ni-na-notes » nederland

A little house by the sea

nina — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:39:18 +0000

So TypeMedia is past, and I’m officially staying in the Netherlands.
No, I did not initially, necessarily, expect this. But Den Haag has been an amazingly welcoming place, and one that has often felt almost eerily tailored to qualities I generally like in cities (a size that is neither dizzyingly large nor inconveniently small; a mild, breezy climate; an active (but not overwhelming) cultural/design scene; proximity to the sea; brick buildings) and societies (sobriety, directness, consideration, practicality), and then it also has this incredible density of type designers and other nice people, some of whom I call friends.

So, yes, I like it here.

As of this month, I have moved out of the city center and am (in blatant fulfilment of one of my life goals – it feels early) living in a little house by myself which is about 200 meters away from the sea. In fact I think the width of the beach might be a hint greater than the distance from my house to the first bit of sand.

And so I am back in that state of always feeling like I’m actually on vacation, like I’m just pretending, just passing through… It’s hard for me, as a Swiss person who used to see the ocean – if I was lucky – once a year, to believe that anyone can just live so close to a beach, much less me. And see it every day. I see it every day now. In mist, in sun, in rain.

In a weird way, I am more “culture shocked” now than I was when I first came to Holland last year. Then it felt like a game: Let’s go live in this other country for a year! I was part of the adventure that was TypeMedia, and Holland was more or less coincidental, although I did like it.
Now, I’m 100% in Holland. I speak Dutch every day, I’m re-orienting myself in a new part of town that has almost none of my type friends, but neighbors and acquaintances from a Dutch world. It’s exciting, and beautiful, and a little bit scary. But there’s always the sea to stare at.

Under Enschedé

nina — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:10:34 +0000

Back row, left to right: Alexandre, Slávka, James, Hugo, David; front row: Mark, Mark, me – we were staring into the setting sun, and this is about two seconds after I gave up. Photo taken by Jan Willem Stas.

I’m not going to apologize again for not posting more, mostly because I don’t like feeling like a broken record, and jump right into a story I’ve been wanting to tell: That of our excursion to Museum Enschedé in Haarlem, the archive of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, printing business and focus point of the rich history of Dutch typefounding.

The roots of Enschedé reach back into the very matter I was researching earlier this (academic) year in my revival project: The typefoundry that Johann Michael Fleischman started in Amsterdam but soon gave up again (he was, endearingly, a great punchcutter but a lousy businessman) was taken over by a certain Rudolph Wetstein from Basel and later sold, among other material, to Joh. I Enschedé; that marked the beginning of their typefounding activities in 1743. The foundry grew quickly and sold the work of great Dutch punchcutters for centuries: besides Fleischman (who returned to cut the bulk of his work for them), names like Van Dijck, Kis, Rosart, later Van Krimpen and De Does come to mind.

This design legacy is carried on today by the Enschedé Font Foundry; but the company archive is in the basement of Joh. Enschedé en Zonen, which now focuses on specialized security printing for stamps and banknotes. This means that the building is highly secured, visiting it is kind of a big deal, and cameras are not allowed inside. While the lack of visual documentation is sad, not having a lens in front of my face also made the experience deeper.

So in early March, we traveled to a heavily secured and otherwise nondescript factory building in an industrial zone in the outskirts of Haarlem, where rabbits run on deserted lawns behind an IKEA just off a major road. It felt pretty anticlimactic until we had met the curator, Johan de Zoete, traveled into the basement of the complex, and crossed the threshold into his treasure chamber. There it felt as if time itself was holding its breath. Breaking down, laying bare its contents for us to see. Letters from centuries. Rows and rows of books, journals, boxes with letters and objects. Posters and prints hung framed on the walls. We were told to stay together, to not touch anything. We behaved, but I wanted to touch everything. I wanted to live there.

We wandered through the centuries, and Mr de Zoete told us stories, showed photo albums, Daguerreotypes and paintings, bibles and books. And type. Type that showed off the limits of what Enschedé’s master craftsmen could do: beautifully floriated Didot capitals with hair-thin lines; a four-point bible type whose metal was thin and brittle and the letter faces barely visible even through a magnifying glass. We shuddered to think how long that would take to typeset … We turned a corner, and there was Paul Rädisch’s workbench: It looked as though Jan van Krimpen’s punchcutter had just gone out for coffee, “look, everything is the same”, said Mr de Zoete, pointing to a photograph of Rädisch sitting at that same desk, all the tools in the same arrangement, “only the candle has burned down a little more” he said, insisting it was the same one.

