Time for a shameless plug!

Jasper (with the support of a patron) is working on launching a brand-new magazine all about warfare in the ancient world (so Rome, Greece and a bit about the other groups in Europe, the middle east and north Africa).

You can help us out by visiting the new website and signing up for a sample brochure. The magazine isn’t coming out right away– first we’re releasing a preview flyer with an original article and artwork, info about the magazine and a cover by my parent’s good friend Les Powers (he’s an awesome artist too!). This is meant to help gauge the interest in releasing a full-out publication, so the more people who sign up, the more encouraging the prospects! Please visit the site and give it a try. We promise– no annoying spamming or follow-up mail… totally free and no strings attached.

Jasper, me and a lot of our friends and people we know are putting much work into this, so back us up!

Sometimes I think the allure of macs for graphic designers is just too much. It’s like they can’t help themselves… the shiny silver beauty just calls out to them, taunts them with it’s cutting-edge modern design when they’re mostly stuck designing SUPER SALE booklets for Sunday’s newspaper. I think it plays to that deep belief that if you have such a perfect godly looking machine, you’ll design better, just like the idea that if you have the right clothes or the right shoes you’ll be “a cool kid” or run faster.

I used to be totally against Macs, I felt a tinge of betrayl when one of my friends bought one for the first time. I remembered the old DOS days when it was really a challenge to get a PC working, the sense of accomplishment when, after hours of struggle I hacked a fussy game into running. I was loyal to PC’s because I was proud that I could wrangle them into working. I was proud of my battle scars. But when windows came out, it started to change. It stopped being fun, and it just seemed to get a lot harder. Most things worked on their own, so I got lazy. And when they didn’t work, the problems were always much harder to solve.

Eventually, I did start working with Mac’s because that’s what there was at the job I was doing. At first I didn’t care. OS 9 wasn’t anything special, and I found it sort of annoying. But then… then there was OS X, and that was a thing of beauty. I’m not really sure when it happened, when I changed, but somehow I didn’t care anymore about the things that had made me love PC’s before. All the OS’s seemed so alike anyway. I guess I WAS suckered in by the beauty, the aesthetic… something, I can’t even explain it now, or why I want to defend my computer choice. I still use PC’s a lot, both at home and at my job where it’s my primary computer… but they just don’t inspire anything in me… it’s just a tool, a computer, it doesn’t matter if it works. I think it’s that Apple promises the vision of what we all secretly wish computers would be like– that shiny perfect machine from the future that appears in every Sci-fi movie. That thing that looks beautiful and does everything with no effort. Do I think Macs as they are now are anywhere close to that? No way. They probably aren’t that much different from their PC competitors. But they have a way of planting that dream in people, that desire we have always had for that perfect future world run on amazing technology.

No posts for a long time I know– but I’ve been really busy with my work. It’s amazing how a full-time job eats into your ambition, energy and time. Anyway, to make up for it, here’s a less than cheerful post about the joys of my commute.

I have definately been having one of those “why oh why me weeks.”

Now to fill you in, all my problems stem from my commute to work. I ride a train for about 20 minutes and then cycle an additional 10 minutes to where I work. I have a crummy bicycle I keep at the bike rack by the train station for just this purpose. It was only 70 euros, so if it is lost or stolen, no big deal. Now one of the hazards of such a ride is always the weather. Nobody likes riding a bike in the rain or in a strong wind, but thus far I’ve been pretty lucky– yea it’s rained on me a few times before, but nothing major I couldn’t shake off.

This week was a different matter. TWICE in one week I left work and soon found myself riding through a rainstorm… yesterday a thunderstorm even. Each time it started slowly, but just about when I got to the station it really opened up. Naturally, when I did arrive I was totally soaked from head to toe and squishing around in my boots. Even my underpants got wet… and you know how fun it is to be wearing wet underpants. Neither time this happend did I have very much fun, but at least I was able to go right home and relax and dry off.

