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April 27, 2015 11:19 +0000  |  Netherlands 1

Today is Kingsday, the day when Amsterdam turns into an orange urban nightmare. Traditionally, we've managed to get the hell out of town for this weekend, but as Christina is rounding the final stretch of her PhD, leaving town for a long weekend is no longer an option for her.

So I'm here, holed up in our apartment, the Dutch chaos bubbling outside. It's hard for me to describe this to someone who's never seen it, so instead, I offer you this YouTube video.

September 21, 2013 00:08 +0000  |  Employment Netherlands 0

In Canada, we essentially have two systems that manage the relationship between employer and employee: unionised and exploitative. Both of these options suck and for different reasons.

  • Unions tend to foster a combative relationship with management and often result in both sides making unreasonable demands of the other. Strikes and lockouts are common, as are attempts to undermine the right of workers to organise, union-busting, etc.

  • Non-unionised workplaces are all-too-often exploitative, using the threat of being replaced to push employees into working additional hours for free, taking pay-cuts, or even breaking the law. Conditions are often unsafe, and the atmosphere filled with distrust and animosity.

In a lot of European countries however, a third-way has been adopted, so much so that when I talk about the concept of labour unions with other Europeans, many of them don't understand the purpose of such a system.

So, what the heck is an OR? It's the Dutch incarnation of this third-way, a staff-elected council that represents employees in dealings with management. Far from being a token voice, their position has legal standing to the point where many key decisions: office hours, pension, health insurance, require approval from the OR.

The relationship between management and the OR is typically more amicable than the one you usually see between a labour unions and management in large part because the staff have more options available to them than work stoppage. The council is kept small, and is composed of people from the company, rather than an external body like a union. This means that the people you're arguing with are the same people you might eat lunch with. The same goes for the people you represent.

The meeting minutes are distributed to all staff by email, and elections are held every few years. The number of members is dictated by the total number of employees in the company, and anyone who has been with the company for six months or more may stand for election.

OR's are legally required of any company that exceeds 80 employees.

I tell you first-hand that this is the way to manage the relationship between employer and employee. It's not perfect, but I've never seen a more functional relationship in an office environment... and that's after working with ten companies over 14years in 4 different cities in 2 countries.

August 21, 2013 16:53 +0000  |  Christina Netherlands 4

I haven't really be posting about this so I suppose it's about time for a catch-up entry. Because I'm lazy, I'm going to handle this with a timeline in point-form:

  • Christina and I met back in mid 2011 and started dating
  • I ended it a few months in because I was stupid
  • We stayed friends and did New Years together at the start of 2012
  • Not long after that, we got back together and have been so ever since.
  • We started talking seriously about moving in together a few months ago. It was a rational decision more than anything else: I was living in Bussum and she was in Amsterdam. Since I was now working in Amsterdam too, I was spending an awful lot of time in her tiny apartment and she rarely came to my place. Moving in together just made sense.
  • We started looking for an apartment in and around Amsterdam with varied success. Some of the places we viewed included:
    • A really nice building with a view of the train tracks and no floor.
    • A canal house in a quiet neighbourhood with a great view, but small. So small that we worried if my bed would fit in the bedroom.
    • A big, modern apartment right on a canal, with a shoddy (tenant-installed) floor and an entrance facing some pretty sketchy apartments.
    • A big, modern apartment right on the Ij (the river on which Amsterdam Centraal sits). It also had no floor.

Before I continue, I want to get a couple tangents out of the way:

A Note About Floors

The Dutch have a very odd way of viewing apartment rentals. Here, an "unfurnished" apartment essentially means four walls, a ceiling, and a concrete slab of a floor. No light fixtures, often no wall sockets, and mostly no flooring. Typically people move into a new place, then go to Ikea and buy new flooring, then bring it all home and cut/install it themselves. Then, when they leave, they take the floor with them.

So there's this whole sub market of people selling their floors from previous apartments, or buying additional flooring to make up for the extra space they have in their new apartment.

As an outsider experiencing this for the first time, let me tell you that it really is as nutty as it sounds. And if you ask a local why they do this, the response (if they defend it, which not all of them do) is: "Well what if you don't like the floor?"

A Note About "Agents"

The Netherlands, like many European countries employs a vampiric system of rental real estate agents whose job it is to promote and show the apartments to prospective tenants. Typically this means posting an add on a few websites and then fielding calls and occasionally meeting people during working hours at the suite to show it.

