Netherlands Trip wrap up
Sorry about the delay in writing this, but there's not really that much too the rest of the trip.
I had planned on taking a trip up to Amsterdam over the weekend of my stay but the weather was downright nasty on Saturday and overcast and drippy for most of Sunday, so I never got going with that. Which is just as well as the jet-lag was still hitting me pretty hard.
I did get to a very nice Indian place on Sunday with wonderful food. The only problem was the "atmosphere" music they were playing was all remade (old to ancient) US Top 40 songs played on Indian instruments (the electric guitar is apparently a traditional Indian instrument) and sung in either Hindi or English. I heard "Hotel California" in both languages, "Mandy" in English, what I thought was "Levon" in Hindi, plus many others. The servers were having some sort of battle via this music, they kept changing it (I could see the controls from where I was seated) and turning it up and down. Finally one of them just turned if off, to universal approval.
On the gender distribution of bicyclists: On Monday I decided to see if my impression was correct and counted how many adult cyclists of each (presented) gender there were. For the sake of not getting creamed, I limited myself to only those on the same side of the road. The final result was 44 female cyclists and 32 male ones. This is, of course, a fairly small selection and may be subject to unknown sample bias due to location and nature of employment in the area.
One of my coworkers in the NL office took it upon herself to make sure that I left with at least one Dutch phrase, but she failed, I'm afraid. Of course, this was the Canadian ex-pat in the office.
The only real "excitement" of the trip was that, on Wednesday, while walking to get cash to pay for my taxi and train ticket the next morning, I was almost run down by a pair of girls on scooters. I had stepped into the bike lane due to a bus shelter crowding right up next to it, just in time for the pair to come speeding along. And of course, this was the moment that one had chosen pass the other too. So my startled jump to the left to avoid the first just left me directly in the path of the second, causing me to make a second startled jump (back to the right, not into traffic).
And there are pictures up for viewing here.
I had planned on taking a trip up to Amsterdam over the weekend of my stay but the weather was downright nasty on Saturday and overcast and drippy for most of Sunday, so I never got going with that. Which is just as well as the jet-lag was still hitting me pretty hard.
I did get to a very nice Indian place on Sunday with wonderful food. The only problem was the "atmosphere" music they were playing was all remade (old to ancient) US Top 40 songs played on Indian instruments (the electric guitar is apparently a traditional Indian instrument) and sung in either Hindi or English. I heard "Hotel California" in both languages, "Mandy" in English, what I thought was "Levon" in Hindi, plus many others. The servers were having some sort of battle via this music, they kept changing it (I could see the controls from where I was seated) and turning it up and down. Finally one of them just turned if off, to universal approval.
On the gender distribution of bicyclists: On Monday I decided to see if my impression was correct and counted how many adult cyclists of each (presented) gender there were. For the sake of not getting creamed, I limited myself to only those on the same side of the road. The final result was 44 female cyclists and 32 male ones. This is, of course, a fairly small selection and may be subject to unknown sample bias due to location and nature of employment in the area.
One of my coworkers in the NL office took it upon herself to make sure that I left with at least one Dutch phrase, but she failed, I'm afraid. Of course, this was the Canadian ex-pat in the office.
The only real "excitement" of the trip was that, on Wednesday, while walking to get cash to pay for my taxi and train ticket the next morning, I was almost run down by a pair of girls on scooters. I had stepped into the bike lane due to a bus shelter crowding right up next to it, just in time for the pair to come speeding along. And of course, this was the moment that one had chosen pass the other too. So my startled jump to the left to avoid the first just left me directly in the path of the second, causing me to make a second startled jump (back to the right, not into traffic).
And there are pictures up for viewing here.