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Hello there!

I know it's been two months already I haven't given you any video to watch, but that was because I didn't have the time to search for good videos on YouTube due to all the work I had to do for school (bachelor term paper, group projects, etc.). So I'm putting this blog on a hiatus for a moment. I hope you understand. Meanwhile I'll post possibly post some videos via Facebook.

Take care,

- Simon

All the six Star Wars opening crawls at once

"And if you can read that, you can throw your glasses…"

The Emperor is having a bad day

Robot Chicken is pure genius. Take a look at these fragments from the second Star Wars special episode.

Addams Family Values

I really love this movie, so I thought it would be nice to show you the trailer:

Car cretins

Who said that only women were bad drivers?

Spiderman spoof

This parody was made by Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar for the MTV Movie Awards ceremony.

The Life of Jesus

Robin Williams makes fun of Jesus:

Televizione povera

These tricks are going to change your life… not a lot

What happens if you fight with a chicken?

… I mean, a real one, not a coward. Peter Griffin from Family Guy is gonna show us how to deal with poultry.

What Tarkin should have done…

"Short but pointless." (Egon Spengler)

Forest Gump in one minute

Goldmember

I don't remember a lot about Austin Powers in Goldmember, except this evil guy, a Dutchman who likes eating his peeling skin and talks with a (slightly) exaggerated accent. At one moment Austin Power's father, played by Michael Caine, says one of my favourite movie quotes :



"There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are untolerant of other people's cultures… and the Dutch!"

Waxing for the good of all

Check out this PSA (public service announcement) addressing the issue of deforestation: Harrison Ford doesn't hesitate to show his commitment.

Frenchman "speaks" English

This is definitely the strongest French accent I've ever heard when a Frenchman speaks English…



It makes my ears hurt!

The DeLorean is safe!

It's been a long time since I've spotted a good alternate ending to Back to the Future Part III, so here we go:

Tu l'as pas volée

Silly Belgian humour, featuring Patrick Alen, aka Francis Joskin, lead singer of Liège rock band Les Gauff' au suc'.

Alles kan beter (11)

New opening credits for "The Simpsons"

Starting with the tenth episode of season 20, each new Simpsons episode features this new main title:

Facebook pictures (2)

I wanted to share some (very) silly pictures that I found on Facebook:




(This picture is dedicated to Mr Romero, whose situation is just as this sign's owner.)

Hamlet in 5 seconds

Not really a 5 second movie, but rather a 5 second play…

Now THAT's what I call an opening act!

Heath Ledger wins an Oscar

Heath Ledger posthumously gets a most deserved Academy Award for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight:

Bear with me

Never go hiking with Family Tree Friends!

Bugatti Veyron power lap on Top Gear

"This is an appeal: if you've got a Veyron and you'd like to lend it to us, we are prepared to pay anything up to £20."

Apparently some wealthy British car owner heared that appeal and handed his/her Veyron to The Stig for a power lap…

Yoda saves the day

Robocop helps his old green friend Yoda to take care of a villain:

The best way to feel the essence of a movie is to watch a summary of it: either the 5 second version or the f*cking short version… Hey, guess what? I found both for Scarface!:

Professor Wikipedia

A nice way of criticising some of the world's most famous online encyclopedia: Wikipedia!

Fake sneeze

Billy Crystal on the Muppets Tonight show… or how to make a spoof on the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Meets Sally… in a kids' programme!

Tribute to John McClane

Listen to this nice song praising John McClane (Bruce Willis), the hero of the Die Hard series:

"The word 'library' derives from the Latin 'librus' meaning 'shhhh'" (Tom Baker, Little Britain season 1)

(For the record, Prof. Auer showed us this video as part of the Introduction to Old and Middle English course in Utrecht.)

Geeky Valentine

Here are some good lines if you happen to be a nerd and trying to find your significant other:

1. You're like an exothermic reaction, you spread your hotness everywhere!

2. I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves

3. You’re like a dictionary, you add meaning to my life!

4. If i was an enzyme, i'd be helicase so i could unzip your genes

5. I'm attracted to you so strongly, scientists will have to develop a fifth fundamental force.

6. Baby, you overclock my processor.

7. Be my queen and mate me with your knight moves.

8. Baby, you make my floppy disk turn into a hard drive

9. You make me want to calibrate my joystick without the latest drivers

10.You defragment my life

11. Do you think we can make it a step more serious and disable network sharing?

12. You must be auxin, cuz u r causing me to have rapid stem elongation.

13. Baby, let me find your nth term

14. I don't have a library card, but do you mind if I check you out?

15. Baby i'll treat you like my hw- I'll slam you on the table and do you all night long

16. Hey baby, can i see what's under your radical?

17. If I were an integral, I'd fill you up.

18. You must be calcium bicarbonate, because if you let me get you wet, then the reaction will be explosive.

19. I think my heart just lagged.

20. I wish I were your second derivative so i could fill your concavities.

21. did you just combust?? Because you're HOT!

