The Pussy Run

November last year, I began running with one of the guys from work and his pack.¹

The route starts off on the Linkeroever side of St Annastunnel in Antwerp; from there, we run alongside the man-made lake to the motor-way tunnel; onto the other side of the motor-way tunnel and the courthouse;  back to St Annastunnel; through the tunnel and up the escalators to finish.

The Pussy Run

The reason my friend travels 30-60 minutes, on a Saturday morning (go time is 09:00) just to run 10km is because we cap it off by going up the escalators in the opposite direction. It gets its name from this: The  Pussy Run.

I imagine a couple of brows quirk at this ("you are talking jive, I don't see the connection"), but please, please let me elaborate... The copious amount of stairs originally earned it the name "The Rocky is a Pussy Run". Over time, this contracted to the aforementioned, more ambiguous,  appellation.²

A month or so after the marathon,³ I started doing it most weekends.

Then in September, I decided to change it up; I split it into 4 distinct portions

• From pt. 2 to pt. 6 on the map (2.6km)
• From the turn between point 4 and 7⁴ and the big green box (2.6km)
• From the green box to the traffic lights at St. Annastunnel (1.9km).
• To finish it off, I sprint the tunnel as fast as I can (570m) and then do the escalators (there are two of them, totalling a vertical height of ~31m).

Between each of these, I take a breather for a couple of minutes, either jogging to the next start point or walking around for a time. With the change-up, I started using a timer as well, to motivate me to keep a good pace. Today, I ran my final one of 2012.⁵ And here's a lovely chart I made of my progress. :)

Average speed per section of the Pussy Run, first three are fast runs and last one is my all out sprint.⁶

I used Googledrive for it... the interface is pretty sucky, but still the info is there.

The points are shown in order, so for the vast majority, my first route is faster than the other two "long routes." I do like that the second two runs are similar in speed. This change marked my first time sprinting properly; one can see that in the chart with the sharp increase in speed for the 570m at the beginning as my technique improved. I am very proud of myself for how close  some of the later first 2.6km runs (blue 6, 9, 12) are to the speed of the first sprint (green 1).⁷ Between runs 9 and 10, I missed 3 weekends, which contributed to the slowing. Also, around that time, it turns out that I was carrying quite a bit of tension in my chest and shoulders, which would have slowed things down a bit.

I really like finishing out with the sprint; it's more difficult than the other parts, which means the endorphin pay-off is all the sweeter! In fact, I find it harder to keep going after the 250m mark than I did going through the 20-40km markers of the marathon... My heart is going like a jackhammer, and the end looks so far away. The tired part of me tells me that I have done enough. Then I remind it that willpower is infinite, if we want it to be.

Fingers crossed that I can eek out some more incremental improvement over the next year.

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1. I think it is cool to refer to groups of men being all macho and sh*t as "packs" - deal with it
2. I first wrote "moniker" instead of appellation, but I really wanted the alliterative 4 hit combo. Thankfully, with footnotes, I can have my cake and eat it too!
3. I'm going to bury the lede here - I did the marathon in 4 hr 15 mins.
1. The first 10km were boring and took a surprising amount of concentration not to just stop.
2.  After 21km, everything kinda locked up and I was hobbled there after.
3. The next 18-20 km were very unpleasant, the words "interminable hell" come to mind, but as Churchill said: "When you are going through hell, keep going."
4. I picked up the pace to stay with the 4:15 pace-setter for the last 2-2.5km. At that point, I was literally running as fast as I could; my hamstrings spasmed when I tried to go faster.
5. Walking down stairs for the next two days was unpleasant - each step became a precarious ledge that I had to cast myself from... I physically could not move faster than a mangled skip.
6. On day three, I had a Gumpian moment running for a bus, where it felt like I had burst out of braces and I could suddenly jog along as I would have the week before the marathon.
7. The muscle stiffness was gone by Thursday.
4. What the hell is going on with this numbering?!
5. What with the world supposed to end yesterday, I wasn't sure if I would make it.
6. True, not a huge increase in speed from run to sprint,  aaa-and the sprint is almost fast enough to be a decent marathon pace... I have a very deep appreciation for what those athletes do.
7. First sprint was 14.6 km/h and my last 2.6km run was 14.3, and my fastest was 14.4. :)

Chocolate Cheesecake Mark II

I made a chocolate cheesecake a couple of weeks ago. Some say it is the best chocolate cheesecake that they have ever eaten. (Imagine that Clarkson is saying it)

Happily, I made the right choice by going with the first recipe that google turned-up (link).

