DUTCHISTAN

Yet another baby, Yet another birthcard

2010-06-17T07:50:00.011+02:00

Yeah, little Fiona has a brother now: Egon ! Time is so fast!..

I had already posted a photo of Fiona's birthcard two years ago. And, Suzanne, very kindly, has sent me the birthcard of Fiona's two-week-old brother by mail.

I found the card veery lovely with that cute baby-carriage and spring motifs on it :) I really love this birthcard tradition !!!!!

Inside the card, there is a footnote saying "Wij rusten tussen twaalf en half vier". My duth is enough to understand all words except "rusten". With Daniel's help; I see what they say:

"We are resting between 12:00 and 15:30"

I only got what they mean by this by Daniel's help: "If you would like to visit us to see baby etc, do not come betwen these hours" they mean :)

Popularity of Dutch Names

Tjeerd has shared an interesting link in Facebook a while ago, which tells you how popular a name is in Holland. I have tried it for Suzanne's new baby:

So, the name "Egon" was relatively very popular till the end of 80's; then suddenly became a not-preferred name somehow.

Bath Houses in Amsterdam??

2009-10-06T21:50:00.000+02:00

Yeah, there were!

The one in Javaplein, I first saw when I visited Kaustubh in his old house at Ceramplein. Noticing its tower and its extraordinary architecture, I thought it was an arab-style mosque, with that tower being its minaret.

The photo is from a blog by Kees; from his entry entitled "a € 29.95 brain"

Later, I noticed the label "Bad Huis" on it, which I knew to mean "bath house". More interesting was to realize that there were people inside having drinks etc. This made me think that I probably was wrong to translate "Bad Huis" since it does not make sense to name a restaurant as "Bath House".

Then, Maikel the saviour helped me :). I summarized him all this one day and asked him what "Bad Huis" meant. To my surprise that place was really an old public bath house of Amsterdam, which has later been converted to a restaurant. It was really weird to me. I thought there was no bath houses at all in europe; with it being a tradition in Turkey (hamams), or in other asian countries..

I have made a search on internet but I could not bump into any detailed information. I only learned that it was a municipal bath-house, where the poor would come for their weekly shower (look interesting!). This info made me think that it was really in old times (eg. a century ago). But somewhere else, it says that it has been built in 1942, which is notably recent to me.

I still wonder the reasoning behind to build such houses in the city. Was it like having water in their houses was a luxury for the poor at the time?

House Hunting Adventures of Tjeerd and Nina

2009-09-29T11:52:00.000+02:00

Yeah, I know how tiring struggle it is to search for a house in Holland. I listened hunting stories from Olja; later I have witnessed many such attempts of my bosses Margriet&Age.. And now; for the last 5-6 months I have been reading the adventures of Tjeerd and Nina via their blogs.

The common things in all those house-hunting adventures were:

tens of houses are checked from inside or outside before you can find "the one".
after a certain point, the hunters get into a desparate mood: "we will never be able to buy a house" they say to colleagues, friends.
If there are more than one hunters for the same house, bidding is used to choose one of them. The one with highest bid gets the house. There is always a case where the hunters get depressed to lose a loved-house because of their lower bidding offer.
The checked houses always have something to be fixed & repaired. So, while making a bidding you have to also take into account the additional expenses you will make for such repairings etc.
"it must be in a central place; but rather must have a yard with some green stuff" is one of the very popular initial requirements for the dream-house.
You must be in contact with one or several realtors during the hunting, asking for appointments to see the house.
Construction inspector is another guy with a must-contact. (S)he will inspect the house of interest and inform you on how much to spend in order to fix the things.

What I did was to scan Nina's and Tjeerd's blogs to exemplify those common things. This would be a nice tutorial for the expats of Holland who wants to buy a house, I thought.

(The complete house-hunting adventure of Nina-Tjeerd is available through Nina's own blog: MyLife... Start from this page from the post at the bottom of the page; and proceed upwards and then by clicking to "next posts".)

1. "Yet another house to be seen" mood

"This was the seventh house we viewed on the inside, out of the 25 houses we viewed from the outside. I think three more to go, so the tenth house will be it! " says Nina in her post titled "House 7".

2. "We will never make it" desparate mood

"Tjeerd thinks we will never find a house we both like and that is still available when we find out about the house. " says Nina in her post titled "And SOLD again...".
"Since several months we are looking around for houses just outside the city. Some houses are sold within a week, other houses are for sale for over six months. But every time when we call a realtor to make an appointment to view a house, we got the answer: “We just sold that house yesterday".
I am not kidding, it’s every time! " complaints Nina in her post titled "Where's the crisis?" Read the whole post to learn about their funny idea on making money out of this experience :D
"We hope that the woman can’t get the mortgage for this house of course. This may sound evil, but it’s our only hope." says Tjeerd in her post titled "Househunting: too late part two", a post he made after they learned that the house they were interested in was sold to one other hunter.

3. "Oo dear house, don't leave us..Our bidding was not that bad" mood

"Unfortunately, the seller of the house didn’t like our condition about the construction technique, so he chose the other couple and they will get the house. Of course, it’s a pity that we didn’t get this house, because we really liked it" says Nina on her post titled "the house we didn't get"
"Now a colleague of Nina has won the bid on the house. A big pity that we didn’t get the house, because there were actually no negative things about the house (location, inside et cetera)." says Tjeerd on his post titled "Next"

4. "The cost for the things to be fixed is amazing :-( " mood

"But the house belonged to an old lady and there are many things that has to be fixed or renewed. " says Nina on her post "House hunting 2: Maarn".
"all the windows and window frames need to be renewed! And the draining in the kitchen isn’t connected to the sewage system yet. So the costs we did calculate for this house will be doubled! And that’s really way too much." is from Nina's another post: "House hunting goes on".

5. "We want a dream house" mood
Hmm, there is no post I found to be quoted for this mood :). But I remember our chats with Tjeerd last year. I know he wants a green place, and Nina wants a central place. So, the source is: personal communication :)

6. "Oo those realtor guys!!" mood

Nina talks about the "Realtor World" with a surprised-angry mood: "It’s a world we can’t see from the inside, so we just have to believe what the people in this world tell us. And that’s hard, because the news they tell us isn’t very believable." she writes.
"Tomorrow it’s “Open Houses Day”: many houses that are for sale open their doors, and you can visit these houses without making an appointment". says Nina on "House sold" post, feeling happy that they do not have to deal with any realtors..
"I sent an e-mail to the realtor to confirm the appointment, just to be sure. I got an automatic reply from him. It said: "I don’t work as a realtor anymore". What!?" says Nina, very surprised on her post "Realtor Mystery".

7. "Construction inspectors" mood

"Well, we know which contractor we will definitely not hire for the modernisation if we buy a house. Why not? They promised us to give a costs calculation last Friday in the afternoon, or else definitely last Monday. We didn’t hear anything " says Nina on a post titled "Waiting, waiting, waiting!"
"This contractor advertises with being the cheapest, but that can’t be true. We found out that it’s cheaper to hire a carpenter, an electrician and a plumber, instead of a contractor who arranges everything for you." says she on her othe post: "Contractor and Realtor"

The Happy End
Yup, they have finally managed to get a house few weeks ago, afterd facing with bankrupt realtors, dying owners and some other adventures. You can read how they are happy about this via Nina's post "Our new house" and Tjeerd's post "Our new house"

They even have a new blog for the new house www.dorpsstraat52.nl.

Pide: Turkish Bread or Ramadan Bread

2009-09-24T12:05:00.000+02:00

Well, the shape of a typical turkish bread sold in Turkey is as follows: (Photo from wikipedia)
One of the biggest problem I faced in Holland in my first weeks was to find a tasty bread. I have tried some among a flock of varieties sold at AlbertHeijn in vain: they were really bad in taste to me.. Actually, I didn't think that I would have a bread-problem in Holland since I had managed to "detect" a very tasty bread in Netto when I was living in Denmark, a country with a very similar supermarket profile.

After few weeks of my arrival to Holland, the fasting month (Ramadan) had started; and I discovered Javastraat in the meantime: the street with turkish shops where I could find many turkish things which were not available at AH (eg. red/green lentil, paprika paste, ayran (yoghurt drink), bulgur (broken wheat) among many other things). That's also when I discovered the turkish-morokkon bakery there: Kardaş Bakkerij. (I have just found out now over googling that they now even have a website)

In my first wisit to the bakery, I was SO happy to spot our pide there. Pide is a special turkish bread with a very different shape compared to the traditional one. It is special since it is only sold in the bakeries in Turkey during the month of Ramadan, the fasting month. I really LOVE its taste, I always questioned why it would not be made available throughout the whole year.

Turkish pide, the ramadan bread (pronounced as pedah)

One of my worries during my fasting time in Holland was to be away from my lovely bread, pide. That's why I felt like the happiest person in the world when I saw pides being sold at Kardaş Bakkerij. "the bread torture is over" I cheered up.

The biggest surprise came later, after Ramadan was over. I was again at Kardaş Bakkerij, and to my surprise I saw they were still selling pides. "How come?" I asked "Ramadan is over". And one of the employees there told me "pide is sold throughout the year here in Holland under the name of "turkish bread". How hapy I was! I enjoyed eating pides happily during my stay in Holland whenever I wanted ..

Then I left the country, and my military service started; and soon it was the next Ramadan. And unfortunately we were not served with any pides at the military unit. Having fed myself with pide for 1 year in Holland, it was really sad to miss the 1-month-pide opportunity in my own country..

That's why I even changed my facebook profile picture with a pide photo when Ramadan started last month and I had again access to pides :)

Ramadan was over last week, and I have to wait yet for another year to "reunite" with pides :) One alternative would be to fly to Holland in every couple of weeks to get the taste, if only I was rich enough to do so :)

Overigens ook geen spiegel :D

2009-09-24T00:37:00.005+02:00

I have wanted to finish a post I intended to write on turkish bread sold in Holland; that's why I have logged on to Blogger about an hour ago. However, I could not do this since I have noticed that there was a new "somebody" who has started to follow my blog :)

So, I have preferred to switch to this somebody's blog instead; and it turned out to be an indian lady living in Holland; ~Lopa. A post in her weblog about a notice at her office has caught my eyes.

I read the post, and I have immediately remembered the funny notice on the window of an office located at the entrance of my university building at Nieuwe Achtergracht. Well, there were (and I guess there still are) two notices, the first of which being the following:

Although it is Dutch, it is not that difficult to get it: "this is not the reception" it means to say. By the way, I have just noticed myself appearing on this photo on the window, trying to take this very photograph :) .

Ok, nothing funny so far.. But the other notice which was next to this one always made me laugh:

"It is not also a mirror" it says :D. I can imagine how the employees working in this glass-walled office felt when people outside were trying to use their windows as mirrors.

Three, no four huge tables on top of each other...

2009-09-20T20:47:00.004+02:00

Isabella talked about Roadside Art in Holland in one of her recent posts in her A Touch of Dutch blog. Reading her post; what rushed into my mind immediately was how I described the way to my place in Funenpark to the first-time visitors.

"You will take tram 26 from Amsterdam Central Station; then you will leave the tram at the stop called Rietlandpark. What you will see there is three huge tables on top each other. Go to upstairs, and walk in such a direction where the tables would fall into your right. And,..... " I would tell.

And, usually, it would turn out that they did not notice the tables. Later when I showed them the tables, "Ugh, yes you had told, but we did not expect them in such a shape and size" they reacted :)

So, here is a photo of those strange tables.

As far as I remember, the one below the top one is wooden, with others being concrete. Actually, it took some time to me to realize that there were actually four of them. The bottom one is not noticeable from upstair level since it is on the same level with the ground.

Dutch-style cyclists spotted in Turkey!

2009-07-27T21:10:00.009+02:00

I was in Konya this weekend, a city in the mid-west of Turkey. The city especially attracts tourists from abroad for its sufistic (mystical Islam) roots. They come to the city to visit the grave of the world-famous muslim poet & philosopher Rumi (the founder of the order for whirling-dervishes). Rumi lived about 800 years ago. In year 2007, he has been described as the "most popular poet in America". Here is the wikipedia link.

(a photo I took during a whirling (sema) ceremony in Bursa about 10 months ago)

One other characteristics of the city Konya is something totally different: it is arguably the city with most common bicycle usage in Turkey. It even has, although noticably limited, bike pads in some streets. This, I have never seen in any other turkish city so far.

The thing which made me excited was to spot a dutch-style cyclist in a street in Konya yesterday. I have seen cyclists, albeits sometimes rarely, in all turkish cities I visited so far; and I had never seen this before.

So, what is it? :) Well, having somebody else sitting at the back-seat of your bike while you are cycling.. And this "somebody else" has to sit in such a way that s/he will make 90 degrees to the back of the cyclist. Very dutch-style! And, the man on the photo below exactly does this! Even more interesting is to see a women in the role of "somebody else" in the photo since I have never seen a female cyclist in the city. In this case, she is not riding herself, but at least she is "on it".

At the back, the Aziziye mosque is seen. It is attractive with its late-ottoman style minarets.

A Mall-free City: Amsterdam

2009-07-18T23:28:00.006+02:00

Yeah; that, I first noticed a month ago in a mall in Izmit where I "handled" my military duty (a neighbouring city to Istanbul).

"Oh, my God; how many malls are there in this city; hmmm there are 4 I know. But, but, in Amsterdam....I do not remember any... Well, isn't that strange to not to have any malls at all in Amsterdam, arguably the biggest city of Holland??" I have started to question..

I only remembered the complex at Amsterdam Bijlmer-Arena station; which even cannot be considered as "mall" compared to the ones we have here in Turkey.

Maikel, the savior

Yup, I had wonderful moments last week! Maikel was here, in Istanbul, for 5 days (and also Kaustubh for 1 day). We strolled around the city from european side to asian side; from black sea villages to genoese side to the islands.. And, of course, we also had time to drink a cup of coffe in the biggest mall of Istanbul, Cevahir.

photo from here, "Sociology Compass" blog.

It is not only the biggest in Istanbul (among about 20 others), but also biggest in Europe; and 4th biggest in the world.

Then, I had the chance to ask Maikel if my deduction that Amsterdam did not have any mall was true. "Actually we have Kalvertoren" he said. Then, I suddenly remembered the shopping center at the one end of the famous Kalverstraat, close to the Bloemenmarkt. "But, I would not consider it as mall, maybe semi-mall" said Maikel; and I agreed. It was "nothing" compared to our Cevahir Mall.

Maikel also told me that the "mall" culture would probably not visiting Holland in the near future.

A letter from Alfonso (or How global is the life now)

2009-07-16T15:10:00.007+02:00

Global World

It was about two weeks ago (yes I was very busy to not to have time to mention about this before).

I got a letter from Alfonso in reply to my letter I sent (i guess) in February. It is amazing actually to get a letter in Turkey from an Italian friend who lives in France, with whom we met in Holland :) How global is our lives nowadays! Another funny thing is; we know each other since we have a common friend, Kaustubh, who is Indian :)

We met many times in either in his place in Ceramplein (where he always performed cooking experiments for dinners, which, always turned out to be deliciious) or in my place at Funenpark (where he usually came with a bag of clothes to wash).

Alfonso, you mention in the letter that "experimental cooking is a little difficult" there "people are much more traditionalists". Then, I will say that they are not aware of what they miss by being traditionalist :)

Degree of Happiness in Amsterdam

It is nice to read in the letter that he was much more satisfied now with life in France than in Amsterdam:

"Don't get me wrong, Amsterdam was also a nice city. Now I understand that having a bad house and a not very-friendly work environment invluenced my staying in NL a lot" he says. Actually, the place they lived was a very old apartment with many missing things. And, both Alfonso and Kaustubh, never got a proper response to their complaints from the university or the housing company.

He also talks about how loose the work life is in France. "'to work' intended in french way" he says, "which means, arrive late; have nice time with colleagues; don't go home too late".

Alfonso; this, I would call Mediterranean style. We also have a very similar working style in state-based working places.

French

Alfonso, you say that your french gets better. I am sure! I am sure it is much better than the time you were trying to communicate with your Senegalese roommate during a dinner in my place :)

Also, if you "will have to turn the roulette again and will find a new position somewhere", I guess this will be a country with a different language (after Germany, Holland, and France) :). What about Turkey?:)

Hey, Maikel was here in Istanbul last week for few days; Kaustubh also joined us for 1 day. We have strolled through the city together, nice moments. You are also welcome!

"Most Undutch" Turkish Dish

2009-06-28T17:06:00.012+02:00

"Among the things you served us tonight, this is the thing most undutch" Inge had told me while she, Hans, Johan and I were tasting my bulgur salad (called natively Kısır) in my place in Funenpark as part of a Ramadan Dinner in September 2007. (Bulgur is broken wheat, commonly used in Turkish cousine)

(The photo is from last week where I made kısır for the site commander of my military unit as well as for other officers in the unit.)

Then I have made it a couple of times for other dinners in my place and for parties we had at Funanpark roof. I remember how people liked it during my German neighbours' BBQ party. It was then when Sara asked me the recipe. "Your bulgur salad has been one of our favorite dishes" she told me later "I make it almost every week". She also published the recipe in an iranian blog. It is in persian, but the photos worth checking.

The original recipe is from a turkish cooking blog "Portakal Ağacı", meaning "Orange Tree".

