I am always annoyed when I see English constructions like “marry with” and “learned me”. These are typical Dunglish. A few weeks back, my apartment was covered in little bits of paper containing Dutch verbs and their matching prepositions, so now the shoe is on the other foot. Some are easy to learn, others are [...]
Entries from June 2008
June 26, 2008
Euro 2008 diary
A few bits and pieces related to Euro 2008, seeing as it’s coming to a close:
NRC.next ran a story about the Netherlands being the only country who really go for all these gimmicky products [nl] such as Welpies and trom-pets etc.: “in other Euro 2008 countries there are just flags and tshirts”.
The Dutch Prime Minister [...]
June 22, 2008
Amsterdam revisited
I recently revisited Amsterdam for the first time in a good six months. This time I was the guest of Alex and Bellinda, the latter of whom is also an Australian PhD student in the Netherlands. They live out to the east, so we spent Saturday bar crawling around that area.
I was actually pleasantly [...]
June 19, 2008
Cursor
An article about me and my “funny” blog appeared in today’s Cursor.
The photo was taken in the Vertigo atrium, which is where I sometimes go to get away from my desk. The Welpies were the photographer’s, but he let me keep them — the white one sits on my work computer and the other [...]
June 15, 2008
Netball?
One of the most popular sports in Australia is netball. It’s a typical Commonwealth sport, just like cricket, except it’s usually a winter sport, just like AFL. The aim is to score goals, however only a couple of players can actually score. I think it’s a simple game, but then I learnt how to play [...]
June 8, 2008
Expat gatherings
I am moving in two circles of Eindhoven expats at the moment: one an official expat group, one a not-so-official group.
A few weeks back I attended a MEETin Eindhoven event for the first time. This group is made up of mainly UK/US expats and a few Germans (I didn’t get to meet everyone, so I [...]
June 2, 2008
Oranjegekte
I don’t think I’ve covered the colour orange before. The Dutch are similar to Australia (and New Zealand and India, according to an old SMH article) in that they compete in sporting events in (a) colour(s) that is/are not on their flag. The colour orange comes from the royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau.
Oranjegekte is [...]