Tonight as the follow-up I decided to, pardoning the pun, build on the recipe... instead of outsourcing the cheesecake base, I went ahead and baked one using the strawberry scookie recipe featured in an earlier blog post (link!).

Take make sure that the base looked suitably dark, I used only brown sugar only in the dough.

Brown sugar and strawberry cookie dough!

 [not pictured]

Baked cookie base

While that was baking, I put together the rest of it the same as described in the original link for the cheesecake recipe. 

Filling! (could have done with more chocolate, me thinks :/)

Finished (well, just has to go in the fridge now)

There it is, just quick post. It's nice having a camera again.. (not a great one, by any means)

Peace out.

Get creative, Yo

I saw a chart on Facebook a while back. It showed a decreasing trend in creativity in children from the beginning of their education all the way up to the end of high school. This was based on the Torrance creativity tests. While I was looking for the aforementioned picture (I never did find it), I came across this nicely written post called the "Creativity Crisis" by Po Bronson.

Part of me was tempted to go on a literature review for the correlations with/mechanisms behind the decades long decline in creativity and then the trend through childhood education itself. I decided instead of getting bogged down in the vicious circle that is looking for valid information that I may as well just give my opinion, which is the main reason for my blog.

As was said in the post I linked, the emphasis on standardised tests and rote learning are correlated with the fall in creativity. But I think that there are subtle nuances there. Specifically I was thinking about the way school exercises were approached when I was there.

In mathematics and sciences, what we are taught in class is reinforced by working on problems oriented around the principles. That's all well and good for internalising a specific skill, but the disadvantage is that it becomes very easy for children (I mean "me") to fixate on how the problem is solved as opposed to what the result is. We (I mean "I") can become conditioned to expect all the tools to solve a problem being clearly lined-up and colour-coded in front of us (I mean... you get the idea). It reminds me a bit of the adage from Maslow:

"[...] if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail [...]"

Although, I would contend it is a bit more insidious than that; it's more a case of: "I was only told I could use the hammer." It's something that trips me up often in work, at least more often than I would like. I have tunnelvision solving problems... what tools to use and what is possible. What I'm trying to do these days is consider what is the desired outcome and not fixate on a path that I thought would lead me to it.

I think what could be an interesting idea for teachers to employ when teaching is only doing 50% of the exercises explicitly using the prescribed method and the other 50% letting the kids go nuts, i.e. solving the problems whatever way they can. It has a couple of benefits (I think):

1. There's cross-pollination; they are more likely to remember the thing they learned earlier and not discard them at the end of course section 
2. They get into the habit of looking at the problem and sizing up what could work to solve it based on the pros and cons of different techniques
3. They build-up a personalized repertoire of techniques for solving problems
4. They won't shoehorn a technique into a problem just because it worked for other problems in the vicinity
5. They'll be more adaptable when a technique doesn't work

Added bonuses, based on successes borne of their own initiative, they could become more confident and more likely to be assertive when faced with challenges - at least that is what my gut tells me; I only have a doctorate in chemical engineering, not psychology... :/

Maybe I'm completely of the mark, but it sounds reasonable enough to me.

There's a nice parable that infers the things I just opined. Part of me feels a bit raw that I haven't offered something novel. But, there's a very rewarding rush to arrive at an answer on your own, that isn't diminished by discovering the answer existed already. I think kids should get used to that feeling. 

Make them problem-solving junkies!¹

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¹Not to be confused with junkies that solve problems... Ah English... your ambiguity is easy pickings for some classic jokes. And hilarious example of one at that, if I might add.ⁱ

ⁱI may.

Mairtin goes a marathoning

Several moons ago,¹ I ran the Antwerp Marathon. I decided to do it 5 weeks before the day.

A little over a year ago, an email from a friend of mine set me on the track to the marathon.

