Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Addendum at the end
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(on to more cheerful notes)

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, I will be able to clutch the much sought-after Resident Permit ('RP') card in my hands. (It'll be Monday by the time I publish this)

Yippee! The previous mishap involving my RP is finally being put to rest.

I received the notification letter from Gemeente Delft (Local Municipality or 'LM') last Friday informing this felicitous news.

At least, that's what I thought it meant. Actually, I had already given up hope on receiving the 'right' RP card until a few days before we leave the country since I didn't hear a peep out of them following the April 10th incident. Almost two months after I gave LM a new passport-size photo, a letter finally dropped into our apartment's pigeonhole.

Ironically enough, on the same day we also received three separate A4-size envelopes from IND or the Immigration Office ('IO') which we must get some Dutch person to translate all of them for us.

This Mac notebook does have a Language Translator widget but unfortunately, the Anglicised words are very much transliterated. This in turn renders most of the sentences incomprehensible. Or worse, a bunch of gibberish.

At a glance, the content of these letters reads like some questionnaires which we have to complete before our respective RPs expire this September.

Until I see the 'correct' RP with my own eyes, I would be saving my Snoopy Dance after we trekked over there tomorrow morning for the pick-up.

Till then, here are some photos from our outing today, a Koopzondag (or literally means 'Buy Sunday') where most shops choose to be open for business on the first Sunday of every month. On other Sundays, shops remain close save for those in big cities such as Den Haag (yay!), Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

It was a scorching hot day. On the spur of the moment, we stopped for ice cappucinos (Douwe & Egbert's full-bodied concoction) and strawberry ('aardbei') pancake ('pannekoek') at one of cafes flanking the Delft Square (or the Plaza). It was our first time slaking off our thirst at this touristy promenade. A Sunday market filled up a section of the Square with items ranging from antiques to lingerie! And a mini-carousel and sidestalls with soft toys as prizes also made their lucrative appearances.






A leisurely walk around Delft's old town on such a beautiful day was just what we needed to unwind. Water lilies already popped out onto their pads, decking the canals with white floral patterns. Summer is finally here, I hope!


p.s. At long last, exactly at 10.25 a.m. I obtained my RP! Woohoo!!! I broke into a Snoopy Dance, just outside of the LM building. Luckily, it was relatively early in the day so people were either still dazed or couldn't be bothered (hey, it's a Monday!) Here's a snapshot for posterity ;)