Goodbye

I say goodbye to my Orionis friends and the Winkle team before I welcome my family to Amsterdam.
This Wednesday I participated in my last 'borrel' (weekly party). It was a good night, although it began in a strange way. Julian and I went to visit Bas, while most of the Jaarclub (a temporary group for first year members) had dinner with the Vloot Dek (a group that you can stay with throughout your membership of Orionis). We met at his place and the only thing missing was Bas himself. Julian and I stayed there and had a nice chat with some of his roommates, but nobody knew where Bas was. In the end we simply left to go to the borrel. We later learned that he had fallen asleep in his room and slept for three hours, through the noise of his phone ringing, the doorbell and even knocking on his door.
Anyway we all met up at the borrel and had a great time there. To me it was a special night, because I was saying goodbye to everyone, but it was also just a good party. I promised a lot of people to come back in the spring and I won't forget that. The trip is not that long and I'd like to see them all again.
Thursday I had a small goodbye party at the office. My internship would end the next day, but the office is always quiet on Fridays, so we chose to say goodbye Thursday instead. Before the party I had a final thing to do for work. I presented my word clustering macro to the team. I have improved it quite a lot since the last time I spoke of it and I now consider it my best Excel macro so far. It's quite a useful sorting algorithm for sentences that compares the contents of all responses and reorganizes them into groups based on similarity. It was well received by the Winkle employees, so I was happy to see my final project turn out a success.
At the party I served herring on homemade rye bread with curry salad. I didn't really expect them to like it, but I wanted to show a danish traditional dish. To my surprise they seemed to like it and it was all eaten, although I think the bread was way below the standards we are used to here. It was my third attempt at making a rye bread, but I had a lot of trouble finding the right ingredients, getting the sour doe correct and also baking it. Anyway, there were also lots of other snacks and drinks, so we celebrated my leave in style. To my surprise they had a lot of presents for me, including a Genever, chocolate, and a tile (I perplexed at the sight of that one: what would I need a tile for? but I have since learned that it has a use in the kitchen)
On Friday I handed in my keys and computer at Winkle. I had dinner with Boris before welcoming my family to the hotel at half past ten. It was a happy family reunion and they were in a good mood despite the long travel (8 hours by car). We did some catching up over a beer at the hotel bar.
The next day we walked around in Amsterdam as tourists and experienced a lot of things including: a Swarte Piet demonstration on Dam Square, the small museum Lord in the Attic and shopping in Jordaan. All of this (except the shopping) happened to shape an overall theme of the visit together with the event I had planned for Sunday. It was the arrival of Sint Nikolaas in Amsterdam. This event is anticipated by many children, who wait for the famous giver of gifts to arrive from Madrid by steamboat with his black helper (slave) Swarte Piet.

It was fun to see the boat arrive and the 600 Swarte Piets were very entertaining. I especially liked the ones who danced 'Gangnam Style'. All the little children watching were in awe and their parents enjoyed it just as much. The Amstel river was full of ships. The steamboat of Sint Nicolaas was surrounded by police in one layer. Around it and ahead of it were a lot of boats with Swarte Piets and in an outer ring and trailing after the convoy were other boats filled with parents and their children, who wanted to be as close as you can get to the show. On the shore there were thousands of bystanders who had come to watch the show and Swarte Piets on roller skates. They came ahead of the steamboat to make sure it was safe to open the bridges and as a little taste of what was to come. From our position on a bridge we watched the show unfold in front of an excited crowd. It was quite spectacular and I felt like I understood why it is so important for the Dutch to keep this tradition even if it seems racist. The tradition will probably change over the next few years though, as public protests against the oppressive symbol of Swarte Piet gain in strength.
On our way back from to Denmark we took a small detour to cross the dike that keeps the Ijzelmeer separate from the north sea. We had our lunch there, before proceeding to drive for seven hours and arrive late in Aarhus.
This concludes my travelogue on my stay in Amsterdam. I hope you liked it. If you want to read more I can recommend the blog of my friend Pernille at http://whiteriverlife.com/. It is an honest self portrait by one of my friends from the university, sprinkled with good advice for how you ought to do stuff/get a job (oh so serious!). Happy reading.
Goodbye and thank you for following!

