Closing in

I just read 25 pages in 3 days.  I have 25 to go.  I finally had a bit of a breakthrough, becoming accustomed enough to Marion Bloem's vocabulary and style to be able to read faster.  I hope to finish by Friday.

Buddy and Maria in the 17th Century

Has anyone seen my context?  It seems to have changed again.  A new chapter means something else. While knowing the language might help with comprehension, I read on anyway.

  This time, the protagonist is looking at some old drawings and telling a story that takes place around the time the Netherlands took over the islands.  There are Portuguese cannons, an English fleet and all sorts of goings-on.

Throughout the book, Bloem uses parallel stories to show similarities and make counterpoints.  In spite of tribalism, the various tribes often intersect and interact.  Here is what I have noticed so far:

Japanese cruelty in the war years is recounted along with the protagonist's contemporary affair with an international Japanese man.

The protagonist's dull marriage comes up next to stories of relationships in the past that worked out to varying degrees.

Earlier in the book, there are the struggles of peacetime in Europe, Indonesia and America.  As the book goes on, we see World War II and the initial conquest.  Independence has been mentioned, but nothing in depth has come up so far.

Reading Marion Bloem: What I Would Like to See

When stories are told about the Indo experience, the choice of time and place is obvious. The camps are likely to remain central.

Even so, I would like to see more material about the diaspora.  Vaders van betekenis has some very interesting passages about the postwar struggles.  How has the diaspora been so successful?  What has it been like for the younger generations?  Comedy might be suitable for telling such stories about the ups and downs of business, being constantly mistaken for other ethnic groups and so on.

Reading Marion Bloem vs. Geert "Big" Mak

Which one is easier to read?  It depends on how you measure difficulty.  In linguistic terms, Marion Bloem is much easier.  Her sentences are shorter, and her vocabulary is not nearly as complicated.  Her writing is much more down to earth.  Big Mak writes like a European academic.  He does it well, but his sentences are extremely long.

In terms of content, Big Mak is much easier. He writes in a linear way.  De eeuw van mijn vader was a straight time line.  It was very easy to follow.  Marion Bloem bounces around between legends, the war years and the present (1989).  Combine that with the many characters, and it's very hard to keep track of what's going on. Slowly reading 1-3 pages at a time doesn't help.

Their translators should be different.  Mak should be translated by a Brit with an academic background who writes well enough to have been published in magazines.  Bloem's more terse prose could only be translated by an American. It moves fast.  It is amazing, considering that she has spent so little time here.

Reading Marion Bloem: What I Have Learned

Vaders van betekenis has the underlying theme that the camps remain a great wound.  People deal with it in a number of ways, but the injury remains. Many never talked about it, and others talked of little else.  Still, it has never been completely sorted out.  Many felt shame and guilt for how they acted in situations that were not their fault that others created. This happens even though what they did might not have been so bad.  After all, there is no correct way to act when a foreign power invades and throws everyone in jail.

"I know what I'm going to tell but not which words."

Marion Bloem is part of the younger generations.  She is a storyteller trying to make sense of a past that those who lived through it would understandably like to forget. She also has a lot to say about the writing process.  Stories are pulled from various sources and put together to make narratives.  Some stories tell what happened, while others tell how it felt.

Reading Marion Bloem: 1989

This book has been around long enough that it's a time capsule.  What jumps out at me is that the world was smaller and more comfortable in those days.  People could flit across continents and oceans.  It was fast and often cheap.  The main character bounces between the Netherlands and Indonesia without saying much about the process.  Such a book written today would include a familiar litany of justified complaints.  It is hard to recall those days and realize that we have gone backward since then.

Reading Marion Bloem: The Process

My process of reading Vaders van betekenis has been terrible.  Months have gone by with no reading at all.  Reading Dutch is as daunting as ever.  I made it to page 100 before last year's Dutch Festival.  I had intended to keep going but didn't.

