Working title for a screed: "A Modest Proposal for the Improvement of the Dutch Language", in which I hit some of the obvious points like the abolishment of grammatical gender and the ui phoneme, all done with such a light touch that even the Dutch will be amused by it.  Better yet, I’ll see if I can get an appointment and enlist Beatrix to push this cause.

Popular Demand.  I'm driven by it.  So much so that I'm now so tranked out on Prozac that it has taken me five days to realize that This Is Not Jet Lag.  It's just the side effects of my meds as I'm no longer on my April drug holiday, an event referred to by the medical profession with its signal lack of humor as an STI (Scheduled Treatment Interruption).

I'm so tranked out and unwilling to give offense that I courteously escort houseflies out my window with a tot straks (see you later) rather than tot ziens (goodbye).

I'm so overflowing with good will that should there be sufficient popular demand, I'll tell my side of the story about the time a San Francisco police officer and I were chased through O'Hare airport by a thalidomide dwarf in leather.  I don't think I've written this one down, but I promise you that everyone I've told it to (not to mention a few dozen slack-jawed witnesses at O'Hare) has enjoyed it enormously.  Perhaps I can work this story into a sociological essay on the Dutch total lack of shame, as evidenced by their disinterest in drawing curtains at night.  At this point I am merely observing the phenomenon since I don't know whether they feel that nobody would be so rude as to actually look inside or whether they simply don't care whether anyone is looking.

It's almost eleven and I'm off to De Bijenkorf (the Beehive, a Macy’s equivalent) to see whether a new shipment of underwear has arrived in the night.  At this point, I seem to have spent as much on underwear as I have on rent, and I haven't even been to the slinky places yet.  I can assure you that if there is one thing with which Amsterdam abounds, it is levels and descending levels of slink.

After a quick stop at EasyEverything this noon, I realized that I'd not had anything to eat all day and was just dying to try an uitsmijter, a classic Dutch dish consisting of bread covered with ham topped with fried egg and surmounted with melted cheese.  In other words, an open-faced Egg McMuffin.  I found this little place called Het Korbeel right next door to the Casa Maria bar on Warmoestraat that was radiating the correct vibes, and sure enough, when I inquired about the possibility of an uitsmijter, a flash of recognition followed the usual blank look that I get when I say any word that anywhere contains a ui.  I have never hated a phoneme like I hate the Dutch ui.  I don't know what it is about my ui that somehow makes the entire word unintelligible, no matter how long it is or where the ui occurs in it.  I am trying to be grateful that now, after six days or whatever it has been, I can sometimes get close enough that that blank look gives way to understanding rather than an immediate switch to English.

It has occurred to me that part of the problem is that the Dutch, even in a place as cosmopolitan as Amsterdam, are unaccustomed to hearing anyone speak Dutch who was not taught it by his mother.  Consequently, they are unable to understand Dutch spoken with a foreign accent.  I would prefer to believe this than think they're like the French, who are accused of simply refusing to tolerate bad French.  In San Francisco, of course, we are continually hearing heavily accented English and are accustomed to it.  That and the fact that so many of us can't speak anything but English and thus have no choice but to listen to imperfect English.

When I got my Nederlands Egg McMuffin, I was shocked to see that it was three times as big as I had expected.  There were three perfectly runny over-easy eggs atop ham lapping over the edges of giant slices of bread and lots of cheese.  Unfortunately, it was so good that I ate all of it.

It's such a gorgeous day today that I strolled through the Dam, stopping to rest while I watched a really funny Australian juggler work the crowd with continual shameless references to its generosity, and across to the Post, where I took a number and then sat comfortably while I waited. (Hey, USPS, what a concept!) While I waited, I did a little vocabulary building and was able to pull the whole thing off entirely in Dutch.  I am now the proud owner of five airmail-letter-to-the-US-rate stamps, and handsome ones at that, although I didn't ask for heel mooi.  (Of course by now, I have already forgotten the word for "stamp.")

Then to Albert Hein on the way home to pick up some cocoa, sugar, and halfvolle milk as I am running out of brands of chocolate milk to taste and have so far found all of them excessively thickened.  These people have been fed too much vla as children.  (Vla is, I think, the only chocolate thing I have ever failed to consume all of.  I tried it in 1988, and I remember it so clearly that I have never given it a second chance.  It's too thick to drink and too runny to eat.  Vlaaaaaaaa!)  But I digress.  What the milk is half full of is fat, although like the US, they don't tell you what percentage full fat is.  And since I'm already complaining, I'll mention that living on produce from the SF farmers' markets for the past few years has spoiled me absolutely rotten.  The fruit and vegetables here are frankly about like what I saw in Nacogdoches, Texas.  I shall have to check out the produce at the Albert Cuypmarkt.

On the other hand, that uitsmijter that I had for lunch finally digested about 2000, so I went back to Het Korbeel for dinner.  At lunch I had thought for a brief moment during my shameless continual eavesdropping that I'd made a major breakthrough in understanding Dutch but then realized that the two guys I could sometimes understand so well were switching back and forth between German and Dutch.  They are apparently neighborhood flaneurs, as they dropped in while I was perusing the menu this evening, recognized me, remembered overhearing the lunchtime waiter override my Dutch with English, and spoke to me in English.  Not to be outdone, I responded in German.

They left after a brief exchange in Dutch with the waitress, but I had scored points with the evening waiter and waitress, he from Munich and she a native, and I had a wonderful time with them both in a mélange of all three languages as I ate a really delicious perfectly lightly vinaigretted salad of smoked halibut, salmon, and squid with the proper (i.e., small) quantity of good greens, plenty of onions, and hothouse tomatoes as good as I can get this time of year in SF.  I had never eaten smoked halibut, and it was excellent. My unabashed enjoyment of this dish got me a collusion of the waiter and waitress as they figured out where a new, cutting culinary edge fish smokery is located (it's so new it's not in their phone book) and marked its location on my map.  High on my list for the next couple of days is to figure out the public transit and take the number 100 vehicle (whatever it turns out to be) from the Cenraal Station to the point where de Wittenburgergracht changes its name to de Oostenburgergracht and look for de sign saying "Vis Rookerij".  If it's anywhere near as good as I expect, I'll have to give some of my underwear to the poor to make room in my nice, cold checked baggage for the return to SF.

And since I'm going on about food tonight, I should mention that this afternoon I also picked up some extremely interesting eggs, from "Columbian Blacktail" chickens.  The package has a picture of them out playing in a grassy field, getting plenty of sun, fresh air, and exercise.  The text is just hilarious because of the connotational clashes between Dutch and English.  The chickens are described as having vrije uitloop, and I get this image of a pack of them "freely loping out" like wolves, picking off a straggler banana slug, and pecking it to pieces.  Maybe you have to see the package.  Then again, it occurs to me that "free range" might amuse a newcomer to the States.  Git along, little dogie, and all that.

I have begun to find, like the Germans, entertainment in certain Dutch expressions.  The language in some of its sound patterns in sentences like "Ik doe de duur dicht" (I close the door) is more and more making me think of the pronouncement of the late Duke Kahanamoku (the great Hawaiian surfer) on sharks, "I don' bodda dem an' dey don' bodda me."