This is the diary of a Hong Kong Chinese girl who recently arrived in the Netherlands. Not sure if you like it but I do consider it fun! By the way, don't sneak out after reading!! Leave me a note!!!
Time flies. Half year was gone. Here is a test to see if I can resume my blog writing. Last week I was taping a TV show and tomorrow I am going to sing solo in the city hall. Cool huh??!!! Anyway, I am pretty busy this week. Shall get back to you on Saturday! Remember to come back and check me up!!!
Sorry for not able to update the blog often as I’ve been totally occupied by school which it started in end of August. Together with the individual oral training session in the inburgering department, I have to attend 3 full-day and 2 half-day school weekly. Probably my body can’t take the tight school schedule, I was bothered by fever on and off in the past 2 weeks. My Asthma also recurs due to the change of weather and I have problem to talk sometimes. Just want to let my friends know that I am fine here and I miss you guys very very much. I will get back to you as soon as my heath and time schedule turn stable.
From one of the head writers and executive producers of "Sex and the City" and the director of the Academy Award(r)-winning film, "Walk the Line," comes a fun and sexy ensemble drama about finding love in the most unexpected places. The show was just broadcasted in America in early September. If you like ‘Sex in the City’, you should not miss this one as personally I consider the latter better.
Content (source from ABC.com): Finding a good man in today's world isn't as difficult as some women think. They just have to watch out for the signs, and it's the job of Marin Frist (Anne Heche) as a relationship coach and best-selling author to help women to find the right men. She travels the U.S. to give women help about how to find the right guy, using her personal life as a model. Now that she has a fiancé, she just released her new book meant to help women find the right men for a great marriage. Before the wedding, she has one little conference in Alaska. On the plane, she discovers her love life isn't going that well at all as she finds out her fiancé has been cheating on her. She now has to forget everything. Marin resolves to temporarily stay in Elmo, where the ratio of men to women is ten to one. She has learned about men and gain new knowledge about love and relationships in this little town and get started on her new book - about men.
Have you ever seen 90-years oldies riding on motor bikes?
Or an advance pregnant lady on the bicycle together with two kids?
Or a man on suit having his dog and grocery on the bicycle?
Or a group of 3-years-old kids having cycling competition together on streets?
If you never see the above situations in your home land, you can find them all here! Welcome to Netherlands! The only country in the world which has massive road infrastructure dedicated to bikes, approximately a total of 15,000 kilometres!! Cycling in Netherlands is supposed to be safe, cheap, convenient and healthy transportation here. However, as a pre-resident in a small city like Hong Kong, I never got a chance to bike. In fact, quite a lot of places in Hong Kong are forbident to ride bicycle. For instance, I scare cycling! Once my foot left the floor, I start to panic!!! Thus, cycling seems like an impossible dream to me!!
However, regarding to my strong character, I never quit before I try! To encourage me learning cycling, Thijs bought me a folding bike which the seat is low and I was supposed not to scare to ride it!
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t manage it! Some of my friends suggested that I should sit on the bicycle and rush down to slop as human's instinct usually drives you to know how to balance yourselves in such a critical situation. Trust me! It is a MYTH!! It just scares your ass off and you still don’t know how to ride a bicycle!!!
After couple of traumatic bicycle learning experiences, I knew that I needed something to help me balance. So we installed helping wheels on the bike.
The helping wheels actually looked very impressive! It’s pink ‘Barbie’!!
Yet, my cycling sessions were still miserable as the helping wheels are mean for children bikes. It doesn’t stand stable for adult bike!!
Finally, I surrendered! I am such a loser and I don’t think I can manage to bike in my whole life! As a citizen in this flat land, not able to ride bicycle is a sin and the feeling of failure was really haunting me!! Subsequently, we decided to buy a tricycle!!
The selling price for new bicycle in Netherlands is already ridiculously expensive. However, it’s much WORST for buying tricycle!! If you complain that you spent more than 250 Euro for buying your bike, you will be totally shocked for paying more than 1,200 Euro to buy a new tricycle!! In Netherlands, every human being is supposed to know how to bike. Tricycles are mainly for the market for disables. Thus the tricycles’ companies overcharge the disables as the latter are able to reimburse their expenses from insurance companies. As an ordinary health human being, it seems to be ‘Mission Impossible’ for buying a new tricycle! So we went online and hopefully could get a cheaper second-hand one.
The e-bay in Netherlands was sold to another internet company years ago and it names ‘Marktplaats’ (http://www.marktplaats.nl/) here. It means ‘market places’ in English. Same as using other searching engine, you type in ‘driewieler’(it means ‘tricycle’ in English) on the searching space and the web site will locate the related web page for you. Don’t forget to type the word ‘invalide’ (it means ‘disable’ in English) too. Otherwise, you will only get the tricycle for children.