Even so, I kept up with the language, watching TV and looking at news sites.  I thought it might help my reading speed eventually.  It has, but only marginally.

I now have less than 100 pages to go in the book.  I have been reading every single day for the past 3 1/2 weeks.

Interaction is the best tool for language learning

If you can do it, conversation is the best way to go.  During lunch at work, I was introduced to someone's mother from the Netherlands.  I saw her come in, and I knew that she would be brought over.  I spent several minutes trying to think of what to say.  Then there was the introduction, "...He speaks Dutch!"

"Ik ben wachten de nieuws van NOS."

It wasn't a traditional greeting, but her face lit up.  She went on about how she liked the place where we were.  To buy time to think of something else to say, I interpreted her remarks to others around us.

After that, I kept thinking of things to say.  It was a huge breakthrough.  I had hoped to see her again, but the rest of her visit was taken up with other places.

Yesterday's Nieuws

I have been watching the NOS Nieuwsuur a lot on Apple TV.  On the TV, it's usually about 40 minutes long.  On iTunes on the computer, it's a full hour.

Right now, Apple TV has the news on it from March 8.  It starts out with the anchors reading a few stories.  Then, they start talking to each other.  The camera pulls away, and they keep talking, but you can't hear it. A camera person goes on the set and leaves.  Most of the set's lights are turned off.  A few minutes go by.  Then, the anchors start reading from the beginning.

Yesterday, I also watched the Nieuws.  There was a gathering of writers that received a lot of coverage.  Then, who should show up but Marion Bloem!  There she was!  It means I have to get back to work.

A Lazy Summer

I am on page 96 of Marion Bloem's Vaders van betekenis.  For whatever reason, I have not been disciplined in reading it.   Still, every time I read it, it's faster than the last time.  Last night, I spent a long time reading 2 1/2 pages.  Reading a language you're not yet good at is difficult.

The season began with a transcription exercise.  Working with a Dutch friend, I transcribed the first minute of one of the Queen's Christmas speeches.  It mimics an exercise I have my students do in English. I did it myself to answer the question every teacher wonders about, "Are they sandbagging?"

Most of the summer was passive listening.  I started with BNR, but listened mainly to Radio 1 in Hilversum. It really does help, though I could understand them only occasionally.

Watching TV was hit or miss.  I saw a number of episodes of Flikken Maastricht, a cop show.  Like many shows, it's basically the same episode every time.  If you watch directly from the broadcaster, as opposed to YouTube, you can click on the instellingen (settings) and put on the captioning.  I just clicked on them to check the word, but the site I use is having trouble.

Dutch TV ratings are as unreliable as American movie ratings.  The ratings tell you what the producers wanted for marketing purposes, as opposed to what might be in the content.  Anything other than programming for young children should be watched first before showing it to anyone else.

I just finished a section in Bloem's book composed of letters from the US.  Again, she has an incredible understanding of this country and what it is like to live here. Now, I'm at a part where the main character is having a glass of tjendol. Reading about it was a great mini-triumph: I've had that at the Dutch festival!"

More Reading, or Where I've Been All This Time

At the 2011 Long Beach Holland Festival, Jan Krancher gave me a copy of Marion Bloem's Vaders van betekenis (Fathers of Meaning).  I had planned to attend in 2012, but my wedding happened around the same time, which meant that it was off the calendar.

Over a nearly two-year period, I made it through 60 pages of the book.  Reading Dutch was as difficult as ever.  I was plowing through it, wearing out another dictionary.  My job situation had improved immensely.  As I noticed another festival coming up, I made more of an effort.  I am now on p. 78.  I have also been listening again, mainly to Radio 1. BNR is also good, but it doesn't come through the computer as much. I have also watched some TV with closed captioning.

This year, I was invited again to help work the booth for the Indo Project. Of course, it was great.  I saw Jeff Keasbery on the way in, and I found Jan and his antique wall map of the Dutch East Indies on the side of the booth. This time, the emphasis was on books for sale.  Lots of people came to browse.

