View from my apartment
Watching a movie ‘A Man Called Otto’ by Tom Hanks at Prime Video at my new apartment in Amstelveen, I am writing this article.
It is not like...I did select this movie. I was watching ‘The Pod Generation’ and then the next movie has started automatically. Popular SF movies like ‘The Pod Generation’ or ‘Uploaded’ at Amazon visualize some future worlds but I felt that in a way it is not totally fiction and that there are some inspirations on how we would feel when future lives come. For instance, too digitized world creates some complexities for us to live.
Here in the Netherlands and other European countries, compared with Japan, digitalization is advanced, such as governmental registration, train system, bank system and others.
The other day, because Japanese bank or insurance company requires me to send an application for my address change by post, I needed to go to the Post office for sending the registered mail. As you can imagine that no country but Japan does not keep those kind of ancient ways to deal with these issues, I believe.
As I do not drive, I needed to walk all way through to the post office during their office hours and paid 24 euros per each application just only for address change. Waste of money and time.
On the other hands, in digitized country like the Netherlands, there are some unimaginable errors. We can use debit cards when we use public transportation here. However, my bank card frequently does not function well and the check-in/check-out machine read my card as not properly check-out and they automatically charge me for a penalty. At the first time I encountered to the error, I got panicked, as it happened when I got off from the tram. When getting off from a tram, we need to check out by debit card or ticket with the reading machine in the tram and get off. So, if an error occurs when checking out, it has to be solved before getting off. Because of that, there are only several seconds are allowed to fix the problem and it ends up with duplicated check-in/check-out and they charge us penalty fees due to their errors. Can you believe that? It is not only me who experienced but others. A person at my office who experienced several errors told me that totally around 100 euros he lost for this.
So, in other words, there is no perfect world, isn’t it?
Getting back from indulging time in scattered thoughts of mine to talking about my life here at my apartment in Amstelveen, now I am drinking a glass of red wine, bought at the Ecoplaza supermarket, and enjoying cheese, ham and chips, bought at the PLUS, another supermarket on the same street nearby.
Cheese here is, as I expected, with good quality and rather inexpensive, compared with the foreign cheese when I bought in Japan.
My usual foods in the Netherlands are cold cuts, cheese, fruits, chocolates, freshly baked breads and some RTEs from supermarkets or Italian/fishery stores’ delicatessen.
The shops near my apartment are with full of these goodies, which I enjoy most. As well as the views from my apartment.
It has been around 20 days since I moved into this apartment with great views. The headline picture is a real picture that I took from my apartment. Don’t you think it is great?! The best thing happened to me in the Netherlands. I have encountered into several issues, like
I had to wait for the Real Estate Agent for 6.5 hours on the moving day due to his car was broken.
Internet was not working
Heating system was not working
Amazon accounts in the Netherland and Japan got messed up, which made me to call the US and Japan to fix.
and other things happened at work.
Despite all that, sitting in this living room to be surrounded by these picturesque views makes me the most happiest person in the world.
And I start to think that nothing really matters.
I can feel that Everything is OK.