Hotel life

I learn that life in a hotel is not for me.
I moved into this hotel yesterday and I'm already glad it's only for a week. I think other people find hotels comfortable, but I don't. There is nothing wrong here, everything works just as it is supposed to. I have a large room, more than a hundred tv channels and fresh sheets and towels every day. I have a big double bed, two comfortable chairs and a large desk. The room is well lit and in the afternoon sunlight gets in through the windows. The staff is friendly as well and one of them even speaks fluent danish (that was quite a surprise). But I like none of it. I don't take advantage of the TV, the space, the four fresh towels or the blanket-wrap around the bed. I like a simple life with simple things like cereals for breakfast and a kitchen to cook my dinner.
My solution has been to go and buy what I need directly from a nearby store and take full advantage of the dutch convenience. I buy half liter of milk in the morning and a fresh salad in the evening and that's fine. But the whole living in a hotel thing makes me feel surprisingly lonely. I think it's something about coming home to a room that looks not like you left it, but exactly like the first time you arrived to it.
It probably also has something to do with the shock of moving away from Hanneke's place, which is just about the perfect place to live. It's such a sharp contrast to move from somewhere you consider home, to a place which is made for temporary stay. Well, I guess I'll have to get used to it real quick, because I'll be leaving again in less than a week and it would be a shame to leave Amsterdam with this sense of not having a home.

Vacation is over

I welcome Ad and Hanneke home from their vacation and move to Hotel West Side Inn.
Yesterday I had a planned to welcome Ad and Hanneke home with a three course meal. I spent time looking for the best ingredients in the specialty shops in the neighborhood and planning what to cook. During the week I had already experimented and I decided to bake a new rye bread for the starter course and make chocolate mousse for dessert. I also intended to make a soup from different root crops, but I ended up abandoning that idea. They arrived at twenty past seven, and did not seem hungry so I decided the first course and dessert would do just fine.
It felt good to welcome them home. In a sense it was like no time had passed since they left. We even watched the rest of a movie we had paused on Netflix. At the same time, a lot had changed. This time I felt like I was showing off the apartment instead of the other way around. I feel like I lived up to the challenge of leaving the house a little nicer than it was when I came. Of course I cleaned everything, but I also put some delicious foodstuffs in the kitchen, so it wouldn't feel like anything was missing.
Today I'll be moving to a hotel which will be my third and final home in Amsterdam. But first I will bake another rye bread; I don't think I'll get any other chances to do that :)

Comfort and Convenience

I go to the first of many goodbye parties and think back on my stay here.
Wednesday the bar of Orionis is always open and of course I was there. I've only missed it once or twice, so it's not surprising that I also spent this Wednesday evening there. In these past days I've come to realize how comfortable I feel in all these places. Only two months ago I knew nobody and was never sure who I would talk with this evening. Now I know who I can expect to see and I there is always someone I know and can share a drink with. It has happened fast, but so gradually that I have barely noticed a change.
These days I say a lot of goodbye's. I probably won't see the people who are not coming next Wednesday anytime soon. It's a pleasant time of looking back at how much I have experienced and how much I've grown to like life in Amsterdam. I'm not sad about leaving, because I have a lot to return to back home. But Amsterdam is nice. Most of all I think Amsterdam is a very comfortable and convenient city. So many things are easy here. When you want to travel even a cheap bike can take you anywhere within an hour, or you can go by bus, tram or metro at low prices. Everyone I talk to has less than an hour of travel time, no matter where they live it seems, and most have around twenty minutes to the center.
The food is also very convenient. It has not yet ceased to amaze me how you can buy any meal and not need a knife to cook it. Everything comes directly out of the package and onto the pan, into the oven/microwave or perhaps onto your plate. You don't need to chop or wash vegetables, that has been done for you. You don't need to cut the meat or wrap it in bacon, it's all been done and it's right there in the store. Now this wouldn't be amazing if you had to pay a lot for to get these services, but you really don't. You can get a great meal for four euro that you just have to heat yourself or you can buy the ingredients yourself and save around 20%, but you will probably also have to use it for more than one day then. The idea of convenience is that you are extremely flexible, when you buy exactly one meal that you can cook in no time at all. You spend as much time choosing your favorite dish as cooking it and the next day there are no leftovers, so you are free to change your dinner plans anytime. By now you must be thinking, that can't be right. No supermarket can beat a good homemade dinner with a prepared meal. I think you are right in that belief, but the Amsterdam people will just go to a restaurant when they want something better. Most of my colleagues eat out at least once every week and I even heard that one of them never cooks.
But even if it seems easy, I don't think it's really for me. It makes you feel a little too complacent, to not cook your own food. What were you doing with that precious half hour you saved? Was it really that much better spent in front of the TV? Right now I'm baking a rye bread and waiting for a chocolate mousse to cool down in the fridge. Cooking good food on a Friday is not a chore, but a good way to spend your time, that comes with a tasty reward at the end. Of course I'm not the only one who thinks that. The great kitchen I am sitting in is a testimony to exactly that. I know Hanneke and Ad both love to cook, so my efforts are also in preparation for their arrival. I have a nice dinner planned for them tomorrow when they return from vacation. I also prepared a gift of a restaurant visit for them, which I hope they will appreciate.
Well, enough about food, let's talk about drinks instead. I had those Thursday at my first real goodbye party. I met up with some of my friends from the monster group (first month introductory group) and had drinks at a bar in my neighborhood. We had a good time and I tasted the sweetest drink I have ever had. The difference from it to syrup was in my opinion only the alcohol percentage. But I liked it nonetheless - who doesn't like sweets? Nobody in Amsterdam it seems (yes, another sidetrack about food). It is surprising how sweet lunch is, with peanut butter and Nutella being some of the big reasons. Combine it with chocolate sprinkles on white bread and you have something that grown men eat for lunch, but which resembles a snickers more than a toast. It's odd to me, how so much of the food is sweet and it seems you can only balance your diet through eating low quantities overall. I have a big salad every day instead and I feel like that is a great lunch. As mentioned before everything comes straight out of the package, so you can just mix anything you want at the table be it different salads, vegetables, cheese, dressings or nuts. It's really good and it's one of the routines I have here, that I love. One of the things that have become a comfortable part of every day.
I'm also generally comfortable at work now. I've sort of figured out how to act there and although I'm sad that ambition is not an appreciated quality there I enjoy that I am so free. I can basically do whatever I want, so I have spent these past few days developing a word clustering algorithm. It's pretty basic, and has big problems with 'chaining', due to using the simple single-linkage clustering technique, but it's a lot of fun to develop. If I manage to create an efficient version using complete linkage, then it might even become very useful tool. But that's just speculation and it really doesn't matter if I make it or not, because nobody knows I'm doing it. It's a comfortable and easy life here, and soon I'll be moving into a hotel, so I don't imagine it will become any harder from then on. I'll also be saying many more goodbyes and hopefully serving some good rye bread.

