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?"

*****

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.

********

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

You should see the other guy

Dear Diary

[Edit: The following was mainly written twofour weeks ago... I ain'tain't changing it now]

The words of the day are ultimate and failure... And careened as in: I wrote careened¹ into a post.²

Today was the first day I used my Velo card. I only wanted to go from my apartment to my bus stop and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those damn kids an unfortunate confluence of events. 

Just before I crossed the tram lines, my pedals lost tension. I froze, thinking I slid on the rails. Then the front tyre did slip into the rail. Naturally, the direction of the rails was contrary to my original course, so over/down I went... Shoulder first into a conveniently placed 5-by-5 soft sturdy wooden post at the edge of the footpath. You know, one of those things that is supposed to protect cars from belligerent pedestrians.

As I carreened into the post, I thought,"only one of us could walk away..."³ My finely sculpted shoulder and its newfound friend, momentum, broke me my first wooden block. And all I got was a 6" red mark along my shoulder.⁴

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¹According to the Dictionary app on my Mac the definition is:

to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction : an electric golf cart careened around the corner. [ORIGIN: influenced by the verb careerⁱ.]

²Lock and load...

³OK.. it was more like:"Shi-!"
⁴The crumple zones featured in smaller cars dissipate oodles of kinetic energy, instead of you getting crumpled. As far as I can figure, I wasn't in danger of breaking anything [Click here for the calculations], but the fact that something broke certainly made things easier on me :)

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ⁱThe verb career is "to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction", not to be confused with career the noun,"an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress."

The European haircut experience

When I was in secondary school (out Wesht), I went to the local barber. He is, in country fashion, a laconic chap that, being the nerd that I was (still am, only nerdier), I didn't have a clue how to talk to. For the 5-10 minutes that I sat in that chair, there was an itchy silence peppered with "how's your mother?," "are you busy these days?," a "lovely/terrible weather we are having...", etc.

When I was in college, I went to... you guessed it, the local barber. The opposite to my previous one. A chatty fellow with that nasal Dublin accent. Generally he spoke to the other barber, or offered me his opinion on the latest news from the Sun or Mirror.¹ So again, it was not particularly relaxing as 10 minutes go.

The last time I was in Ireland, I met up with one of my mates, Neil. While we were chatting, I mentioned my reluctance to get my haircut in Antwerp. I had been putting it off for a while. Partly I didn't feel settled in Antwerp, and partly I wasn't happy with my Dutch. I wanted to at least try to speak it when I went in. He observed:

It doesn't matter what language the barber speaks; he is the one holding the scissors. When they ask you at the end if it is OK, you say,"Yes."

I feel rather silly for deferring it for so long. It was a million times better than getting it done in Ireland.

I got haircare advice (apparently my hair is too dry). He even put clips in my hair so that he could layer the sides! Clips! Sides! It turned out that he had studied Greek literature in College and he was planning to read Joyce's Ulysses. So we chatted about books as he snipped away.

It was thoroughly enjoyable and actually relaxing.

It was like going from being roophied to a candlelight dinner.

Screw you, Barbers of Ireland, you ain't touching this again.²

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¹I don't mean to sound snobby, there are nerdy equivalents thereof that I drawl about ad tedium, that other people would have no interest in hearing about.
²I don't know if you can see it, but I am pointing at my head.

A commuted Dutch lesson

4 months down in Antwerp now.

It is coming along well - cashiers and servers don't automatically respond to me in English now. The entire process is really helped along by being in a native region.

As a language, it is really growing on me, it's very expressive, almost like a pantomime. This exchange below is a perfect example of it. It was like public performance art...

A couple of weeks back, some of my fellow commuters - keen to see me progress, surely - listed useful phrases for me. It was like a role-play that we would have done for our Leaving Cert. languages.

Women A: Mag ik hier zitten?
Women B: Nee.
Women A: ...
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women B: ...
Women A: Mevrouw! Je hebt mij met jouw krant geraakt!
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women A: Ik kan zitten waar ik wil. Ik zal de politie bellen.
Women B: Bel! Bel!
[...]
Man A: Mag ik hier zitten.
Women A: Je mag! Je bent hartelijk welkom.⁰

This woman (Woman A) regularly gets the same bus as me. She's is not a morning person. She storms down the aisle, directly for the seat her mental game of Russian Roulette picks for her. The bus was not full, maybe 20% of the seats were free. Even the seat she picked was one of a quartet (two facing two). She just had to sit facing the direction of travel, even though the woman declined her request and the two seats facing away from travel were free.

