Doing IT Dutch

This is what a speeding ticket looks like in Ireland!

Going 22km/h over the speed limit!

I finally found some Dutchlish – Dutch English. I was in Eindhoven Airport and i saw a sign that said “Please keep passport ready“. It only took me 2months to find some wrong English – these dutch people are really too good at English.

This a reminder to myself:
Dont ever presume the data is one encoding or another – Esp when using a japanese computer.
I have spent the whole day playing with UTF-16 data. Lots of “Hmmm thats strange” moments.
Only to discover that im an idiot. Lessons were learnt today, big ones!

This is just some thoughts:

• Erasmus isn’t available in Japan?
• Some Japanese dont have excellent international english?
• Japanese are scared to live outside Japan….

This just dawned on me because i realized in Nijmegen there are people from all over the globe except Japan. Im still waiting to see a Japanese person in Holland! Im sure it bound to happen sometime…

The Dutch are just too good at English in my opinion! Its Crazy! I honestly believe if there was an equal opposite in terms of conquering the English Language to Japan, it would be The Netherlands. Its quite the change of scene! If people speak dutch to me (because they think im dutch) i simply tell them
“Eh i cant speak dutch”. They`re response is 98% of the time, a perfect fluent english complex conversation . This is just weird for me. In Japan, English is far from the dutch fluency.
However the Japanese and the Dutch are – understandably – very different.

Thats not to say speaking English here is perfect, its not. Its just different. In Japan – i had the Japan Book of Anonymous Quotes. A collection of quotes from people i have meet when i was in the land of the rising sun.
I have started the Dutch Book of Anonymous Quotes. Every line has a story behind it. The only problem i seem to be having, is that i have no easy way of memo-ing myself like in Japan.

Today was a good day (Its a friday nevertheless!), i went to Eindhoven for two classes at TU/e. I was a little worried that my cryptography class would be like last week – really difficult! Thankfully i arrived early got a front seat and understood loads! Then after i had the famous class, Linux Kernel and Hacker Hut. Thats always a fun class. The professor knows more about Linux than i can hope to know in a lifetime…
Anyway, It suddenly came to me as i was opening the door to my apartment today. Im finally settled in. I have a new printer, schedule, friends, university work, trips to plan.
Later in the day a strange occurrence happened – i got asked for ID! In dutch. Naturally i showed them my ancient rusty old “Age Card”. I think, it would be rather impossible to forge this genuine look!

Rubbish! Its everywhere, Im not saying Holland is dirty. Its just that its a small culture shock to see so many people throwing rubbish on the ground.

A wonderful selection of Meat! In the supermarket, i actually dont know which one to pick – there is such a massive amount to choose from. Its great!

Bicycle lanes. Japan doesn’t have bike lanes. Simple. Also its a different side of the road! Which is really messed up when you have to cycle across a crossroad – wondering if im going to get hit by traffic. It just doesn’t feel right!

Shops are closed early. This one is a killer. In Japan i could by an ice cream from the 7Seven at 3AM if i wanted. Here the dam shops have a closing time. I genuinely miss 24hour convenience stores!!