Reanimation
I write the above rather optimistically, because despite the best will in the world, I probably will almost immediately break the promise I made to myself and not keep this blog updated.
So I moved from Brighton in the UK to Nijmegen back in June 2008. I never actually thought that it would be something I’d ever manage to pull off, but I did finally. That should have been something to be pleased with at least. However, as I’ve now realised since moving, life doesn’t really change very much whatever country you are in. There are still the same old mundane things that need to be taken care of and experienced. As for my world view, rather than being broadened it seems to have narrowed and I feel a lot thicker (I blame the internet here actually). I still seem to get bogged down with the same old issues and lack of self-confidence. Not that I suppose having such shaky Dutch helps here either.
I tell myself this sometimes as I wander around the streets of Nijmegen. “Wow! “I’m living in the Netherlands, how exciting is that”? Despite this I still can’t shake myself to the levels of excitement that the situation seems to require. Most of the time I wander around with my music on listening to Pink Section, or The Raincoats or The Shop Assistants, and think to myself: “I’m probably the only person in this whole town who is listening to this at the moment.”
I don’t think that it helps that I actually work in one of the shittiest jobs I’ve ever done at the moment. The Netherlands is a much more slow-paced society than the UK. The shops are shut on Sundays (apart from once a month), and often are on Monday mornings too. People generally work a lot less hours as well. Not in my job though. I work 40 hours a week and get half an hour for lunch. If I still lived in the UK I wouldn’t do anything like this, but as my Dutch is only rather basic I need a job where all the work is in English. Unfortunately there aren’t many of those in the East of the Netherlands to come by. Of course the fact that I work 40 hours a week means when I do get spare time I have to squeeze all the stuff into it that I didn’t get chance to do for the rest of the day. It is also rather detrimental to me learning Dutch, thus keeping me stuck in the same bloody job!
Once of the few things that I do actually enjoy at the moment is cycling to work. Rather sadly it is the high point of my day often. I feel something approaching freedom as I bike to and from work (25 minutes each way). As the cycle paths are so good it’s also safe to listen to music. Of course even when I do go on the roads I keep the music on. It’s unlikely but even if I did manage to end up getting killed under a bus it wouldn’t be so much of a tragedy, not really (I’m being pragmatic here, not expressing a death wish, or giving vent to ‘woe is me feelings’). Simply put, I think that managing to get run over by a bus while listening to Teenage and Jesus or The Jerks is one of the best ways you go. Indeed it’s rather a privileged form of death, and a finer death than 99 percent of people in the history of humanity have ever experienced.
Another Catastrophe 