So here is the recipe for those who want to taste this "most undutch" turkish dish:

Ingredients

5-6 spring onion
half bunch of parsley
2-3 layers of iceberg salad (optional)
4 gloves of garlic
1 onion (optional)
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1 tablespoon of red paprika paste (or 2 tablespoons of tomato paste if not available)
2 glasses of hot water
1 dessert-spoon of salt
2 glasses of fine-bulgur (Beware: it must be the fine version, can be found in turkish supermarkets)
1 tablespoon of dried mint
half tablespoon of chilly pepper (can be 1, if you want it hotter)
half tablespoon of black pepper
half glass of lemon juice
half glass of olive oil
2 tomatos (optional, for decoration purposes)
a handful of fresh mint leaves or parsley leaves (optional, for decoration)

Preparation

Fınely chop onions, spring onions, parsley and iceberg salad. Put them together into a container and cover the top.
Fry the chopped garlics with the olive oil and tomato and paprika pastes
Put bulgur into a container and add the hot water on top of it. Add the salt and the mix with the mix in (2). Mix occasionally till bulgur sucks all the water and the mix looks homogenous. (10-15 mins)
Add the chopped vegetables of (1), lemon juice, and spices to (3). Mix till it gets to a homogenous mixture.
Decorate with tomotos sliced in half-circles and with the parsley and/or mint leaves.
Put into refrigerator for a while. It is better to eat it cold.

My first trial of Kısır in Amsterdam
It was again a Ramadan dinner where we fast during the day, and have dinner when it is getting dark. I had invited my turkish friends from Delft and the one from The Hague. When they tasted my kısır, one of them said "the taste is OK; but it would be better if you did not use coriander". I was shocked "what? What is that thing? I never used that thingy" was my reaction. "It is a vegetable similar to parsley" they told, and suddenly I got enlightened :D

I remembered how I felt while I was preparing the bulgur salad. The "parsleys" I got from turkish supermarket at Javastraat was somehow pale. And they had really a different strange smell while I was chopping them off. I thought: "probably those parsleys got deteriorated. But I have no time to buy new ones, and since I will mix many things, my guests will not get its bad taste anyway". That is, I never realized that it could be some other vegetable :D

So, since we do not have corianders in Turkey, I never knew that they were being sold in Holland, and they were so similar to parsley :)

Food Meme

2009-06-09T20:02:00.009+02:00

Of four dutch-originated blogs I kind-of regularly follow, one is Kelly's. (The others are Isabella's, Tjeerd's and Nina's blogs). Kelly is a gibraltarian expat living in Almere, Holland. She has tagged my blog in her food-meme post. Here is the rule for the food meme:
List 7 items related to food or drink you love, also list 7 items you hate the most. Then tag 7 buddies and find out if your stomachs have something in common. Bon appetite!

I will make a small change and will list the liked/dislilked foods which are somehow linked to Holland.

DISLIKES

1. Drops: I already have written about how torturous was it for me to try even one. No way! I can't like them!
2. Sweet popcorn: Another terrible experience. It was my first weeks in Amsterdam; and I was very happy to see pre-popped corns sold in Albert Heijn one day (I love them); and I bought one bag. And guess what: I was home, and I opened the bag with a big enthusiasm, and threw few of them into my mouth. And, I was shocked! I never heard/tasted before pop-corns with sugar!. It was unbearable! I do not like throwing foods away, and It took more than a week to finish all of them :D
Later I realized they sell two versions in supermarkets: with salt and with sugar..
3. Peanut butter: Well, it is not my cup of tea. Daniel once told me that this was one of the three things he would take with him if he were to live alone in an island. This shows how Dutchmen love it. But i simply can't. Peanut butter on bread does not taste good at all for me.
4. Breads sold in Albert Heijn: There are so many different varieties of breads sold in AH. I tried a couple of them, and did not like any. Thanks God, the turkish neighbourhood was very close, and I could go there to buy turkish bread from Kardas Bakkerij in Javastraat in Indische buurt.
5. Soups I tried at the university canteen: They were all terrible. The soups may be OK in itself. But they add some kind of flavor to all soups which change the taste into an unbearable nature.
6. Mix-fruit juices sold in AH: This is getting common only recently in Turkey. When I was in Holland, it was the first time I saw mixed fruit juices. I tried some (peach-orange mix or apple-raspberry mix or things like this), and did not like any of them. I prefer pure juices.
7. Round three-color bell peppers sold in AH: They are unbelievably nice in appearance: red/green/yellow bell peppers sold together. The way we use bell peppers in turkish cuisine is by stuffing them with rice and then cooking. I tried this dish with those huge bell peppers sold in AH: they are so thick, which makes your mouth not comfortable :) . Then, I preferred to buy the turkish-style ones sold in the turkish neighbourhood at Javastraat.

LIKES

1. Vla: A traditional dutch yoghurt-vanillin mix. This, I discovered thanks to Ewoud. He brought a box of vla when he first visited my place for a dinner. I liked the taste a lot. The only thing is: one variety sold in AH includes a red colored flavor. I later preferred not to buy that variety since I found out that carmine is among its ingredients (carmine is an insect-derived coloring agent)
2. Stroopwafel (Syrup waffles): Also sold in AH, also traditional. Again, a goodbye present by Ewoud; that's why I came to know them. I liked the taste a lot.
3. Ice-tea: When I first tried ice-tea about 10 years ago, I found it not interesting at all,and did not try again. Till it was served to me while I was in Vahid-Sara's place for a dinner. Then suddenly I liked it a lot! It has turned out to be one of my most favourite drinks in the Netherlands. The peach- and lemon- flavoured ones are my favorites.
4. Cashew nuts: This, I discovered in Holland in AH since we did not have this type of nut in Turkey (only recently it has been gaining popularity). The taste is just amazing.
5. Appelstroop (apple syrup): I was told that this is what the pregnant dutch ladies prefer to eat to have a healthy baby. It was my favourite thingy during my lunches at UvA canteen.
6. Celebrations: Again an AH product, I discovered this thanks to Olja. She brought a box of Celebrations as a present when I invited her, Hans and Suzanne for a Ramadan dinner. It is a box of miniature-size versions of popular chocolate bars.
7. Falafel at Maoz: Falafel is a vegetarian meat-ball like middle-east food. The ones sold in Maoz are offered with unlimited salad. Since I preferred vegetarian food while eating outside, this was one of my favourites. At the end of an old post is a photo of the one of the branches in Amsterdam, a branch we had visited with Sara and Vahid (and also with Maikel and Alfonso during Queen's day in 2008).

TAGGING

I am supposed to tag 7 others as part of this food meme. However, there are only few blogs I kind-of regularly follow. So I can only tag 2 others:
1-Tjeerd: www.tjeerd.net
2-Nina: www.bellanina.nl

GREAT EXPAT BLOG AWARD BY "A TOUCH OF DUTCH"

2009-05-29T21:33:00.007+02:00

Isabella, the owner/author/mother of the weblog "a touch of dutch" has awarded my blog, and a couple of others, with "Great Expat Blog" award.

Here is her related blog entry. "I want to thank you all with your expat blog and love reading what you have to share! You are making a positive contribution, and your contribution to expats is helpful!" she says in her blog entry. Isabella, just thanks for the award! (Actually, I am no longer an expat "physically" as I am in Turkey busy with my military service. But I keep this blog active as a virtual link between Holland and I.)

I already had written about her blog a while ago; it is really a great blog. I take it as an unofficial guide for living in Holland. And it is so comprehensive! Isabella, just thanks a lot for sparing your time for your blog, for your enthusiasm, and for making such a great help for people googling about Holland. This is really something to be greatly appreciated!

Seven awe-sum things

As part of the award, she says "List seven things about yourself that are awe-sum".

I will make a small change, and I will list seven things that are not only awesome but also related to Holland.

1- A with-minimized-prejudice guy: Compared to the people in my environment, I am noticeably free-minded and also free-of-prejudices. This, I owe to my living experience in Holland (and also in Denmark). The people I met from different countries as well as the general lifestyle in Holland are the main factors behind. The people in my military unit are aware of this, and they sometimes call me "the free-mind Willy"
2- A can-still-understand-some-dutch guy: I thought I already forgot all Dutch I know. But, checking some websites in dutch, I surprisingly noticed I can still understand quite dutch! (Isabella, your blog is of great help; you put some dutch sentences/phrases, which helps me to refresh my dutch :) )
3- A can-bike guy: I can bike, I can bike, I can bike!! This I learned at the age of 28, in Amsterdam :). I even managed to travel between two cities :)
4- A having-dutch-friends guy: Many expats say that dutch people, although they are very kind, are difficult to make friendship with. But I have managed to develop very nice friendships with dutch people in my work environment: I am still in contact with Maikel, Daniel, Suzanne, Tjeerd, and I am glad that this is the case..
5- A good-cook guy: I am very good at cooking some dishes from turkish kitchen. Lentil balls, bulgur salad (kısır), pepper with stuffed rice (dolma), lentil soup, yoghurt soup.. All of these, I learned in Holland while living alone in Funenpark. (I should also thank to all friends who joined me for dinners, BBQ parties)
6- A bird-fan guy: I am a bird-fan. This, I owe to different birds I came across in the canals and parks of Amsterdam & Utrecht (Moorhens, coots, geese, swans, jackdaws, magpies....). I use the word "different" since you do not see any of those birds in Istanbul, which is a quite urbanized city.
7- An awesome guy: My university building was just next to the zoo Artis, but I have never been there :( That's quite awesome considering that I am a nature-loving, animal-loving, zoo-loving guy :)

A Smile in Photo: A Must for Dutch Driving License

2009-05-07T21:52:00.002+02:00

Yeah, quite surprising...

I take driving lessons nowadays due to my attempt here to get a driving license. I take the lessons usually on the road which is just in front of the military complex. So, the SFH (our Soldier From Holland, abbreviated) watches my driving attempts when he has guarding duty at the gate of the complex.

Yesterday I had a short chat with him after my driving lesson was over. "Commander, I got a license here in Turkey,and also one in Holland" he said. "I got 100 from the exam in Turkey, and only 80 from the one in Holland, after my second attempt to pass" he said. I had already heard once from my German class teacher that many "experienced" turkish drivers had to take extra lessons when they wanted to make the license valid in Germany. So, it looks it is noticeably more difficult to get a driving license in Germany, or in Holland as the SFH told me.

The funny part is just coming: the SFH says that in Holland they turned down the photo he submitted for the driving license: "it must be a smiling one" the authorities had told him. How surprising!.. "Are you serious???!!" was my reaction. "Yes Commander, that was also the case for the passport photo" he replied.

One of the things I admired in Holland was to see everybody smiling in streets, in hospitals, at information desks, in restaurants etc.. But, I did not know that this was "kind-of" a policy they wanted somehow every citizen "to obey"; which is really to be appreciated I guess..

I must ask my dutch friends if they are familiar with this "smiling photo" policy :)

Somebody from Hoorn in my Military Unit ..

2009-05-03T10:56:00.004+02:00

Yeahh, it was totally surprising for me.. To meet a soldier from Holland..

It happened few weeks ago. I heard that there was a new soldier from Holland. Ugh.. Somehow I feel Holland as my second home. That was why I really felt excited to hear about somebody from 'my second country'.

Then, I met him. Well, of course he is of turkish origin. He told me that he was born in Holland and he is from Hoorn. It was such a nice feeling to talk about Albert Heijn, drops (he loves them !, he is not a typical turkish guy anymore :) ), trains, Alkmaar, football teams (he is a professional football player), Blokker ...

Then, I went to uncle Wiki since it was the first time i heard "Hoorn". I have learned that it is somewhere close to Alkmaar, on the coast of Markermeer, and it is really a nice historical city! Weird that I did not hear about it when I was in Holland..

Blokker
"Do you know Blokker", he asked me, "the store chain". "Of course" I said. I was there almost every week. I usually went to the one in Javastraat, next to the turkish supermarket I went for shopping. There was also one on the other side of Rietlandpark station of tram 26. (And I remember how I was surprised when Vahid and Sara told me that they do not know about Blokker :D)

But, the weird point is, I never questioned the meaning of the name! Of many such things I discussed with Maikel, Daniel or Suzanne, this never became an issue. I guess the main reason was that I thought it came from the word "blocks". :), which makes some sense when you think of what is sold in these stores..

Who would guess that I would learn the origin of this name in Turkey, in the military complex, from someone in turkish military clothes ... This is life :) It is so unpredictable :D

Yeah, this "soldier from Hoorn" told me that Blokker was indeed the name of a village in Hoorn area. " "They even have a football team, and I played there some time ago" he said.

Height standards of World's tallest people: A case study

2008-11-03T21:25:00.004+01:00

I had e-mailed a photo of mine to Daniel in which I show up in my official military clothes (as I mentioned in the previous entry).

I called Maikel few weeks ago from the military complex, and we chatted for a while. He told me that he could not recognize me when Daniel showed him the photo.

"Well, first, you look completely different in those clothes. I looked at the photo, I knew I had to see something, but I could not get you" he said. And the funny part was his second reasoning on why he could not get me:

"When Daniel told me that you were in the photo, I was very much surprised since I expected to see somebody who is about 15-20 cm shorter than the other people around" he said, laughing; "But all the people in the photo were of the same height!".

"Then" he continued, "I realized that you were shorter than dutch people!, and I immediately thought that probably your height was just an average height in Turkey".. We laughed a lot on the phone :-)

Terrific Happy-Sugarfest Gift !!!

2008-09-30T22:26:00.013+02:00

Today is the first day of our Ramadan fest, also known as Sugar/Candy fest. It comes after one month of fasting.

And, today, I got an extraordinary gift via e-mail from my former research group (BDA) in Amsterdam.

Heyyy! Daniel, Maikel, Suzanne, Age!!!!

I like each of you very much!

Thanks a lot for the big surprise! IT was something I will never forget!

The gift-message is:

uggh. DJ Vis even cannot spell my name, but I will ignore it once :D

Just below is the gift:

Yeahh, it is a photo. The portable board in the big office of 7th floor of building C of University of Amsterdam at Nieuwe Achtergracht 166; and a plant..

Then, you zoom into the photo to get what is interesting about it:

Plant

It is a Zamioculcas (also known as ZeeZee plant): Gift of Suzanne when she visited my place last year during a Ramadan dinner (iftar). I left it into her office when I left Holland.

Today, in the morning, I asked Daniel if the plants I left there were doing OK. He referred to this plant and wrote to me:

"That larger plant is doing well. I felt she (Suzanne) should care for it better, so I labeled that plant "Fiona II". Apparently, that works, now it is getting sufficient water"

And I got the gift photo in the afternoon: Yeah the ZeeZee plant has that label as Daniel told me; and it looks very OK. Apparently, Daniel's trick seems to work :D, Suzanne takes it as a second daughter..
The Board
Thanks again! I had just e-mailed Daniel today a photo of mine from our swearing-in ceremony where I appear in the military officer clothes. It looks he printed it and posted in the middle of the board. "Mr. T says Hi" wrote on the top..

And then, Maikel, Daniel, Suzanne and Age signed the board ;-)

Well, lots of signatures are missing. They even have a report on this on the right side of the board:

THANKS AGAIN GROUP!
and Thanks God! Thanks for the opportunity to have my post-doc there, with such nice people around!

Facebook vs. Hyves

2008-09-30T10:12:00.004+02:00

I was stubborn to not to open an account in Facebook.. I was in "I do not have time for such stuff" mood.

Things changed few weeks ago in military service.. The military-friends (as we refer them traditionally) there were talking about a group they initiated in Facebook special for us. They said they even put some photos. That's why I put an end to my stubbornness (what a word with so many double letters!), and opened an account during a weekend break in the city (Balikesir)..

Now that I am home thanks to the official 1-week holiday in Turkey for Ramadan (sugar) fest, I have time to "play with" my Facebook account.. I have added tens of people from our lieutenant-candidates as my friends, and also some other friends from netherlands, or from my university..

One surprising thing was: none of my dutch friends have facebook account - my search could not find a match to any of their names (the only exception is Tjeerd, who happened to get an account only few weeks ago)..

I discussed this shortly with Tjeerd yesterday: we agree that the real reason behind should be HYVES.NL.

Yes, there is a dutch social network tool: "we use Hyves ( www.hyves.nl ) in the Netherlands as a social-networking tool" as Tjeerd says. I checked the website: it already has about 7.5 million members!

Yet another (temporary) farewell & Where is my home?

2008-09-27T12:18:00.003+02:00

Third-Lieutenant Candidates at Packing
Next week is our Sugar (Ramadan) Fest- the fest we have after the fasting month (Ramadan) is over. That is why I have a 9-day-break to my military life!!. It is weird to stay somewhere else after staying in the same place for 45 days with the same people around.

One of my funs in the military service is to have short visits to the other bedrooms on our floor for short chats (There are 12 on our floor, each with 4 people). I was having one of such visits on thursday night when I saw some of us (ı.e. the third-lieutenant candidates) being busy with packing things to get ready for 9-day-leave: : luggages around in the room, some clothes on beds to be put inside; half-ambiguous looks with some happiness signs on faces.

Well, farewells always make me emotional. Packing is an obvious sign of a farewell (albeit a temporary one in this case). I went outside then, and had a sit in the dark in front of the building. "Why do you look so thoughtful?" asked Egemen, sitting accross with Ihsan. "Well" I said "you may find it weird, but witnessing people packing made me a bit sad"; and I got a big laugh from him in return, implying a "the weirdest-feeling-I-ever-heard" comment.

Where is my home?
Of course, all of us are happy to leave the military complex: we will be with our families/ beloved ones, away from the discipline-rich environment of military service. Everybody looked forward to be home: but it was a bit weird and confusing for me.

For sure, I missed to be away from the military life, I missed my family: but I was confused: living in the Netherlands just before my military adventure; I guess I have more missed to be in Amsterdam, at Funenpark 41 in my place, rather than to be at my home in Istanbul. I missed to have dinners with multi-national friends there, to be at BDA group at the university in Amsterdam or at UMC Utrecht and to chat with colleagues/friends there, to walk in train stations, in the city, to get on Bus 11 at Utrecht, or to take tram 26 to/from Rietlandpark in Amsterdam, to have visits to friends in Delft, in the Hauge; to spend some time in Amsterdam parks with water birds around, and all-in-all to cycle..

Poor me: I could not see Fiona :( :(
I guess those feelings explain why I had that dream in the very morning of that night: a dutch-associated dream.