History really comes into life and into context when it can be experienced like this. For instance Fleischman’s famous music type: I had known it existed, I had seen samples, but now it was lying there, in use in a violin manual by Leopold Mozart. (The father of W. A. Mozart; I’ve loved the famous son’s work since my childhood piano-playing days.) Realizing that that had then been a contemporary use … it was odd; type ages so slowly, and I easily forget how old it is, that Fleischman died when W. A. Mozart was twelve. I stood lost in thought, and Fleischman looked out from a tiny painting in which he looked wise and less ugly than in the well-known engraving (I remember thinking he looked a bit like Kevin Spacey). Around the painting were displayed his punchcutting tools, and I wished I could deduce something more meaningful from staring at these than “omg Fleischman worked with these 250 years ago”, but even that was pretty impressive.

I could talk about banknotes, envelopes, vignettes, furniture and stamps and books, but I will just mention one more amazing thing: Smoke proofs. I had read that punchcutters, while working on a punch, would take smoke proofs to judge their work; this involved blackening the punch over a flame (hence the candle on Rädisch’s desk) and pressing it – perfectly vertical, aligned to a guide – onto a sheet of paper, where the soot would leave an impression. It’s a quick way to “preview” a lettershape in progress, but what I did not know was that this is probably the sharpest reproduction one can get of type; and that it keeps. We got to see some of Rädisch’s decades-old smoke proofs of one of Jan van Krimpen’s faces. The soot stood black on the page, perfectly black, perfectly sharp. I held my breath, again.

We bought books. We said goodbye, and on our way home took the above photo, staring into the evening sun. Then we carried our books to the train, and slowly returned to the year 2014.

Kingspotting

nina — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 18:53:14 +0000

Today was Prinsjesdag, the annual occasion on which the King (or, formerly, Queen) travels through the inner city of The Hague – from Noordeinde Palace to the Binnenhof – to hold his speech before parliament, and open their session. You might think he’d just take his bicycle cause it’s not far or anything, but oh no this is a King!, so this is a serious and big occasion: He and his wife travel in the Gouden Koets (golden carriage) in this whole procession of men in big hats and funny costumes and drums and trumpets and very many horses, while mostly quietly happy people (some of whom dressed in orange) line the streets and gun salutes are being fired far away over the Malieveld. Good times.

Along with a bunch of type]media peeps, I headed towards the route around lunchtime too. I was pretty excited to get a glimpse of an actual king (the concept being very foreign to this Swiss person), especially after the experience of watching his inauguration earlier this year live on TV – something I thought I’d never do; but I was captivated by the sternness of the affair, the 200-year-old ermine coat the new king was wearing, and a summoner banging his staff on the church floor, which echoed into the silence, and loudly announcing: “de koning!” – I still get shivers. (And for the record, I really see no harm in appreciating occasional ritualised demonstrations of old-worldly power. There are other powers now that are sneakier and that I fear far more.)

People here sure seem to be liking their king; the streets were packed, and as the Gouden Koets was passing (I got a vague glimpse of humans inside) there was a little bit of shrieking, and also some waving of scrawled banners – but those turned out just to be wishing the “Super Royal Couple” a great start. I find it fascinating to observe the peculiar mixture of the usual Dutch sobriety and unfazed orderliness with the gilded flourishes of their monarchy. Historicising pomp, funny hats and golden carriages are not necessarily things I’d have imagined to fit in well here; on the other hand, the stepladders (pictured below), the relaxed quietness of the crowd until just before the golden carriage appeared, the subdued little shrieking, and the bustle with which the crowd disappeared back to work as soon as the king had passed aren’t something I could imagine anywhere else – and in a strange way, it all works beautifully. (Yes I do like this place.)

Dutch-style organized fandom. Bring your own stepladder.

