Being a foreigner in the Netherlands at this time of year is great; not only can I celebrate my own Christmas and winter traditions, I can also join in with the Dutch Sinterklaas festival. My coursemates had, what I think is termed, a Sinterklaasavond last night, from which I received a teapot and a lovely poem written by Sinterklaas and his helper, Zwarte Piet, which is reproduced below (the poem, not the teapot—though I’m sure there is a computer scientist working hard somewhere to develop a hyper-teapot transfer protocol):

“I’ll sing you one, Ho
Green grow the rushes, Ho
What is your one, Ho?
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall be (it) so”

But Tom,
You’re not alone
Though, in Leiden, you’re hardly seen
Dashing off to some conference green
With gay abandonment
Saving the environment
Cars and trains cross the land
So we can all understand
The dreadful warning
On the effects of global warming

But please, Tom, take a little hint,
As for earth you do your stint:
You see:
Hitchhike
Take a bike
Or, of course,
Like me,
Take a horse
But please, leave a carbonless footprint.

It always seems to be the case that I go along without doing much for ages, then everything happens in one week. This weekend I’m in Malmö for a European Greens meeting, then all next week I have exams and a parental visit. Still, I can’t complain, Sweden is lovely, and I’m pretty confident about the exams.

Well I’m not getting anything out of this economics lecture, so I may as well break my blog silence. Since my last post left off with the line, “…tomorrow I’m emigrating”, I have indeed done just that, so here’s a post in a similar grain to my I Live In Manchester! post from 2006. I now live in the beautiful Dutch city of Leiden, with a masters course on European Union studies at the oldest university in the Netherlands to keep me occupied.

The city itself has a little bit of an ‘Oxford’ feeling to it, with the ancient university dominating things, and plenty of old-fashioned bicycles everywhere; the rest of Holland, at least what I’ve seen of it, seems to be rather Dutch, much as one would expect.

The experience of becoming an expat is an interesting one, quite difficult to prepare for. The wonders of the European Union have made things a little easier, what with my right to live, work, and study anywhere in the EU, and all; Dutch bureaucracy seems to be determined to hinder me though. Despite being here for over a month now, I’m not, officially speaking, a student of Universiteit Leiden yet, nor do I have the luxury of a bank account. I have faith that it will all work out though, so eventually I’ll be properly settled; hopefully I’ll still be here when that happens. Thankfully, I think the worst thing I was warned about before moving here has already happened: culture shock. It’s difficult to measure whether it has or hasn’t happened, but I certainly know that I had the feelings of novelty about the Netherlands for a few weeks, followed by an unexplained dislike of the place, and now I’m pleasantly indifferent to it, much as I am when I’m in the UK.

Anyhow, since I started writing this, the professor seems to have been able to draw four complicated economic graphs on the blackboard, and somehow chain them together with baffling dotted lines: am I allowed to fail this course?

I wonder how many people are pressing the “Check for Updates” button in iTunes only to be presented with this notice today. Engadget is reporting that the 3.0 software might be scheduled for release at 18h UK time. I can’t wait! Oh, and I’ll get my exam results later. But naturally my priority is copy-and-paste on my phone.

On the 17th of September 2006, I wrote a post on the first edition of this blog titled “I Live In Manchester!“. For the past three years that has remained true, but as of Sunday it will no longer be so. I finished my last exam on Wednesday morning, so while I’m still a student, I’m liberated of any studious endeavours. It is quite an odd feeling to have no revision, dissertation work, or essays looming over me; of course I would never normally have revision or essays to bother with during summer holidays, but what makes this especially weird is that I won’t be coming back to lectures and seminars at MMU in September. If all goes to plan, it will be in exotic Leiden that I next have a stab at being academic.

I’ve said it before, but it still rings true to me: I won’t miss much about Manchester; my department at MMU, the many charms of Didsbury—especially The Art of Tea and Silver Apples—and the Cornerhouse cinema are probably the things that will be most disappointing to leave behind.

So, time to start packing those books up, giving notice on services, and figuring out how to squeeze the contents of a reasonably spacious flat into my comparatively small bedroom in Edinburgh.

The last fortnight has been just a little bit crazy. I’m now into the exam period, and the last leg of my undergraduate degree, so in just over 25 days I should be free from academia until at least September (when, all things going to plan, I should be starting a masters at Universiteit Leiden). Technically this continuation of studies makes me no more liberated from scholarly endeavours than any other summer holiday for the past three years has done, but the feeling of getting away from all the problems of MMU and letdowns of Manchester (don’t get me wrong, the place has its good points, they just seem outnumbered sometimes) is one I look forward to very much.

Last week I had a very poorly timed trip to Maastricht for the FYEG General Assembly. It was much fun, but I couldn’t get the guilt of not being at home revising for my human rights exam out of my head. As usual, the Netherlands proved itself to be beautiful and almost perfect in every way. I say almost perfect, because the darker side of one of the city parks was revealed on Saturday night, when two FYEGers were subject to a homophobic attack on their walk back to the hostel. The injuries weren’t too severe, though they looked painful. Of all the places for such an attack to happen, I wouldn’t have thought of Maastricht. I guess it shows how much work greens and other tolerant people have left to do.

Just now though, I’m trying to avoid too much politics until I get finals out of the way. It’s a task easier said than done when revising for a green politics exam.

I only have to finish the proofreading and last little bits and pieces, then I will no longer have to worry about the huge beast that has been lurking in the background of my life since September. I’m really looking forward to this being out of the way so I can focus on revising for my finals before throwing myself into the last weeks of the election campaign.

Before I realized just how busy i’d be at this time, I decided to attend the FYEG General Assembly in Maastricht, so I’ll be getting back on the train to Brussel on Wednesday morning for a few days of young green stuff. I’m looking forward to when I’m no longer based in Manchester, as I’ll be able to use the nicer and more convenient Flying Scotsman into Kings Cross, instead of the rubbish Virgin service into the horrible Euston. Anyway, I mainly wrote this to play with Wordpress for iPhone, which I finally got working with a little patching of the functions.php file.

Seven thousand words in eight days is my current target. I’m referring to my dissertation, which if all goes well will be complete by Wednesday, ready for proof-reading on Thursday, binding on Friday and handing in on the following Monday. I’m not sure what it is in my mind which makes me work in a last minute way, but it seems to run in the family, like the love of trains which has entrapped all male Redfords. It usually seems to work out well. I’ve already managed to achieve quite good marks on several essays which were each written and submitted within the same twenty-four hour period. I just have to hope that I can pull off a dissertation in a month. It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds though. I have spent the past two terms researching the thing, so now is mainly just a process of writing up notes and plans in a form which has some semblance of a dissertation.

My decision to participate in the Münster University International Model United Nations (MUIMUN) last week was probably not the wisest one as far as time-management goes, but I’m certainly very glad I did it. I was representing the Russian Federation on the UNDP, so I decided to engage in a little characteristic ego-power building (Russia’s ego, not mine of course) by trying to create a developing world bloc under the wing of Moscow. Surprisingly it worked, and all our demands were included in the resolution we produced, with not one policy compromise from Russia. I’m not entirely sure how realistic the warm relationship between Russia and Venezuela was, but it certainly worked to the advantage of both of us.

Anyway, I now have to focus on getting the dissertation completed before the twentieth, so that I can go off to Maastricht for a young green conference with significantly less stress.

After all, I’ll only have finals to deal with then..