I heard Suzanne saying something, and she was entering into a room on the other side of a corridor. I guess she was changing Fiona's diapers there. I shouted her "How is Fiona?". And made an attempt to see the little baby.

Poor me :(. I then heard the alarm of my watch: It is 06:15 : time to get up, shave and make your bed/ cupboard tidy, and rush for military gathering.

I was really sad for few minutes to miss the opportunity to see little Fiona in my dream :)

Cyclists: Another Source of Happiness

2008-09-13T12:26:00.002+02:00

People always asked me in Holland if there was any cyclists in Turkey during the everyday life. "No, never ever" I said. "Only children in summer time, for fun, in front of their houses".

Well, this was valid for Istanbul, and I thought it was the same all over Turkey.

Luckily, It wasn't. But, this, I have realized only when I came to this small city few weeks ago.

I always appreciated the role of bikes in dutch people. I always envied them. That was why I was very happy- as in the case of seeing a magpie- when I saw cyclists in this small western city of Turkey.

It is not like you see only few. You can see a cyclist passing through in every 10 minutes or so (which may sound very rare compared to Holland :) ). They are not children; they are all adults who even sometimes carry some bags with their bikes: exactly dutch (and danish) style! Moreover, It is not unusual to see bikes parked here and there.

Spotting bikes and cyclists in the city centre makes me smiling since:

it reminds me of Netherlands; my (Johan's) bike there, my cyclings etc....
it makes me proud to see that people here are aware of the advantages of using bikes. I guess it only need some municipality-based official encouragement to make it more common here.

A Magpie: A Source of Happiness

2008-09-13T11:36:00.009+02:00

I have hardly been in any other turkish city other than Istanbul. And, Istanbul is quite poor in terms of bird 'content'. We only have sparrows, pigeons, crows, and pinkish pigeons, whose english name being laughing dove (Streptopelia senegalensis) -as I have just learned via googling-.

It was the beginning of this week. Morning. I guess I was busy with making my bed/my cupboard/ my desk tidy as you can get strange punishments in the military service otherwise (eg. Your 9 AM- 6 PM weekend breaks are cancelled if they have any trace of untidyness)

I, without any reason, looked at outside at one time. It was there. It was real. It was exactly the same as the ones in Denmark and Netherlands. It was walking there.

Alas, I was alone in our 4-person bedroom, and I did not hear any humanly voice at our floor (probably everybody was already at the breakfast). So, very unfortunate that I could not share my happiness with anybody else :(

It was a magpie. Yes, exactly the same as the ones I tried to photograph in Amsterdam; the exact replica of the ones I saw everyday multiple times in my dutch life. The black-and-white bird from the crow family.

I never imagined to come across a magpie here in the small turkish city, Balikesir. I had seen them during my Denmark stage for the first time. I had realized their similarity to crows, and thought "they must be danish version of crows" , and stopped thinking about them.

In the Netherlands, however, I had an increasing interest to all those birds in nature. It was Maikel who taught me the name of this bird and the other birds from the crow family (jackdaw etc). Seeing a magpie here was like building a path to our chats with Maikel on birds, a path to my very nice moments in the Netherlands, a path to dutch life, dutch weather (especially if the weather is always 30-35-40 degrees here without any rain all month), a path to all dutchy stuff. It was like all the holland was squeezed in the form of a magpie in the front side of our building here..

I found the following magpie (pica pica as Maikel calls it) photograph on the internet. I wish I could photograph the one I saw. But, this is more than impossible as it is not allowed to have a camera within the military complex.

the other stuff

So, my military service is going well; the difficult part is over (training on the field). It is really very nice to meet many more people. Actually, the most attractive part for my for my dutch stage was to have the opportunity to meet new people there. I like meeting new people, new worlds.

I had a quick look to the A Touch of Dutch, Kelly's blog, Tjeerd and Nina's blogs to feel the dutch atmosphere here. I just very much wonder if the people who follow this blog are doing OK, how their life is going etc.

Courgette soup

2008-08-06T23:47:00.006+02:00

Maikel was talking about this soup occassionally, and stating how tasty it was. I guess he knew this soup from his mum, albeit a different version.

Then he cooked it for us when we visited him with Alfonso in June.

It was at least as tasty as he described it. I got the recipe from him.

And I had the chance to try it yesterday.

This recipe is for 2-3 people. I used a little bit more water than stated (0.7 liter rather than 0.5). I boiled a tablet of boullion in water. Then, I added two medium-size courgettes in chopped form (or zucchinis; the name in american english) and 2-3 cloves of chopped garlic. I let them boil for 15-20 mins till the courgette pieces get very soft.

Then I have blended the mix using our blender, leading to a very homogenous mixture. Then I added 75 g. plain cream cheese. Normally, Maikel had used a cream cheese with herbs and garlic (Boursin is the brand I guess). But I could not find this type here in Istanbul in the supermarket nearby; and I added garlics externally therefore in the first phase.

After mixing the whole thing and letting them boil for a short while, I added two teaspoons of curry powder (Maikel's recipe was for 1 teaspooon, and I later thought 1 would be more than enough).

Then, I ended up with the following soup.
My mum really liked it.

Only a physical farewell...

2008-08-04T22:30:00.008+02:00

Everything has an end.. And my stage in Netherlands had an end too.. And that end was on last Saturday..

I had some other things on my mind:

We had already started our inter-faith activities; and I would very much wanted to go on with it..
I like inviting people over dinner or lunch . I was going to invite Andreas Karoly Gombert from Delft with his family for a dinner (or BBQ at our roof); and Yvonne and Eric from Eindhoven, Saadet and Daniel, Tjeerd and his girlfriend, Isabella and her husband, Kelly and S, Johan from WKZ ... I was going to have Olja and Hans meet Defne and Hans, and talk about raising kids with parents from different lands... We were going to have another BBQ at Funenpark roof with all my Amsterdam research group.
I really wanted to go to some museums, to Artis zoo .... We were going to have a bike tour with Maikel, have a stroll in Pijp area of Amsterdam.. this and that..

I had started my dutchistan dairies not because of the urge to be read by others, but solely for myself. I did not want my good memories in Netherlands to fade away over years. I preferred to write them online and in english, however, so that other people may learn from my experiences; I would be helpful to them somehow; and also to force my english writing skills. And also, I thought it would also be a nice site for people I have spent times together to remember our nicely spent moments together..

And leaving the country does not mean that I won't write anymore. it is only a physical end I would say. Thanks to internet, i will stay in touch with those nice people I had the chance to meet in Amsterdam. I will still read Isabella's, Kelly's and Tjeerd's blogs, which will help me to keep up with the dutch life there. And I still receive DutchNews newsletters, this will make me updated with dutch daily agenda.. And, there are many moments here that make me remember my dutch life. There are recipes I want to get from dutch friends and try.. So, all such things will certainly help me go on writing my dairies here: the ones related to my dutch experiences, my dutch life.....

Thanks God; I had this chance to meet such wonderful people, to experience such wonderful moments in this country.

Goodbye to WKZ

2008-07-30T23:45:00.012+02:00

Preparing good-bye cake on Monday night
It was Alfonso's birthday on Monday, and offered me to join them on a boat in Amsterdam canals. One of his friend had a boat..

It would be really nice to take this opportunity in my last weekend in Amsterdam; however I was somewhat late from Utrecht; and I wanted to make a good-bye cake for Utrecht colleagues since yesterday was my last day there. Therefore, I could not join Alfonso..

I took the following photos of Wilhelmina Kinderziekenhuis during a short stroll at the woods across the hospital:

Then, on the way back to my place from Amstel station by cycling, I finally managed to take the photos of those two little lovely houses located at Ringdijk street, close to the end meeting Linnaeusstraat.
Vahid and Sara joined me in my place on Monday evening since Sara also wanted to see how to make this easy cake. The recipe, I had taken from Duygu years ago when I wanted to make a good-bye cake in 2004 before leaving Denmark. Duygu calls this "mosaic cake", but my portuguese colleagues in Denmark had told me that they had something very similar, which they call "chocolate salami."

First we had a simple lunch with my şehriye (semolina) soup, and their iranian rice, and later the turkish dessert: Noah's pudding (aşure). Then, Vahid took biscuits into pieces, Sara chopped walnuts and dried apricots; and we mixed everything and rolled with an aluminum folio to put into fridge.

Deregistration at Amstel 1, at Stadsdeel Centrum
Normally, you go to Stadhoudskade 85 to register city hall. I was there monday morning, and they told me that they only register; for de-registration you have to go to your stadsdeel hall.

So, I was at Amstel 1, just behind Waterlooplein to deregister myself yesterday morning. Then, I cycled to Amstel station for the last time to catch Utrecht train. I managed to get on the one at 9:15.

Good-bye sushi
When I entered into my office at WKZ, I told Margriet that I had brought good-bye cakes. "But they ended up having in small amount although I tried to double the recipe" I said. She said that I should not be worried since she also brought sushis for my farewell. It is so kind of her! Well, on one hand, I found it weird to eat sushis to say goodbye; but I did not think about it that much.

Then she sent an e-mail to the whole department using Monique's computer.

Then, at 11; we went to the coffe room with Tjeerd, Hannelie, Peter and Lieke. I started to slice my cake; and put onto the tables. Then I saw the thing Margriet brought. They did not look like the japanese sushi at all; but were like sweet things. I asked the name again, and realized that they were 'soesje's. I liked the beginning of the wikipedia definition very much: "Een soesje is een klein gebakje .."

I found the following photo on the internet, and actually, wikipedia refers to them as profiterols in the english website. So, they were not that familiar at all..

We chatted about military service with people in the coffee room, with Tjeerd, Margriet, Johan, Arno, Ans and later Inge, and the girls. I learned that Arno had the military service!! The first dutch I met having this service done!!!. Johan referred to my cake saying that they had similar thing in their family, called something like aartje. But it turned out that no other dutch people in the room heard this.

Last moments at WKZ

At around 5 P.M, people started to leave; and Tjeerd and Ans said good-bye to me. After a while, Inge left saying good-bye and referring to the nice moments/chat we had shared, mostly full of laughter. She said "maybe we won't see each other again". Then, she was back after 15-20 mins. "Look, we saw each other again" I said, we laughed. She had forgotten her key and her coat.

I took photos of my desk in the office before leaving;
and a photo of the coffee room,

and also the monster located in the middle of the building:

Rookvrij Hoog Catharijne
When I left bus 11, and took stairs to Hoog Catharijne (i guess this is the name of that station complex) to go to train tracks for Amsterdam, I saw the following notice on one window:
It is about the latest smoking ban introduced in the country in 1st of July. "As of 1 July, smoking is not permitted in Hoog Catharijne" it says. I am glad I can fully understand it :)

Hare Krishna event at Amsterdam

2008-07-29T19:35:00.011+02:00

On last Sunday, we went to the Hare Krishna "temple" at Amsterdam ...

The idea was to go there together with Bea and Maikel; but because of my earlier-than-expected leave situation and of their holidays, we went there as the muslim group: Vahid, Sara and I.

How to get there
We met in front of SeleXYZ at Sarphatistraat. We then cycled through Sarphatistraat straight ahead; and made a turn to Ferdinand Bald straat from the corner Heineken Brewery factory is located. The "temple" is located in one of the side streets: Van Hilligaertstraat. This is the same street where Vredekerk is located.

Ceremony
The ceremony starts at 16:00. After parking our bikes, we were hesitant to enter inside the "temple". I guess this was basically because of unusual clothings of the people we saw inside. "Maybe we should go to the church, Vredekerk; It will also be an interfaith activity" one of us said. Finally, we had the courage to enter inside and ask about the ceremony.

One of the orange-cloth people told us to enter inside after taking off the shoes and sit. We set on the ground on cushions. The hairstyle of those orange-clot people (should I say monks? ) was very interesting: almost no hairs, but a small bunch of them somewhere at the back in long format. I searched on the internet, but could only find this photo: and this monk does not have that long hair bunch at back:

Then the ceremony started: after repeating a four-line prayer few times, it was all repeating the same thing for about one hour:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama
Rama Rama, Hare Hare

All of us liked the melody they sang this. It was relaxing to hear it. I later checked from wikipedia: the explanation I liked most says that "hare" means "eneryg of God", and "Krishna" and "Rama" are different names of God. Actually, this was very similar to what-we-call "zikr" in Islamic tradition in a sense, where the names of God are recited in a musical way. I found an example at youtube.

One interesting thing was the way they made "secde" (I guess the english word is prostrating). The "devotees" (this is how they refer to themselves; followers) made this prostration when they entered the temple room; but in random directions. Some of them even completely laid down.

After singing period, a preacher came and talked about what kind of activities are made within organization in terms of helping people. It was in dutch, but a devotee made english translation for those who do not understand dutch. Even the very tall lady there, who looked very devoted, was with us to hear english translation to our surprise (we all thought she was dutch considering her height).

prayer beads
This During the preach (or was it towards the end of singing session?) a devotee came in, with a cloth wrapped on his right hand in a strange way. "What kind of hand injury is it" I thought.

Then, the drummer during the singing left and came in after a while with a similar cloth wrapping around his right hand. "This must be part of the rituel" I thought.

Then, Sara managed to ask them about that while we were leaving. They told us that they actually recite the 16 words in Hare Krishna song (i am not sure of this part) using prayer beads; and since the prayer beads are too big, they wrap it around and tie to the hand. That is, that cloth has the prayer beads inside. And they do this recitation 108 times (does this mean that it is made up of exactly 108 beads? probably)

Linner at Leidsestraat
Then we cycled to leidsestraat to eat something as lunch-dinner. We went to Maoz; the popular vegetarian shop. We ate falafel with unlimited salad; and I guess it was 4 euros.

Library excursion

2008-07-27T19:41:00.010+02:00

Yesterday at around 8 PM, the rain has stopped at last; and I left UvA to join Alfonso at the city library.

I am glad I did.

The entrance is free, and it is open seven days a week between 10:00-22:00. I regretted I did not discover it before. In fact, I remember Filipe telling me in his last week here that he had just been in the library the day before and it was unbelievably nice. I guess it was also the day he gave me the nice cute present.

Anyway, coming back to the library; I guess it is worth to go there just to see interior, the very interesting sitting places. There are beds with integrated computer screens; and you can lie and watch /listen music there, or read books.

There were so many different seat types! Each very interesting. I managed to take photos of a couple of them.

The whole building is 7 floors! And there is a restaurant at the top floor with a nice view. It was interesting that you did not feel any food smell till you arrive at the stairs to the top floor; and the smell exactly starts when you start climbing stairs.

And this bird was in the basement floor dedicated to education (onderweijs).

I guess, as Alfonso pointed out, this is also an ideal place to go to relax, read something. or even for free internet surfing since they have lots of computers with internet access.

If I knew the place before, I would go to there once e while to read books in the comfortoble seats they provide.

Summary

The library is very close to center, on the opposite side of NEMO; and it is nice to have an excursion there! to see its design etc!
It is also very close to the building where Stadelijk Museum is temporarily located (two buildings away I guess); and after the library excursion it can be very nice to go to 12th floor of this building to have a free and very nice view of all Amsterdam. We were once there with Maikel after having mint tea in the 11th floor at Club Eleven. We even managed to see towers from Schiphol airport!

I am stuck at UvA at Nieuwe Achtergracht 166

2008-07-26T18:20:00.008+02:00

It was unbearably hot last night.

And this morning too; it went up to 32 degrees in my place (which always is few degrees warmer than outside because of glass covering outside and no real aeration/ window opening etc).

I was sweating a lot; and for the first time I decided to leave home without any coat, with a t-shirt.

Swan Family
I first went to Oosterpark as I usually do in weekends before coming to the university to work. It is nice and relaxing to see ducks, moorhens, coots, geese and swans there. And I am glad I did it today since the swan couple finally had their babies! They were feeding the babies with weeds, and they did not mind when I got close and took the family photo.

Thunderrss!
I was working at the office,
and I have started to hear strange sounds from outside after a while I arrived. It is thunders and lightnings and rainings! Unbelievable! The exact opposite of the weather few hours ago! Alfonso is in the library now, and asked me to join. But how can I without any coats, any umbrellas, any raincoats?? Sara is also stuck in the university, this I learned via gtalk.

A Guide for Buying Eggs in Netherlands

2008-07-26T16:03:00.004+02:00

I went to Maikel's place for dinner last evening. I first called him from the office, and he told me all the details on how to get to his place by bike so that I would not get lost on the way. Thanks a lot Google Maps! Amsterdam map was open in both of our browsers; and it was very convenient then to follow his directions on phone.

How to get there
I rode through Oosterstraat, going straight ahead; passed through Nobelweg till I hit Kruislaan. Then, I took a fietspad (cycle path) by keeping the highway always on my right. After a while, I saw Diemen Zuid station and passed under the rail tracks. I had already taken notes of all details; so It was not that difficult to get to Clara Zetkinstraat and finally to Kruitberg through Kraaiennestpad. Kraaiennest means crow nest by the way, and the metro station nearby is also called so.

Dinner
He is really a good cook! He cooked a very delicious vegetarian pizza,and a dessert whose recipe I will ask (mix of yoghurt, lime, milk ).

Chickens without beaks !!
He had a box of eggs on his kitchen bench. He gave me the details of the lables on the inner side of the box cover:

Here, there are a group of numbers on the eggs we buy. Each number starts with either of 0, 1, 2, 3. The first column of the explanations in the picture points to the meaning of these numbers; and this column is the most important part to pay attention when buying eggs.

Maikel said that he always buys the ones labeled with zero (organic/ biologisch) or 1 (chicken freely allowed to eat outside in grasses/ vrije uitleop). I asked if 3-kooi meant cow. "No" he said, "it is cage. The eggs labeled with 3 are from chicken always kept in cages."

"I never buy eggs with labels of 2 or 3 since the beaks of those chickens are cut off" he said. I was in a big surprise! "Since they are kept together, otherwise they make harms to each other with their beaks when they have fights" he explained.

