Moelker Math

Cramming, pore over, read, read up on, swot up on, hammer away at, bone up on, burn the midnight oil on, cogitate, apply onself to etc, etc. Plain and simply put; studying. Yay! *waves the little sarcastic sign up*. I have one day left till my first test, thankfully a listening test, French. Pourqoi Francais? Pourqoi tu torture moi??

Besides the obvious anxiety I am feeling for this week I am secretly not very worried. two of the tests will be listening, and another will be a writing exercise where you'll have to write either an argument, an informative texts or a consideration tekst. I have already written all three of them as the subject has been known for a few weeks now. All that I have to do now is memorize the whole damn thing, thrice.

What does worry me, what makes me curl up and weep in a quiet corner of my mind is math and Chemistry. Math feels like doing anal with an eleven inch strap on. It really is like ''THE FORCE OF MAAHHT COMPELLS YOU, BIATCH!". A friend of mine who is in the same math class as me came up with the eleven inch strap on thingie. I Always said to him when we walked to class: ''Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for mental rape''. I had an interesting conversation with another friend of mine who isn't in the advanced math class. We were talking about the difference between regular math and Moelker math. Moelker is the last name of my math teacher. That man can kill a man with his math, not his thumb, but really like masacre you with the exponentiol growth of a function. There is normal math, then there is advanced math, and then there is Moelker math. In our class we Always say that we vermoelkerd our test. If you've vermoelkerd your test you will not have an F or a zero, but your grade will be a negative figure. But anyway my friend and I were comparing the two and we came to the conclusion that regular math is equal to the safety dance and Moelker math is the flight of the bumblebee on the piano, played with your litte toe.
I am worried about Chemistry as well, but that's just learning, as I do understand it when I have actually learned it. Moelker math on the other hand...

This exam week I want to have outstanding grades. Only sufficient or more than sufficient marks. Even for math. Whether it will work? no idea. Will I'll be shitting myself during the test? Most likely, yes. Being realistic here I want to have at least a six for math. It's higher than my average score and it's a sufficient mark. I'll hang that test on my wall if it's a six. 

For now I am just going to sleep as I am tired as fuck. I skyped with a friend of mine till five in the morning, got three hours of sleep, went to a workshop and made the most awesome game in existence, went home, studied till twelve in the evening and just listened to some music and though about some deep shit till now. I am going to make my game available in a few months for people to download for free. It's a really simple concept. But simple can be good. 

Yours faithfully,
Claire Quiem 
 

Dutch High school

The Dutch high schools are not comparable to the ones in America. What I’ve seen in the movies and heard from Americans themselves doesn’t come close to the standard high school here in Holland. Don’t think now that shit doesn’t go down here. It’s just that we don’t have metal detectors at the school’s entrance.

What we do have here, what probably every high school has, hell every school everywhere in the world is the quirky teachers. On my school alone there are some messed up teachers. You know, like the ones where you seriously question whether they bribed themselves into a teaching permit instead of getting it the legal way.

There are also, of course, the perves. We had a priest here at school who taught religion. Yep, he liked them young. I’m not saying that I am prejudice against priest, or that all religion teachers are perves. Just an example. Also, an old friend of mine had lessons from him. He threw his bible in the bin while yelling ‘’Hail the almighty Satan!’’. The first and only time the priest got pissed.

Another kind is the one that can never keep things under control. The teacher where you can just keep on yapping because he won’t stop you anyway. I feel sorry for those teachers. They get crushed. But there are two types of no-control teachers. The ones that just don’t give a crap and the once who can really not do anything about and have sudden nervous breakdowns in front of the class.

There is also the psychotic teacher. You really don’t want to piss off those ones. They always have this cold face of indifference. And when they get mad…Those people are bat shit crazy and should never be angered if one values their life. Period.

The boring teacher…Yawn. Their lessons are just an extra nap hour. It can be their voice, face or the way they talk. They are just plain boring.

The almost last kind of teacher is the passionate one. They LOVE their subject or another specific thing. If they could they would marry it, have children with it and grow old with it. They talk about it like they want to make sweet love to it. And then you have to listen to it. It’s just verbal pornography. If you feel like not doing anything that class just ask that teacher about his beloved fetish. He/she will explain everything about his precious beloved and you can just lean back and enjoy the story.

And the last kind of teacher, the kind of teacher I love the most; the witty teacher. Just brilliant. One of my teachers lives in Amsterdam, a diehard Ajax supporter, but he works in Utrecht. He glorifies Amsterdam every chance he has. One time he was talking about Europe’s hundred most beautiful cities and that Amsterdam was in the top ten or something like that. Also that he couldn’t find Utrecht anywhere on that list.

Someone in the class yelled back ‘’Than why do you come here every day for work?

The class became quiet. All listening to the one who said it.

‘’Why don’t you just find a nice job in your precious Amsterdam?’’ someone else yelled through the silence.

We all looked at our teacher waiting for his response, thinking ‘ha we have you there!’.

He just smiles back at us and said ‘’You know, I like to do development aid’’

*Pin drop silence*

Those teachers are the best.

Yours faithfully,
Claire Quiem 

Bicycles

One of the first, perhaps maybe THE first thing a tourist will notice is the god awful amount of bicycles. They are everywhere. Chained to fences, street lights, bicycle racks and parked against other bicycles, walls, buildings or even just standing on the streets. I have no idea how many bicycles there actually are in Holland but as almost every Dutch person owns at least one bike, and seeing as there are around seventeen billion people currently living in Holland…Well let’s just say we have a lot of bikes.

It’s not like riding a bike in Holland is difficult or unpleasant. It’s perfect here for cycling! No mountains or hills, only flat landscape make cycling a good option. Also because Holland is so very small everything is easily accessible with a bicycle. You usually never have to cycle far to get to school, work or the store. And because of the coldish weather cycling doesn’t get uncomfortable cause of sweating.

There are a lot of bicycle paths here. Cycling in Holland is very safe in comparison to countries like England or France where the cars and busses dominate the road. Especially in England! When in London you can see a select group of people cycle like crazy pigeons through the maze of giant red busses. The warrior cyclists of London. The Dutch are no warrior cyclist. Here we cycle in big lazy groups through the big cities. No rush, just taking it easy. If the British are the fast pigeons you always see flying off just in time, than we, the Dutch are a fat flock of ducks just waggling through traffic like who gives a fuck.

The cyclists are king here. I see it all the time. People on bikes have all the power, you are basically completely immune. The only people more holier than the cyclists are the pedestrians. In Holland we have this thing that the most vulnerable person in an accident holds no blame. Whether this is legally correct as well, I don’t know, but the accepted rule by the non-law upholders goes like this: Pedestrian-cyclist-car driver-anything bigger than a car on the road-train-plane.

So if you are standing in front of a red light as a cyclist just keep on going, the bus that’s coming at you will stop as you are of course a God-send gift from heaven on your bike and everything that’s bigger will have to yield to your almighty power! Except if it’s a pedestrian coming your way, than your fucked.

Most Dutch people start learning how to ride a bike at the age of four or five. We use tiny bicycles with side wheels on them. The moment those little side wheels where allowed to be taken off you would be a true person. It feels like an initiation to childhood. From that moment you don’t have to sit in the kid’s seat on your parent’s bike anymore, you are your own person now!

Yours faithfully,

Claire Quiem