About one month ago …

“Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep.”
I rolled over quickly to grab my phone and turned the alarm off. I had been lying on the bed awake, waiting for it to go off. My head was pounding like a pile driver, my throat was dry as sandpaper, and my sheets were soaked: I was ill. On top of that the hotel had informed me, the night before, that I had to get out of my room within two days. Great, only fourty-eight hours left, and no outlook on any semi-permanent place to settle.

I had viewed a couple of houses in the preceding week. However, by now I had run out of time, energy and willpower: no more viewings. The night before I decided to simply go with the best option so far: the top floor in a family house. I had sent an e-mail to Sophie, the landlord of that place, the night before. So, I closed the alarm application and opened up my e-mail to see if there was anything new. And: yes, I got a response. Since she was out of town her in-laws would take care of business and hand me the key. Their phone number was included.

Hastily, and only half awake, I dialed the number. It was nine and if I’d manage to get out of my hotel room before eleven, I would not have to pay for yet another night. I had spoken to one of the in-laws before: Jack. He had picked me up with his small red car for the initial viewing.
“Hi, this is Jack”
“Hello, good morning, this is Almer, how are you?”
“Doing fine, thanks for asking.”
“Look,” I paused briefly, “I’ve decided to go for your option.”
“Okay, that’s great to hear, you’ll enjoy the place, I am sure.”
“So, where do we go from here? I mean …”
“Let me put on Laura, she handles the details.”
“Okay, great.”
As my nose was clogged I snorted briefly to remove the blockage.
<rumbling as the phone is passed>
“Hi, this is Laura, so you will be the new tenant, great to hear,” she sounded excited. “Where are you now and when do you have time to move?”
“I am in my hotel. Ideally, I’d be out of here by eleven …”
“Okay, hold on,” she interrupted.
<In the background>
“Honey, he needs to be out of his hotel by eleven. Can we make that?”
“Sure, sure,” Jack was still audible, “I can pick him up in the car.”
“Wait, so, let me put Jack back on so he can arrange to pick you up.”
<rumbling>
“Hi, so do you have a lot of stuff?”
“No, only a bike, a suitcase, …” I pondered. “Oh yes, and a backpack of course.”
“Okay, no problem, that’ll fit in the car I think, perhaps I should bring the bike mount. I can come and pick you up whenever you’re ready,” he assured. “Just give us a call as soon as you are good to go.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll call you in a bit.”
<click>

It was already half past nine. All my stuff was still scattered across the hotel room. I had to be fast: I quickly jumped out of bed, picked up the nearest set of clothes, and put them on. I collected my other pieces of clothing, which were randomly draped over various pieces of furniture, and hastily stuffed them into my suitcase. I went into the bathroom and saw all the stuff that I had neatly laid out there: toothpaste, deodorant, razor, etcetera. Breaking the composition, I put one arm around all of it and shoved it into my toiletry bag. After packing every other thing, and forcing the messy suitcase to close with my knee on it, I started moving my stuff into the hallway. The backpack, the suitcase, and finally: the bike, which I had put in the hotel room next to my bed leaning against the wall. God, I was happy to get out of there: living out of a hotel room is definitely no fun.

I called Jack. He assured me he would be there in five minutes. So, I made my way down to the lobby, moving stuff down in two phases. Checking out was messy due to some confusion over a discount, supposedly that was factored in, but I still felt screwed over for some reason. I went outside with my stuff just as Jack came walking down the driveway.
“Hi, how are you? My car is parked around back”, he pointed. “Let me take your suitcase.”
“Great, thanks.”
“I did not bring the bike mount, I think it’ll fit in the back”, he said as we approached his (second) car. It was white and somewhere in between a huge car and a small van. We managed to fit everything inside it quite easily.

As we stepped in the car Jack’s phone rang impatiently. He picked up.
“Yes? we just got in the car, we’re on our way”, he said wile fastening his seatbelt. “Okay, yes, I’ll ask him.”
Jack turned to me, I suppressed a cough.
“What kind of coffee would you like?”
Apparently the person on the other end of the line was Laura, she was walking over to a coffeehouse to get us something to drink. Great, I thought, finally some people who actually try to make you feel welcome. As we drove from the hotel to the house Jack told me a lot of things about the area. Although he was not originally from here, he’d lived in this neighbourhood for a couple of decades. Nearly all his children took residence in this part of the city within walking distance of each other.
“So, if this is a good neighbourhood, what are the bad ones?”, I inquired.
“Places like Homewood, the Hill District, East Liberty”, he replied. “I’d steer clear of those.”

