My God, it’s hot in this town. The weather has been amazingly good for well over a week now. Hot summer days with no rain whatsoever pass by, one after another, the evenings as humid as the days are sunny. Coming from California, it could be easy to take such weather for granted, but I remind myself every day that this Indian summer will not last. For now, however, we’re enjoying the blue skies and 27° from the shade of the café terraces.
On Wednesday, our friend Bonnie took us to the Makro, which, for the Americans out there, is like the Dutch version of Costco, except that there’s no membership fee: you just need to have a registered company, which you prove by showing your enrolment at the KvK (Kamer van Koophandel or Chamber of Commerce).
In all of my years in Amsterdam, I’d not been to this before, so I was surprised to find that it stocked way more than Costco does. We picked up everything from a beard trimmer to toys for Eloïse, from German pasta and kiwi fruit to a baby’s changing pad.
In the evening, the family made its first trip in a Greenwheels car to Media Markt, down near the Amsterdam ArenA in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost. This part of the city is picking up steam now, with some very large shops in the style of an American mall. Just a few years ago, there was nothing here. Now, it’s a really ugly, but thriving commercial centre for the kind of shop that just can’t fit anywhere within the confines of Amsterdam. Of course, this unfortunately necessitates the use of a car.
Anyway, after much deliberation, we finally bought a new LCD TV to brighten up our empty, dishwater-dull living-room. We settled on a Philips 37PF9830 model.
Once we’d paid for the thing and hauled it down to the underground car-park, we soon realised that we could not fit the TV, two adults, a baby and a pram into the small Greenwheels car, so I had to drive the TV home and come back for the other precious cargo.
Anyway, after much heaving and sweating to get the thing up the narrow stairs in this house, we finally have a decent TV… with Teletext!
The very next morning, I went down to the UPC shop to order digital television for us, only to find that UPC has decided to freeze sales of this product as of 1st September. The saleswoman told me the product would be back in a new form in a few months, possibly with a new decoder and who knows what else. So, for the time being, we’re left looking at a crappy analogue picture blown up to 94cm. Ironically, the image was sharper on a smaller television, but this will be a great television in the long run. One can admire its true sharpness by putting a compact flash card in the back of it and viewing one’s digital photos, which are as crisp as you can imagine.
We’ve been viewing some more houses, too, although we haven’t yet found the right one for us. Hardly surprising, I suppose, since we’ve only been at it for a couple of weeks.