The fee for this "service" is usually a one-time fee of one month's rent on top of whatever you pay the landlord. I am positively amazed that such a system continues to exist in a free market economy.

The Decision

So, back to the story. We ended up opting for the apartment on the Ij. The process of taking possession has been long and complicated, full of forms emailed, printed, signed, scanned, emailed, printed, signed, and scanned again only to email to the agent, but we now have keys. The people from XS4All will be coming by in a few days to install our new super-awesome optic fiber internet connection (100Mb/s baby!) and our stuff will be moved in on Saturday.

It's really all quite exciting. I'm moving in with my girlfriend. It's a little scary, but honestly this just feels right. We mix very well, communication is great, and we're happy together. I'll be posting the before, during, and after shots on this site over the next few months.

November 26, 2012 22:08 +0000  |  Netherlands

This is one I've been wanting to write for a long time now. So, as part of my series on what it's like to live, work, and socialise here in the Netherlands, I thought I'd tackle one of my most grating subjects so far: stinky people.

Now let me be clear on this: Dutch people, on a personal level, are no more or less stinky than people from anywhere else. However, I have come to understand that in this country, for some people personal odour is just somehow not a priority. More importantly, and the reason why this observation is worthy of note, there appear to be more people here oblivious to their BO than anywhere else I've been.

Lets frame this up for you. You've spent the past week or so packing up your apartment in preparation to move all of your worldly possessions to another home some distance away. For the actual moving job, you've hired a few strapping young men to come to your house and do the heavy lifting. The men in question do a fine job of lifting and hauling for a few hours and when it's all over the driver comes over to you to have you sign a few papers and you get a whiff of a cloud of overpowering man stink. You're stunned for a second, and then you accept it as part of the business of lifting heavy objects for a living. You sign the papers, say thank you, and open a window for a bit when they leave.

Now imagine walking into a cloud like that on a near-daily basis. Most people you meet enter and leave your life without notice, but about once per day, you're kicked in the face by someone's armpit stink. Strangely enough, this has never happened to me on public transit, but rather it's people who sit next to you at the theatre, or stand in line with you at the grocery store. Often these are the same people who are covered in dandruff, and are wearing pants that clearly don't fit, and they have so far, without exception always appeared to be Dutch nationals who work office jobs for a living. These people spend their day lifting pens and paper, not couches or soil.

Now I don't pretend to understand it, and like I said, the vast majority of people I've met here have been non-stinky, but my experience (and those of others I've talked to) has been consistent: the ratio of stinky-to-not-stinky people in this country is markedly higher than in other cities I've lived in and visited. Admittedly, the deoderant here is pretty terrible, but that can't explain everything.

August 18, 2012 11:09 +0000  |  Movies Netherlands 0

As part of my series of reflections on my own culture shock living here in the Netherlands I thought it appropriate to cover movie going, something I do an awful lot of wherever I live.

The first thing most Canadians might be surprised by is the assigned seating. No more sitting on the floor in line for hours waiting to get into the theatre and fight for good seats. In the Netherlands you buy your tickets in advance, either at the door or online (Pathé even has an awesome mobile app), pick your seat, and show up 5min before the show starts. The only downside is that you can't move if the people around you are being assholes or if they stink.

The biggest theatre chain here also has an Unlimited club card. Take it to the theatre, scan it at the automated ticket dispenser and go see your movie... as many movies as you like, for a flat monthly rate of €19 -- roughly the price of two movies. I have one and let me tell you it's pretty fabulous. I find myself going to movies I wouldn't normally see, and walking out if they suck. It totally changes the experience.

Also, with the exception of some animated children's films, movies here are also *not* dubbed. Instead they're subtitled which is pretty awesome until you're watching a movie and someone starts speaking Russian and the subtitles... well they're already in Dutch so you're SOL.

So that's the good stuff, the bad though is pretty bad.

First of all it would appear that Dutch people do not know when to shut up. Talking (not whispering) in the theatre is par for the course here. People regularly get up, walk in front of the screen, have loud conversations and then just leave the door open when they walk out, only to return 20min later and do it all over again.