We arrived. The driveway of the house was steep and narrow.
“I am not going to drive up there, I know Sophie and my son Charley can do it easily, not sure how they manage that.”
He parked the car near the sidewalk instead. We walked up, I parked my bike at the back of the huge house after which we entered through the wooden back door into the dining room. The table was full with stacks of unopened mail. Laura looked, got up from where she sat and walked towards me.
“Hello,” she said while extending her arm.
Laura seemed friendly. After she gave the coffee she got for me, I suggested we’d first take care of business. Honestly: I’d never signed a cheque before. It seemed to me like something out of the eighties.

We went through the living room to the stairwell. The suitcase was very heavy as I’d lumped pretty much everything in it. I carried it up the stairs myself, while Jack carried the backpack.
“You’ll like it here. Anyone who’s ever lived up there loved the place”, he reassured as we walked up the final flight of stairs to the apartment.

Continues at Part II

When you arrive in a new country one of the first things you are confronted with is the local eating habits. This affects the whole spectrum of places where food and drinks can be bought: from restaurants to grocery stores. Hence, it is time to take a brief look at the top characteristics of the American diet.

Portion Size
The size of a meal in the United States is on average two to three times larger compared to what you would get in Europe. Only high-end restaurants and some foreign restaurants are exceptions to this. I haven’t made any concrete calculations, but I am quite sure that the amount of calories in a single average dinner combined with a fountain drink approaches the recommended daily intake of calories. On top of that fountain drinks come with free refills: drinking over half a liter of a soft drink is bad enough by itself, let alone refilling that already oversized cup once or twice.

When I ordered a Cappuccino at Starbucks I was told that “Tall” (354ml) is the smallest option they have. The others are Grande (473ml) and Venti (591ml). Then there’s even the Tentra (916ml) option for some of their drinks, which is larger than the capacity of the human stomach. I am not sure about you, but I have more or less come to expect coffee to come in servings of 200-250ml. In a similar vein: I ordered a medium Cherry Coke at a movie theater, what did I get? Over a liter of cola!

The large portion sizes extend to grocery stores: I’ve seen potato chips in bags about the size of my own torso. By default most packaged drink sizes are larger than in Europe: cans are 355ml (12 fl oz) instead of 330ml, small bottles 590ml (20 fl oz) instead of 500ml, and large bottles are 1890ml (64 fl oz) instead of 1500ml (and sometimes even 2000ml). Notice that the proportional difference gets larger each step we go up: 1.07x for a can, 1.18x for a small bottle, and 1.26x for a large bottle.

From left to right: a tea cup (175ml), a measuring cup (250ml), the movie theater cherry coke (1100ml) and a `normal’ cherry coke bottle (2000ml)

Restaurants and Eating Out
In the Netherlands it is common to eat at a restaurant perhaps once a week. Of course there are exceptions, but most cooking is done at home. In the US it is very common to eat out at least four to five times a week. Service at most restaurants is usually quite quick, and Pittsburgh is filled with quality restaurants. So, the preference for eating out is not surprising. Furthermore, the restaurants are diverse and true to the taste of their home country and region: chefs do not go overboard to cater to the local taste here. That means that Chinese food is really Chinese food, not the watered-down variant we’ve become used to in the Netherlands. The diversity of restaurants is high, which supports the conclusion that the American diet consists of a broad selection of local tastes that originate elsewhere in the world.

Sugar
It has become clear to me: America is on a sugar high. Many foods are somehow sweetened. For example, the bread you can buy in the supermarket looks deceivingly like normal Dutch bread. However, once you actually taste it you will notice that it is really sweet: as if several bags of sugar have been added to the dough. The same goes for many other American foods, especially processed ones, in which sugar is commonly replaced with high-fructose corn syrup which is allegedly less healthy than normal sugar.

