Trip into town
The kids were off school this week for the spring holidays / Voorjaars Vakantie, and whilst they certainly found ample time to sit back and relax, that was far from the case for Eliane and I.
It was a hectic week. An apt, Dutch expression which I came across recently translates to ‘mopping with the taps open’.
The weekend before the holiday week was Carnaval weekend across all of southern NL and it was pretty amazing. There was nowhere you could go which didn’t show signs of parties soon to arrive, festivities currently happening or celebrations recently concluded.
I mentioned in a previous blog that on the Friday leading into Carnaval there were already a significant number of people dressed up and making merry. As the weekend progressed and turned into Monday the extremity of the celebrations escalated.
We were fortunate enough to find ourselves amidst the party in Eindhoven city centre in the early afternoon of Monday (the last official day of the Carnaval period). This was because Eliane and the kids were scheduled to attend the city halls to get their National ID numbers (BSNs). In addition the kids, like myself, require residents permits. El is already one of the cool cats, so she can just flash her dutch passport to show that she belongs. I had managed to book an earlier appointment when we arrived so I’d already completed the process, but left work early to accompany El and help with the wee ones. We took the bus into town, which puts us a simple 15 minutes walk from the Stadhuis [en:city chambers]
On route, we came across various huge groups of people all dressed in matching fancy dress. I felt like there was a really even representation of the cross-section of the Eindhoven community, young and old and from all nations – everyone just seemed to be happy to be out. It was obvious that a lot of the fun taking place was not between groups of people who knew one another, but rather they had struck up some affinity over their outfits or a song one group was singing, or a dance they were doing. It was really very wholesome.
We arrived at the Stadhuis exactly on time at 1500. Except we were not on time. We were very, very late. You see, this appointment was booked for that day months ago, when we were still in Scotland. It was added into the calendar for 1500, because the appointment, in NL, would take place at 1400, which are the same times relatively speaking. However, when you take that calendar entry out of the timezone in which it was created into one an hour ahead, then you are now an hour late if you are, according to your calendar, on time. This was our plight.
It was a small office, which I assume can only processes around 10 to 15 people a day. So it makes sense to me now why the receptionist grimaced as we arrived. When the family of 5 scheduled for 1400 didn’t arrive, the staff and her will have liked their chances at having an easy afternoon. When we turned up an hour late it was instantly clear to her the problem we’d just landed on them.
They were very accommodating. We managed to get all be Felix processed for residency, and everyone had their details taken for BSNs (including getting fingerprints taken. So we can only commit crimes so long as we don’t leave fingerprints …or actually get caught in the act.. important also to remember).
Whilst Eliane was having Arianas paperwork done (for which Ariana strictly had to be present), Reuben, Felix and I went down the lobby of the building to play on their office swings.
When I had my appointment, back around the first week here, I was told that since the Residents Permit card takes a few weeks to prepare, I would be having a temporary, Residents Permit sticker, affixed to a page of my passport. Since I was at the office again I enquired as to whether the card was ready. To my delight, it was! I am now an official permanent resident of the Netherlands, and once again part of the EU. The sticker stays in my passport too, which is kind of cool.
So we are officially Burgers now…
.. Opportunistically Reuben floated the rule that one must eat a burger on the day they become one. So we rolled with it.
Not pictured is the puntzak (although you can see in the background of the photo where this was ordered from). That is a cone of fries with fritessaus (sort of like mayo / salad cream but lovelier) squeezed all over, in ample supply, the top surface of the food. I tried to be cool and order “Frittes met” which translates to “Fries with”, because it’s so commonplace to have a puntzak with fritessaus that you needn’t even state condiment. It worked, so as I shared the frites with Ariana and Felix I did so with the smug satisfaction of feeling like I’d perhaps fooled someone into thinking I actually deserved a residents permit.
Mopping with the taps open
So as I mentioned at the start, it was a hectic week. I’m putting really long days in at work just now to try to get up to speed and to set the tone well, which leaves El solely in charge at home for the vast majority of the day. The combination of the kids being off of school, the house still being really disorganised, and there being so many administrative things still to sort out meant that there just wasn’t a lot of downtime.
