at the place where i work, there’s a bunker, inside of which lays the facility that controls the gas in the whole netherlands. live. all of it. i mean, it’s possible to close all the gas entries in all the cities and knock down the country with a few clicks and dos-like commands. and still have an impact on neighbouring countries, since holland has a huge reserve of natural gas and is considered the energy roundabout of europe. as in a science fiction movie.

anyway, the bunker is an autonomous underground control room, built separately from the rest of the building, with very limited access and iris scan entrance. the people working there have received training up to 5 years and know they are being watched by the national secret services.

the air seemed to be reaching it through a dozen of anti-everything filters, it felt clean and fresh, slightly artificial, in a private hospital kind of way, but without the smell. the walls had pictures of 20 years ago, when the team still worked on another location or pictures of the process of building the bunker (and let me assure you, buildings construction in a country below sea level isn’t easy - but that’s material for a whole new entry )

beyond the computers, the network maps in the walls and the darts target, the focused look of some people and all the support facilities around the room, there were a couple of things that made me smile.
first, an aquarium someone brought from a mixing station somewhere, when they didn’t know what to do with it there. it was big, colorful and occupied the center of the control room.
then, on one of the walls, there was a real-time video stream from the garden outside. no sound, just image. people chatting, biking, unaware they were being watched. it gave the workers down there a meter, a view of the weather and the light outside. i found the idea so humane, so nice.

as opposed to the offices upstairs, the aura there was calm, focused. i mean, people smiled at me, the stranger being guided through them as they silently watched the screens, made calls and someone delivered some fresh made coffee.

and at that point, i understood i’ll never be one of them. can you imagine the look on her majesty’s face when someone told her the reason why the netherlands was without gas… was because a dispatcher spilled a cup of coffee on a computer? :|

(an insight on the Groningen and Dutch lifestyle, through bikes)

The first thing that hits you as you leave Groningen train station is probably going to be a bike. If the Netherlands is the country of pedal power, then Groningen is the city of cycles par excellence, and the students, making up almost a third of the city’s population, have turned saddles ‘n’ spokes into an art form. To own a brand new bike is horribly passé, and it sticks out like a sore thumb to thieves. A bike must have a bit of character.
Hastily spray painted to protect it from its previous owner. A bit of a clatter to the back wheel, a bit of a wobble to the front one. A flat tire looks good, and so does some large object precariously pinned to the pannier (a girlfriend or boyfriend or family pet). They are either piled up ten deep outside the cafés and bars in the evening or whirring by, dynamo powered lights, catching unwary pedestrians with legally required bells. Others are chained to lampposts picked clean like carcasses of their vital parts: wheels, seats, handlebars and the like. These bipedal locomotive devices are not the trim and sophisticated superfast flying machines on which Day-Glo lycra clad Chris Boardman wannabes race around the English countryside, but rather a more casual unpretentious mode of travel that is wholly representative of the Dutch way of life.

For a start, the Dutch ride bikes with a strange ungainly expertise, like Norman Wisdom walks, a sort of shaky perturbed stutter what won’t fall over. An imminent collision is always avoided by a seemingly unintentional lurch to the left or right.

These bikes are robust and strong constructions and can be bought on any street corner. They usually have no gears or brakes, which makes them simple yet ingenious in design. What is the point of elaborate gears and brakes in a country without any tiring geography? It’s a question of practicality which sits well with the pragmatic sense of humour, for the Dutch find illogical things amusing - a bike with fancy gears but no mudguards is positively hilarious!
Having no gears would also suggest that speed is not a consideration, and this is also true of Dutch life. There is a sense or organised patience to the Netherlander that seems at first infuriating and then relaxing to the visiting Briton. The Groningen cyclist does not sit hunched over braced into the wind, they sit high on their saddle like Kermit the Frog looking as if no effort was being afforded to the activity, watching life as it flies by them a little above walking pace.

This attitude is carried into the education system; it is efficient in its leisureliness. There isn’t that whiff of Victoriana which still hangs in the air of British education. The liberal attitude of the Dutch people is felt throughout the whole system. Lectures are scheduled on the hour but by unwritten agreement, they do not start until a quarter past. During exams, a tea lady trundles through with hot drinks and biscuits. To the Dutch cyclist, racing about is presumed unproductive because you do not enjoy the experience of getting to your destination.