22. By looking at you I can tell you're 36-25-36, which by the way are all perfect squares.

23. It doesn’t take a genius to see how gorgeous you are, but if it did, I would be overqualified.

24. Baby, if you were words on a page, you'd be what they call FINE PRINT!

25. What do you say we go back to my room and do some math: Add a bed, subtract our clothes, divide your legs, and multiply

26. Baby, you're a 9.999999999...but you'd be a 10 if you were with me.

27. Baby, everytime i see you, my cardiovascular system gets all worked up

28. I wish I were adenine because then I could get paired with U.

29. What's your sine? The sine^(-1) of you must be pi/2 cause you're the one

30. If my right leg was christmas and my left was Easter, would you like to spend some time between the holidays?

31. You have nicer legs than an Isosceles right triangle.

32. Your so cute you make my zygomaticus muscles contract. (Muscles that make you smile)

33. When you and me get together it's like superposition of 2 waves in phase.

34. Want to meet up so I can excite your natural frequency?

35. If I was sin^2 theta and you were cos^2 theta together we would be 1

36. You know.. it's not the length of the vector that counts... it's how you apply the force

37. If I move my lips half the distance to yours... and then half again... and again... etc.... would they ever meet? no? Well in this specific case i am going to disprove your assumption.

38. Your name is Leslie? Look, I can spell your name on my calculator!

39. If i was an endoplasmic reticulum, how would you want me: smooth or rough?

40. I wish I was an Ion so I could form an exothermic bond with you.

41. If my right leg is the cell wall and my left the membrane, do you want to be the cytoplasm?

42. Our love is like dividing by zero.... you cannot define it

43. Lets meet somewhere... you bring your beaker and I'll bring my stirring rod

44. Baby let me be your integral so I can be the area under your curves

45. Hey baby, what's your tanx cosx?

46. Lets get together and test the spring potential of my matress

47. Let's discover our coefficient of friction

48. Baby, you're so gneiss I'll never take you for granite.

49. I less than three you..... (i < n =" osculating">9

77. Hey baby if i supply the voltage and you a little resistance, imagine the current we can make together. (V=IR => (V/R)=I)

78. Baby stop with diet coke, you've got plenty of ASSpertame

79. Yo baby, you want to see me solve a quadratic?

80. Baby, lim (u->me) ∫ e^x = f(u)^n.

81. On a scale of 1-10, you're a solid e to the power of pi

82. I think that convex butts are ALWAYS better than concave butts..you look toned

83. I wish I was your secant line so I could touch you in at least two places!

84. Baby ill be your asymptotes so i can shape your curves...

85. Would you like to see the exponential growth of my natural log?

86. If you were a graphics calculator, i'd look at your curves all day long!

87. Question: Wanna integrate my natural log?
Answer: I'll have to be one over first...

88. hey girl, let's get together and figure out our heat of fusion

89. it's a good thing you've got evaporative cooling, cause i'm gonna make you sweat

90. hey baby, lets figure out the torque of your mass on my rod

91. baby i just drew a pic of you on my ti83 but ur sooo hot my screen melted

92. The way the light reflects off the angles of your head is extremely enchanting.

93. in Old English:
Ich grethe Þae, maec Cwen.

(I greet you, my Queen)

94.I don't know if you're in my range, but I'd sure like to take you home to my domain.

95. Hey baby. Want to squeeze my theorem while I poly your nomial?

96. Hey baby, I'm like a rubix cube. THe more you play with me, the harder I get.

97. You're so hot, you must be the cause for global warming.

98. Since distance equals velocity times time, let's let velocity or time approach infinity, because I want to go all the way with you.

99. Your body has the nicest arc length I've ever seen."

100. I hope you know set theory because I want to intersect you and union you.

101. You and I would add up better than a Riemann sum.

102. Can I be the phasor to your electron and take you to an excited state?

103. Let's make like a transcription factor and response element and turn things on.

104. If I were a Shwann cell, I'd squeeze areound your axon and give you a fast action potential.

105. You must be an asymptote, because I just find myself getting closer and closer to you.

106. You're as sweet at 3.14.

107. You must be massive because I'm attracted to you.

108. I won't stop bugging you until I get the address to your home page!

109. You fascinate me more than the fundamental theorem of calculus.

110. My love for you is like a concave function's positive first derivative, because it's always increasing.

111. Let's convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.

112. Why don't we measure the coefficient of static friction between me and you?

113. You're hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power!

114. Baby, together U and I make uranium iodide (UI3)

115. If I were an assembly language, I'd jump to your address, shift right a bit, push it in, pop it out, load a byte into your accumulator, then jump if you're negative.

116. In Euclidean geometry two parallel lines never touch ... let's go back to my place and study some non-Euclidean geometry.

117. My vector has a really large magnitude. Would you care to normalize it?

118. Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF. All my base are belong to you.

119. I 1-sin(theta) you.

120. You and I must have the same natural frequency, because we resonate together.

121. The surface of my cylinder is not a compact metric space.

122. Most women are so complex. They're always like "i! i! i!" But you - you're just so real. (Note: i! does not mean i factorial.)

123. My love for you is like the slope of a concave up function because it's always increasing.

124. Can I plug my solution into your equation?

125. The volume of a general cylinder was known for thousands of years, but you won

126. i want to go through your every procedure, Do your Loops, and program your Booleans

127. I wish I were a predicate so I could be the direct object of your affection.

128. I think if you and i had Hex we'd be a perfect OA

129. Can I bombard your singularity with my rocket ship until you supernova?

130. you are the log(base 10) 10^1...