Premieres, like the one I attended the other night, are particularly worse. This is where people's inner douchebags are truly released. Whenever a woman walks on screen, half the audience shouted "Whore!" and randomly throughout the movie you hear "Homo!" and other shitty behaviour. The theatre staff remain blind and deaf to it all, and happily sell _cases_ of beer to movie goers on their way in.

Being at a premiere in the Netherlands is like being in a room with 400 drunk 12 year olds.

The event was a doubleheader, but I bailed after the first movie. The way I figure it, they should be paying _me_ to put up with that kind of thing, not the other way around.

...you're going to burn in a special place in Hell.  A place they reserve for child molesters, and people who talk at the theatre.

May 04, 2012 20:32 +0000  |  Netherlands War 2

My grandfather fought in the second world war. I hesitate to call him a "hero" as that word is used all to often, but he was a good man, a young man who answered his nation's call to fight in a war on the other side of the world. This post isn't really about him, but his story helps me frame what I want to talk about.

Gerard Quinn, my father's father, was initially sent to Sicily to run with the infantry for the Allied push into the so-called "soft underbelly of Europe". His tour, like so many others in the region, was far from "soft", and at some point along the way, a canon that hadn't been secured properly, fired and rolled backward and onto my grandfather, crushing his legs.

Fortunately for him (and his future grandchildren I suppose), the Allied position held and he was evacuated to the UK where he, once recovered in hospital, was returned to his company, as they prepared to invade the Netherlands. As a newly injured soldier, this did not favour his chances of returning alive, but Fortune intervened again: he was reassigned... to radio duty. As it turns out, my grandfather's penmanship was so exceptional, the Brass felt his skill would be more useful to the war effort receiving and transcribing messages from inside a helpless tank with a wooden gun barrel.

And so it is that my grandfather survived the War and helped, in his own small way, to liberate this place I now call home. I just learnt today that he was given a medal for his efforts in liberating the Netherlands -- just months before he died.

Today is Dodenherdenking, the Dutch day of remembrance for the war dead. It precedes Bevrijdingsdag, or Liberation Day and consists of an 8pm ceremony much like what you'd find in Canada on November 11th at 11:11. There's the two minutes silence, Taps (though it sounds slightly different), and laying of wreaths... even the Queen is there. I attended the services here in Amsterdam along with thousands of others and let me tell you: those 2minutes of silence: not a sound. Not cell phones, not even undisciplined children or dogs barking. The whole of Dam Square collectively remembered and observed for a full two minutes.

In those moments, as I do every November 11th, I thought of my grandfather, a young, dumb kid, doing what he thought was right at first, and ultimately doing what he could to survive. I'll think of him tomorrow too, while the country celebrates its liberation. I think he would have liked to see that.

January 10, 2012 18:25 +0000  |  Netherlands Transit 2

So I've been building a list over this past year of All the Things the Netherlands Does Well and Those Not So Much. The original intention was to write one Really Big Post on the whole thing, but it occurs to me that there's no reason I have to do that. Instead, I'm going to break it into a series. Today I'll start with one of the things the Dutch do well (sort of): Transit.

In comparison to Canada, the Netherlands is tiny. It's about half the size of New Brunswick and can be traversed by car in a matter of hours. In terms of geographic obstructions, we're talking more about streams and tiny lakes than mountain ranges or rivers. In other words, it's more-or-less perfect terrain for the trains that criss-cross the country and lead into Belgium, Luxenburg and Germany.

The trains are largely commuter rail, but the tracks double for freight outside of rush hour as well. The station across the street from my apartment regularly sees freight trains rip through the station. This can be quite loud, but homes like mine have been constructed with this in mind: close the window and you barely notice.

The commuter trains aren't particularly high-comfort (with the exception of the newest Sprinter trains) but they're a ltitle cleaner than the average SkyTrain or TTC subway. The exception here though is the graffiti. For some reason there are a few assholes that insist on tagging the occasional train car (inside or out). This is cleaned eventually, but most trains have at least a few marks.

The quality of stations ranges from sketchy (like Diemen Zuid), to Shiny and New (like Bijlmer ArenA), but in terms of safety it's all about the same: super safe. The Netherlands is (well -- feels, and based on my own limited research, appears) super-safe... but that's another blog post.

