People who write in library books deserve to be stabbed with their pencils. On the other hand, while it makes reading the original much harder, a certain kind of annotation is guaranteed to add comic relief to the driest of academic prose.
And indeed, Dutch translations of tricky idiomatic phrases such as “a preliminary stab at” [...]
#173: Under the railway overpass way off to the side of Centraal Station.
Not that I normally would, only the back tyre sprung a leak during a thunderstorm, and that was the closest place I could lock it up under shelter.
And not that it got stolen, either. Instead, some klootzak slashed the seat and both tyres [...]
For last month’s trip to Brussels I stayed at an incompetent hostel. Since I didn’t have enough cash on me when I arrived (and apparently nowhere in Belgium has heard of pin/eftpos/debit cards), they took my Dutch residence permit as bond.
And lost it.
They were awfully apologetic when I went to check out, and got me [...]
I went today to pick up tickets for a weekend trip to Paris (for the PALMYR workshop). We’re going by train; if you make an internet booking, you go to the NS office and a machine prints your tickets for you. It’s a touchscreen system — here’s a shot of the moment when you enter [...]
PayPal just sent me an email (which you can see for yourself):
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It must be karmic retribution for all the times I’ve gotten off without paying fines for cycling without lights. Last night I was fined 20 euros for cycling in the cycle lane.
That’s not a typo.
The UvA is introducing a new system for tracking expense claims (travel, conference fees, &c.). Actually, they’ve already introduced it, a fancy web app which only runs under IE on Windows machines, and they’ve already decommissioned the old-fashioned paper system. If you send your paperwork to someone who can do anything about it, these days [...]
Last week I thought that by next month my residence would be settled, and I could start drawing full pay. I should know by now not to be so optimistic. I’m putting the rest of this entry below the fold, because it’s basically just an extended gripe. The short version is, for even stupider reasons [...]
I’m having some delays in the process of becoming a PhD student. It’s almost a catch 22 situation, but not quite. The original catch 22 was “You can only have this if you ask for it … but if you ask for it, you can’t have it any more.” (Know the phrase but don’t know [...]
We’ve had some problems recently with an antisocial flatmate. I’m working at counteracting my naturally aggressive response to his behaviour by trying to see the funny side. And actually, there have been some mildly hilarious moments.