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.

Storm - Part 1

I go sailing in heavy winds with an unlikely partner.

The storm is here. Trees are falling, traffic lights are out, planes are grounded and train tracks are blocked. The national weather agency has issued their most serious weather warning and only half of the Winkle employees have shown up at work today. Some of those who did show up are now unable to return home until late tonight when the trains tracks will finally be cleared.

To stay with the metaphor, I have chosen to ride this storm as best as I could. It started on Saturday. The wind had increased steadily and I could feel it hard against me, while driving my bike to Sloterplas. I was going to the Orionis Club Championship. I didn't know who I was going to sail with, because I had been sailing with different people on Wednesdays, all beginners and none of them had expressed any interest in this event. Anyway, I went there thinking that there would probably be someone else still looking for teammates and if not then I could always help organize the event.

When I got there, I met Boris, Doortje and Rochelle (first year Orionis members whom I knew from earlier) and 15 or so older members. That made it pretty obvious that this event was only for the most enthusiastic competitive sailors. As we stood there huddled up in our little group of first year members, I saw some of the others start to clean the bottom of their Laser Vagos. They were really dirty, so I commented that doing that would certainly have a big effect. Doortje was quick to pick up on that and suggested the two of us form a team and start doing the same. I must admit, that I had some doubts at first, but I didn't reject her. I knew that she was a somewhat selfish girl and that I didn't like her much, but also that she had sailed competitively before. If you have followed this whole blog you might recognize her as the girl I badmouthed earlier on this blog. I am a little ashamed of that. I believe you should tell people directly if you have a problem with them instead of sharing it with others. I will defend myself by saying that the post was actually never about her, but about me and how I was unable to handle being with her in a constructive way. I just left her as fast as I could. That's not how I like to interact with people. I don't flee, I adapt. But with this girl, I guess it took a little longer than usual to understand what was going on...

Well, that was a little sidestep, but a lot went through my head when she asked to team up with me. Basically, I knew that I wouldn't be able to find a better partner than her, but I was also a little scared that we would not have a good time together. So I pulled myself together and asked for what I wanted. I told her it would be fine by me if she wanted to steer, but that I also wanted to in some races. As you could probably expect (but I honestly wasn't sure how she'd react) she agreed right away. After that we worked efficiently to get our Vago prepared for the race. We scrubbed the bottom, lightened it for 20 litres or so of water (maybe that's why it used to be so unstable, with all that water splashing around inside it) and readied the sails. After a short briefing by the organizers we left the harbor.

It was quite windy, around 10 m/s in the gusts when we left the harbor, but I immediately suggested that we put up the gennaker. I knew we wouldn't have much time before the races, so we had to get our teamwork going. She was a bit hesitant, but she agreed and we quickly picked up speed. I realized that she had never sailed with a gennaker before and tried to teach her the basics (higher for more pressure, lower for less), but I didn't get to finish that lecture before we were in the water. To her credit though, she understood exactly what had happened and did better right away when we got the boat back upright. I guess that was our first bonding experience of the day, as it was quite intense to suddenly crash, get very cold, work hard to get the boat back up, crash again and finally get back up. We were both breathing heavily after that and there was a silent understanding between us, that we had to do better than that from then on.

When we were about to start our first race she confided that she was not a good starter, so she would appreciate some help with the tactics. That was a good opening, because then I was allowed to tell her about my basic strategy well in advance and then guide her into a good position for the start. But we were not the only ones who knew how to start. All boats crossed the line in time and two managed to make a port tack start at the pin end and get in front of the rest of us (6 Vagos in total, the rest were sailing Valk). We lacked speed on the upwind and ended up last at the top mark. We put up the gennaker and with that we overtook the secondlast boat. They had chosen not to bring a gennaker, because Rochelle the crew was inexperienced. On the second upwind we did reasonably well for speed and overtook another one. On the last leg towards the finish we put up the gennaker again, but we were overtaken by the boat with Rochelle in it, who went directly towards the finish line (we were going at an angle, because of the gennaker). That was a bit frustrating, but no more than that we could complement them after the race. Well done (but we would not let that happen again). In the second race I was at the helm and I decided that I wouldn't let them get away with a port tack start again. So I met the two boats, who had chosen the same tactic again at the perfect time by the starting line. I knew I could force them to go behind me, but then something unexpected happened. The Valks rounded the pin end, which was part of their course. I'm not sure what the rules are around that exactly, but I didn't want to interfere with their race, before my own had started, so I gave them room. That was all the other Vagos needed and they slipped away by starting between the Valks and the mark. We still got out of the start fairly well, and I could feel that I had a better speed on the upwind. I think it had to do with the mainsail trim, which the helmsman is also responsible for. We did well and in a close race we ended up third. In the third start we crossed at speed at the right time, but so did several others. We found a good track to the top and got there right after the leading boat. They had won both races so far and you could see from their boat handling that they were pretty good. For some reason they chose not to put up the gennaker and we gained a little on the on the first downwind. When we met at the top mark they had gained some distance to us, but for some reason they again did not put up the gennaker. We did, like on every other downwind leg, but this time was different. We caught a massive gust and got the lift necessary to get the hull out of the water to plan on top of it like a flat rock that you throw so hard it skips on the surface. We passed them so fast they didn't even finish putting up their gennaker before we were ahead of them. In the midst of all this, we were approaching the downwind layline fast, so we had to jibe. I told Doortje and I remember the sound she made as reply clearly. It was the kind of mmmm sound you make to say yes, but with hints of real fear in it. "I know, but we have to" I replied and so we jibed. We did a swift change of course to get the boom across and then immediately steered counter to avoid being overcome with pressure from the gennaker. Seconds later we were flying towards the finish line at by far the highest speed we had yet experienced. We were completely ecstatic. Winning is a great feeling, but then take that and add in the excitement of sailing so fast and relief from completing the jibe without capsizing only moments ago. It was perfect.

After that, we had a break on the middle of the lake. We attached all of the boats to a floating bridge that the organizers had brought from the harbor and had some snacks and some water/beer. That didn't last long though, as the anchors had come loose and the wind was pushing us fast...