Dinner with friends

I sleep Monday away and get friends over for dinner Tuesday.
Monday Orionis had organized an event where you were supposed to get to know the different 'fleets'. I used to think they were Jaarclubs for older Orionis members, but they take in new members from the first years. It's one big an chaotic process of selection, where many try to get into the popular fleets but not everyone get to join. It's not that relevant for me, as I'm not going to join one, but I could have joined the party anyway. I heard today from many others that it was a great party that went on to three in the night. But honestly I don't think I would have liked that. I was so horribly tired from all the partying this weekend that I fell asleep at eight o'clock Monday.
Today I have had two friends over for dinner and that was really nice. We had a good time together and talked about all sorts of things from last weekend and about our jaarclubs. I tried some new dishes, which I think I'm going to repeat (improved of course) for Hanneke and Ad when they return from their vacation. I hope they'll like to have a nice dinner served on the day they return.

My last Orionis weekend

I go to Nes in a Porsche, party, sail, party, sail and go home in a bus.
This last week I have been looking forward to another weekend with Orionis, without knowing anything about what would happen. As you know, I am trusting of nature and I don't like to plan too far ahead. Therefore I was not really worried about the lack of information about the weekend. Friday I still had no information about the weekend, except that I was going somewhere to sail in a Valk with my crew of five. I knew that the event would start friday and that I would need to find a way to get there, but I didn't know the location or the specific time when we were expected. Luckily, other people sorted it all out for me and I ended up being picked up at home by Martijn. He drives a Porsche. I already knew that, because I've seen him on another weekend in this beautiful red Porsche. It's not the kind of thing that would usually impress me; I'm not much into cars, so I basically think it's a waste to pay that much for transportation. Yet, it has a strange kind of attraction and it certainly is quite impressive for a student to be driving something like that. The first time I saw it, I quickly decided that it must be his father's car, so I would not have to be impressed by it. It turns out I was right about it being his father's car, but I couldn't avoid being impressed by him, when he picked me up in his own, white Porsche!
We drove all the way to Nes on highways, so there was ample opportunity to see what the car could do. It's fast. It's very fast. The seats surround your body as you get pushed gently into them by the force of the cars acceleration. The car is low and without much suspension. You can feel the traction of the road and hear the sound of the air rushing past. It was quite the thing. I also liked how we arrived in style to the costume party, which we had dressed up as playboys for. The costume seemed to fit well with stepping out of a Porsche and arriving just when the party was about to really start.
We had a lot of fun that night and a lot of people did a really good job with their costumes. I especially liked the guys in the Zwarte Piet costume (highly topical at the moment), the pope and the pandas. The pandas were the organizers of the event and they went the extra mile with their costumes. Not only did they look good, they also had a choreography which they performed for us to get the party started.