Soft drinks are also sugary of course, unless you go for the diet variants. I believe the maximum recommended intake of refined sugar is about 40 gram. In the United States the smallest can of coke you can buy is 355ml which contains 39 grams of sugar. Hence, it may not be surprising that the United States has the highest sugar consumption per capita in the world: about 70 grams per day. Which is nearly one-and-a-half times more than the average Dutch person consumes.

The love for sugar in the United States has historic roots. It is believed that Christopher Columbus brought sugar to the new world. There was a high demand for it, but: harvesting sugar was labour intensive. Since there were not enough European settlers to do all this work people were brought in from elsewhere: slaves.

Tea
Similar to many Dutch people, Americans prefer coffee over tea. Nevertheless, tea is easy to obtain in the US. Many herbal teas are inherently caffeinless, but black teas are usually not. However, in the United States it is very common to see bags with normal black tea alongside bags of `decaffeinated’ black tea. I’ve not seen this before, although it makes sense perhaps as decaffeinated coffee is a global phenomenon.

Fat
While both French and Dutch people may be accustomed to using cheese for its merit of having a strong taste, in the United States it appears to be viewed quite differently. Oddly enough, cheese appears to be a relatively tasteless slice, or sauce, of fat that you add to something to make it `fuller’. Comparable to adding whipped cream to chocolate milk to make it sweeter.

In many American fast food chains the food is literally drenched in fat, as if to mask the inferior taste of the low-quality ingredients. Sadly, America’s own food `trademark’ is taking something nice and then applying the fast food formula to it: burgers, pizza, chicken, you name it. If you want to eat out, the general advice is: skip the American restaurants. So, no McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. Instead go to one of the many excellent foreign restaurants, like: Japanese, Chinese, Indian or Thai.

Generally: Unhealthy is Cheap
Several days ago, as I walked down the aisle of the local super market, I heard someone complaining about the prices of the healthier foods that were available. A shop employee responded: “It’s simple, ma’am, if ya wanna eat healthier ya gotta pay more”. In regular grocery stores the vegetables are often of poor quality and the fruit is expensive. Better quality food can be bought in more expensive supermarkets^[1]. The fact thus remains: eating healthy is costly: a perverse incentive.

It is no wonder that America is getting ever more obese …

Apple and Microsoft are the two household operating system creators known by the majority of consumers. However, they are not the only ones. While Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS are commonly viewed as the two dominant desktop titans, there is a third often overlooked player: Linux.

Linux is not an operating system by itself though, it is only the kernel of an operating system. The kernel of all modern versions of Windows is “Windows NT”, while the one of Mac OS X is “XNU”. I won’t go into too much technical detail, but roughly the kernel is a middleman between the programs that run on your computer and the underlying physical hardware. So, if you open a text document residing on a disk, the text editor would ask the kernel to do this, and in turn the kernel would ask the disk. The details of accessing the disk are hidden from the text editor, which is nice since it doesn’t need to know the myriad of different media that your text document could be stored on: a harddrive, USB stick, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray Disc or network drive.

When the Linux kernel is combined with a set of applications it actually becomes possible to operate the machine it is installed on using those applications, hence it really becomes an operating system. In the Linux world such a combination of the kernel and applications is referred to as a distribution. A distribution commonly includes a set of core applications created by the GNU Project. There are many different distributions, some target a broad audience that want an easy-to-use desktop, like Fedora Core, Ubuntu and SuSE. These usually offer an intuitive graphical user interface like GNOME or KDE. Besides this there are distributions that are specialized to make it easy to, for example, run a media center or a web server.

If you’re still with me, you may be convinced you’ve never ever used Linux, and perhaps you’d even like to try it. However, if you have used an Android telephone or browsed the web than you have most definitely used Linux. Google’s Android actually uses the Linux kernel. That’s right: many smartphones, and tablets, are running Linux nowadays! Additionally, most of Google’s application actually run on Linux even if you access them via your browser. Besides this the majority of web sites use the Apache web server which is also often run on Linux systems.