Discovering school / an empty office building / Amsterdam

nina — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 15:32:26 +0000

I started studying at the Royal Academy of Art on Friday the 13th. Fittingly, it was an exciting and a strange day. We’ll spend the first week or so in a common project with the Interior Architecture master students; it involves an empty office building left by a government ministry that moved to a new highrise last winter. The strangest part of the day was exploring the abandoned, but almost pristine building. Like something from a dream or perhaps a vaguely post-apocalyptic movie.

19th floor

The project starts tomorrow; I’m curious what exactly it will bring (and then I’m mostly fired up to get started with the type stuff proper). But first, weekend! I was looking forward to exploring the area a bit further – just a few days ago, I very much enjoyed traveling across the country to beautiful (and temporarily very rainy) Gelderland to visit the dear Jos Buivenga. This Saturday I took a train to Amsterdam to meet an old friend there, and my new friend James tagged along; he was happy to find out that taking trains is easy, yes you can bring food, European trains are quieter than American ones, and there are trashcans at the seats. It’s fun to experience this country also through the eyes of someone who’s newer to it than myself, and comes from further away. I’ve never thought about trashcans on trains, but come to think of it, they are pretty handy. :-)

James being impressed

Once in Amsterdam, James went off with a friend, I met my Singaporean classmate Mark, and we met with Claus for lunch. It was a rainy lunch. We gave up on the idea of wandering around looking at things, and went bookshopping instead (Claus thankfully pointed us to a large (used)bookshop having a half-price sale!). Turns out Mark and I have a similar interest in spending hours in bookshops ooh-aahing at letters, preferably old and ornamented or otherwise remarkable ones, or ones that can be identified and discussed. Good times.

Book design by Jan van Krimpen, type by Rosart (reproduction)

The mysterious double-eared g

Swirlavaganza

My loot

With five books more (it’s both delightful and dangerous that I can now read Dutch as well…) I continued on to a very fun afternoon/evening with a few other friends, discovering a lot of very good local Dutch beers (with the local house beer, Tempelbier, the overall favorite), slightly fewer very good Dutch cheeses (yes I have seen the light now), and just a bit of very good Dutch weed. Way to live it up in this supposedly so serious country. I also learned a few new things, for instance that a guillotine is the below-pictured tool for cutting cheese. Now that’s endearing.

“What do you call this cool cheese-slicing contraption?” – “Ah but that’s a guillotine.”

Holland, Dutch, & The Netherlands

nina — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 11:57:37 +0000

To anyone confused about what to call this place where I live now, this appears to be a pretty definitive answer.

via @waly_k on Twitter. Thanks!

Man spricht Deutsch

nina — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:53:40 +0000

Vor etwa zwanzig Jahren beobachtete ich in einer Strandtaverne in Ierapetra (Kreta) mit wachsendem Unbehagen zwei ältere Deutsche, die gerne Spiegeleier haben wollten. Der Kellner streckte ihnen die Speisekarte hin, zeigte sie ihnen von allen Seiten, sie war laminiert und mit Bildchen und Beschreibungen der Gerichte in diversen Sprachen, doch die Herren wollten Spiegeleier, »Spie–gel–ei–er! Zwei!«, was sie immer deutlicher und lauter wiederholten, der Kellner zuckte hilflos mit den Schultern, schließlich zogen die Herren frustriert von dannen, dass jemand mit dem schönen deutschen Wort »Spiegelei« nichts anzufangen weiß, lag offenbar außerhalb ihres Vorstellungshorizonts.

Liebe (Mit-)Deutsche: Lautet denn bei uns das Sprichwort »When in Rome, keep doing as you do at home«? Wieso fehlt sovielen von uns, von Euch dieser gewisse Leisegang, der Respekt, die Rücksicht und Vorsicht, die andere mitbringen, wenn sie fern von zuhause sind – und das Bewusstsein, dass unsere Sprache für andere eine Fremdsprache ist und deren Kenntnis optional?

An die »Spie–gel–ei–er, zwei« werde ich seither immer wieder erinnert. Wie heute auf dem wunderbaren Antik- und Büchermarkt hier in Den Haag: Die lauteste Sprache, die man hört, ist Deutsch, und das wird dann mit einer Selbstverständlichkeit allen an den Kopf geworfen, Verkäufern wie anderen Gästen, als wäre Deutsch lingua franca, als gehöre einem der Ort – was ich hier angesichts der noch nicht so lang zurückliegenden Besetzung ganz besonders unangenehm finde. Wie mir der nette Herr, von dem ich in schüchternem und ziemlich wackligem Niederländisch eine schöne Delfter Kachel kaufte, erleichtert sagte, könne ich zumindest schon mehr Niederländisch als er zum Beispiel Deutsch; was viele deutsche Touristen allerdings nicht davon abhielt, ihn auf Deutsch zuzutexten, ohne schon nur auf die Idee zu kommen, vorher zu fragen. Ich finde sowas unverschämt. Und beschämend. – So.

