hookers and chinese food

fine fine…heres the obligatory journal post. *grumble* so ive been in amsterdam a week now. the first week was akin to living in some weird dutch version of a real world house…given that christa (who was here prior to me and whose time overlapped with mine) and dano (our resident IT guy) were all here at our office/house too. btw, this place is pretty rockin’…the first two stories are the offices, with a few residential rooms sprinkled about and on the top two floors. it doesnt hurt that we’re in a pretty nice area of amsterdam.

given the larger-than-usual crowd at the house, we went out pretty much every night…the best we could anyway, given it frickin’ rained everyday. we roamed the canals, checked out the village and windmills around the zaanse schans, ate in chinatown (new king…yum), and swung by the red light district too! the hookers were noticeably less skanky than i had imagined! i suppose they looked more like porn stars, but with good health insurance. this week will probably be less action-packed, since christa and dano headed back to our new york office over the weekend. anyhoo, heres some observations ive made while here. in bullet-point…woot!

> as aforementioned, the hookers are noticeably more upscale than the new york breed. hawt!
> life revolves around albert heijn (a supermarket)
> their ready-made dinners are pretty damn good (im eating curry right now).
> im addicted to european fanta again…damnit!
> there are public urinals in the middle of the streets (open btw, no walls). wtf…
> bicyclists are to amsterdam what the taxi drivers are to nyc…dicks.
> hate to bring up this cliched notion…but the beer tastes better here!
> everybody’s been to the “heineken experience” except me.

a couple of pics already posted to my flickr…