Since Linux is prolific nowadays, you may wonder: is there some big company behind it? Windows has Microsoft, MacOS is backed by Apple. However, Linux is non-profit and open source. You can find out how that works and what it means here. The foundations of what we know as Linux today were created by Linus Torvalds twenty years ago. However, many people have contributed to it over the years, both volunteers and paid developers. Indeed, large companies, like Intel, IBM and even Microsoft, have contributed code to the Linux kernel. Besides this there are several companies that have become famous for their continuous involvement in Linux: Red Hat, Canonical and Novell. These make money primarily through support and services, targeted primarily at the enterprise.

Is Linux usable as a desktop operating system for your day-to-day activities? This was the big goal a decade ago: to get the Linux desktop, notably GNOME and KDE, to the same level as graphical user interfaces of other operating systems. Whether the developers have succeeded in this depends largely on how you use your desktop in your day-to-day life. The best way to find out is to actually try it. If you are a newcomer to Linux I usually recommend Ubuntu, which you can download here, as its one of the easiest user-friendly distributions around. However, feel free to take a look around to see if there is an other distribution that appeals to you.

Steven Soderbergh is a very prolific director. Interestingly, he recently announced that he has lost interest in the film medium and wants to retire. Soderbergh has directed several gems such as Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven, and was involved in the production of other good quality flicks like Syriana and the rotoscoped adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. However, some of his work is notably harder to follow like Solaris and the critically acclaimed Traffic.

But let’s move on to Contagion: Soderbergh’s most recently released work concerning a global pandemic. The movie opens in an original way by showing a number of infected people in several places in the world. This is followed by a sequence of introductory scenes for the main characters. After this the consequences for the principal cast rapidly become apparent. The first third of the movie is gripping and fast paced, but not in an action-film way as we’ve become used to from Hollywood. Instead Contagion mixes narrative and character build-up with close to documentary-style film. The second third of the movie is more conventionally paced as officials try to figure out a way to develop a remedy for the spreading disease. Unfortunately, the movie loses direction and comes to a grinding halt in the last third of the movie.

Fortunately, the scriptwriters have not tried to `dumb down’ the movie, for example: the medical researchers appear to use real, hard to follow, language. Nor have the creators tried to pump it into a blockbuster: there are no over-the-top gun blazing heroes here. Good! As people begin to realize what situation they are in they choose for themselves leading to rioting and looting, revealing the dark side of the human spirit. This also accurately shows the indirect consequences of societal turmoil: a refreshing take on easily milked subject matter.

The filmmakers chose to follow several characters throughout the pandemic that are essentially disconnected from each other. That can work quite well if their stories are logically intertwined. Unfortunately this is not the case which makes some of the subplots underdeveloped, for example the one involving a blogger and one that involves a WHO representative. On the other hand the main character at the CDC, a role by Laurence Fishburne, and of a family man portrayed by Matt Damon are well structured.

This leaves me with the problematic last third of the film, which is simply paced too slowly. This is not helped by the fact that the viewer does not really have a sense of where the movie is going once the main device that closes the story is undramatically revealed. In this sequence, surprisingly, characters are used that were either unseen or insignificant during the rest of the movie. Finally, the ending itself is somewhat predictable, but satisfactory.

Good and unnerving cinematography, a strong start and some excellent acting save this movie. However, Contagion is certainly not for everyone, and people seeking action or a blockbuster should skip it. Nevertheless, if you are interested in a more realistic spin on what might happen during a global pandemic, this might be for you.

Rating:  

Official Site | IMDB | Wikipedia

Trailer hosted by YouTube, Copyright © 2011 Warner Brothers

Standing in the hallway I looked up through the glass exterior of Carnegie Mellon University’s Gates-Hillman Complex and saw something I didn’t like: rain. A Chinese co-worker came out of his office. I hadn’t seen him here before.
“You’re going home?” I asked suggestively, “perhaps you’d better wait.”
He looked outside and nodded in agreement.
“How long do you think it is going to take?” he asked while frowning.
“Trust me, this won’t be over soon,” I assured him.

Frak, it was nearly a quarter past seven, I wanted to get home. I sat down and starting flipping through a weather application on my phone: the prognosis didn’t make me happy. When the rain seemed to settle down a bit I walked outside: bike helmet in one hand, keys in the other. However, when I briefly stepped out from below the protruding roof to feel the rain, it was really a bit too much. Think: what are my options?