He suggested that we do the Belgian edition of the Strong Man Run. Since I had run no more than a couple kilometres at a time in the last 4 years, I figured a 10km+ obstacle course would be something that'd be tough on me; something to inceive thoughts of quitting in the middle of it, a test  of will. Much to my disappointment, I was only really getting into the swing of things by the final/2nd lap, and was kind of looking forward to a third lap. To be fair, I had no idea what was a comfortable pace for me, and therefore stayed at the back of the pack; between an overly conservative tempo and bottlenecking at the obstacles on the first lap, it was too easy on me.

At work, I lamented this to another martial arts enthusiast. Out of sympathy, or possibly curiosity, he invited me on "The Pussy Run".^3/sup> I am now a huge fan of it!

It is a 10km circuit around the Scheld. The first part concludes with a run up 130 or so steps (something like ten flights of 13 steps - I think). The second leg, atop the steps of the courthouse (hence the allusion to Rocky). And finally, the coup de grace is a run up the downward moving escalators in the pedestrian tunnel.

Really, the sole purpose for the previous 10km is that you are "warmed-up" for the escalators. Their total vertical distance is 34m. I find the last few moments on them grueling. :)

It starts off well enough, a nice  springy stride; thinking such a pace is maintainable ("I'm invincible!"). Halfway up the first one, the burn in the legs is noticeable; I don't pass by the pictures on the wall as easily  as I did before; the lungs start wheezing; the body begins to wheedle ("We can't do it", "Haven't we gone far enough?", "We might fall on the escalator; just stop", etc.)...

There is a very satisfying endorphin rush at the end of it all. :)

So. Running was back on the radar as something to pass the time with. For various reasons, I only did the Pussy Run twice in October/November. The next time I got to run was a 15km jaunt on Christmas day.⁴ I was pretty happy with my 12.3km/h pace.

My curiosity was definitely becoming piqued... how far could I run? The next time was in near the end of March. Since I had decided to do the marathon at this point, I went for a 23km run to make sure that my joints/feet were OK for longer distances. This time I ran it 11.7km/h overall, with the last 7.5 km or so at 12.1km/h to pull the average up. I felt pretty comfortable at this pace, like I could have done it for another few klicks⁵ at least. In the days afterwards, my legs were a bit tender.

So there it is - in the 6 months prior to the marathon, I ran 2 x 10km, 1 x 15km and 1 x 23km. Naturally, there were quite a few doubters when I declared my intentions to run the marathon... 5 weeks before hand... With little to no preparation...

Stay tuned for the riveting continuation of this tale of mind and body.⁶

ooooooooooooooo

¹I have been "rather" lax in keeping my blog current :/

²Running

³A shorthand for the "Rocky is a Pussy Run"

⁴You know how it is; I had some time to kill.

⁵That's army lingo alpha charlie zulu tango bonza

⁶I was tempted to say mind vs. body, but that's like saying Scottie was fighting with the Enterprise's engine... Really what we do is coax, egg-on, encourage, trick, entrap, bribe, blackmail our innately lazy bodies to work up a sweat. It's not the least bit adversarial. 

Bread recipe

Dry:

• 1 kg wholemeal flour (or plain flour or mixes thereof, whatever you like)
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 100 g raisins
• 25 g cinnamon

Wet:

• ~1/2 litre of apple juice
• 4 teaspoons of vinegar.

1. Mix the solids together.
2. Preheat oven to 200°C.
3. Add the vinegar to the apple juice.
4. Roll in juice gradually until all of the flour mix is wetted, but not slimy looking sludge. 
5. Throw a quarter of the mix onto a section of baking paper. 
6. Roll the baking paper up so that it's a crude looking cylinder.
7. Place it on the tray in a way that it wont unroll while the dough bakes.  

For me, this is enough for 4 loaves of bread.

I use a fork and bowel to mix it all together - it spares me losing the sticky dough on my hands.

Now, what is nice about the baking paper is that it helps lock in the carbon dioxide that is going to be generated while it bakes. Which is critical for maximum fluffiness. You end up with two rough looking ends because they are exposed, and a smooth curved surface, where the baking paper touches the dough.

Cooking time:
Until it is visibly steaming (when you open the oven door and steam rolls out and it smells deliciously edible). Essentially, the perfect time is when most of the water has been boiled off, that the loaf is almost dry. Something like 20-30 minutes.

You can keep the dry mix for a couple of days, but once you add the liquid and mix it up, the dough has to go into the oven quickly (<5mins). Otherwise more of the carbon dioxide will be released during baking.

