designswarm thoughts

Speaking of ecologies of service, I bought a bike a week and a bit ago. Not an easy task in a city that’s just swarming with them, they’re usually overpriced and demand is high, and so for the few weeks that I have in this lovely city, I didn’t want to invest 200 euros. I went online to a aggravatingly badly designed dutch website and with the help of my friend Laura, bid on a woman’s bike that a woman was selling in the North of Amsterdam. Eventually she agreed to the low low price of 45 euros and I went to meet her. Took a bus at Centraal (to be pronounced as if you had a potato stuck in your mouth with a long hiss for the s and a long drawn a) and 30 minutes later, in a weird look-alike of american-suburbia in Amsterdam- Noord, I waited at the bus stop for Rebecca, the bike owner. Turns out the bike had a flat tire and so, i grumbled a tad but remembered seeing bike pumps at my flat and after having convinced a bus driver to take me back even if it was against the “rules”, I walked my bike home happily.

Flash forward to back home where the bike pumps end up not working as befitting more elegantly a mountain bike rather than my city bike. I remember that there are 2 bike shops by my place and decide to go there to get the tires pumped. These little stores have, however a very north american schedule of 10-6, which also correspond to my work hours. Flash forward a week, I wake up on Saturday morning, decided to deal with this “issue” and get a the tire fixed once and for all, I step out my door, and freeze. Nothing. My precious bike with an already rich history was stolen! As i turned to my local friends here and cry out in outrage, they just shrug their shoulders and go “yeh a week is too long, it’s bound to get cleaned off”… what! There has to be a service solution somewhere in there… a 24h bike store anyone? a dropoff anytime/repair/get it back the next day service? a call this number and we’ll deal with the problem 24h? RFID on each bike to locate it back? If North America has the CAA for example, what’s the equivalent here?

Yes, I’m just bitter and miss my bike… god only knows what happened to my precious Tulipa bike that I left in Milan. Sigh.

Ok now I’m really freaked out… I found someone else I know on a dating site…arghh… the world of design is just too small.

Ok coming back to it, now in Amsterdam, a friend of mine is also using online dating and I tried to get some feedback from her as well. She’s dutch, in her mid 30’s and has been on about 6-7 dates so far, which I personally find really cool, seeing as I haven’t “dated” in about 3 years and have somehow lost the notion of what that means. Her biggest criticism of the site was also to do with the pictures, she said that they never match and are always a disappointing aspect of the date…

I find this a bit confusing, I mean, I’d rather be honest about what i look like online while there is still an element of anonymity, absence of judgment, and so I’m sure that whoever wants to meet me isn’t disappointed when we meet, starting the date on the wrong foot.

But apparently, because we like to kid ourselves into thinking that looks aren’t everything (they’re not of course, but seeing as 80% of our understanding of the world is through our eyes, they’re pretty damn important), we lie and cheat our way into airtime with a person who will ultimately be disappointed at first sight… I guess that’s why they call them blind dates…

So in the world of dating, so far I’ve found this very uselful blog by Gordon Smith about the online dating industry at large. He talks about MatchActivity an online dating service in California (so far, it’s in Beta still) that makes people meet over activities that they post up. Kinda like eBay for people… I want to take a walk in the park…5 people answer, who’s gonna be the chosen one? Bah…not convinced about the approach. Then of course there are sites like Match.com which make me sick, i mean, its like a shopping list of people…

There has to be a web 2.0 of dating… it would be really useful… hmm something to think about over the weekend as i sit in Vondelpark and read my book.

I’m using this blog these days as a sort of dumping ground of all my thoughts on my Amsterdam stay as I am cameraless and will be for a little while more, so I hope my Flickr friends will forgive me and start reading me instead. : )

Amsterdam is a strange city of ambiguous nature. Some of it feels like eternally in transition, the american college students, tourists of every kind, who have traveled the world to admire the Dutch’s libertine lifestyle. The red light district in itself only covers a few blocks of the center of the city and each and every one of it’s street is filled with hypnotized men walking around like they had just landed on another planet and every woman behind a red neon lit window was an object of either worship or fear.

Somehow i never quite managed to have a preconceived idea of the Netherlands. The images that flashed through my mind, had something of the misinformed-CNN-watching-tourist: clogs, windmills, drugs, same-sex marriage, tall blond people riding bicycles…

Most of what I discovered here of course had nothing to do with any of that, except for the tall blondes riding bicycles : ) Yes bicycles rule here, with their own set of rules, and cars like pedestrians feel alien. I went for a boat ride last week which finished quite late and got a “ride” from someone on their bike which i was most grateful for. No one walks except for the tourists…feels like L.A. but with bike traffic. The city is slow and soothing with the speed and emergency of bikes everywhere…an odd mixture.

There’s water here…what? I never knew that i would be relocating in the Venice of the North… canals everywhere and lovely undecorated and simple bridges..no fuss here, very little ornamentation, beautiful full colors on narrow houses that lean slightly forward. A lovely flower market with the latest tulip bulbs (look more like onions) on sale everywhere. I bought a “dutch for beginner’s book” because I just can’t stand not knowing what people are on about and living in someone’s culture without being able to speak to them. It’s a form of disrespect in my opinion… so I will make an effort and learn this very odd-sounding language to the best of my ability for the next month or so…

So far I’ve been to great pancakes at “Pannenkoekenhuis Upstairs”, sushis at Kagetsu, drinks at 11 and coffee at Lattei.

Something interesting just occurred to me as I familiarize myself with the Dutch and Amsterdam (although I did date a dutch man once and have two great friends who are dutch). Here a waiter is actually paid very well, which is not the case at all in North America usually when young people who have these jobs rely heavily on tips and therefore provide what we consider a great service or attitude in consequence.

Here’s it’s like a parallel universe.

Waiters ignore you, accuse you of being subordinate, and that’s apparently accepted. Dutch clients are expected to treat them rudely and expect the best, sometimes returning plates if they don’t like the look of it, waving frantically to get the bill, ie being direct and what a north american might consider rude. Is one feeding the other? Is it the contempt of the client that is creating the “laissez-faire” attitude of the worker? or the other way around. Is it purely cultural? I can’t tell yet, but it makes for a very odd service experience.