January 2004 Archives

First in my series "Everything is better in America" is Museums. Now i'm not a big museum fanatic. And that's a shame because in The Netherlands there are famous works that draw a croud from all over the world. Like Rembrandt's Night Watch, the van Gogh Museum and eh... and more!
During our visit to New York Sweety and i visited a couple of museums and i noticed the professional approach and great collection of the museums. I wondered: why the difference? Well i found a few plain and simple reasons why American museums are better than Dutch. It's always about money. Dutch museums get 80% of their budget from the government while US museums get just 20% of their money from the government. The colections are made out of gifts from the public and companies to the community. Why does this help them be better? Well, American museums have to earn most of their income. They have to perform and be in touch with the community, Dutch museum just have to be there. Another big difference is that Dutch museums are ofter run by one person, often a historican, under great influence from the government. US museums are run by a Board of Trustees where often business people with serious experience take seat. Hence the proffesional approach i experienced. Overall US museums offer great collections and publications and a committed audience.

Here are some of the museums Sweety and i visited and liked.
Guggenheim Museum
American Museum of Natural History

Elsevier magazine ran an article this week called "Everything is better in America". The article handles 14 fields on which things are better in America. Thanks Elsevier for giving me so much blogging information, it's just a shame you guys didn't mention my site in the article :)

I'll use the information in the article as inspiration the coming weeks, so expect to agree with Elsevier and me.... Everything is better in America!

Rise of the Nations is distracting me from my Windows 2000 MCP study.... I need to get seriuos, Rise of the Nations will never get me a job in the US, being fully MCSE might help :)

CNN and Money have an online test to determine what the best place for you to live is. Check it out here...

Everytime i take the test it comes with a list of places in New Jersey. So is New Jersey the best place to live? And is that just for me of in general? Take the test and let me know where you're supposed to live.....

I love Sweety (great site!) and not just for making my site look so great :) She spend all day working on the new look for my site and the result is beautiful! Thanks Sweety!

I decided to add a new category: Useless Dutch sayings.
In Dutch language, just like in any other, we have a lot of saying that are past on by generations. They tell you a lot about the culture and atmosphere in a country. This category of Useless Dutch sayings will be my place to tell you why i don´t like them and how they influence living in The Netherlands.

Today´s saying is: "Wanting to be the best kid in class.".

This saying is very typical for the Dutch. Being the best kid in class is considered something bad. Very bad. Nobody wants to be the best kid in class! Don´t do evertyhing by the rules, rules are there to be broken. Or at least bent. Dutch accuse eachother of trying to be the best kid in class. This saying is meant to pull you back down, where you belong! Don´t you dare try to be the best kid in class! And it works. In school you are graded on a one to ten scale, ten being to best. Nobody tries to score above seven or eight. You classmates will kick you and throw you out of the group if you do. I´ve made that mistake a couple of times. Studying hard and then score an nine or ten on a test. Nobody talked to my for a whole week, not even the teacher. He would have just loved to see me fail!

Who was the first President of the United States? Can the Constitution be changed? Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Can you name the thirteen original states?
Those are some of the question you can expect on your U.S. Citenship test. Now, i know it will take a while before Sweety (great site) and i will take it but it won't hurt to know the awnsers :)

Next time when you fall down the stairs and think your bones are broken, just call Natalia Demkina in Russia. She has X-ray vision and can see inside human bodies, according to the BBC and Ananova.
Wow, just imagine! Your boss is standing in front of you and is going on and on about some boring project. Your mind drifts away and without realising it you start counting his ribs. After a rib or five you see that his hart really is made of stone!

I really don't get it sometimes. I feel like quoting a Dutch soccer coach, he said something like "is it that i am so smart or are all of you so stupid?". How can a political party (Labour PvdA), when they where in office, legalize prostitution and support a Union for hookers on one hand and than on the other kick out one of their own (probably the most honest one) because he visited prostitutes. That's so hypocrite..... read all about it at Expatica.

