Lost in transit

Non de Ju!

Look at this. Ever seen so many capped teeth in one picture ? Would you want to open your front door, expecting a package of algae wafers for the fish and find them standing there? These guys are going to be crawling through town for the next few days, in our tiny town of 1400 inhabitants, looking for drama, for nerves shaking in anticipation, for teeth grinding in regret.

I think I'm going to suffer temporary amnesia : forget every word of Dutch that I ever knew. Pardon me ?

But I am hoping that they will trawl other small towns nearby, which also share the same post code. You see, our town, tiny though it is, is filled with well known artists of every sort, not the sort to break down and say "Non de Ju!!"

Yes, this is a big deal here in the Netherlands. This is the PostcodeKanjer Lotterij.

And the kids are really, really excited by the pop stars coming to the pancake house for The Party. Now, if only people within our post code can come, well, they just might see a celebrity or two, one who hasn't been around long enough to have their teeth capped. But if it is open to all, well, this is a small town, and Meggie is 6, just about 1 meter 15.

But it is exciting, and all must cross fingers for the girl at the bakery- she just got married, a lovely wedding through town, stopping by the baker's in all her finery.

She has my vote: millions for Suzanne, from the bakery.

Jammer, He ?

Before I went out to do the shopping this morning, pick up some milk and bread, I prepared what I would say to my fellow townspeople : Nee, jammer, he ?

You see, The PostcodeKanjer ( The big zip code lottery) this year has landed upon our zip code. If I had bought a ticket for this lottery, my number would be my zip code : four numbers followed by two letters. Apparently, the first four letters were drawn the other day which means that anyone who has a ticket with those four numbers will divvy up an 8.8 million euro pot. The four numbers drawn were those of town and a few other small villages in our county.

On Sunday, the two letters will be drawn. This usually turns out to be one street, or small area. Anyone with all 6 number and letters will share an additional pot of 13.9 million euro.

As I bought the milk, I replied, Nee, jammer, he ? For we haven't a ticket. But the girl who works at the bakery does and isn't that too exciting for words ? Well, I'm excited for her, at least.

A bunch of dutch pop stars will be coming to town and I have promised to take the children to try and catch a glimpse of them, after all, we don't have to worry about parking now, do we ? I'll be the short, grey haired lady wearing a tomato red coat, three children in tow.

I hope that it falls in town.

Just not on our street !

Sneezing

Here's a funny 3 D ad, I guess you can call it, on the intersection of Dunhua and Nanjing here in Taipei. As implied by the face mask flying away from the sneezing guy to the right, it's of course an ad for some medicine against colds. The pharmaceutical industry must be one of the most thriving here in Taiwan. People are always worrying about their health, and everyone has at least one cure that is certain to fix any ailment you have save a severed head. Anything edible is good for something, but preferably your liver, your kidneys, or your digestive system, and for men, their virility. Inedible stuff like dried bugs ground to a powder is even better. Watching the ads on TV here, you'd think Taiwan is a nation of impotent men. In China, they drink alcohol with a whole snake and snake's gall in it for the same reason -- I know, I've tried it (don't ask why).

As far as Chinese medicine goes, the worse it tastes, the better it is for you. And it is true. The best thing I've ever had against a cold is that ginger reduction D gives me. A liter of water and a cut-up piece of ginger. Reduce it until there's only about two cupfuls left and (try to) drink it. It is absolutely horrible, but if you can force it down, it almost always does the trick. So you see: horrible taste == effective.

Another thing I tried was acupuncture -- 10 minutes of needles in my left knee. It didn't kill off the cold, but my clogged up nose was completely opened up and I could breath normally for six hours. The doctor said that if I came back the next day, he would kill the cold altogether.

When Taiwanese people see a doctor in Western medicine they are disappointed if they don't get a cocktail of five or six different pills to combat a common cold. A single pill probably means that he doesn't know what he's doing, while I think that six pills mean he doesn't know what he's doing, which is why he gives you a blanket prescription to kill off any and all bacteria and viruses you have in your body, and your immune system with it. Doctors tell you nothing but "Take this medicine, and then you take that medicine." Why? "Because I say so, that's why." This means that, "Don't forget that I am a doctor, and have gone to university to learn this (if he's a doctor of Western medicine, that is). It would be too complicated to explain what the problem is, and you wouldn't understand anyway. You'll just have to trust me." And they do. Taiwanese have an implicit trust in their doctors. It's not like back in Sweden where they do all they can to explain to you what's wrong and want to make you understand what's going on and keep asking you what you think. "They sound like they don't know what they're doing, your Swedish doctors, asking all them questions." That's what D told me when we first lived in Sweden. She prefers it the Taiwanese way.

