Getting down to business

Can I just say that it's great being married to a "highly skilled knowledge migrant"? 

There were a ton of tasks we had to do on Friday, things that had to be accomplished before Marlon started work on Monday. The day was packed, but everything was made absolutely painless by the fact that Marlon's job afforded us a relocation consultant to accompany us on all the errands. Our first stop was ABN Amro Bank at the World Trade Center, which is kind of like the Makati CBD—a cluster of glass and steel office buildings that I haven't seen anywhere else in the city. 

That one hour at the bank uncovered a few surprising tidbits, such as the fact that checks have been phased out in Europe. Yep! Nobody uses checks anymore—it's all debit and credit cards. I find that mind-boggling, considering that in Singapore, one of the most advanced financial hubs of Asia, I still get paid in checks. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

We both got "private accounts", which come with a debit/ATM card and are linked to a savings account with monthly interest. The setup sounds perfect; I just hope we actually have savings to put in those accounts. Marlon also got a credit card, the niftiest features of which are zero percent interest and monthly payments deducted automatically from your paycheck. Seems the Dutch know the dangers of living beyond your means.

Oh, and big-ticket items bought using the credit cared are automatically insured. Welcome to the first world.

After the bank, we headed to the Expat Center, also in the World Trade Center. It's a one-stop shop (which relocation agencies pay to use) for a number of services that would normally be scattered between several government offices, or even cities. So instead of doing these tasks over a full day or two, we just spent about an hour in this very chic office. Chi chi poo poo! as my friend Susie would say.

The receptionist at the Expat center welcomed us with a cute goodie bag...

... that contained, among a pile of flyers for organizations like Republicans Abroad (eew) and the British Society, an issue of Time Out Amsterdam, expat handbooks, city maps, and a prepaid SIM card. I like.

Instead of queuing up with the hoi polloi at the town hall, we simply had to squeeze into a cushy red cubicle to register our arrival into the Netherlands with this very friendly lady. She entered us into The System with data from our documents ("Philippine birth certificates are always so hard to read!") and gave us each a Burgerservicenumber, or BSN, a kind of social security number which we'll need for pretty much everything.

Afterwards, we registered with Immigration and applied for our residence permits. This involved simply walking over to the cubie of a nice man named Marcel and handing him our passports, documents, and passport-size photos with gray backgrounds and no smiles. "Look at that!" he exclaimed, pointing to my Netherlands visa photo. "They're allowed to smile in Asia!"

Within minutes, Marcel welcomed us officially to the Netherlands and handed us the approval letters of our residence permits. Marlon's residence permit is valid for five years, but only for working with Philips; mine needs to be renewed within a year, but covers any kind of job I can get. (Marlon can't even do volunteer work!) Marcel told us to expect an "invitation" within the next two weeks to come and pick up our residence cards, which will be our main IDs, at the Expat Center.

Sure. And I'll just kick back with a pina colada while waiting for that email. Did I mention that this whole procedure was absolutely painless?

Update (forgot this part!): At the Expat Center, we also converted our Philippine driving licenses into Dutch licenses. This was so easy, it was ridiculous. Because of Marlon's "highly skilled knowledge migrant" status, neither of us had to take a driving test! We simply paid 22€ apiece for a form with questions like "Are you able to use both arms and legs?" (like... DUHHH), filled it up, and mailed it. In a few weeks we should be receiving notifications on the next step, which is to send them our Philippine licenses. Within the next two months, we'll be equipped to drive all Europe!

The last official errand was driving into the city to be screened for tuberculosis. Of all the diseases, I don't know why this is the one the Dutch screen for; in Singapore, it's HIV. We ran into a couple of other new hires from Philips, also with their relocation consultants, in the waiting room. The X-ray took all of five minutes.

And that was about all we had to do to dig our migrant claws even deeper into the Netherlands! *Evil laughter*