Amsterdam, the Honeymoon

My first half a year in Amsterdam.
In the DFAIT Intercultural Effectiveness course that I took before I went to Ghana, the instructor described the "Stages of Cultural Adaptation".  The pre-departure jitters --> the honeymoon phase --> culture shock --> adaptation --> re-entry shock.  The duration of each stage depends on the individual and the experience -- in my 6 month post in Ghana, the honeymoon lasted about 3 weeks, culture shock about 3 weeks, then adaptation for about 5 months interspersed with mild honeymoon/culture shock blips.

[borrowed from http://www.expatmumsblog.com]

When I moved from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam my pre-departure jitters were virtually non-existent because it took me over a year to move here -- normally I give myself about 2 weeks notice before I move to a new country.  And remarkably, I seem to have remained in the honeymoon stage for the past five months here.  I have characterised this post-Abu Dhabi interstitial period as:
"Mini retirement"
"Sabbatical"
"Intermission"

And have used the following job titles:
"Kept woman"
"Home economist"
"Lady who lunches with ladies who lunch"
And my favourite, courtesy of Patricia:  "You're not unemployed, you're a 'freelancer'"

After leaving Abu Dhabi, I had given myself a month and a half in Canada to refuel so that I was ready for the job hunt as soon as I settled in Amsterdam.  But I quickly learnt that Amsterdam in May is not a place for professional ambitions, it is much better suited for leisurely self-indulgence.
"You know, when I first moved to Amsterdam, I was really expecting to land running, but it has surprised me how long it took me to get on my feet here."
"I know, everyone I've met here is an unemployed ex-pat partnered with a Dutch person, who was a professional-over-achiever until they landed in Amsterdam."
"Exactly, no one is expected to do anything their first six months."
"But even if I tried to do 'nothing', I just can't be idle.  My natural default is hectic productiveness, and I always have a lot of to show for my time.  I don't expect Amsterdam to be any different."

Five months after saying that, I do have a lot to show for my first six months post-Abu Dhabi, but not the sort of stuff I had initially meant.  Instead, Amsterdam taught me a lesson in leisure this summer:

Public Holidays.  With Queen's Day as the opener, May is the month of public holidays in the Netherlands.  Queen's Day was a lively inauguration into Dutch street festivities, followed by Remembrance Day, Liberty Day, Ascension Day...and the list continues.  By the time June had begun, most people had forgotten what it's like to work a five-day week!

Queen's Day, Amsterdam, borrowed from www.iamsterdam.com.

World Cup.  My biggest piece of advice to people thinking about leaving Abu Dhabi is to leave in April. This way you benefit from the best time of year in Abu Dhabi (October-March) -and- the best time of year in the temperate world (May-October).  But even with a year to plan my entry into the Netherlands, I can't take credit for landing in Amsterdam just in time for the Oranje to go all the way to the final (and for Ghana to make the quarter final!!  Go Black Stars!). "You wouldn't believe how crazy it is here.  I am woken at 9AM on game days to people cheering and howling, everyone is dressed head-to-toe in orange, and all the offices close for the day.  I can only imagine the atmosphere in South Africa?"
"No one here has gone to the office since the World Cup began."

120,000 people at Museumplein for the World Cup Final, borrowed from www.mobypicture.com.

Fitting in.  Once my belongings from Abu Dhabi actually arrived 3 months after they were packed, it was a full time job for a month just trying to make the place functional.
"What's your schedule this week?"
"I'm fitting my 1200 sf apartment in Abu Dhabi into our 400 sf apartment in Amsterdam.  All week."

Art.  Art is everywhere in Amsterdam, and it's not something reserved for an artistic elite -- it's children's playgrounds, people singing on their bikes, temporary train station installations, overhead lamps, and random street characters.  A week doesn't pass by where I haven't seen a group of people dressed in costume break out into song.

Visitors.  I finally live in a city that is both central and desirable to visit, and whether it was a quick beer during a layover, or a week of hosting houseguests, we had a summer filled with reunions and good company.  Literally every week since I moved here, we have either been out-of-town, or someone has been visiting, and it has been a fantastic way to transition into life here, surrounded by familiar faces.

Cooking.  I've never been the primary chef in the household, nor do I ever plan on becoming one, but I've had fun learning how to cook and buy groceries this summer.  We have a farmer's market 50m from our doorstep every Saturday and a vintage market 100m away every Monday.  We invented a fantastic salad with goat's cheese, the crusty bits on top of fattoush, pasta, strawberries, and chicken; I learnt how to make stuffed butternut squash; Reinier learnt how to make cepelinai (Lithuanian mega-perogies); and I remembered how to make some of my old faves such as okonomikyaki, stir fry udon, and poor man's sushi.