(Bei den vielen Deutschen, die nicht so sind, möchte ich mich für die Verallgemeinerung entschuldigen. Aber raus musste das jetzt trotzdem.)

Notes from Nederland #4: from language to illustration to type

nina — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 20:32:11 +0000

So I graduated from my Dutch class, and my main take-away is that Dutch does not feel weird anymore. I’ll admit it: Until a couple of weeks ago, my German-trained mind found Dutch pretty funny. All those double vowels, and the word choice (and word order) that is mostly comprehensible, but just different enough that it seems cutely off… belangrijke vitaminen* in my yoghurt, people telling others to bellen** or to run the sea in***, ha ha. Now that I’ve learnt the basics of Dutch, the language has begun to make a surprising lot of sense – to the point that I’ve started to replace ei by ij in some German words, and using those previously-funky double vowels… the thing is, Dutch spelling is super-logical. A word like brood (bread) sounds like it looks, with a loooong “o”; and while the German word sounds very similar, it is spelled Brot – which now looks like it should sound like “brott”. Maybe the two are just too close for comfort? Well, if my command of my mother tongue gets a bit weird over the next months, I hope that will be temporary – and signify that my Dutch is getting proportionally better. :-)

My classmate Inês, who is also a designer, has found a cool way to make studying vocabulary visual, and more fun: For a few months now she has been posting “A Dutch Word a Day” – cute analog illustrations of Dutch words:

Generally, I feel quite happy to have gotten a peek inside the workings of this language – not just because I’ll at least partly have to operate with it in everyday life for the next year or so, but also because its representation in letters has such a proud and beautiful tradition. Indeed, typography in the Netherlands is often (if by far not always) beautiful, and unmistakably Dutch. The latest example I encountered is the Groot Uitdrukkingen woordenboek (Van Dale) that my teacher let me look at in the lunch break one day – a book I found very hard to put down, and might just have to get for myself. It also felt incredibly Dutch, and a quick look at the colophon revealed that it is in fact typeset in TEFF Ruse by Gerrit Noordzij himself, originator and father-in-spirit of the type design graduate class here in The Hague, which I am getting very excited about entering very soon now.
Picture below shows the typography… and my favorite idiom so far.

* belangrijk is the normal word for “important” in Dutch, whereas the corresponding German word belangreich is a quite old-fashioned word for “relevant” or so. It kind of means something similar, but the German word sounds positively silly for yoghurt.