Alternative options:

Instead of baking soda/vinegar: try 8 teaspoons of baking powder; 4 teaspoons of baking soda with 4 teaspoons of cream of tartar; use buttermilk instead of the vinegar and apple juice (roughly 1/2 litre until the dough is damp), any other juice, lemon juice in water (say half a lemon to 1/2 litre of water), use normal milk with the vinegar (either add immediately or let it stand for an hour [as an engineer I would prefer to stir it in this time just to have a consistent and faster souring] while to make your own buttermilk).

Add in about 80 g of finely diced fresh ginger - the raisins and the tart ginger provide a fantastic flavour where they complement each other - I haven't used powdered ginger yet.

Dry some fruits yourself. 4-5 apples cut into small chips (wet size ~1-2 x 1-2 cm) are enough for this amount of dough (150 g or so when dry). Dry in the oven at 140°C with the door open a crack and, if possible a fan blowing across it. Dry until crispy, but not burned, . The apples lose a serious amount of moisture in the drying process (about 60-66% of their wet mass). In my oven it takes about 3 hours for this, but keep going until they are crispy and don't smell burnt or taste like carbon. I generally peel them beforehand. I am partial to pink ladies for this. I haven't used cooking apples yet, and I'm not inclined to.

Add some oatmeal, nuts, shredded All Bran and/or a bit of sugar if you like (you could drop large sugar crystals on the baking paper before you throw the dough on it and roll it up.

Much like my cookie recipe, beyond the bare bones recipe (flour, source of carbon dioxide [baking soda/vinegar, etc.], and a source of water to dampen the dough), you can do what ever you like with it.

Experiment  and see what works best for you.

As a parting thought:
Is carbon dioxide generation critical, or just the simplest/most convenient one to do?

As long as the by-products aren't toxic and are tasty, any reaction that produces a gas could do the job. Although... something heavy like carbon dioxide is probably best because it has a lower diffusivity than something like nitrogen. So it is more likely to stay in the dough.

I wonder what would happen if you had an oxygen or hydrogen producing reaction in there...

Twaalfwoorden deel drie

And here it is, the ultimate part in my thought provoking series⁰ on Dutch words (imagine it’s David Attenborough saying it).

9. Bij

This a handy word to have:

·      Er is iemand bij = “There is someone (else) there”/”there is an additional person there.”

·      Ik heb X erbij = “I have it here/with me]”

·      Bijleren means to learn something extra, i.e. something incidentally learned, something that you’d pick up during your day.

The reason I like bij as an modifier to words or sentences is that it’s such an economical way to say that someone is beside you/with you/accompanying you, or that you have some. Or to say that you picked something up. It’s like the linguistic equivalent of a vintage sports car (think original Bond Aston Martin), whereas equivalent English approaches are 80s and 90s era sports cars – kitch and cool in their own way, but sometimes seem to have too much going on.

10. Eenvoudig

Combining two words to get another word, is something I relish seeing in Dutch (and also in German). The meaning of the new word is something easy to infer, intuitive even. They are often built up from common/day-to-day words. Such an elegant synthesis of literal-mindedness and abstraction. Of which this is a wonderful example...¹

Simple. Een (one) and voudig (from vouwen “fold”). Eenvoudig is hands down my favourite etymological discovery in Dutch. I let out a gleeful yelp when I realised which words were the parents of this one. It is an example of an abstract concept being used as the word to represent that concept...² there aren’t many things simpler than a single fold!

11. Woordenschat

Vocabulary. Woorden (words) and schat (treasure). It strikes such a powerful chord… “word treasure.” For me, at least, when I consider this compound word, it gets me to take a moment and consider the words I have learned. To admire them, each an ingot of gold or a precious stone. Compare that to “vocabulary”; Just a bundle of syllables. How… how forgetable.

And of course, to finish with a chuckle.

12.                  Hoeren en uren

Prostitutes and hours… A tricky one for me is the distinction between oe and uu. The first should be pronounced like the like the "oo" in raccoon. The second is similar to the u in “ubiquitous (the first one - it certainly seems to be everywhere in that word...)- but stretch it out to make it a long sound.

