Sometimes I just can’t believe this is still going on.

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Gepost in: English, Injustice, Internet, Palestine
1 Reactie » | 18 januari 2010

Nog één keertje dan, over dat huwelijk van ons:

Een interview dat Daisy Mohr afgelopen zomer met ons afnam in Beirut voor Radio Nederland Wereldomroep:

Nicolien Kegels trouwt Libanese vriend op Cyprus.

(Of het ook beluisterbaar is op de site weet ik niet.)

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Gepost in: Lebanon, Life, Nederlands, Other author, Personal
Geen reacties » | 7 januari 2010

… that you’re back in Beirut?

It’s when you run into 11 people you know in the first 6 hours after leaving the house. It’s when you wake up from the sound of construction works and the smell of foul. It’s when you can have a cup of tea in a hidden place on the seaside. It’s when you walk past a bar called ‘Starbuzz’ that has all its TVs tuned to the ‘Fashion TV Arabia’ channel, including the one underneath the floor in the entrance.

It’s when you can’t think of anything else to do except go for lunch, go for coffee, go for dinner, and go for a drink – and you don’t even mind. It’s when you agree to meet people and they don’t show up, but it doesn’t matter because others do. It’s when you see an ad for ‘Philippina woman wanted to help 55 year old man in small house’ right above a poster for the weekly Filipina Disco; Sunday from noon to 7pm.

It’s when you wonder why everyone stares at you until you realize you’re the one sticking out again. It’s the sound of honking cars is louder than your own thoughts. It’s when you can satisfy your craving for both donuts and saj 24/7. It’s when there’s always someone saying ‘you didn’t eat enough, have some more’. It’s when you see a billboard for diet pills that promise to ‘cut the fat and burn the calories’ with free delivery, so you don’t need to move to get them.

Beirut, it’s good to be back (even if it’s only for a short while).

P.S. I have some trouble uploading pictures to my blog, but if you click on the light-blue parts of the sentences you will see examples of what I am talking about.

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Gepost in: Beirut, English, Lebanon, Tourism, Typical...
2 Reacties » | 5 januari 2010

Some habits are hard to acquire. Others are not. For example, it didn’t take me long to pick up the Lebanese habit of asking ‘do you want/need anything?’ upon leaving. Whether it’s leaving a room going to the kitchen, leaving the house to go shopping, or even getting off the bus to go to work (I’m not kidding, I once heard a guy ask the bus-driver if he needed anything – how he would get the wanted item to the bus-driver once he would drive off, I don’t know); you ask the question every single time.

Usually, the question is answered with ‘your health’ – as in, you don’t need to bring me anything other than your safe return. Hardly ever is it met with an actual request to bring anything. If somebody does ask for something specific, it’s most likely because your destination is spoken of earlier and they know you’re going to that exact store that carries the item they need.

The problem started when I came back to the Netherlands and forgot that this is not standard practice. Every time I left the office, I would ask my colleagues ‘do you need anything?’ First they didn’t know what I meant. ‘Do I need anything? Like, what kind of thing?’ I would try to save face by making up a story about going to the supermarket rather than to the soup-place around the corner for lunch, to increase the chances of them thinking the question was a genuine one, rather than a strange routine I had picked up abroad. When they started ordering their groceries from me, however, it was time to lose the habit.

I still ask it though, but only on one occasion: just before packing my bags to go to Lebanon. The perpetual request?

Stroopwafels. Lots and lots of stroopwafels.

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Gepost in: English, Lebanon, Life, The Netherlands, Typical...
1 Reactie » | 30 december 2009

It’s a recurring theme in the rants of even the most experienced expats living in the Netherlands: why the generally friendly or at least often smiling Dutch people never say ‘sorry’. (It’s a recurring theme in our inter-cultural marital fights as well, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.)

And since for many expats, I’m one of the few Dutch people they know well (that’s apparently another thing that still baffles foreigners living here; how hard it is to become friends with a true Dutchie, but let’s leave that aside as well), they come to me for an explanation.

The first few times it came up, I didn’t know what they were talking about. I don’t find the Dutch people particularly rude, nor do I think they don’t apologize when they do something wrong.*

But I remembered that I was often annoyed, when living in the United States and in Lebanon, by people who kept saying sorry when I felt they didn’t even mean it. “I had a flat tire” – “I’m sorry”. “It’s raining outside so I can’t go out” – “I’m sorry”. “My dog died” – “I’m sorry”. I mean, I knew it was supposed to be friendly, but those ‘apologies’ only made me want to ask ‘why?’ Did you puncture my tire? Are you the one who made it rain? Or worse: did you kill my dog?

And then I realized what the problem was, and luckily it wasn’t rudeness: a different notion of what it means when you say sorry. The foreigners say sorry when they feel bad for you; the Dutch when it’s their fault that you feel bad. Don’t think we don’t sympathize with you – we just don’t want you to think we’re to blame.

*Except when we really did something wrong, like made a fortune by trading slaves. Then it becomes a lot harder to say ‘sorry’.

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Gepost in: English, Life, The Netherlands, Typical...
5 Reacties » | 20 december 2009

I have a typically Dutch fear, or maybe I should say a fear typical for Amsterdammers: I’m afraid that one day I will accidentally drop my keys in the canal.

Now you may have been to Amsterdam and think: that’s ridiculous! I mean, how often does one actually get close to a canal? And even if you get close, why would you run the risk of dropping your keys into the water?

Well, we also have bit of a parking problem here in Amsterdam. A parking problem that is not restricted to cars; it is almost as hard to find a spot to put your bike as it is to find a place to park your car. (There is even a three-floor ‘bike-parking-garage’ next to Central Station – it fits around 2500 bicycles and it is always full.) So what do we do? We lock our bikes to the bridges. The bridges over the canals.

Once you are busy locking your bike to the railing of the bridge, it’s a small step for the keys to drop into the water – you yank a bit too hard when opening the lock, you pull your gloves out of your bag and the keys somehow got stuck to one of them… there are endless scenarios possible. I mean, if around 850 bicycles a year end up in the canals, what about the keys?

As far as I know, it’s not in the list of phobias, so I propose clavisaquaphobia. Makes it sound a whole lot more acceptable to worry about my keys.

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Gepost in: English, Life, Personal, The Netherlands, Typical...
6 Reacties » | 21 november 2009

There is a store close to our house that sells organic things. Fruit and vegetables, cleaning supplies, tea and coffee, bread, cheese, etc. They also sell meat.

Between the entrance and the cashier they have a large banner with their guiding principles, or whatever you want to call it. Third or fourth on the list is the statement that they believe in selling only products that have been produced ‘with respect for humans, animals, and the environment’.

Yet, may I repeat, they sell meat.

How exactly is it respectful for an animal to raise it in order to kill it? I wonder.

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Gepost in: English, Injustice, Question, The Netherlands
8 Reacties » | 19 november 2009