131. Let's work out our orbicularis oris muscles together!
*orbicularis oris = kissing muscles

132. I've been secant you for a long time

133. The direction fields of my heart all point to you

134. Want to be my substrate/enzyme?

135. You have 206 bones in your body... want one more?

136. Chem students do it on the table periodically

137. If you let me work hard enough, I can give you a dipole moment

138. I love you like an unspoken metaphor. That's why I had to use a simile.

139. Instead of being the derivative, id much rather be the secant so i can touch u not only once, but twice

140. Lets make love like pi; irrational and never ending

141. I've been secant you for a long time

142. The direction fields of my heart all point to you

143. baby lets measure the amplitude of our physical wave

144. baby you're the basis of my mind. no matter what i think of, it all comes back to you

145. Maybe later we can go over to my place and titrate until you reach your end-point...

146. The word of the day is "Legs", lets go back to my place and spread the word

147. Baby, you must be a pile of dinosaur bones, cause I dig you!

148. Baby, you're body is like a hyperbola

149. Baby, you're like a pendulum... you'll only stop when I damp you

150. Are you the square root of 2? because I feel irrational when I'm around you

151. Being with you is like switching to polar coordinates: complex and imaginary things now have a magnitude and direction.

152. Our love is more perfect than 6.
(Six is the first perfect number)

153. You can put a Trojan on my Hard Drive anytime

154. Baby you must be a modulus sign, 'cos whenever you wrap your arms round me i always feel positive!

155. Baby, I'm like an oceanic plate on a gravity slide - I can't wait to subduct beneath your crust!

156. You're so hot you denature my proteins

157. Baby you know this shit isn't USB2.0..it's firewire!

158. Let's just cut to the chase, I wanna hotsync your PDA.

159. Nobody turns me on from a cold boot like you.

160. Don't worry honey, they call it my dual-channel RAM.

161. If you were Anatomy, then I'd be Physiology because they always go together!

162. Want to make the Cold War hot?

163. My court packing plan isn't my only packing plan...

164. Want to play War of 1812? I'll light your White House on fire...

165. There's a reason they say I started the Era of Good Feelings...

166. Can I annex your territory after class?

167. Do you want to help me with my project on the tit- I'm sorry, TET Offensive?

168. I'll be your Secretary of the Interior...

169. I bet if Jefferson had met you, he would have vetoed the Non-Intercourse Act.

170. Want to go back to my place and discuss Big Stick Diplomacy?

171. Want to reenact the Battle of the Bulge?

172. If you were Anatomy, then I'd be Physiology because they always go together!

173. Hey, up for some high-energy quantum tunnelling tonight?

174. If you were a concentration gradient I'd go down on you

175. Girl whenever I am near you, I undergo anaerobic respiration because you take my breath away

176. If you were C6, and i were H12, all we would need is the air we breathe to be sweeter than sugar...

177. we've been differentiating for too long, lets sum it up and integrate

178. you and i add up better than a riemann sum

179. my love for you is a monotonically increasing unbounded function

180. Your beauty defies real and complex analysis.

181. Your hottness is the only reason we can't reach absolute zero.

182. I use my rod of infinite length for more than just simplifying calculations...

183. You must be a magnetic monopole because all i get from you is attraction

184. My love for you is like pi, it's never-ending.

185. I wish we were in telophase, cause then I could admire your cleavage."

186. Let's make our slopes zero (slope of zero means horizontal => bed)

187. baby you must be O2 cuz i m about to combust all over you

188. I just bought a molecular model kit, want to play with my stick and balls?

189.√-1) 2-2sinθ ∫du
√-1) = i
2-2sinθ = cardiod graph (heart)
∫du = u

190. Forget hydrogen you're my number one element

191. You're cute, I'm cute, together we're 2cute!

192. you are like a proton in my core--without you i could never be the same.

193. Hey baby, wanna form a synapse with me and exchange neurotransmitters?

194. Baby, if you were oceanic crust and I was a continent, I'd let you subduct so we can make hot hot magma.

195. I do believe I am your reciprocal; we will be one when we multiply.

196. Hey baby, wanna form a zygote?

197. If I'm the Riemann zeta function, you must be s=1.

198. You're a moving electric charge, and I'm a moving magnetic charge... Wanna flux?

199. If I toss a fair coin, what are my chances of getting head?

200. hey baby, do you need an anatomy tutor? They say i'm the best because i prefer to use a more HANDS-ON approach.

201. Baby, if they made you in Java, you'd be the object of my desire.

202. Baby, if they made you in C, you would have a pointer to my heart.

203. Baby, if they made you in Haskell, it would infer that you were just my type.

204. You're like a Universal Turing Machine; you're the only one that I'll ever need.

205. Like a quantum computation, our paths are entangled.

206. You're like an NP-hard problem of significant size; I could spend the rest of my life with you.

207. If I could program the universe, I would allocate you and I in contiguous memory blocks.

208. If I was an operating system, your process would have top priority.

209. Like a graph with n^2 edges, you complete me.

210. Are you a non volitaile particle? Because you raise my boiling point.

211. If I went binary, you would be the 1 for me.

212. my hypothalamus must be secreting serotonin because baby, i want you!

213. i'm sine and you're cosine, wanna make like a tangent?

214. I sure hope our coefficient of restitution is 0, 'cos when we make contact i never want to part!

215. My love is like communism; everyone gets a share, and it's only good in theory.

216. You + Me = The number of sides in a Mobius Strip

217. Hey baby, let's make a stress-strain curve together.

218. I don't need neurons to stimulate your sensory system.

219. Let 'u' and 'i' be irrational integers such that a real non-monotonic relationship exists for all T = {0 ... infinity}

220. you must be absolute, because every time you're around me, i feel positive

221. Hey baby, can I be your enzyme? because my active site is dying for a chemical reaction.

222. Why don't you remove those barriers to imports? It will ease my inflation and the benefits will trickle down.

223. how about you Palmitoylate my protein, so i can drive it into your lipid raft.

