Adventures of Mr.Behi

Drift

I went out this afternoon for a quick grocery shopping and headed for the supermarket a few blocks away. Winter is already here with a thin ice sheet on cars and a crisp frost on grass. It was snowing but it could well be just a windblown snow, already plundered, shattered and drifted away.

Walking past the small gardens in the neighborhood and in the ordinary of all things covered in frost, I was gazing at needle shaped complex of ice crystals branching out of objects or swinging along spider webs. I was looking with a broad smile on my face. Some minutes later, that smile met with the smile of the man playing new year themes on his accordion. His brown hat in front of him as he was pressing the keys with fingers of same shade, resting the accordion on his conspicuously large belly. A few meters away by the door of the supermarket, was the regular girl who sells magazines, very pale and skinny by contrast.

On the way back, As the sound of accordion faded, I reviewed 2008 that ends tonight. It was yet another year with lots of changes and new adventures and here I am again, drifting off for yet another year.

Daring for Herring

Around a month or so before Christmas, I received an e-mail from one of my Dutch colleagues calling for a "Herring Party" on a day after work. With no clue of what he was talking about, I replied with question that what the party was supposed to be about. He replied that it would be about eating herring with friends and that certainly did not make anything more clear for me. Just realising that it was something about fish and Dutch traditions was enough for me to sign up.

The day arrived and I found myself in a room where trays full of small fish were being passed around. It was the first time for me seeing what herring looked like. The fish were beheaded and cleaned with a longitudinal slice passing through them ending to the tail. I anxiously looked at my colleagues picked one each and run it against a covering of raw onion in their plates. Each then picked the fish from the tail, bent their neck backwards and snapped a bite like children taking on cherries.

I should admit that going for the raw fish could easily make as an initial psychological barrier for me but as it seems, it is true that one gets more brave in the crowed.

It did not taste like a totally raw fish. Not that I have any reference to compare but it smelled like as if it was left for a while with a special mixture of herbs (?). By the time I swallowed the second bite on the second fish, I was already popular in the Dutch crowed for bravely endorsing their tradition :) I even took one home for Mrs.Behi and she enjoyed it as I did. I can say one thing is crossed off from the list of Dutch things to do for us :) 

The Gaza Ghetto

These days I am using the freedom of my days off with reading and watching what I have collected in literature, art and history. I have this amazingly detailed BBC documentary series of the second world war that is both horrifying and enlightening. What really stands out is the racial discrimination and outrageous racism applied in occupied territories of Nazi Germany. The mass annihilation of Jews is so infamous. Movies are made on how they were marginalised in Ghettos and sent to labour camps and gas chambers for the "final solution" of the Nazis to get fulfilled.

For a nation rising from the ashes of that war, Israel should have known better and done better than what I see today on TV. Hundreds dead in air strikes in a densely populated area, short in medical supplies thanks to the walls surrounding it. With living memories still existing of living in Ghettos and with Israel weeing and complaining every time about people denying the Holocaust (which by itself is an outrageous inhumane thing to do), one wonders why little is learned from the event.

Hundreds of civilians are already dead and from those who survived, how many more minds you think are ready to be brainwashed to do suicide bombing? You do the math and I hope the blind, veto holding nations can do something and stop this crazy and bloody chain of events. I also wonder why Hamas and Israel ended the cease fire. Was there anything wrong in not killing each other? Maybe someone in Hamas thinks he needs war to find a meaning for its existence or someone in Israel needs to win an election!

Whatever that is, it is just ridiculous for all these people fighting for a strip of land for these many years. The dead sea will absorb all of the souls of this land if they continue sink into the bloodshed. 

The Regulars

I got this cool program on my iphone called "iwakeup" that tries its best to wake us up in the morning with a selection of sounds from nature from which I normally use a calming noise of a forest as a main theme. Getting up is difficult considering the latitude of Holland and the time of year. The sound of the woodpecker from my iphone says it is time but the eyes can not believe the dark of the outside as a true morning.
I know a few people here who are deeply into photography and they were telling me how much they love the scattered light caused by the ever cloudy sky here. Going out is like walking into a big hall with a dimmed florescent lamp. Not bright nor dark, no shadows but something tells you that there must be a sun somewhere.
If I manage to leave on time, I normally meet a bunch of regular people in the station and or along the way when I watch them boarding the bus. There is almost everyday a man cycling very fast just before the bus comes. On a speed bike and with a blue windproof coat and amber cycling glasses, he passes  like wind yet you hear him breathing fast and feel him sweating heavily under the jacket. Maybe he is one of those CEOs who have a shower in their offices!

Apart from some irregulars like the boy de ear piercing and the the guy van red hat, there are others that I may call the regulars like the guy with two newspapers or the girl with the heavy hardback book. After one station, a family of three board the bus. A mother with two boys, one hand pulling one boy and another pushing the stroller in which the other looks at his surroundings ever surprised no matter how similar the bus looks from the day before. The mom has to stamp the ticket so the older boy find his hand free from the mom and runs inside the bus. She pushes the stroller in, puts the foot break on, calls for the older boy and rests her back on the side of the bus. She looks exhausted already.

Sometimes if I am early, there I see another family of three boarding the bus. Again a mom, a boy and a little girl. They speak English and the kids speak loudly all along the trip and I can hear their plans for the day and after school. The girl is spectacled and wears an eye patch on one of her eyes that each day, has a different colour and patter. A blue flower or a pink one. The three of them cramp on the single seat in front of the bus and the talks go on. I get to the office and normally head to a coffee stand in the ground floor. I am becoming a regular and they start preparing the medium latte that will take me through the morning...just another regular day.