After 5 minutes of bickering, sniping and misty-eyed nostalgia at "that time you hit me with your newspaper", things died down. A Stranger gets on the bus and asks to sit in one of other two seats. The entire bus could barely keep it together.

Naturally, despite the blow-up, neither woman moved until it came time for them to get off the bus.

Were this Ireland, I would be convinced that this charade was, well, a charade. However, since I have previously noted the mysterious mechanics of Picking Your Seat On The Bus In Belgium, I'll allow it. I can imagine how Sandra Bullock's character felt about getting on public transport after the whole debacle she went through. Of course, the bus didn't have to move for us for "It" to go off.¹

********

⁰Woman A: May I sit here?
Woman B: No.
Woman A: [The woman sits down]
Woman B: Madam! I said that you cannot sit here.
Woman B: [Hits Woman A on the leg with her rolled up newspaper]ⁱ
Woman A: Madam! You have hit me your newspaper!
Woman B: Madam! I told you that you could not sit here.
Woman A: I can sit wherever I like. I am going to call the police.

Women B: Call away.
[The bus reaches its next stop]
Man A: May I sit here?
Women A: Of course you can! You are more than welcome.
¹Oh no he didn't!

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ⁱClearly an avid follower of Jason Bourne.

Quantum buschanics

Our quantum physics teacher in college, was a gent who made the stuff pretty accessible.¹ I remember he made this nerdy [i.e. I laughed] simile.

We were learning about the particulars of the incestuous mess that is Hund's Rule of Maximum Multiplicity and the Aufbau Principle [and peripherally, the Pauli Exclusion Principle]. In a nut shell, in a given electron shell there are a number of orbitals and 2 electrons ultimately go into each orbital. The energy of the system needs to be a minimum for a given number of electrons in a shell (Aufbau), the energy is lowest when the orbitals are balanced - filled to the same amount, so 1 or 2 electrons (Hund's Rule). So the result is that the electrons fill each orbital first in a shell before doubling up.

He likened it to the way bus seats fill in Dublin: all the seats are filled singly before strangers start sitting side-by-side. It's practically a law of Nature.²

Of course that is not the case in Belgium. Every morning, I see the cosmic commuter ballet unfold. Firstly, the seat filling is quite different. There are some seats that are never filled, regardless of how many people there are, other seats are filled regardless of who is in the adjacent seat. For example we have the face-to-face seats. Here, they are all about facing the direction of motion; they'll preferentially sit side-by-side instead of taking a free opposing seat. To complicate matters further when a seat is vacated someone will usually trade up from their seat to the free one. Much like everything else in Belgium it is a complex dance, and I still don't understand the running order for the best seat - I've seen people going the length of the bus for a change.

Two other things that I have noticed:
Some take their commuter naps seriously; I've seen two bring inflatable neck pillows, and conk out for their trip. One of them even sports a really long lagging-jacket-like coat that she reverses as an ad hoc blanket.

There is a turn off a highway - it takes about 10 seconds to complete. It's fantastic, it's the longest turning circle I've ever been in! Once I figure out when it happens - I am going to eyeball the g's I'm pulling on this bad boy³... when I am starting to doze the shift reminds me of the falling van scene in Inception.

While we are talking about buses and commuting - there was another blooming vakbondsactie last Friday. To add some levity a chap sporting a knitted cap in the Jamaican colours came into the waiting room. He began with a boisterous "Goede morgen, Everybody!" He then spent 15-20 minutes bemoaning the fact that Belgium has been without a government (regering) for 6 months - he's wrong it is actually over 8 months, but he didn't sound like he was interested in accuracy. To add that Belgian flair to it he was soapboxing in a patchwork of English, German, French, Dutch and Italian.

For a finish, all the men except me had decided to brave the frost outside, instead of staying inside with the man of the moment, me and the women. After we, the audience, exchanged a few glances and smirks at his histrionics, our man declared that he had to work, pulled down his cap, put a rolled up cigarette in his mouth, swung open the door and left without so much as a by-your-leave.