Couples.  One of the biggest adjustments for me has been living in a coupled world.  Everyone in Amsterdam lives with their partner, usually expat female + Dutch male.  I don't think Dutch people marry Dutch people anymore.

Modes of Transportation.  Amsterdam has some very creative ways of getting around, including the beer bike, the penis bike taxi, the luge bicycle, and the disabled guy who pops a wheeley through crowded squares.

Beer Bike, with fully functional taps, borrowed from conortje.wordpress.com.

Festivals.  There are hundreds of festivals held in Amsterdam, and most of them occur between May and September.  "You want us to come to Liverpool for the Matthew Street Festival at the end of August?  I might actually tire of free outdoor music and beer by then."

Trips.  We found ourselves saying an enthusiastic "Yes!" to every travel opportunity that landed at our doorstep this summer.  And since we never know how long we'll be living in Europe, we felt it was the responsible thing to do.  Mountain biking, camping, family, building sand forts, sailing, yachting, reunions...a special thanks to my family in Lithuania for being such outstanding hosts, as always!

By September I was actually looking forward to the transition from summer bedlam into autumn order.  As the leaves begin to brown, this week I also started Dutch courses and working part-time setting up a Dutch Waterfront Centre and Network, and next week I start working a second part-time job.

It's been 5 years since I spent a winter in the temperate north, I can sense that the honeymoon is about to end at the same rate as the winter sets in.

Trips - Ethiopia

This fall, I'm hoping to have the chance to start documenting some of the places I've been over the past few years.  Here are some notes on my trip to Ethiopia in December 2008, and please check Mikey's version as well if you're planning a trip to Ethiopia soon.

Addis Ababa - the modern-day capital of Ethiopia, the location of the African Union. Go to the National Tourism Organisation (NTO) and have them organise your whole trip around the country. Not only are they highly competent and affordable, their guides are well-educated, and they employ local guides from villages to tour you around each site, creating local capacity.

Rock-hewn Churches - 12th Century Ethiopian Christian church, The Church of St. Mary is carved out of limestone and exhibits a distinctly Ethiopian Christian character. Unlike many other parts of Africa where Christianity was imported by Missionaries in the 19th Century, Ethiopia has its own orthodox faith, was the second country after Armenia to declare itself Christian, and includes its own array of black saints.
Nearby is an archaeological site with an informative 'museum' that illustrates the anthropoligal history of our species.

Bahir Dar - situated on Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, Bahir Dar is an extraordinary collection of monasteries and other historical sites dating from the 16th and 17th centuries peppered amongst islands accessible via boat. Our tour guide, Adugnya, took us to hear traditional Ethiopian entertainment, and participated in many lively discussions about the current state of Ethiopia, and its democratic system.

Awash National Park - a wildlife viewing National Park with lots of birds, oryx and other bovines, but do not expect to see the big 5 like in South Africa and Kenya.

Not-to-be-missed next time!
- Gondar - the 17th century capital of Ethiopia with 44 churches.
- Lalibella - Ethiopia's 11 famous rock hewn churches, carved as crosses.
- Axum - the Holy City of Ethiopia, dating 2000 years back, including the tomb of kings and the parks of Stelae.

Halas that sh#t.

Ex-pats and people who repeatedly travel to certain places often don't necessarily learn the local language to fluency, but instead slowly incorporate some of the local language into their own vernacular. Some words just don't quite have the same flavour in your mother tongue -- how can you accurately translate "Inshallah" (officially meaning "if God wills it", but often meaning "No."), and "chez" (translates as "at the house of", but is so much more widely applicable and faster than English terms).

Here are some words that I have encountered in the vernacular of ex-pat communities around the world:

Scotland -
"Id-nay" (literally means "isn't it so?")
"Neeps" ("turnips")
"Tatties" ("potatoes")

Japan
"Gambateh!" (three syllables that collectively mean: "work hard"; "nose to the grindstone"; "good luck")
"Dai-jo-bu" (meaning "no problem", but not as casual and much more fun to say)
"Five-man" (a combination of "five" in English, and "man" meaning ten thousand, used constantly when dealing with Japanese currency)

Montreal -
"What day are we?" (Anglo-Montrealers won't actually believe you when you tell them this is not real English)

