If anyone has a pre-2008 Opel Agila or Vauxhall Agila in good condition, with valid MOT or APK that isn’t due to expire soon, and is willing to donate it, or lend it to me for a year, then please get in touch. A small actual van might be great too. Below is why.

1. The older Agila’s are really boxy and spacious and cute. 🥰
2. They are actually as tall as I am when I stand next to them, so are (almost) a minivan.
3. They run on petrol/gas, so not on diesel.
4. They are low in road tax and insurance.
5. They are easy to park.

Having something like this would enable me to stop renting storage space and would make me much more flexible than I currently am. (The only other thing that I would still need/like is a small power station.)

I had found one Opel Agila, but it needed work. Not necessarily a lot of work. Just a cleaning and fluid change and new brake components might have done the trick. I wasn’t in a position to accomplish that myself, unfortunately. It might have served me fine. It was old and very obviously used but that’s fine.

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I obviously won’t and can’t stay in the Netherlands.

• It’s one thing to be considered a “vieze vuile migrant” – cheap low-skill, low-wage labour, with at best diploma mill degrees – in other countries, but it’s quite another to be seen as such in what is supposed to be your home country. 😂
• Besides, I’m not eligible for any kind of support here any longer, of any kind, while the crazy legislation also stops me from supporting myself in ways that are considered fine elsewhere, the records that the Dutch have for me are a mess (and they prefer to believe what their computer systems say about me), and so far, each civil servant I’ve spoken with has given me different, contrasting information about just about anything. I no longer know anyone here, the weather is awful and depressing, I’m often not entirely well here and there is very little nature here (bricks, concrete, tarmac, asphalt and cultivated soil, mostly, with water surfaces the biggest natural areas), and my experiences and cultural background don’t fit in here any longer. 🥴
• What’s more, because I have been away from the country for so long, I can’t work just anywhere. I’m considered a potential security risk now. This is not about me personally. It’s some kind of rule that you have to have been registered here for 6 or 8 years.
• What is worse, the country is developing a culture of aggression and intimidation that I find extremely worrisome and unpleasant. There’s for example an epidemic of people targeting each other with explosives, but there is also a lot of paranoia (for example anti foreigners which now includes me) and aggression in other contexts.
• The seized-up mess that the overload of contradictory pieces of policy and legislation constitutes is making the country unliveable.

Life’s simply too short, folks. I don’t believe in fatalism or masochism. I believe in freedom. I believe in living. 😁😀 ☺️

My big problem is that I don’t have any money. I have not been able to support myself from the year I moved to Portsmouth. It’s a long story that no longer matters as I can’t change a thing about it, but it taught me a lot.

I’m going to teach myself a new programming language to get around that. That seems to be the easiest and quickest way to break out of this awful impasse. I’ve enough experience to know that I can do this. Big plus: It won’t matter what I look like as long as I can do the job well. (What I do not know yet is the degree to which I would like it, but I can compensate, for example by playing a musical instrument and going to woods and beaches and long walks in my spare time.) Before I enrolled in earth sciences at university, I actively explored enrolling in computer science and I have some experience with several languages.