Indian in Holland

A friend of mine had told me his story of getting his Dutch. His story was a long one, perhaps because he was not good at driving cars with proper road signs. Perhaps he has driven more cycles than cars in his life in India (and the same here in Holland) and hence may be on the extreme side. But then, these people have greeting cards that congratulate the person who has passed his/her driving test and has been awarded a license to drive. The person celebrates this long-awaited moment with his friends and family, so its not a mean achievement. The author summarizes the problems very concisely and precisely Just what makes it so difficult? Cost, language barrier, cost, cultural confusion, and cost. The process starts with clearing the theory test. Even though the test is in English, the book having the possible set of 1500 questions is only available in Dutch. Once you clear the test, you need to find a good driving school Ask the price per hour. This should be 32-36 euros, which seems l...

As reported earlier, the plan for cutting subsidies to childcare creches has now been passed by the cabinet. While prices will go up for all income groups, low income families will face an increase of just €5 a month. Households earning over €90,000 face a €65 monthly rise. There is some good news as well A new form of home-based crèche, with fewer rules and a fee of €4 per hour is also being set up. DutchNews.nl - Crèche costs go up to slash overspend Creche costs to rise for all parents

The government is to put €16m into regional bus services to fund a pay rise for drivers and end the ongoing bus strike, junior transport minister Tineke Huizinga announced on Wednesday. Transport unions said bus services would return to normal on Thursday, ending weeks of industrial action. DutchNews.nl - Government finds €16m for bus drivers’ pay

There was no service this morning in my town of Almere. I guess people are going to suffer for a few days at least. The strike means that no buses are operating in most of the country, with the exception of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Dordrecht and parts of Gelderland, Limburg and Friesland, where drivers fall under another pay deal. DutchNews.nl - Indefinite bus strike begins

Bus drivers will strike outside the rush hour on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week in support of their pay claim. Talks on a new pay deal have been deadlocked since April. If no deal is reached this week, the unions plan to go on indefinite strike from June. DutchNews.nl - Bus drivers strike outside rush hour

The Dutch have a concept called 'covered' markets. Basically, these are the 'stalls' people put up to sell their wares in designated areas on specific days of the week. They are not very different from those weekly markets back in India. The difference is that a good number of stall owners bring their wares in big trailer trucks (maybe a couple of them pooling to save money), the markets are clean and they clear up the place before they leave. These markets are good to buy groceries and household items you do not find in the supermarkets (Albert Heijn, C1000, Lidl etc.). For items you regularly find in these stores (some common groceries, breads, eggs etc.) its advisable to purchase them in the supermarkets themselves. I am preparing a list of these weekly markets here. Please help me complete the list as I myself am not aware of all of them. Wednesday - Almere Centrum (not sure where, but I guess the same place as Saturday market) Friday - Somewhere in Almere Buiten, p...

This is what I call penny wise, pound foolish. If the BTW (Value Added Tax in Dutch) on energy saving bulbs is reduced, would it not give more incentive to people to buy them? I see that the price difference between conventional bulbs and energy saving ones is quite remarkable in Holland, especially in large wattage bulbs (like 75 watt and 100 watt equivalence bulbs). If the BTW is reduced (or better, eliminated for a couple of years), it will give people more incentive, as the break even period will be reduced. Lowering the btw tax on energy-saving light bulbs is a possibility but is not yet an option... The minister was commenting on recommendations from her Lighting Taskforce which says traditional light bulbs of 60 watts and above should be phased out by 2011 and energy-saving versions be made much cheaper through lower btw and a scrapping of the import tax. DutchNews.nl - No tax cuts on energy-saving bulbs

If you survive in the Netherlands on Public Transport, then this is your one stop guide for Public Transport Information. 9292ov.nl The one website that will tell you what connections to take when going from place A to place B. You can specify the source and destination in many ways; address, train station, museum, theater, shopping center etc. You tell it the date and time. The time could be time of departure (from the source) or arrival (at your destination). Once the info is given, click geef reisadvies (Give Route Advice). If the info matches its database, it will give the fastest connections. Else it suggests corrections (for typos). Public Transport options include walk, bus, tram, train and ferry. Using the proper options, it can tell you all the stops on your route. It also tells you how much the fare will be (in strippens and train/ferry tickets). The only issue is that the website is all in Dutch. Unless you get familiar with it (and you soon will!), use Google Translate by...

