'When a Dutch person behaves rude to you, don't get angry, because it is normal conduct to him.' That is what other foreign people told Pham Thi Ngoc Mai from Hanoi after she came to the Netherlands four months ago. When she started her PhD at the Inorganic Materials group of Chemical Engineering, she indeed had to get used to the direct way of Dutch talking and also to what she calls the 'cold behaviour'. 'Sometimes it feels like Dutch colleagues act as if I am not there. But then, the next moment they are so friendly to me!' Mai says confused.
Another wisdom her non-Dutch friends told Mai was Dutch people like to talk with each other. In Dutch, that is. Again, Mai tends to agree. 'During lunch, the Dutch people from my department sit at a separate table from the foreign aio's. When I want to join them, I will have to carry a conversation in English, for the minute I stop talking English, people will talk Dutch again.' That might explain why she is taking the intensive Dutch course at the International Office. And it is not as bad as it may seem. 'There are people who come to the Foreign Table sometimes and I do have very friendly colleagues,' she says, and grins: 'Also the Dutch ones'.
'One great thing of people in Holland is that they do know how to enjoy life,' the Vietnamese girl sighs. 'In Vietnam people work seven days a week. Even my Vietnamese friends who live abroad do so.' She definitely likes the 'gezellige' part of Holland. 'Why would you work seven days a week when five will do?' One of the reasons Mai came to Holland was because her husband has been taking his PhD in Amsterdam. Like any Vietnamese he is a very hard worker. But since his wife came over he does not work in the weekends anymore. Mai laughs: 'I forced him to stop doing that.'
