chockoblog of days

08.08.07

school was fine today. nothing new to report, really. the lectures are winding down and this is the mid-point of the last week. tomorrow we have a big party thing at the same place we had the last one (bonjour tristesse) but it will be nice to have a last huzzah as we promise to stay in touch & network & send along photographs. but that's tomorrow. today is today.

the major event of wednesday is that i went to visit C & P at the ICC. the ICC is located way far out of the centre. well not way far out, but not easy walkable distance which means way far out to me. i got sort of lost getting there, not realizing that the tram i was taking wouldn't get me to the transfer point for the bus i needed to hop. i did get there eventually & only half an hour after i told P i'd be there. no worries. P is no bastion of punctuality.

part of the point of visiting P & C at the ICC was to see where they work. the other point was to meet up with P's boss, F - who used to do the big firm thing and now does the prosecuting allegedly bad allegedly guys, allegedly bad guys. & girls. chatting with her was great. definitely got some inside scoop, which is happy. i need to know the inside. & somehow maybe get there too.

the ICC is a really weird looking, quasi-office building. it kind of reminds me of the deposition center in houston. & that's not a good thing. anyway, the cafeteria is apparently price-y & not that great. i had a coffee there from a machine & it was fine. it beat the pants off the peace palace / hague academy coffee. so in a battle royale over caffeination, the ICC takes it. but the peace palace has a super awesomer library (no offence to the very nice library lady at the ICC.)

and. later that day, post-ICC, i was going to meet up with some class-mates. but my phone died so after a brief moment of mourning, i just stayed in and watched bad english tv with dutch subtitles. shows that i've never even heard of. though ugly betty is starting up here in a week or so. super cool. i love that show.

09.08.07

school was fine again. we had the usual complement of lectures & an ICC speaker in the afternoon. i had to mail myself a box of some documents & books that i didn't want to lug around. luckily, the peace palace has a TNT post-office. excellent. i go in there with my stack of stuff to mail. it's staffed by one woman, but that's okay because i'm the only one there. after chatting briefly about my needs, i quickly assess that what looked to be a relatively easy situation was probably going to take 30 minutes minimum. as it turns out, i got out of there in about 37 minutes. the mail lady was a lovely woman originally from the dutch antilles. we had a bit of a communication issue between her broken english & my (what's more broken than broken) extremely insufficient dutch. in the end, my box was as ready as it was going to get for shipping. the post-office did not have any packing tape. so the box is held together with scotch tape. i'm quite certain that the label she gave me back is actually the one that was supposed to go on the box. & i was slightly disconcerted by the fact that she seemed to think that my box would get to NY is 7-10 business days -- not the time itself, but the fact that it takes dutch "business days" -- i joked that i should expect the box in new york by november. at least she laughed once i explained that the dutch workweek looked to me to be tuesdays & alternating thursdays from 3 pm to 4:25 pm, except on bank holidays & birthdays of the royal family, in which cases only tuesdays from 3:30 pm to 3:55 pm. i thought it was funny. she laughed out of politeness.

this is a plea for you to urge whatever deity, principle, spirit, substance, etc. that you believe in to keep an eye out for my box. i would be thrilled if my box could make it to new york before october 1st. keep hope alive. one might wonder why i would continue to send this box given the unlikeliness of it's successful appearance in the destination. good question. not sure why i went ahead with it; guess that's just how i roll.

after the postoffice, i went to "bagels & beans" -- a coffee shoppe in a bookstore (sort of like the barnes & noble of the hague) in the shopping passage-way aptly called "passage". i had a bagel with butter. delicious. i also had a hot chocolate. which was a piece of chocolate on a stick to mix in with a cup of steamed milk. definitely on my top 5 of hot chocolates.

later that night was the beach farewell party. i had a really good time. i spent most of my time talking to my new austrian friend, H. i was practicing my flirting moves on him. & i think it worked. after we closed down the venue for the farewell party (at a rockin' 12:30 am), we moved over to a pub-dance place called "the king & arms" or something like that. it was smoky, loud & sort of annoying. but i stayed there until about 2:30 and then hopped a cab back home, only to wake P up at 3:00 am since i didn't have a key to let myself in. we haven't gotten around to making a copy of the keys. i tried but i couldn't find a place to have a key made.

on the way back, the cab-driver, who was moroccan, asked me if i know who amitabh bachchan is. of course, i said. then he seranded me & D (a woman from brazil who lives very close to my place who shared a cab back with me) with lines from a few bollywood songs.

bollywood is the ultimate form of diplomacy.