What made you smile today?

That is, if you were asking for help finding a place, I just assumed so! But maybe you just meant, like, what are the good places to live etc?

Basically The Hague is split into two like no other city in Holland - inhabitants of the two halves even call themselves something else (Hagenaars vs Hagenezen). I wrote about that once.. wait... here. Fascinating stuff actually.

So you got about 40% of the city that's really proper, and quite to very prosperous, very bourgeois, very green, and quite boring (where Hagenaars live). And you got about 40% of the city that's got either white working class or immigrants or both, can be varying degrees of gritty, but is always very upfront (where Hagenezen live).

Both parts of the city widen out from their wedge of old inner city neighbourhoods to their share of the suburbs. The Hagenezen part, which I know better, goes roughly from the immigrant-inhabited, vibrant but high-crime Schildersbuurt to the white, no-nonsense but somewhat intolerant outlying neighbourhoods like Bouwlust and Vrederust. The Hagenaars part goes from lively but posh downtown neighbourhoods like that around the Denneweg to bland but expensive flats by Kijkduin and sumptuous villas in the Vogelwijk, Scheveningse Bosjes or Clingendael.

There's like 10% neighbourhoods (no I cant add up to 100) that are in the middle or in between. The kind of neighbourhood where there's many immigrants as well as lots of young independent up-and-comers and more alternative folk. The Hague's got a lot less of that kind of neighbourhood than Amsterdam. There's a few: the Zeeheldenbuurt for example. Or the city centre itself. Maybe the Regentessekwartier and Valkenboskwartier.

Local news guy announced that a long time Chief's player had been indicted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame...

Sitting on this terrace, a lovely courtyard place with a view on a playground and a garden - not an alternative place by any measure, but one where twenty-somethings gather after work, or exchange students and the like.

There's these two guys at the next table though - around 50 years old, I'm guessing, one with greying hair. Austrians, I think, German-speaking. Proper office shirts, no ties, but businessmen or middle management staff I'm guessing.

The young group on the table to their right gets up, paying a big bill, and leaves. They're gone, and the bill floats down on the sand under the table. In one nifty move, the older Austrian guy gets up, swoops up the bill, and presents it to his colleague, who carefully folds it into his wallet. There. One for the reimbursement form. Every euro counts, right? :wink:

(laughing at that)

Also: last night, the drunks outside on the square, at dark thirty in the morning when I was still awake anyway, singing songs from Csinibaba.

(If you click on the link, which would be cool, watch out for the typo: 1992 should be 1962 of course).

Kicsit szomorkás a hangulatom máma
Kicsit belém szállt a boldogtalanság...

And now that I'm listing little things anyway: there's this new hip loungy place round the corner called Baladino or something. You know, with the retro wallpaper and stuff, where they incessantly play these downtempo/electronica background beeps with the slightest hint of bossanova. I dunno, Jazzanova, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Air or Hooverphonic. Obviously going for the arty, up-and-coming and oh-so-selfconsciously ironic crowd, but that's still blissfully small here in Hungary. (The yuppie crowd here tend to be crass and the arty people poor and alternative - there's not much crossfluence yet.)

Anyway, it hasnt really caught fire yet; it's usually pretty quiet, borderline eerily empty. Yesterday, I passed by there on my way to the coffeeshop, and it was all empty ... save from four seventy-year old guys, from the neighbourhood, circled around a table gruffly playing cards.

Smiling at those anecdotes (particularly like the check...)

Sozlet has a friend over and just received (in the mail) a Klutz book called "How to never grow up" or something like that. It's in the "Dangerous Book for Boys" category -- stuff to make, stuff to do, interleaved with interesting facts and jokes. Sozlet brought it over to tell me a joke, but she wasn't sure how it worked. I demonstrated. Playdate friend stood by.

Me: Knock knock.
Sozlet: Who's there?
Me: Interrupting cow.
Sozlet: [pauses, looks confused] Interr...?
Me: [breaking in] MOO!!!
Sozlet: [pauses... then ABSOLUTELY CRACKS UP]
Me: [also cracks up]
Playdate friend: [looks confused]

Interrupting cow got a better laugh than nimh's check.

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
The dying cow.
The dying cow who?

Smiling because my chemo-cousin is feeling way better this week, her white blood cell count is above normal and she likes her custom-made wig.

YES!!!

I'm smiling because I have a sense for the absurd, and because I picked up a notepad on which I had written down the inscription on the Cambridge city hall's balcony. Remember that "the People's Republic of" Cambridge is the alleged capital of American liberalism? You couldn't tell that from the inscription on their city hall. It reads, in its entirety, as follows:


So much for the separation of church and state in the capital of liberal America. Weird. But then again I like weird, so this inscription made me smile.

Ha!

Come to think of it, this reminds me of a gem in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which I found back in May during my visit to Dys and Diane's. The Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied building in the US, currently serves as a museum of New Mexican history. (And maybe other things -- I'm not sure.) So here, straight from the horse's mouth, is New Mexico's official story of how it became part of the United States:


This word, "peacefully", makes me smile every time I read it. You can just see how patriotism and truthfulness must have clashed in the author's mind.

State Motto:
We may be crazy, but we ain't stupid.

I like your state motto, George. It sure beats Washington, DC's: "Taxation Without Representation". (I actually saw that on a license plate.)

How was Miami?

Miami was a hoot.

We decided to go the beach one afternoon and someone jokingly mentioned
a "clothing-optional" beach (called "Haulover Beach"). Well, we actually went
there. I never thought I'd do such a thing. I put my towel down and thought,
"Now or never". I dropped my trunks and headed for the water.

The smell of home cookin' here at the ranch for a change, but now Ima hafta refind my appetite, George...

Sorry 'bout that, Rock.
(There will be no entries in "The Picture Gallery" thread.)