The Classic

Had to start with tulips of course, playing around with the camera and lighting.

Next up is hopefully some urban shots around Amsterdam.

Upgrade - Better Late Than Never

I've been a standard point-and-click photographer for the last 20 years but have finally decided to indulge a long-hidden interest by purchasing my first ever SLR camera.

I trawled through a lot of review sites and spoke with a few friends and decided a good starting point is the Canon EOS 1000D.

So hopefully as I start playing around with some of the settings I'll be able to start uploading some more interesting pictures than I've been able to produce to date.

Casual Gaming

Most Internet users these days are probably casual gamers without even realising it.

If you haven't wasted a few months weeks hours minutes playing one of these then you should give it a go.

Optimum Change

Here in the Netherlands pocket change seems to be a very important part of day-to-day life (especially at the supermarket!). We can hardly pay for anything in cash without being asked if we have the exact change. I'm not sure if there's a shortage of change or it's just what people are used to, but each to their own.

After seconds of intense research one morning I determined the optimum amount of change to put in my pocket and I felt a discovery of this nature must be shared with the world!

The smallest coin that generally gets used here now is the 5 cent coin, so it's important to have one of those, also 2 x 10c, 1 x 20c, 1 x 50c, 2 x €1, 1 x €2. And for the notes preferably 1 x €5, 2 x €10, 1 x €20 and a €50.

"Why?", I hear you roll your eyes and ask? Well this enables you to produce any combination from €0.05 to €99.95, with 5c increments :)

Metro Tickets

We found ourselves spending New Year's eve heading to our friends place in Amstel. We took the Metro from Nieuwmarkt and the guard was already at the machine helping everyone out with their tickets. We'd done it many times before so we started doing our usual purchase: 4 x 1 Hour tickets (one each for the outbound journey and one each for the return trip since it would be more than an hour before we'd return).

The guard then told us that the Metro would be closed 8pm till 1am, which we were surprised to learn, and he also told that we only needed to buy 1 ticket each as long as we checked out properly at Amstel... because the tickets last for an hour of usage, NOT an hour from when they were purchased... so we've thrown away a dozen or so usable cards over the last year! Ah well, at least we found out now rather than after another year of living here!

The Perfect Fridge

Well you have to hand it to the Dutch, they certainly know how to create the perfect fridge!

This is our deck this morning.

Fietsen! (Bikes)

Well we finally managed to get some bikes! Living and working centrally has kept the priority low but we decided to take the plunge and get on to two wheels with the masses in Amsterdam!

We bought one from Fietspiraat that was quite good but unfortunately needed repairs to the pedals two weeks later (that they took care of for free) and a second one from Recycled Bicycles which we strongly recommend. They have 5-10 second-hand bikes at any one time and the guys there are really friendly and restore the bikes well before reselling. Most of theirs come from reclaimed bicycles from the police so they get a new ID number which makes it easier to track if stolen.

We got the standard rear-wheel circle lock and the secondary front-wheel/frame mega-lock, but we're thinking of getting a third. (Recommended by the locals!)

No New Zealand is not part of Australia

New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

Just so we're clear :)

The usual argument people falsely cling to is:
As a cultural construct, the concept of a continent may go beyond the continental shelf to include oceanic islands and continental fragments. In this way, Iceland is considered part of Europe and Madagascar part of Africa. Extrapolating the concept to its extreme, some geographers take Australia, New Zealand and all the islands of Oceania (or sometimes Australasia) to be equivalent to a continent, allowing the entire land surface of the Earth to be divided into continents or quasi-continents.

BBQ @ Amsterdamse Bos

My work team had a BBQ at Amsterdamse Bos park this evening. It's a lovely huge park with bicycle and horse tracks everywhere. We arrived about 6pm and started cooking around 7. Everyone else seemed to be playing some kind of sport or doing some kind of fitness activity so we enjoyed watching.

We took the 170 bus from near our work, but it also goes from Centraal Station, you can also get the 172.

Amsterdam Library

We decided to visit and join the Amsterdam library on our walk today. We can sum it up in just one word: wow.

However, just a few more words:

Open every day from 10am till 10pm, with 9 floors of books, DVDs, CDs and wireless free Internet access!