** bellen in Dutch means to ring (e.g. a doorbell). In German bellen means to bark. Ha ha. I mean woof.

*** Correct word order in Dutch (IIRC) to say run into the sea.

Notes from Nederland, week #3

nina — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 22:03:23 +0000

Dutch people can do any (or, presumably, all) of the following while riding a bicycle: “walk” their dog, talk to their kids (seated in front of them or behind them or both), talk to people riding around them, talk on the telephone, type text messages, smoke, hold a bag of groceries, dodge any traffic that comes their way, sound pretty bells, sing songs, and pick their nose. All while keeping their back straighter than straight, and looking entirely unfazed and very serious.
People do like club music here. Like even normal cozy little cafés can sometimes be found playing trance. It’s funny. They also like hair gel.
Apparently it’s true that the dairy is responsible for making them so tall (and slender and beautiful). I feel like a walking antithesis. Since my stomach and lactose are not so good friends that I could hope to compensate by drinking my body weight in milk each day from now on, I shall compensate by learning Dutch:
I’m in an intensive Dutch course and so far it’s great. For people who know English (and in my case, German and a bit of Danish), Dutch is nicely friendly to learn at least in terms of grammar; and many words are cognate with English, German, and/or Scandinavian ones (although the meanings often [and irritatingly] differ), which not only tends to make them easier to memorize but also offers ample chances for my beloved little language epiphanies (of the ah *that’s* where that word comes from!! sort). What makes the course extra cool so far is that we get some language history, history, culture, and general discussion on the side, and the group only consists of 5 students so I’m learning a lot. They’re also nice people so I’m also having a good time.
A very nice moment in the language class was when during introductions, the teacher was not at all confused when I answered the feared what are you going to study here? question with letterontwerp (type design). “Oh, yes, cool. Does everyone know what that is, yes? Zij maakt een A, bijvoorbeeld.” Wow, Nederland, land of letters. I don’t think it’s ever happened to me outside of the type scene proper that I didn’t immediately have to explain to puzzled faces what type design is, and why anyone would want to do it.
I’m a bit sad that the love of the Dutch for oranje only extends to the color but not the fruit. They don’t even call them oranges (but sinaasappel, as in “Chinese apple” because that’s, uh, where they come from?). It seems like a missed opportunity kinda. On the other hand, now that I picture partycrowds throwing oranges, maybe it’s a good thing.
Incidentally, fruit is spelled identically in Dutch, but finally sounds really badass. Just like Duisburg.
Basic utilitarian anatomy of a fish: Dutch people eat the whole thing, save for the tail (the end of the fish counter-intuitively called staart) and head.
This is true, very much so in my case: Dutch staircases tend to be closer to vertical than anything resembling normalcy for non-Dutch people. (“It’s really more like a ladder”, my mother said.) The worrisome implications for moving become clear if you try to picture carrying boxes of books (or other heavy stuff) up a ladder without having any hands free to hold on… right. Next time I’d: make the boxes smaller; and try to make sure I’d have more than one person helping me.
(I do wonder if Dutch people aren’t tempted to just throw their stuff out of the window when they move out … Or each other’s stuff, perhaps. Has any ingenious Dutch person invented a furniture life net yet?)

More things I’ve learned in The Netherlands so far

nina — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:53:48 +0000

I need to update my “best fries I’ve had in my life” statistic (until now, the award has been held by a tiny hole in the wall – actually someone’s kitchen – somewhere in Derry, Northern Ireland, 1996). I get the feeling I may have to update it multiple times in the coming year, but right now the award goes to the first fish stand from the north end on the boulevard in Scheveningen. I don’t know that it has a name, but it’s round and they use a lot of Helvetica and Comic Sans, and some amazing spiced salt (I think) on the fries that makes them even better, fresh chunky fried things that they are.
OMG kibbeling! I love kibbeling. Crispy on the outside and super tender on the inside. (Oh, and it goes really well with fries. Did I mention how good the fries are?)
Generally, I’m not entirely tired yet of only having a minimally functional kitchen (all my pots and stuff are still in storage). For one thing, readymade salads from Albert Heijn are way better than those from Coop in Switzerland. Sorry Coop. Predictably, my favorite is aardbeisalade, mixed salad (feat. spinach, I think) with strawberries and creamy goat cheese (I just wish they wouldn’t put entirely flavor-free overcooked pasta in the bottom of the bowl, presumably to make it more filling).
To switch over to the non-food department (phew): I’ve always enjoyed hearing church bells through the window (nothing religious, I just love the sound, it probably connects to home/childhood somehow). De Grote Kerk is a real treat to live near – it plays lovely chimes and little tunes, and at midday there’s some veritable music coming from its bells. I’ve started looking forward to hearing it every day.
I generally enjoy having the windows open when I’m home, and let the sounds of the city in. Voices, some traffic. The occasional clop-clop of horse carriages with happy tourists; the (seemingly sterner) clop-clop of riding police(wo)men. The cries of seagulls. A semi-sax-savvy neighbor across the street recently practising “Take Five” over and over. The guys renovating the restaurant downstairs hammering and talking and playing funny music, including Nirvana and Rammstein (one band I wasn’t necessarily expecting to hear here).
The other side of the apartment, where my bedroom is, mostly features the (very) nearby cooing of pigeons, which usually wake me in the morning & hence aren’t quite as popular with me as the horses and seagulls and Rammstein-playing hammering men.
I had forgotten how unfunny it is to get suncream, mixed with sweat, in my eyes. Note to self: Going on a bike trip? Just risk the damn sunburn.
Generally, I have not made the (often deplored) observation that foreigners instantly get spoken to in English here. I usually try to speak my current brand of kindergarden Dutch, and unless I give in and say that I’ll have to continue in English because I haven’t understood a question or something, the conversation will carry on in Dutch. I like that. I like Dutch, too. I don’t necessarily find it a “beautiful” language, but it’s really fun to learn, and it’s cool how it teaches me things about my own language (and English) too. For instance, I would like to thank the Dutch word gordijn for making me realize that German Gardine and English curtain are related. (Little language epiphany at IKEA.)
They sure like letters here. Interesting lettering pops up in the most unexpected places (like this railway underpass in Delft). Buildings in town also often feature interesting lettering, much of which has already been documented tenfold among my Flickr peeps, but I’m taking photos anyway, looking voraciously. Then returning home to draw type. Can’t wait to enter letterland for real.
I just realized that I used the word “home” without even thinking about it. See? I’m arriving.
Overall, life has been getting a bit more “life”-like (feat. stuff to take care of, health insurance, rental cars, other people’s whiny kids at IKEA) and a bit less exclusively “omg omg awesome vacation”-like, but I’m happy here – my current view is that I wouldn’t mind if the rest of my life was an endless summer in The Hague. This summer in The Hague.

