Indian in Holland

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...