This is worth a short note: from what I hear, the 1988 Oldsmobile of Trenholme Avenue that some of you know and may even love is now beginning its well-earned retirement. I wish it a good rest.

As for politics:

The elections results are in, and nobody seems to know who exactly will form the next government. No two parties are big enough to form a majority coalition. The best bets seems to be on the Christian Democratic CDA and the Labour Party (PvdA) forming a coalition with a third small party that is very very Christian. Others think that the Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, may have to include the the Socialists in the government, since they almost trippled their seat total. A symbol to the people that he got their message, in some way.

In any case, it's all been quite civilized. If you compare the campaign with Canada, I think that the Dutch brought forward less glamour and more content. And people here say that it used to be better. Plus, on the same night the election results were announced, the political party leaders took part in one final debate where they calmly discussed possibilities for working together in the future. I've never seen anything like it. Partly because of our system in Canada, I always feel that the losers go home to cry and the winners go to Ottawa to govern.

More than three months since my last poetic post, but I want to assure everyone that I'm still alive and doing alright.

It's been a hectic couple of months here at the Tinbergen Institute in Amsterdam, and more than a little bit stressful. I've been trying to focus my ideas about potential research projects, both for a Master's thesis and an eventual PhD. I've made progress, but the road has been rough. Circumstances have given me a nice little kick in the but as well, since I wanted to meet (and did meet) a November 1st deadline for a research grant application to the Dutch government, and I am currently facing more deadlines in the coming weeks for PhD applications to other schools. At least I have the comforting thought that I will NEVER have to make grad school applications again, as long as I shall live - three times is enough!

Lots of news to catch up on, but perhaps most exciting of all ... today is election day here in the Netherlands. The previous coalition government fell late last year, when the smallest member D66 withdrew its support because of a very Dutch scandal. I won't try to summarize it, but it touches on house member Hirsi Ali, who is closely tied to the issues surrounding the death of Theo van Gogh a few years ago, possible lies on her refugee status application more than a decade ago, and the Immigration Minister (from the same party!) trying to make political capital through removing Ali's citizenship. Unbelievable. So here we are with "Tweede Kamer" (House of Commons) elections and it is a neck and neck race. Or, as I recently learned in Dutch, a nek-aan-nekrace!

The two main parties are the CDA (Christian Democrats), led by Jan Peter Balkenende, and the PvdA (Labour Party), headed by Wouter Bos. The last two governments were headed by the CDA, and the two before by the PvdA. The PvdA was the big favorite in the months leading up to the elections, but the CDA has gradually pulled ahead of them only to have the race tighten up in the last few days. The thing is, the CDA and their right-wing allies (VVD, Liberals) are not projected to have enough seats to form a majority, and neither are the PvdA and their potential left-wing coalition partners (SP, Socialists and GroenLinks, the Greens). We shall see.

A little bit of humour this morning: Wouter Bos went to cast his vote, surrounded by a dozen television cameras, and he was turned away because he didn't have the proper piece of paper. He had left it at home, so they made him go and get it! Fair enough, but not exactly the kind of news the Labour Party wanted on the morning of the election.

Some more humour: three of the very small far right parties had a showdown in Rotterdam earlier this week. They are: the Freedom Party, One Netherland, and Fortuyn, the last of which used to be headed by the assasinated gay former University Professor Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn (or List Pim Fortuyn, as it used to be called), made a huge impact a few years ago, coming out of nowhere to win dozens of seats by, to oversimply, calling for a hard line on immigration and integration, particularly regarding Muslims. Since he was killed by an animal rights activist, the party has pretty much fallen apart. None of this is funny, it's just there is still this cult of personality around him, with certain people claiming that only they know what he really wanted and only they are able to reinterpret his message. It's like Marx and revisionism all over again. The funny thing at this protest was that people from Fortuyn wanted to critize what they saw as the (even more?) xenophobic policies of the Freedom Party and One Netherland, and so they had a sign saying, "That's not what Pim meant!" Nicely put.