Dutch speakers are unforgiving about vowel sounds, the distinction between them is more important than in English.³ It is coming along, but I do have my off moments…

I was chatting at lunch about the hours I spent relaxing in the canteen in college with the lads. They looked at me in surprise and asked me to repeat myself. I did. It turned out what I had said sounded far closer to “prostitutes in the canteen”, all because of a mix-up between those two sounds. We still chuckle about that one. :)

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⁰It certainly provoked my thoughts.ⁱ  :) ¹ Because of the influence of the Normans (French-speaking conquerers of Britain back a 1,000 years ago), many technical/scientific terms follow Romantic naming conventions of using the Latin or Greek.

² Talk about meta! It’s wheels within wheels up in here! If I didn’t want to finish on a laugh, this would have been the kicker!

³ Consonants are kings in the Queen’s. [EDIT: A colleague of mine challenged me in this. And I had to concede that, being an English speaker, I have a much broader experience and exposure to the manifold ways that English can be mis-pronounced; Compared to a Dutch speaker - with significantly fewer foreigners learning it let alone trying to speak it - the skill of inferring what is actually meant by garbled syllables is not as well honed]

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ⁱA friend of mine asked me why I wrote my blog in the first place, if I cared that people wouldn’t get it or thought that something on it was stupid.

I told him that I do it because I get a kick out of it. I’d be lying if I said that I didn't care when people like it or read it...^a,b I get a lot out of putting a post together – in terms of amusement, learning something new,^c and having epiphanies about myself and the world around me.

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^aAs John Donne said:

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…^d

^bI mean when they enjoy reading it as well as “liking” it on Facebook.

^cThere is a whole lot of bijleren going on up in here!

^dThe rest of the poem goes on to talk about death and how as a part of mankind each death diminishes us individually… the poem is bookended by two famous lines, the one I quote above about the penninsular status of conscious existence and “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” As you can see, I am cherry-picking because clearly Mr Donne was referring to something deeper than acceptance and validation. I recommend reading his Wikipedia article; riveting.

Twaalf woorden deel twee

Welcome back to a recap of my fun and fascinating journey with/in/through(?) Dutch.. (it sounds much better when you imagine it’s Gene Wilder saying it).

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4.   Ik heb X nodig/Jij hoeft dat niet te X

In Dutch, there isn’t a direct translation to “I need ...”. They typically say the former phrase above, which literally translates as: "I have X necessary”. Or sometimes it is: Het is nodig dat... = “It is necessary that...”.

The phrase above translates as: “You need not X...”. The latter does phrase include the verb closest to “need” in Dutch: hoeven, which is used in reference to people acting/doing, or more precisely not doing something... Apparently, it is never used in the positive (usually mogen, kunnen or moeten are used to indicate what one "may", "can" and "must" do).

I’ve always considered Dutch as some kind of cross between English and German. So it’s interesting that need (brauchen in German) isn’t in Dutch.

5.   Zitten

Sit. This verb does double duty. Zitten is often used to indicate where someone is situated or what kind of situation they are in, e.g. someone is in a meeting (hij zit in een vergadering), someone is in another country (momenteel zit hij in Ierland), someone is having trouble (hij zit in problemen).

6.   Fout/Zout/Wouter

Here's something that's just a curiosity.¹ While listening to an audiobook, A Spymaster's Guide to Learning Languages, I learnt that the within a family of languages there are often sounds that change consistently from one language to another.

Above we have the Dutch for “Fault (Wrong)”, “Salt” “Walter”. Excluding the spelling change for fault, the vowel sounds are the same for these words in each language. So “ou” in Dutch can be an “al” in English. Oud to old is, unfortunately, a bit of a stretch, but I am just putting it out there.

7.   Verschrikkelijk

It means terrible, appalling, horrible… which is strangely appropriate, because I had a devil of a time pronouncing it.

·      The s has to be an s, not an sh.²

·      The ch is a similar guttural sound to the aforementioned g.

·      And bookended by rolling rs.

Now. Each of those sounds has to be pronounced clearly, smoothly and in relatively quick succession. Vibrating tongue against the roof of the mouth (r), point of tongue against the rough of the mouth (s), guttural sound from the throat (ch), vibrating tongue against the roof of the mouth (r)… Much like morgen it is a great word for working on some critical sounds in Dutch.