And the rest will have to wait for another day. I'm now sitting inside under a blanket in the most awesome apartment. I'm writing this post as the storm outside is quietening down and the thunder is taking over...

Silence before the storm

I'm not doing much at all, but that's about to change...
This past week I have lived up to my promise of taking things slow. I think it was necessary, but I also know that it is not a way I like to spend my time. I like it when things are moving so fast, that I can not predict what is going to happen next. In fact, I don't even like to know what's going to happen, I'd rather just be surprised. Not all the time, of course, but I guess I'm often in the mood for it.
It doesn't have to be big adventures like the sailing weekends I have previously written about, it can also just be small everyday adventures. That's the kind I've had this last week. Sunday the weather was great, so I put on my jacket, an empty rucksack and some good walking shoes and went outside. I had no plan for where I was going, and that's how I made it a little adventure. At every turn I simply looked in all directions and made a decision about where to go now. I kept my inner compass fairly well aligned, so I was never lost, but I had not seen any of the places I walked through before. At one point I walked by a compass rose on the floor and realized that I was about 20 degrees off, but that's not enough to get you lost unless you walk for a really long time! Anyway, I spent a couple of hours walking around and got to know the area a lot better. Not that it matters much, as I won't be staying long, but it felt like a fine little accomplishment anyway.
Tuesday I did the same, only on my bike and in the city center, so I was not lost at all. But I did some turns I wouldn't usually do and let it take me to some new places. Wednesday is the day of sailing and that is always a lot of fun. This time we had a lot of wind for the first time and we actually capsized once in the Laser Vago. When we got back ashore we had dinner in the clubhouse like always and at half past eight we usually leave for the Wednesday night party. This time, a lot of people had exams, so not a lot of people were going there. I didn't feel much like going either with all my wet sailing clothes, which I would have to put in my bag with my laptop. Instead Tea and I had a friendly drink and some nachos at a bar closer to the sailing club.
Today my little adventure consisted of buying a new thing at the supermarket. It's something I love to do. When I see something that I don't know what will taste like, I get an urge to buy it. I went a little over the top this time (again), by buying both a butternut squash and a rutabaga. I still don't know how I'm going to eat the rutabaga, but I'll leave that concern for tomorrow. Tonight I made a soup from the butternut squash and what a hassle that was. I think I might be getting a bit too used to the convenience of the dutch kitchen, but really preparing that thing took almost half an hour. I might have been doing something wrong peeling it like a potato, but that's how I understood the instructions I found online. In the end it tasted great, so that was much beyond expectations. Sometimes, when I buy things I don't know I have to throw them away. That has happened twice already in the Netherlands. Once with a Turkish specialty, which tasted like dried cotton candy with vanilla (I had to give up, because it was way too sweet). Once with a Swizz specialty cheese that had such an intense taste that I was worried I might be acidic. I had to give up on that one, because I was afraid my taste buds would take permanent damage...
All of these little things are my ways of wasting time, while I am waiting for bigger things to happen. At the office I am still waiting to have any kind of interesting assignment (I'm starting to lose faith that it will happen at all).
With Orionis I think I have signed up for a lot of events, but I am not sure how many I will end up participating in. It can sometimes be a little confusing to be the only foreigner (in fact Tea and I are the only foreigners in Orionis).
At home I will have to move out soon, as the contract ends on Sunday. After that I will move in at Hanneke's apartment while she is on vacation. I look much forward to that, I think it will be quite luxurious compared to this one. I have to think of some appropriate gift to give her as thanks, but I'll have lots of time to do that.
Oh, and if you think the title of this post is a bit of an overstatement. Referring to moving out and participating in Orionis events this weekend, then I can inform you that it is a reference to the weather in Amsterdam. There is absolutely no wind today, but Monday the weather report says there can be gusts up to 59 knots. For those of you unfamiliar with the metric it's just short of a category one hurricane (but that would be constant wind, not only gusts). On the hurricane scale, it will still be a tropical storm, though. I wonder if it will really be that bad, a lot can change in a couple of days, but I will have to stay updated on this. I might reconsider taking the bike to work if there is indeed a tropical storm in Amsterdam...

Oh come on...

We officially establish our Jaarclub, I say goodbye to Susanne and I come home to an apartment without knives.
Wednesday sailing was cut short, because we had to meet all of the other first year members of Orionis. I would have much preferred to sail for another hour and have dinner in the clubhouse of the sailing club at Sloterplas like we usually do. But we had to go, as it was a somewhat official event. So at eight o'clock we were present at restaurant 'the views' in Magna Plaza. Magna Plaza is a stunningly beautiful building. When you enter you will step into a huge room in the middle of the building. It has a marble floor and massive pillars go from the ground to the ceiling. I had to stop for a second to look up and around and take it all in. It only has three levels, yet the central room has a higher ceiling than a church. The ceiling of each floor is so high above your head, that you can almost feel the weight of the air above you. Even a crowded can look almost empty when the ceiling is up that high and there is easily room for impressive chandeliers.

