If we’re (like twelve years ago) are doing proverbs for shits and giggles (and for the sake of easiness, really), then this is another Dutch one.
‘Bij iemand in het krijt staan’.
It literally means ‘Standing at someone in the chalk’ , so go translate that, right. The meaning is simple, owing someone something, most often some help or an apology. Help mostly when the other side has helped you, and an apology because you owe one.
I remember saying to my Greek (language) teacher once that I’d do all homework for that day (as in having my translations lead the class work or discussion or whatever you want to call it), because I honestly hadn’t done anything for a while so ‘ik stond nog bij hem in het krijt’ (I still owed him one, he was fine with it btw).
That’s kinda how you use it. Now yesterday obviously I was mightily pissed off. The same iteration of the same fucking ruinous nonsensensical fake shit gets a bit old after twelve years. It’s not even the content; it’s just that you should have understood by now that you shouldn’t even have started it, let alone continued. I’m not interested in the epic results of your endless wisdom as the results simply have been horrible. End of story. And you can’t get away with erecting a program that blames me personally for everything that’s supposed to be ‘bad’ in the world. That’s just complete lunacy, yet here we still are.
It makes you wonder who is owing who what, or ‘wie staat er in Godsnaam bij wie in het krijt’. I think many folk owe me an apology to be very honest. We’ve been over this, and we can talk about big cultural hallelujah and stuff, which is fine, I can do that, but let’s stay a bit more practical now. I think there are enormous amounts of freaks who really owe me an apology. You’re standing in my chalk.
What a lousy translation btw. It doesn’t work in English. Maybe they have an equivalent, maybe not. I’m too lazy to look it up. Well let’s look it up.
No there apparently is no equivalent, at least not as a proverb. Well there you go, you learned something today 😛
Yeah as simple as that. Instead of being smart about everything I think an apology, well and by now also a bag of money would simply do.
I bought 96 bottles of Schweppes btw, it was and is intended for my actual sobering up campaign. Day one worked really well. What is wrong with you people that you are so obsessed with me being dysfunctional. Did you see half of Japan die in agony when I recovered?
I don’t think anything happened, really. Surprised? That’s simply how it should have been. Unless you find binge drinking fruit juice for two weeks really disturbing or so?
But the point is that I’m gonna have a bottle now lol. I didn’t sleep very well. Let’s drink some water.
But it really does make you wonder. Let’s add some of the usual to keep it real. Of course they apologize in Japan; not everything is about world war 2. And they apologize in the Netherlands. I think the point is that no one really likes to apologize, but people still do. Everywhere it’s more or less the same. There are some nuances here and there.
In Dutch political culture, as a minister you generally speaking are allowed to apologize once. It means that you are allowed one ‘mistake’ basically, and well as long as it’s not superserious can apologize for it. Twice you might either wanna resign, or your position will become very weak, it depends a bit.
A popular one (at least used to be) ‘misinformation of the parliament’. The trias politica is obviously not ideal, most power is always gathered in the executive branch, which can lead to some conflicts. So a ‘popular’ one is ‘misinformation of the parliament’. So an agenda is set, and a debate, blahblah, and information about a certain case (questions are asked in advance, etc) are being given (with some technical exceptions that’s what happens). But often it turns out that the information being given is or wrong or seriously incomplete. The minister will burn for that (unless the coalition has a really sizeable majority, then sometimes it can be ignored). However he/she is generally speaking, as an unwritten rule (unless it’s really serious), allowed ‘one apology’. So he/she can apologize to the parliament. And then there generally speaking is a bit of a warning ‘no second time’, etc.
The question is always whether ‘misinformation’ is deliberate or not. Often it’s deliberate of course, but yeah (simply to get certain policies through).
But that has little to do with my life; it’s just that I don’t understand why this insistance on ruining me for life instead of just doing what you have to do if you practice what you preach yourselves.
This is no rocket science or hypercomplicated philosophy, this is just real life. You did what you did. We all know that, and soon I will continue writing about it.
But for today, I thought this little outro into something more practical was not a bad idea. Then at least you know where I am coming from.
Because I’m not going to accuse you folk of possessing an overdose of braincells, trust me on that.