I wrote more about prostitutes.

One of my colleagues (Esther) is on vacation to Turkey. She left saturday but friday the guy that was supposed to watch over her three little fishes canceled. So she asked us at the ICT Helpdesk to take care of the fish. So friday, when i had already left, she brought her little aquarium with Spongebob, Arthur and whatshisname.....

Today i had an early shift at work and arrived just before 7.30 am. What´s that smell? I turned on my pc and the lights and never thought about the fish. I was in need of coffee. And what´s that i´m smelling? When i was pouring the coffee i heard the friendly little Vietnamese cleaning lady shout: "Fishy dead!". It took a moment before i realised what she was talking about. The silence must have made her feel uncomfortable, she shouted "I not did it!". Looking at the aquarium i now realised what that smell had been. Apparently the fishes had been dead for a while. Now, i don´t know much about fish, but maybe she shouldn´t have put the aquarium on the heater..... B.I.P. (Blub In Peace)

President Bush recently proposed a major change to U.S. Immigration law, which if passed by congress, will radically change the way foreign workers are treated. Under the new proposal, anyone with a job or a job offer in the U.S.A. will become eligible for a renewable 3 year work permit and may apply for permanent residency. Even unskilled workers and those who have been in the U.S.A. illegally can qualify. Under current laws, only highly skilled workers in specialized fields can obtain work permits. The new proposal could open the door to millions of immigrants, including me :)

Read the White House Transcript. Read the White House Fact Sheet.

Wednesday evening i had a communication training at Qmagic. It was basicly more of the same.... T-Mobile had good training so not much new this time. But it was fun anyhow, although the pizza was cold when i got there. The guy that gave the training did a good job at entertaining us. There were a total of just 6 people taking the training and it was remarkable to see that half that group wanted to leave The Netherlands.... asap :)
One wants to move to Canada, one to Venezuela and (as if you don't know) i want to move to the USA. So 50% wants to move... why would that be.

We had one thing in common. We all want more space, in The Netherlands we have 16 million people living on just 33,883 sq km of land. To compare, in the USA there are 290 million people on 9,158,960 sq km. Canada has just 32 million on 9,093,507 sq km.... wow... what a space!!!
Anybody out there......? No.... hardly :)

My site was down... and now it's up again. Oops, i forgot to renew the domain registration....

First the worst news of the day. Most of you don't know my brother so won't care much but today he was told he'll be fired! That's actually better over here than in the States, you have much better job protection. So he isn't unemployed... yet. But it will happen and i really feel sorry for him. But i do see great oppertunity comming his way.

Now about the train. Sweety (great site) and i are staying at her parents place, read here why. Their house is just five minutes walking from a trainstation and it's all paid parking at my work. So, i take the train from here to The Hague and then a bus to work. I know... i shouldn't have said last week that this public transport thing was perfectly working for me....

So Sweety and i were in the train at ugly The Hague Central Station, ready to get home after a long day at work. It was time for the train to leave.... it didn't... that's nothing special, in 2003 just 83,1% of the NS trains left our dirty stinking Dutch stations in time. But this time we had to take a bus, the train wasn't going anywhere.

In the USA, Amtrak trains arrive on time 95% of the time. Now, for some reason in The Netherlands there is a lot of discussion about trains leaving on-time and not arriving on time. I'd rahter leave late and arrive on-time than the other way around. But anyhow, if you have to take the train to work, you're better of in America.

It all started out great friday. Sweety and I went to Boom Chicago, it was great! The show we saw was Best of Boom Chicago 2004. The show was hilarious and dinner was very tasty.

Then came the night after the evening.... it started at 2 o'clock, i woke up feeling nauseous. To make a long story short, i threw up twice every hour for almost the whole saturday.... No, i did not drink to much, just four beers. I just sometimes overreact to alcohol i guess. We had planned to go to the Expat shop but that was delayed.