The windows of restaurant the views can be seen on this picture. They are on the second floor in the tower-like corner nearest to the photographer. At first I thought this place was way too classy for us, a bunch of loud students, but I was wrong. There was absolutely nothing classy about the restaurant. The tables and chairs were cheap and shifty and the place had mixed styles so much that there was nothing left of the classy atmosphere of the Magna Plaza or even of the view referred to in the name. They served nothing but all-you-eat and the buffet had no good food at all. It consisted of 2 salads, a hot aubergine dish, a fatty lasagna, some dry bread and two bad soups (ok, I didn't taste the minestrone soup, but it didn't look any better than the tomato soup). They served this for 120 hungry students without breaking a sweat, because they had it all prepared on beforehand. On top of that they offered us pizzas and pasta that we could order with the waitress. Yes, there was only one waitress and 120 students. It was completely impossible for her to take all the orders, so she just took some of them. The result was the half of us waited for more than an hour to get pizzas (in the hope that they would be a little better than the buffet). She routinely forgot orders and served everything in a chaotic 'who needs a pizza'-like manner. I can safely say that it was the worst restaurant I have ever eaten at. But that was not the point of this evening. The point was to officially establishment of our Jaarclub and get some group pictures taken. For pictures, the location was ideal as it didn't take much effort to find a place with a beautiful background in the Magna Plaza. This also meant that everyone was dressed up, girls in high heels and dresses and boys wearing a white shirt or their regular clothes (only one boy was wearing a suit, but I think we all should have, if we wanted to match the girls). I think seeing all the girls dressed like that was the best thing about the evening. My own Jaarclub is not one I am proud of. I know five of the guys in the group and I like three of them, but among the other nine I don't think I will find any friends. Laurens my friend from the monstergroup expressed what I was thinking after we had been in the restaurant for a little while. "I don't really know anyone from our monstergroup and I don't think I like them either". That made me smile, because it was so obvious that these boys were not like us. They are the kind of boys that I would be embarrassed to walk around with in the street or be associated with in general, but like Laurens I'm not going to make a fuzz about it. You choose for yourself how much you want to involve yourself with the group and you can just socialize with the other groups if you don't like your own. There are only a few events where you are expected to do something with your Jaarclub, but it is encouraged that you become a tight group of friends of course.
At work, we said goodbye to Susanne Thursday evening. It was her last day at Winkle since she had not obtained a permanent contract, when the last final temporary contract ended. We gave her a proper goodbye with a gift, a little speech, drinks and tapas. I remembered to thank her for finding Orionis for me, the single event with the most impact on my stay in Amsterdam so far.
At home, I was once again surprised by the actions of my host. She had visited the apartment while I was at work and picked up some stuff that she must have needed. That is: a cupboard, a clean bed sheet and linen, all the knives from the kitchen and a notice from the rental agency. She is such a strange woman. The half-disassembled couch is still in the living room and she also didn't care to pick up their toothbrushes or her kitchen appliances. But she had to take all the knives, not even leaving one behind so I could comfortably eat my dinner. Well I can tear a chicken breast apart without a knife, but still...

Good morning

I wake up with a smile on my face.
Good morning. That's what this is. The weather in Amsterdam is still grey and rainy, but today is a good day. I've finally come to terms with something that was nagging me at work and later today I will be going sailing. After sailing there will be a dinner with my Jaarclub. I joined it just recently and I don't know all the members of the group yet. I'm sure it will be nice to meet them, but other than that I don't have high expectations. I'm not as committed to my Jaarclub as I was to my Monstergroup, because I will be going home soon (relative to the one-year lenght of the Jaarclub). The Jaarclub formation was an odd process and I don't know why, but most people chose to form all boy/girl Jaarclubs. That doesn't really make sense to me, but whatever I just joined the first one I was offered.
After the dinner we will go to the weekly Wednesday party together and the idea is to start a tradition within the Jaarclub about going to dinner on Wednesdays and arriving together at the party.
I think you can consider this the promised happy post and I am expecting my mood to continue improving. I really felt like something came off my chest this morning, but I'm not going to share that today. Perhaps another time, perhaps not.

Storm

The weather goes from bad to worse.
Yesterday, I skipped the Klipper race, because the weather report said there would be no wind all day. I decided to go today instead and experience sailing in some more windy conditions. I forgot to check the weather report before leaving home, but I had done so Friday. Today was supposed to be without any rain and with moderate winds. So, I woke up early, all excited for the race. I had my breakfast, got dressed and opened the door before I noticed the weather. It was raining heavily. Well, that's no problem I thought, and put on my sailing clothes.
I was in somewhat of a hurry to get to the train, but I was not nervous about catching it. I probably would have been if I had known that I would get on board only a few minutes before we left the station. Anyway, it worked out and I got seated next to two other sailors who were going to the Klipper race. They could inform me that yesterday had indeed been completely without wind. A few boats had completed the race, but most had not cleared the time limit. That meant they were not back until nine or half past nine in the evening from an all day distance race. Lucky I stayed at home...
In the train I had taken off my sailing clothes. I quickly realized the need to put it back on as I stepped out of the train. It was still raining hard, and it was much more windy than in Amsterdam. In my full dress again, I felt comfortable walking through the rain. Now, I just had to find Avanti in the huge harbor of Enkhuizen. You would think that a 32 metre, 2-masted Klipper would be pretty easy to find, but it wasn't. There were at least 40 other ships that looked like it. I had to find a spot with shelter from the wind to call Niels the skipper and ask for directions.
When I stepped aboard I met a lot of friendly sailors and got served some nice breakfast (second breakfast is always a winner). Entering the luxurious ship was a sharp contrast from the weather outside. It was nice and warm and dry of course. We all helped energetically with the preparations for sailing. We put a reef in the mainsail and carried some extra sails below deck. We let go of the mooring lines and almost sailed, when suddenly there was a lot of shouting back and forth in dutch. We still held on to the front mooring line and at first I thought that was the problem, but it wasn't. We were simply trying to get back into our spot again. That is actually quite a challenge with wind from the side, only one mooring line attached and just one propeller at the back. I certainly wouldn't want to try that landing. With a smaller boat you would pull the two boats together using ropes, but with these ships they always prefer to use the engines. That means putting a buoy in between the boats and then pushing against that until the boat turns into position. Scary. Anyway, we got back to our position and I learned that the race had been delayed for an hour. That was quite disappointing, but the worst thing was that predictions said the wind would increase even further, so there was almost no chance that we would go sailing. An hour later the race was cancelled.
At the time I got a little disappointed, I had come to race, but at the same time I thought it was a good decision by the race committee. The wind speed had at this time reached 6-8 Beaufort. That is way beyond hard wind. It's a storm.
When the race was cancelled there wasn't really any reason for me to stay, so I said goodbye and left the Avanti. I did a little walk around Enkhuizen and I'm sure it's a beautiful city, but it's really hard to go sightseeing in your full sailing clothes, in heavy rain and stormy wind. Also, it's a rather small city, the main attraction being the harbor as far as I know.
On my trip home I felt more and more relieved that we weren't sailing. I realized, that even when I thought we would be sailing I was not preparing myself to sail as good as possible. I was preparing myself to make sure I stayed safe, while we were sailing. This is very unusual for me, as I am very comfortable on a boat, but there is something about that Klipper that scares me. Everything is too heavy for you to move by yourself. You cannot lift the sails, pull the sheets or basically stop anything from moving. Well, at least that's what I thought when I prepared myself. I never got to try and in a way I feel just fine about that.
So, instead of an exciting day of racing I spent most of today at home learning how to instantiate a display class in Flash (very basic, but it still took hours of frustration)...