How awful! Never heard this before. Now I regret that I did not pay attention to those labels before. My campaign is: never 2- or 3- labels to discourage harms to chicken beaks!

from BDA group....

2008-07-24T20:27:00.006+02:00

Tessa at hairdresser
Olja was here surprisingly at noon to print the final version of her thesis. I asked how Tessa was doing. "Perfect" she said, "with funny comments." And she told what happened few days ago:

Tessa was looking at her photos taken when she was baby. She was born without any noticeable hair. Her comment to the photos was: "Hmmm. I must have gone to a hair dresser before I was born"

Daniel is defending soon
His comment two days ago in gtalk when I told him about my leave soon was : "just imagine the time i save NOT chatting to you man ... this phd is almost done" :)

And today he was here just to say goodbye to me although he had taked today off. Thanks God I have made such nice friends here. While we were chatting in the coffee corner of 8th floor, Ewoud joked that I would have to wake up at 3 AM, and run for 2 hours with 20 kg of bag in my back.

Thanks God ..
My biggest fear when I started my post-doc was about my new supervisors. After experiencing the incredible supervision of Prof. Jens Nielsen, and hearing about scary supervisors with no kind attitude towards the students, post-docs; I had found it risky to start in a research group with which I never had a contact before in any conferences or so. And, thanks God, all my dutch supervisors have turned out to be very kind, very nice people!. I guess that was why I was almost crying when Age and Margriet gave me a good-bye present after our research meeting today.

Why would you call your son "Sefer"- "travel" ?

2008-07-24T16:01:00.002+02:00

I was back home last night after 10-days holidayish days in Istanbul. My KLM plane arrived at around 10:00 PM to Schiphol. I knocked the iranian neighbours' doors when I made it to Funenpark to tell them that I managed to inform my family about my safe arrival, and did not need to use their mobile.

They invited me over tea, and we chatted about several things. The most interesting thing - I really do not remember how we got there- was about the words 'sefer' and 'Safer', both common words in Turkish and Iranian language.

Sefer means traveling, and Safer is actually the name of one of the months in Arabic lunar calendar. No problem up to this point.

But then, they went on saying that Safer was also a male name in Iran. "It is the opposite in Turkey" I said, "sefer is a turkish name".

Then, suddenly, - I am not sure if this can also be called an epiphany- but suddenly it made more sense to me to call your son 'Safer' -the name of month, rather than 'sefer'- traveling.

We already have Ramazan, Recep, Şaban and Muharrem as male names in Turkey, all the month names in arabic lunar calendar. We also have Şevval, again a month name but somehow female name. So, it makes more sense to hypothesize that the turkish name 'sefer' is actually coming from 'Safer', the month name, but a modified version of it. I know one person called Sefer; I will send him an e-mail and ask what he thinks about the meaning of his name.

Yet another turkish name- Yeter (Enough)
I guess we had talked about this with Maikel some time ago. Yeter is also an uncommon turkish name meaning 'enough'. It is funny but the idea behind is: if the parents did not want to have any more child, they named their last baby as 'Yeter'; to reflect their wish that it was enough to have that many child.

I even know a sad real story (I guess we also had chatted about those names with Vahid and Sara): An old distant relative of my mum had told her that they had named their third son as 'Fazıl', which is also an uncommon turkish name meaning either of 'redundant' or 'Virtue'. The old woman said to my mom that they called the baby Fazıl, implying the meaning 'redundant' , since they did not want any more child. And, the child died in an accident when he was 10-12 years old. The old lady later lost her other sons when they were 20-25 years old. She was very sad when telling this story, and she thought that it was all due to their wrong-naming of the last son, which implied a disobeying to God.

Omega in Oranjekerk

2008-07-21T20:30:00.002+02:00

When was it? Hmmm. Yeah, the day Holland played with Russia.

It was saturday, and there was a nice (and free) classic music concert in Oranjekerk behind Sarphatipark. Merel (blackbird in Dutch) from third floor (mass spectrometry group) was also singing in the choire.

Oranjekerk is not a church anymore; it is used for different activities I guess.

However, after the concert, "It is probably still being used as church sometimes" said Maikel to me.

"How did you understand it?" I was curious and a bit amazed. He pointed to the speech desk: "there is an omega sign there." I did not get it, and asked why..

He told me that omega represents eternity or the afterlife since it is the last letter of the greek alphabet. That's why it is used as a symbol in church.

interesting...

I have just checked the wikipedia entry and found the following sentences:
In the New Testament book of Revelation, God is declared to be the "alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last".

Tutorial: Why should a Dutch retire at 70?

2008-07-21T19:46:00.007+02:00

There was already a discussion going on in dutch media if the retirement age had to be increased to 67 from 65. Today's DutchNews quotes the related minister saying that it should be 70.

Then I remembered one stroll-discussion I had with Tjeerd on the woods (weiland) across WKZ.
Well, I had never elaborated on the retirement age discussions before. The points Tjeerd made made quite sense to me; it was a tutorial-like chat :)

So the basic answers to the question is:

Dutch people live longer in recent years (the case in all developed countries). This requires more retirement salary/support for government budget. This, in turn, affects the working dutch population since they have to support more retired people. It is getting more interesting if we think that the birth rate is getting lower in the country. So, relatively less and less working people will support more and more retired people. (I wondered if "less people" is grammatically correct: it looks so according to UsingEnglish website.)

One solution would be to encourage birth rate increase. However, this is not that logical considering the population density of the country. (It is the densest european country I guess; much denser than Turkey)

So, one solution is to increase the age for retirement. In other words, those are why the government is so eager to increase retirement age..

Did I remember correctly Tjeerd? :D

A Touch of Dutch

2008-07-19T17:55:00.003+02:00

I have discovered a nice blog by an American expat a while ago: A Touch of Dutch.

She gives so many details about the life in Netherlands, and tries to explain many things about dutch culture, life style, language, history etc.

I wish she started blogging before I arrived in country and I would thereby read and learn many dutchy stuff before coming.

Her last post was about shoarmas in Netherland (shawarma); or, with the turkish name: döner kebab.

Shawarma is the arabic name, but I always suspected it to be of turkish origin. I have followed the link in her blog post to see definitions of the word: and there it is! It is originating from turkish word çevirme (or chawerma in english spelling), which means turning. It is a very turkish word.

I do not know why, but it made me happy to learn that it was of turkish origin :)

Turkish Hindi Common Words

2008-07-17T21:10:00.026+02:00

I have made a table of the common words (the ones I remember now) that popped up in our discussions with Kaustubh. I used google spreadsheet to embed the table as HTML into this page.

I will extend the list as soon as I find new common words.

UPDATE (December 30, 2010): I have extended the list to 87 words with the contributions of the reader RC & Hardik & Praveen & P2 & Ash & Anonymous & Altan & Marit & Abhijeet and also by adding some words from a list published in a blog called akkiz.

NOTE (thanks to Swapnil & P2): Yes, these turkish-origin (or persian-origin) words exist in hindi language. However, hindi also has actual-hindi counterparts for these words. For example, adaami (man) is of turkishs&persian origin, but hindi also has the word manav, the same meaning with hindi origin.

Those who comes to this page via a search engine: I would be more than happy if you leave a comment on why you have been searching for common words :) ..

Poor Mariam

2008-07-16T17:51:00.006+02:00

I had bought it for my brother from Waterstone store at Spui.

I have decided to start reading it on Saturday morning in the Dordrecht train to Schiphol. I went on reading in the airport, on the plane, and in the bus later.

And, managed to finish it on Sunday: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

I was happy to hear that I was not alone in the world. Olja had told me once during tea/cofee break that she could not stop reading when she started, and that's why she did not read anything at that time, fearing that she would focus on reading without doing anything for her thesis.

I am exactly the same. If I start reading, and if it is of a novel type which makes you curious on what will happen some pages later, I cannot stop reading. That's why I finished A Thousand Splendid Sun in two days.

I won't say that it was perfect, it was fabulous etc. It is not. However it has a quality noticeably above average.

What I liked in the book:

I very much liked the way the author presented poor Mariam in the beginning.
I also very much liked to learn about political history of Afghanistan from seventies till today. The effect of these changes on the life of normal people.. From kingdom to communism to after-soviet-war chaos to Taliban.
I learned that Taliban means students, and a single member of Taliban is referred to as Talib. This is because it was originated as a religious students' movement.
I also liked very much to see words also used in turkish throughout the novel like gul, tasbeh, zahmat, khayat, sofrah, khala, lotfan, thasakor, tabreek (the way they are spelled in the book).
One very interesting thing was the conversion of Kabul to a titanic city when the movie was released. It was immensely popular, and there were titanic toothpastes, titanic carpets, even titanic burkas sold on the markets.

Mariam and Laila's father were my favorite characters. But somehow I did not like Laila and Tariq that much, and the related love story.

Now is dictionary time!
Now, I would like to go on in the direction of my urge to start compiling common-word dictionaries; especially after coming across some other common words in this novel.

I want to do lists of:
- Turkish-Iranian common words (Sara-Vahid)
- Turkish-Serbian common words (Olja)
- Turkish-Hindi common words (Kaustubh)
- Turkish-Greek common words (Yorgos)

hope I will have time for this stuff.

Train toilets and Childless women

2008-07-11T20:14:00.005+02:00

I have compiled the news from this week's DutchNews newsletters that looked interesting or funny to me.

MONDAY, JULY 07

Dutch Rail to reduce train toilets
The number of toilets in trains and on railway stations is to be drastically cut back, the Telegraaf reports on Monday. Dutch Rail (NS) says scrapping a toilet allows it to build four extra seats in a train. The toilets are also rarely used and often vandalised, the company tells the paper.

Childless women
Over 25% of well-educated women born in 1960-1964 are childless, the same as women born in 1945-1949, says national statistics office CBS. But 15% of women with low levels of education born in the 1960s are childless, compared with 9% of those born in the 1940s.

TUESDAY, JULY08

Racoon plague
The agriculture ministry is to investigate the growing number of racoons in the Netherlands and what to do about them, says Tuesday’s AD. The racoons are invading the east of the country from Germany where they were introduced from North America in 1929. The paper says they eat just about anything and have no natural predators.
(I found the following racoon photo in wikipedia:)

Donald Duck tops students’ reading list
One in ten Dutch students reads the weekly comic Donald Duck, making it the most popular magazine among college and university goers, according to research by marketing bureau StudentServices. Students spend three hours a day watching tv and over five on the internet.

TNO
The TNO is never known by its formal name, which is Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research). It was set up by parliamentary act in 1930 and its role is to ‘make innovation possible by translating scientific knowledge into practice’. It is based in Delft and employs 5,000 staff.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 09

Panda orphan
A baby red panda abandoned by its mother at Amsterdam’s Artis zoo has been adopted by a domestic cat which has just had four kittens. The cat is also feeding the panda, zoo officials told news agency ANP. Red pandas are an endangered species and part of a specialised breeding scheme.
(I remember to see red panda cage, I think, in Basel zoo. But it was empty and I was sad. I imagined to see a red version of common panda. Now I checked from wikipedia to see how they looked like: a bit disappointment. They very much look like racoons, and much smaller than common panda)
FRIDAY, JULY 11

Fake cigarette smell to mask sweat
A company in Groningen has developed a machine that bar owners can use to bring back the smell of cigarette smoke, after the smoking ban. ‘There is a need for an scent to mask the sweat and other unpleasant smells,’ Raymond Bolt of Rwin Showtechniek told the Telegraaf.

‘New train drivers go through red’
Many drivers for Connexxion and Veolia continue to drive through red signals, despite being warned to stick to the rules. This is leading to potentially extremely dangerous situations, the papers say. In one incident, a Connexxion train which went through red nearly collided with an NS intercity service, the paper says.

(This is surprising to hear from this country.)

Prince and family feel ‘unsafe’ in Argentina
During the short interview it also emerged that Máxima is not only a regular lunch time supervisor at her oldest daughter Amalia’s primary school but is also an official ‘nit mother’ and helps check Amalia and her classmates for head lice. Amalia also showed herself to have a mean left foot at football, ANP says.

statistics of the day
Fake euros
The number of fake euro notes found in the Netherlands in the first six months of this year has gone up by 20%, according to central bank figures. Some 72% of all false notes are €50 bills. Nearly 25,000 notes were seized, the bank says.

Snapshots from BDA group

2008-07-10T11:21:00.007+02:00

Mopperen
Yesterday, I asked Age if he has been used to working at UvA whole week. He said that he had done this for 11 years, and it is easy for him to pick up things.

When I went to his office for our research meeting at 4 PM, he was talking with Margriet. Later, he referred to the word 'mopperen', something dutch people generally do. Since he did not remember english word for this and he did not have any dictionary in his office, he wrote the word for me on a paper.
I checked from interglot.com today: it means 'grumbling'

Süzanne
Oh my God! It has been about 11 months since I met Suzanne; and I today realized that I did not know how to correctly pronounce her name!

I should have realized actually, since I already know that letter "u" is pronounced ın Dutch as letter "ü" in Dutch in Turkish and German. . The turkish or german "u" corresponds to "oe" in Dutch. That's why they write "Istanboel", not "Istanbul"; and "Poetin", not "Putin".

But I always pronounced her name as "Su", as if it was written as "Soezanne". Today, I realized after hearing Maikel's short pronounciation "Suus!" and asked him. it is "Sü" he said. I went to Suzanne's office to verify; yeah Maikel was right (again). I will address her as "Süzanne" (in turkish spelling) from now on.

School holiday season in Holland
Ewoud told me during the tea-coffee break in the afternoon that Jill still attended the school and the school holiday would start next week.

I was surprised since I thought that all schools were already in holiday season.

He said that the country has three zones for school holidays. First zone schools start in the beginning of June, then the second zone schools, and the last zone is the first week of July. "This is to make the holiday season longer" he said, "and to prevent overloadings, crowdedness etc". Interesting.

Inter-faith Dinner Again

2008-07-09T20:33:00.012+02:00

Yesterday evening, Bea, Vahid, Sara and I was in my place for our second interfaith dinner. Maikel wanted to come; but could not make it due to some health problems.

Dinner Table
I cooked lentil soup; and Sara cooked potato kookoo. I again forgot to take the photo of the dinner table. Instead, I took following picture this morning.

The movie that Bea brought is on the table ("Life of Brian" ); and also the pen and paper I used to take some notes during our chat.

We had chat about this and that first:
- the royal family of Spain (their king after the dictatorship is still the king today)
- the story behind the naming of daughter-in-law Ezo soup (a variety of lentil soup). I discovered thanks to this chat that iranians also say "gelin" for daughter-in-law and bride.
- I learned that Argentina also has a city called Cordoba, named after the Spanish city. And, Sara told us that Ines was from there. Then, it made sense to me why Ines was talking about her life in Cordoba during Fesencan dinner last week in Sara-Vahid's place. Interestingly, Bea is from spanish Cordoba.
- Vahid and Sara asked if the taste of helva I got from them two days ago was similar to ours. I told them that the only difference was addition of spices, which we don't do. It was interesting to hear that they cook this dessert also in funerals.

Regarding interfaith discussions; we basically talked about two main things:
- Violence and religion
- Does the world need religious leaders?

Violence & War and religion
Of course all of us were against violence and war. Bea initiated a discussion about the Buddhistic view with no violence at all even you are attacked, i.e passivity view. She also reminded us the statement of prophet Jesus: "If someone slaps on your cheek, turn your other cheek to him".

At the end of the discussion, we all agreed that the advice of Jesus Christ must have been for the people who can take lesson from "turning other cheek" (Sara's comment). If the person is of the kind who will not take lessons and start to slap more and more to you; you should not behave like this. Probably this was what prophet Jesus meant, we concluded.

So, we all agreed that totally passivist attitude is not true. Everybody must do their best to keep peace, but war or counter-attack for defence purposes is OK when unavoidable.

Do we need religious leaders?
We first started talking about if any religious leader is needed or not (Pope, Dalai Lama etc.). This was Maikel's discussion-question. Bea opened a discussion about sufficiency of inner voice. Isn't our inner voice, our own mind enough to decide on what is right or not? If so, why would we need a religious leader?

At the end, we all agreed on following points:

- General and basic moral values are almost the same in all religions, and it is true that we can make our decisions on those issues (whether that thing is right or not) based on our own inner voice. We may not need a leader or an expert for such things. However, there are more detailed and deeper issues (or controversial points) which require an expert opinion. Since we go to doctor when we are seriously ill (they are experts) and we do not decide based on our inner voice for treatment, we need religious experts to guide us in deeper issues. (Vahid's point)

- It is better to say "religious scholar" rather than religious leader in this sense.

-This does not mean blindly obeying only one leader. There must be more than one leaders equally respected; so that we can have opportunity to compare their views with our inner voice. They should be considered as guides to alternative ways of thinking and interpreting an issue. We can then have opportunity to adapt the view closest to our "inner voice", or we can make our own interpretations depending on those alternative views.

Further ideas

Towards the end of our chat, Bea asked the question: "What should we do next?"

She already had a couple of nice suggestions:

We can search for dialogue associations in Amsterdam and join their activities

We can participate in the activities of helping organizations (for kids etc)

We can visit churches, synagogues or mosques

I had found a very interesting website last week for organizing voluntary activities:Meet-In. Bea suggested that we could drop an add there to call for people who are interested in interfaith discussions and we could have a big meeting with people with very different backgrounds.

She said that we can also join ceremonies of Hare-Khrishna which are held on sundays.

We decided on the last activity; and we will go there in our next meeting.

Words of The Week: Sluis & Bui & Lentil

2008-07-09T17:04:00.005+02:00

BUI
I had already checked this before but forgotten over time. My familiarity to this word is due to BuienRadar website. How handy is this website! Yesterday, it was raining in the morning in Utrecht. Tjeerd and I have checked this website, and have seen that there is no rain cloud "on top of" Utrecht between 12:15 and 12:45. So, we decided to make our noon-walk between this period. It really works. It was sunny outside while we were having our stroll. "This is a typical Dutch summer weather" Tjeerd said. I told him that this was how the weather was when I was here in 2005 August for few days. We talked about water management issues and global warming.

