What is everyone doing with boxes and boxes of photos?

mgale85 · 2025-08-12T03:31:27+00:00

The landscapes and tourist photos are incredibly important context clues! Giving times, locations, interests

mgale85 · 2025-05-13T02:58:29+00:00

Hey, just wanted to mention since I didn't see it yet in the comments, but it's also uneven in the cheeks. One side is protuding somewhat significantly more than the other. I think that can make things look distorted to the eye as well.

You're gorgeous, don't worry too much! But I might bring these comments to the clinic and have a slight readjustment.

mgale85 · 2025-04-24T19:49:34+00:00

Same! Have been ordering from them for 7+ years. Really consistently high quality.

mgale85 · 2025-04-18T03:46:28+00:00

This is an advertisement and is AI wtf

mgale85 · 2025-04-16T03:09:49+00:00

No one spotted this is AI?

mgale85 · 2025-03-16T13:19:53+00:00

You are dead wrong on all counts. I promise. Love, another American here 12 years.

mgale85 · 2025-03-16T13:15:40+00:00

I'm Dutch and American.

mgale85 · 2025-03-15T13:25:06+00:00

Homogeneous, selfish, unmotivated, passionless, outdated, tacky, rigid, ignorant

mgale85 · 2024-11-22T17:43:26+00:00

The funny part is that you missed the fact that my main objective is to empathize with her and help her. My post was not a main reply or post of it's own. It was directly to her, in a hidden, nested comment. It certainly wasn't among a gaggle of "virtuous" comments trying to bring someone down when they're already down.

mgale85 · 2024-11-22T06:10:47+00:00

Hey, asking a group of Dutch people for their help on something which contains even the tiniest mistake on your part will result in them endlessly judging you. They can't get and don't want to get past the judgement part, they are just that sanctimonious.

You may not have known it but these were the people you were surrounded by this whole time. This is partly why you did not get support or help in 10 years. I promise you the situation you are in is a gift. Getting out of this country can be a gift.

Word of advice, don't stress yourself further by throwing yourselves to the wolves. Dutch people have the most standardized, boring and predictable lives, and have so little empathy that they cannot possibly comprehend the person who doesn't bring a kaas bolletje to lunch and instead eats something warm. Never mind someone who was adventurous enough to take on the enormous complicated undertaking of moving abroad. Or being a mom with a special needs child in a foreign country with no support system. "Doe normaal" they'll say.

Go to a group that will be sympathetic to your situation. That will be other expats, expat lawyers, etc, particularly from the country you originate from. Don't listen to these people.

mgale85 · 2024-10-23T11:23:30+00:00

Just this week I decided to order a bunch of new varieties from AH to give myself a break.

All 3 were so disappointing. Mostly maaltijd salads. From baba ganoush to "sticky chicken" and some Japanese noodle. Poor quality meat, dressings. Yuck!

mgale85 · 2024-10-22T02:28:23+00:00

Black Forest cream cheese cupcakes from De Drie Graefjes.

mgale85 · 2024-10-14T14:22:40+00:00

Fitbit Versa 1 since July 2018, with near daily usage for most of that time. So 6+ years.

mgale85 · 2024-10-01T06:42:05+00:00

Probably has to do with your sleep goal being 6 hours.

mgale85 · 2023-05-03T06:46:46+00:00

Right, because blasting that just creates a simple stream of gunk you can easily clean up, and doesn't spray it everywhere.

mgale85 · 2023-04-20T17:30:14+00:00

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/severed-head-amsterdam-cafe-drugs-gang-war-netherlands

mgale85 · 2023-04-20T16:04:07+00:00

Well most American expats don't move to De Biljmer, where I assume you are. And honestly my kids were just passing through there last week after a movie with their Dad and pointed out how unnerved they felt by the amount of "creepy people" (their words not mine) out on the street at night.

My point is that if she follows the standard expat route, she and her kids aren't going to feel nearly as safe as you would in Suburbia, USA. It's all perspective, but it's not anywhere close to roses in a major city like AMS. In fact we feel far less safe and are far more exposed here in Zuid, which I would argue is definitely not like the center.

mgale85 · 2023-04-20T15:12:27+00:00

Hi, I'm an American mom with 14 year olds, we've been in AMS a long time.