Grey clouds

There are grey clouds over Amsterdam, the temperature is low and so is my mood.
The weather is never bad if you are dressed for it, but some things do become less enjoyable. This weekend I will go sailing on the Klipper Avanti, but the weather report for Saturday says no wind and lots of rain. That is not ideal for a distance race. Therefore, I decided to sail only Sunday and stay home Saturday. When I made the decision I knew that something about me was a little different from the me of a week ago. Last week, I didn't check the weather report before going sailing, because it wouldn't have mattered. I knew that I would have lots of fun regardless of the weather. But this week something is different. The something is my mood, which is slightly lower than it used to be. In fact, I keep track of my mood mentally and it is currently at it's lowest on so far on this trip.

So why do I write to you about these uninteresting topics of my mood and the weather? It's not because I want you to feel sorry for me or send encouraging messages (please don't). It's because I'd like to have a little talk about happiness (well, a monologue really). I'd like to share my thoughts about happiness with you to tell you that I am alright, even when I am not happy and perhaps make you think about your own happiness.
First of all, happiness is an important topic to me. Happiness is important in the sense that it is something we all strive to achieve. At the same time, it is something that we rarely discuss, especially unhappiness is almost a taboo. When I hear talk about happiness, it is usually related to material things. Do money make people happy? Do nice vacations and few working hours make people happy? Yes, and yes, would be my replies, but with that you are still far from understanding what happiness is all about. A milestone in my understanding of happiness was the book "Viljen Til Sejr" (Will to win) by Arne Nielsson. It gave me a framework of words for describing happiness and it also attempts to describe a base case. I do not agree with everything in the book, most definitely not, but I did like the view on happiness expressed.

My interpretation of the framework is, that everyone (in countries with as much wealth/welfare as Denmark at least) is supposed to be happy and sad at a ratio similar to 5 to 2. This makes sense only when happiness is defined as a relative term. According to this framework you cannot break the scale and become permanently happy, because you are only happy when you are happier than your 'normal happiness'. In the book normality is described as a line, which you can be above or below. If something happens in your life that makes you permanently better off your line will move upwards on some imaginary static measure of happiness, but your perceived happiness will be the same. Every morning when you wake up, you will still be either above or below the line and you will still maintain a ratio of above to below.
But as with all frameworks it is a complicated and very complete way of trying to explain a phenomenon. You could simplify it into a way of thinking that goes something like: "There is no point in striving for a life of happiness, because you will always be sad sometimes". This also means that you should not fear unhappiness, because it is always temporary and no matter how sad your life situation in general becomes you will always have mornings where you wake up and feel happy. I realize that the last statement might not hold in all cases, but I assume some kind of minimum living standard, which I think it is unlikely that I will ever end up below.

Thus, my current low in mood is merely a necessary dip below the line, because I have been happy ever since I got here. When I get in a situation like this, I like to spend the time evaluating things, considering what makes me happy, my current and future situation and stuff like that. This time it yielded the following result: I need some time to recover from the month of Orionis introductions. Participating in events every second day and never getting enough sleep will have costs at some point I guess. It's been a lot of fun and it's been tough on the body at times, but what I'm feeling now is the mental effect. I puts a lot of pressure on me to meet so many new people all the time and yet not be close with anyone. Therefore, I will take a break from doing all the things you do, when above line (create dove costumes, dance all night on a Wednesday, try to fit in perfectly in a group of dutch students, etc.) and just lay low for a while. The same goes for work. I've been working hard to impress everyone, with every single thing I did. I've been doing everything to perfection, working late and frequently asking for more assignments. It's time to relax.

What makes me happy? I like to achieve things, I like to try new things and I like to be with close friends. These are things that I want, but not desperately so. I am not in any urgent need to become happy, as I explained I think this time is necessary as well. In fact, more than necessary, I like this time as well. It is not a time of depression, it is a time of low speed of life and I believe it can be just as enjoyable as the times when you are above the line. This is completely out of sync with the framework from the book, but I don't like things too simple.
The philosophy of a constant balance of happiness is basically unfit for me, because it lacks a goal. I know about myself that if I can't identify the goal of something, I will loose interest in a second. Therefore, I have added a goal to my philosophy of happiness. In explaining that, I think my theory of happiness is explained completely, as it looks today. My goal is to enjoy a life of happiness and unhappiness, by always being aware of my mood and acting in the best way I can with those moods. When I am happy, I will act natural and do all the things that I would not dare if I was unhappy and I will celebrate the feeling and the new experiences that usually follow from it. When I am unhappy, I will lay low and scrub away the less important things from my life, which are not making me happy. I will enjoy the perspective in both directions (backwards and forward in time). I will make sure to remember the happiness I just slowed down from and I will take a look at my expectations for the future, so I know what interesting things lie in wait for me or so I can change my course in time if I find that I would rather do something else.

So when can you expect the next happy post? I have no clue. I've been trying to predict my happiness swings, but found that to be absolutely impossible. But I can tell you that I have some nice things lined up, that I will definitely like. Firstly, there's the Klipper race Sunday. I look forward to seeing all of those sails up and feeling how such a big ship moves in the water will be an exciting new experience for me. At work I have just been included in a big project about music preferences in South Korea, and I think that is my chance to bring something home for my studies in Denmark. I have also discovered the fun of programming for real now; I've always been interested, and I have even attempted to learn Java once. At work I have learned a lot about VBA programming and now I am learning Flash in my spare time, because that's way more cool. My housing situation is suddenly looking great. I now have the whole apartment for myself and I have taken advantage of that by cleaning everything so it feels nice and fresh and I have also turned one of the rooms into a walk-in-closet (that's actually pretty sweet). So as you can see, there are lots of good things happening around me, and I'm not forgetting to enjoy them, even if I'm less happy than last week.
One last stray thought: if you feel uncomfortable about me braking the taboo of unhappiness try replacing happy with ecstatic (unhappy=not ecstatic) everywhere in this post. I think that will make everything good again.