Twenty-two hours earlier I was walking down Forbes from Oakland towards CMU with two colleagues. One of whom said:
“I am going to take the shuttle.”
“Shuttle? How often do they go?” I asked.
“Every three quarters of an hour deep into the night,” he replied, “it’s very convenient”.

Back to the present, back to the rain. Ah, of course: the shuttle. CMU runs shuttle buses that can be used by everyone with a CMU card. These are intended to take people to their homes safely late at night and service a number of surrounding neighbourhoods including Squirrel Hill: my destination. I quickly grabbed my phone and looked up the schedule. Luckily the first shuttle would be leaving half past seven from right in front of the university: great!

I waited near the bus stop. The streets looked rainy and bleak. The shuttle arrived exactly on time. I embarked together with a Chinese girl. We were the only two passengers. The driver, a gray-haired middle-aged American man, informed me he would be able to take me to an intersection close to home. I sat down in a comfortable seat about two rows behind him. The shuttle looked like a white mini version of the traditional American school bus.

“Man, the weather is rainy, is it always like this?” I asked.
“Well sometimes it can rain very violently here,” the driver replied, “and in a few months it will also get really cold.”
“A shame, I prefer sunny weather, what about you?”
“Hehe,” he laughed. “You’re talking to a guy who loves cold,” he said while turning onto Schenly Drive. “I go skiing quite often, I was even an instructor at some point, do you like skiing?”
The bus shook heavily as we drove over a badly scarred road. I recalled the last time I was on skis: as I descended I lost control. My right ski ejected, and flew several meters up in the air, while I landed with a thud on my back. Autch!
“Only did the indoor type, and based on falling a couple of times, I can say that it’s not exactly my thing.”
The Chinese girl chuckled. She commented she had tried it too, without much success.
“Indoor: it’s just not the same. You should really go out on to a real piste,” the driver said.

Like many Americans, the bus driver too was a good storyteller.
“I remember this one time when we were going down a huge mountain at night: it was pitch black. We were with a group, skiing down with torches making turns, you know,” he started.
“At one point,” he continued engrossed, “I lost control and went tumbling down the mountain.”
“Oh dear,” I replied. The Chinese girl, also listening, gripped the seat in front of her tightly and leaned forward.
“So, there was this big fence down the mountain. Like this huge thing,” he briefly let go of the steering wheel and gestured.
“So, did you hit it?” I asked.
“I tumbled down like an unstoppable freight train, but miraculously came to a halt just inches before the fence,” his face, reflected in the front window, looked contorted.
“Wow!” The Chinese girl and me uttered in unison.

We had come to the girl’s stop, she got off and darted into the night. I was the last remaining passenger.
“I always find it surprising when people come back from skiing all tanned,” I said with mixed amazement and envy.
“Yes, you’re closer to the sun there and the white snow reflects all the light, so people tan very easily under those conditions. Hell, they even get sunburn.”
“I am lucky: I never burn,” I replied confidently.
“You can get burned though. I mean: everyone can get sunburn, no matter how dark their skin is.”
“Okay, I’ve never noticed it.”
“You can take a lot more than the average white person though. A lot more.”

It was dark, each street light alternated to illuminate the interior of the bus. The Carnegie Mellon University logo on the side of the vehicle reflected on the windows of the cars passing by: traffic was dense.
“Okay, so there’s this one thing I don’t understand about colour,” the driver continued.
“Tell me,” I replied leaning forward in curiosity.
“So, if you wear something white, it keeps you cool in the sun because it deflects the light, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And if you wear something black, it warms you up, because it absorbs the light.”
“Indeed.”
“So, why is it then that people with a dark skin can tolerate the sunlight so much better than those with white skin, shouldn’t that be the other way around? Doesn’t make any sense, right?” He shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands out.
“That’s a good question,” one with a complicated answer.
“So, these are the kind of things I think about.”
“That’s cool,” I replied with a big grin.

“So what’s your name?”
“Chuck, and yours?”
“Almer.”
“Good to meet you Almer, I’ll be driving this route on most days.”
“Great.”
“This is your stop, I’ll let you out once I cross the intersection.”
A minute later I got up, walked to the front of the bus and jumped out.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem, bye bye.”
He closed the door with the extended handle and drove off into the night.