The two books that stood out weren't for sale.  I hope they are uploaded as ebooks soon.  The first one I looked at was a graphic narrative of camp life that was most likely done right after the war.  The colors and fairly precise drawings made those times look very recent.  Digitizing this work is urgent, because the paper is disintegrating, and the colors are starting to bleed.  While we were there, I spoke to a man who is restoring his wife's family photos with Photoshop.  Such a treatment would certainly be worthwhile.  Some of the drawings have shown up as illustrations for other books.  The other book that stood out was Jan's own immigration story in a small three ring binder.  It is largely a reverse diary, made up of translations of letters he sent to his mother, beginning in 1960. It is one of the rare translations that appears to have been written in the target language.  Usually, the source language comes through in one way or another.

While I was there, I heard some Dutch spoken, and some people spoke it to me.  In spite of my recent piling on of listening hours, I am disappointed to say that I understood very little.  When I spoke, my pronunciation was way off.   The linguistic bright spot was my surprising ability to sight translate.  I was quickly able to give English speakers a window into Dutch language material.  I was also able to reassure Dutch speakers that I was acquainted with their world.

I had not planned on posting anything, but my wife and I spoke to Priscilla Kluge McMullen on the way out.  She encouraged me to post more about the journey, which brings us back to the current book.

Marion Bloem's Vaders van betekenis should be translated by an American.  She writes in a very clear, yet freewheeling style. Although she has only been on a few short trips to the US, she writes about it like a native. This is my fourth book in Dutch, and it is the third in which I have read with the method of using the dictionary to look up every word I don't know.  I move the fastest through the parts with familiar material.  The wartime experiences are similar to what Geert Mak described.   Reading about the US was almost easy.  The beginning of the book, on the other hand, brings Miguel Asturias to mind.  She ties an incident with a kite to the surreal nature of life during wartime and ancient legends.  I found it as hard to follow as Asturias.

My posts about Dutch reading will be far from regular, but I will keep it up.  I plan to finish Marion Bloem's book.  After that, I would like to return to Geert "Big" Mak to read Reizen zonder John, his following of John Steinbeck's journey in Travels with Charly 50 years later.

Yet another one of my blogs.

Do you like cars?  If so, you might have a lukewarm reaction to my newest blog, Prototype Pics. It features pictures of cars that are being road tested.  Be forewarned that automotively speaking, the future isn't very exciting.

I'm now a member.

A couple of weeks ago, I got my first emails to participate in the work of TSF. They were Spanish to English translations, sent out around 2 am. By the time I got to them, they were already picked up by others. Still, I'm glad to be counted as part of the organization.

Joost and product placement

Yesterday, I just saw The Way with the gf. Seeing it made me wonder if someone in a culture ministry read my Christmas post about promoting Dutch language and culture.* The movie is a long, wonderful commercial for visiting Spain and walking the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route, whether you're Catholic or not. Martin Sheen is the lead character, and he is the only one who wears visible brand names. Product placement roars.

It appears that someone took one of my suggestions for promoting the Netherlands, but contradicted another. Joost, the number one sidekick, is Dutch. I had suggested using product placement methods to put Dutch characters on American shows. It looks like that was done. Joost always mentions where he's from more than any other character. He's from Amsterdam, which is the only Dutch city I have ever seen promoted as a tourist destination. Still, I found myself wondering why not Eindhoven or Wageningen. If Joost was Dutch due to product placement, my advice was not taken in terms of the character himself. Through most of the film, he is a fat, jolly pot smoker, sort of a stoned hipster Santa Claus, passing out joints and sleeping pills. He walks to lose weight. Later, we find out his poignant back story.

While a lot has been written concerning what the film is about, it is really about the Sheen/Estevez family and who they wish they were, given current events. The father is rich, but not famous. He is in Ventura, which is only close to the craziness of Malibu geographically. A son dies at the beginning, but he's in pursuit of a worthwhile goal.

In spite of the product placement, The Way is worth seeing.