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¹He told us about his own difficulties with the subject as a student, and what he found helpful. Unlike our physics teacher in first year who could tell you how many students were in the class and recalled how many were at the last class; told us we shouldn't eat coming into his post-lunch lecture because it would make us sleepy. I couldn't never followed his lectures on Gaussian surfaces, it took a lot of thinking on my own part... I suspect this guy never had any trouble learning new things.
²Obviously the quantum mechanics is practically a law of nature, but I meant, as a figure of speech, that the system for seat-filling is such a thing.
³I can estimate how many degrees off vertical it is with a piece of string, or how far I moved away from the side of the bus - I have an idea of my centre of gravity - the law of the lever on from c.o.g. what ever datum I chose for moving away from the side of the bus - a bit of vector magic... then from Googlemaps I can estimate the radius of the curve - and then the speed of the bus. ⁱ

****

ⁱAlternatively, I could look over the driver's shoulder. :/

It really tied the room together

There it is - a Venn Diagram of part of my world view or more specifically {Things ∉ My World View}...

Four years of Chemical Engineering followed by another four doing a PhD [, which I have successfully defended; I will be graduating at the soonest convenience]²... I wasn't ready for this.

In the week leading up to "Mission In Furnishing," I kept having the exchange between Walter and the Dude go through my head. Well, that and the montage of Edward Norton's nameless character furnishing his apartment in Fight Club.

Thanks a bunch pop-culture.

Linen, towels, beds, shelves, tables and ladders and chairs [oh my].¹ It's a f**kin' mystery to me. The whole week I was thinking through what I needed, and a triage on the order to get them in.

It took three visits to Ikea to get the essentials [plus dealies I simply had to have]. The first time was tough going. Halfway through my Ikean trek, I was done, mentally. It was purgatory. Chairs, followed by bins, followed by shelves, followed by office desks, followed by office chairs, follwed by stools, followed by dining tables, followed by beds, followed by light bulbs... I just wanted it to be over. I strongly advice using the website to decide what to get beforehand and just go straight for the chosen items. Otherwise, you'll feel like this, but without the laugh track.

To cap it off, my poor choice in timing - stepping out of Ikea on a Friday at 1700 - meant that my taxi was "25 minutes away" for about 2 hours. The next two visits went far more smoothly, except for waiting over 30 minutes at the warehouse for oversized items.

So, Ikea, a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't live there.

At the beginning of my furnishing travails, I balked often at the cost of things, particularly in Ikea, since I was expecting "rock bottom" prices. Being the neophyte that I was,³ I had no point of reference for the costs. But when I took the time to think about it: compared to the amount I am prepared to pay for shoes, clothes and PC parts; the cost of having things to sit on, sleep in, eat off, hide under, etc. daily for years is very reasonable.

My favourite discovery has been Hema. It's just a few minutes from my apartment and it's got a sh*tload of housing stuff, almost everything a man about town could want.

Almost.

Up until yesterday I had not been able to find baking trays. What the hell, Antwerp? How hard is it to provide a planar piece of heat-conductive metal for the purpose of baking? There was no end to bread-, tart-tins and cupcake trays, but the most geometrically trivial of baking vessels... I never had this trouble in Ireland. Luckily, I found an Arnotts-like department store that has them, understandably a tad more expensive than Tesco.

Up until now, I wrapped my oven shelves in tinfoil.  My oven is going to take a while to get used to; The fan is weak so the forced convection isn't great, and the baking times are longer than I'm used to.  The first batch of cookies were OK, but a bit harder/crunchier than I'd like. The second batch worked out a lot better. Plus, the Nestlé cocoa powder I got in the supermarket is like a party in my nose where everyone is invited,^3.5 and yields a richer flavoured cookie than the Cadbury's cocoa in Ireland.

There isn't much to report in work. On my first day we had quite a time finding a lab coat that fit me because of my apeish armspan; I now sport the largest labcoat size we could find in the building. Sure, the sleeves go to my wrist, but it's like some kind of monk robe the way it is cinched across in front and goes down to my knees.

Much like Walter White⁴ I will sometimes need to have a full-face mask with a filter for my work with powders. During my safety training, the instructor, in broken English and gesturing with his hands, told me that I have a small face, which may be a problem [for getting a seal on the mask]. It turns out that it was not a problem, but I can't help feeling insulted by being told I have a small face. :-(    :-(

[Edit: it has since been pointed out to me that trays are available in Ikea:
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/10196662
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/00133043

This only serves to annoy me further... Ikeeeeeaaaaaaaa!]