Kerry Hagan (BA (Hons) English Literature, 2001)
(from
here)

dear people of the world,
despite the grin in the barman’s face when he realised we were portuguese and despite the crowd in the pub cheering for england, both g. and i left the place in amsterdam with a smile in the face. what a game, what a bit of history repeated. :)
we came back to celebrate with more equations and tests, as today we both fly to portugal for a statistics exam tomorrow and other exams.
being in amsterdam has a bittersweet taste. i’m halfway home if i go south (to portugal), and i’m halfway home if i go north (to groningen), but being halfway is neither and makes us ask where is the remote control, we want to fast forward the hours…
well, wish us luck! :)

… mas discreta, que o temporal que se abateu e a quantidade de bêbados laranja nas redondezas não estava lá muito convidativa.

não foi um espectáculo bonito de se ver. pelo jogo em si - e bolas, que nervoso miudinho (ainda bem que a joy, a nossa pacifista tailandesa, lá estava para eu agarrar o braço de alguém), mas também pela nossa posição, uns 20cm abaixo da média à nossa volta… o ratio de nós/eles devia rondar os 1/20, no sally’s… mas lá ganhamos.
temos pena :P
e nada paga o sorrisito com que presenteei a malta no trabalho, na segunda de manhã… (não é que estão todos a torcer pela inglaterra? ai…)

(desculpem lá a má qualidade, quando estiver em casa redimensiono a imagem. entretanto cliquem para ver maior. pedro, bigado pela foto. :) )

levi and lulu, dear friends, feet on the sky.
he knows nothing about his future except he wants to fly somewhere and explore some more. she’ll return to shanghai in about a month, to wear her ally-macbeal-professional-outfit once again.
she wore a bikini for the first time the day i took this picture: we managed to convince her to do so, despite her relutance - as it is not morally allowed in china (or most asian countries, i’ve heard).
her big happy smile, sunbathing in the grass: “this is nice.”
indeed.

i’ve been in the netherlands for the past 8 months, and now that my head is in countdown mode towards september, i can’t seem to actually believe it. not just yet. all my life is here (except for family and the bit of my heart that flew overseas), on this cozy room, walls filled with stories, details and memories.
living in the same corridor with all the people that got to be my closest friends. it’s just too good AND it’s true.

featuring ana and her workplace, from the bevrijdingsdag (liberation day) festival, in the city park. warm days, blue skies, green grass and music in the air… feels like summer :D

if you have to pick a time of the year to come around, do it on the 30th april. spring is well settled in, lots of flowers to look at and then boom! queen’s day. it was celebrated last saturday (hence on the 29th, because sunday is not a very good day to party - everybody know that) and was great - lots of people in the streets dressed in orange, concerts in the city’s main square, and the best of all, the free market. imagine all kinds of people selling all kinds of stuff in the streets. from kids to grown-ups, from junk to amazing treasures, food, drinks or just playing music. amazing! why don’t we have such a thing in portugal?!

well, me, joy, heye, nurcan, lulu and levi found a free spot on the sidewalk to lay our wallets in the beggining of the afternoon and we were imediatly flooded by curious looks and interesting comments. the boys stayed in the middle of the street, chatting and subtly diverging people towards us. the girls (from portugal, thailand, china and turkey) smiled and showed the wallets. lulu spent the afternoon trying to say “portemonnaie!” and her cute chinese accent made people laugh and approach us.

we had all kinds of costumers, from little kids (who had probably just finished selling their old toys somewhere else) to grandma’s, couples in love, crafty chicks, even mothers who would come and let all of their 5 kids choose their favourite one. we even had people coming back for more to offer to loved onesn or telling us about which milk they drink everyday, how it was such a nice idea. we made a website (www.pantominas.com) about the project and some general instructions to make wallets and we slipped it into them.

it was perfect - three hours later, only a few wallets were left from the initial 160, and we came back home tired and happy to the bones.

nurcan even got a xmas themed present from the lady selling stuff next to us, just because “we attracted so many costumers”. :D

(this last picture was taken by a dutch guy :| a very tall specimen.)