The next day I was all ready for sailing. I didn't know what we had to do, but it turned out to be some kind of adventure-day. I thought we would be racing, so I was a little disappointed, but it turned out fine. We sailed around in the canals and on some small lakes to a few points of interest and we also spent some time in a restaurant on the harbor. It was very relaxed and obviously meant mostly as a way to recover from yesterdays party. There was almost no wind anyway, so we just sailed calmly around. The little element of real sailing there was, was that our skipper, Tjaard, liked to trim the sails optimally. To me, that's an important part of the fun in sailing and I was happy that someone else shared that feeling. The Valk is horribly designed, but there are a few ways you can adjust the sail and we did our best with what we had. Unfortunately it was not enough to go faster than the other boats, so I guess we still have something to learn.

In the evening there was a big event, that everyone was very excited about. I didn't really know what it was and when I asked I got vague responses. "It's a kind of drinking game, but not like any you know"."I can't describe it, you just have too see it for yourself". "Wear some clothes that you don't care too much for". "Do not try to get drunk, you will get drunk anyway". It sounded like a lot of hype to me, really, how bad could it be? But it was everything they promised. It was a big game, with everyone involved. The pandas were working hard to make sure nobody ever ran out of beer. Three persons were sitting at the high table, acting as game masters and the rest of us were sitting close together on three long tables (we were around a 100 participants). In front of each one of us, was a beer glass and a leaflet with songs. The game had a lot of rules, but the basics were: when the president says cheers, everyone replies and drinks. The songmaster will announce the next song and who should sing it (the rest will follow at the first refrain). The punisher will decide who gets punished. The punishments are all about drinking beer, but in rather imaginative ways. Everyone who got punished got beer on their clothes in way or another. You can only leave your spot in breaks. This basic setup and a lot of people who follow the rules as good as they can makes for a great game. I don't know if you can imagine the game from so little information, but I can tell you it is a good game. Not just because it's fun to play. It is, but it's also well designed from a game-theory perspective. The result was, that everyone got drunk, but people were not forced to drink more than they could handle. It is also not humiliating, but bonding in a positive way. Well, that's a lot of praise for a drinking game, but I was really impressed with it. After that we went on to have a great party all of us drunk and in a good mood from the game.
Sunday some of us went sailing again. There was supposed to be a race, but the wind was too hard, so we were told we could do whatever we wanted. That was great, and I didn't doubt for a second that I would go sailing. We put in two reefs and used only part of the jib, but we still had a lot of power. The handling was absolutely horrible, as the power center of the sail kept shifting and made the boat want to luff or fall depending on the wind speed and relative direction. It was a real challenge to get it to sail well, but we got it down after a while and were definitely faster than the other boats. After a while we chose to go on an adventure, that is, see where a canal would take us. It was almost impossible to make any headway, as it was directly against the wind in a tight canal, but we did it for 40 minutes or so. It was good exercise and I think it was fun to have a lot of work (tacking every 20 seconds at times). When we turned around we got back to were we came from in five minutes.
That concluded my last weekend with Orionis. I'll still see the others at some other events, but I'm not joining next weekend's sailing and the weekend after that will be my last in Amsterdam. It feels like my time here is coming to an end fast, although I still have one sixth of my stay to go. Before I leave I have a lot of things to do, so the last two weeks will be full of activity I'm sure.

