De Javastraat in Oost is een van de leukste, meest authentieke straten van Amsterdam. Ik breng graag de wat minder voor de hand liggende plekken in Amsterdam in beeld. In dit geval is het een tekening met inkt, potlood en waterverf.

I live close to Biljmer Arena, and today it was completely filled with plastic glasses due to the football match. It’s everywhere! Where are yall been educated? Isn’t it possible to just throw them in a garbage bin like civilized people?

If they would have agreed, the cleaners would have had to sign a settlement agreement stating that they had “always been treated well” by Saints & Stars. They would also agree that they can no longer hold each other legally accountable.

^((Translations with Google Translate))

Working up to 17 hours a day, having to sleep with up to 4 people in one bed, in the villa of the owner of Saints&Stars and then being asked to declare that you’ve always been treated well…

I wonder who is attracted to this ‘Modern Slavery Ultra Luxury Gym’?

Lame cryptocoin-bros, cocaine-import-boyz and golddiggers, I’d guess. Change the name to ‘Foul moneybags and non-celebs’ perhaps?

This couple leaving the Gamma has me seriously jealous of their biking skills. I’ll always be blown away by things like this here!

Little rant since I need somewhere/one to yap this to. Lately there has been a lot of US tourists in the Hotel I work at. It has been nothing but a nightmare so far. They keep doing stuff they arent supposed to. Even when we tell them no they do it anyway.

Here are some examples:

-Went into the (closed!) kitchen and helped themselves to coffee, a whole box of cereal and 2L milk, leaving the dishes, including coffee machine dirty for us to clean in the morning

-going into the sauna and turned it on themsleves, even after we said sauna is at noon and it was currently 8 am. (he sat in the dark because the light switch is locked behind a box. it should have been our job to turn it on. He went into the only one whos buttons are not in said box)

-flooding the bathroom so much that the room below suffered water damage, where parts of the ceiling fell off

-stole pockets full of tea bags

… You get the picture. I honestly have expected better for a country whos people are boosting …

So today the sirens started like 5 minutes late where i live which like never happened to me the whole time i’ve lived here and it made me wonder how do i tell if it’s the monthly testing on the first Monday of a month or a real emergency? Do I just get an alert on my phone too or..?

I speak 4 languages and and speaking Dutch almost destroyed my confidence.

I have always been interested in languges and now I am learning Dutch. The thing is I am experiencing a shyness for the first time when it comes to speaking. When I was learning Italian I was just speaking even though I knew I was not speaking it perfectly.

But couple of experiences with Dutch just destroyed my confidence. Mostly because when I pronounce something slightly incorrect people do not understand me at all. I am afraid I can not get past this and get stuck here.

I love Dutch people they are really helpful when I try to speak with them. I also know coming from experience with other languages that I learnt its inevitable to mispronounce things if you are not native. But the problem is my fear of hearing “Hé?” from my Dutch friends again 😔

UPDATE: Thanks for all good ideas and comments to help my motivation. I will try to ignore the “He?” and keep trying to speak Dutch. I also …

This intersection often gets very busy during rush hour and the main road has few gaps to allow bicycles to cross and autos to turn. Therefore both parties can be very aggressive about taking priority, but I could never figure out who had the legal priority here.