I'm so happy!!! When i was walking from work to the bus i saw a sign that read "There's No Taste Like Home". I stopped to take a look and a there's a new store in my rainy Dutch city of The Hague: Expatshopping... they offer a wide range of British and American products. And i'm very interested in the American products. Our good friends Kev & Mel gave us a superb cookingbook, based on american products. Now i hope we can buy them at Expatshopping :)

And for all you people in the States that want to order Dutch products. Visit Holland's Best or Holland American. They both sell speculaas, Venco drop and.... duh Dutch Cheese :)

Dutch tv showed a nice program on the Bilderberg conferences. There was an interview with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and they played some taped conversations from the first meeting in 1954. When asked if the Bilderberg group is a secret shadow government Prince Bernhard awnsered "no, it's a discussion group where people are free te say what they want", and then started to laugh out loud. He then went on to say that every government that was represented at the meeting, or at least every secret service got a copy of the tape. Hmmm... why was that? A free discussion group that tapes everything and then sends copies to secret services?

More information at these sites:
www.bilderberg.org
Bilderberg Blog

A site based on one simple idea:

Present the general public with clear, concise and practical information that would be useful in deciding which course of action to consider when immigrating to the United States.
At least, that's what they say about there own site :)
It does look like a honest site with a lot of information. With lessons in American Civics, Immigration Visa Information, News and Fact Sheets.

Take a look :)
Rapid Immigration

Wow.... O N L Y 5.9 million applications for the annual green card lottery were submitted. For 2004 10.2 million applications were received. Yes! That means better changes for us :)

Last-minute applicants flooded the State Department's Web site, but the number of entries was still well below the totals for the last two years, The New York Times reported.

The countries with the most applicants were Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Nepal and Morocco. Each country is capped at 3,500 green cards, however, so the more applications, the longer the odds. I don't know how many Dutch applicants were recieved. I hope just two :)

Today was my first day at RIKZ (NL), Governmental Institute for Coast and Sea. They prevent our Dutch feet from getting wet :) As you might know i worked for T-Mobile before. And T-Mobile is an agressive customer driven commercial organization. RIKZ is a Governmental organization..... it was hard to stay awake sometimes. I had to tell the guy that was supposed to show me around what to do. Pfff.... i started today together with two other people from QMagic, one worked at IBM and the other at a Dutch cable tv/internet provider. So both also very customer driven. The three of us might revolutionize the whole IT support proces at RIKZ :)

I really think it´s time to move the American Embassy in The Hague. Right now the The American Embassy is located in the historical city center of The Hague. And i do mean historical! The Hague is a more than 750 year old city and the Embassy is right across the street from the 200 year old Royal Theater (NL). The theater was build in 1765 as wing of a much larger palace (more).

The entrance of the Embassy is located at a street called Lange Voorhout which originates from the 13th century. During the second World War an accidental bombardment by the allied forces destroyed the former American embassy at the corner of the Lange and Korte Voorhout. After the war a new embassy building was build. It is one of the ugliest buildings in the city.

But, the fact that the building is ugly is not the only reason to move it. The location is dangerous. There is just two meter distance between the building and the streets (the building is on a corner). And one of those streets is busy: bikes, cars, busses and trams. There's no way to prevent a truck from pulling up with explosives. Or we'd have to close the whole area. And that already happend numerous times. Two times just this past week. Once because of a suitcase and once because of a phonecall. It's dangrous for the people working there and for the old city center when the American Embassy stays at this location. It's time to move!

In previous posts i had some complaints about Dutch police and justice. Those where just my opinion and based on my personal experience. So i decided to do so research to come up with independent facts. Here they are and they support our dream to move to the States.

Yeay! I am back online :) To read what happend with Sweety and me you'd better read her great blog. This weekend i'll make some outdated updates on this site and then i'll post regurally again (as you requested Robert :) ).