224. baby, i'm gonna break you like a large non-polar substance breaks a phospholipid bilayer!

225. what say we slip between my beta-pleated sheets and you get to know my alpha-helix?

226. i couldn't help but notice your impressive cleavage furrow...

227. let's exchange plasmids - my pilus is huge.

228. baby, if you let me pump my H+ ions into your intermembrane space, it would induce a massive conformational change in my f1 complex.

229. Baby, if you were oceanic crust and I was a continent, I'd let you subduct so we can make hot hot magma.

230. Hey baby, let's vasodiolate!

231. I'd be the photon to your electron and take you to an excited state.

232. You must be sin squared, because I'm cosin squared and together we equal one.

233. Baby can u oil up my geering system while I use my rack-and-pinion steering?

234. Hey baby, I'm a power source, and you're the kind of resistor i'd like to deliver my load to.

235. Baby, let's configure our hard drives in master and slave position.

236. Hey baby, lets turn off our firewalls and connect our Ethernet cable.

237. Babe, you take the 'C' out of sec(xy)

238. Baby, you must be a start codon because you are turning me on.

239. Wanna alkylate my alkoxide? It's nucleophilic and ready to backside attack the halogen out of you.

(Source: Facebook.)

The Simpsons: the Ride

Have a look at this ad promoting the (then) upcoming new attraction at Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood theme parks: The Simpsons: the Ride:





Incidentally, this attraction replaced another called Back to the Future: the Ride, and this video makes reference to it:

Shawshank Redemption: alternate ending

Indiana Jones IV: just another review

Spiderman 3: review

Get on with it!

In de gloria: Gilbertke!

Remember Gilbert from the Rutte 98 sketch in West-Flemish? I found it in this fragment from In de gloria…

Slice and dice

The longest English Words

This video might be a good idea if you're looking for a video to transcribe…



Please check out the Wikipedia entry on the matter.

Quandumb of Dumbace

Watch this very silly trailer "mashup" between Quantum of Solace and Dumb and Dumber:

Village idiots

"(…) working on special training equipment designed to keep him silly."

Fanboys

Fanboys tells the story of young Star Wars freaks who try to heist George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch to rob a copy of Episode I because they cannot wait till the release. It's full of references to the original films (and I fear that the French translation will ruin all that) and other geeky gags…

Jeremy Clarkson meets the neighbours…

… and goes to Belgium to witness pipe-smoking competitions, bird-singing contests and bets on cow defecation, and then to the Netherlands to plunge into the sex business, meet Bible zealots, admire a league against speed cameras and investigate the Dutch love for caravans…

"It's good to be heckling again"

Comedian Melton Berle tries to stand up against Statler and Waldorf, masters in the art of retorting:

's Lands wijs, 's lands eer: an Erasmus stay in Utrecht

After five months spent in Utrecht, a city located in the centre of the Netherlands, it is high time I wrote down 'a few things' about my Erasmus stay. Since I wanted to give a full account I did not pay any attention to the length of this blog entry, which resulted in it being the longest on this blog to my knowledge. Sorry about that but I needed to explain everything.

First of all, when we were asked to state which cities we would like to go to as Erasmus students, I did not choose Utrecht — simply because this destination was not in the list. So I was rather surprised to find out just before the Easter break that I was going to study in Utrecht for five months. Magali and I were the first students from Namur to go there, so we would be like scouts doing reconnaissance work.


As to administrative matters we did not meet enormous difficulties because the University of Utrecht (Universiteit Utrecht) runs an International Office devoted to exchange student matters. We filled in the forms, sent pictures and so on, and we were effectively enrolled before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’. However, since course programmes change from year to year we had to adjust our 'choice of courses' form in order to comply with all requirements. We had to take at least a course in each of the two target languages — obviously — and at least a grammar-oriented course as well as another focusing on literature. Since all courses were worth 7.5 ECTS credits, only three different courses would do to reach the minimum of 21. My final programme consisted of the following three courses (which I will get back to later):

• Dutch Present-Day Society
• Betekenis in taalgebruik
• Introduction to Old and Middle English

Everything being taken care of by the university, I did not have much to worry about, except finding a room… Prof. Mettewie strongly advised us not to ask for accommodation via the host university for fear of ending up renting a very expensive room shared with another Erasmus student. Instead we would have to look for a room in the private market so as to live with Dutch people. Due to a busy schedule I only started looking in July via a website called Kamernet.nl. Basically you have to pay:

• € 12.95 to post an advertisement valid for one month (‘urgente oproep’) in which you state that you are looking for a room and present/sell yourself
• € 10 to be able to post ten reactions to housing offers. For instance you spot a place that suits you (e.g. not too far from Utrecht and its surroundings, access to the Internet…) and then you send a reply to that advertisement.

However, the Dutch have a very different housing system: in Belgium when you are interested in renting a room, you tell the owner and you can immediately have it; in the Netherlands it is the flatmates who choose you. In a way you have to win a contest to get the room — which is totally outrageous in a country praising ‘equality’ as its main value. (*Cough*) I mean, the idea of selection is in absolute contradiction with that principle of equality, even more so since the Dutch hardly ever take the trouble to write back to tell you why you were not ‘selected for the second round’, so to speak. Indeed, if you do receive an answer you are invited to a ‘kijkavond’, i.e. an informal meeting with all the (potential) flatmates. Then again you can be discarded like an old smelly shoe if they do not like you. Let me now describe how all of this dreadful machinery ruined my summer holiday.

