Ah Ruben Day 2010

My birthday has always been a special day (although unfortuantely often not for myself). It is the first day of the Star Signs, it is the autumnal or vernal equinox (depending on which hemisphere I happen to be) so it marks the beginning of a new season, on several occasions it has even been 25 hours long due to daylight savings (summer/winter time), and it is even a public holiday in Japan. This year, however, was even more special. It was A-Ruben celebration day.

For those not in the know, Aruba is a country which sounds like a place where Captain Jack Sparrow liked to frequent. It is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and yes, that is a real Kingdom, hence the link to Wikipedia. So, my birtday was also the Aruban Independance day celebrations. Ruben, Aruban... Coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences.

Okay, it is probably a coincidence, but I'll add this to the list of why my birthday is awesome.

Open Application

Life as a graduate is rough, especially in times of depression. Luckily, the Leiden University provided an arbeidsmarktcongres, which ,I think has something to do with strawberries, for the Geesteswetenschappen, which I think has something to do with ghost ships. I asked around, and I found out that it was also a job market where recent graduands and graduands-to-be can inform about which fast-food restaurants they should apply at.

In principle, I am against any type of event which is advertised as a good place to "network" or "interface", because, let's face it, people who interface and network are douche-bags. It is just for people who want to make "talking to people", and "trying to get people to like me" sound important and business-like. But at this phase in my life, washing dishes when I am lucky enough to be given dishes to wash, I had to go to the job market, because if I didn't it would have been good ammunition for that guilty voice in my head.

So I signed up, costing me five Euro. However, I more than earned that 5 Euro back just in terms of pens. Why is it that at these type of events, everybody wants to give you a pen? ("People who have a pen look employable!"). There were also three D-list Dutch celebrities who came to speak to us, which would be like the hairdresser for Cher's stylist giving a speech on how to be successful. Amazingly, I who knows no Dutch celebrities, had seen one of them on TV before. I remembereed her because she was weird.

Let's face it, she wasn't speaking to us to give beauty tips.

They were actually great speakers, although there was no actual useful information, since all three of them had such crazy and incidental career paths that it's not followable. But it was nice to listen to three success stories to help soothe my unemployable miserableness. Thanks! You made me feel a lot better. There was also lunch included, and there was extra left over because there were only about 50 people out of the 5400 targeted students who came, so good feelings all-round.

The afternoon had a few more speakers, one of which was about translation agencies in Holland. Now, I don't want to be mean, because I really appreciated such an excellent opportunity to recieve a big lunch, but I have a bone to pick with the event. Below is the image from the website.
Now, there might not be a lot of career opportunity in Holland for me as a translator because my written Dutch is probably at the level of a 9 year-old, but I think I found a niche: an English ant-fucker. Dutch people are proud to have a high level of English especially compared to other countries, but it is still a 2nd language. They wrote this slogan in English probably to try and be cool, but if they had employed someone like me, they would see that they are, in fact, not cool at all.

First off, "upto"? Really? I sincerely hope that by omitting a space they were trying to make fun of Chinese people's poor English, even as ironic as this might be.

Secondly... This is an incorrect usage of "up to". It is only ever used in common English in a question format, or in vague situations ("I was up to no good"). Let me give you a conversation format of what the above fortune cookie appears to be saying:

A: "What are you up to?"
B: "Not much, just a job with talent"
A: "Oh, you have a job already? Never mind."

Moreover, the job appears to have talent, upstaging the candidate. Burn!

Although the entire day and the speeches were conducted in Dutch, there was a link to a page for "foreign students". Since I used to be an English teacher, I took out my virtual red pen and made some corrections. With just a few changes (per line), this paragraph actually starts to resemble authentic English.

So once the depression is over, if any people need an English ant fucker, I should be able to find some time between doing dishes.

The Hairvolution

Over the last 15 months, I have changed. And then, a few weeks ago, all of that changed, and I went for a change. I got a haircut.

In November 2008 I wrote this passage:
"I have a terminal fear of hairdressers, and ever since an older boy with blond hair in a pony tail at the bus stop used to punch me, I am terrified of blond men with pony tails. I could never become that guy, and I love mirrors too much. I also hate paying money for hairdressers, but I would never allow someone I know to cut my hair. I consider the fee I pay as the right to hate that person who de-faced my hair until it (my hair) grows back."

