussion between the owner and a Turkish supplier, and it was interesting anyway.

All that’s fine, but the only problem that I’ve got with going there, that this means spending the rest of the day over there, as it’s IMPOSSIBLE to sneak from the middle of any of the discussion or from the stuff that they offer me, and then every 10 minutes there’re a new visitor that speaks Arabic and then they start a random discussion that involve me of course and never ends, and sometimes it gets bigger and bigger that the back room don’t fits everybody and some people are standing, drinking, eating, chatting, or just loafing around and listening to the interesting random discussions………but anyway, I like that Egyptian atmosphere, with the interesting random discussions!!

Last Thursday, I was invited at some friends’ place for dinner, and after we were done, I felt my eyes are strained and I decided to get back home and have some sleep. On Friday, I waked up in the morning feeling like somebody has rammed my left eye….i looked in the mirror and found a big red spot in my face in the place of my left eye!! I felt like it’ll be for couple of hours and will go after putting a buffer eye drop solution, but it hadn’t gone till midday.

I decided then to go to the hospital, as the vision started to fade away in this eye, and when  I arrived there, I went directly to the reception and asked the lady about directions to the clinic, and she told me I’ve to go to the FIRST AID’s department in the hospital!! What??!! First aid in a hospital!! Well, the dutch standards are a bit different than the normal ones, but having first aid in a hospital is a big joke. Anyway, I went to the ER department, where they started the slowly dutch bureaucratic system……filling forms, checking my insurance, contacting the company, creating a file for me on their systems, DAMN, I almost can’t see with my eye, and I’ll decay till I get to the doctor. They told me to wait in the waiting room till they call my name, and it was after 2 mins, but guess what!! She was just a nurse who checked my case and then reported it to the ophthalmologist’s clinic, and directed me to there….ok, cool. When I went there, beside the nice nurse who asked me about my appointment, and I was going to explode in her face…IT’S AN EMERGENCY, what the hell kind of appointment needed for that, and then waiting for half an hour, till the doctor’s assistant came to me and started a normal check-up…..well, it’s a Dutch normal check-up for emergencies!! She conducted a vision test and then tested my glasses to tell me at the end, “that’s perfect, the glasses are exactly the same as your eyes’ vision!!”. SO!! And what’s it supposed to be!! Anyway, she told me to wait till the doctor calls for me, and this meant another half an hour, but anyway, he was a nice dude who’s English is very good, and after he checked my eye, he told me “I’m so happy to see you”, hmmmm…..that’s not the best thing to say to a patient with an irritated eye and can partially see him, but anyway, till that time I was feeling like it might be anything abnormal jumped into my eyes, and was trying not to worry much about it, till he told me that if I won’t be there at that day, I may have lost sight for sometime!! S H I T!! he told me that it’s kind of bacteria that can be get from tropics or from contacts, and he told me the first thing to do when I get back home is to through my contacts, and then I should put eye drops every hour, which has been added to the list of things to make me panic!!

I started thinking that may be it’s a Dutch medical standard of taking medicines excessively in hope that it may take effect faster!! I just remembered in Ghana, when Monique and Marleen (the Dutch girls) were taking the same brand of malaria pills that I was taking and prescribed by my doctor of once a week, and by their Dutch doctor of once a day!!

I was thinking, it might be a funny situation in any other case than feeling like having a flame instead of my left eye, and having this god damn headache in half of my head, and without seeing clearly for 2 days.

do you still remember what you're supposed to say!!

preparing for the presentation

Looks a bit formal...huh?!

Oh man, this was definitely a new experience for me!! I’ve organised a dinner with Christiane, the german friend living by the next door, and we’ve invited some other friends and we made a NEW YEAR’s EVE’s dinner!! We’ve baked pizzas and quiche’s pie, and made something like custard which were all things that I’ve never done before, but it went perfect, and then when it was the TIME, at midnight we went to the streets of Arnhem and seen the largest fireworks I’ve ever seen, not because it was big, definitely the one I’ve attended in the African nations’ Olympic games opening ceremony was much bigger, but it was coming from everywhere and went over for a whole hour, that the city was foggy with smoke!! Then we started doing the fireworks ourselves and done the flour fire thing, that reminded me with Egyptian moulids when the guy makes fire with his mouth, and guess what I’ve tried it myself and it was amazing. Then, we kept on partying around the fire that we made infront of our house till 4!!