From July to the beginning of September I sent 36 reactions (i.e. a kind of motivation letter telling the owner why you would like to rent his/her room and why you are the perfect candidate) in total, which means I spent nearly € 40. I always received the same automatic replies:

• Helaas heeft de verhuurder besloten om jou niet uit te nodigen voor een bezichtiging. Geen nood: elke maand worden ruim 6.000 nieuwe, actuele kamers aangeboden op Kamernet.nl. We wensen je veel succes met het vinden van een kamer. We doen elke dag ons best voor je! [My foot, once again, SL.]
  
• De verhuurder heeft deze kamer van Kamernet.nl verwijderd. Dit kan het volgende betekenen: 1) De verhuurder heeft al voldoende reacties binnen en zal in de komende dagen enkele geschikte kandidaten uitnodigen. 2) De verhuurder heeft al enkele geschikte kandidaten gevonden en heeft geen behoefte aan meer reacties.

When you receive those replies more than 30 times you get depressed, I can tell you. You start wondering whether your proficiency in Dutch is really bad (which would explain why they do not reply) or your hobbies and personality do not appeal to them… I started cursing the Dutch housing system. Only two girls had the ‘kindness’ to send me this :

Beste Simon,

We hebben al een leuke huisgenoot gevonden.
Bedankt voor je reactie en interesse.

Met vriendelijke groeten,

(Signature)


Beste Simon,

bedankt voor het reageren maar wij hebben een keuze kunnen maken.

Met vriendelijke groeten,

(Signature)

Simultaneously I paid for a ‘urgente oproep’ and prolongated it for a month, which cost about € 25 in total. I was much more successful than through the replies, because I received a bit more than half a dozen offers, some of which were plainly commercial (i.e. already making an appointment and not showing any pictures), while other rooms were simply outrageously expensive, up to € 550 per month — exclusive of Internet, gas, water and electricity costs!

Nevertheless, I also received four serious offers. For the first one it turned out that I was invited to buy the room(!); for the second offer I was invited for the first time to a ‘kijkavond’. However that day I left home with a bit of delay and I was stuck in a traffic jam (due to an accident involving… Dutch caravans!) so I called the guy to postpone the meeting. One day later I got an e-mail telling me I did not even have to come because they had found ‘een gezellig huisgenootje’ in the meantime. This is the moment when I realised that finding a room was basically a contest. The third ‘serious’ offer I received was the following:

Beste Simon, Ik zag op Kamernet.nl dat je woonruimte zoekt. Ik heb het volgende in de aanbieding: ruime kamer in schitterend historisch pand gezellige binnenstad van wijk b duurstede, m tuin, ligbad voorzieningen, goede busverbinding 15 min. met stad Utrecht, in nood mag mijn wagen gebruikt.. Met vriendelijke groeten, Albertha Liewes

As this was the only option I had, I told the lady that I was interested in the room. We made an appointment and so we (my mother and I) rode 200 km to Wijk bij Duurstede, a picturesque town lying 25 km from Utrecht. When we arrived I already did not like the place very much: I found it had something strange and unpleasant to it — don’t ask me why. We visited the house… and we were stunned (in the literal sense of ‘shocked, unable to react, astonished’):

• the lady was not particularly clean; she was some sort of a painter and poetess;
• the ‘fully-equipped kitchen’ did not even have a fridge;
• the ‘20 vierkante meter’ room was actually much smaller and located in a non-isolated attic. Besides, no bed nor any furniture was provided and the absence of any heating could not remain unnoticed;
• however, there was a chimney in the living room with a large heap of ashes on the floor;
• the bathroom was in a complete state of filth;
• finally, before we 'got the hell out of there' one of her two smelly dogs peed on the floor.

We discussed the rent: she first told us it was € 350 but after we pretended that Belgian rooms (like the French, the Dutch do not call a student room 'kot', but 'kamer') were never as expensive she reluctantly agreed to lower the price to € 300. We left the house telling the lady we had to ask my father’s opinion before taking any decision — which was not true at all, but this way we could 'elude'. On the way back we all kept silent for a while because we were in such a state of shock. There was no way I would rent this room, even if it was the only option I had so far. Once I was home my mother and I knocked back a glass of whisky (a first for both of us) and I sent Mrs Liewes a diplomatic response. The next day she retorted (I keep the layout as it was):

Goedemorgen Simon,

Er is overal centrale verwarming in het huis,

en ik heb een huish hulp verder. (typisch een moederopmerking)

U bent blijkbaar niet bekend met het hollandse systeem.

AArdgas, ! Het huis is juist zo sober ingericht qua stijl,

om het aurhentieke te benadrukken,

het omgekeerde van Belgie waar de ouderwetse pluche kleedjes nog op tafel liggen.

enzov.

De open haard is luxe erbij, de vaatwasser ook.

Gelukkig heb ik mensen voo de huur gevonden!

die de 16de eeuwse sfeer weten te waarderen.

Gr Alberdina Liewes

nb je nederlands was houterig en te formeel

So she dares to complain about my ‘wooden Dutch’ while she makes a lot of spelling mistakes… You will conclude from other examples that the Dutch display all sorts of paradoxes…

One week later I was invited to come and visit a room in Overvecht (northern suburbs of Utrecht) that a student rented for € 260. So, once again we rode to Utrecht to meet the guy and his flatmates. We chatted a lot, told each other where we came from, which were our hobbies (surprisingly we had a passion for the same films) and that kind of things. However, there was filth all over the place and the bathroom was rather disgusting but I was ready to make an effort and clean it up myself, I thought. I was quite confident about getting the room but I was told that there was another candidate… They could have bothered to tell me that beforehand! Especially because my ‘opponent’ eventually got the room: he looked more desperate than me because he was Italian! Once again I cursed the Dutch.