8.   Voorstellen

It comes up a couple of times in the list; I like the simplicity of Dutch that there are some words that, based on context, tacking on a preposition or combining two words together, adopt a new meaning or nuance. There's an earthy, solid and elegant feel to much of the language. Sometimes English feels like porcelain on the tongue, like you have to be gentle with the words or they will break. Here's a fine example of what I mean.
Suggest or propose. Other than direct translations for those, in phrase, it would be used where “I think that...” (Ik stel voor dat…), is used in English. It has a more rooted feel than “suggest”, but not as hoity-toity as “propose.” When I say it, it’s like picking up a hammer to fix something, like working with your hands.

Plus it is a sterling example of prepositions modifying verbs.³ It’s a nice concept, no need for fancy words. Although, on closer inspection, this is identical to pro-pose. Huh… I never noticed that before.

So there is the end of the latest section... Stay tuned for the final 4 things about Dutch that I find most remarkable!

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¹Let's face it, the world is a curious, sublimely intricate, but simple place, and you are here to hear me give my take on it.

² I keep slipping, or should I say shlipping

³A characteristic of Germanic languages, whereby a preposition (A) modifies the meaning of the verb (B). If it is separable it is placed at the end of the sentence so AB in a normal sentence becomes: subject B object A. But other times it is not separable such as with ver- and ont-, then there are various exceptions for the other prepositions, which make sense, because there are some things too important to wait until the end of sentence to have the fun meaning of. Am I right?

It is an efficient piece of linguistic trickery that makes use of fewer verbs. And for ~50% of the time, there is a pattern/sense to the effect that a preposition has on different verbs.ⁱ

^----

ⁱMy Dutch teacher generally has a very long think before ever saying that there is a rule for anything in Dutch. In all our classes together, she has only given the nod to one of my queries.^a The main rule appears to be that at least 25% of the time there are exceptions to a rule. Quite often she discourages me from looking for patterns and rules.

***

^aIt was about the distinction in application between behandelen and aankunnen. The first literally means to handle, but it can also be used figuratively, when you talk about how you treat people or how you handle something in a figurative sense. The second means to cope or manage something. And the line in the sand is that the first is only applied in the figurative sense to things that you can physically touch with your hands, whereas aankunnen is for abstractions that you cannot touch, e.g. a situation, a challenge, etc. Naturally, I am open to correction from this, since I am not a native speaker, and because our classes are always in Dutch, it is possible I have mis-interpreted my teacher's explanation.

Twaalf woorden (twelve words) deel een

One for every month

As one can gather from previous posts (scares, a year in numbers), I have a penchant for listing and evaluating things. So, to commemorate my first year as an expat, I sat down and had a think about the words and structures in Dutch that I think are fantastic. I'll do my best to expound on my reasons.

1.    Morgen

A lovely word. Before I could ever say anything else in Dutch, I could say that at the beginning and end of my day.

In Dutch, it means morning and tomorrow; typically preceded by goede (good) or tot (‘til). Here are the things it has going for it…

In Dutch:

·    The rs tend to be rolling ones, produced by the tongue vibrating against the roof of the mouth.

·       In Dutch, the g is a guttural/soft; like coughing up a furball

·    The e at the end is known as a duffe e, so it's a sharp and short exhalation, like the vowel in "bet."

And

·       You say it multiple times during the day.

So, three key parts of Dutch pronunciation regularly used; Mana from Heaven!

2.   Foefelen

It's a Flemish word, that is used commonly in relation to the Belgian pastime of tax avoidance. It means to fudge; to do something using shortcuts; cutting corners; to not follow official guidelines, or standard practises; taking the change on a split bill.
I like this for two reasons: It is one of the first words I learnt from my friends at work. We use it when teasing each other. And I think it has wonderful succinctness and onomatopoeia. ¹

3.   Er

Here we have a doozy of a thing. It is a Chimera; taking on many of the roles that there, here, that, those & these fulfill in English:

·      Counting something that has been referenced already (Ik heb er drie = "of which I have three")

·       A substitute for a place (Ik ben er = I am here/there [depending on the place in question])

·      In certain cases, a substitute for a noun (Er zijn mensen binnen = "There are people within/inside"; -”Ik ga dansen.” -”Geniet ervan.” = -”I am going dancing” “Enjoy that/get enjoyment from it”)

·  Which smoothly leads me to another of it's quirks. Er joins prepositions to form words like ervan, ervoor, erover, etc. = thereof, for that, thereover, etc. In English, it is a rather archaic thing, usually relegated to legalese ("Where were you the night thereof?”)

