daBlog by goddess101

Art House

Rudi and I have been enjoying ourselves quite a lot lately, not just programming (although there’s certainly still a lot of that), but also doing art! Rudi began participating in an art group with Edgar Jansen (whose website I occasionally update) in January of this year, which features a nude model posing in the middle of a room for 10-15 minutes at a time while the group sketches or paints her. This particular group (with ever-changing members of course) has been around for 35 years and was recently featured in one of those homeless mags (like Street Sheet in the U.S.) with guess who’s art on the cover? Rudi’s!

What was originally considered a mistake – the elongated neck and misplaced head was not planned – has now been validated as a piece of art by the city of Amsterdam! Not bad for a guy who has been “studying art” for only a few months and sits down to draw once a week at most.

When I got back from my recent trip to San Francisco, Rudi was pretty anxious to have me give this nude-model thing a try. After all, he knew that sketching and drawing was something I loved doing long ago. Unfortunately, the art group is pretty crowded on the days he goes, so he and Edgar arranged for a model to come to our home to do a private session for the three of us. Ooooh, how fun and exhilarating. Yeah, you’re probably thinking, how else are you going to feel with a strange, nude woman in your living room? But, really, the process of drawing is as scary and exciting as a roller-coaster ride, and easily more satisfying. In those 15 minutes, several thoughts go through my mind: where the hell am I going to start?, i’m making her look too fat, now she looks anorexic, this is going to look like crap, this looks like crap!, there’s not enough time, maybe I can strategically hide this one when we show off our stuff to the rest of the group, and so on. Yet, even though I tend to torture myself during each pose, I somehow get passed that, turn the drawing around somehow, and I’m always proud of the final result. No, I don’t think I’ve created true works of art, but it’s extremely satisfying to realize you have created something out of nothing, in just 15 minutes no less.

So, yeah, this art thing is really fun… I started out doing pencil sketches, but after some research on the web, I wanted to try to work with pastels. Yesterday, I bought a set of soft pastels, for just 5 euros, and started playing around with them. Oh, what fun! I used to have a paint set when I was a teen, which contained acrylics and oils, but hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with them. I might have had pastels too, but I never touched them. I stuck to the oils, trying to do my best Bob Ross imitation, but I guess I just didn’t have the patience, and certainly not the focus, so my results were disastrous and debilitating.

Anyways, pastels are such an interesting medium. It’s all about the color blending, which is always done after the color is applied to the paper/canvas. Sounds a bit backwards, but it certainly works. In my “computer guy” pastel, I didn’t have any flesh tones in my palette. So I started off first with a mostly white face, then added a bit of brown, orange, yellow and red, blended it all together, and viola, got a tone that mostly resembles skin. Pretty neat.

This art thing is definitely something we plan to continue. We’re due to arrive back in the states soon, so we’re already on the lookout for nude women to come to our home.

Green Thumbs

One thing I really like about the Dutch is their love for plants, flowers, and all things in that vein. There is this joke from a book called “UnDutchables” (a popular read among expats which examines the Dutch culture from an outsider point of view) which mentions that you will need a machete to hack your way through a Dutchman’s home because of all the foliage you will encounter. This isn’t entirely true, but i’ve seen apartments with, say, 5-10 plants in the living room alone. Garden shops are certainly very popular here too, and its not uncommon to see homegardeners hauling 20 kilo bags of soil on their bikes.

So, I’m reminded of this funny little quirk because of what I encountered at the local grocery store today. They were selling baby apple trees and pear trees, and that struck me as something most Americans probably wouldn’t find at their local Safeway or Ralphs. The thought of loading a box of cereal, a bottle of wine, a bag of M&Ms and—oh why not since I’m short of them this week anyway—an apple tree… that just makes me giggle.

Left in the Cold

Ah, the refrigerator saga continues.

A little over a month ago, I noticed something was wrong with our BOSCH fridge. It was slowly failing. First the refrigerator part went warm, then the freezer. Luckily, our landlord had bought the refrigerator immediately after we moved in (because the refrigerator already in place was dead), and he let me keep the receipt. So, after some rigamarole involving warrantees and the like, I finally got a BOSCH technician to come to our apartment to diagnose the problem. Turns out the compressor had gone kaput and needed replacing. A couple of days later, we got the new compressor installed, and we were happily buying ice cream and other spoilables again.

One month later, the refrigerator goes warm again. I give BOSCH a call on Friday morning, and they tell me they will send a technician Monday afternoon sometime between 12 and 6pm. So Monday rolls around and I get a call from a BOSCH technician around 10:45am. He asks me if I will be at home this morning because he wants to come earlier. I said sure, and he says he’ll be here in 15 minutes.

So, I started getting concerned around 12:30pm, but didn’t do anything until 2pm when I called the BOSCH service center to tell them we had been expecting a technician around 11am but he never arrived. I was told that was _niet bedoeling_, or “doesn’t matter,” and I was assured that someone will show up between 12 and 6pm.