I felt so helpless. Kamernet.nl did not help me at all although I spent more than 50 euros plus another 100 to go to Utrecht and back again… Being that close to the beginning of the academic year I decided to wait until I got to Utrecht to continue my search for a room. Fortunately, Magali had rapidly found a room (notably thanks to her skills at playing the piano) so she kindly accepted to house me for some time.

I arrived in Utrecht on 3 September with very little enthusiasm left. Magali and I had to meet a 'studieadviseur' to assess our proficiency in Dutch and thanks to her we enrolled for a course (Betekenis in taalgebruik) which was not open for 'bijvakkers' (i.e. people not studying full course programmes). During the following days we attended a general introduction for all exchange students, an introduction in the Faculty of Arts as well as a city tour with ESN, the Erasmus Student Network association in Utrecht. Its board members organise all sorts of activities for exchange students throughout the year, like excursions and sports tournaments, and even a tour of Utrecht canals on a canoe.


However, most of these activities were organised on Fridays and since I always had lectures on Fridays I have never been able to attend them. I could have visited Rotterdam, Amsterdam, North Holland and Leiden (among others) and I could have taken part in an excursion abroad — a weekend in Brussels andBruges, which would have been pointless anyway.

Let me get back to my housing problem: on the introduction day in De Uithof (i.e. the university campus where most of the faculties are located, a bit outside the city) I spotted an advert for a room in Bilthoven, approximately 8 km from the city centre. I gave the person a phone call and we met on Sunday 8 September. When I entered the apartment I was astonished by its cleanliness. The owner,Mostapha , was a Moroccan immigrant who was very kind and thoughtful. He showed me the room that was about eight to ten square meters and was already equipped with a bed. We then chatted, I explained my problems with finding accommodation, I told him about my studies, etc. I was also surprised when he said I could have the room immediately — definitely the opposite of what I had become used to. He simply wanted two 'logés' to help him pay his own rent. My rent would amount to € 250 all inclusive, which is a trifle in comparison with prohibitive rents everywhere else. I was so pleased with all this (a nice room with a view on a railway, a big fridge, access to the Internet, a television, and a clean and quiet environment) that I accepted to take the room. The very next day I moved in; I was ready to face a whole term in Utrecht.

2/3 of my room, just after I moved in.

Let's now move on to the teaching system and the courses that I took. First of all you have to know that the semester is split in two 'blokken' of two months each during which entire courses are given. In a way, having a course that lasts only for nine weeks is nice when the material is boring, but it is very annoying, too: you've just started getting used to a particular subject and then suddenly you have to stop… Second, as mentioned above I had three courses: Dutch Present-Day society and Betekenis in taalgebruik during the first blok, and Introduction to Old and Middle English during the second blok.

Dutch Present-Day Society was a very nice and interesting course which — obviously — discussed the Netherlands ('From the Queen all the way down to the coffee shops"), especially since it was attended only by exchange students, so that we could learn about each other's opinions during the weekly tutorial. Our teacher, Mrs Besamusca gave very lively lectures to introduce us to some aspects of the Dutch way of life (pragmatism, the ' gedoogbeleid' and so on) and make us think about multiculturalism. We had lots of reading to do and we had to write four essays — some of which you can read on my blog. Moreover we made an excursion to The Hague and visited the Parliament, among others.

The goal of Betekenis in taalgebruik was to introduce us (a group of about thirty people, including Magali) to logics applied to language. We started from theories about sets ('verzamelingen') and elements and then we built up our logical knowledge so as to be able to decompose sentences and translate them into the logical language (i.e. the so-called 'predicaatlogische taal'; for more information check these entries: propositional logic and predicate logic). At first I thought that taking this course was like committing academic suicide, but thanks to the weekly homework and multiple choice quizzes on WebCT (similar to our WebCampus, but better) and the explanations of the teacher, Mr Ruys (whose Dutch accent was really difficult to understand, especially since he mumbled all the time), we finally managed to get this course 'onder de knie'.

During the second blok I only had to take one course and I opted for Introduction to Old and Middle English. Although we covered roughly the same topics as in Prof. Delabastita's first year course, our teacher, Mrs Auer, put more emphasis on analysing whole texts. We read for instance The Ruin, The Dream of the Rood, Beowulf and significant parts from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

We had a lot of work to do each week, but thanks to that you not only earned marks (home assignments and online tests) but it made the exams look much easier because you had already worked on your course thoroughly.

Before concluding I would like to discuss the top 11 most unpleasant things about my stay in the Netherlands. Indeed, as ThatGuyWithTheGlasses says: "Why top 11? Because I like to go one step beyond."

11. Landscape.
As much of the country is below sea level the Dutch have invented ways of protecting themselves against floods by constructing dikes and digging canals, which was part of a process to gain land on water to house people and grow crops, among others. As a result everything seems artificial in this country — perhaps with the exception of some areas in the south. Moreover everything is flat and the only things that stand out when you look out to the horizon are rare buildings and a couple of forests.

10. Weather.
The Netherlands have a maritime climate, much like us in theory, but I can tell you that temperatures are much colder in winter. As a consequence when you want to go to the city by bike you'd better wear gloves, a scarf, a warm jacket and something on your head in order not to be frozen when you arrive. What is more it rains at least three times a week and the sun is hardly ever to be seen behind the clouds. Over the course of months it snowed only once (a very thin layer) but it froze so much that you could skate on lakes and canals.