I never noticed that it has different models of tricycles on the market! Some are solely for carnival uses I guess.
Some of them have 2 big wheels on the front and it seems to be inconvenience when you drive it around.
Some of them are obviously for disables and I feel shame to ride on it!!!
Some sellers are very sneaky! For higher selling price, they claim their tricycle are for adult but actually for disable children. Just like the following one, we almost bought it from our first bid!
Regarding our second bid, the seller was really honest. He told us that his tricycle’s coating already fell off and it didn’t worst for his selling price. Regarding what he said, we subsequently tried to make a bargain. However, he sounded like a retard and repeating to murmur the price 250 Euro on phone. Of course, the deal was dropped!
The seller for our third bid was a grumpy old man. He asked for 595 Euro for his tricycle which he claimed himself never used it. As his selling price was too high, it only had 2 bids for it in the past 4 weeks. I lately got his email for complaining that my bid was too low and unrealistic. He even asked me to go to hell! He's funny!!
Probably God knew that I needed a tricycle for birthday gift. After a-month bidding, I finally bought my tricycle from an old lady last night. As she also lives in Utrecht city, I even rode the tricycle home by myself!!! Though lot of people looked at me like a freak when I was on the way home, I was totally content by the feeling of freedom. Let see how beautiful of my tricycle!!
Yesterday, I finally got the courage to wash the bloody jean which I put on during my health collapse. 6 weeks passed and I do feel much better now. Infection was gone and I can attend 6-hours activity continuously before I take 2-hours nap. As I am going to resume 4 full-day schooling on 30.8.06, I started to resume jogging since 3 weeks ago so as to build up my physical strength. Now I can manage 30-mins jogging daily (I did 50 to 60 minutes jogging before I got the surgery).
Thing seems to go back on track but I do feel sad inside. I’m just a year in Netherlands. For people who knew me well, I did have much change on life style; no more designers’ clothing or matching manicure and pedicure and I totally accept it. One thing does really bother me. My health condition turned to be uncontrollable here since I came here. 10-weeks lung’s inflammation and 6-weeks recovery from surgery are really too much to me though I tried to uphold positive attitude all along. In fact, I hate the health system in Netherland! It is family doctor-oriented. Those doctors appear to be able to make all the crucial decision on your health and the worst situation is you can’t change them! For example, my first family performed suck and did nothing to lessen my Asthma. However, I could not change another one because the mutual protective system and other family doctors refused to accept my case. Pretty rediculous isn’t it? I pay for my medical bill but I can’t choose doctor!
Some friends asked me why I didn’t call ambulance when I was bleeding so hard in the trip from Rijswijk to Utrecht. The truth is... we, as ordinary citizens, do not have the right to call for ambulance here. Dutch Government considers the cost for running ambulance service is very expensive. To prevent people abusing ambulance service, only family doctors are dedicated the power to call ambulance. For example, what happen if a patient can not reach the family doctor but needs the ambulance service during non office hour? The patient has to take a taxi or drive to emergency room by himself/herself. So what happen if this patient losses lot of blood on the way from driving to emergency room by himself/herself? It’s NONE of the Dutch Government’s business! To Dutch Government, upkeep abundant saving in treasury is much important than citizens’ life though she already takes 50% taxation from our salary and 19% from additional tax!!
Winter comes early in Europe. I keep my finger cross and hope my health can stand for another year in this flat land...
Last Thursday was my birthday. We had planned to go to Belgium to visit my Hong Kong online friends, Iris and Rebecca there but had to cancel the trip due to my recovering health (Regarding my late heath, will write it in next entry). Instead, we went to Gouda which is in the province of South Netherlands. It is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes and its 15th century town hall.
Gouda is about 20-mins away from Utrecht by train.
The town takes its name from the van de Goude family, who built a fortified castle alongside the banks of the Gouwe River, from which the family took its name (In Dutch, ‘van’ has similar meaning of ‘’from’ in English’ while ‘de’ means ‘the’. For someone who gets the last name as ‘van de Goude’, it means his / her ancestor from Gouda).
The main activity in Gouda revolves around the market. In the middle of the market stands the Town Hall which built in 1450 in a Gothic style.
The Gouda town hall has numerous statues of Burgundian Dukes and Duchesses and lofty step gables sprouting pinnacles. Every hour you can listen to the city hall's chimes and watch the puppet show depicting the moment that city rights were given to Gouda back in 1272 by Floris V.
Gouda also has a cheese market which opens only on Friday morning.
You'll see 'De Waag' there as well, the place where the cheeses were weighed.
Apart from seeing how people trade Cheese, you can find lot of interesting stalls nearby! (making Cheese)
(Cheese stall)
(making wooden shoes)
(hand-made pipe)
(Typical Dutch musical instrument)
(souvenir stall)
(Dutch small size pancake)
A stall is typically for children where they can make and colour their own wooden shoes.