Everything administratively also takes frustratingly long to get done. Like, think about a time you arranged Internet for the first time at a house you moved into; you compare suppliers, arrange contracts, get installation date, it doesn’t work, so you use customer service chat, they figure out the problem, the come in a day or two to sort it, ok now you have internet. There were maybe five touch-points along the way if you were lucky, but probably closer to ten. Something as mundane as that is a bother to do, but you only do it once every few years, and otherwise life goes on.
Right now for us, we are doing something akin to the above setup-process but for every… single… administrative and practical detail of our lives. Phones, health insurance, bank accounts, onboarding details for work, schools, nurseries, updates of correspondence details for everything back in Scotland, rental agreements, standing orders, GP’s, gym memberships, gas supplier, water supplier, electricity supplier, council tax, waste disposal payment, tax papers for the kids, landlords insurance for the Glasgow house, house insurance for here, ordering furniture, insurance claims for furniture damaged in transit*, cancelling utilities which we still have registered in Scotland, submitting residency paperwork to various offices, registering for a Dutch DigID, chasing letting agent for x, y, z, setting up the school app for the kids… it just cascades, and many of the processes have dependancies on other things completing, which means you have to keep a close eye on when something is completed, what tasks does that now open up for starting.
I don’t know if I mentioned this already but because there were a lot of fitted wardrobes in the house in Scotland, we discovered the hard way that we had woefully little in the way of furniture in which to store things. So that means that if something we are looking for did get taken out of a box by the unloaders, then it ended up in what would best be described as an amorphous pile of shit on the floor of a room somewhere in the house. If something we’re looking for didn’t yet get taken out of a box, then it’s not a mess, but we probably don’t know where it is and it certainly isn’t accessible. So you have this sort of chicken and egg situation where you think, ‘I need my tools to build this set of shelves, but I don’t know what box they are in, and I’m reticent to empty any more boxes right now because my feet are already covered in the detritus of 60 other previously opened boxes, so I need to find somewhere to put all this stuff, but I haven’t built the shelves for it yet because I don’t have my tools’
On the plus side imagine our life right now as a supersized version of the card game pairs. You know the one – all the cards are face down and you turn over two at a time and if they’re not the same two, then you turn them back over and try again on your next turn to remember where each of those initial two cards were. A week ago I found the key for one of the bike padlocks. I had seen the padlock in one of the boxes, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t find it. Then yesterday when looking for something else I found the padlock… where is they key, I think I left it on the shelf in the garage. I did! Matching the pair felt exactly like the game. I had this same thing with a pair of boots, a charger and the associated electric drill, the case for my penknife, and the TV stand and the TV. It’s a game.
The other thing which is VERY satisfying is having emptied a box (hopefully not onto the floor) and being able to take the stanley knife, cut the tape, close down the box, and slot it gracefully into a small slot in the garage.
Saturday
When we checked weer.nl this morning is said the weather was going to be pretty decent, so we decided that we would try to make the best of it and avoid subjecting the kids to anything too home-making related.
First, we ate vlaai met slagroom [en:apple tart with whipped cream] ….
Then we cycled ~7.5km to an outdoor play park, Speelpark de Splinter
El found this park online some weeks back and suggested that it might be worth a shot.
…Boy, was she right.
I feel like the Dutch really know how to do a play park! There were about five different sections to this public park, and each section would have been a great park in and of itself.
We all were in agreement that our favorite bit of the park was the water section. Ok, Felix perhaps didn’t fully agree, which you may observe from one of the videos below. Still, we were fortunate to avoid any kids in water, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that even if we had ended up with a wet child, we’s still have said it was one of the best park trips to date.
Work
I’ll keep this as brief as possible because it’s the boring stuff for everyone else. I’m not going lie, I LOVE the job. I’m only now beginning to understand how my days are going to look at the company and the work is very inline with what I want to do. I think there will be many places where I can utilise my strongest skillsets and many more where I can learn and grow in new skills. The company is growing at lightening speed and, as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.