Big boats - Part 2

I experience a Frisian party, do my best as a tactician and sail home aboard Avanti.
Saturday evening was a festive event organized for the sailors. At six o'clock the event plan said free fish. I tagged along with the rest of the crew to a big building. I think it must be used for storage of boats in the winter, but today it was used for the gathering of the sailors. As promised, there was free fish, and lots of it. There was nothing else to eat with the fish except for white toast bread, but the amount of fried fish was impressive. We had some and a beer, but we left quickly again. We would have dinner aboard the Klipper together with the Verwisseling crew.
Later we returned to the winter-garage/sailor's pub to party with live music. The crowd consisted of Frisian people of all ages and us, students from Amsterdam. The band was very loud and I thought that was a bit out of a place, but everyone else seemed to like it. Despite the mixed crowd, it quickly escalated into a wild party with lots of dancing and drinking. I never really got into the mood for it, but curiously watched all the crazy things happening around me. To me, students drinking and doing crazy stuff is one thing, but old people... that's something else. My favorite moment was when an old guy almost went crowd-surfing, at least he got carried around all over the dance floor. The most crazy thing that happened was a 'mosh pit'. The others had expected it, but I was clueless as to what was going on. I've since Googled it and found out that it is a dance that belongs to the hardcore scene. According to Wikipedia it is intended to be 'energetic and full body contact'. In practice this means running into each other and aggressively pushing others into each other. Absolute madness. We also did a few less crazy things like dance head-and-shoulders-knees-and-toes and polonaise...
Sunday morning I couldn't wait to go sailing. I was excited about my role and sailing with all the big boats in general. There was no mist this morning, but there wasn't a lot of wind either. When the wind came, it came from West. That is a much better direction, as it is along the lake, so we could sail a classic up-down course. In the first race we wanted a start near the starboard buoy. We sailed downwind on the right side of the starting line and positioned us for the start. Niek, the helmsman today, and I both remembered the horrible start from yesterday, so we had agreed to start at speed no matter what. He is a very cautious sailor, so I had to push him a bit to start sailing towards the line early. We let one boat slip past us to leeward and suddenly we were in a line of boats racing towards the start. There was still 2 and a half minutes to go, when the positions were completely locked in. In the end we crossed the line about 20 seconds after the sound and sailed right past the starboard buoy. Although a little later than ideal, it was a perfect start for us. We generally have low boatspeed, so getting free wind is difficult in the start. The starboardmost start ensured that we had free wind for the first part of the upwind leg. During the upwind Niek and I got a feel for each other in our new positions. I think he learned not to ask, when he had in fact already decided and I learned that I had to be subtle to get what I wanted. Niek was still a tactician of heart, so he did not leave much room for me to make decisions, but that didn't stop me from doing a good job and enjoying every moment of it. The thing about being a tactician is, that you get to see everything. Not only that, you are expected to see everything. It is perfect, because that is what I really like about the race, experiencing all of the boats, not just focusing on performing small tasks to perfection.

At the top mark we got into an interesting situation again. We had the choice between tacking below a competitor or going a long way around it. By this time, I had a fair understanding of how high we could go towards the wind, and I predicted that we could reach the mark even if we tagged below him. I knew from yesterday that Niek would always go behind, so I had to say something if I wanted us to tack. So I yelled from the front of the ship (that's how we communicate, if we want to say something more complicated than we can do with hand signals) that I thought we could make the mark. I got a "you better be right" in return, but he did the tack. The competitor passed us, as we lost most of our speed in the tack and only slowly accelerated inside the turbulence from his sails, but we still made it. We didn't even have to push the board as hard as I knew we could if it got tight. I didn't expect an applause and didn't get one, but I felt quite smug that I had just saved us several boatlenghts. On the downwind we did poorly, no matter how you look at it. We had trouble with the jib trim, positioning and even steering towards the next mark. At the bottom mark we got into a really bad situation. There were a lot of boats rounding the mark in a tight row. There were all doing too big curves around the mark, but at least they maintained good speed. We wanted to do a somewhat narrower curve around the mark and we had right-of-way inside the rounding zone over one leeward boat. Unfortunately, our turn became much too wide. I'm not sure exactly what happened at the helm, but the result was that the boat behind us decided to show his dissatisfaction with our poor rounding of the mark almost colliding with our leeward side near the back of the boat. The resulting pushing with legs to avoid real collision turned our boat away from the wind and made the rounding even worse. We ended up in the turbulent wind of the whole row in front of us, so I suggested a quick tack. That almost became a big mistake, as we tacked extremely slowly and almost got hit before we could claim right of way from being on starboard tack.

The second race was less eventful, as we failed the start and therefore quickly ended up behind the main group. I think my tactical guidance was good, but Niek suddenly got scared 30 seconds before the start and decided to stop the boat. He thought we were above the line, but I confidently told him there were two more boatlenghts to go. He reacted and we started sailing again, but the damage was done and the other boats were on top of us. We couldn't regain our speed in their turbulence and didn't accelerate before we tacked away and crossed the line on port tack. At the top buoy we did the same maneuver as last time again showing the others where the lay-line is, and again I think I was the only one who appreciated that. On the downwind we relaxed a little too much and almost got hit by one of the leading boats on its way upwind. That was embarrassing, as it was my responsibility to predict possible collisions. We did a (too) big evasive maneuver and avoided collision.

After the races everyone went home in different ways. Some would sail Elizabeth back to her home harbor further north in Friesland. Some would go by car (Porsche) and some went by public transport. Me and one other went with the Klipper Avanti across the Ijsselmeer to Enkhuizen. The captain of the Avanti is a previous Orionis member and also the helmsman of the Verwisseling Skûtje. That is how we were allowed to stay in the beautiful ship for the weekend. This night there was no wind at all, so the sea was blank as a mirror. The sunset was beautiful and so was the ship, even without sails. I would have loved to go by sail and so would the others, but without wind it wasn't an option. Instead they offered me to come back next weekend and sail a race in the Klipper! I couldn't resist that, so I immediately told them yes. Next Saturday I'll get to see it set all sails and race against other really big boats!