It was quite peculiar to see ducks and geese walking on ice.

9. Showers.
You will agree with me when I say — or rather: Wikipedia says — that

"Showers are separated from the surrounding area through watertight curtains (shower curtain), sliding doors, or folding doors, in order to protect the space from spraying water."

None of the three separations mentioned seem to be used everywhere in the Netherlands (see the picture on the left), resulting in much water all over the bathroom. This is annoying in the sense that you must stick to a rather low flow of water (Dutch thrift, I guess) and then you have to dry the floor afterwards… Moreover, it seems that the Dutch discovered "regular" showers only recently (as you can read on the Dutch Wikipedia entry):

"Steeds vaker wordt een douchecabine geplaatst, een voorgevormde ruimte met (mat)transparante wanden en deuren en met een geïntegreerde douchebak, als afscherming van de douche."

I'm glad they found it and that they gradually install it everywhere. I wish they also did so with toilets (see below). Just a note before moving on to the next point: I read that "Nederlanders staan steeds langer onder de douche. In 2008 gemiddeld 8 minuten per dag", i.e. "The Dutch are increasingly taking longer showers, with an average of 8 minutes a day"… Can you imagine what it was before, if it has just risen to only 8 minutes now?!? I guess it has to do with their thrift, as usual.

8. Expensive public transport fares.
All Dutch students normally get a so-called 'OV-chipkaart' which allows them to use any means of public transport in the whole country — although it is restricted either to week days or to the weekend. However, other people — including exchange students — have to buy a 'strippenkaart' to take the bus. I won't explain how to use it because I would take too long. Train fares are almost prohibitive as well: there is no such thing as a 'Go Pass' to be bought in train stations; the best option is to buy a 'jaarabonnement' for € 55 to get a 40% discount on all train fares, if and only if you take the train after 9 am except on weekends. But still, a fare from Utrecht to Maastricht costs as much as € 15! In Belgium, on the other hand, as a student you'd pay € 4,6 [and I am told it has risen to € 5 in the meantime ;-)] to go anywhere. And Dutch exchange students benefit from this, what an outrage!

7. Cleanliness.
As you have read above I encountered serious cases of utter filthiness, so I won't repeat myself here, but just say that I was lucky to live with a Moroccan guy. I helped him time and again to keep the apartment in a clean state — which my female flatmate unwittingly tried to ruin. I realise now that I have not told you about Minéa yet; she rented another room from Mostapha and I admit I know very little about her because over the course of five months spent in that flat I met her at most ten times. Indeed she was either absent all day long, coming back at 1 am and making much noise, or she stayed in her room instead of cooking and eating with me. I just know she came from Groningen and that she studied at the Hogeschool Utrecht. Moreover she drank up to 6 cups of that disgusting Senseo coffee in a single afternoon and she was heavily addicted to cigarettes. I told her I could not stand her smoking but she kept doing it — just in her room, but since walls are as thin as paper the mephitic stench penetrated my room when she was there. Moreover she never cleaned the kitchen after cooking, resulting in large drops of grease everywhere and a sink clogged by the remains of her meals. Besides, she never washed her hands after going to the toilet; she just rushed to the Senseo machine.

6. Food.
The Dutch have traditional dishes like 'stamppot' but I never got the opportunity to try them. Instead I ate the same as in Belgium, not only because I brought a large supply of meat with me (mimicking the Dutch when they go to the Ardennes) but also because you can find everything you want in supermarkets like Albert Heijn, Hema, Dirk or Super De Boer. From September to December you could buy candies for the Sinterklaas period, like 'kruidnoten' (which are cookies, in fact). In December you would also see stands selling 'oliebollen' which are much bigger than the usual Belgian 'croustillons' or 'smoutebollen'. As to chips or fries (whatever you call them), the Dutch like to dub them 'Vlaamse frites' and the common way to order fries with mayonnaise is to say: "Patat met!". However, never order that because Dutch mayonnaise has a sweet, disgusting taste to it. I had to import mayonnaise from Belgium so as not to be sick. As to fries themselves I did not find them that tasty, probably because they use Zeeland potatoes instead of the 'bintje'. What is more, they love soaking them in all kinds of sauces, like patatje speciaal (special): mayonnaise with spiced ketchup and chopped onions; and patatje oorlog: mayonnaise and peanut sauce (and ketchup and chopped onions). The Dutch enjoy that, though, as well as any other junkfood they can find: in the station you could eat at as much as a dozen junkfood outlets, not to mention all other similar 'restaurants' in the city — including KFC, one of the few things (together with non-damaged roads) I regret not having in Belgium.

5. Paradoxical behaviour.
I have already mentioned a couple of Dutch paradoxes (like praising equality but not giving you a chance to find accommodation), but let me give you a few others.

• First, the Netherlands have set up a so-called 'gedoogbeleid' which allows municipalities not to prosecute soft drugs users in order for the authorities and the police to take care of other criminals who are 'more dangerous for society', like hard drugs users and dealers. So policemen don't 'raid' coffeeshops (which are actually forbidden by law) but prefer handing out fines whenever possible. (Incidentally, speed cameras are a Dutch invention.)
• Second, the Netherlands claim to be one of the most secular nations in Europe, but this does not mean that most of them are atheists; quite the contrary, from what I experienced they have an extensive knowledge of the Bible and their culture is strongly influenced by Calvinist thought, as is the case with their thrift (that is to say: 'spending hard-earned money on earthly goods is bad', if I can sum it up this way).
• Third, the Dutch are keen on standing on the left of escalators so that people (like me) who would like to walk because they are not lazy become blocked. I simply do not understand why they just cannot stand on the right side much like in England for instance. We could think the Dutch do not like to rush or anything, but I have evidence of the opposite: when they ride their bikes they would hardly ever stop when the traffic lights are red.
  

