Thursday, January 21, 2010
Olga had a wee accident with the stovetop: a pot boiled over and put out the gas flame, and she didn’t notice for a few minutes so the kitchen started smelling suspiciously gassy. We opened a window up wide to let it out. That’s what some idiots in the park outside decided to take advantage [...]
Friday, September 7, 2007
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 [...]
#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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Thursday, December 14, 2006
PayPal just sent me an email (which you can see for yourself): Dear Tikitu De jager, Christmas is approaching! Still need to find some gifts for your loved ones? We show you how to find unique gifts on eBay. Also, find out how you can send money home with PayPal and stay in touch for [...]
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.
Monday, February 13, 2006
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 [...]
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
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 [...]