Netherlands Five - Text
Subject is 38 years old. He is an organic biology teacher at CSUF. He was born and raised in the Netherlands (Newport, Strien and Leiden). Attended school in the Netherlands, Canada and New York; learned English at school around age 12. Currently lives in Southern California.
TRANSCRIPTION
I was born in a little town called Newport, in the Netherlands. What you guys call Junior High is is kind of what we have also until you’re about twelve years old. That’s when you have to make a decision what kind of career you want to have. So, some people go to technical trade schools. Some people go to higher education, which would be more the high school level. I did that. And I did that for five years. And I teach Organic Chemistry mainly. The definition of Organic Chemistry is a chemistry that deals with the element carbon. Virtually anything you look at or touch or eat or drink is organic. In the old days organic was defined as as it has to be living, living material. Which turned out to be not really true. There’s dead material that has organic material in it too. A lot of people think organic is a very different thing these days right because organic farming and organic products. And that’s kind of funny that that has come out like that. That’s not quite the meaning of the word organic chemistry. I was good at it too so that kind of helped of course. I was not so good at other subjects but chemistry always sort of worked well for me so... I just enjoyed mixing different chemicals and seeing the color change or seeing a solid material form or seeing something dissolve. It was fascinating to me. And so I’ve always liked it. I was born in Newport and then I moved to Strien, it’s just a very tiny little town in the Netherlands just south of Rotterdam. Then I lived in Leiden for a few years, I stayed there for two years after that and then I decided to move to Canada. I met somebody at a conference. I mean I knew I wanted to do something different. Felt like I wanted to get away. The opportunities in the Netherlands weren’t...there weren’t many of them. So what... I’m try this first part of this paragraph ok. (First paragraph of Comma Gets a Cure in Dutch).
Recorded by Noel Salter, November 12, 2007
Running time: 04:13