Turkey -
"Ghetto tea boys" (meaning the young men with brown teeth who spend all day drinking tea and staring at passing women, not to be confused with "tea boys" in the UAE, who are the men who serve tea)
"Brown Cricket Problem" (meaning cockroaches)

Ghana -
"Sista" (literally means "sister", but can be applied to any female, including strangers)
"Cha-lee" (literally means "Charlie", but can be applied to any male who is a friend)
"Bra" (literally means "brother", but can be applied to any male, including strangers)
"You are not a serious man" (widely applicable, used whenever any man is incessantly bothering you)
"Obruni" (means "white person")
"Obibini" (means "black person")

UAE
"Maam-sir" (literally means "madam or sir, whichever you are", and is used by virtually all south and southeast Asian service staff to greet people)
"Same same" (literally means "they are the same", but usually implies "same same, but different", used by virtually all south and southeast Asian service staff)
"Halas that sh_t" (no exact translation possible, western ex-pat expression that combines "halas" [done, stop, enough, cease] with English slang)

Netherlands
"Beer-tche" (spelt "beertje" in Dutch, literally means diminutive beer, or small beer)
"Gezellig" (fantastic Dutch word meaning "good vibes", "friendly atmosphere", "positive ambiance")

The Benefits of Being Not Married.

- I hear that you are leaving us.
- Yes, I'm moving to the Netherlands.
- So you two are finally getting married?
- No, there's no need. I can immigrate as a "partner".
- But then where is it written that he must provide you with a comfortable home? And what allowances you'll have? And what he has to provide for you to go home to visit your family?
- Well western marriages are really wishy-washy about those sorts of things anyways. All we do in western marriages is vow to love, honour, and cherish each other.
- Really? But that doesn't mean anything. Where are your guarantees? Where is your contract?
- All a western marriage contract says is that you have exchanged your vows in front of witnesses and that you are now married.
- Where are the vows written? How can you verify that they have been met?
- Umm. They're not listed in the contract, it's only mentioned that there were vows exchanged. I think it's the act of saying them in front of your friends and family that makes you accountable to them.
- Speaking them in front of people? But what are the grounds for divorce if the contract is so ambiguous and undocumented? What is the guarantee that your partner can afford to be married?
- Well, for my immigration purposes my partner has to take responsibility for me financially and legally for 5 years as my guarantor, and has to prove his income and employment and status as a citizen. But as far as I know, in a marriage there are no such requirements.

In a country where business runs on word rather than contracts, where million dollar deals are made on handshakes alone, and multinational companies risk everything on their relationships with just a few key clients, the attitude in the Emirates towards marriage is quite different. I was generally met with complete shock by my Arab colleagues in Abu Dhbai when they learnt that I was relocating to the Netherlands without any marital "guarantees".

The attitude in the Netherlands seems quite different towards marriage. Everyone in the Netherlands seems to be partnered with someone from abroad -- there are no Dutch people married to Dutch people in Amsterdam. And even for the ex-pats, it's much easier to immigrate as a partner than as a wife/husband!

- It was such a nightmare doing the paperwork to immigrate here.
- Really? My whole immigration process took a total of 3 days, and then I received my papers less than two weeks later.
- We got married in Canada, and so we had to apply for a long form marriage certificate, and then that needed to be sent to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs to be stamped, and then they had to send it to the Dutch Embassy in Ottawa to be legalised, and only then was it an acceptable document to the Dutch Immigration Authorities. It took months!
- You should have gotten not married instead. It's much faster.
- How do you do that?
- On Monday you go to the Canadian Embassy in the Hague and get certificates saying that you are not married. On Tuesday you register at the City Hall as "co-habitators running a joint household", and then on Wednesday you go to the Dutch Immigration Office and sign a paper saying that you're "partners". It only takes 3 days, rather than 3 months.
- But don't you have to prove your relationship? Or be living together for more than 6 months?
- We had every boarding pass from trips together and visiting each other over the past 2 years, and plenty of other documentation. They never asked to see it. And on the form it only stated that we had been officially co-locating for 3 days.

The best part is that when we went to the Canadian Embassy to fetch certificates saying that we were not married, the women who presented them to us said "Congratulations!".

- Um. Thanks?
- Good luck to the two of you then.

Had she just congratulated us on being not married? She must have recently divorced, or be someone who is against marriage. Then it was explained to me that Canadians who get married in the Netherlands must apply for the same certificate of being "not married" first, so it's more likely that she was being presumptuous rather than supporting our not married status. In any case, we went out for drinks to celebrate the completion of my immigration process, and the benefits of being not married.