Big boats - part 1

I participate in a competition in the Skûtje Elizabeth
Friday afternoon I left for Lemmer by train from Amsterdam with Noëmi and Niek. We arrived in the evening and went to the race office to register right away. Doing so, we walked through the center of Lemmer, which is a harbor full of classic ships. There were sailors everywhere and you could sense that this was a big event for the small town. The race office was in a pub where a lot of sailors were having beers, but we didn't stay. We went to meet the crew of Elizabeth and our sister-team from the Verwisseling. We were all staying aboard a huge ship together sharing rooms two and two. An impressive luxury considering we only paid 55 euro each for the whole weekend. We spent the first evening getting acquainted with each other and getting settled in our rooms.
The next morning we woke up early and had a nice breakfast together. We then prepared Elizabeth for the race by removing absolutely everything from the inside. There was definitely nothing wrong with the preparations as we took out everything down to the plates, knives and forks to optimize the weight of our 12 ton Skûtje.
Sailing out of the harbor was an odd experience. People wanted to take pictures, but of what? We could see absolutely nothing inside a thick mist. We all knew that it would be impossible to race in a weather like that, so we dropped the anchor near the other Skûtjes. While waiting for the mist to clear we would sometimes see Skûtjes appear out of the mist and disappear just as sudden again.
Around one o'clock the mist finally dispersed and we could hoist the anchor and set the sails. Even in the light wind the Skûtje is surprisingly fast. They are old boats (all of them are built in the beginning of the 20th century), but they have been heavily modified to look the way they do today. The ships have been elongated, the decks replaced to a thinner layer of steel, the masts have been moved backwards and of cause much larger sails. They are so overpowered, that they can actually capsize. Think about that for a moment, a 12 ton boat, which can capsize. That is just crazy. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I had not seen a YouTube video of it.
Fifteen minutes before our start, we heard the first sound-signal. It was the five minute notice for the A-class. We were in the small Skûtje class with only three other boats, but we started with the B and C-class Skûtjes, so there were plenty of boats on the starting line. The start of the A-class was a pretty sight. All of the boats had found a spot on the line and were crossing at speed. This race no one crossed to early, but many were close. I heard someone from our crew describe the A-class as the champions league of sailing, and after seeing them start I felt that the description might not be too much of an exaggeration.
Our own start was terrible. We ended up far below the line and in a bad position relative to the other boats, but that wasn't even the worst part. We had absolutely no boatspeed, when the start sounded. It was hurting my competitive heart to see all the wrong decisions of our helmsman, but I didn't really have any way of influencing what was going on. I had the role of second jib trimmer, which essentially meant I had no decision making power at all. The roles with influence are the helmsman, the tactician, the main sail trimmer and the jib trimmer and it is also important to have a good centerboard trimmer. The rest of us are working mainly at their commands. Our roles are second, third and fourth jib trimmer (the fourth is in charge of releasing the jib, and the two in the middle are just muscle), starboard and port centerboard trimmers (muscle for the centerboard trimmer) and two guys working the halyards.
After the disaster start we sailed upwind and rounded a the top mark. Then there was a long leg of reaching and some zigzagging back towards the start line. The course was very odd, because the lake is fairly narrow and the wind came from the side. I think we did a lot of mistakes, but we also made some good choices and our tactician was very attentive so we always got well clear of the other boats. That is in fact an important issue as they tend to sail very aggressively, luff each other on the downwind and even chase each other into starboard situations. I can be quite tense, because the boats are so big and heavy that it can be difficult to maneuver away from tight situations. I was quite frustrated with our helmsman for steering such a bad course towards the wind, but I couldn't really express that to anyone. Obviously, I would not be allowed to show him how it's done, because you need all sorts of certificates to sail a Skûtje. It warmed me inside, when Charlotte our jib trimmer expressed it for me. "Arh! We varen echt zo...! (big zig zag motion with her hand)". But even if I was struggling a bit with suppressing my competitive ambition, I fully enjoyed the race. being part of a race with 30 other big boats race, who all compete intensely is a lot of fun. We kept getting into close situations, overtaking and being overtaken by others throughout the entire race, which lasted for two and a half hours.
After the race we evaluated it in a manner that I have come to recognize as very dutch. We do it at work as well. Everyone sits in a circle and are asked to say their opinion. It is a very uncomfortable exercise, but the dutch seem to like it. It puts one person on the spot and if a negative opinion is voiced there will be a discussion about it. The helmsman will get defensive and it will be altogether unproductive. Instead we all said how much fun we had had, and the skipper talked about the things he liked from the day. The experienced crew members had some suggestions for the next day, which were in fact less like suggestions and more like orders to their 'muscles' to pay more attention to the commands. I was a little depressed at that, as it looked like we would have the exact same problems the next day as today. But at the very end of the circle-meeting I learned some great news. Our helmsman was going home and the only other person who were allowed to take the helm was our tactician. That meant the tactician's role would be open for me or Martijn. When I heard this, I confirmed that I had understood correctly (it was in dutch) with Niek and then did a "Yes!" gesture (at the part about me or Martijn becoming the tactician). That settled it and I got the role. I knew I would be able to make a big difference for our team in the next days race and I also trusted our new helmsman more than the previous one...

I am alone!

I get word from my host, go speed-dating and prepare for the weekend.
I am the first in the office this morning! I guess I will go ahead and do something as unproductive as writing this blog :)
Yesterday I got news from my host. I can stay in the apartment until the 27th. She already moved out, so I have the whole place for myself. I am looking so much forward to being able to keep the kitchen clean!