Problem:
Assume a country where every family wants to have a boy and continues having babies until they actually have one. We consider only one generation. The probability of having a boy or a girl is always the same. After some time has passed, what is the ratio between boys and girls in the country? Try to work it out yourself and then expand the solution below.

“Hello, is this Almer?”, a female voice.
“Yes, who’s this?”
“You mailed me about housing?”
“I mailed a lot of people, what specific housing option is this about?”
…
“Ah, yes, okay go on.”
“So, I have a room with a separate living room, bathroom, and kitchen for eight-hundred dollars.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“I can show it to you, but if you like it you’d have to sign right away.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’d have to sign if you like it.”
“Well, I am quite sorry, I can’t promise that: I’d need time to think about it.”
“Okay, it would only become available on the 1^st, so if you’re still looking for something around that time, please contact me.”
“That’s okay.”
<click>

The same lady calls me back only three or so days later, way before the 1^st.
“I have available, in the same house, a room for nine-hundred dollars.”
“That’s a bit steep.”
“So, what price where you looking for?”
I am thinking: what is this a garage sale or something?
…
“Okay, you can get it for seven-hundred dollars if you pay it all up front.”
“I am not sure if I can do that, but I am willing to come over and have a look,” I say, “but, I am sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name” (… because you didn’t say it yet).
“Oh, uh,” she hesitates, “You may call me Joanne, I am the concierge here.”
“Okay.”
“My son can pick you up, where are you?”
…

We agree to a pick-up location about a block away from the busy street in front of the University, because, for whatever reason, they don’t like to drive on that street. I wait at the corner. Ten minutes after the agreed upon time a gray, big, air-conditioned car pulls up next to me. The driver is a heavily bearded young Jewish chap with a Kippah: not unfriendly, but not very talkative either. He drives me to the place.

The house looks good from the outside. He leads me inside.
“This is it, I’ll go upstairs to fetch my mother.”
I look around, the front section is apparently a living room, about as large as a small office. The place is dusty and looks trashed. The radiators appear like they were placed there when Abraham Lincoln was elected the first time. The carpet is thick and stained. Glass shards litter the windowsill. The adjacent room of similar size is a bedroom with a large, also heavily stained, bed. There is a mini kitchen in the back and a very dirty bathroom as well. The place has a weird scent: this hasn’t been cleaned in a long time.

I hear footsteps: someone is coming down the stairs. An old Jewish lady appears at a wooden door in the back wall of the kitchen. She asks me what I think of the place. I say that I am not sure, and will have to discuss it. The price is way to high for what is being offered, within reason: probably twice over. Perhaps I should have simply said no straight away, as this obviously did not rank high on my places-to-live list. However, I hadn’t found a place just yet, and it’s always good to keep options open when you’re still looking.

There were supposed to be other students living in the house, but I hadn’t seen, or been introduced, to a single one of them. The lady takes a passive stance. She seems very much concerned with just getting someone to rent the place, and very much not concerned with making the interaction pleasant: not a single smile. It’s clear that I have to do the work, so I try to make the best of it. We chitchat as we stand on the front porch, then make our way back to the car. The lady has trouble getting down the stairs since she is carrying a foldable chair. I help her by taking it over, carrying it down, and putting it in the gray family car. They drive me back to the University.

A couple of days later, after several other viewings and making a final choice, I sent an honest mail stating that I’m not interested. The main reason is that it is too expensive compared to everything else I’ve viewed, and not worth half the highest asking price: nine-hundred. I further add that she probably would have more success finding a tenant it if she’d thoroughly clean the place.

I get a response which starts off reasonably:

“Thank you for your feedback. Would you like to give more details about what you mean with properly clean the place?”

Then turns into a rant concerning the entire interaction we had. I read it open-mouthed. Her first point is regarding me explaining to her during the viewing that I am looking at multiple places to compare options:

“… taking your good old time to be snotty and turn off people.”

Uh? Then she continues about a conversation we had about my roots while standing outside on the front porch. Regarding this topic I assume that people do not know exactly where my country of origin is, as in my experience: most people don’t. Apparently, she heard something different.