Storm - Part 2

I continue the story about the club championship and I move into Hanneke's apartment.
We start off right where I left yesterday. Doortje and I were getting ready for the fourth race of the Orionis Club Championship. Doortje was at the helm and she offered it to me with the words "if we want to win, you should probably steer". That was a nice compliment, but I declined politely. I no longer felt the pressure of having to prove myself, so I didn't mind if we would be sailing a little slower than we could.
In the fourth start, we got ourselves into a bad position. We got to the starting line too early, and it was very short, so we would need to do a tack before the start. I thought that would be practically impossible, because of all the other boats, who were on time and coming on a starboard tack. Therefore I suggested that we do a jibe to get around them. What I didn't anticipate was the we would fail to make the jibe quickly and end up many boatlenghts below the starting line. Throughout the race we overtook three boats and ended up third, but I do attribute some of that to luck, as one of them capsized while they were far ahead of us.
In the fifth race we had another dramatic start, with all boats on the line in time. We were a bit too close to our leeward boat and that was a big problem for us. We had trouble sailing as high a course as them and we knew that we had to tack away, but there was also a boat on our windward side blocking that opportunity. When the windward boat tacked we immediately followed, but that turned out really bad as they capsized in the middle of their tack! Both Doortje and I did all of the emergency things we could to avoid capsizing on top of them and in the end I could push our boat off theirs with a shoving hand. We got back in the race after that and climbed our way up to finish second in spite of all those troubles.
In the sixth and last race we were both getting pretty cold and tired, but we sure weren't giving up. Doortje gave me the helm for this last one. The wind was slightly lighter than in the earlier races, but it was still strong and the gusts as unpredictable as usual on the small lake. Before this race, Rochelle's boat had given up. I'm not sure why, but she had been in the water several times, so I suspect she was too cold to continue racing. My strategy for the start was to keep the other boats on the outside or behind me as I approached the starboard end of the line. It seemed to be working for the most part of the start, but with one minute to go the wind direction changed so much that I couldn't even get above the buoy at the pin end. It turned out to be a very poor start, leaving us last. We did advance a little on the upwind, but at the top we had trouble finding a spot on layline and we tacked just below another boat. Unfortunately, they were perfectly on the layline and we had to tack twice before we could get around the mark. On the downwind we were moving fast with our genakker (no one else were using their genakker any longer). We almost overtook a boat, but they managed to get space by the bottom mark. Even though I could see it comming I did not manage to get us a good rounding of the mark and we ended up in their shadow. After this we couldn't really get enough speed to overtake anyone and we finished fourth.
That was the last of the races, so we sailed back to the harbor. In the clubhouse the organizers prepared dinner for us and we were grateful for some hot pasta bolognese. At the announcement of the results we were surprised to learn that we had achieved a second place with 13 points in six races. The third place also had 13 points, but they had no first places. The first places went almost exclusively to the winning team, who won with 6 points. Doortje and I were surprised and happy with our result. We celebrated a good day of sailing by going to a pub that was open just for us. The organizers of the event had arranged this as well, and we had a nice time together there until we were too tired to go on. That was already at half past eleven, but we were really tired from a long day of sailing. Doortje also lives in Amsterdam Noord, so for the first time ever I had company on the ferry home. It was definitely pleasant, and a sharp contrast to how I had feared the day would turn out, when she first asked me to team up with her. I still think selfishness is a bad character trait, but in her own words she just looks out for herself. From being with her the whole day I think I got a little better at dealing with that, as it just required me to seek the things I wanted a little more actively than I usually do. At the end of the day I felt perfectly at ease around her, and that is actually a bit special as I don't really have any close friends in Amsterdam. We said goodbye at a crossroad and congratulated each other again "Second place!" - "It's been a great day!".

Sunday, I moved out of my apartment in Noord and into Hanneke's apartment in De Pijp. Just mentioning the areas will tell people from Amsterdam what kind of a change that was. Noord is known to be one big ghetto and De Pijp is one of the most attractive areas to live in. It is just south of the center, close to the Amstel river and there are canals here just like in the center. It is more open and spacious than in the center and it is actually perfectly quiet in Hanneke's apartment. That is another change from where I used to live. I don't think I've ever complained about it on this blog, but the first week a had to use earplugs to fall asleep, because of the noise from the street below. But the location is not all that is wonderful about this place. The inside is so impressive that I still haven't gotten used to it. Hanneke and Ad met each other at hotel school and that means they both know how things are supposed to look. Everything in this apartment feels perfect. Every cupboard holds neatly stacked things, which have been taken perfect care of. The kitchen is huge and looks sparkling new and pretty much all the furniture looks expensive. I don't think I'm really going to be able to describe this place accurately, but I can tell you that I am impressed. I know that no matter how much I end up earning I will never live in an apartment that looks this good. She told me that she wouldn't clean or anything before left and I believe her. It just always looks as it should.
Sunday evening Hanneke had prepared a three course meal for me an Ad that made me feel like I would be forever indebted to her. There is simply no way I can repay the kindness they both have shown me, so my only option is to try and express my gratitude. Of course I will find a very nice gift for them, but it could never match what it means to me to be welcomed here and be allowed to stay for two weeks. It better be something good. I will surprise the both of them somehow and make sure they become happy that they trusted me. Nice people like them should never be let down.

Monday was the real storm, but the day were the least happened for me. I took my bike to the office regardless and when I drove home I passed an uprooted tree that almost blocked a canal. It rained heavily and I got soaked completely before coming home. But there's a great way to get warm again when you live in a fancy apartment. I filled the huge bathtub and regained my warmth while listening to heavy raindrops on the window. It felt great to be inside and feel nice and warm and I sent yet another appreciative thought to Hanneke for letting me stay in her wonderful home.