Thursday

Well, the house is now safe from other potential purchasers as we've signed the preliminary contract to take it off the market. We’ve also arranged to go back to the property this Saturday to measure things & generally poke around; we still have until midnight on Monday before we are finally committed to buying the property – if we find something unpleasant this weekend, we can just walk away, no problems. It’s apparently the standard way of buying a house over here – buy it provisionally & then check it over when you’ve got the time to look at it in the cooling-off period.

 

We then went to the financial advisors in Amsterdam & talked long & hard about mortgage plans (we are repaying this damn mortgage! How clear do we have to be?) & also got our 2006 Dutch tax returns done. In all, a lot of stuff ticked off the list, but there’s still a load more work to do; today I have to contact the estate agents & solicitors for about 4 topics, (all of which are essential) so there’s no let-up!

 

As to the Dutch, C & I had a long talk about it last night, after C had spoken with the tutor again. The overall conclusion is to continue to go to the current level (Basis 3), probably supplemented with some private lessons, to give me extra support & hopefully fill in a lot of the gaps in my current knowledge. The long-term intention is to attend the course in body & spirit, but in the understanding that I’m probably not going to get through*, but next time, I’m going to retake Basis 3 with the additional conversation course. By then I hope (thanks to the combination of lessons & private tuition) to have gained sufficient knowledge to get through.

 

When I’m through the basic courses, I should have sufficient skills to (say) read a newspaper & hold a basic conversation – and that’s really the most important step. When I can converse (no matter how elementarily), then the knowledge should snowball. I’m also going to ask my Dutch gamer friends to only speak in Dutch to me in future & I’m going to watch the news in Dutch every day (the international topics should be the same) & I’m going to buy some more Tintin / Asterix books in Dutch, as I know the stories sufficiently well.

 

That’s the plan.

 

S

 

*The next level is a magnitude more difficult, compared to what I’m currently doing, so I’ve got to be 100% ready for it. This is doubly important that I think that the bulk of my current problems stem from the fact that I only just passed the first 2 courses - getting another marginal pass this time round will simply compound the problem. My present goal is to consolidate my knowledge & be ready for the higher levels.