Sign-up was easy; at the front desk with passports and proof of address we had our cards in under 5 minutes from the very friendly and helpful staff. We then paid our yearly contribution of 25 euros at the payment machine (one on every floor) and headed upstairs to explore! Computers all over the place for searching and browsing the Internet made it easy to find the books we were looking for... this time books on Copenhagen and Bruges and a couple about Amsterdam and the Netherlands in general.

Signing the books out was so easy too, machines on every floor where you place your card on a desk, the computer scans it and then you place the books and it automatically scans their chips... you press yes to confirm the titles on screen and then it prints out an invoice and you're done!

Plus they have a great restaurant on the top floor with a wonderful view over Amsterdam that we plan on going back to... probably next weekend!

Amsterdam In The Morning

I love Amsterdam in the morning. Amsterdam is lovely at any time of the day of course -- it has a great feel about it, but my favourite at the moment is in the morning. This time of day is my favourite because there are only a few shops open -- just the bakeries and fish markets on my 15-minute walk to work -- with a few others cleaning up last nights' 'fun'.

The best thing is that all the coffeeshops and pubs/cafes are completely silent, no doubt having closed only a few hours earlier while I was tucked up in bed. It's even possible to walk through the red light district and have it seem like a normal street... although I don't make a habit of confirming that :) My route to work cuts across one corner of it, but also has me crossing 6 canals so is generally quite picturesque.

It's also great because it isn't completely empty... there are a few people around, but mainly only the street cleaners or the people heading to work as all the tourists are still fast asleep in their hotels or hostels (apart from the really keen ones already out taking photos -- usually in matching raincoats and 60+) as the shops and museums don't open until 9:30 or 10am!

Van Gogh

Last Saturday we decided to visit the Van Gogh museum. They have a great deal on their website where you can purchase tickets and use them anytime between now and the end of the year, and you can even print them out and miss the huge queue. You can also do that if you have the museum card that I've mentioned before.

Van Gogh certainly had an impressive range -- he does have his own museum after all so you'd hope he had created a lot of work -- but personally I think his variety is what really makes his art stand out. My favourites are still the well-known portraits and Sunflowers, but it was good to see a lot of others that were equally interesting.

Van Gogh's work takes up the entire 1st floor, but you can see them all in about half an hour to 45 minutes unless you really want to stand in front of each piece for 5 minutes. The 2nd and 3rd floors contain a wide selection of works by some other artists, some of which were his friends.

On minor minus was the layout of the museum itself. I don't understand why museums don't have art displayed at a 30 degree angle (or so) a little higher up, so that a crowd of people can stand in front of it and not get in each others way. I'll ask my Dad to design the museum I want to build some day and it will be the first! People might get sore necks but at least it'll be worth it for enjoying the art!

Edam and the Beach!

Last weekend we visited Edam with some friends as they have a car. It was great being able to get there in half an hour and find a car park easily – there was no machine or attendant so we just had to write the time we parked there on a piece of paper and put it on the dashboard!

We wandered around the town a little and then stopped at great place called Hotel De Fortuna for a couple of drinks and some local cheese and mustard in their garden beside a canal. While there we saw the nearby draw-bridge raised by hand to allow a few boats through.

We then decided to drive across to the west coast to a beach village called Bergen aan Zee, through the slightly bigger main town called Bergen which had a lot of huge houses in a forest-like suburb, well worth a drive-through if you get out that way. The beach was amazing, similar to Mount Mauganui in many ways. There was even a cafe on the dunes with two NZ flags flying – we asked why and the owner said she ‘just liked the stars and knew there was no chance anyone would complain’!

After a few more drinks there we headed back to our friends place and had dinner at a nice local Portugese restaurant that they knew. The service was a bit on the slow side but the food was really delicious – I had the goat and it was delightfully tender!

Unfortunately we hadn't charged out camera battery, but our friends did take a few photos so hopefully I'll be able to upload those at some point.

Shopping is a necessary evil for me -- my style is one of having a specific thing in mind, browsing for as little time as possible and then going in for the purchase as quickly as possible. So recently I needed to buy some new shoes as my current pair of brown CATs were looking a little worse for wear after 3 years.

Enlisting the aid of my girlfriend I went for a stroll along Kalverstraat. We were pleasantly surprised to find a great many shoe shops along the strip, more than we thought were there, especially in regards to mens shoes. I found 1 pair that I liked enough to try on in Sketchers but once I did I realized they weren’t for me… but while there I noticed another pair I liked and my girlfriend found a pair of slip-ons that I decided to try. I liked both so bought them with a little discount for buying two at the same time!