4. Toilets.
Most of the toilets that you can find in the Netherlands have a very peculiar shape and their use is somewhat unpleasant. I found an account by an American which perfectly sums up my thoughts on this disturbing matter:

Normally, it's good to accept a different culture at face value, and to seek fault as little as possible. The Dutch toilets are just crazy, though, and I still feel that way.

For those who haven't had the priv[i]lege of shitting in The Netherlands, allow me to describe. Instead of a bowl, you have a shelf. That's the simplest description. The shelf has a very shallow bowl-like aspect, and a low curved lip toward the front of the unit, where the flush-tube is.


So, you get to take a good look at your stool.

Then you flush the toilet. (…) When you flush the real Dutch toilet, your stool is supposed to wash down that flush-tube at the front. It doesn't always do that, of course.

There should be a toilet brush. If there isn't, something's missing. The brush is not just for the occasional housecleaning toilet scrub. You have to brush that shelf. You might even have to sort of help push that turd down the flush, sometimes. I mean, you can't leave it there.

So the toilet-brush is soiled, sometimes badly.

I don't like Dutch toilets.

He forgot to mention the smell since the 'stool' is exposed to the air. If you happen to be interested by this highly sociological topic please watch this instructive video and read this other account.

3. Language.
As we know the Dutch have a very peculiar way of speaking their own language: as Prof. Mettewie told us last year the pronunciation of Dutch remained relatively unchanged in Belgium thanks to the BRT (now VRT) standard, while the pronunciation of Dutch in the Netherlands went its own way, resulting in another distribution of diphthongs (as in the Poldernederlands variant). To use a Konnex phrase: 'het klinkt me niet als muziek in de oren', I admit, maybe just like I do not like the French accent. Moreover the Dutch tend to use the same words very often; I wrote down a sentence in which they all occur:

"Jaaaaaa, nou, het is toch gewoon lekker gezellig of zo, weetje, zeg maar."

'Zeg maar' itself seems to be the most en vogue idiom nowadays because the Dutch (unconsciously) use it at the end of (nearly) all their sentences, which becomes very irritating if you are obsessed by it like me. (By the way, French-speaking people now overuse such chunks as 'tu vois ?' and 'quoi'.) What is more, the Dutch usually have a very good command of English, except that they either speak it with a strong American (perhaps due to the so-called 'Gooise r') or Scottish accent (because of the frequent use of the /ʃ/ phoneme in Dutch).

2. Trains.
Apart from the fact that train fares are prohibitively expensive (see above), there is something else that upsets me about the NS (or 'Nederlandse Spoorwegen'): most of their trains feature so-called silent passenger cars, which is really a good idea. However, the Dutch seem not to notice they exist (nor the big signs indicating 'STILTE' and 'SILENCE'). I remember that once, as I was trying to understand some difficult course material, a group of four old people talked loudly and eventually noticed they were in a silent car, but they blatantly kept on talking! My advice is to go to a non-silent car in order to get some peace and quiet.

1. Snot.
As it is always very cold outside it is normal that everyone catches a cold. But what I find extremely annoying is that the Dutch never blow their nose but prefer to sniff in their mucus. Once I noticed that phenomenon I became obsessed by it and this was a torture when I sat my Old English exam: I was in the middle of 150 Dutch students, and I could hear someone sniffing about every single second. Apparently this bad habit is restricted to the Northern part of the Netherlands, because I did see people blowing their noses in Maastricht. Prof. Leijnse's hypothesis is that this all has to do with a less important conception of hygiene in the Netherlands, and this would explain many of the unpleasant experiences that I mentioned above.

But, as Konnex would say: "'s Lands wijs, 's lands eer".

All in all I have mixed feelings about my Erasmus stay:

• on the one hand I delighted in that excellent university and in the courses that I took: I learnt a lot about the Netherlands, semantics and logics as well as about Old and Middle English, and I got good marks at the end;
  
• on the other hand I was quite bitterly disappointed by the cultural side of the stay: I did not live with other exchange students so I did not see them very often (which is sad, because I met very nice people like Aslak, a Dutch-speaking Norwegian student), and I hardly ever talked to my two flatmates. I did not make any contacts with Dutch people, except for a woman next to whom I sat when attending Old and Middle English classes, but although I always spoke Dutch she replied in English… I spoke more Dutch when I attended the Christmas Party in Namur than in Utrecht. Hence all the bitterness in what I wrote in this blog entry.
  

I am glad I took part in this kind of adventure although I regret some of its outcomes. At least I learnt a lot about the Dutch way of life and this strenghtens my opinion that Belgium is the best country in the world. I hope that the students who will succeed Magali and myself in Utrecht will take good note of this account so that they have a more fulfilling stay.

– Simon

PS. Please browse through the blog that Magali and I kept to see more pictures.



[Note: this blog entry was edited according to Professor Vandelanotte's corrections and suggestions on 2 February 2009. Sorry for those of you who read some shameful mistakes that are due to a lack of focus when writing the post.]