·   The final one, the one I had to look up because I don't use it regularly at all, is er in passive sentences: Er was niks gezegd = "There was nothing said"

It really helped me get into thinking in Dutch. It’s such a marvelous, nuanced, Jack-of-all-trades.

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¹You'll probably have to read the fine print, but by being on my blog, you have implicitly “asked me.” Deal with it.

That's what I said

Over a year ago I moved to Antwerp.

I remember when I was doing the interview, I apologised that I could not speak Dutch. The man that became my boss chuckled and told me that it didn't matter. Nevertheless, my mother was thoughtful enough to arrange some Dutch lessons for me while I was still in Ireland. They went well.⁰ But I didn't apply myself at the time,¹ so all of my off-the-cuff insights and reasoning, didn't become automatic; it was just a puzzle to solve.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I began my actual Dutch lessons back in February. At that point I had been listening to quite a lot of it in work... maybe hearing it is a better word; sounds like a menagerie of unidentified animals sailed past my ears and over my head. Naturally, there were some words that were familiar to me from other languages. But really it was a mystery to me.

One of the main reasons I was excited about coming to Belgium was the wonderful chance it was to learn another language. In many respects it is one of the easiest countries in which to learn the local language, because at the end of the day, if you don't know the right phrase to say, or you don't know what the other is saying, you can simply ask in English. Of course, one would need to have true grit not to stay in English, never dipping a toe into Dutch. Luckily, I am made of grit. :)²

I used every single opportunity to speak the Dutch I had. In the beginning it was just morning greetings, farewells, thanks, etc. I listened, and still listen, as carefully as I could to conversations around me. Being the perfectionist that I am, I was self-conscious of making mistakes... at the beginning it tended to hold my tongue. But I told my self, quite reasonably, if I don't say anything, I never will. So I would stretch what I knew to it's limit. Much like a child, I would literally, or figuratively, point at things and ask,"What's that?"

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Interlude

I quite often resisted the urge to talk in English during lunch breaks. This aversion to using English comes from my Summers of Irish college.

For those not in the know, Irish College, is an institution in Ireland, disguised as a Summer camp – and by institution, I mean:

An established law, practice, or custom : […] Informal a well-established […] custom, or object : he soon became something of a national institution.³

These camps are usually based in Irish speaking enclaves [Gaeltacht(anna)] so that you are immersed in the language. The one I faithfully attended as a teen was Coláiste Laichtín Naofa on Innis Oirr.

In the morning, we had classes in Irish; in the afternoon we played games and/or swam in the sea; and every night we had a Céilí, a traditional Irish dance, where we danced our socks off in crude approximations of various Irish set-dances– I am pretty sure the craic I had in those evenings is why I now enjoy dancing so much.

The mantra was Gaeilge an t-am ar fad [Irish at all times]; One was discouraged from speaking English. Those caught speaking English had to write copious amounts of lines,⁴ and/or were threatened with being sent home. Every afternoon and evening, the names of those caught speaking English were called out –names provided out by the muintir an tí [Family of the house; the family that you stayed with on the island], a helfpul local, or a teacher ag gabháil timpeall an oileáin [Going around the island]. It was never safe to speak English [cue ominous music].

So, off the back of my rather oppressive experience⁵ with immersion in a language; my reluctance to fall back on English is understandable.

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Now, where was I...

I won't pretend that it wasn't hard; my job is quite often mentally intensive, and when I took, and take, moments to chat there was, and can still be, quite an under-tow to work against, to dredge up Dutch. I didn't succeed every time, but I would try and if it didn’t work, I made a mental note to give it a go the next time.

Within the first two months, I began writing as much of my email correspondance in Dutch as I could, and my friends at work were happy to look over it afterwards to give me corrections and suggestions. One of them even included me in his email circulation of jokes in Dutch - from comic strips or just written jokes - a number of which I had read in English.. it made me wonder how many languages the jokes had made it to.