I have checked the meaning of "bui" from interglot.com. It has double meaning: mood, and shower. Tjeerd said that those two words are expressed by the same word in dutch since having in a bad mood is somewhat associated with bad weather. Interesting to know.

MERCIMEK- MERCEK & LENS-LENTIL
I told Tjeerd about how there has been a major decline in lentil production in Turkey, because of less rain. But he did not realize what 'lentil' was. I told him that it was from the same family as chickpea and pea; but no help. He did not know any of them. Not that surprising since I never saw these foods being sold in dutch (and danish) supermarkets.

Anyway, I was searching on the internet after we were back from the stroll, to send him some lentil photos. I saw a very interesting detail in wikipedia. The word "lens" has actually been derived from "lentil" because of the shape similarity. I never thought about this before. And actually, it is even the same in turkish: lentil is mercimek, and lens is mercek. Never imagined that mercek was originating from mercimek!

SLUIT
Maikel told me today that he was once living a place in Zaandam close to a sluit. Sluit is a system in rivers or canals. The water level is different in both sides of the system. Its function is to enable boats pass from high-water-level side to the low-water-level side or vice verca. It has two gates in both sides to enable this, which are normally closed.

One gate is opened, and water fills into the space between the two gates so that boat can move there. Then, that gate is closed and the other gate is opened so that water level of the between-gates space and that side of the river become the sama, and boat can go on.

The english word is lock, and wikipedia has some nice pictures showing the mechanism.

Yet another dutch habit: BIRTH CARDS

2008-07-07T20:24:00.002+02:00

We only have cards for weddings in Turkey.

Here, they have a habit that i really liked: the parents send birthcards to the relatives, friends etc to let them know about their newly born babies.

Fiona's birth card is still on the notice board on our floor. I took a picture of it.
"Op 3 Maart 2008 is onze dochter geboren" they say.

I did iit!! I diiid it!! I did it !!

2008-07-06T14:47:00.011+02:00

It was my dream to be able to cycle from one city to another. In Denmark, there were people cycling from Copenhagen to Lyngby everyday. Here, Maikel was cycling between Zaandam and Amsterdam when he was living there.

I think it all started when I heard from Alfonso that he had cycled to Haarlem. Haarlem is almost the closest city to Amsterdam. "I should also do it" I had said to myself at that time. However, considering that the longest path I cycled was about 6-7 km, I did not know if I would manage it.

Then, first I cycled to Maikel's place with Alfonso: about 8-9 km one way. Later on, two weeks ago, I cycled between the parks in Amsterdam; from Flevopark to Vondelpark to Rembrandpark for bird watching. I cycled back home, then cycled to Oranjekerk behind the Sarphatistraat, then cycled through Oosterpark on the way back. I guess I made more than 10 km in that day.

Then, being more self-confident, I made my questions to Maikel more frequent: "When are we cycling to Haarlem?" "When are we cycyling to Haarlem?" ...

Andy, we did it yesterday.

How to get there
We met at UvA, and cycled to the central station. Then, cycling to west Amsterdam; we passed through Haarlemmerstraat, Haarlemmerdijk, Haarlemmerplein, and then Haarlemmerweg. Haarlemmerweg is a very long street, and you find Westerpark at your right. By the way, Haarlemmerstraat and Haarlemmerdijk are very nice and cosy shopping streets, with a bit difficutly in cycling.

We gave a 10-min break on the half way. Funnily enough, there is a small city located between Amsterdam and Haarlem. It is called Halfweg since it is on the half way.

We were veeerrry happy to see Haarlem sign. It was just after we passed Schiphol and saw three storks on the sky. I always thought that "storks bringing babies through chimney" was a turkish story. But even Maikel knew it! I checked from Wikipedia later on; and it seems that the story has been originated from Netherlands and Germany!

Anyway, I took the following picture in front of Haarlem sign.

It took about 1 hours 45 min. to get to the central square in Haarlem from UvA. We sat in a place in front of the big church, and watched people.
I drank coke, and maikel preferred biting-weed tea. (Nettle in english, Brandnetel in dutch.)
Then we walked through the streets and made window shopping. Maikel told me him hearing that Haarlem was the best shopping city of Netherlands. Indeed, Although the city was not that big, the shopping streets were very long.

Then it started to rain, and we decided to cycle back. Although I had a raincoat, I decided to not to wear it to more resemble an average dutch cyclist. Well, I would be more close to a dutch cyclist if I holded an umbrella in my hand while cycling, but I was not that brave.

Jewish Cemetery
There is a jewish cemetery very close to Haarlem. Especially the years on the grave stones were interesting. The deceased Sara Mok, for example, died in 9 August (25 Menaghem) 5686.

"Daddy" pushes me
On the way back, I started to cycle really slow after a while. Then, "daddy" Maikel started to push me for 1-2 minutes with his right hand, while still cycling with left hand. It helped incredibly!!

I always saw parents pushing their kids while cycling; but never imagined that it would help that much!. It helped so much that I have regained my normal speed after pushings.

Moorhen
We saw moorhens on the way on a small stream. Maikel said that it was the first time that he saw moorhens. Very surprising. But not more surprising than the fact that he had never been in Haarlem before.

This is the moorhen photo I took while I was bird-watching two weeks ago in Rembrandpark.
The honoring speech
We stopped under a tree near Weesperplein so that Maikel would start his honoring speech. He said "Now you are officially entitled to be a dutch cyclist. Now you are really dutch. Not every foreigner can cycle from one city to the other. You must be given a diploma." It was nice to hear in the rainy weather. He said that we probably made more than 40 km in both ways.

Johan's bored bike
So, Johan's bike will not feel bored anymore. I will tell Johan that I really take care of his bike, and I even took it to an excursion to Haarlem.

Dimensionality Stories

2008-07-02T17:46:00.004+02:00

I have dimensionality stories today from our group.

Two-dimensional Daniel
I never knew before that there were two-dimensional people. Daniel said that he cannot notice/see the third-dimension, the depth.

Maikel wrote "useless" onto the board by using the three board-pens at the same time. I found it interesting and added another "useless", and then "nice!" and "good!".

Maikel then said that we could see these writings in 3-D if we had 3-D glasses. Then we jumped to 3-D stereogram images in our deer-chat. Maikel found the following image from internet.
I was trying to see the dolphins here, and Daniel showed up with his cup in his hand. He said that he never can see hidden images in those 3-D stereograms since he is a 2-D person.

I was surprised. He had eye problem when he was a baby, and this was only noticed when he was 2. Had it been noticed when he was 1, he would regain his third-D view.

But the good thing is, he does not have any real disadvantage in his daily life other than difficulty to park cars into narrow streets with small parking places.

Multidimensional Gooitzen
I always thought Gooitzen as a (only) computational guy. During the tea/coffee break this afternoon at 8th floor, I learned during the short chat that:

He had PhD in Physical Chemistry
He had a post-doc in Oxford
He teaches Calculus to 1st year students
He also teaches Computational Systems Biology course with another instructor
He also teaches data analysis course

I was saying "vawww" "vaawwww" as I heard those one by one from him. I told him that he actually fitted very well to our group then with those multidimensional background.

Spiritually unclean dogs ?

2008-06-30T18:06:00.008+02:00

1. E-mail from Kaustubh
I received an e-mail from Kaustubh yesterday. He said that he encountered the following news in Times of India, and he asked my opinion.

Being touched by sniffer dogs 'unIslamic': UK Muslims
London: British transport police sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers after complaints that it is against the suspects' religion.

A transport department report has raised the prospect that animals should only touch passengers' luggage because it is considered "more acceptable."

In the Muslim faith, dogs are deemed to be spiritually "unclean", but banning them from touching passengers would severely restrict their ability to do their job.

The report follows the trials of station security measures in the wake of the 2005 London suicide bomb attacks. In one trial, some female Muslims said the use of a body scanner was also unacceptable because it was tantamount to being forced to strip.

British transport police last night insisted that it would still use sniffer dogs — which are trained to detect explosives — with any passengers regardless of faith, but handlers would remain aware of "cultural sensitivities".

Critics said the complaints were just the latest example of minority religions trying to force their rules and morals on British society. During the trials, passengers stopped in London had their bags checked by dogs. But in Brighton, dogs patrolled the station and were walked past passengers. Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic human rights commission, said even dogs touching baggage would be an issue for a Muslim preparing to pray. But said it is fine to allow dogs to check passengers without physical contact. ANI

2. My personal opinion
The major problem in current muslim society is the tendency to interpret everything too literally. I do not see any logic behind considering dogs "spiritually unclean".

So, this must be just an exaggaration and misinterpretation of a religious tradition. The dogs in railway stations there are not used for fun, they are used for security purposes. If you are that sensitive as a muslim, then just wipe the place the dog sniffed afterwards :), that simple.

3. My search over internet

There is a hadith by Prophet Mohammad saying that a container must be washed if a dog licks it or eats/drinks from it. I guess this is the basis of the reaction of british muslims to sniffing dogs. However, many hostorical islamic jurists argued that this was due to health reasons: to prevent disease spread from dog's saliva since it may contain viruses. This makes very much sense, and something to be appreciated: hygenity 1400 years ago!. So, nobody says that they are spiritually unclean.
It is known that black dogs were seen as evils in pre-Islamic arab mythology. It seems that this belief later interfered the islamic belief, and led to "spiritual uncleanness" myth.
Shia islam and three of the equally-respected four subsects of Sunni islam consider dogs unclean mostly based on the above hadith in 1st point.
The other subsect of Sunni Islam, Maliki, says that dogs are clean, unlike the other three (based on 4th point below).
There is no ban in Islam to use dogs as hunters or farm-keepers or shepherd-helpers etc. There is even this verse: "What is lawful to you is that which is good and pure and also what you have trained your hunting animals to catch in the manner directed to you by Allah." (5:4). For sure, dog is one of the hunting animals, and nothing was stated after this verse about not to use dogs as hunting animals. Additionally, since hunting animal brings the game on their mouth, this fact indirectly suggests purity of dog saliva. (basis for Maliki view).
In Koran, the story of seven-sleepers and their dogs are mentioned in a positive way; and there is nothing condemning dogs.
There is another hadith by the prophet Mohammad about a prostitute who was forgiven by God because of giving water to a thirsty dog.

Summary

So, in summary; "spiritually unclean dog" contradicts with islam.
There are muslims who follow other schools than Maliki. They can consider dogs as unclean. However, they must keep in mind that this was for cleanness. This was not an advise to hate dogs.
I do not agree with the reactions of Muslims mentioned in the article of Times of India based on the bullets above. For me, security issues must be the priority; and I guess there are examples of changing of rules due to such priorities in the Prophet's life, based on logic.
As Kaustubh commented, such things make people more suspicious about islam, and makes general opinion about islam worse. So, much care is needed.

The board of the week

2008-06-28T23:20:00.005+02:00

The above board photo is about two-weeks old. I took the photo and erased the board, also removed the Antilles-tutorial.

On the left is a barbecue drawn by Ewoud, a stick-man drawn by Maikel, and the smoke drawn by me. The drawings were made in the same day we had our BBQ party in Funenpark roof with the group. There are also some notes regarding my Cheesy epiphany. On the lower left is the names of magpies, crows and their dutch versions, due to a discussion with Maikel. Other drawings below the Antilles-tutorial is by Maikel I guess, I do not have any idea.

Filipe's board
Filipe had written a farewell-message to our board in office C7.12, in Portuguese. It is still on the board, and I asked Serge to take a photo of the board few days ago. Even the green drawings he made for christmas is partly there.

I thought it would be nice to put this here, to give Filipe another proof that he had really been here, spent times here..

BBQing again

2008-06-28T23:11:00.004+02:00

I wanted to check the barbecue before going to shopping; but it was not anywhere in the roof! I told Vahid, and we had a search in the whole building, we could not find it.

We decided to use the tablegrill- the christmas gift of UvA. I called Emrah in the meanwhile. Then he called back and said that they will bring a barbecue grill.

They brought a newly-bought bucket barbecue. We have grilled lambs, sucuks, red paprikas, and marinated chicken wings I had bought from iranian supermarket at Dapperstraat yesterday. Or to be more correct, Emrah and Çağrı were our barbecue-guys.

We also had bulgur salad, prepared in my place with the help of Sara; and a pasta-salad by Sara.

How to marinate chicken
I took recipe from Sara, who took it from the guy in iranian supermarket. I modified it a bit.

Mix kip kruid (chicken spice) with olive oil so that they form a paste
Add a bit pomegranate sauce
Apply the paste to the chicken wings
Put the wings into a container with chopped onions
Leave them marinate.

Seven of us spent very nice time together in the roof, and later in my place for drinking tea and eating pumpkin seeds.

It was very funny to discover words which were common in all three languages: iranian, turkish and greek. Tiryaki (addicted) and hamal were two of them. Yorgos told me that they have surnames like "Kuyumcu", but people do not know that they are turkish words. They even say "yalanci sarma" (fake wrapping), an exactly turkish name, for rice wrapped with grape leaves. They call it fake since that dish does not include meat. Funny to know :)

I am glad that I met Yorgos. This was the first time in my life that I chatted with a greek person. He is such a nice person. Very open-minded, with very turkish appearance. I learned that he was from Mora peninsula, the hand-like part of Greece; and this part is actually an island now since there is a canal to make ship transport easier between western and eastern part of the country.

Gözde said that she was accepted to a program in Amsterdam for the next internship. It was also good to hear that she very much enjoyed the time spent together. I will talk to her to convince her to take more serious decisions on her future life :).

I found the following receipt in one of the bags Emrah and Çağrı:

Farewell Dinner of Walid

2008-06-28T22:50:00.001+02:00

We gathered in Sara-Vahid's place yesterday evening at around 20:00 with Walid, since he was leaving Amsterdam.

I learned new things about Singapore and Iran.

At one time during the chat, Vahid asked me if we know "Leyla and Mecnun". "Of course", I said, "It is turkish!". Walid said "Really?, I thought it was indian.." To be honest, I guess it is arabic although I once read that the desert of Leyla and Mecnun's tribes were in Afghanistan.
I should ask Kaustubh if he heard this story or not..

I also learned that his name is after a Lebanese politician: Walid Jumblatt. His brother is called Yaser Arafat, and he has a cousin called Muammer Kaddafi.

It was interesting to hear from Walid that there were no clashes between groups in Singapore. Tamils, Chinese and Malays live happily in the country, without any integration problem. He said that in big buildings, a certain percentage of residents has to be from each ethnic group, which in a way "forces" the different groups to integrate. And it seems that this policy works.

One other thing is: the official language is English in the country. The education in universities is english. I was a bit surprised first. "Why are not your own languages promoted?" I asked. But it does not make sense since the question then would be: "Which of malay, chinese and tamil must be the official language?" In this sense, it is logical to select a language other than any of these three as official language, to prevent conflicts. But still, it is sad that the new generation forgets their own languages, and prefer to speak english in daily conversations, as Walid said.

Vahid and Sara talked about an Iranian poet with azeri origin: Shahriyar. I learned that there are actually two deserts in Iran. Also, one grandfather of Vahid was azeri; and his city Mashad was close to Turkmenistan.

It was also interesting to learn reasoning behind his surname. They also told me that women do not change their surnames when they get married. That was surprising at first; but considering that we and they did not have any surnames in the old times, getting the husband's surnames must be a tradition originating from the west since surname tradition comes from there too.

How to call your mom and dad if you live in Holland..

2008-06-27T16:45:00.005+02:00

Mohammad had told me and Donatella on the JN Reunion day that he had heard that danish teenagers would call their parents with their first names. Donatella had said that that was not the case in Italy.

I had the opportunity to ask about this to Suzanne and Daniel just few minutes ago.

First I asked Suzanne how she called her parents-in-law. "Just with their first name", she said. I was surprised. She added that although many people use "ma" and "pa", it is getting more common to use their first names.

Then she said that even there are people (some of her friends) who call their own parents with their first names. Daniel and Suzanne, however, do not have this habit..

Over the chat in front of their office, I learned that this sunday Suzanne will be away from Fiona for the first time overnight. So, she was a bit anxious. By the way, finally, I dared to take Fiona to my arms yesterday for the first time.

In the meanwhile, I verified that Daniel's 85-year old grandma could use laptop to send e-mails. I said "even my mother cannot do it". To my surprise, Suzanne's mom cannot do it either :).

EK and Turkey

2008-06-27T00:27:00.001+02:00

I watched Croatia and Germany matches, the first voluntary watching after the semi-final with Brazil in 2002.

I was in my office during Croatia game. I called Daniel after we scored the goal, and also talked to Saadet, sharing our joy. Then I called Maikel, and I was talking to him during penalties.

It was very pleasing to see turkish people around horning in their cars with turkish flags when I left UvA at around 11:30 PM for home.

The next day (the last saturday), I went to Studio-K to see Russia-Netherlands game. It is in Borneostraat, next to the Stayokay hotel.

For semi-final, I was in Mavi Köşk in Javaplein.
I saw the following car during the break, parked nearby.
It was an interesting experience to watch the game there; to see the people's reactions; much stronger than the reactions of dutch at Studio-K.

And the following photo was in the front page of yesterday's Metro: Turken in rouw. "Turken in Amsterdam zijn in rouw na de goal van Philipp Lahm" it says.
Today, the lady (echocardiographist) at AMC said that she was very sorry that Turkey was out of the cup. She added that she really would very much want to apply an echocardiographic scan to our coach :).

Word of my week: Cootling

2008-06-26T10:22:00.002+02:00

Last friday, on the way to P-018 for the REC research seminar, Suzanne told me how she witnessed a heron swallowing a duck chick.

She used the word "duckling" to refer to duck chicks. I asked if it was the english name for it. "I don't know" she said, "I just use this word".