Some things I’ve learned in The Netherlands so far

nina — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 20:06:26 +0000

My brain will need more than the four days I’ve been here to process that I live here now. With a bike, near a beach, amid Dutch people, a soon-to-be-student. I’m constantly half expecting to wake up. I hope I won’t.
Having a bike is awesome. I know you all know that, I was just in denial. Also, this here is Fietsers’ Paradise (feel free to sing to the tune of Gangsters’ Paradise if you must). Not that I didn’t in theory already know that, but, you know, it’s rad that it’s flat, and there are bike paths everywhere (including bicycle roundabouts and bicycle traffic lights complete with buttons to push), and drivers respect riders as other traffic participants rather than annoying slow things that should be crushed. So far, I’m not missing the helmet.
The Dutch appear to be a remarkably healthy bunch. It boggles my mind (especially since they also appear to eat their fair share of fried foods), but I’ve seen very few blobby people, few who seem unhealthy or unfit or in bad shape or not looking after themselves. It’s impressive. This recovering couch, er, desk potato can learn a lot here. (I know, the bike’s a start.)
My downstairs neighbor’s definition of “speaking English” is starting a sentence with 2 English words and then reverting to Dutch. Funnily, that is exactly the way my grandmother used to “speak English”, just with Swiss German instead of Dutch. She’s rather communicative, so by the time my Dutch class comes around (in 2 weeks) I might not need it.
I was really weirded out (and slightly disgusted) by the Dutch word for body, lichaam – it reminds me either of lichen or of Leichnam, the German word for dead body; but then I realized the German word Körper isn’t exactly pretty and sensuous either. We’re even, Dutch.
Current favorite Dutch word: kippenvel.
I’m reaching some of the limits of minimalist living. Today I gave up on having just 1 pair of pants. Tomorrow I’ll get a second towel too. One towel just doesn’t do it, especially once it’s full of sand and because I haven’t yet figured out the laundry situation (no washing machine in building).
The large supermarket around my corner has: no pencil sharpeners and no non-lined paper (which surprised me); bicycle repair sets (which should not surprise me); a little bit of decent chocolate (but not my favorite kind, so I’m hopeful I can ignore it); spiced kroepoek (which I hadn’t known to exist and will now attempt to forget again, because it’s even better than the “naked” kind); an exhilaratingly rich selection of dairy, milk, yoghurts, buttermilk, etc etc that has caused me to experimentally re-evaluate my supposed slight lactose intolerance; and a respectable palette of cheeses too, which have led me to decide that I’m not going to look down on Dutch cheese by default anymore. (When you’re Swiss, disdain for other countries’ cheeses comes as a factory default.)
I’m so far keeping my disdain for the bread on offer here, but I haven’t looked further than the supermarket yet. Next stop will be de Bakkerswinkel which is not far from my home (“my home”, whoa) and appears to have good stuff (and, perhaps more importantly, two cats).
I still, invariably, suck at foosball, especially when challenged before coffee.
Most importantly: Yes; I like it here. More than I expected, in fact.