The service, like most things in this country, appears to be at the whim of the workers and their interest in your welfare. I've been late to the airport twice now because my train decided that stopping at Weesp just wasn't in the cards that day. Weesp is a major transfer point to Schiphol airport, roughly between my home and Amsterdam. I've been abandonned at a station well after midnight least once (they don't run after about 1am) and for New Years, rather than running later to handle the late-night traffic, they stopped running as early as 2030h. When I mentioned this to a Dutch coworker, his response was: "Well the train workers need to celebrate too!" -- it's a wonder the police and fire departments don't just go on holiday on Easter... but that's another blog post too.

They use a system here called the OV Chipkaart, an NFC card that you keep in your wallet and swipe at the station before getting on the train and again as you're leaving the station. It carries a balance that is debitted every time you swipe out based on the distance travelled. It's a smart way to run a transit system that both Vancouver and Toronto are likely to see in the near future. London, Seoul and Tokyo have been using such a system for a long time now to considerable success.

But the Dutch are dicks about it. In order to ride the train, your card must have a minimum of €20 on it, a ridiculous sum when you consisder the single-digit minumums required for the aforementioned cities. In addition to that, most of the stations don't use fare gates so it's all too easy to pass right by them without checking out. Suddenly, your €4 journey just cost you €20: you're welcome. Also, as far as I can tell, they actually store the credit balance on the card, so someone with an NFC writer and a little patience can game the system. For a second attempt at such a system, the Dutch get a C- on this one.

But for all the gripes I have with the service and shoddy fare system, the network is just too awesome. I can literally cross the street, step onto a train, and be in Berlin in a few hours. Commuter rail to Amsterdam Centraal, and then hop onto a 400kph ICE express train that shoots across the country and into the next. I can be in the Hague by commuter rail in about an hour and half, or be in Paris by Thalys in 3 hours. Have a craving for Belgian waffles one morning? You can be there in about 2hours.

Just make sure that you go on Saturday... nothing is open on Sunday. But that's another blog post.

July 03, 2011 17:16 +0000  |  Netherlands 7

Eichholtz

I know that it's been a while since my last update, and I'm sorry about that. I think that Twitter is slowly killing my appetite for blogging, but I promise to keep this one open for good, updating from time to time.

I thought that I might take a minute to talk about branding. It may not be obvious to those of you who haven't tried to build a life in a foreign country, but product brands play a big role in how your life works.

I'm one of millions of men who literally spent years looking for the one right stick of deoderant, and the toothpaste that tasted like it was doing a good job. I know the best stores in which to buy everything from towels to shoes to underwear, to hard drives, and this knowledge took A Very Long Time to accumulate.

None of that information is useful here.

Suddenly I'm faced with a myriad of dermatological choices: deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, soap and shaving cream: you buy one for €5 and it dries your skin, another makes everything oily. It's trial and error of everything I've ever purchased, and it's all in a foreign language too.

It gets especially exciting when you introduce pharmaceuticals (the leagal-in-Canada, over-the-counter kind). That pill you used for hayfever? Nope. The only brand of cough syrup that works for you? No one here has even heard of it. Sometimes you get lucky and the brand names are the same on one or two boxes, but the logo is different, and there's a good chance that the dosage/effect is different too. Differing legislation and markets means that products you love in one country might be unavailable in another, or worse, they're available, but taste/act different.

For example, Oreos exist here, but they taste like dust, and Reese's Peanutbutter cups are unheard of. Kellog's Corn Flakes pretty much taste the same, but the variety of cereals I can find in the local grocery stores is limited to 6 choices.

Some days it feels as if no one here has ever heard the cautionary tales of what would happen if the Big Scary Communists ever took over: abolition of consumer choice, one supplier for everything... it's not quite that bad, but let me tell you, Albert Heijn completely dominates the grocery market here, and strangely, the locals seem to think it's the Best Store in the World. Contradicting them on this point of view is not advised.

But yesterday, was a Great Day. Yesterday, I was introduced to a tiny little shop in Amsterdam called Eichholtz. It's a privately-owned store that sells imported brands of food... the stuff unavailable in the Netherlands for whatever reason. There must have been twenty kinds of breakfast cereal there, and another twenty brands of chocolate bars. Peanutbutter, popcorn, and all sorts of stuff. It was glorious. I bought a tiny box of Golden Grahams (American), two cans of A&W root beer (Canadian), and one 3-cup package of Reese's peanutbutter cups (UK). Total cost: €15! Yes, I was that desperate.