I verified this via internet. Now, I think that the chicks of coots should be referred as cootlings, to be consistent.

Moses and the Shepherd

2008-06-25T18:41:00.004+02:00

Maikel, Bea, Sara, Vahid and I gathered together yesterday in my place for a dinner and for chatting on beliefs, faiths.

I cooked yoghurt soup and dolma (stuffed paprika). Maikel helped for the mixing of flour and yoghurt for the soup. Vahid fried the cigarette pastries. After the dinner, we had Mangos by Bea and ice-cream by Sara as desserts. I always want to take a picture of dinner table in these occasions, but I always forget.

We talked about many things, nice moments. At one moment, Sara told us a story from Mevlana (Rumi)'s Mesnevi: Moses and the Shepherd:

A shepherd prays God: "My God, I love you, I want to kiss your hand, I want to serve you milk, I want to clean your bedroom, I want to wash your clothes....".
Moses hears this and gets angry "How come you can personalize God! You will make Him angry". And prevents him to go on with his prayer.
Moses gets a revalation just at the time by God: "Why did you separate my lover from me? Is your mission as a prophet to unite or to sever? Every person has his/her own way of approaching to me..."

Sara sent an e-mail to us today, and gave links to the english translation of the complete poem:

http://www.iranchamber.com/literature/jrumi/masnavi/moses_shepherd.php

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=358

She quoted the following parts from the second translation:
"Don't bother with good manners anymore,
But let your heart express what's in its core!"

I would really want Kiran and Kaustubh to be with us during these discussions..

Chatting with Mehmet Şen, constructing bridges to my a-decade-earlier inner world

2008-06-24T16:16:00.005+02:00

Yesterday evening, I prepared the stuffed paprikas (dolma) for my today's guests. While they were in the cooking-phase, I decided to call Mehmet Şen. It was about 12 PM (or should I say AM? Once we had discussed this with Maikel. I guess the correct way of saying is 12 AM for midnight).

I am glad that I did so.

He mentioned about many things. Listening to him was in a way making a journey to bachelor years, remembering the moments with full of tranquility spent with nice friends in nice places. I guess we stopped at about 1:15 AM when I checked the stuffed paprikas, and saw them they were cooked (meaning that I could sleep). He told me many things among which was to ask me to call Murat more often. He said that he works on the structure determination of a protein called Integrin.

Thanks God, I have such friends. Such friends that, even if we do not have any contact for a long time, I can call them I can talk to them very closely; I can feel the brotherhood in their voice... Thanks God!

And thanks to Lebara too, for making it cheaper to call US numbers :)

Margriet, the Random

2008-06-23T10:11:00.004+02:00

At UMC, they have organized an EK (european championship) pool within the department. I somehow did not participate, but my utrecht supervisor did. Margriet filled in two separate prediction sets: one based on her intuition/guess as everybody usually does, and one based on a random generator.

What she did was to count the number of zeros, ones, twos, threes etc. scored in the previous EK; and then assign scores to the games based on the probability of these scores.

And, now EK is coming to the end with all semi-finalists are already known. This morning, I have checked her random semi-final match predictions:
Russia- Spain
Germany- Austria

Unbelievable! She could predict the three of four semi-finalists and their matching, with only mistake being Austria instead of Turkey.

And, in the final updated list of the pool, she ranks the first among about 30 participants with her random prediction, even beating her intuitive prediction.

The all other 29 people must be feeling really bad; they predicted worse than random :)

This reminded me the day when Ewoud, Maikel, Filipe, Kaustubh and I gathered in my place in January for dinner, and played the card game take-5. Kaustubh preferred to play random cards in one round, and he was not the worst.

Happy Dutch Teens & Dutch Centenarians ....

2008-06-20T22:25:00.003+02:00

Interesting short news/statistics from this week's DutchNews newsletters:

Dutch teens again the happiest in the west
Dutch children are the happiest in the western world, according to a new World Health Organisation survey of 41 European and North American countries, quoted in Wednesday’s Volkskrant. Last year, a Unicef report also found that Dutch teenagers were the happiest in the developed world. The WHO report found that Dutch teens were the most pleased with life. They get on well with their parents and have a large social network. Dutch children are also particularly happy with their schools, the Volkskrant said.

Centenarians
The Netherlands had 1,486 people aged 100+ at the beginning of this year, up 91 on 2007. Only 193 of the centenarians are men, the national statistics office CBS reports.

sidelines- bus off
Today it emerged that bus users will have to pay a fuel surcharge from January 2009, like air travellers have done for years. This bizarre plan is apparently the government’s way of funding the 3.5% pay rise for bus drivers.
(my note: The regional buses, which operate between cities, were on strike for about 3 weeks. Finally, last week, they were given the salary increase they demanded.)

Inflation set to soar says central bank
The annual inflation rate will reach 3.4% next year before falling back to 2.2% in 2010, says the Dutch central bank in its latest quarterly bulletin on the economy. Higher oil, food and raw material prices will drive up inflation, the bank says. In addition, the shortage of skilled labour will boost wages. Higher taxes will also have an inflationary effect, according to the bank’s economists.

Paternal leave
Two out of five fathers do not claim their statutory right to parental leave because they think it will hurt their career, according to new research from the national statistics office CBS. Parents with children under the age of eight are entitled to 13 weeks of unpaid leave, spread over at least 26 weeks.

English lessons
The independent educational council (Onderwijsraad) is recommending that primary school children begin learning English as soon as they start school at the age of four. Most primary school children currently get some English lessons from the seventh grade, two years before they go to secondary school.

Second Dutch FARC guerilla found
A second young Dutch woman has been discovered fighting with anti-government FARC guerillas in Colombia, reports the Colombian paper El Tiempo.

Albert Heijn experiments with finger scans
Customers using the Albert Heijin supermarket in Breukelen are taking part in an experiment to pay by fingerprint. Once they have registered and their finger has been scanned, customers can pay for their shopping without cash or cards. The experiment will run for six months.

Green Stuff for Filipe

2008-06-19T21:08:00.004+02:00

Filipe had arrived in September. Then, he was sad when the trees that we saw when we looked at outside from our office started to lose their leaves in autumn. The view was more or less like this:
And Filipe said "How sad, I won't see them to be green again.." He left us in January.

Few weeks ago, Maikel was looking at outside from office, and he said to me : "Hey, why don't you take pictures of these green trees and send to Filipe?"

I liked the idea and took the following picture..
Now, I will send him an e-mail. "Hey Kid", I will write to him: "No need to worry anymore. Check out this link and you will be happy."

Birding in Amsterdam

2008-06-19T20:42:00.004+02:00

I went to my place for a short while to meet Alfonso since he is going for a long holiday, and also to have my dinner.

I prepared a for-me-unusual salad for dinner:
mix of boiled/squeezed potatos, tuna fish, iceberg salad, tomato, and mix of olive oil, lime juice and pomegranate sauce..

I plan to go for birding in amsterdam this saturday. I guess birding more means observing birds with binoculars; but I will do it by naked eye. I plan to borrow a camera with optic zoom function to photograph them.

List of birds that I already knew and that appear around
Duck
Swan
Goose
Sparrow
Crow
Pigeon

List of birds with which I met here for the first time
Coot
Moorhen
Egyptian goose (in vondelpark)
starling
magpie
jackdaw
blackbird
heron

List of Birds I want to meet & see
Kingfisher
Eurosian Jay
Great Grebe

Some of these birds are already everywhere, and some of them are in the parks in the city; about 10-15 min. of cycling from the center of Amsterdam..

In this sense, this is unbelievable for Istanbul. You can go to a distance of 15 min. cycling from a central place, and you see all of those birds? No way! ...

I was checking the turkish names of some of these birds; and just few minutes ago; I realized that starling was actually "Sığırcık" !!. I heard the name of this bird many times in stories, novel; but never seen it. The name in turkish means "little cattle"; so I always had strange imaginations about the bird. However, it is just a small cute bird!

I also found this very interesting video on the internet: the dance of starlings: from Kutahya in Turkey

ORANJE

2008-06-16T17:51:00.001+02:00

The dutch football team is called "oranje" here. It is because the team is associated with the royal family, and one of the surnames of the royal family is oranje. (the other is nassau).

And, in dutch, the fruit orange is called sinaasappel. So, oranje refers to color, not to the fruit. Ironically, however, dutch football team is referred as "portakallar" in Turkey, after the fruit orange.

Now is the european championship games, and Oranje is doing very well, even to the dutch people's surprise. Almost nobody gave the team a chance to qualify for the second round, beating france and italy.

On June 7, we had to walk to the central station with Maikel to take the Thalys train to Paris. There was no tram that early on Saturday. And we saw a store on our way, selling refrigerators etc. They had put the following two fridges on the front window, in reference to the first match between Italy and Netherlands..

I have checked Buienradar for the rain forecast of Amsterdam on Friday. To my surprise, they had colored netherlands in orange, in reference to european championship.

TURKEY
Surprisingly, Turkey won against Chec Republic last night. It was 2-0, but we scored 3 goals in last 15 minutes, 2 of them in last 3 minutes. Today, Stan congratulated me for the winning, and qualifying for quarter final. Ruud also referred to it when we had research meeting in his office. Our secretary Monique asked me on the corridor if I had seen the game.

I read in today's Metro that turkish supporters were in Amsterdam's Mercatorplein last night, celebrating the sansational winning.

One nice thing would be to have the final game between Netherlands and Turkey. Let's see. The ball is round, you never know..

Johan killed my Jacobian baby

2008-06-16T16:30:00.004+02:00

We had research meeting today. We talked about small issues regarding my manuscript.

Johan had suggested to skip the last paragraph of my discussion, and to make a short separate paper out of it instead. It was about the jacobian strength. I did not want to skip it, and we argued for a while. I said that it was like a child for me, and I did not want to skip it. Since he managed to convince Age and Margriet, I had to give in at the end.

Johan apologized, however, for killing my jacobian baby. Margriet comforted me saying that it will hopefully come back as a separate child (paper) :).

Coots Revisited

2008-06-15T22:10:00.003+02:00

Coot family on floating garbage revisited..
I have checked the floating coot nest in the canal passing under our REC building close to Halverstad bridge..

To my luck, it was the time where mother and father exchanged roles for food-finding to laying-on-the-nest. Therefore, I had the chance to see their chick again (the mother or father always lay on top of it. That's why my previous attempts were unsuccessful). It is bigger now compared to previous size.

And very surprisingly, there were 3-4 more eggs on the nest! That's weird. They already have one chick of 3-4 weeks old. Did the mother make new eggs again? Probably this is the case; there was no egg on the nest. Let's wait and see..

I managed to take a video with my mobile during the exchange event; but its resolution is so low that it is impossible to see how they exchange..

We were at "Coot Day-Care Centre" at Gaasperplas
Alfonso and I have cycled to Kruitberg (literal meaning: {gun}powder mountain) yesterday. This was my longest cycling experience. Routeplanner showed the cycling distance as 8 km. However, we have made a wrong turn somewhere on the way. I guess it was at least 9 km. It took about 1 hour to arrive at Maikel's place at 5 PM.

He cooked zucchini soup: very tasty!. I will ask for the exact recipe. The other dish was risotto with salmon and smoked trout. Again, a nice and interesting dish. I learned that risotto was an italian rice type with more round shape, and a higher capacity to absorb water.

We had a walk to the lake at Gaasperplas after the dinner in Maikel's place. He took us to the park, and we saw a lot of rabbits around in the park! Their sudden movements were very funny. This was the first time I saw rabbits in natural life.
Then we walked to the lake. There was one mature coot feeding three other younger coots. Then another mature coot with a younger coot appeared, and it started to help feeding all younger coots. Maikel said that probably this was a coot day-care centre. The mothers are at work, left their young kids to here, he joked. He added that probably the two mature coots are paid by government. I said "then these coots adapted themselves to the dutch system".Yet another interesting coot nest
This morning, while cycling to university through Mauritskade, I saw this coot laying on a nest on the wheel in the middle of the canal.

"Are you going Dutch?"

2008-06-15T16:32:00.004+02:00

I was scanning the dutch book I bought from the biggest book market of the world: Undutchables. I saw the expression "to go dutch" there.

I remembered the time when Alfonso, Bea, Maikel and I went to Castricum (Limme) for the non-commercial tulip garden Hortus-Bulborum.

The ticket was something like 3.5 euros; and in the payment process, the lady sitting there asked us "Are you going dutch?". We did not understand what she meant.

After getting the tickets, Maikel told us that it is an idiomatic expression in english, and it means "Is everybody paying by himself/herself"..

This probably originates from the fact that dutch are in general cheap people..

Drops Torture: the poor dutch people ....

2008-06-13T19:23:00.003+02:00

Daniel showed up in front of our office with a box of what-he-calls "drops".

Drops are traditional dutch candies.. Well, it is probably wrong to call them as "candies" since they are not sweet.

He and Maikel encouraged me to taste two types of drops from his box: a pyramide-shape brownish one, and a black-man shape.

I bit a small part from both of them; and i had to throw the rest into the garbage bin! So strange taste! I have drunk water afterwards, and ate one Halley chocolate-biscuit; but still the strange taste was in my mouth!

In the afternoon, I was in their office, and Daniel told Suzanne how strange my facial expression was when I tried the drops. I told them that I really feel a pity for dutch people since they had to eat these disgusting-tasting candies. Daniel gave me some drops to give Suzanne after realizing that his pushings for me to taste it again would not work at all. So, I took some drops and gave Suzanne. She said that the way I hold them was very similar to the way she holds Fiona's diapers.

Suzanne made a search on internet and found out that they had found drops even in Tutankamon's grave. I reacted by saying "Then, we managed to produce the new tastes from then on over centuries and switched to them; but you poor dutch could not make any improvement and still have to eat the same thing."

Crazily enough, Daniel said that drops would be one thing he would really miss if he goes abroad. Coffee and peanut butter was the other two.

Actually, I remembered that I had tasted one months ago from Margriet. They include ammonium chloride. Its taste was not that strong; but still I did not like it at the time either.

Dinner at Komme Nieuwegracht

2008-06-13T19:05:00.005+02:00

Age came to my office during the day and made the following sketch on the board, explaining me how to get to their place.They have a very nice house! The roof has a garden-like balcony. The tower of the famous church is very visible from the balcony, very close. They said that this will probably be the selling point of the house. They have a very big piano in the living room, whose fame I had already heard during the new-house-finding stage. Age told us how they had to get this huge piano inside through the window of the kitchen by first removing the whole window frame. At that time, he wanted to use the word "crane". He could not remember it and he brought a dictionary to the dining table. It was funny to have dinner with occasional dictionary checks..

One of the rooms had graffiti on one wall. Age told us that it was his nephew who asked permission for this, and he agreed; and he liked it at the end.

The house is furnished in such a way that one can think that they have already packed everything for moving to the new place. There was hardly furnitures around. I liked it. It is totally opposite of traditional turkish furnishing where houses are full of unnecessary things, leading to almost no place to walk around freely. This was also what I saw and liked in Inge and Hans's house.

It was interesting to see that the walls were full of interesting picture frames. Inge said that she found the picture in the bedroom very scary.

The dinner dish was very delicious too. Halal meat balls with tasty sauce, served with boiled potato, carrot and spinach. I also liked the dessert they served: strawberrries with a very tasty sauce: mix of a soft cheese type with lemon juice and honey. I will ask Margriet the recipe.

Together with Inge and Hans, we talked about many different issues. The chatting was about many different things from books to music to photography to alcohol dehydrogenase located in stomach... In the meanwhile, Margriet and Inge told the others how they had taught me how to make a typical dutch conversation using "Wat schuift het?" and "dikke neuse"..
:) ...

Inge and Hans talked about their french neighbour. She still uses ashes to make her bed warm before sleeping. "She leaves in 19th century" was the comment. It is interesting to hear that there are still such westerners.

Inge said that the dutch laws require that everybody has to have a certain office space. She said "For instance, I should have 12 m2 office space, and you 2" returning to Margriet. I was surprised why Margriet's space right is so little according to laws. "Probably it is because she has just obtained a permanent position" I thought. Then I realized that Inge had actually said "you too..".

The house had full of plants. I forgot to ask Margriet if she really does not touch any of them.

Overall it was nice moments.. We left at around quarter past ten, and I was home at 23:45, cycling from amstel station..

DutchNews: Church-goers & Geese-gasers

2008-06-12T11:37:00.003+02:00

Two interesting details from yesterday's DutchNews;

Statistics of the Day: Church-goers
The Netherlands has nine million people who say they are religious, but only 20% regularly go to church, mosque or other house of worship, according to new figures from the national statistics office CBS.

Only 7% of Catholics attend weekly mass.

Geese cull
A court in Haarlem has given the green light to plans to gas 6,000 greylag geese on the island of
Texel because of the damage they cause to farmland. The aim is to reduce the number of breeding pairs on the island to 200, says news agency ANP.

Opponents of the cull say it is a waste of time.

"Notre Dame" or "Onze Lieve Vrouw"

2008-06-10T18:36:00.003+02:00

I know the name "Notre Dame" since I heard about the book "the hunchback of notre dame" by Victor Hugo many times since childhood.

But I never knew that it was the name of a church.

Thanks to our visit to Paris with Maikel, I now know that it is the name of a very famous church in Paris, located on one of the small islands in river Seine. It has very nice and majestic look.
More surprising for me was to learn its meaning. Since the name was always associated with hunchback in my mind, I thought it was probably a person with a hunchback.

When we were inside the church, I saw the explanations in different languages; and my eye caught the word "onse lieve vrouw kerk" (our lovely lady church). I was surprised that they mentioned about a dutch church in the explanations. "Why" I asked Maikel. "What has this church to do with a dutch church"?

"It is this church" was Maikel's reply to my amazement. I did not get it. Then he told me that "Notre Dame" was the french word for "Onze Lieve Vrouw". How surprising!