As a result of this fixation on medication and illness, I guess, there are more ads for headache medicine on TV here than even in the US, and celebrity endorsements of useless and maybe even dangerous medicines have gone so far that there is now a law against endorsing stuff that you don't know anything about and don't use yourself. Or something like that. The long and the short of it is that you have to be personally responsible for any endorsement you make. If the stuff is bad, there are stiff fines, and even jail sentences, no less.

The funniest medical ad I've ever seen, though, came when we lived in Texas. Don't remember the name of the laxative, but there was this African-American family sitting in their living room watching TV and reading. Then the camera moves to one of them who is making a funny face as if she was in pain. The husband looks at her and says: "You look constipated. Here, use XXX." How about that.

Cross post

Thank You

Should you ever come to The Netherlands, know this : you don't have to times the sales tax by two or figure out any percentages: tips are not a part of life here. They are not an established tradition, no one will pour soup over your fancy- schmancy suit recalling your lousy tip last time.

One doesn't tip here.

It is not the custom.

But when the teenagers stop by my door, the teenagers who deliver junk mail to me at ungodly hours in horrendous weather , when they stand there looking rather stupid as they hold a dull little card up, wishing me a Merry Christmas, I give them a big- by Dutch standards - tip. I give them 5 euro.

And why not ? They could be ripping navigation systems out of cars, trashing homes, but instead they deliver junk mail at ungodly hours in vile weather.

That'll get a tip from me any day.

As well as a thank you, for your good work.

I bought a tree

After working out, I remembered we still needed a Christmas tree and stopped by a village on the way home where two farmers had competing Christmas tree businesses. I stopped at the first one, where we had bought trees previous years and looked around.
The farmer asked me what I needed. Regular room height, I said, about 2.30 meters. Any particular tree? he asked me. I said they all looked good to me, but no matter which one I picked, someone at home was likely to find something wrong with it.
I have a nice tree over here, he said, and took me around the corner, past the sold trees, where he had stashed a nice one. There was a tag on it reading, "Onkel Franz". My uncle never showed up to get it today, so you can have it, he said. I had picked it out for him. He can pick out another one whenever he shows up.
It was like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Christmas trees.
I paid. The farmer offered me a cup of punch, which had gone lukewarm as it was late evening and he was ready to close shop. He asked me where I was from and what had brought me to Austria. Work?
I thought about it and said, my love of Austria, actually. He seemed to like that. I unpacked my habitual conversational nugget about how my wife and I had debated where to move to from our last place in Japan, she for the United States and me for Austria. It's an easily told anecdote, much-practiced. It makes me sound adventurous, maybe, but I wonder if maybe my wife was just more ready to face her past than I was.
He told me about a trip he had taken through the US ten years ago. Then I guess he had enough. Enough of this, he said. If we keep talking, I'll get in the mood to travel again and you'll get homesick. He said he'd deliver the tree sometime after the 20th of December and asked if I had any kids. I said I did, and he said he'd be careful that no one saw him bring the tree, which the Christkind officially brings on the 24th, blazing with candles. He remembered where our house was, he said he liked our fence.

Old friends

I've ended up having the strangest relationship to the Swedish language, after nearly seven years living in this chilly country.

It's as if I am in the fourth grade again, and English is my oldest and best friend, who knows all my darkest secrets but likes me all the same, and Swedish is one of the scary popular kids who can sometimes be quite nice to me, but not so nice as to invite me to his house, and sometimes, on a whim, can be so very heartless and cruel.

The problem is that the only way I can really be friends with such a cool guy as Swedish is if I give up spending so much time with my beloved English.

Worse, I can't help feeling jealous and full of self pity when Swedish seems to be much better friends with some of my other friends than he is with me. Like my buddy Devin, who hasn't lived here in more than three years, and only lived here for four years in total but when he visited last week, was still so much more at ease with Swedish than I am, all full of slang and jokes and perfect pronunciation.

I feel so inadequate.

Then, I buck up and remember how Swedish won't have anything to do with the American woman who sits across from me at the office, even though she's known him for more than twice as long as I have.

Oh, the price one pays for being such good friends with English.

We really need to stop hanging around together so much. People will get ideas.