Christina, my Greek/British friend who introduced me to this wonderful little shop, tried some of all three purchases and approved. Now if only I can get more people on board, maybe, just maybe I can create demand... that'd work right?

April 19, 2011 20:15 +0000  |  Language Netherlands 2

I'm learning Dutch! And I suck at it. Strangely enough there are days when I feel as though Korean is easier, though I know considerably less about their language than Dutch. I often feel as though Korean just came easier to me than Dutch does... but I'm getting it, ever so slowly.

The title of this post, literally translated means "one large fries please", something I've had to say a few times here. The sticky bit though is that all four of these words are pronounced differently from how a Canadian might read them. Try to sound it out in your head, and when you think you've got it, read on.

It's pronounced: ayne kchroat freets al-stew-blayeft, and the kch in there is that phlegmy sound you hear common in languages like Hebrew and Arabic. Pretty brutal eh? The stickiest part I've found so far has been the combined vowel sounds. For example, the region of Amsterdam I currently live in is called Zuidoost which is not pronounced zoo-ee-doost, but rather a subtle mangling of the sound ah, oh, and oo to make a sort of Zauydohst, not to be confused with zout which is Dutch for salt.

Let me tell you, it's rough, and it makes my brain hurt, but that's part of the reason I came out here right? I like this feeling of my brain learning how to learn again, there's nothing quite like it. Dutch may not have been my first choice (or even my tenth really), but I think that at this point in my life it's more the experience than the function that matters.

And in unrelated news, I thought that I might share this lovely quote I found the other day with you all:

Your journey has molded you for the greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be.  Don't think that you've lost time.  It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now.  And now is right on time. -- Asha Tyson

February 11, 2011 22:19 +0000  |  Amsterdam Employment Job Hunting Moving Netherlands Unemployment 6

For those of you who follow my life on Twitter or Facebook, I apologise for taking so long to post the details of the recent changes to my employment status. Stuff's been kinda crazy these past few weeks, so I've had other priorities that I'll talk about in other posts.

So here's the full story: On January 18th, I responded to a job ad for a web developer at MarketSims that I found on an online job posting board, possibly monster, but frankly, I don't remember. The application included my usual fun-sounding cover letter and a PDF copy of my CV along with a link to this site.

That same night, I received a response asking about my preferences for CMSs and/or frameworks and we had some good dialogue about why one CMS might be chosen over another, and why I prefer frameworks in general etc. etc. We also talked about my salary expectations, volunteer work, and outside interests as well, all over email. He thanked me for the info and said he'd get back to me.

Then he got sick for about a week so I didn't hear from him for a while. When we reconnected on the 31st, we talked about doing a Skype interview and settled on a midnight gig on the evening of the 4th.

The interview was with the CEO, CTO, and COO and covered in greater detail what they're looking for. Basically, they're looking to unify the many sites they have into a single managed solution as well as build a portal site for people in their industry. We talked about options and preferences and I made no secret regarding my preferences for Python/Django -- something I was happy to hear was positively received. The interview was largely non-technical, and when it was finished, the CEO said that they'd like to talk about me privately for a while and get back to me... in about 20minutes. A little surprised, I said thank you and we ended the call.

About 15minutes later, the CTO called me back and offered me the job. I'll start March 1st.

The pay sounds good, though it's tough to tell when you don't really know the cost of living over there. Regardless, it works out to a lot of money in Canada, so that doesn't suck. There's lots of vacation time, as European standards more or less require it, and they're accessible by transit. The CTO may even be able to hook me up with some inexpensive temporary housing with some friends while I look for a place of my own once I know the neighbourhoods better.

All-in-all, things are looking pretty good, though I try not to get too excited. Contracts etc. don't get signed until I come in for my first day and somehow, all of this doesn't feel like it will be "real" until then. I'm definitely leaving though. I've already bought my flights:

Vancouver » Kelowna Feb 21
Kelowna » Vancouver Feb 23
Vancouver » Amsterdam Feb 23

If the temporary housing doesn't work out, I'll look into Couch Surfing, then hostels, then hotels, in that order. Obviously, that's a rough route to take, but I'm not sure how else to do it. I will however endeavour to blog the process, if for no other reason to chronicle how very painful this kind of thing is.