Clay figures...2

A thousand things happening at the same time. I waited at 8 AM this morning at the OSB for the delivery of the clay. Henk, the chauffeur arrived 4 hours later. But the clay is for free, so I am not complaining. Toon (the facilities manager at the OSB) and Henk unloaded 9 pallets (sic!) from a huge truck unto the school grounds. Tomorrow Michael will be here, so then the whole set up will be built (tent, tools, etc). And on Thursday he will start working with the pupils of the OSB on the clay figurines.

The tilers started today on Hadassah's work, but there is not much to see yet - so I will publish images of the work in progress later this week. And Amalia is arriving tomorrow to inspect her work at Anything is Possible.

On not speaking Sundanese/Japanese....

I have finally met Hadassah Emmerich. She spent a couple of days in Amsterdam (she lives in Berlin) with her friend Jeroen and we toured the Open Source route. It was great talking to her.

Hadassah has a Dutch mother and 'Indische' father. In the Netherlands, we speak of 'Indisch' when we refer to people who come from Indonesia at a time when it was still a Dutch colony. It is always such a treat to talk to people from a bi-cultural background. One of the things we talked about was language: how strange it is to have the appearance of someone who speaks Sundanese (in Hadassah's case) or Japanese (in my case) but doesn't. And on how the sound of that language is so familiar, because you have heard to so often during your childhood, that it feels like you can understand, but you don't.

It always reminds me of that great book by Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West.