There are places that I wish I could still visit in my lifetime. Most of these are islands, or places along beach fronts. I am not much of a beach bum, in fact, there is a little loathing in me about seas and other bodies of water. I have friends whose lives were taken away by these bodies of water. But there is a certain aura about beach fronts that give me a natural high. Its the breeze, the changing hues of the horizon, the palm trees, the sound of water splashing and hissing, the sunrise and sunset and the calm, simply uplifts my spirit.

There are many of these spots in the place where I came from in Mindanao. But a grand vacation comes to mind when I’m fancying an island life or a beach escape. An island life without the threat of being kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf. A beach escape in a pristine and not a tourist infested beach.

My day dreaming takes me to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. There I would bask in the sun, walk barefoot on its sandy beaches, climb its mountains and pay a visit to the graves of Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brell. Mexico offers good spots too, and I have read that Cabo San Lucas is one of the best destinations. Being a tourist spot, it offers good Cabo San Lucas accomodations like  Cabo San Lucas Villas or for  Cabo San Lucas Vacation rentals. Thailand also has good beaches and islands if you plan of following Di Caprio’s movie, The Beach. And lastly, but once again, the islands in the South Seas, where the late Marlon Brando hoped to build his paradise.

Call me old fashioned, but perhaps the movie South Pacific, the original one, had made such a great impact on me.

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The advancement of technology and advent of the Internet made people predict for a paperless office. Offices will be spared from the clutter and a mountain pile of papers. People will be exchanging notes, messages and other materials through the Internet or some other hi-tech mobile gadgets. The way paper is used will be drastically changed by computers and the electronic communication. But is this so?

Paper will still be around and will definitely stay for a while. People still need paper even if emails, PDA’s, cellphones and laptops have become widely used. Even the mobile businesspeople who carry their data around in little electronic gadgets, find themselves still needing to print their documents. One cannot send wedding invitations without using paper. Receiving birth announcements from close friends in beautiful paper work gives more warm personal touch than getting it through mass email. Imagine holiday photo cards made in metal, wood, plastic and other material, other than that of paper.

A paperless world will eventually come. In the meantime that paperless story remains a fiction we read in magazines that are still made of paper. Perhaps such pursuit is laudable if it is made in the context of saving trees of our world. But if the motivating vision for a paperless world is just another consumerist stint and for capitalist profit, then we will surely miss the paper, equally as we will miss the trees.

The next time you receive a wedding invitation or baby shower invitations, be truly happy.

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On my previous “Amsterdam on my mind” post, I wrote about our gallivanting adventures on the streets of Amsterdam. There are also other (mis)adventures I had while in Holland. So many to remember, but some are too notable to forget, especially those about getting lost in translation.

There was one instance when my Filipino classmates and I went to a party hosted by our compatriots. In that party I met a crowd representing the widest spectrum of Filipinos in Holland. Aside from a sprinkling of few students, activists and political asylum seekers, most of them were Overseas Workers like the seafarers, shopkeepers, caregivers, nurses, window cleaners and Au Pairs. Oh, yes the Au Pair, how can I forget.

Admittedly it was during that party that I first heard the word Au Pair. And I thought I was alone. To hide my being ignoramus, I didn’t asked what it meant the first time I heard it. My boisterous and noisy Filipino classmate did the discovering for me, and in a rather embarrassing manner. My classmate already tipsy, misheard and mistook the word “Au Pair“ for “offer”. In an honest mistake, he innocently but loudly asked why should Filipinos come to Holland just to be “offered.” To his bewilderment, the group suddenly broke into a guffaw.

After that Party, my once noisy classmate had suddenly become more behaved and silent.

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There is always a first time for everybody. Two of perhaps a million of my first times, happened at the same time in 1998. One was my first time to travel abroad, to the Netherlands, and the other was my first snow. It was in Amsterdam that I first saw, felt and played with snow.

I was a student in a short non-degree studies in Amsterdam in 1998. We stayed in the school’s dormitory during the whole duration of our study. Our school was located at Willemsparkweg, just a few meters away from the Vondelpark and the Hotel Zandbergen. Amsterdam for me then seemed like a very big park. So during class breaks, together with two of my Filipino classmates, we strolled around the city center of Amsterdam by just walking. Being first timers in Amsterdam, every street corner is a new site to behold, making it impossible for us to get tired of walking.

From where the school was located, we walked to and stroll around Leidseplein, Damrak, the Dam, the Royal Palace,etc. A stroll down Vondelpark became a usual destination during short class breaks. Our Dutch classmates called the Vondelpark as Fondle Park, an allusion of course to what pairs usually do in that park any time of the day. We also visited museums and took a boat tour around Amsterdam via its canal network.

The first thing I learned in Amsterdam was never to go to a Coffee Shop if you just wanted to have a real coffee and some food for snacks. But if you want a good trip around A’dam, a-la Cheech and Chong, then a Coffee Shop is your perfect whistle stop. Coffee shops serve ‘ganja’ Yellow Coffee and some good stuff and joints. These Coffee shops are aplenty and you can find them scattered all over Amsterdam, like the Grasshopper, Bulldog, and a lot more. In The Netherlands, soft drugs like cannabis sativa are legal, albeit regulated.

Moving around Amsterdam is quite easy. The Dutch can speak and understand English perfectly well. So if you get lost, you can just ask anyone for instructions. We were always mistaken as Indonesians when we converse with a Dutch on the street. Indonesia was once, and the only Colony of Holland in Asia. That is why next to the Morrocans and Turks, one can find a lot of Indonesians in Holland, like one can find a lot of Vietnamese in Paris.

Assuming you’d ask, Yes, I visited the popular Red Light district of Amsterdam. But it was merely to “kijkend” around. A Dutch friend told me that there is an unwritten law in the alleys of the Red Light district, taking pictures of the women of the place is a no-no, it is considered disrespectful. You might find yourself in trouble if you can’t prevent clicking your cameras. Next time you know, your camera had found a new home under the canals of Amsterdam.

Finding hotels in Amsterdam is not hard as well. You can find all kinds of hotels just within the City center, from cheap hostels to five star hotels. Or you can locate one through the internet. One good finder in the internet is the easytobook.com.

I went back to Amsterdam two more times, after my first time.

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Just when I thought that nothing was free on the Internet and that knowledge always came with a price, I came across this site where you can learn to speak French!

The site provides pronounciation guides, grammar and phraseology, arranged by Topic so that you can specialize in some areas that you think you need improvement on. It even has actual conversational guides that you can use for practice.

The site is predominantly text so pages load quickly, with hardly any waiting for the content to be seen. This is a great site for beginners who may not have the time to go to actual classes.

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