I was just curious. I wanted to look at Divorce statistics of Netherlands. I Googled (yes, I still feel its a good verb) the info and landed at this page It says Divorces (as percentage of marriages) = 38.3 Divorces (as per 1000 population per year) = 2.04 I tried some reverse math and reached at this number 5.38 marriages take place every year for every 1000 population. Does this finding say anything? Is it realistic? Find the flaw in my math, if any.

Did you know that if you are not in possession of your Residence Permit, you cannot leave or (if you did succeed in leaving the country) re-enter The Netherlands, even if your Residence Permit Application has been approved by the IND? There are a few cases where you would not be in possession of your Residence Permit You Residence Permit Application is pending before IND Your Residence Permit has Expired and you have applied for a renewal. This can happen if your job is a contractual job and hence the Residence Permit expires the day your job contract does. Or if you are the dependent and your Residence Permit is expires before your spouse's. You have lost your Residence Permit and have applied for a duplicate to be issued to you. What if you have to leave the country while you are not in possession of your Residence Permit? You need to apply for a Re-Entry Visa. IND's website does not state it , but the unwritten rule for getting a Re-Entry permit is terminal illness or death ...

For those who have recently moved here, or have not yet moved from pre-paid (pay-as-you-go) mobile phones to the post-paid (contract) phones, here is some relevant information. When I moved here, I was told that Lebara and Ortel (also Lyca) are the ones that offer the cheapest call rates to India. At least for the calls you make directly from mobiles, it is true. My friend here had Lebara but I found Ortel better. Each call had a start tariff of 7 cents and then there was a per minute charge. It was 12 cents to landlines, both local as well as in a few select countries (likes the US and UK) but the charges to mobiles were high. Charge to India is 21 cents. Even at that time, these charges seemed too high. And they were. I used to see ads of post-paid connections. They used to offer X minutes and/or Y SMSes per month. I was not sure if they were limited to calls to landlines or not (they include calls anywhere in Netherlands, though special numbers cost more). Also, I was not sure...

Perhaps the most photographed place on Earth, Keukenhof is the place to be when in Europe in the months of March, April or May. Better known as the Tulip Gardens, this treasure of Holland boasts over 7 million Tulip bulbs hand planted each year. More than 40 million visitors till date have viewed the flowers in person and yesterday, I and Sonia incremented the counter by two. I will be working on the photos for a long time, but a video slideshow of the photos is here for you to see. Its hosted on youtube, and hence the quality is degraded. Write to me if you wish to see the better quality video.

Look at the picture above. Its taken from inside a train yesterday. I happened to notice the piece of paper in the dustbin. In Netherlands (or most of Western Europe), hardly anyone would give this piece of paper a second look. The same paper in a country like India might be 'picked' up when no one is looking, and stashed under the mattress , for a few 'private viewings' later. And if you were to be spotted with this paper in, say, Saudi Arabia, you would be going straight to jail, at the least. One world, many rules, even more interpretations. PS: Maybe interpretations is not the appropriate word here.

I've just moved to Amsterdam and its been a couple of days here. This is from my first email to my friends back in India. I'm just settling here. Work has just began here; the dev guy who is to train me has been keeping really busy due to upcoming release and some sessions with the traders. From tomorrow, I will be sitting with the integrator who sits on the trading floor. I have been told that IT people avoid going to the trading floor, because the traders are always after the IT guys for bugs and feature requests. Its like Saurabh Chandna trying to avoid coming to 5th floor if something or the other keeps now and then. Maybe the guy was exaggerating; I guess I'll soon find out. Amsterdam is a nice place. Its expensive; apart from dairy products, potatoes and perhaps wheat, they import almost everything. I just bought tomatoes from Albert Heijn (pronounced Haain, the j being silent or sounding as a y, AH is to supermarkets what Xerox is to photocopy). Costs 1 Eur 35 cents ...