That was the last haircut I got, and since then, I successfully avoided the salon experince. I figured I would fully immerse myself into the student lifestyle and tried to capture the look of a Dutch hippy carefree student. I wonder if anyone noticed. Then one day, I was approached at the train station by some idealistic young kid who asked me to give monthly donations to his charity so he could go to some poor African country and build a school.

Great. I am not going to sponsor some hippy douchebag to go to Africa to lay a few bricks, and go on a few safaris. If he thinks it is such a great cause, surely he could get a normal job and send his money himself, instead of guilt tripping poor students like me. He argued that a few cups of coffee is all that it costs per month, but I have a caffienne addiction - not the poor African school children. Besides, aid doesn't work. Still, I am not a completely heartless person. In fact, I have a freezer-full of human hearts in my fridge. But I thought, I am not going to give my caffienne allocation to charity, but I will give them something they have to use: my silky golden locks.

I decided to set myself a goal: to donate my hair to charity. For that, it would need to be a minimum of ten inches long. In the metric system that would be equivalent to two middle fingers (America is never going to go metric.) This served me two purposes. Firstly, it gave me a reason to grow out my hair, and secondly, it would give me a reason to cut it. This way, I would overcome my dual fears of blonde men with pony tails, and my barberphobia.

It was an amazing experience having long hair. Here is a bullet-list of events that I never thought I would ever have.

• Non-Japanese people thought I looked like David Beckham. I still think I looked more like Gwyneth Paltrow.
  
• My girl flatmates, and girl neighbours asked ME for a hair elastic! "Ouch" said my dwindling masculinity.
• I would spend more than a few minutes brushing my hair. Seriously, I felt like a hot Hawaiian girl sitting next to a waterfall.
• My sunglasses - which I often used as a more manly versio (but not by much) of a hair clip - became so entagled in my hair that I needed assistance to cut me loose.
  
• I started - shock - tucking my hair behind my ears. It was official. I looked ridiculous.
  

I badly wanted my hair to be long enough, but my hair was growing so slowly! I know there are other ways of finding this out, but for me, this is how I realised that ten inches is really quite long. So, I truly rocked a pony-tail for an extended period of time, mostly against my will. Hey, but at least it was for charity, right? So I didn't look like a complete douchebag.

Everyone I told about my charitable goal had never heard of such a thing, but it does exist. It is called Locks of Love, and makes wigs for children with diseases that cause hair loss. Not even the hairdresser had heard of such a charity. He then had to explain it to his boss (in ... Turkish?), and then he gave me over to another hairdresser and explained it to her (in... Belgsch?). And bam, the pony tails came off.

I was actually about one inch short of the 10 inch goal. So, if they even end up using it, it will be to sell it to help offset the production costs. It doesn't seem like much hair either. It is a little disappointing. It's like the sample you give to the doctor, it never seems like very much.

Below I have made a video compilation, a video montage of the last 15 months. Sorry to everyone who had to witness my pony tail or tucked-behind-the-ear-ness. I promise that I won't change, at least not for a long time.

My Bul is Got

Almost exactly a year ago I was completely lost. I had been accepted and apparently become a student at Leiden University, but I had no idea what classes I would take, what classes I needed to take, or even what classes were available. It took several meetings with different people to figure it all out. It all seemed rather unorganised.

Fast forward to yesterday, standing in the old university building of Leiden, waiting for my graduation ceremony (the "bul"). I had no idea what to expect or what the general ceremony would be like. All I knew beforehand was the address, the time, and that I could bring a "limited amount of people".

It turns out, it was my own private ceremony. I was part of the Graduation Class of Me. Every day that I wake up will be like a reunion! Man, I felt like the total attention-whore. I had invited four people to a party just for me. It was like my own super sweet 16 party, except without a video message from Puff Daddy.

But it all finished, and as all masters graduates at Leiden University do, I got to write my name on the wall in a certain room called the "zweetkamertje". This is a tradition going back four hundred years. So now my name is among lots of famous people that I have never heard of.


And with that surprise, the year of study is all over. I feel like somehow I cheated the system by studying something I actually like, and that I don't feel like I deserve this diploma. But I have already buried it somewhere so they can never take that away from me.