I’m possibly one of the people that doesn’t complain too much about the trains in The Netherlands. The NS (Dutch railways) has a reputation of delays and other malfunctions. I travel by train everyday, and as a frequent trainer I can tell it’s not that bad as people say it is. However, this week hasn’t been too good so far. Yesterday it took me over 3 hours to go to The Hague and over 4 hours back home. So when my laptop battery died on me, I bought a pile of magazines at Schiphol airport that brought me home. I have a love/hate relationship with magazines. I really love magazines, but I hate them because there are always some articles that make my brain spin, lead to concepts and I just don’t have the time to do something with them. Except if they coincidentally overlap with projects I work on. So, actually it is hate in a good way.

Anyway, today was another trainy day. Home, Amsterdam, Delft, Amsterdam, home. I’m in that last stage now; heading home. But due to some technical reasons it’s a real small train. So I sit first class now, second class was stuffed with people with worn out deodarant, standing on top of eachother with their sweatty uncovered parts exchanging body fluids.

Besides me a guy with standard creative looks: black eye glasses, wide jeans, retro sneakers, a bright green Freitag lookalike bag, a printed t-shirt and yes, an Apple Powerbook on his lap. He obviously just entered the creative arena. How I can tell? He is typing an invoice in InDesign. So recognizable, because, I must confess, I did the same when I worked for myself. Because you can control everything regarding its design. Fonts, lay-out, everything. Another reason, I peeked at his screen, he has an hour fee of €15,00. He worked on a routing through a city, and spent a total of 22 hours. No, he hasn’t decided yet, now it’s 19. Swiches to his calculator widget. 22 x 15 = 330, 19 x 15 = 285. 285 is better. Probably feel better not to cross the €300,00 barrier. And 18 x 15 makes 270. He has decided: €285,00 it will be. Relief, a smile, he’s happy. Too funny. It so reminds me of myself back then. You can also tell he is quite nervous because he knows he illegally sits first class. And older man and woman don’t have a seat and are standing, but have intense eye contact with my designer friend. You can see them think that they feel he has to hand over his seat, but he is really avoiding eye contact. Next stop: Amersfoort. Thank god, the suspense almost killed me.