Becoming Dutch

Returning back to Amsterdam after my long vacation in Taipei, sadly my facebook and blogspot login pages are turned into Dutch, more sadly, I can pretty much understand it (the very basic things such as login, logoff, yes, no, and email address, etc). I am still trying to figure out how to make these pages speak English. I guess I only need to learn how to speak over the mobile phone while riding a bicycle to become a more complete one.

Speaking of which, Dutch people are very open-minded, they do not mind dealing with different cultures, such as working with foreigners, enjoying food/drinks coming from other countries. However, they are indeed very private (perhaps that's just being very European). I think Dutch is pretty confident of they way of living, thus, they do not mind seeing or dealing with other cultures. Be very careful, they are not really trying to imitating others , they are only dealing with different values.

Having a very straightforward attitute toward life and everything (for example, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do as long as 1. you can make money 2. you are not bothering others), Dutch people can pretty much handle any culture shock. Think about it, not many cultural differences would conflitct with the Dutch principles.

Dutch though have different understanding of language, they tend to read the face value of sentence. If an English man said to you "I almost agree", what he meant to say is that he does not agree at all. But to a Dutch man, that means "Ah, he has agreed". More translation in the following link, pretty amusing.
http://www.joppeluiten.nl/anglo-dutch%20translation%20guide.htm

I have similar experience when dealing with Dutch people in the bank, I normally end my emails with "please advice" to be polite. However, one of my colleague wrote back "What do you want me to advice, you know everything".