Economy beats ecology

In the Baltics we have a great practice of re-using old beer bottles. In Holland they also have the same system. Around 90% of beer, coca and other bottles are returned for re-use.

As you might know, reusing of old bottles is much more ecological than recycling. Despite this fact, Holland decided to abolish reusing practice and start recycling all wasted bottles in the country. WHY!?!?!?

Because: EU said that by requiring to set up a bottle re-use system, Holland is protecting its market from foreign breweries. For instance to Svyturys it would be VERY expensive to collect bottles in Holland. That is why EU demands to provide fair competitve conditions to all players. And now all bottles will be simply collected and burnt/scraped/recycled.

My business society teacher is now probably crying. She is very emotional.

Rooms vs. dishes

Today I discovered, that there is a similarity between unbreakable dishes and a common room in my apartment.
The similarity is the following:
-I know, that I can break unbreakable dishes, but I do not dare to try,
-I also know, that I can clean the common room, but I do not dare to try.

My common room is uncleanable.

Amazement in pricing

I boaught a coliflower one day. From a turkish shop. The price was qouted per piece/per stuck. And that inspired a question: what does it take to be able to qoute prices 'per piece'?

Basically it means that you have to be able to grow exactly the same size coliflower for many many coliflowers. That also means that somebody is literally checking the size of each head before cutting it off. Walikng in a greenhouse with a meter an checking every single head! Imagine!
Impressive.

Dutch ignorance

Ignorance of Dutch people to things happening beyong Holland borders never stops surprising me. Some of my recent occurences of this type:

One Dutch person saw me browsing www.Delfi.lt. He looked at it to make sure that writings were "from left to right".

Another citation from a Dutch girl: "Those countries, like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary...they are a bit backward...eh, right? Is Latvia (i.e. Lithuania) also like that?"

And: "So, Tadas, how much did you pay for your dyploma?"

...strangely, somehow I start loving Soviet Union for acknowledging that Baltic States were known, significant, even important countries, which were so desparately needed in the Union. Ech...