“And when you mentioned your home country you said something like of course you never heard of it. How patronizing, how disrespectful, how would you expect someone to want you around at any price with that attitude.”

She’s clearly on a roll here:

“You don’t respect people you don’t respect their time in servicing a short term lease with a person behaving with dishonesty and condescension.”

And finally the kicker:

“As you are in graduate school subsidized you have a perceived obligation to review your `notes’ prior to making comments and to express yourself with articulation. Besides representing yourself you represent the sponsors of you and please consider to do it with more grace and honesty.”

I had to turn down a number of other places I viewed as well. However, I never had a single response like this: not by e-mail, not by telephone. People were happy for me that I found something that I liked, some even offered to socialize, and to some others I offered to help them find a tenant by suggesting places where they could put up advertisements.

It never seizes to amaze me how people can respond and treat others: it’s just incredible. By the way: I did not bother to respond to her e-mail, and I forwarded her message to the housing registry here, requesting she’d be removed. Good luck finding tenants in the future …

I stood on a brown front porch, rang the doorbell, and waited for the door to open. Nothing. I decided to simply call the guy I was supposed to meet.
“Hi, this is Almer, I am at your front door.”
“Ah, don’t worry, I’ll be right down.”

A young chap in his early twenties opened the door.
“Hi, I’m Jason, come in,” he extended his hand to shake mine.
I entered, the place looked quite posh.
“Should I take my shoes off?”, I asked.
“No man, the girls may care about that, but I don’t”, he said dismissively.
The front living room was large with a big table and several chairs arranged on a carpet. Several cabins and tables were neatly tucked in various corners. There was a huge stairwell in the middle of the room. However, instead of going up we first walked around it to reveal the back part of the living room. It contained a number of benches, sofas and a flat screen television.
“The mother of one of my roommates is an interior decorator,” Jason added.
That explains it. We passed into the next section of the house.
“So, this is the kitchen,” he spun on his feet.
“Cool.”
“We have a small backyard too, with some herbs.”
I peered through the window. The number of spices down there would make even Jamie Oliver jealous.

He took me down to the basement where there was a large pool table, and finally upstairs to the bedrooms.
“So, this would be your room, it’s actually the largest.”
“So, it’s unfurnished, right?”, I asked.
“Yes, but I could leave some of my stuff here, and we can move a queen size bed in if you’d want that.”
“Great, let me know if you’d like to have anything for that.”
“No problem man, you can have it, we’re all here to help each other.”
Okay, I thought: that was friendly.
“So, I’d be renting it for only a couple of months, that’s not a problem?”
“No man, it’s okay, you can crash here for as long or short as you’d like.”
“Okay, but, so you’re moving out and the two girls would stay, correct?”
“Yes, exactly. I am moving to Bloomfield, since most of my friends live there. This is a fine place though, the girls are relaxed.”
We walked downstairs.

We stood at the table in the front part of the living room. Jason turned to me.
“Unfortunately, the girls couldn’t be here right now, but we can set up an appointment with them if you’d want.”
“Yes, that’d be great, because when you’re living together it’s quite important to have some chemistry,” I advocated.
“Yeah, I feel you man, I’ll contact them so we can set up a time for that.”
“Great, let me know.”
I was about to head out.
“Oh, one thing.”
“Yes?”
“The girls really value tidiness and cleanliness, so I am not sure if you’re like that, but: emphasize it a bit if you can.”
“Sure, sure, thanks for the advice.”

This seemed like a great place. I was quite enthusiastic. The girls would be there the next morning, so I mounted my bike at ten past nine. Unfortunately, the climb towards the house was a bit more intensive than I had anticipated, so I arrived about ten minutes later then I was supposed to: out of breath, sweaty and with a pounding headache. Frak, this was going to leave a bad impression. I checked my phone, there was an SMS from Jason: “Make me proud man”.

Same house, same brown porch. I rang the doorbell. A plump girl with curly brown hair opened this time.
“Hi, I’m Donna.”
“Hey Donna, I’m Almer, sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay.”
I went inside and took off my backpack and helmet.
“You’ve already seen the house, right?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Water would be great,” I understated: the bike journey had dried me up.