And I realized that the novel by Victor Hugo was actually about the church. It was not a personal name...

Finally Back to Utrecht again...

2008-06-10T12:29:00.006+02:00

Last monday, I was in Denmark. And we were in Wageningen on Tuesday for a small workshop. So, I did not come to WKZ at all.

And this monday, we arrived early from Paris; and there was NMC meeting in the afternoon.

So, today finally I am again in Utrecht after a while.

Margriet's "little poor plant"
I asked Margriet today if she had any plans to water her plant. Normally, it is almost always me who waters the littel poor plant 'zielige plantje'. She said "let me check"; and opened Microsoft Outlook calendar. Then, she joked that it was not in her agenda, so she won't.

Then, I told her that it would be better if she takes the responsibility to take care of the little hoya serpens.

By the way, Inge's hoya lacunosa is finally doing something: produced a new branch with 3 tiny leaves.

Giant Cow-Parsley
While we were walking outside with Tjeerd at noon, he pointed to a plant among the grasses alongside a canal. "These are called 'berenklauw' in dutch, meaning bear's paws; and they are poisonous" he said. He added that if I grab their stem, my hand will be very itchy.

We have checked from wikipedia when we were back from walking. Its english name is giant cow's parsley, or giant hogweed. The exact dutch name is reuzenberenklauw. I could not find any turkish name.

The following photo is from the internet.

Wikipedia says that:

-its sap causes severe skin inflammations. They form scars that can last several years.
- if eyes are exposed to minute amount of its sap, it can cause temporary and even permanent blindness.
- you should have head-to-toe covering while removing it.

Chasing a Typical Dutch Cyclist

2008-06-10T11:11:00.002+02:00

In this morning, a lady cyclist appeared in front of me at Linneaustraat on my way to Amstel Station.
- She had shoes with heels,
- She was cycling with left hand,
- She was holding/supporting a bag at the back of the bike with the other hand..
So, a typical dutch cyclist..

I was already in hurry to catch the train, and I was cycling with my maximum speed. "I will pass by this lady" I decided.

But it was not possible at all. To my all efforts, I could not close the gap in between. She was very fast despite one-hand control, heeled shoes, and holding the bag behind.

Very close to the train station, she crossed the street when the traffic light was red, and disappeared on the way..

I have collected new data on Dutch-Danish comparison

2008-06-04T19:02:00.007+02:00

I had a three-day holiday in Denmark, and I used this opportunity to update my data on differences of dutch and danish people.

Some data verified my previous conclusions, but some required revision.

Verified Data
1. About 20-30% of danish cyclists use helmets. This percentage is less than 1% for dutch cyclists.
(On our walking tour to Bagsvaerd Lake on Jens Nielsen Reunion Day after lunch, Birgitte told me that there were plans to make it obligatory. A recent pool showed that 60% of danes said "We will stop cycling if helmets becomes mandatory")

2. 100% of danish pedestrians and danish cyclists obey traffic lights. They just stop at red light even there is no car/ no pedestrian in the visible distance. The percentage of dutch people (weather cyclist or pedestrian) , on the other hand, who wait at crossings at red traffic light even there is no cars around, is on the other edge: 0-5 %.
(I feel stupid sometimes when I stop at red light while cycling, and all other cyclists just pass by)

3. Danish people drink much more alcohol than their dutch cousins. Ana Paula had already told me multiple times that beer was even cheaper than water in Denmark. And during this visit, I had an extra proof. During the lunch in the hotel on Jens Nielsen reunion day, Birgitte told me that Danes call "bottle opener" as "beer opener". I asked Maikel after my return if that was the case for dutch people, and obviously not.

4. I was very surprised when I was in Denmark in 2004/2005 since, unlike Istanbul, there were almost no construction works going on outside such as constructing new buildings, new roads etc. I had the impression that this was the general european style. Definitely not. Amsterdam has full of construction works going on:
- as soon as you leave amsterdam central station, you see the construction works for renovation/ new metro line, which will take few years to complete.
- there are many new buildings being built within the city
- Keerwal, the small street at the back of Funenpark, is under construction for 7-8 months. I do not have any idea why they renew the road.

And, during this visit too, I haven't seen any such attempts in Denmark.

Contradicting Data
5. Danes are not tall anymore. After spending months in Denmark, I remember that I was surprised when I read somewhere that Dutch people were the tallest in the world. "How come?", I thought, "It is actually Danes."
However, this time, after spending months among Dutch people, I was surprised to see that Danes were not that tall. I even started to think that they are no different than Turkish people. There are outliers for sure, like Trine Bro.
(I guess this is what I will call from now on the "dutch effect". I have started to judge tallness using dutch people as my standard; and this will lead to the conclusion that all other people are noticeably short.)..

6. As an Istanbulin, I had not noticed the difference between crowdedness of the two countries/ two capitals. For me, it was the same: they are very small cities, very quiet cities. Now I realized that there was hardly people around in Denmark. It was very quiet there. And I realized that Netherlands was actually really crowded relatively.
(We have checked the population density of the countries from Wikipedia with Kiran on sunday. Netherlands is 25th in the world.).

My epiphany today: Cheesy vs. Çizi

2008-05-30T18:15:00.003+02:00

Maikel was talking about something, and he used the word "cheesy".

And, I experienced a very sudden realization!

Çizi has always been my favourite biscuits. I liked its salty taste a lot. "Çiz" means "draw" in turkish, and I did not understand the reason behind the name of this biscuit.

At the moment Maikel used the word "cheesy", I was enlightened by the reason behind this naming :).

Çizi is the turkish spelling of Cheesy, and the biscuit had cheese flavour!

Maikel told me that the english word for such a sudden realisation was epiphany.

May is the warmest of 100 years!!

2008-05-30T17:36:00.002+02:00

From DutchNews daily newsletter:

May 2008 has been the warmest May in over a century, the KNMI weather bureau said on Friday. The average temperature has been 15.7°, compared with 12.7° in a normal year. The temperature reached over 20° on 20 days, while nine warm days is the norm, the KNMI said.

Kids, kids, kids... All are daughters..

2008-05-30T17:03:00.005+02:00

Johan the father
Johan was at UvA with his daughters on Wednesday. Two blonde sweet girls. Daniel said that they were very excited to get on train, metro to come here and to be at Papa's kamer (room). Father and the daughters have visited my office too. I wish I knew the language to be able to communicate with them. The younger one looked shyer and quieter, and that made her even more childish... It somehow made me happy to see Johan with his daughters, to see that he is a father, he has the responsibility to take care of these sweet kids.. happy and somehow emotional..

Suzanne the mother
Suzanne is back to our group this week. I saw her yesterday first. She looks quite OK. Wednesday is Mamma Dag, and Thursday is Papa Dag. So, little Fiona has to go to the daycare center only three days per week. I asked her if any of the grandmas were helping her for few days after the delivery at home as we have in Turkey. She said that it was quite uncommon here since there is a nurse (paid by your health insurance company), and that nurse comes everyday in first week or so. She shows the new parents how to take care of baby, how to have her have a bath; and she even makes the other stuff like laundry etc. The service is available even it is not your first child, Suzanne said.

Tessa the daughter
Yesterday was Tessa's birthday. Olja showed me the photos from the celebrations in the kindergarten. She said that she started to make fun of her mother when Olja does not know dutch word for something, or pronounces it incorrectly. "Je weet het niet! Je weet het niet!" -you don't know that- was what Tessa said in these moments. I also learned how they came up with her name. Tessa was a dutch author, and it was Hans' suggestion.

She also told me that the swan couple who already had eggs when I visited them had their babies out. There were 6 baby swans first. But after a while, they saw only two of them. They were very surprised on what happened the other 4, and speculated that they were maybe eaten by other birds. Funny thing is, some days later, they saw this swan couple somewhere else, this time with all 6 babies around :).

We have partied at Funenpark roof !!

2008-05-29T15:47:00.006+02:00

On friday, we had our vegetarian + chicken barbecue party at Funenpark Roof.

In the afternoon, I went to the P building to meet Vahid. We went to the iranian shop at Dapperstraat together to buy the chickens for barbecue.

After our DBN research meeting, Gooitzen, Maikel, Daniel and me cycled to my place. Johan and Ewout came by tram 10.

We started to prepare bulgur salad (Kısır) and lentil balls (mercimek köfte). Maikel helped me a lot in chopping onions, spring onions and parsley. I guess Daniel chopped an onion too. But he was mostly busy with garlics to be used with shrimps. First, he did not like my garlics since they were rotten somehow, and we got one from Sara and Vahid.

I asked Ewout's help on chopping parsleys. Johan suggested to use a small scissor saying that it makes it more practical. At the end, I realized that Ewout has a noticeably lower performance than he had in our previous gathering in January. Then, I asked him to stop :).

At the end, we had the following menu:

Bulgur Salad

Lentil Balls

Koko Sabzi (Iranian dish; vegetables with eggs. Sabzi means vegetables; and koko is if you mix something with eggs)
Cigaratte Pastry(Vahid helped me to fry them in oil)

Chicken barbecue.

Ewout was our barbecue guy together with Johan. Maikel helped me to mix the things for Bulgur Salad, and Gooitzen squeezed lemons. Sara made the mixing for lentil balls and she shaped the balls.

We were all 9 people, including Sara, Vahid and their friend from Argentina: Ines.

It was very nice weather, and enjoyable there in the roof in open air.

The others left earlier, but we sat in the roof with Maikel, Ines, Sara and Vahid till it gets dark. There was another group started to partying; so we decided to go to my place to have a quieter environment. We made jokes about american pigeons.

After Ines and Maikel left around 11:30 PM, we went on chatting and eating pumpkin seeds (from Ines) with my iranian neighbours till 1 AM or so.

It was funny that my iranian neighbours were referring to Ewout as 'the barbecue guy'.

Overall, I had a very nice evening/night with all those nice people around!

Cartoonist

2008-05-28T17:33:00.003+02:00

From the Sidelines of today's Dutch News:
---------------------
"The right-of-centre VVD party is offering to exhibit the work of cartoonist Gergorius Nekschot in its parliamentary quarters in The Hague. The party wants to make a stand for free speech.

Nekschot (a pseudonym) was recently arrested and questioned about the alleged racist nature of his cartoons. Some of the cartoons in question were recently re-published. They were ugly and insulting: one showed a fat Muslim riding on the back of the welfare state. One wonders if the VVD would come to the rescue of a Muslim cartoonist in the Netherlands portraying Dutch politicians as fat parasites feeding on populist anti-Muslim sentiment? And what would their reaction have been if Nekschot had substituted Jews for Muslims in his cartoons? Who is
going to see the VVD exhibition, anyway?

If Nekschot has broken the law then he should be punished. If not, then let him continue. His
heavy-handed arrest by the police was unnecessary and has made him a martyr.

And as for the ridiculous nature of VVD’s gallery for free speech….now that would make a good cartoon."
----------------

I completely agree with the parts I colored with green. VVD is the dutch liberal party by the way. And it is the second larges opposition party in the parliament according to the uncle Wiki.

"More Shadows for Dutch Cows" Campaign

2008-05-27T12:01:00.005+02:00

I saw an interesting news in yesterday's Metro newspaper.

"'Bomen voor Koeien' stops " it says.
The campaign of 'Trees for Cows' had started in May 2000 to provide more shadowy place for cows in pastures. Approximately 77,000 trees were planted during the 8 years.

It was very interesting to see such a campaign in this country since the sunny days in the country is really limited. This shows how professional the dutch people are in a way. They even care about the shadow need of their cows to make them happier and to get more milk.
The campaign even has a website: http://www.bomenvoorkoeien.nl/

Jackdaw

2008-05-26T20:04:00.014+02:00

Maikel told me that the crow-like birds with grayish head are not crows, but they are called jackdaw in english.

He said that jackdaws are the clever birds, not crows. And he added that jackdaws are actually smaller than crows. I put a crow picture below from wikipedia, to make the difference clearer.

And today, on our way back from R-Class meeting, Tjeerd told me that they are called 'Kauw' in dutch. I checked from wikipedia for the turkish name: it is not that creative: 'Kuchuk Karga', meaning 'Small Crow'.

OLVG: Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis

2008-05-26T20:03:00.003+02:00

My huisarts (family doctor) is located in a hospital close to Oosterpark. The hospital is called OLVG, the abbreviation of 'Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis'. Namely, 'Our dear lady guesthouse'.

I had asked Maikel why this hospital was called so. He told me that 'Onze Lieve Vrouwe' refers to Prophet Jesus' mother, Mary. He added that this name suggests that the hospital was of catcholic origin. According to him, there are hospitals all over the country with the same naming.

Ben Seni Sevdugumi / The Edge of Heaven

2008-05-26T19:59:00.002+02:00

Maikel and I visited Gurchay and Olga on Saturday at The Hague. This time there was many more ducks in the lake in the middle of their complex.

The basic idea was to watch Fatih Akin's movie: Auf Der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven). IMDB gives a point of 8.1 to the movie.

Before the movie, we had a dinner: again a delicious one thanks to Olga. During the dinner, I learned that the lemon slices put into cokes etc while serving were actually limes most of the time. They told me that lime and lemon are not the same variety although the taste is similar. Lime is green in color, and it has a different smell.

It was an interesting movie. More interesting was the song you hear three times in the movie: Ben seni sevdugumi (by Kazim Koyuncu originally). I bumped into this song on youtube a week ago. Shevval Sam sings it in a very nice way. I had listened it few times back then.

Then, few days ago, I saw on the internet that an Azeri girl from Turkish-Azerbaijan high-school sings the same song too..

I was already crooning this song on Saturday morning. It was surprising to hear it in the movie in the same evening.

Elevator Stories

2008-05-26T19:53:00.003+02:00

Last Wednesday, on the elevator back from tea-coffee break outside at open air, I remembered my amazement when I saw the following notice in the elevators in my first days at UvA : 'U bevindt zich in lift'. It is similar to german, So, I understood that it said "you are in elevator". 'What a strange and stupid comment', I was thinking, 'Of course I am in the elevator'..

Then, days later, I realized that there was something under this remark, saying "B4" or a similar label. I then realized that the exact expression was : 'You are in elevator B4'. So, in case of emergency, you can call related number and tell in which elevator you are..

I told this story to Olja, Daniel and Gooitzen in the elevator. And Daniel shared another funny elevator story with us: He was in the elevator and suddenly heard that the emergency phone on the lift was ringing. He decided to take it. The person on the other side was asking 'Is that the student desk?', and he answered: 'No, this is elevator B5.'

It must be very funny to hear something like this when you call a place :)

Hectic Days

2008-05-26T19:44:00.003+02:00

I had very busy days starting with last Wednesday.

Wednesday evening: I was at Sara and Vahid's place for dinner, to talk about our roof party organization. Sara cooked a very delicious pilav (rice), with minstmeat, safran and white cabbage on it (also onion and a little bit hot red paprika paste). I learned from them that they also have the classification of hot-food and cold-food like in India. I asked if this classification is accessible in official books or so, and they replied : 'No, you just ask your grandma..'

Thursday: I was at Sonnenburgh (Utrecht) for chemometrics meeting. The location was very nice- an observatory. On the way at Amstel Station, I bumped to Gooitzen, and later Huub joined us and we went together. I also met a turkish PhD student from Nijmegen. Bulent told me that he works on support vector machines.
During the lunch break, there was a tour in the observatory; and I learned that it was a dutch person who found out that the air moves from high-pressure area to low-pressure areas in circular way, not in linear paths (like we see in buienradar.nl for example).

Friday: In the morning, I was at OLVG for a short check. In the afternoon, we had the causality meeting, this time on DBNs (dynamic bayesian networks) with Age, Margriet, Johan, Huub, Daniel and me. Afterwards, we had our roof party at Funenpark. Very nice moments.

Saturday: We went to Den Haag, to Gurchay and Olga's place to watch Fatih Akin's last movie, Auf der anderen seite.

Sunday: we had a barbecue lunch with Vahid and Sara, partly on the roof (although it was partly raining weakly), and partly in my place. It was surprising that they could correctly pronounce and knew about our former female prime minister, Tansu Chiller.

On the way to transform to a Dutch Cyclist

2008-05-22T20:43:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, after shopping in the Albert Heijn near the mill De Grooijer, I heard my mobile ringing just after I have turned to Cruquiskade on my bike. I have checked my back, there was no cyclist coming.
Then, I did it..

For the first time, while cycling, I answered the mobile! One of my hands was on one handle, and I was holding the mobile with my other hand, and cycling through Cruquiskade next to the kanal houses.

It was Alfonso, and we talked for a minute or so.

This means that I am transforming to become a Dutch cyclist.. I felt really excited afterwards. I could not believe that I did that..

But there are a couple of things that I have to achieve for full transformation:
1- I have to find a dog, and pull it with me while cycling.
2- I have to find a baby, put him/her into the front or back of my bike, and talk with my mobile at the same time.
3- I have to cycle with none of my hands being on the handles. If my hands are not totally free but instead I hold a box which is at the back of my bike, this would be a plus.
4- I have to cross in red traffic lights in the rush hours.
5- I have to go in the opposite direction in the bike paths (I do this only on the way back from Javastraat, but this has to be done in the central places).
6- I have to smoke while cycling.

Then I can be a real dutch cyclist...

Turkey on Bus 11 of Utrecht

2008-05-20T19:10:00.002+02:00

I see the advertisements on having holidays in Turkey almost everywhere on the billboards and on the buses in the last few months. Once Maikel said that there was also commercials on TV channels.

Last Tuesday, the bus 11 which took me to the central station was also covered all with Turkey advertisement. I managed to take a photo of the bus while it was waiting for departure time.

Two Pandas at WKZ

2008-05-20T18:02:00.008+02:00

This morning, there was unusual children screams coming from outside. Margriet, Inge and I went to the window to check: what a surprise! There was one panda outside. And after a while, I realized that there was another one.. And pandas were surrounded by many children.