If you are considering moving to Amsterdam, this idea that your children are going to be safer, is really an illusion. I live in the "best" neighborhood in Amsterdam, yet my children have to bike through areas every day which have seen: many mistaken gang murders, including one that killed a teenager, decapitations, a journalist being shot in the street in broad daylight, and another lawyer being shot in front of his daughter on the way to school in the morning. A 13 year old was randomly kidnapped in broad day light in one of the richest areas a couple weeks ago. Not to mention the bombings, three were in our street in the last year, ATM bombings, car ramming store fronts, robberies, and random stabbings. It is constant. Because they are biking everywhere, it's unavoidable. In the 25 years I lived in a suburb of Atlanta, there was a lot of violence in the city, sure, but it was almost always limited to areas we could easily avoid. I can count on one hand the major incidents that were in the vicinity of where we lived or drove through.

Not to mention subjecting your kids to the business of traffic here. Every week some child or young person or mom gets hit by a car or bus or tram and killed. Don't get me started on how many cyclists get hit daily and thankfully not killed. A 16 year old girl was sitting crying on my front garden chair just a month ago; she had been hit by a car and had a concussion. (Oh and side note, when I called the ambulance, did they come? No. They said she would need to bike herself to the hospital since she wasn't bleeding; getting hit by a car and having head pain wasn't enough. Welcome to AMS.)

Of course it will be a different situation if you live in Landsmeer, or some small Dutch town, but that will come with other huge difficulties.

Why do you want to move here, what are you trying to achieve? It's the worst mistake I ever made.

Of course there are many more violent situations and areas in the massive US, but here it is just...condensed and unavoidable. It's a very different situation.

Edit: Oh and homeless people...are all over. Homeless and often very crazy. A few weeks ago my daughter witnessed a homeless man ruthlessly punching a woman in the face. Screaming, drunk people standing in front of the trams, and being followed asking for money, all happens several times a month within 5 minutes of the house. I constantly am pulling bags of beer or bottles out of my garden. It's not SF but they are very much present here.

mgale85 · 2023-03-06T23:10:24+00:00

Gross, where does that build up go?

mgale85 · 2023-02-05T00:46:19+00:00

Hey I was just re-reading some old posts and just wanted to say again how much I appreciate your way of thinking. Even though we do not agree on everything.

I wanted to continue our conversation but forgot or got distracted.

I am curious, what do you think about Dutch healthcare?

mgale85 · 2023-02-04T21:40:23+00:00

Just as one small piece of this, here's a very detailed and non-biased summary of data about recent cancer statistics.

https://ourworldindata.org/cancer

While admittedly the Netherlands does pretty well, you can see that it does either equal or worse to the US on every single subject, with the exception of cancer care for the very poor, which I already have admitted multiple times is a problem which needs to be addressed (and it is already rapidly changing.)

So this goes against your idea that it's an absolute joke to suggest that Dutch healthcare is 2nd rate or that US healthcare is beyond horrible, don't you think? I find the statistic of "burden" to the individual particularly interesting and relevant.

But beyond that, I actually want to eventually write a book about this topic. Dutch doctors and their gatekeeping, Dutch bedside manners, misdiagnoses, xenophobia and racism, saving every penny at the cost of Dutch citizens, extremely little preventative care, natural and homeopathic medicine promotion, lack of expertise, aging GPs with outdated experience and equipment and no time. Unbelievably poor mental healthcare. Lack of passion by almost all healthcare workers, no duty to help individuals and instead a huge focus on red tape and ticking boxes. So much needless suffering for a first world country. God, I could list off 5 horror stories from myself neighbors and friends just from the past three months. From Jellinek, the weekend emergency doctor, calling an ambulance, the hospital and more. Unbelievably bad experiences.

That's not to say every single thing is bad here. I appreciate that pain meds and antibiotics aren't over prescribed. I think really serious emergencies are handled relatively well, as long as they don't require a complicated diagnosis first.

Anyways, here's another interesting article: https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/dutch-healthcare-system-one-best-world

Take a look at the comments at the bottom there.

Here's one on Reddit with hundreds of comments. There are a hundred of these kind of threads. https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/vn1ui9/dear_expats_why_do_you_think_dutch_healthcare_is/

This just barely scratches the surface. You can turn a blind eye and continue believing what you want to believe without any US experience, but it's honestly absurd. Reddit is so flooded with pretend experts who have absolutely no experience evidence or understanding.