This morning though, something even worse managed to happen. When I got to my bike, I unlocked it as usual and then took off the extra chain lock I use… only to discover that some random person had come during the night with their OWN chain and chained my bike to the rack. What kind of moron does something like that? It wasn’t a cheapy chain either, but rather one of those hard to cut compound plastic and metal chains. I was really steamed and had to walk all the way to work, for lack of any other option… and of course it started raining again and I got wet again (though thankfully not as much).

My boyfriend came later after I’d gone to work and went to a hardware station near the station where they let him borrow a big specialized chain cutter to get my bike free. First though he had to walk to my office too to get the keys from me so the police wouldn’t think he was stealing it, walk all the way back, do the deed, and then ride the bicyle back to me. After this, he was ALSO soaking wet. So seriously, what a pain in the ass this day has been.

I’m done with the Dutch language tests now too. They were almost as easy and stupid as the culture test– In all the tests where we worked at our own pace, I was done a full hour before the other students. The NT2 made these tests look like grade school spelling quizes. I feel 95% certain that I’ve passed everything. Now hopefully the gemeente will leave me alone.

This morning I got to find out just how lucky I was that I studied Dutch at a university. True, I had to pay a lot (buy Dutch standards, not American), but the teachers were enthusiastic, and the other students fun and intelligent. However, due to the fact that I’m here b/c of Jasper, the government is entitled to making me take all sorts of integration courses and tests and stuff. Luckily, I got out of the courses, but I do still have to do the tests. These are given at the local vocational school, which is in a huge victorian pile that looks much better outside than inside (namely the smell of a hundred years as a place of learning, you know what I mean).

The test room (which was in a computer lab) quickly filled up with pretty much the same people: either from somewhere in southeast asia or somewhere in the middle east. There was basically no more variety than that. The teacher acted like she hated her job– she spoke in baby Dutch (not even complete sentences) with the students, and she was actually walking a student through the test when I left, reading the questions to him and helping him pick the right answer. The view was pretty depressing, and the test wasn’t any better. This particular one was supposed to test you on Dutch society and culture. It was given on the computer by a person’s voice speaking at literally one word a second and with about 48pt text on the screen. The questions also ALL involved pictures and each multiple choice answer was a picture. Some classic favorites included:

Jan had his wallet stolen, but it was found by the police who ask him to come get it. He is very happy and wants to thank the policeman. How should he do this?
a) Picture of Jan giving policeman a present
b) Picture of Jan giving policeman money
c) Picutre of Jan shaking policeman’s hand

Pieter is interviewing for a new job. How should he greet the interviewer?
a) Picture of Pieter hugging the man
b) Picture of Pieter shaking hands with the man
c) Picture of what appeared to be Pieter kissing the man on the neck???

You just bought some cookies. They cost 1 euro 50. Which picture shows how to correctly pay for the cookies?
a) Picture of 1.20
b) Picture of 1.50
c) Picture of .50

Well you get the idea, pretty sad all around. I managed to pass with 80%, which is about the minimum. That’s not bad for not studying, like ever. You may ask why I didn’t do even better with such idiotic questions, but to be fair, they weren’t all so awful. I mainly screwed up on the ones asking about which government institutions to go to to get money in the case that you needed to leech off the social welfware system for some reason. We can REALLY see what’s expected of most immigrants here. Talk about insulting. Clearly, we’re expected to not only be super dumb, but also never amount to anything. What fun.

Here are some pictures of our adorable but bitey new pet, Tarquin the ferret. He is currently three months old and a little bundle of energy when he’s awake (though that’s not so much since he sleeps 18 hours a day). He is very fun to watch playing and play with though when he is conscious.

The following is cross-posted from a thread on Roman Army Talk where an english speaking person visiting the Netherlands asked for advice on useful Dutch words and phrases they could use while there. I thought bits of it were kinda funny and perhaps instructional for other english dutch-wannabes too.