Margriet told me that this was actually organized once every year to test the behavioural normality of children from schools at Utrecht.

Throughout the day, there were many children groups, but the pandas and the story was the same:

Somehow, something happens to one of them and it falls down. Then children start screaming "Ambulance, Ambulance !!!!". And, ambulancemen hear those screams and they show up in the accident area within one minute!

They examine the patient panda, apply first aid, and they take a stretcher from the ambulance. Then they call the panda: "Bear, beaar !"

Sick panda hears this and comes and lies on the stretcher...

How funny, all of us laughed and enjoyed a lot today in the office.

Research at UMC Utrech

2008-05-19T19:46:00.005+02:00

Research Meeting at WKZ

Today, I checked my cycling time to Amstel Station: 14 minutes!. The whole path is 3.4 kilometers according to fietsplanner.

I came to my office at around 07:55, and sent Maikel an e-mail immediately saying that I was earlier at work than him :)

Then we had a research meeting with Age, Margriet and Johan; and it was a very satisfactory one. Thanks God, i have such nice supervisors. During the meeting, Age told me that you can understand the direction of the wind by licking your indexfinger and holding it in the air (with 20-30% deviation though).

He also referred to a former PhD student who had 50th version of his manuscript at the end!. Then, in one of the latest versions, Age showed him a group of sentences saying that he liked the style of those sentences a lot, and he wants all the manuscript written in the same way. The answer of PhD student was : 'Well, you had added those sentences to the manuscript ten versions ago'.

I also saw pictures of Age-Margriet's new house, and told Margriet "Sit there by laughing and laughing" ('gule gule otur' in turkish).

Quite Unusual Genetic Algorithm Settings

I sent my genetic algorithm settings for my static jacobian problem to Kaustubh, and in return, he wrote me in gtalk:

"hmm the GA setting is quite unusual"

I laughed a lot, then he called me and told me how to change my code to have a usual GA code :).

This is like a book paradise

2008-05-18T20:00:00.005+02:00

I wanted to go to center today for a small shopping. But on the way at Waterlooplein, I noticed the bookstands, and I stopped and started to walk around.

Oh, my God! So huge bookmarket! Book stands were all around Waterlooplein till Mr. Visserplein and till Nieuwmarket.

I spent about 4 hours there, and bought some cheap books:

The name of the rose (umberto eco): 2.5 euros (Sadullah's request)
Awakenings (Oliver Sack): 4 euros (Inge had strongly advised me his books, saying that he writes about his experiences with his patients)
Alice's Adventures (Lewis Carroll): 4 euros (since Kiran had lots of quotations from this book in his thesis, and said that the book was one of his favorites)
A spot of bother (Mark Haddon) : 5 euros (I really loved his previouos book- the curious incident of the dog in the night time-)
The undutchables (dutch book): 2.5 euros (I bought this just to have a dutch book)
Nederland voor hunderd jaar (dutch book published in 1959) : few euros (just to have an old dutch book about netherlands)
Jip en Janneke 1 (Annie Schmidt) : 2 euros (Heyy! this was the last book I bought. I had to walk a long way to find a Jip-en-Janneke seller.)
the 30-second golf swing: 1 euro (for Johan)

While strolling among book stands, I heard one of lady strollers saying to one bookseller "This is really a book paradise."

And later I learned that this was the biggest book market on the world, with the total length of stands being about 5 kilometers.

And I have seen this creature among the stands on the way from Waterlooplein to Nieuwmarkt. The child seems to afraid of it.

Whiteboards in my office and Maikel

2008-05-18T19:49:00.003+02:00

Maikel is a clean and order-loving guy, and I guess that's why he always cleans the board in our office regularly. This time, before he was in action, I managed to take a photo of the board.
The middle: In the middle ofthe board is a tutorial page from Sp!t newspaper on Netherlands Antilles. I liked it when I saw it last week during the coffee brak at 8th floor, and put it on the board. I learned thanks to this paper that there are 6 islands which form Netherlands Antilles. And, they are in two clusters of each being 3 islands. Then, they are very very close to Venezuella.

On the right: There are strange sketches made by me. We were discussing with Johan about 4-metabolite system part of my manuscript.

Below: Maikel told me that a ducth guy from 17th century was the father of microbiology. I asked him to write his name to the board. He is Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

Above: Daniel was telling Maikel about the cupboard he had in his place from Ikea and how he oriented it. Additionally, he said that he wants to eat Veal for our planned roof party. I asked what veal is, and he told me that it is the name for cow meat.

Coot nest near Halverstad Bridge

2008-05-18T19:32:00.005+02:00

On Friday, around 6 PM, I suddenly heard the emergency alarm, and then an announcement has followed in dutch, english, german and french saying that everybody had to leave the building.

At first, I was in panick somehow, remembering the fire in one of the buildings of TuDelft few days ago, but then felt relieved when I saw few other people on the stairs.

When I was outside and about to leave with my bike, I have noticed an eurasian coot (I checked the turkish name: sakarmeke or su tavugu -water chicken-, and the dutch name is meerkoet) nest on a floating surface on the canal. The parents even had one chick!.

Table Tennis

2008-05-18T19:04:00.002+02:00

On Friday, during the lunch, Ewout told me and Gooitzen that it is easy to hit the ball when you are away from the table for few meters. The most difficult thing, he said, is to hit the ball when you are close to table. He said that you cannot see if your opponent hits the ball with a backspin of forwardspin in this case. This is very important to know since it determines your hitting method/style. So, you have to make a decision within one milisecond about how the oppponent hit, and if your decision is wrong you lose since the ball will go to an unexpected place.

Then in the afternoon, he showed me a website where he appears in the available photos while playing table tennis.

By the way, I have realized that the way I write 'Ewout' is different than the way he writes (Ewoud). But I am not saying that I write it wrong since it is not an official name anyway.

"Transporting Paper is an Art in This Country"

2008-05-15T20:38:00.003+02:00

On wednesday I went to AMC to get an apointment at cardiology department. I gave the secretary the letter by my house doctor, and she said "I cannot give you an appointment now". I was surprised, then she told me that I will get a letter in two weeks, and that letter will include the date and time for the appointment.

When I said this to Maikel, he was surprised. But I do not get surprised since I know that the things can be quite slow but organized here in this country (Kaustubh would definitely object to the "organized" part). Letters have to go and come back, and you have to wait. Daniel said the following as his comment, and he allowed me to quote it directly:
"Transporting paper is an art in this country."

Origin of many lakes in Holland

2008-05-15T20:22:00.004+02:00

Maikel told me yesterday that many small lakes in the Netherlands were created because the stones and sands from ground were used for building purposes, and the resulting cavities were filled with water. He said that the lake close to his place (Gaasperplas) is one of such lakes.

Dinner with Iranian Neighbours

2008-05-15T20:10:00.004+02:00

Last night, I had a dinner with Vahid and Sara. I cooked chickpea soup, potato meal, and pasta with onion sauce. We talked about different issues.

1. We discovered new common words between iranian and turkish languages like sandalye (chair), taze (fresh), chorba (shorba), meyve (fruit), portakal (orange). I told them the story behind the naming of portakal, linked to the portuguese city porto.

2. They mentioned about a professor from Carnegie Mellon, who will die of pancreatic cancer. Today, Sara sent me the link to his last lecture, and strongly advised me to watch it. I have found his weblog on the internet too.
Sara and Vahid told me last night that he said that his mother was saying to people "Look, this is my son. He is a doctor. But not of the kind who can help people."

3. Towards the end of our chats, they said a few times that they wanted to leave and it was already late, but we went on chatting. Then they said : "Is it the same in Turkey. Guests say that they will just leave, but go on chatting? " I said: "exactly!" :).

They liked the taste of paprika paste very much. Sara was saying: "I wonder what would you eat and cook if you did not have paprika paste" since I had added it into all meals I cooked for dinner.

They also talked about the still-continuing effects of Irak-Iran war on the health of people.

A Day in Utrecht

2008-05-13T18:14:00.011+02:00

Inge and Accidents
This Morning, Inge told me about the unfortunate traffic accident Hans and Britt had in France. Luckily, they were not injured at all. And she also told me an accident she had witnessed years ago: The woman in the car was crying after the accident "It was only a fly, it was only a fly!"; and later they learned that the driver wanted to send a fly who landed onto his hand away, and he just shook his hand; and this caused him to lose the wheel control. Luckily, there was not any causalty.

You never know, you have a life with everything proceeding in order; and suddenly in a second your day, your life changes completely...

2nd Days of Pasen and Pinksteren
Today, Margriet told me that she did not have any idea on why those holidays were 2 days. She joked that it could be because Netherlands is a religious country :)

Ijsvogel
At the end of our 40-minute walk in the woods (and almost in the wild), Tjeerd told me about ijsvogel and how beautiful it was. I later realized that that was the bird Maikel was talking about last week. It is from the same family as crow (Karga in turkish); yet it is so beautiful with blue and orange colors. Tjeerd told me that it can be seen in Oostvaardersplassen. I then remembered that Maikel had told me that they are also in east Amsterdam (referring to Huub).

And I have checked turkish name of the bird. It has a very funny name! Yalicapkini :) . And it looks that they are seen in Izmir.

PhD Comics
I liked today's PhD comics a lot!.

Holiday in Antarctica
Margriet told me that the only two countries she had not been are Australia and Antarctica. I considered the Antarctica part as a joke first. But then she said that there were rich people going to Antarctica for holiday, to walk around and to see penguins etc..

Herenveen
During my lunch in the coffee room, I read in the newspaper Dag that the futbol team Herenveen won the right to play in next year's UEFA cup. And I learned that Herenveen was a Frisian team.
I already knew that:
Ajax : Amsterdammers
Feyenoord: Rotterdammers
PSV: Eindhoveners (this was already obvious since Eindhoven is included in the official name of the team)

And I had read that it was in a way strange that The Hague, being the political capital of the country, was not in the 1st Leauge. But maybe this is also related to the fact that The Hague is not officially a city but a town. This, I learned from an episode of Laura Speaks Dutch podcast.

Rakshasa
I asked Kaustubh if there is any "God of Evil" in Indian religions, and he directed me to Wiki entry of Rakshasa.
It looks that it is not a god, but an evil spirit. It says in Wiki that Rakshasas are man-eaters with venomous fingernails, they feed on human flesh. How awful!

PASEN & ASCENSION & PENTACOST

2008-05-12T19:22:00.005+02:00

Today is the last of a series of holidays started with Easter (I guess).
First, we celebrated Easter (Pasen in Dutch, Paskalya in Turkish) for four days in March 21-24. It actually starts on thursday, but thursday is not official holiday. So:
White Thursday: the last supper of Prophet Jesus.
Good Friday: crucifixion of prophet Jesus
Silent Saturday: He lays on his tomb
Easter Sunday: This is the third day of crucifixion and he rises from dead.
Easter Monday: I do not know why is this celebrated/made holiday, and it looks that uncle Wiki also does not have any idea..

Then, the next day after Queen's Day, May 1, it was again holiday because of "Ascension day". First I thought that this was becasue of ascending to throne for the queen, but Maikel told me that it was the ascension of prophet Jesus to heaven 40 days after his resurrection..

And, this sonday and monday has been yet another holiday: Pentacost (Pinksteren in Dutch). Wikipedia says that this is the day when the holy spirit came back to his apostles and followers 10 days after his ascension.

The Bastard of Istanbul, and other Books from Spui

2008-05-12T14:58:00.003+02:00

Today, I have left my 32-degrees house immediately after breakfast and shopping, and parked my bike close to Bloemenmarkt. On the way, I stopped in Rembrandtsplein for a while and took photo of the statue (s) : Rembrandt himself and the ones in front..
I went to Spui through Kalverstraat to find a bookshop in the hope that I can find some of the books Sadullah asked me to buy. Just in the corner when you are a bout to make a turn to Spui, I have seen a bookstore: Waterstone. It was amazing: four-floor building full of books. I first saw 'the Bastard of Istanbul' on a shelf. Finally! I was looking forward to buy this book in english. Then, since the bookstore offered "choose from any 3 for 2" campaign, I got two books from Sadullah's list: American God and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

After I left Waterstone, I haver realized that there were two more big english bookstores in the same square, Spui. One of them was Athaneaum, the one Inge and her husband was talking about, and saying that they were even selling turkish books. Hope to be inside next time..

How do the Amsterdammers enjoy nice weather?

2008-05-12T14:51:00.004+02:00

From my observations in last three holiday days, if you are an Amsterdammer and notice that the weather is nice outside:
1- Grab a cloth, grab your partner & kids etc. if any.
2- Hurry to one of the parks neearby. Among most popular ones are Oosterpark and Vondelpark.
3- Put the cloth on grasses,
4- take off most of your clothes & kids' clothes etc ..
5- Lie on the cloth against sun.
An alternative is; to jump into a boat of yours or friends' (i guess), with the 4th remark above being valid..

On the "Short Spoon" Street ...

2008-05-11T18:29:00.005+02:00

On Friday afternoon, Daniel, Ewout, Maikel and I have sat in front of Torino restaurant at the Kortelepel street for drink and dinner, and of course chatting..

Dutch Kids and Rabbits
I learned that it is a general Dutch habit to buy a rabbit or a guinea pig for your kid. This, I learned while Daniel was explaining Ewout that he had to cut his daughter's rabbit's nails. It is funny that Ewout promised his daughter about buying a rabbit for her when the weather gets nice - hoping that it will not happen soon. I guess "when the weather gets nice" is something like "when it snows red" here as we sometimes say in Turkey. But, unexpectedly, it happened and we are having 20-25 C weather since last week.

Dutch Moms and their PhD-doing Kids
It was quite relieving to hear from Daniel (and Ewout) that even they, as Dutch Phd students, had difficulty to tell their moms about what they were doing as part of PhD project.

Do we have enough space on the earth?
Daniel said that if each person in the world is given 1 m2 square area- much larger than the space it occupies :) - then the whole 6-billion population could be located in a 6,000 km2 area; which is a little bit larger than the province Brabant.

cycling and cycling..

2008-05-11T17:52:00.008+02:00

Yesterday I went to Flevopark for the first time for cycling. I did not know that it was that close. It was just at the very end of Javastraat (or Zeeburgerdijk). And it was way bigger than Oosterpark.

Today I left my 30 C-hot house to come to UvA. I was planning to go to Oosterpark first, and cycle there a while, and then come to UvA. On the way I have changed the plan. I was on Mauritskade, and I just wanted to cycle straight ahead, in a Forrest-Gump manner in a way.. I passed through several traffic-lights, and then continued on cycling straight ahead again. After a while, I decided that it was enough, and I have taken a photograph in that location (called van Oldenbarneveldt plein).

Now I have checked the whole route i made from my place to the place on the phote on google map: and I realized that I was about to make a complete turn around Amsterdam.

On the way back, I made a tour in Vondelpark. Compared to my first experience on Queen's Day, it was not that crowded for sure. But still, it was full of people cycling, walking, jogging, lying on the sun ...

And, it was very amazing to see a man on a two-storey bike there!. I still cannot figure out how he managed to sit on the 'second floor' to start the ride..

Did I eat 'Muisje' or 'Meisje'

2008-05-08T18:40:00.001+02:00

Daniel and Maikel asked me if I ate 'Meisje' or 'Muisje' when Suzanne was here with her baby about a month ago. The funny thing is: the two words have almost identical pronounciation. Meisje means little girl, and Muisje is the the cake served here traditionally to celebrate the birth of a baby.

For sure, when Suzanne was here, she had both of them :). I had to pay special attention to not to say that I had eaten Fiona. After asking them to repeat both words a number of times, I managed to make the correct guess!

my bike pump

2008-05-08T13:18:00.001+02:00

I had bought a small, functional and easy-to-carry-around bike pump from one shop in Javastraat a couple of months ago - I guest just for 3 euros or so.. But I could never make it work..

One night my iranian neighbours told me that one of them had flat tire, and they wanted to borrow my bike for an hour. I offered them my pump in the hope that they could manage to make it work.. And no..

I tried it few more times, but no way.. Then today I decided to take it to office. 'Maybe Maikel would want to have it' I thought; 'otherwise it is not any use to me'.

Then, again he has taught me something :)
He just told me the trick, and a couple of minutes ago we tried it on Olja's bike. It worked perfect!. With just a couple of pumpings, the tires were full of air..

'Mas' in Christmas

2008-05-07T19:26:00.001+02:00

Today, Maikel told me that Christmas actually means 'Christ's mass'; and 'mass' is the gathering in the church for celebrations, commemorations, funerals etc. where the priest gives a talk.

Two Little Ducks

2008-04-15T13:35:00.003+02:00

We have started to have 20-minute walks with Tjeerd around WKZ. Yesterday, we walked through the woods across the hospital; really nice scenery. I learned from Tjeerd that 'weiland' is the dutch word for pasture.

Today, we wanted to take a different route in AZU direction. Just after having 100-200 steps, we heard bird sounds. Tjeerd said that the sound was coming from a manhole cover.

Managing to take the cover out, we saw two duck chicks in water about 70-80 cm deep. I caught them and put outside. They were so small!! They rushed to the stream nearby. We talked about feeding them, raising them, being their parents..

I have checked them in the afternoon, they were there, always moving together. I took a photo of them.

Dinner at Defne's & Hans' & Devin's

2008-04-14T09:49:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, we were in Defne's & Hans' & Devin's place for dinner. It is funny that I have tasted the traditional Turkish (Mersin region) 'Yuksuk' soup and also 'Hunkar Begendi' (Sultan's Favourite as Hans translated it) for the first time in a foreign city, in Amsterdam. All delicious & well-cooked. I liked the 'borek' very much too, but forgot to ask its name. There was one more delicious thing in their house : the baby Devin :). He is about to walk now!.

Few hours before the dinner, I cycled to Kalverstraat for a small shopping; and on my way to UvA in return there was a sudden rain and hailing. I was completely wet in the few minutes while the hails were bumping and jumping on my head :).