So anyway, you’ll see very few posts like this from me, but I did want to advise that shoe-shopping here in Amsterdam is very good!

Next on my list is a new summer jacket, yay.

Dutch 101: Lesson 3

Dutch Word of the Day!

It's time to start increasing our vocabulary -- this site has a lot of great resources as well as the standard word of the day via web or email: http://dwotd.web-log.nl/

Milk

What is up with the milk in Europe? UHT seems to be very popular and for fresh milk the two standard options are full fat and half fat (half volle). We go through about 2 litres every 3 days but we still have to buy 1 litre containers to keep us just ahead of the 'going off' stage.

I'm not sure whether the treament process is different or whether it's a matter of there being so many people that the milk takes a lot longer to get from cow to human, but ours never seems to last more than a couple of days in the fridge!

Ikea

We went to Ikea the other day to find a few bits and pieces. Such a great store although I can't say I like the floorplan which takes you on a trail around all of their products but I guess they've got to try to increase sales somehow.

Getting there turned out to be fairly straight-forward, if not well sign-posted. We were able to take the Metro from Nieuwmarkt straight to Bullewijk* station. We bought 2 x 1 hour tickets each for 5 euros so that covered us both for the return journey. We could've bought 2 x 24 hour tickets but that would've been 7 euro each and we weren't planning on travelling on the Metro again during the 24 hours. We exited Bullewijk station and turned right and walked until the first major intersection and then turned left and Ikea was already visible. The first entrance we found was through the carpark so I think the general idea is to drive there rather than take public transport.

* One amazing thing to note, after we got off the train it started to leave the station then suddenly slowed down and came to stop... just to let a mother and her child that had arrived late get on the train! I can't imagine that ever happening in London, once a train has started moving the drivers there wouldn't stop for anyone.

So we wandered around Ikea for a couple of hours finding the bits we needed wanted and then went to the warehouse to gather the pieces we'd noted down. Like the other Ikea stores I've been to this one also had a huge restaurant, but we didn't go in as it was packed and we wanted to get home. At the checkouts there was a 'Contant Betaling' option and one beginning with 'Alles...', we chose the latter since we saw a sign with all cards on it and I was able to pay with my new bank card... or with 'my pin' as people seem to say here. At home we looked it up and the Contant Betaling option meant you could pay with cash so that's good to know for future as you couldn't use cash on the other tills at all.

Getting everything home was pretty easy too, we only had to pay to have one item delivered and that cost 39 euro, fortunately they were able to deliver it later that same day. We managed to carry the rest of the stuff home via the Metro. Easy!

Mutations

This may be something that is normal everywhere else in the world -- in New Zealand and the UK bank statements consist of 'transactions' -- but here in the Netherlands they consist of 'mutations'!

It seemed very odd when I read it the first time -- I'm not sure if it's a direct translation from English or if that's standard financial terminology that I've just never come across before, perhaps someone out there knows?

Either way, it's still funny to look up my mutations for the last week as in English it has somewhat different and negative primary connotations :)

Garlic Queen

Recently I had dinner at a restuarant called the 'Garlic Queen' which is between Rembrandtplein and Leidsestraat. As the name suggests, almost everything on the menu contains garlic. The selections were good, the meal itself was very tasty and I enjoyed the atomosphere of the place also.

Their website doesn't really do them justice, it's a shame they don't have any photos up as the interior is interestingly decorated. I recommend you go along -- if one of your friends really hates garlic you can always ask to have a meal prepared without it, but it really is worth trying -- the garlic ice cream was delicious!

Online Shopping

I've received my first online groceries order and AH have made a very bad first impression. I had booked for delivery between 1900 and 2100 and at 2100 with no sign of the driver and no notification of delay I rang AH to find out what was happening. They contacted the driver and discovered he was running 30 minutes late... and hadn't told them. I was told that I would get a whole 3 euros credit for my next order, which is half of the cost of delivery. Not exactly happy with that -- I expect if they can't deliver within the agreed time then delivery will be free, especially if they don't even bother to call me to let me know they're running late.

So I waited until 2200, still no delivery, tried to ring customer service again but they closed at 2130. So I continued waiting... until 2210 when it finally arrived.

I hope AH aren't the only supermarket to provide online delivery so that I can try to find one that can deliver on time. At least the food was all reasonable quality.