5 years ago when I joined T-Hive. I couldn’t even locate the Netherlands on the map. I came to a small town Heeze for the company meeting and returned home with a lot of good memories (driving classic DAF rally). When an opportunity raised to move here - I immediately decide to come without thinking about too much how long I would be living abroad this time. I wanted to know Europe more.
4 years time can get you a university degree. I stayed 3.5 year in Japan, 1.5 year in Singapore. 4 years is more than 10% of the number of years since I was born. I think it’s a sufficient time to learn something serious. 4 year is a long time to be spent abroad.
The first couple of months went very quickly with building furniture, converting the rental apartment into comfortable home. Buying a second hand VW Polo Mark 4 was a great decision. Car brought me freedoms to explore. I enjoyed cycling 7km to the office day-in day-out. When the first winter came, I experienced ‘Koud en nat’ (cold and wet) that Dutch likes to complained about. It was a real deal when I see the first light of the day at 9AM and completely dark at 4PM. 2 months into the first winter around the middle of January, we decided to take a break and return home to escape the darkness. (Cold is less of a problem compared to the dark.)
The second year was eventful with close friends Tum and Ann came to Europe for a long trip. We got to travel on countless trips like never done before (when you can afford the travel with sufficient time & money). We explored Europe to the maximum for every weekend for 3 months. Without them, we would have never been to so many places. We visited Germany (Luneburg, Hamburg, Berlin), Copenhagen, Goteburg, Norway, Iceland, Barcelona, Dolomite, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium. I started to recognize the similarities & differences in languages, cultures, way of life among these European countries / town where we visited. I started to remember maps of those towns and roughly guess the distances between towns, geographical features. I could see housing architecture / food as gradient that slowly changing from one country as oppose to political borders on maps. We drove the Polo to Slovenia and Italy (Bologna) in two occasions to attend PI meetings.
The third and fourth year - half a year on each year we spent in Japan. I was really happy to go back to Japan this time for working. It was like 80% dream come true to work for Toyota Company (I kept 20% because I wanted to design GR86 or 911). I got to experience Toyota principles at first hand - Gemba, Monodukuri, Jidoka. I have a lot of good Japanese mentors - Inagaki, Nakamura. The first trip was really fun. I worked long hours trying to hack the system to work, established a new way of working with Japanese engineers who are very hardworking and motivated to get the system to run. It was the opportunity to really collab with Japanese with didn’t exist when I was a student. Back then I knew too little Japanese and my communication skills was bad. I relearnt the Japanese language, the cultures. I thought I saw enough of Japan when I was a student but no Japan has so much more to offer. These 6+6 months in Japan proved to me that there are more lessons to be learnt from Japan. I also proved to myself that study in Japan was the correct choice that I made.
(Continue on the third and fourth year) We escaped the Dutch winter (1 or 2 months) to Thailand. On the fourth year after we decided to move back to Thailand. I was surprised that my parents wanted to our lives aboard just right before we leave the Netherlands. I was glad to hear that and the timing was so perfect that I quitted the job and took them to see Europe for 3 weeks. It was a treat for me be with the family again who aren’t active travelers.
For 4 years, I have been pondering conundrums about the Dutch. I was interested a bit in the history of this nation - what had they done in the past so that the country is now very developed (at least perceived very developed). Perfect bicycle lanes everywhere. Efficient road network. Why people likes to claim that they are more direct than any other nations? Why they are tall? People are laid back. We get 40 days of paid vacations per year 20-ish by the law, compared to 6 in Thailand. At work, I felt like I wanted to deliver more than what the company expects from me.
When it’s time to wrap up my 4 years in the Netherlands, I came across this book Why the Dutch are different, Ben Coates lying in the living room, loaned from P’Ae — a Thai who married to a Dutch. I decided to pick it up with the hope to get answers to those questions. The author who is British married to a Dutch lady shared his experiences living here. It was entertaining to read similar stories. Reading it at the final moment that I am living here, while my experiences are still vivid, I feel like the voids between ice cubes are filling with water. The gaps, the missing links between stories that I experiences are being filled. Yet many questions remain unanswered. One of the big one was - what can I do to lift up my home country in my capacity?
If I had read it too early, I would have been warned of the future and real life encounter will not be a surprise (got spoiled). If I hadn’t read it at all, it would have been a miss of opportunity to reinforce ‘living in the Netherland experiences’. There was no better time for me to read this book than now. I wasn’t plan for it but I am glad I read it just now.
Five more days to go. I am happy to spend the moment slowly to enjoy this final part of the chapter by storing every important bits for future recollection, despite chores of packing.
PS. This post might not have a lot do with ‘komkommertijd’ = cucumber time = silly season. I just like the sound of it in Dutch which I learnt from Rob our last hike in Kampina
