Talking about the English - I would like to share with you guys a speech made by an English friend of mine who used to live in Amsterdam up until a couple of months ago, and worked in probably the largest law firm on earth. I know this has nothing to do with Current Events, but I am hoping it is of General Interest <g>
This is the speech he gave in a business dinner in honor of Lawyer's Day or something. I certainly can't believe he said all this in a DINNER (picture the yuck factor) of LAWYER colleagues, the majority of which were Dutch. Anyway, here it is:
Lawyers Day Weekend - Notes for Speech
I was asked to give this presentation on Wednesday of this week by Mark. I hope you all appreciate the great personal sacrifice I have made in cancelling (or, at least, postponing) my regular Friday evening activities which traditionally involve me drinking copiously (no difference there) and wandering around the Walletjes until I run out of money or get really bored. The instructions were along the lines of: "each practise group has to nominate someone to make a five to ten minute speech at the dinner on Friday. You're it for English Banking".
When I enquired as to what I had done and who I had offended to deserve this singular honour I was told that the idea was to make a five to ten minute humorous presentation and he thought I'd be good at this. Quite what perverse thought process led him to reach this conclusion in the light of my well known personal charm, tolerance and sophisticated appreciation of Dutch culture is probably a matter best left to be investigated by someone more qualified in psychiatric medicine than myself. A person more cynical than me might suggest that I was the first person Mark found who was sitting at his desk when he walked down the corridor looking for a victim (although that would certainly not be inconsistent with the way I which it sometimes appears that work is allocated in English banking). Frankly I'd rather he had told me that a new deal had come in which would be closing in three days time and that, if I had any plans to sleep in the next 72 hours I should probably forget them.
This is a round about way of apologising in advance if you find my talk neither funny or interesting. Please don't blame me, I'm only obeying orders. I don't want to do this talk, I'm sure you don't want to listen to it so let's try to get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Once I reconciled myself to the fact that I couldn't dump this responsibility on anyone else after being told to fuck off in no uncertain terms by Gary, Jarrod and Angela (whose help and assistance is appreciated and will be remembered) and decided that with the economy fast disappearing down the toilet it probably would not be a good idea to try and get out of it by resigning, I asked what the talk should be on.
Apparently I have free reign. The advice books on public speaking always give is talk about what you know so obviously my first thoughts for topics were "The socio-economics of the Red Light District: A last bastion of individualism and free market capitalism in a socialist state?" and "Pornography in London and Amsterdam: A comparative analysis". However, some people pointed out that these topics might be seen as controversial, even confrontational, and possibly alienate the female half of my audience. In any event I decided I would prefer to reserve these titles for the doctorate I plan to do on the subject when I'm finally sacked and once I manage to find someone to fund my research.
This left me with no idea what I should talk about. I considered ranting about those aspects of life in the Netherlands which aren't as good as London. It's obvious, unoriginal and potentially really rather tedious (not to mention likely to turn the majority of my audience against me) but against that it is easy to do and frankly life is difficult enough. So here are a few random thoughts of an Englishman on the more irritating aspectsof life in Amsterdam.
The people who work in the McDonalds in Amsterdam who are presumably employed as part of some sort of affirmative action program to assist the severely retarded and who make the lobotomy victims you find in McDonalds in London look like Wittgenstein (I mean exactly how difficult is it to not give someone Coke when they ask for diet Coke, has nobody ever explained to them that, while they may look the same and both taste approximately like malted battery acid they are in fact different drinks? You'd think the fact that they come out of different taps might give them a clue). I have timed staff in the McDonalds on de Munt as taking more than five minutes to gather together the constituent parts of a quarter pounder menu and, occasionally, they disappear to go to toilet, have a smoke or take a short vacation between taking your money and supplying your burger. It irritates me quite unreasonably. Twice since coming over here in January I have had to walk out of McDonalds without the food I'd paid for because if I had had to watch the apparent inability of the server to collect a bag of fries for any longer I'd have leaped over the counter and inserted his face into the deep fat fryer.
Another thing is the dirty, unhygienic looking supermarkets which sell nothing that anyone with any sense of self-preservation (let alone concern about the nutritional value of what they eat) would be willing to consume and which will consign me to a fate of slow starvation once Marks and Spencers closes due to lack of support from the native population. I'm told that Albert Heijn is considered quite upmarket in the Netherlands. I truly fear what the downmarket places must be like.
The paucity of cash machines in the centre of town is also a problem. The few that there are are mostly empty by about 7 p.m. on a Saturday, which, combined with the fact that the banks will not allow you draw amounts of less than NLG 1,000 out over the counter, is a real pain given that the sectors of the Amsterdam economy in which I have the most interest run exclusively on cash.
The way in which people piss and, occasionally, shit in the street is also rather disturbing. I was walking home a few weeks ago at about 7.30 p.m. going past the Albert Heijn at Waterlooplein and a guy, who didn't particularly look like a tramp, junkie or alcoholic, I'd say some sort of manual worker from what he was wearing was urinating against Albert Heijn's front window in full view of everyone. It was still open and pretty busy but no one made any move to stop him, let alone calling the police to arrest him.
I've seen numerous pissoirs where people have taken a dump, which is pretty disgusting and I don't understand the point of those plastic urinals which get dumped all over the city, seemingly at random, every Friday night. While I'm sure they reduce the incidence of people relieving themselves in the street to some extent I've seen Dutchmen happily pissing away against a wall with those portable urinoirs less than 10 metres away and any advantage they do have is nullified to a great extent by the fact that by Sunday morning many of them start to over flow sending great orange torrents of piss cascading down the street. I've sometimes seen them after people have shat in them as well and, frankly, if there is anything more disgusting than that in the world I don't want to know about it.
And on that note everybody please enjoy your main course. |