With Orionis the new members are no longer in monstergroups, but we still need a group to belong to. This time, we can form the groups ourselves. They are called Jaarclubs (year-clubs) and last for the remainder of the first year with Orionis. If you still want to belong to a smaller group after the first year, you should join a 'Commissie' (Orionis department) or a 'Dispuut' (Not sure what they do). To get the best opportunities for forming a Jaarclub with some nice people we went speed-dating. I didn't expect much from it, so I was positively surprised. In the beginning we had a fair amount of time and did it in a 'double-date' style. That was nice, as we could relax and just enjoy something that seemed like a natural setting. But at another bar (we moved around in groups and met other groups in bars around the area) we did some very fast 1 to 1 speed-dating and I found that to be quite exhausting. A new name every couple a minutes, a basic story from each of us and goodbye. Then a new person is looking expectantly at you... It's not like you can say "Sorry, I'm not interested in hearing about you, can we just relax and drink our beers?". Anyway, I went home as soon as the event was over, because I wanted to get some sleep before the weekend.
This weekend I am going to sail a competition in the Skûtje. I have heard there will be around 30 Skûtjes present and even though they are huge, old ships, they are very competitive and they are all very similar. There are some fairly strict class-rules and I find that quite impressive, considering how big they are. I think it will be a lot of fun.

Now I better get started working... Although I am still alone in the office!

Am I alone?

I wonder what's going on at my apartment...
Yesterday, when I came home I felt a little uneasy. Something was not like it used to be. The floor was too clean and the hall too empty. The usual trash near the front door was gone and the clothes rack in the hall had only a few coats on it as opposed to it's usual abundance of clothes. There were also just a few pairs of shoes. The kitchen was like it always is, filled with old food and unwashed dishes and generally a mess. Seeing that put me at ease, and I went to my room and closed the door like always. I thought my host might have got the splendid idea to clean up some of the family's clothes, possibly to sell it or something... She was not in, but I didn't think too much about that. Although she is usually here, she does sometimes leave the apartment.
Today, I am increasingly worried. It's not a natural thing for me to be worried, but being abroad simple things can sometimes be a little more scary. The apartment today is almost completely empty. I don't know if the living room was this empty yesterday, I didn't check, but today the door was open and I could see that all the furniture was gone. My host is still nowhere to be seen. The kitchen looks exactly like yesterday, except there's now mold on some of the food (please, don't think badly of me for not cleaning it; doing so would be a massive task and I don't think my host would be grateful for it). How do I eat? You might wonder. There's a microwave and the ready-made steam-cooking meals from Albert Hein (convenience supermarket) are of high quality.
This is a strange post I know, but please don't be worried for me. I will worry myself, so you don't have to. I've got several back up plans in mind if my host decides to move out of her apartment without telling me. I'm preparing for the worst, but I hope she will come back soon and explain what's going on.

My last week as a monster

I visit the Van Gogh museum, participate in a game of Crazy 88, eat boerenkool, get a visit from Denmark and go to Friesland for the final event of the introduction to Orionis.
This last week has been full of events with Orionis and I have had no time to update the blog. Therefore you can look forward to another long read today, as I will be catching up with this post.
Sunday, eight days ago, I visited the Van Gogh museum, which my colleagues had recommended. I took an audio tour and learned a lot about Van Gogh and his paintings. The museum leads you through a great storyline of Van Gogh's life as an artist and showcases a large collection of his paintings, drawings. The life of Van Gogh is well documented, because he wrote a lot of letters to his brother, Vincent. It is also dramatic as he gets himself into a lot of trouble by arguing with other painters, he becomes mentally ill and he commits suicide at an early age. I think I like the story more than the paintings. His style of art was ahead of his time and I admire him for being able to understand so much about art before everyone else, but I find the works of contemporary artists more interesting and relevant.

Monday, Orionis had arranged an event called Crazy 88. It is a game you win by completing as many crazy tasks from the list as possible. It gives me associations to American Pie: Beta House, I don't know if you've seen it... Anyway, I had a feeling that it would be fun, if we really committed ourselves to it, but otherwise not. So, I did my best to lift the mood of the group and have fun with the tasks, but it didn't work very well. I think there were just too many problems - it was organized poorly. If you ask me what the most crazy thing I did was, then I think you will be disappointed to hear that I didn't do anything worse than climbing a lamppost and get a little ride on the back of a stranger's bike.

Wednesday was much more fun. We had dinner in our group and everyone was there. That's 14 students in one student apartment. We had a traditional dutch dish called Boerenkool, which is the name of a cabbage used in the dish. The dish is made by mashing potatoes and Boerenkool together. It is served with brown sauce, bacon, sausage and apple puree. It's the type of dish you eat with your grandparents on their farm, but it's also had by students because it is so cheap to make.

Friday, my mom and two of her friends came to visit Amsterdam. We arranged to meet at their hotel and I showed them around in the city. We visited Museumsplein, where the Van Gogh museum is located and walked to the center. Here we found a nice place to have lunch right next to Bloemenmarkt, the famous flower market. We had tapas outside in the sun and felt lucky to have found such a nice spot right in the center. After having lunch we walked through the old part of Amsterdam and did a quick step in and out of the Red Light District. Then we crossed the Ij river on a ferry and had coffee on the terrace of the EYE museum. We enjoyed the view of the Ij river, the nice sunny weather and our coffee until I had to leave for Friesland. I've since heard that they went on to take a canal cruise that afternoon and they also enjoyed the great weather Saturday.

I left for Friesland by taking a train to Baarn. Here, I met up with one of my group members who had arranged for his father to drive us to Balk, Friesland. When we arrived, we were greeted by the MoCo (the organizers of the weekend) and we got checked in and unpacked. As there was no dinner arranged for us, we then went to a snack bar and had fastfood. After dinner we all gathered in the main room and got an official welcome by MoCo. They told us to prepare ourselves to show ourselves to show our act (like everyone else we had prepared an act, which mostly consisted of making fools of ourselves for a minute). So we all got dressed up and went to the discotheque in our costumes. The Moco kicked off the show themselves with a great act. They were dressed up as captains and stewardesses, did a good choreography to some nice party music and they had the whole crowd cheering and dancing. Everyone had a lot of fun we all got to show our acts. In between each act the DJ made sure to play some music that got people dancing, so we didn't grow tired of watching the poor performances of the groups. It was great fun and we danced on to around 3.30.

