Life in Amsterdam

I have a new blog (actually, I have a new, new, new blog). Go there instead.

What I ate today:

Energy bar, "Goldens & Cherries" (a little box of dried white grapes and cherries) and OJ -- all free from work.

Pizza Hut buffet - two salads, five breadsticks, probably five or six pieces of pizza, and two pieces of dessert pizza

I'm Moving.

This page, anyway. It's kind of a pain, but I think it will be worth it. I will provide links between the pages (so you can access old posts from this page if you want to), so it should be pretty painless. "Why move?" you must be wondering. Well, at my other site you can post comments and I can post images directly to the blog. There are also a lot of other perks like a search bar (so you can more easily find past entries), a guestbook, and editing the page is easier for me (although none of you care about that. Once again, here is a link to my other page. There is a link on the sidebar as well, and this is the address (if for some reason the link isn't working or you didn't click it) - http://www.upsaid.com/uselessbabble - write it down if you'd like. What was that? You want me to put another link just to ensure that you are able to find my page? Alright, you can click here, here, here, here, or here. I'll see you on the other side.

Bad luck doesn't recur this often (which means it's MY fault, which is an impossibility. What a conundrum...)

So I guess all of the messes I've been getting myself into are my fault. I have to use this quote, though, I indirectly stole from a Hamline student. He lost his disk and I "acquired" it because I needed to save something, and one of the filenames he had on the disk was "All's Well that Ends.doc" I loved it, what a play on words. But, as it turns out, he was just lazy and shortened the title to his horrible paper on Shakespearean plays, "All's Well that Ends Well?" Corny. But, I figure no matter how horrible all of the messes I get into are, "All's well that ends." And it always ends (eventually).

I was 45 minutes late to class today. Here's why. I stayed up until 5 in the morning doing my reading and writing my papers, decided to start at 1:30. Congrats, Wyatt, great work ethic. It really wouldn't have been a problem, though, except that I was so exhausted I turned off my alarm in my sleep (something I do from time to time, although nobody believes me when I tell them that). So I woke up at 10, 15 minutes before my class was scheduled to start, so I rushed out the door and to the computer lab, hoping to print off my papers quickly and run into class maybe five minutes late. But you know my luck.

Get to the lab, and they are rebooting and reformatting all of the computers except for one lab, and there is a queue of about ten people. AAAAAHHHHH! So I wait in line, basically conceding that I am going to be late for class. I get in, print, and am out in 2 minutes. Okay, I think, I'm only going to be 20 minutes late now. So I go to the printer, and the guy in front of me screws up the machine. The only operating printer in the entire building and the guy right in front of me in line messes it up. Perfect. So the technician has to come back three times to fix it, so there's another 20 minutes gone. Just picture me this whole time (well, at this point I was just 'shooting it' with the technician. I didn't care anymore, I figured, hey, just enjoy it if you have to be here). By the time I get to the printer, I punch in my codes and use my card and it takes me maybe 10 seconds. So the whole thing could have taken me 2 minutes 15 seconds, but it takes over a half hour instead. Stupendous.

I'm a big boy.

I'm apparently able to fend for myself in a foreign country, but until now was unable to figure out international dialing codes. I gave THREE wrong numbers in my post 'I gave in.' (regarding my purchase of a cell phone). Horrible. I know for a fact that Kyla (my twin) tried calling ALL THREE NUMBERS, to no avail. Way to go Wyatt, you've sure got things all nailed down there in Amsterdam. I'm sure everyone is reading about how I'm constantly getting lost, missing assignments, and screwing up in various other ways and are thinking that these excerpts are characteristic of my trip as a whole. Not the case, they're just the most entertaining parts of the trip (I doubt anyone wants to hear about the time I did my homework and showed up to class and sat through a lecture).

SO - here it is. My real number. I swear it this time. Really. This is the one - my phone number. Push the buttons, talk to Wyatt. No annoying phone operators telling you that you're stupid and the number you dialed doesn't make any sense. Fully functional. It will work, scout's honor (well, I guess it will only work from the U.S., as 011 is our international calling code, but that is irrelevant).

011 31 6 1811 2947

Give me a ring, everyone! I haven't heard a peep from my so-called "friends" from college, but guess what guys, I'VE GOT NEW FRIENDS NOW!!! YOU'VE ALL BEEN REPLACED BY EUROPEANS!!! HA!!! Seriously, though, you know how that game works. One person expects you to email, you expect them to email, and both continually check only to be disappointed time and time again. Then you will both grow so bitter that you won't write any emails at all out of spite. That's the way it works in my head, anyway. I know at least a few are reading this, and if you happen to be one of those few Hamlinites that is reading this right now, spread the word, and tell people to email me, I use my college account (which I won't divulge on a public web page). Yeah, I know this is a shameless ploy to get people to write and call me, but I've got no pride left to lose, only shame to wallow in.

What a mess

Tell me how this happens: I'm in Amsterdam, I don't know where anything is. I'm told by my professor that I have to hunt down a bookstore and buy the books for the class. No problem, except that they aren't too fond of speaking English in the bookstore that I had to go, but I bought the stinking books. One less thing to worry about OR SO I THOUGHT.