We chitchatted in the back part of the living room. Donna seemed friendly, if somewhat distant.
“So, you grew up here in Squirrel Hill?”
“Yes, been living here all my life.”
Someone was stumbling to open the front door. The person came in, out of view, and sprinted up the stairs.
“Kaaaaarrreeen”, Donna called out.
“Yeeeahs”, came down.
“Do you have a minute? Could you come down?”, Donna shouted.
“Yeeeahs, in a bit.”
She came down: a tall thin girl with short black hair. She looked confused.
“Hi, I am Karen,” she peered at me with jittery eyes.
“I am Almer, nice to meet you.”
“So, you’re here for the room, right?” she said in a flat business-like tone.
“Right.”
“So, I know Jason put it up for five-twenty-five, but it really should be six hundred. I mean, I am not sure if you’re okay with that. It’s her house though,” she pointed and looked at Donna, “your choice.”
I didn’t respond to this as I didn’t think we’d reached that stage quite yet.
“Sorry, I am in a hurry,” Karen continued while she fumbled with her shirt.
“One thing: are you gay friendly?”, she asked.
I was prepared for strange questions, like “what Smurf would you be” or “what would you take to an uninhabited island”, but this flabbergasted me. I honestly couldn’t care less about my housemates’s sexual orientation.
“He’s from Holland”, Donna quickly interrupted – apparently she held the belief Dutch people are by definition gay friendly.
Karen left to pick up something in an other room.
“I am sorry,” Donna said, “but her grandmother just passed away.”
“Okay, that’s pretty bad,” I nodded.
Karen was preparing and dressing up for the funeral and therefore in a hurry. Donna had to leave the room, Karen came back to pack her suitcase. She didn’t say a word, neither did I: I didn’t feel like it. Although I understood and sympathized with her situation, she’d been pretty rude and abrasive and somewhat succeeded in alienating me. Why take it out on me anyway?

Donna returned a bit later.
“So, where are you living right now?”
“In a hotel.”
“You’ve been living out of a hotel? Wow, that must be really hard,” she looked compassionate.
“It’s not the most pleasant thing, no,” I replied arms crossed.
“As I understand you’d be here for only a couple of months correct?”
“Yes, until about December.”
“Okay, you’re obviously a great guy, but we’re looking for someone who’d stay a bit longer”, a mixed expression of sorrow and regret appeared on her face. I was not going to get this, but by this point I kind of felt okay with it.

She guided me out of the front door.
“We will call you before the end of the week, is that okay?”
“Sure, please do, I have to get out of my hotel or extend by then, so please let me know.”

They never called.

Note: names and locations have been altered to protect the privacy of the people involved.

The fuzz of you leaving is beginning to die down as the people back home become caught up again in their own lives: you’re here, they’re there. Thus, as is usual after a week or two, feelings of nostalgia set in: Why did I leave home in the first place? What am I really doing here?

The food doesn’t taste as good anymore, the streets start to look gray, rain pours down. The initial novelty and rush is starting to wear off and your emotional circuitry is kicking and screaming to get you back to your old environment including friends, family and roommates. As the Kaiser Chiefs sing: “Oh my god, I can’t believe, I’ve never been this far away from home!”

But, you know what: I think that’s kind of healthy. I’d be concerned if it weren’t this way, since what would that mean? That I’d have few or weak bonds with people back home, which apparently isn’t the case. Good. So, what now? You resort to other things for comfort. While walking through a huge grocery store you grab the things that you know and recognize: suddenly the Bertolli pasta sauce looks really good while it’s admittedly way overpriced both here and overseas. Never mind, you take it and hold the little^[1] glass container as if it was a precious child in need of protection.

What is this? Are this supposed to be fries? Where’s cheese soufflé, the vegetable croquette? I am tired of eating bagels, and: why put a hole in a perfectly decent piece of bread anyway? Help! Where are the Dutch crisp bakes? Where are the milk chocolate sprinkles? Where is the cheese? Aaah, oh wait, finally, yes: I’ve found a piece of Beemster mustard cheese. Way overpriced. In the Netherlands I would not even have looked at it, preferring other brands instead, but now I carry it home with a grip so tight and fascination so strong that it would make Gollum’s obsession with the ring seem normal.

Sometimes it just feels great to be and act really Dutch.