“*DUM DA DUM native english person living in the Netherlands to the rescue*

That’s probably enough. A few polite Dutch words here and there will please most Dutch people (they appreciate you using their languaged a bit), but more than that is not needed. Most everyone speaks english better than you, and if you try more Dutch than that, you will either be mistaken for knowing more than you do and be up a creek without a paddle, or more likely be spotted as foreigner in 5 seconds and be addressed from then on in English. The Dutch are very practical and don’t like wasting time, so they’ll always switch to the fastest and most efficient means of communication. They don’t want to spend twice as long listening to you butcher their language.”

Well, for everyone in the universe who doesn’t know, I’ve gotten myself a new job– a REAL job. This is an actual full-time job too. I’m really excited about it too– I’m going to be working at a young, successful, web-development company in Arnhem (so a bit of a commute). I’m starting by doing HTML coding projects and studying .Net C# so that I can hopefully do more programming later. Everyone at the company seems super nice and I can tell it’s a nice working enviroment. I’m starting in September, so I still have a few days to relax. Today, I went in to finalize things and sign my contract, so I guess that makes me good to go!

Today was also a good day because I got the results back from the NT2 Staatexam II. I was pretty sure I was going to at least mess up some parts of it, but I was really surprised and pleased that I passed all four sections! I had decided not to worry if I didn’t, but this is a great bonus for me and sure makes me feel better about my progress with Dutch… and that I could enter Dutch university if I wanted to… err not that I will since I don’t think I’m quuuiiite ready for that.

Yesterday I went with Jasper and several old guys he knows from his modeling club to the National War and Resistance Museum in Overloon. Overloon was, during WWII, the site of a large battle between the Germans and Americans. The museum’s collection got a healthy start by using the various abandonded vehicles left after the battle. Later, more were added as well. The museum has three parts: an outdoor park full of various armour, an indoor museum, and also a depressing concentration camp museum that’s built into a hill, so that it’s nice and dark (I didn’t actually visit this, since we ran out of time). Most of the stuff outside is rusty and (obviously) not in such good shape, but at least you can climb all over it! (See the picture of me on a Stalin tank).

The really fun part of the museum was indoors. Jasper writes a lot for the Overloon newsletter, so we have free-admission cards for whenever we want to go. One section of the museum is more old-fashioned– lots of text all over the walls talking about the progression of WWII and the resistance in The Netherlands. This section is big, but I didn’t really look at it too closely since we had already spent so much time in the newer wing. The museum has some old armour for which it is already famous, like a panther tank (not a lot of those around), but they’ve also added a whole new wing which houses the Marshall collection, which as you might expect is mostly American armour. This area of the museum has practically every vehicle the Americans made for WWII, from duckboats to cargo trucks– and lots of other more specialized variants. There are also some more modern things, but the WWII stuff makes up the bulk of the collection. This section is gigantic, as you might expect. Probably as big as the airforce museum in Dayton (not perhaps in terms of sheer size, but certainly in number of pieces since afterall, tanks are still smaller than airplanes, though there were some of those too). We got to walk around and look at a lot of different vehicles. I personally liked the mobile machine shops the best– very clever in how they folded out into small, but fully functioning workshops.

We ate lunch at the museum cafe, which was really quite good. After spending most of the day looking at a lot of big metal things, we went to the nearby model shop to spend even more money (you can’t ever skip a nearby modelshop if you’ve got modelers with you). Jasper ended up with about six different books and some modeling accessories. I picked up a later-war German 8-wheeled armoured vehicle with an anti-tank gun. After grabbing ice cream cones and fleeing an approaching rainstorm, we headed back to Nijmegen where we hung out in the apartment for awhile before grabbing a sandwich and visiting the local park. I struggled sometimes throughout the day to keep up with all the Dutch, but managed pretty well, nonetheless, I slept really well that night!

I wasted a lot of time and didn’t get this one done as soon as I could, but it is done now! I took a bit of a break from Romans this time and painted something to please the Greek fans. I’m pleased with how he came out. Incidently, you can also buy him on a shirt (along with all my other soldiers) in the newly overhauled RomanArmy.com store. Make a fashion statement and support our site today!