Turns out, the book, Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789-1989, is actually the book The New Philosophers 5: The Empiricists. Whaaa?? The put the wrong cover on my stinking book. But, like the oblivious fool that I am, I read through fifty pages of 16th century philosophy before I realized that the book wasn't at all about religion (hey, cut me some slack, it was probably about three in the morning at this point). So, I have to email the professor, explain to him why I didn't have my paper to hand in, grovel, grovel, explain, grovel, lie, grovel. You get the point. Only later did I find out, ALL of the books were messed up. How does that happen? How does a major publication company distribute such a large number of books that are all screwed up, not recall them, and allow students to buy them before the mistake is caught? Were we the first to notice? Is there no quality control in this country (which makes me worry about the shady meat I've been buying from the "cheap" market...)?

Foreign Instruction

I'm on my break from class, and I thought I'd comment on something my professor wrote. We were talking about the evolution/progression of society and he was talking about nomadic hunter/gatherer societies. He said, "nomadic," but he wrote, "nodaming." I thought it was pretty funny.

Which gets me to my point, it really doesn't matter how you say or write something as long as your point in conveyed. I run into this all of the time, as I'm talking to non-native English speakers constantly. The majority are quite fluent (which makes me feel like crap for not knowing any other languages - ahh, the luxury/curse of being American), but are self-conscious about not saying things correctly. I just tell them, "hey, as long as I know what you're saying it doesn't matter." You do get some strange and amusing combinations of words, the latest being, "Pretty asshole" from a French girl, which she intended as an insult. She wasn't calling me that, don't worry.

I've got the holiday spirit!

Only one problem: how can I possibly sustain the level of spending required for a five month holiday?

I'm in Amsterdam, there are a plethora of things to do, see, places to go, and THEY ALL COST MONEY. I hate money. I could be (and so far, am) having the time of my life, until monetary restrictions curtail my fun. I'm writing this because I'm going to book a flight to Ireland today. I'm going to spend six days there celebrating one of my newly acquired friends' birthday. The whole trip is going to cost around 160 Euros, which is VERY reasonable. That's the problem - I can't disallow myself from taking advantage of these opportunities. Someone asks me, "Do you want to go to a movie?" It costs five Euro, and I get to hang out with my new friends instead of sitting in my room, of course I'm going to say yes. Of course I want to go to the museum, of course I want to go to the film festival, of course I want to go to the pub, you get the picture. All of these small "vacation-like" expenditures are going to start biting me in the arse here pretty soon. The question is, how long will the money last? And the even bigger question, what am I going to do when it doesn't?

Don't worry people who may actually be concerned with my well-being, this isn't the end of the world. I'm just going to have to be smart, do the things that are most worthwhile, and possibly 'subsidize' my finances for this semester by taking money from my refund for second semester. Hey, you're only in Europe once, right?

Bear with me here

This is my first feeble attempt at incorporating my amateur digital photography into the blog. Just to forewarn you - there are still a few hitches in the machinery, if you know what I mean (if you don't you soon will). The pictures are too big, I have to use links to separate pages to view the pictures, and the page format is very bare-bones. Well, after that I doubt that anyone will still want to go to the pages, so it goes.

I've compiled three small sets of pictures - one from Bob's Youth Hostel, one from my apartment/room, and one of my new tattoo (for those who haven't seen it).

Bob's Youth Hostel, the biggest dump in Amsterdam, was where I stayed at the outset of my trip. It provided a very strong first impression of the city, even if it wasn't the best first impression. I half expected to find out the I was going to be living in dresser drawers like the Asian businessmen that stayed in Kramer's drawers on Seinfeld (for anyone who wasted their afternoons watching that show like I did).

My apartment is new, nice, and "cozy," overall a good place to live. It is relatively near to everywhere I need to go, especially now that I have my bike. It's pretty small, only one room with two beds, two desks, and a small table. No other furniture, so they aren't much for social gatherings. I have music on my laptop, so we still have people over every now and then. Being the gracious host that I am, I spent an entire night sitting on the floor while everyone else looked down on me. Seemed fitting.

I've finally put some pictures of my new tattoo on the internet, and have written a bit on that page as well, so I won't elaborate here. Well, if you've clicked every link that I've provided (and you better have!), then I've already sucked more time from your short lives than I should have, so I'll end it here for today.

Good or Bad?

Yesterday, September 11th (cue melancholy piano tune), I went about my business like it was any other day. Although I was aware of the significance of the date, I didn't do anything special, talk to anyone about it, or make any outward indication that the day was any different than any other. Now, I haven't experienced any real anti-Americanism, but this comment struck me as strange. Someone said, "You haven't said anything about 9.11..." to which I replied, "I guess I really didn't have anything to say about it." The response (and this is what got me thinking), "Yeah, it's not like your birthday or anything, it's not a day you'd really remember. It's cool that you don't make a big deal out of it." Is it cool? The ambiguity of the statement is what gets me. Was it veiled anti-patriotism (like they're supporting me in not making a big deal of my nationalistic sentiments) or was it just a way of saying that they think my response to the event is natural and acceptable?

I wouldn't usually put much thought into a comment like that, but I guess I have gotten a heightened self-awareness since I've been here. Sadly, once you've gotten comfortable in your life (wherever it is) the majority of the interactions you have in any given day are taken for granted. It's almost as if you already know what people are going to say, how they're going to act, and what is expected of you in most situations you're confronted with. Here, I have no idea what to expect from everyone else, and I sure as hell don't know what to do with myself. It forces you to think about why you act the way you do, and it's then that you come to a full realization of what it means to be yourself.