Day 12 – bad days; good days

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a week since I last posted!

It’s been pretty much a blur what I’ve done so I’ll just summarize what I remember, as I listen halfheartedly to a podcast about epigenetics:

[Day 6]
- nothing happened. really.

[Day 7]
- I had to endure the most boring 2 hour lecture during typography class. the instructor took 2 hours to go through his past work. granted, the latter half was much more interesting than the former, however… it would’ve greatly benefitted from editing. really.

[Day 8]
- Friday. I had a class called crosslab, which is about working with new media. Our assignment was to create a “business card” using a webcam. (Still working on it, heh). The one thing that should be noted is that this is the first time the third exchange student came to class! Hooray!
- After class, I witnessed Timothy and Pauliina engaging in a heated debate about Dutch vs. Finnish bread. Apparently Finnish bread is much more superior than Dutch bread, according to the Finnish girl. The Dutch guy obviously disagrees.

[Day 9]
- There was supposed to be some sort of touristy hangout thing with the other exchange students but that fell through. Lack of planning.
- So instead, I spent an hour and a half strolling through Lijnbaan and Meent. I hoped to take pictures but they ended up looking lame.
- At about 7pm (or 19.00) Mary-Alice and I went to a bbq thing on our apartment’s roof. In sum, it was a night of a TON of beer, TON of lost-in-translation awkwardness, lack of English and drunk conversations. Not by me, I only drank a couple glasses of their cheap supermarket wine. I witnessed a couple guys downing beer after beer… 20 times. As for drunk conversations, the most memorable one was when someone (seriously) asked “what’s your favourite traffic sign?” (seriously). Then later a couple guys were in a heated debate over whether it was physically possible to have a swimming pool on the top of the roof… I left shortly afterward.

[Day 10]
- Sunday. I think I caught a cold from the night before.
- During the evening Mary-Alice invited me to eat out at a restaurant we spotted while waiting for a tram at Meent called Furore. It was pretty cool, I liked the interior’s aesthetic. Quite chic. We parked ourselves at a corner of the restaurant so it took a while before the waiter gave us our menus. Actually Mary-Alice had to get it herself. Lol.
- I found it to be reasonably priced given what was on the menu, it was semi-casual semi-high class. The menu unfortunately was in Dutch so Mary-Alice had to translate, and had a hard time doing it. Lol.
- As an appetizer we ordered Bitterballen, which is basically a croquette except it has meat instead of cheese/potatoes inside, served with mustard on the side. It was good! It’s very creamy/gooey-ish.
- I eventually ordered steak with something that translates into mashed potatoes in a circle. Well, at least I think it’s steak. It was called “jodenhaas”. Mary-Alice translated it as “rabbit” at the time but google translator claims it’s “steak”. Regardless, it was meaty. And very, very rare! Literally raw inside. I’m surprised they didn’t ask how I wanted my meat prepared, because usually they’re supposed to.
- I can attest that Coke tastes better in Europe. Much better. It’s has a refreshing taste that doesn’t sting or leave a lasting gummy aftertaste, if you know what I mean. The downside was that the 200ml bottle ended up being 2,30 euros. [Note: I noticed that commas and decimals/periods are switched when it comes to numbers. Instead of say 2,300.00 it's 2.300,00 here. I find that quite strange, haha.]
- Our orders also came with a bowl of fries (served with mayo) and salad, though we were already full that we barely touched them. I was disappointed to discover that in Europe (or at least in the Netherlands) it’s not customary to doggy-bag food home, except for in fast food restaurants (which doesn’t really make sense, I mean aren’t they already made for take out anyway?), according to Mary-Alice. So all those fries and greens went to waste. :\
- Throughout we talked about casual and stupid things. From double joints to alphabets. It was nice.
- Before we embarked our journey home I discovered that there are headlights in front of bikes, where the bike’s wheels control the motor of the lights. Hard to explain, but it was SO COOL. Unfortunately mine didn’t work. I think city by-laws make them mandatory for night use.

[Day 11]
- Monday. Start of my typography minor! This is different from my other typography course, where it’s about the application of typography through projects. This minor concentrates on theory… which I need.
- Two unfortunate things happened: 1) turns out it was in the WORST ROOM POSSIBLE. It was literally a meeting room. There weren’t enough chairs for people, and we only had about 10 in the room. There was also a sink. Yes. A SINK. And in the cabinet next to it were cleaning supplies. -_(\
- 2) Half way through the instructors unintelligible presentation I realized this was a terribly disorganized pilot class that seemed to have absolutely no aim or focus whatsoever. The material presented also appeared outdated and useless. I was disillusioned by the midway point.
- Hence, I was considering switching minors. But given the fact that the other available minors either a) needed prerequisite software knowledge or b) were just as if not more unattractive options, I decided to stick with it.
- Later I spent nearly 2 hours studying the material he wanted us to study, pausing and making notes every so often, only to find out that on PAGE 59 there was a SUMMARY of all the previous 58 pages I was taking notes on! WTF.
- Even later I spent practically half and hour trying to print two bloody pages of text (that I wouldn’t even need, as later learned the next day) because the freaking printer is in DUTCH! First it was because I was trying to print LETTER instead of A4 (damn you ISO) and second was because my card wasn’t working. OMG.

[Day 12]
- Today was interesting because it was the first day I took the bus instead of biked to school. I ended up being 5 minutes late.
- First class was grafisch ontwerpen. We had to present our ideas to the rest of the class. It was then I realized my ideas needed some work. (They weren’t bad per se, just needed refining. Lol) I was too embarrassed to show my sketches so I withheld them, heh.
- The whole class went on like this so towards the middle-end it got quite long. Naturally, I started doodling. I noticed the girl next to me, Martja(?) doing the same thing with the guy sitting next to her, Fernando. The subject of the posters was about copyrights, so they were drawing pirates going “fuck you”. So then I decided to join in and started doodling more stupid things and we eventually created a masterpiece involving pirates with eyepatches, balloon animals, some sort of crab thing dancing to disco, and stupid little profanity ladened phrases. It was genius.
- Then we did the thing where you fold the paper into three panels, and each person draws on one and passes the next to another until you form something new. It was also genius.
- And that’s how I made a couple new friends! Fernando called us the three (pirate) musketeers. Bahahaha.
- I’m too tired to finish the rest but it involved Pauliina and I pushing to drop the ‘text’ class for illustration (after enduring another awkward assignment session and perceiving it as both frustrating and pointless), a presentation with the exchange students (dutch culture course? what? you never told us that) and futile attempts to mingle afterward, and basa fish ladened with garlic cream cheese and spinach for dinner. Mmmmm.

Dutch word(s) of the day:
jodenhaas: either “steak” or “rabbit”

Finnish word of the day:
Moi: hello or goodbye, depending on context/how it’s said (Moi! Moi!)