*A long shot, but I would like to think they did.

More Festivals.

Check out Around the World in Southern California for information on more festivals. There are also a few more photos of the Long Beach Holland Festival.

I have not been able to find as many festivals during this time of year.

So far:

Paderewski Festival: Nov. 10-13

Pan African Film Festival: Feb. 9-20

At the Dutch Festival

When I started learning Dutch, I never thought I would talk to anyone. In this region there are few opportunities to use it. Yesterday, I got to use it all day long. There was a high point, where I responded in Dutch, and I had understood everything. There was a low point, where someone who had been previously introduced addressed me, and I had no idea what was going on. Most of the time, I was 2/3 in and 1/3 out. I knew most of what was going on, but could rarely add anything.

The Dutch language is held dear by a group that came from all over. I was in line behind someone with ID from Nevada. For many, the festival was the end of a very long drive.

You never know where a language will take you. As long as you keep up with it, the road keeps going. Yesterday, I felt honored to work at the Indo Project's booth. I was the map guy for the morning shift. Jan had saved an old map of the Dutch East Indies from a trip to the dump. I was there with some pads of tags and some pens, encouraging people to mark where they were from.

While we talked, I explained how I got there, and held forth about how independence could have been much different under the 1936 Soetarjo Petition. Their stories explained long journeys, from the camps, when it looked like that was the end, to all sorts of destinations. The most moving story I heard came from a man who was separated from his family and found that he was an orphan at war's end. When the camps closed, he reunited with his grandmother, and they went to the Netherlands. She died there at 96. She had been through two world wars, but she couldn't take the cold. He felt that she had a few years left, but the inactivity and the changes were too much.

Another man, a Dutchman, said that he didn't belong in the Netherlands any more than he belonged in Indonesia, where he was born. I suppose belonging is a state of mutual acceptance. The Indo Project booth and the festival were very welcoming. Although many sad stories were told for the first time, the tone was happy. People were glad to see each other.

A continuous succession of Indo Rock bands set the tone. They used instruments taken from the Portuguese play hits from the United States in the early 60s in a genre that they had invented in the Netherlands. Everyone heard them jam in the here and now. In a sense, they pointed the way ahead.

The Indo Project at The Holland Festival

The Indo Project will have a booth at the Holland Festival in Long Beach on May 29. I have met them at other events, and other editions of this event. Their booth will definitely be worth a visit.

The Indo story is largely unknown. Their recent history fell between the cracks of narratives by those who were either for independence in a way that forgot the past, or colonialism. Indos have been around since the Age of Discovery, and the Project is making their instructive history available to everyone.

The following post was forwarded to me by Director of Development, Jan Krancher. I mentioned the project on March 6, 2010, and I linked to some of his work.

The post was written by Co-Founder Priscilla Kluge McMullen, who was at last year's event. It will remain up through July 2.

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Only a small percentage of the English speaking world know who or what a Dutch Indonesian is, or Indische(n),or Amerindo, or Indo, and you can go down the list of names that we prefer to call ourselves. The non-ending discourse on this topic is an example of the reason why. I wonder why it is that we cannot be united in what we call ourselves? Ourselves, meaning we who have roots in the former Dutch East Indies. I can understand why we would want to differentiate our own particular family history since most of us have that unique mixture, an intermingling of race, culture & nationality.

However, let’s think of the bigger picture, far into the future, how will we be identified in the history books of the world. Will we be known as a fractured people with just as a fractured description known by different labels? All because we cannot agree on what we want to call ourselves? Or do we let others label us? We continue to confuse people outside of our community by these different names we apply to ourselves.

