Some asshole stole the back wheel off my bike yesterday. I came back from my first indoor frisbee tournament, and when I got to my bike I saw that it was curiously low to the ground in the back. It took me a few seconds, but I eventually realized that Read more…
So, I was speaking with my friend Esther the other day when all of a sudden she was locked out of her computer. This program hijacked her computer, put up pictures of people doing strange things, and wouldn’t let her close it or do anything else. “What’s that?†“Oh, that’s Read more…
Just to illustrate the different attitudes between the Netherlands and the US as concerns employee welfare, below is an excerpt from an actual memo sent from the Facilities Manager here in Dordrecht: “2. Temperature and Humidity in our buildingJohn Q. Dutchman (trainee Facility Management) is measuring the temperature and humidity Read more…
Saturday – December 4, 2004 Ann booked us a weekend getaway in Maastricht and I am writing this from the bed of the Crown Plaza hotel, which Ann acquired for us at a discount that warms her little Belgian heart. Maastricht is one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands Read more…
A grand and noble tradition has now been introduced to the gambling-impoverished masses of Dordrecht: poker night. First I had to wait two months to get an apartment. Then I had to wait another month to fill it with IKEA furniture and new appliances. Then I had to go through Read more…
It was a little weird being ‘home’. First of all, it’s hard to call a place home when you don’t live there, even if all your friends are there and you’ve spent a significant chunk of your life there. When you’re driving around in a rental car, and you have Read more…
Let’s say you get a new debit card in the mail and have to activate it, how would you normally expect that to be done? You call the number on the back, punch in your card number, maybe punch in some personal info, and voila, done right? See, this is Read more…
I’m sitting in Hartsfield airport in Atlanta. I’m halfway through my trip home. It’s my first official trip home as an expat. At first this was just going to be an extended business trip, I needed to go through Newark to get to New Orleans for a business meeting. I Read more…
For those of you who ever wondered, the maximum amount of times that one can safely shop at IKEA without experiencing IKEA Overload, is twice a month. Yesterday Ann and I took our fourth trip in as many weeks to freaking IKEA. We rented a car from Avis in Dordrecht Read more…
Ann and I have met five neighbors so far. All of them had to be over 65. A few of them were in the 70s I think. I think Ann and I brought the average age of that apartment block down about 20 years when we stepped in. At least Read more…