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¹Mick Foley's classic quoteⁱ from when he was the general manager in WWE, no youtube or soundbite of it... but trust me, it happened. Also, the ladder was "poetic license", i.e. "a lie" because I don't need one.

²"I didn't go to evil freakin' Chemical Engineering School for four years to be called Mr McNamara."

³I'm a paleophyte now. Whatever.
^3.5Don't do drugs kids.
⁴Breaking Bad shout out! What! I'm getting a buzz just recalling the season gone by.

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ⁱItself a corruption of "Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!" from Wizard of Oz

Vakbondsactie

I'm going through the process of registering with the Antwerp municipality.

It begins with notifying the police that you are living in the area. They drop in to your place to make sure you live there. If, as in my case, you are in work at the time, they leave a note for you to come to the local police station.

Mired as I am in pop-culture, I found myself thinking of any instance in a film where going into/dealing with continental police ended well... In Kiss of the Dragon and Taken the cops were crooked; in the Bourne films they were patsies/cat's paws.⁰ I can't think of cases where they've come off well.

Needful to say¹, I was carried away with flights of fancy.² What actually happened was a cursory glance at my papers and I was asked to sit in the waiting area until I was brought to have a quick chat with a pleasant middle-aged woman.³

As it happens, on the same day, I had my internet connected. The technician that turned up was, I must admit, good looking and stylishly dressed – sporting a fashionable square-faced, silver-framed wristwatch. Coming from Ireland it was rather incongruous, where technicians generally have jeans or overalls with the company logo. As usual, I was thinking "spy."

It reminds me of the holiday I took in Iceland a couple of years back. Two of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen were selling hot dogs at a tourist trap called the Blue Lagoon. These, these blonde goddesses selling hot dogs... it made no sense. If they were doing this job in a film, there would have been complaints about suspension of disbelief or lack thereof. As usual, Shakespeare and Hamlet got to it a couple of years before hand:

Hamlet: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end [...] is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature [...]⁴

Hamlet was cautioning against hamming⁵ it up, but I think my anecdote illustrates the "ham" line is farther away than we actually think. 

No doubt, everyone is having what amounts to the revelation at the end of The Usual Suspects with cup dropping and all when you pore back through your life and see these people that don't fit. But don't worry, it's normal.

In other news, I feel settled enough to focus on learning Dutch. I have started listening to vocab on the way to and from work. And I have a handy pocket dictionary, which I take out now and again for key words. It was really useful on Friday morning when I arrive to see that my bus wasn't at its stop....   vakbondsactie - or trade union action - means I wait 40 minutes for a bus in the morning and 60 minutes in the evening.

Anyway, I really think I am getting the hang of it...

Gellukig Kerstfeest!

*****

⁰Imagine those poor unsuspecting cops trying to get some vagrant off of a park bench; they were just doing their jobs, and they get their asses kicked.
¹I know that the phrase is needless, but that is an apparent contradiction, since I am writing and I have decided that it needed to be said. It's like that phrase - "it goes without saying." What is really being said is: "I do not trust you to figure this out on your own, so I am going to prelude the information with a lip service to my belief in your competence....  'no offence'ⁱ."

²"Sorry sir, your papers... they are no in order. I just have to make a call, if you will wait in this room." At which point two burley 6 footers in riot gear come in with tonfas/night sticks. But then I clean house, and someone walks by going,"are you a special forces guy or something?" And I am all like "I'm just the crystallization expert."

³One thing that has bothered me about English language films set in Europe is how native languages would be used intermittently for filler and minor developments. but plot-critical information is relayed in English, no matter what nationality the source is. A month living and working in Belgium has made this perfectly reasonable to me because I have yet to meet someone that could not tell me in clear English what I needed to know.

⁴Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 17–24 - granted my editing has ruined the iambic pentameter...

⁵The words are unrelated - hamming comes from the first syllable of amateur. [ORIGIN late 19th cent. : perhaps from the first syllable of amateur ; compare with the slang term hamfatter [inexpert performer.] Sense 2 dates from the early 20th cent. - from my Mac Dictionary]

*****

ⁱWhich happens to be another doozy, for carte blanche insulting. I think the best outrage against these veiled maneuverings is Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) on Alias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qaIvb3bGA^a

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^aMy former "study buddy [one lab removed]", John, pointed out that I forgot about the gold standard in thinly veiled condescending insult: "With all due respect."