I, who was born in Indonesia and have German/Dutch/Indonesian blood, and currently maintain dual citizenship (Dutch & USA), have “captured” the word INDO as that is how I want to describe myself in my personal and professional life. I want the English speaking world, that I come in contact with, to know me as an Indo. Of course, first and foremost I am an American but I want people to stop guessing my heritage. I am “taking claim” of the word Indo as my own because the beauty of the word Indo is that it is a shortened form of Indo-European, meaning exactly that! It encompasses everyone in our community. Not only people of Dutch Indonesian descent but also individuals who are descendent from any mixture of Indonesian and European blood. Whereas the term Indische Nederlander or Dutch Indonesian is exclusively of Dutch Indonesian descent.

We cannot be exclusive, we are a dying culture. We need to be inclusive --and rather than bicker about what we want to call ourselves why not go into the world and raise awareness about our history, culture and values. It is my hope that in the far future when my children and grandchildren say that they have Indo roots, the rest of the world will know exactly what Indo means… a proud, strong, and united people that had their roots in the former Dutch East Indies.

Another Dutch reading blog.

Off to Belgium!

This time, I'm blogging my way through Kaas, by Willem Elsschot. I'm reading the graphic novel adaptation by Dick Matena. I got a copy thanks to Willem Bongers at deBuren. Dutch language material is very rare in Southern California.


Anyway, here is A Slice of Kaas!

Het Einde

Here are some final thoughts about this project.

The Most Important Thing I Learned: That in every human circumstance, pettiness reigns supreme. In the camps on the Burma Railway, Catrinus Mak tallied the casualties of death and disease, but went so far as to complain about gossip and backbiting.

My Favorite Part: The description of the air race.

What The Book Made Me Want to Do: I would like to visit Schiedam and Medan. In both cases, I would like to look at whatever old buildings are left. I think it would be interesting to see what's left of colonial days in Indonesia.

The "Whatever Happened To" Moment: In the 60s, the Mak's sailmaking business had another brief life as a sporting goods store. They sold to recreational boaters.

I have another blog starting on June 5th. It's a corporate complaint site. You can find it here. It will last for a year.

Read it if: You want to see more from the same author.

Skip it if: You want to see more of the same subject matter.

Thank you everyone. I'm grateful that so many of you read it. You can write to me at my yahoo address. It begins with mextravlr.

My Linguistic Progress and Advice to Language Learners

I had a short conversation in Dutch at work recently. I can't really speak Dutch, but I'm well prepared for it. I can understand a lot of what I hear on podcasts.

Reading is easier than it was at the beginning, but it's still daunting. I read Chapter 14 Xavier's way. That is, I read it straight through, then read it again. It worked well, but I went back to the dictionary for the rest of the book. It was good I finished that way, because the last chapters had some dense discussions of Reformed politics.

I looked at the Dutch to English test on TSF, but I decided not to take it. For now, Dutch will remain a hobby. I will keep going back to it and improve over time. I took their test in French because there was an urgent need right after the earthquake. Also, I'm good at high register material, which is most of what TSF appears to deal with.

My approach to learning languages has varied. In Spanish I talked a lot at the outset. In Portuguese, I did a lot of listening first, mainly to news programs. I talked to my relatives about current events, but I remember the blank look on their faces when my great-uncle asked me for a pen, and I didn't know what he was talking about. Before the trip to Portugal, I had also been to church in that language. Back in the 80s, I studied it and had some short conversations with old relatives here.

I have thought of improving at French and actually learning to speak it, but 3 closely related languages starts to become irritating. It's easy to see why scholars ignored Romance languages for so long and stuck to Latin.

If I were ever faced with a trip to Holland, I would watch a lot more TV to understand what people say to each other.

If you're wondering about how to learn Dutch, think of your goals first. If you want to speak the language, emphasize watching TV and listening to the radio. Try to avoid the news and listen to programs that feature people talking to each other. I read that the gulf between written and spoken language in Dutch is greater than it is in English. Even so, reading works such as plays, along with works featuring dialog can help. If you're interested in a book, get a dictionary and start reading. Reading helps a lot in learning a language, but bear in mind that it is not central to speaking. If reading is your goal, start with a few lessons, then read whatever material you find of interest. From there, the possibilities are limitless.