I bought a pocket Dutch-English dictionary. And I rightly, kept it in my pocket, along with a little notebook for words that I deemed useful. For the first 6 months, on my way to work, I grabbed a copy of the Antwerp Metro. I read through it as carefully as I could, all the while my left thumb between dictionary pages. For the first 3 months, I retained very few of the words that I would learn in a day.⁶

I watched Het Eiland, a Flemish TV series like the Office on BBC. I got the most benefit out of this because I could play back sections with the subtitles underneath so that I could reconcile the aural with the written. Similar to De Metro articles, we would prepare exercises based on individual episodes for class.

I think the main reason that the Flemish and the Dutch have such a high standard of English is the fact that they dub virtually none of the English language shows and films that they get. I’ve used this to my advantage as well; when I go to the cinema, my eyes are glued to the subtitles. It is a great way to pick up turns of phrase, because the English equivalent is provided in context and it’s just a question of noting what the subtitles say.

Our monthly meetings gave me a wonderful meter for my progress because they were done exclusively through Dutch - I am the only non-Belgian on the team. By the beginning of the Summer, I had the gist of large chunks of what was being said. I could not have repeated it to you in Dutch of course, but I between body language, tone, and snatched words, many meanings were clear. For the rest of the Summer, it seemed like I wasn't making much progress in understanding, but boy was I making progress in telling someone what I heard! Over time, I have developed the language enough, that I don't have to rely on guess-work and context to understand what people mean.

So, to round things off... 14 or so months after moving here:

·     I speak it comfortably and mostly understand what people say to me

·     I’ve had a couple of dreams in Dutch.

·  On two occasions I have forgotten English words, but remembered the Dutch equivalents. I forgot what azielzoeker and dringend mean [“asylum seeker” and “urgent/pressing”]

·    More and more,  I find myself spontaneously thinking in it.

·    There’s still a long way to go before I would say that I speak it well.

·  I’m reading a fascinating Dutch book called Handboek voor Creatief Denken [… I won’t insult your intelligence by translating that].

AND (drum roll please! Hahaha)

·    Last week I had an interview in Dutch with a journalist as part of a series she is doing about Expats.

It was about what I watch, listen to, read and what kind of technology I use for these things. Initially, she emailed in English asking about an interview. Naturally, I responded in Dutch, telling her that I would prefer to speak in it too.

I’m pleased to say that it went off without a hitch, and I did not have to speak any English. :)

She was impressed with my level of fluency after such a short time in the country. I thanked her and told her that my friends and colleagues at work, and my teacher have helped me a great deal in my linguistic adventure. It has done wonders for my confidence to see the progress I make in the language. 

I strongly encourage you to go learn a new language. :)

The next two blog posts are about the 12 words I have chosen as my favourite Dutch words, one for each month of my first year here.

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⁰My teacher was generally impressed with how quickly I figured out things ["He's so fast; scientists aren't usually good at languages"]

¹It's funny that; back in those days all I had was time; the thesis was done and all I was doing was pottering about at home... telling myself I'd do something constructive.. in just a few more minutes.

²At least by my own estimation... my dedication to martial arts and completing my PhD, should have me scoring high on the metrics.ⁱ

³ As ever, I am grateful to the thorough dicitonary application on my Mac; Apparently it is based on the “New Oxford American Dictionary.”

⁴ The Zen Art of Writing Nothing: Often the same line over and over again (just like in the opening credits to the Simpsons), generally cast away at the end of a session; leaving the writer with nothing tangible to show for their time; just an existential quickening.

⁵ Don’t get me wrong, it is a huge high point in my formative years; my mind teems with fond memories from the time, but the negative reinforcement employed to encourage Irish taints those times somewat. It’s difficult for me to explain… I love speaking Irish, and I do so without reluctance, but I don’t care for the lengths that they went to to enforce the language. In kids less obedient, studious, driven, and more independently minded than me, it generally leads to a rejection of or a reluctance to use the language.

⁶There is a short story that I read  a number of years ago, that Benjamin Buttons this idea. I wish I could find it to link it somehow.. but I don't remember the title, which is appropriate. It is about a man who is so strongly affected by the sense of solitude he experiences on a holiday, that he returns home and decides to unlearn his own language. At the beginning, he had to repeat a work hundreds of times until it lost its meaning. Over time, he got so good at that, that a single utterance of a word would vanish it from his head. I found the end of it rather profound; I shan't spoil it.

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ⁱI'm just a hair over 4