I’m now cycling to work on my proper bike from Scotland. My dutch bakkerfiets is nice and all, but the basket at the front makes it front and top heavy, and it is not very aerodynamic because of it. Additionally it only has three gears. My proper bike is a beast by comparison, with 21 gears and no weight at the front.
One of my greatest joys is overtaking someone riding an e-bike. On Wednesday the conditions were perfect on the return commute and I actually made it from the office to home in ~13 minutes. I’m not sure I’ll manage much better than that. I’m just loving cycling everywhere, it’s a total dream.
The campus at work is ever expanding. They literally built a warehouse a few years ago which is already too small so they’re in the process of ripping one side off to make it 4 times as big. There has been non-stop building of factories, plants, offices and warehouses in Veldhoven for ~ 10 years. One of the areas on campus is where they house all of the super high tech cleanrooms. It’s the weirdest thing, but the air around the place smells like a new MacBook. If you’ve ever bought an apple laptop you’ll know the smell. Smell is probably not a sensation you would naturally associate with buying technology or manufacturing it, but it’s very distinct and I noticed it right away.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ASML is a guy called Peter Wennink. I chatted with him in the coffee queue on Wednesday and then for a 5 / 10 minutes afterwards at a table. Unreal.
On Thursday morning I did a presentation to the team on my specialty subject – myself. They always ask new starts to take five to ten minutes at the start of a suitably attended meeting to properly introduce themselves. I prepared well for it and made sure to bring lots of life and energy to the time I had. It went really well. I even managed some laughs.
Final thing to say is that I had never realised until now how impossibly fortunate somebody is to have grown up with English as their first language. I would estimate that perhaps 1 or 2% of the people I have met so far at ASML have English as their first language. Practically, this means that as well as trying to perform a very complicated job, non-native English speakers also have to process everything in a language which is less natural to them than would be preferable. Everyone’s english is fantastic, that needs to be said. There’s no-one i’ve met who isn’t very impressive in that sense. However it is clear that for most, some more than others, it adds at least a little friction to their processing of information.
I think that it is grossly unfair that I don’t need to think about that element of my work in the slightest. It is such an advantage for me and other native English speakers. There is actually not a single native english speaker in my team besides me (but they are all fantastic at English) yet they all communicate with one another in English. I sat with a group of six Dutch coworkers in a meeting last week and one of them actually apologised for their English during something they were saying. I felt embarrassed. If things were fair I would be grinding my way through in the native language of the Country where I am resident.
It is what it is though. My point here is that I realise now in vivid detail just how unbelievably privileged I am to have grown up not ever needing to consider communication internationally. El hasn’t just had this realisation like I have – she’s always known it since being a kid, coming to Scotland and no one speaking her language. I’ve had a lot of moments over the last month since arriving when I’ve really been able to take stock of things which I took for granted, which are actually not granted, and have helped me silently along the way my whole life.
It’s a big world, and I’m loving getting to see it from a new perspective.
J
Fantastic blog Joe. The water park looks great. I was waiting for Felix to walk off the end of the platform as it progressed across the pond but he was very sensible and stood still. Instinct (or was it fear) told him not to move until Mum was close. Great stuff.
Glad to hear that work is proving positive and that you’re now pals with the MD. Watch out for the vlaai met slagroom Too many of them and you won’t be doing the cycle ride in 13mins any more.
Love to all the family
Dad
Im counting on the exercise cancelling out the baked goods 😜 hope your well. Love you both
Great blog Joe. Keep going with it. I’m so pleased all is going well.
Big hugs to everyone.
Angela
I’ll give them each an extra hug from you Angela. Hope you’re having fun.
Love the blog Joe so much detail love the videos. Life certainly seems hectic but you all seem to be coping well. Felt sorry for wee Felix on the water raft but he braved it through to being saved by mum. Lots of hugs and kisses to you all. Xx
I didn’t want to come off as too moany in the blog, because despite all that noise were doing great really. Felix doesn’t have his sea legs yet but we’ll be going to that park a lot I think so he’ll need to shape up
Many thanks for the update on your experiences with lovely photos and videos! Holland is obviously the place to be 😎!
Love to all and “vele groetjes” 😚!
Ben