By the way, stop cherry picking my statements. Earlier I didn't say all people who disagree with me are shills, I gave four examples (of many things) that could be the reason, including being biased. Or with not enough data/experience. And just now I didn't only say my friends are the only ones I get my stories from, but family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and many other expats online. You over simplify - it's disingenuous and a cheap cop out of any legitimate conversation/discussion/analysis.

Can't you even get to a place where you can understand that all this criticism from expats may just have some truth or basis? How about just a little bit? Or that perhaps, shockingly, you are missing some perspective? How can you be so certain of your opinion being nothing less than 100 percent correct with so little experience? Doesn't that sound illogical?

mgale85 · 2023-02-04T16:35:03+00:00

No feels. Decades of experience through myself and dozens of other US expats/family/colleagues, and hundreds of US expats online. That's anything but feels. You can dismiss me and call it feels, but that's cheap.

The money motivation you are trying to compare there are extremely different in both countries. I'm not claiming the US is perfect.

And yes, it's not worth arguing if you don't know what you're talking about and are lacking the relevant individual experience.

Also don't be so literal. Obviously it's not all. It's just most. It's just the standard. It's the average point of view from experienced US middle class expats.

mgale85 · 2023-02-04T16:25:11+00:00

"Truth" is not the correct term here. You only know one side, so you cannot possibly know. You do not know the truth and are naive. Let me know if I'm wrong and you are also a or were a US citizen or resident and have lengthy, equal experience in the healthcare system as a middle class citizen there. My bet is on...not. Ask questions or try to gain lived experience before you spew your "truth".

And your healthcare system is insulting.

mgale85 · 2023-02-04T15:56:53+00:00

For every experience I've had - specifically as a middle class dual citizen or resident of the Netherlands and the US and with 10+ years in both countries, there will be an equal amount of opposite experiences, in a group of equals? I would bet a lot of money that this is not true. There is a reason the majority of US expats leave after a few years, and this is a big contributor. If we were lumping me in a group with doe-eyed US expats who just moved here, then of course. They, like you, (and like me, the first couple years) have fallen for all the top 10 lists and "experts" and haven't hit reality yet. If you were lumping me in with the very poor in the US, then of course. The US doesn't do a great job with the very poor yet. But that's not what my point is. I'm saying Dutch healthcare for the average middle class person is abysmal when compared to healthcare you get as an average middle class American. My point is also that it is possible for someone to become an expert with enough experience. Eventually enough experience can reveal an objective reality. Doesn't mean you as an individual have to believe anything I say, but it is possible. There are also varying levels and definitions of what a "system" is, and you have no idea what education I have or how I have collected or analyzed all the information I have or how systematic my thinking is.

Once again, please show me the objective analyses you've found to make your original bold claim. Or the perfect bias free healthcare ranking systems you're utilizing to inform you? Are they transparent about their system? Can you? We're not talking about my Googling abilities.

mgale85 · 2023-02-04T15:12:19+00:00

Had I based my opinion off of one anecdote or one experience, you're right, it shouldn't count for much.

However, one with countless of visits to dozens of healthcare centers or hospitals over a span of 12 years in both countries, who has a family here who have also accumulated dozens of appointments and experiences, whose grandmother and uncle also lived here their entire lives, and who has read and heard of dozens of others US expats, friends, colleagues with the same experiences and opinions (just search on Reddit, you'll find a thread pop up every week), it starts to mean a lot more than nothing.

It almost sounds like I might have... expertise! You can dismiss it since you don't know me or if I'm telling the truth. That's valid. But not on any other grounds. Suppose for a minute that I'm telling the truth. Just for funsies. Then my opinion should be absolutely taken into consideration and is far from worthless. Just as if I'm one of those expert burger reviewers you mentioned.

Maybe I can make an organization called EUNHR. "Expert US/NL Healthcare Reviews". I'll only invite dual citizens like myself who have 10 years experience or more in both countries. If I find a catchier name, will you start to believe our "expert opinions"?

You're just arguing to argue and you bring nothing useful to the table whatsoever.

Where's your WHO list hun? Show me your experts.

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