Book seen in the library: "Taxation of international performing artistes". Uhh.
There was a party billed as: "Be there from 22h00 at Cafe de Steeg to celebrate the birthday of genius economists Smith en (sic) Keynes". Wth.
The only Dutch food you see in restaurants is pancakes. Hurr hurr.
Sign seen in the History department:
*Picture of a man lifting a glass of beer* (Each line gets progressively smaller)
Drink!
And forget who you are!
I sure don't want to know you!
What's MY name, anyway?
Beer is your friend!
It doesn't really say anything down here.
But thank you for checking!
I like fluffy bunnies...
At a Burger King in the Hague I saw 3 prices for onion rings. That was normal enough, but under them there was small print scribbled. I looked carefully and the small print told the viewer how many rings came in each packet size. Gah!
The cheapest hair salon I've seen so far: "No nonsense kapsalon voor Hem and Haar. Wassen, knippen, blowen va. €11/-"
English is sometimes used in signs, for headlines, keywords, motto or jingles. I suspect it's because the use of English is seen as cool and lends the product an aura of superiority or coolness.
Seeing ducks waddling across the grass while people are sunbathing in the park is very funny.
I saw the kebab man near my place walking from the minimarket with 3 6-can packs of soft drinks. Considering that the kebab van is right beside the supermarket, I wonder that people would mind paying more than twice as much for a can of drink from him when they could get one from either the minimarket or the newspaper/stationery agent across the road.
A slight majority of females here tie their hair. This might seem surprising given the climate until you disentangle the effect of their not having been forced to tie it for 10-12 years.
xxoos crashed for a couple of nights and wanted to eat pizza, so I finally had an excuse to call Domino's (or rather, place an order online)!
Creamy Bacon - Crème fraîche, kaas, dubbel bacon, ham, champgnons, ui en oregano (Sour cream, cheese, double bacon, ham, mushrooms, unions and oregano) xxoos doesn't eat onions and prefers tomato bases but I managed to cajole her into trying this.
It came about 10 minutes late; I made the order at 9:29 but the printout on the box said 9:40. Nonetheless the guy gave me a €1,95 discount since he only just made 10:10pm, so I only paid €10 for a 35cm pizza.
God, it's been years since I had Domino's!
xxoos also showed me what must tie as the most expensive toilet in the world (the tie is held by a toilet near Aachen which I will "feature" when it comes to it):
Urinoirs: €0.60
Toilettes: €1.10
This is in Luxembourg, which is supposed to have the most expensive Big Macs in the world. Unfortunately (xxoos is perverse) they cost the same as in Germany, but even so, they have [one of] the most expensive toilets in the world, so xxoos was pacified.
Quotes:
single levels (similar)
drive'rn (driven)
in core'm gaps (income)
croation of institutions (creation)
trading pot'ners
greater axis to foreign markets (access)
mare cher nissin (mechanism)
two come pens (companies)
trade berries (barriers)
to ablide by certain rules of the game (abide)
There are a few ways you could improve your presentation. Besides your special pronunication of English, your accent which is something different from what we're used to.
[Student: I agree. It's a bit boring.] What is boring? The artivle? The subject?
trade dee'er'spore'ras (diasporas)
verbertim (verbatim)
I forgot to bring a picture of a cola nut... It's chewed by Muslims in West Africa as a stimulant. Not unlike wine. Just kidding.
merchant gao'd (guild)
I will set up an incentive schedule... to incentivise it, to prevent moral hazard, I will not be giving the answer to these questions. To further incentivise you, I will ask one of these questions in the final exam. I will sit here and shout encouragement at you... the official break time is 4, but you can stop earlier.
Now we have some econometrics questions. I'm really bad at it. I asked *** [the other, main teacher] for the answers but she refused to give them to me because of the moral hazard problem. [Student: Your moral hazard problem] I have prepared some answers, but they are likely to be crap.
[On lowering expectations] Pretend that you don't know about econometrics, and people start *makes hand gestures*
Next week there's no tutorial at 3 o'clock. It will be at 11, because I have to be home in time for soccer.
[On the economic explanation for autocorrelation in the Taylor rule] You always have to remind the econometricians that there are people there at the end. Pulling the strings, moving the data.
[On Hayo & Hofmann, 2003, estimating the Taylor rule for the ECB from 1/99-7/02 and comparing it to the Bundesbank 8/90-12/98] 11 September is in it, so can we learn anything from this crap paper? They draw all kinds of crap conclusions from this.