Brilliant Quotes of the Noughties [2000-2009].

Sometimes friends bantering can quickly spiral into pure genius. Here are just a few quotes I remembered recently, which may or may not be funny to anyone else:

“But our dwarves have magical powers.”
- Nunoo, on the difference between ‘real dwarves’ in Ghana, and the ‘mythical dwarves’ found in folkloric tales such as The Lord of the Rings. Ghana, 2006.

“Unless that hamburger has alpaca or guinea pig in it, I’m not interested!”
Sarah, responding to the waiter’s dinner suggestion after delaying her much anticipating first Incan meal of either alpaca or guinea pig by 3 days due to altitude sickness. Peru, 2006.

“It’s all in your outlook: sure you’re being cheated, but you’re being cheated in the sun!”
- [Translation] Hostel bartender, on why I should go to Morocco, and to this day the best travel advice I have ever received. France, 2002.

“It gets rid of the goatiness”
- Maura, on using lemon rind to mask the ‘goatie’ flavour of goat’s cheese, coining the term ‘goatiness’ forever. Canada, 2001.

“I was seriously disappointed by the lack of llamas”
Sarah, on her first impressions of Machu Picchu. Peru, 2006.

“And that’s a historical fact.”
- Consultant_Tim, on all of the historical ‘facts’ we fabricated during our car ride across Jordan, collectively falsifying all of Jordanian [and Western Civilisation’s] history. Jordan, 2009.

“Is that funny, or am I just drunk?”
“I don’t know, I’m drunk.”
- Mikey and Me, on a particularly creative Abu Dhabi park job. UAE, 2009.

“I know – let’s make a Junction Triangle interpretive dance!”
- Dougie, on how to effectively present our revitalization plan for Toronto’s Junction Triangle. Canada, 2005.

“It’s irresponsible of you to have a heating bill of less than $600.”
- Toronto Landlord, on why he shouldn’t have to pay to insulate our house in order to reduce energy consumption and our heating bill costs. Canada, 2004.

“Alpacas have cuter faces.”
- Sarah, on her highly scientific method for distinguishing alpacas from llamas. Peru, 2006.

“You promised me Madeleine Albright, elephants, and Livingstone. I’m leaving!”
- Mikey, on his invented expectations of Ethiopia. Ethiopia, 2008.

“It’s f-ing brilliant. Just add water, instant community.”
- Me, on my first week of graduate school. Canada, 2004.

The Silent Chapter.

After nearly three years living in the United Arab Emirates, I have finally bitten the bullet and left my cushy government job in Abu Dhabi to search for new opportunities in Amsterdam.

People have often asked me why I rarely wrote about my experiences in the UAE, compared to my endless emails exploring the Japanese psyche, my elaborate photo documentation from multiple stays in Europe, and my unquenchable excitment about Ghanaian people.

There are several reasons / excuses:

1. Professional learning curve -- unlike my other world adventures, my life in Abu Dhabi revolved around my exciting, but intense job. Most of my mental and emotional energy was poured into absorbing as much as I could of such an unparalleled professional opportunity.

2. Busy travel schedule -- living in the Middle east, there are dozens and dozens of [inexpensive] countries within a 3 hour flight radius, and several low-cost airlines to get me there. I took every opportunity I could to travel, on average leaving the country once a month. I was very fortunate to go to Yemen, Ethiopia, Oman, India X 3, Lebanon X 2, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and many other places, sometimes just as long weekends from Abu Dhabi. [I also had 40 work days of paid vacation per year, plus about 3 weeks of public holidays.]

3. General Hecticness -- there's exciting-professional-hecticness, there's fun-travel-hecticness, and then there's painful incessant administrative hurdles that one has to jump through in the UAE which make life unmanageably hectic. I have never been able to express to people how unnecessarily traumatic small administrative tasks are to accomplish in the UAE. And for no good reason except human carelessness. Just as one example, to have internet connected at my house it took 11 applications, about 25 visits to the internet company's offices (each visit takes about 25 mins stuck in traffic, 15 mins trying to park, 1 hour waiting only to find that you were given a waiting token for the wrong division, and I will spare you the explanation of trying to communicate with the staff members when you're trying to determine *which division you are meant to speak to, etc., etc.), four visits to my house by the technicians to [not] install my internet, and then keeping the technician hostage until the internet company and/or the technician can give me a good reason why it's impossible to install internet. Imagine the headache of basic tasks such as opening bank accounts, paying phone bills, finding an apartment, buying a car, car repairs, minor car accident administration, minor car accident repairs, car servicing, communicating with a taxi driver, home repairs, cancelling visas, etc., etc.

