No to This, but Yes to That!

Junk Mail. You know 'em. In the U.S., supposedly one is able to write to an authority dealing with this issue, somewhere in Colorado, to request that your name and address be withheld from junk mailing; but despite my doing that more than a decade ago, it never seemed to have worked. Even spam filters work better in keeping the junk mail away.

During my stroll in the city today (in Amsterdam, that is), I saw tiny stickers affixed to people's mail slot. On it are two options: the left one states whether or not you want unaddressed advertising, while the right part gives you the option of whether or not you want catalogs. The home owner gets to choose: Yes or No to either part. As you can see in the pictures above, one house decides it does not want unaddressed advertising mail (Nee or No), but welcomes catalogs (Ja or Yes); while the other house wants neither of the mailing (Nee, Nee, or No, No). It only wants personal mails and bills.

Unfortunately I never found out whether or not the system worked. Any Amsterdamers out there who could verify this?

Honor Scanning

Today I accompanied by aunt grocery shopping and learned a new device in the grocery world of Amsterdam: Personal Handheld Scanner. Who gets to use it, and how does that work? Well, the grocery store gets to offer this privilege to old clients and frequent/repeat customers. And here is how this works: when a customer enters the store, she would go to the scanner kiosk, where, after scanning a special card, she would grab a scanner. And off to shop...

When she picks up an item, she scans the barcode of that item, and the item would be registered within the scanner. Change your mind? Then just re-scan and push a "minus" button and the item disappeared from the scanner register. As she picks up more things, she scans more barcodes, and the scanner will hold all the information. For things that need weighing, she would put the fruits (for example) on the scale, scan the specific item, and the scale would produce a barcode sticker. Then she would scan this sticker and put the items on her cart.

At the end of the grocery shopping, she would go to a separate counter (thus, avoiding the long queue elsewhere) and surrender the scanner to a staff, along with cash or a debit card. The staff would then run the debit card through a machine and deduct the proper amount, and hand back the card plus some shopping bags (but the environmentally conscious Amsterdamers always bring their own canvas grocery bags from home). No muss, no fuss.

This is all done on one's honor. The store does random spot checks (just like they do in buses and trams). If one gets caught "stealing" (not scanning the product), then the person loses privileges. There is no such thing as "Oh, I forgot to scan that." No excuse.

[UPDATE: Jul 10, 2006]
During my recent trip to the U.S., I saw that the same scanning method has been applied to select Target customers. I am surprised that a city like Tokyo with their super-honest citizens has not had any of these floating around, unless I have not been privileged to have the opportunity to use it.

Koninginnedag

Koninginnedag, or Queen's Day, is celebrated in Amsterdam every April 30. This year the celebration took place on Friday, April 28 night (Eve of the Queen's Day) and on Saturday, April 29. The weather was extremely agreeable: sunny but cool. The entire downtown area was blanketed with people donning anything orange: hats, wigs, clothes, and jewelries. The color came from the name of the first king, Willem van Oranje (Dutch for Orange). Nothing weird in having Orange as one's name (think of similar surnames such as: Black, White and Brown).

The current queen, Beatrix, whose birthday falls on January, decided it best to keep her mother's birthday as the formal Queen's Day date as it falls on a much more agreeable Springtime weather. During that day, she usually goes to a small town somewhere in the Netherlands to make an appearance. She normally does not show up in Amsterdam during this celebration (she does not reside in Amsterdam).

The Eve of the Queen's Day is also a time when people would mark places in downtown for the following day's Flea Market. This year, Vondelpark (Amsterdam's version of Central Park) reserves the area for kids 16 and under to earn money either from merchandise sales or from staging a performance.

The celebration is not confined to land but spills onto canals as well, where revelers can be found on boats. I learn that it was not unusual for drunken people to fall off the boat during such festivities. The canals do not have any protective measures to prevent people from falling off the road either.

The picture above was taken from a pastry shop, where the day's offering contained anything orange (not necessarily the orange taste, but for sure the orange color). More pictures from this celebration is available here.

Airing Dirty Laundry

Seen somewhere in downtown Amsterdam during the Queen's Day celebration. The "I am" is taken from a current Amsterdam citywide campaign for tourism, called "I AMsterdam"

More pictures of the Koninginnedag (Queen's Day) celebration is available here

Jet Towels: the Ones that Really Work!

Hand-dryers in the restrooms of the world always leave a messy puddle underneath the devices and hands are not necessarily dried at the end of the timed session. Not until I arrived in Japan did I finally encounter these effective hand dryers. The Mitsubishi models (on the lower pictures, they are the first two pictures on the left) are more ubiquitous than the more recent Toto model (both at the upper and at the lower pictures, they are the ones on the right).

The device is usually attached to a wall, at the waist level (usually Japanese people's waist level). One activates the unit by inserting both hands downward into the mouth of the device, with the palm and back parallel to the unit. The machine turns on, and gusts of wind come from both directions of the hand. As one slowly pulls back the hands, s/he will find them dry.

And what happens to the water? It all dripped onto the bottom of the device and contained within it. No mess. Another advantage: there is no contact between the device and your hands (unless you have a huge-sized hands), which means minimal or zero chance of germ transmission.

For more information:
Mitsubishi Hand Dryer