There’s a smart initiative here, issuing stickers for on your mailbox that say “No unaddressed advertising, no house-to-house newsletters” (or no to one but yes to the other). They’re nationwide and highly recognisable, with a big “NEE/NEE” or “NEE/JA”. They might even keep some of the junk away, who knows?

Today’s post contained a flyer from GroenLinks, a political party whose name translates literally as “GreenLeft”. The flyer informs us that because of our NEE/NEE sign, they did not leave a house-to-house newsletter in our mailbox. It also tells us where we can go for more information about the party.

Funnily enough, the flyer doesn’t mention the fact that despite our NEE/NEE sign they did leave unaddressed advertising in our mailbox. But perhaps they realised that we could figure that out without their help.

Here’s what I thought was going on. I’ve been here a little over six years, on short-term permits, and after five years one can apply for a permit for unlimited residency. But I didn’t do that, because they do income tests that I couldn’t meet. My current permit is tied to my appointment at the university, which ran out January 1st. But since I became Dr de Jager quite recently, I could apply under the rules for “Highly educated recent graduates”, granting a year to look for work. If I found a good enough job in that year, that would give me the income to use the five-year rule to get permanent residency (or near-as-dammit).

Almost every single statement in the above summary is wrong.

First up, the five-year rule doesn’t apply to my first two years here, which were officially under a study exchange programme with New Zealand. It also wouldn’t apply to a “work-seeking” year, which in any case I couldn’t apply for because while I did graduate here my permit at the time was for work, not study.¹

Secondly, in order to apply the five-year rule I would have to continue working, on the same kind of permit I have now, for five years. This probably would have been possible, if I had known about it in advance: another semester of teaching would have done it. But I didn’t, and now it’s too late. Because:

Thirdly, and most importantly, the five-year rule involves a most strict attention to continuous legal residency: the one and a half months between the end of my previous permit and the date of my application for a new one would reset my accumulated residency to zero.

Oops.

(The same rules apply to work: lacking a contract for the month of February would interfere just as much as lacking a residence permit for January.)

Perhaps you can imagine my distress at this news. It must have been quite a sight, because the nice lady at the IND, after explaining this to me twice, had to go off and fetch some backup.

The first thing the backup asked me was if I had a girlfriend. (You might think, given my beardy good looks and charming personality, that I would get this sort of thing rather often; if you thought that, you would be surprised to learn that in fact I don’t. Pretty much never, in fact, and especially not from government employees during working hours.) Somewhat bemused, I answered that yes, I did. Was she Dutch? No, Greek. Even better! Did she live here? Yes, we live together. Problem solved!

As a family member of an EU citizen registered as a Dutch resident, I am entitled to a five-year residence and work permit. (As an added bonus, at the end of those five years I can apply for permanent residency.) We have to prove that we’re an honest-truly couple, but we don’t have to be married. (There are plenty of good reasons to get married, but “because I need a residence permit” is not one of them.) It will cost €41, instead of €331 (!).

In some ways it’s almost a disappointment. I had the vague idea that after working at a university for four years, and doing an MSc and a PhD at Dutch institutions, the qualifications I had accumulated might help argue the case for letting me live in the country. Instead it’s who I’m sleeping with that makes the difference.

So much for the knowledge economy.

Notes:

1. Slightly more complicated, for those really keeping track: under a related rule I could indeed apply for a zoekjaar, but it would force me to get a separate work permit, which is a terrible pain. One of the major attractions of the permanent residency option is to be able to work wherever, rather than constantly having to have my contracts approved by the immigration folk.

Oliebollen are deep-fried lumps of dough, like a doughnut with neither hole nor jam filling. You can get them with chunks of fruit inside too (apple, cherry, raisins), and they should be eaten lightly dusted with icing sugar.

There’s an oliebollen stall right next to the ferry that I take every morning to get to the city. The ferry that runs every six minutes, which is coincidentally roughly twice as long as is needed to order, receive, and pay for an oliebol.¹

Not good for the waistline, but excellent for getting started in the mornings.

Due credit: it was Renske (friend of my to-be-flatmate Ella) who pointed out the conflict between our evolutionary heritage and the cultural institution of oliebollen; and it was Robert (thesis supervisor) who bought me an oliebol this morning on my way to work. I didn’t have much to do with it all, to be honest. Except the eating, that’s all my own work.

Notes:

1. Dutch folks: do you actually refer to oliebollen in the singular? Or will I have to start ordering two at a time?!

But it does have one disadvantage: you learn a particular register very well, but only that register. That’s a problem for Dutch, because the formal/informal distinction is embedded in the grammer — not just, as in English, in the pragmatic subtleties of choices between synonyms or hedging with modals or whatever. There’s a “2nd person formal” which has its own verb inflections, and which you don’t really get to practise with your mates over a brew on a Friday evening.

(I’m a bit lost with formal “u” anyway, since Kiwi culture is generally so informal. Luckily in our institute it’s more or less standard to use informal “je” with faculty. I was quite taken aback myself to get “u” from a couple of my students back when I was teaching introduction to logic, but reassured when out of the classroom the same folk dropped back to “je”. These be waters I swim in but rarely and reluctantly.)

Anyway, today, for perhaps the first time in my five-year stay in this country, I had a genuine and appropriate u-impulse. It came when I had to ask our teacher (Dutch grammar, as preparation for Greek grammar) for the third time to explain that damn example Dutch sentence I couldn’t get my head around… At such a moment, a little bit of distancing can be a valuable linguistic asset.

No, formication.

It’s Wouter’s brilliant translation of one of my favourite Dutch words, mierenneuken. Idiomatically this is similar to English ‘nit-picking’¹ but literally it means having sex with ants (mieren-neuken — the pictures should make everything clear, for those who don’t speak the language).

A shame it doesn’t carry the usage that mierenneuken does… but languages change as usage changes. Take this as a call to arms: go forth and formicate!

Notes:

1. Thanks, Wikipedia — my previous rough translation was ‘splitting hairs’, which captures neither the negativity nor the entomology.

De NRC Handelsblad heeft een stukje daarover, of je kunt direct naar LibraryThing.nl. Wees voorzichtig, het is wel verslavend…

So it takes some serious cojones (so to speak) to wear one of their t-shirts around Amsterdam, like the bloke I saw in Centraal Station the other day. I like to think maybe he just didn’t realise, and at some point someone is going to tell him and maybe it will be the start of something beautiful.

Yeah, hopeless romantic, that’s me.