As we had expected, that never happened.

I called BOSCH again the following morning to find out what happened. Apparently, our request for service had been cancelled! Turns out a technician indeed was in our vicinity, was greeted by someone who spoke English and was told that no repairs were needed. So he went away, cancelled the service call, further killing any doubt that the Dutch are amongst the world’s worst in customer service.

So, why didn’t the dude call again? Wasn’t it obvious to him that he had arrived at someone else’s doorstep? If he had made the effort to call me in the first place, why didn’t he do so again?

That’s the main complaint expats have about the Amsterdam’s brand of customer service: no one will take that extra step, no matter how trivial, to assure quality service. I remember hearing this one story about a Brit, who had been living in Amsterdam for a few years, return back to the UK and was surprised by a very simple gesture. He was grocery shopping, saw that the store had been out of one particular product, so he asked a stockboy if he could find it anywhere else in the store. The stockboy replied with a “I’ll go check in the back” and at that, the Brit was aghast. He had not heard those words uttered, in Dutch or English, by anyone in the service/retail sector the entire time he was in Amsterdam. This is a story I tell often, and most expats, upon hearing it, always agree.

So, now we’re left with a warm refrigerator and cold hearts for friends at BOSCH. I just got a call back and now they tell me the earliest they can have someone out here is this Friday. I could fight it, try to get them to come earlier, but I know it’ll be futile. I can already hear the phrase “That’s not possible,” easily the most common punt technique used out here, ringing in my ears.

You know how Eskimos, who usually live in icy climates, have several names for the word “snow”? Or how the Spanish, often considered to be amongst the most passionate cultures, have several ways to use the word “love”? When Rudi and I took our beginners’ Dutch course together, our instructor gave us at least 5 different ways to say “that’s not possible.” In retrospect, I think that’s quite telling.

Household Matters

Getting stuff repaired in a rented apartment sucks, doesn’t it? A lot of people I know hate calling the plumber. They would rather live with an annoying leak than deal with a stranger coming into their home. And if something vital breaks, say, like a refrigerator, then the whole world just seems to stand still until it gets fixed or you have to buy a new one, doesn’t it? Somehow, you can’t relax until it’s taken care of.

Oh man, that’s what’s been happening here and it’s driving me insane. On top of all the other stuff that cilibrar and I are currently involved in, our central heating system (which we absolutely depend on for hot water) AND our refrigerator decided to break down at the same time. What’s worse is:

1. our landlord is in Bonaire until October
2. we can’t seem to reach him via email (well, at least we’re not getting any repponses)
3. the guy who is supposed to be handling any household repairs for us is AWOL (can’t be reached by cell phone and his home phone is disconnected)
4. we are in a foreign country, where most folks who deal in domestic repair stuff (as opposed to, say, computer technology) can’t speak English

It’s a real, stressful drag. Luckily, we got our hot water fixed on Sunday. That’s a load off my mind ‘cuz hot baths are what cilibrar relies on to relax him, and an annoyed cilibrar means a shitted-on me. But the fridge is still busted. On the bright side, it isn’t super important anyway cuz we’re quitting dairy and meat, and at least the freezer works. But I’m now waiting for the original manufacturer to call so we can get a service person out here. But man, the waiting is agonizing. And there’s also a bit of worry cuz the lady I gave my number to could barely speak a word of English; I actually had to carry out most of the conversation in Dutch, and my Dutch is pretty terrible. Anyhoo, it’s so hard to concentrate on much else until I get that phone call. I keep thinking about how I just went grocery shopping yesterday, and the perishables I do have are just getting more perishable by the minute.

I think the main reason I’m stressing out over all this is because based on all my interactions with the Dutch, no one is really reliable. Phone calls not returned, appointments missed, promises never realized—it makes you pretty skeptical. Worst of all, that Dutch conversation I had this morning was agonizing enough as it is, and somehow, I know, that I’m going to have to get on the phone again with another woman who can’t speak a word of English and I sure as hell am not looking forward to it.

Trying Not To Be Offended

There’s this funny thing our landlord does every time he leaves our apartment after helping us out with a household issue, whether getting our toilet fixed, buying us a desk, whatever. I often tell him, “Thank you very much.” And he replies, “No thanks.” I often think that’s funny, ‘cuz obviously he means something more along the lines of “No problem” or “No worries,” yet chooses a phrase which has loads of negative connotations to these American ears. You don’t want my thanks, buddy? Well let me tell you where I think you should shove it!

Anyhoo, I always thought it was just my landlord that did it, but after I left my doctor today, and said good-bye with my usual “Thank you very much,” he goes and says “No thanks.” How funny these Dutch pick up the wrong way to say things, like they were never told the right way. Then again, I didn’t bother to correct him either. And I guess who am I to talk ‘cuz I come from a culture that insists on saying “higher the sound” instead of “turn up the volume.”