My group, dressed up for our silly act

The next day started at 7.30, when we got up and did a little gym routine together. I don't mind that kind of thing, but some people were a bit tired from the day before. We also did a little race, I think we ran 400-600 meters. I won, because I like to compete and I'm not that bad at running. This gave us some more points towards the trophy and I was rather pleased with that. Then we had a horrible breakfast (I don't like dry white bread with ham and I had to drink a lot of milk to get through my sandwich) and then we went sailing. I got on a team with Derek (instructor), Thea (Finnish Girl from my group), Thalina and Rosa. Together we sailed in the Valk and we had a great time. The weather was perfect, sunny all day and 7 m/s. Two times we went past a cafe at a bridge, where many of the others stopped, but we preferred to sail instead. We had lunch on a little island in the middle of a lake (white bread again! What is wrong with you Dutch students?!). I don't think I can accurately describe how much I enjoyed the sailing, but I'll give it a try. I felt happy all over and gave compliments to Derek for being a nice instructor, I talked a lot (a side effect from being very happy I think) and at one point I noticed, how overflowing I was with happiness and decided to just close my eyes and enjoy that...

Back ashore the MoCo had something special planned for us in the evening. It was an initiation ceremony, executed in cult-like style. My overall impression of the event is, that it was very well executed, but I don't think I would ever arrange something like that myself. But you must see it in a context, because all student unions in Amsterdam does this kind of thing. The basic idea is that new members should be treated very poorly by the older members up until they complete the initiation ceremony and become full members. This is supposed to make them feel a sense of accomplishment for becoming a member and a strong connection to the other new members, who suffered the same pains. I had been warned on beforehand about this and I made sure to wear some clothes that I didn't care too much for...

First, they took us outside and had us march up and down the street in silence. They would shout at us like sergeants teaching us to obey orders without question and to stay silent, unless asked to speak. While we did this, I had a feeling that they were just stalling for time. There were only two MoCo present and they didn't really have anything they wanted to accomplish other than put us in the right mood. When we walked silently, in orderly rows back inside the main building we could see why. The whole place had been covered in black plastic bags, there were small candlelights everywhere and we had to sit on the floor in front of an elevated desk with three MoCo dressed in black robes. More Moco were standing around with water pistols in some rather sexy guard costumes (well, at least the girls looked sexy). Intensely dark music were being played, the type of music you would expect in a movie at an execution scene and MoCo and their helpers were amplifying the music by stomping the ground. The effect was stunning, and I must say I was positively surprised again by the amount of hard work they must have put into it, to make such a good execution in the end. After the music stopped there was a long, tense silence before the MoCo finally addressed us and started the games. Groups were called forth to compete against each other. Often the most brave would step forward and champion for their groups in the games. To mention a few examples, the champions did: showcase sexual positions and use them to pop balloons, drink beer out of a shoe, play a quiz game where you could only answer after smashing a cream bun (floedebolle) on top of a group members head and get their hair on the chest waxed off. If your champion, or sometimes your whole team, lost the competition you would be punished. Some of the punishments were: getting 'a pancake' meaning having the ingredients of a pancake mixed in your hair, getting your hair spraycolored (we got that one, green and silver glimmer)... I think you get the idea from these examples. It lasted for a couple of hours and I got a little tired of it in the end. The fatigue from not having slept much last night was also setting in. I was quite indifferent to getting punished or not, unlike some who were scared of it, so I didn't really stay emotionally involved and got bored. In the end we got our diplomas and got declared full Orionis members. Up until that point we had been called monsters. We then went on to party at the discoteque, I guess some people had a shower because I didn't see any pancakes that night, but my group went with our colorful hair and champagne-sprayed clothes. This night the event was a beer relay tournament. Unfortunately the DJ was less successful at getting everyone to dance in between the beer drinking matches, so the event felt too long. The good part was that we won the tournament, but there was a lot of confusion and the other team initially got declared the winner. Only later did it get discovered that we had in fact won. We were very proud of this and we also got some points towards the trophy. This night I went home early. It had already been a long day and I didn't really feel like dancing all night. The house was still locked when I got home, I guess I must have been one of the first, but I climbed in through a window and took a nice warm shower before going to bed. I fell asleep around the time my group members started coming home.

The next day I woke up feeling much better rested than the day before. We slept until nine and had some nice breakfast served, because the MoCo wanted to emphasize the difference from last night when we were still monsters. After breakfast I was ready to go sailing, but unfortunately it was very windy and the MoCo decided we should stay ashore. That could have been a good decision if they had planned something for us to do while staying ashore, but they didn't. We ended up doing a lot of waiting, spending a lot of time among ourselves and doing a few silly games. It felt like waiting for the bus to arrive and I guess it was. I think they should have let the experienced sailors have their fun instead or at least have a proper backup plan, but ok nobody's perfect. I still think they did a great job overall and I feel inspired to take some things home and see if we can make something happen in Denmark. The final thing before the bus arrived was the trophy ceremony. I felt confident that we would win, as we had won the notable competitions and we were also ahead before we came. However, we ended up in second place, behind a team with a somewhat different strategy for earning points. Points are also awarded for kissing and this team apparently did a lot of that, one of them even managed to kiss with a MoCo (that's a lot of points, you see). But even though we didn't win, I felt quite good at the ceremony. We got a special applause for winning the beer relay and the best thing... Do you remember the t-shirt I mentioned a couple of weeks ago? How I said: "I bet it will turn out great and end up as a famous t-shirt"... Well, I'm not sure if it got famous or not, but it won the best t-shirt award, so at least it got the attention of the MoCo (I'm proud of it, so what? It's my blog).

The end of a this great weekend was the trip home by bus. I had expected everyone to sleep, but in fact the mood was still good. We sang along to a few songs and had ourselves a little afterparty as the bus-driver suggested. I've never had such a cool bus-driver before. He was playing music for us and encouraging us to party. At one point we were in a queue, so he left his seat and went upstairs to talk with us. When the queue started moving he had to run down and start the bus again. We all said our goodbyes at the Amsterdam central station Sunday evening.