4. No camera -- everyone is taking fabulous, highly professional-looking photos these days with state-of-the-art cameras, and then emailing them or facebooking them electronically to be instantly shared with the rest of the world. It was during my trip to Peru in 2006 that I realised I was starting to live through my camera, feeling constant pressure to capture a moment, capture a site from it's most interesting angle, and document my life experiences on film. These days I am rarely the one behind the camera, and seem to have gotten much more lethargic with documenting my experiences in general.

5. Ex-pats -- I had never had so many white anglo friends in my life. Emirati culture is very private, and Abu Dhabi's population is 20% UAE Nationals, and 80% ex-pats. I worked for the government and was very fortunate to have a great deal of exposure to Emirati culture, and to have Emirati friends. But there are social rules that must be followed which limited the amount of time and conditions under which I could enjoy the company of my Emirati friends. The mix of ex-pats is highly stratified based on the combination between your job and your nationality: labourers live on labour camps and speak no English with no right to travel or see their families for the duration of their stay; service workers live in crowded apartments, sometimes with rotating sleeping shifts, speak English and are very sociable, but their role is to serve and they have no right to travel or bring their families; and, skilled workers and entrepreneurs, who have exponentially higher wages than service workers, have the right to bring over their families, have the vacation days, money, and right to travel, but are still divided in salary by the position they hold as well as the country they are from, with Western skilled workers having the highest wages within each pay band. Therefore you can save everyone a lot of embarassment by just simply spending time with the people who have relatively the same social boundaries, pay, and rights that you have, although it gives you much less material to write home about.

6. Good friends -- having been employee number 12 at an organization that now has over 180 employees, many of whom are young, energetic, explorative, art-and-culture-loving, food-loving, extroverts, and despite Abu Dhabi being considered a "boring" place, we made the most of it and managed to have endless fun. Abu Dhabi was also the longest I'd ever spent in one place except "home", and I certainly have a new appreciatation for longer stays.

7. Long distance -- whatever energy that was leftover was spent maintaining a long distance relationship, which is now a no-distance relationship in Amsterdam. I tended not to write because the first question was often "When are you two finally going to live together?"

So I have no excuses in Amsterdam!

The Call to Beer.

People have often asked me if living in a Muslim country has changed my religious practices.

Ramadan and Fridays are the only times I actually felt like I lived in a different culture. In the UAE, people work a Sunday through Thursday work week where Friday is the Holy Day, Thursday night is our Friday night, Friday is our Sunday, and Saturday nights are spent relaxing, preparing for the busy work week ahead, rather than gearing up for a night on the town.

Despite these alterations to the work week, my life in Abu Dhabi looked more like my life in suburban Vancouver above anywhere else I had ever been. I drove to work, I drove straight from work to the hypermarket to fetch groceries, free time was spent driving to the shopping mall or to friends' houses, and life revolved around the availability of parking, and the path of least traffic resistence.

Friday was a very different scene. A typical Friday morning involved sleeping in, lazing about, and eventually making breakfast plans that never managed to come to fruition until lunchtime. We would leave the house walking or driving along empty roads, famished from having taken so long to organise ourselves, recounting the adventures of the week. Walking through the streets of Abu Dhabi, there is a rare quietness as we dash through the alleyways, enjoying the hidden gems of the Capital tucked behind the boulevards. Abu Dhabi has an oppressive super-block configuration where most people's urban experience occurs stuck in traffic on 8-lane boulevards lined with 22-storey buildings, or squeezing through parked vehicles on the smaller roads on the insides of the blocks which have become veritable parking lots punctuated by sheesha cafes and mosques. But at midday on Fridays the streets are empty of cars, and the usual bustle and honking of the inner superblocks is replaced by a quiet sea of white robes walking peacefully to the Friday mosque for prayers. We pass a group gathered under a tree drinking tea and realise for the first time that many of these interstitial urban spaces are actually rather nice places to spend time.

Our church is in sight. A single voice begins to ring from the surrounding mosques -- the Call to Prayer -- ushering its followers into their houses of faith. The pace speeds up as our Muslim brothers stream into the Friday mosques, eager not to be late for their weekly Jumu'ah prayer. With this same sense of urgency, we too make haste, pouring into our adopted house of worship: Brauhaus. And a hmmm / mmmm falls on the whole city as we observe our respective creeds. If anything, my life in Abu Dhabi has strengthened my religious practice of beer.