I will now walk you through the incomprehensible logic of filing taxes in The Netherlands…

1) When downloading the online tax filing program, the site of the Belastingdienst (The Dutch IRS) tells me the following:
“Warning! You can only use this program if you lived in The Netherlands through the entire year of 2006. If you lived outside The Netherlands through the entire year of 2006 and had Dutch income and property, use the program for foreign taxpayers.”

I lived in the US for half of 2006… what program should I use? Secondly, why don’t they display a link to the program for foreign taxpayers? I can’t find it anywhere!

2) After finding and downloading the tax program for foreign taxpayers, I get this message:
“You cannot use this program if you lived outside The Netherlands for (part of) 2006.”

Okay, I guess I’ll go back to the other program…

[UPDATE] There’s more…

3) By coincidence, I stumbled upon this message on the site:
“Warning! If you lived in the Netherlands for only a part of the year, you have to use the M-form. In that case, you cannot file taxes electronically.”

4) That sounds like my situation but clicking on the M-form link I get this…
“If you lived in the Netherlands for only a part of the year, because you immigrated to or from the Netherlands, you have to file taxes using the M-form.”

Well… I didn’t exactly immigrate… What should I do? Let’s just ask if I can delay my tax application, because this doesn’t make sense at all…

Things are going so fast! I realize that I haven’t written anything about my new courses yet, and I’m already halfway through this semester!

Well, there’s an explanation for all of this. First of all, I started out thinking that I’d be able to manage an extra course over this semester. I was wrong. Six classes is just one too many. It was hard to choose a class to drop, but it turned out that my course on Artificial Intelligence wasn’t exactly as good as I hoped it would be. The lectures were very interesting, but the homework was just a whole bunch of mindless Java coding. It would have been a challenge if I had the time, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Since it also didn’t directly contribute to my goal of learning about Human-Computer Interaction, I decided to drop it.

That was a good choice. My classes this semester are even more demanding than last semester. Spending 60 hours a week on courses is fine, 70 is just too much. I rather do less and do it really good. Interface and Interaction Design, MHCI Project, Cognitive Modeling, Applications of Cognitive Science, and Programming Usable Interfaces are all very good courses, and although I have to work really hard to keep up with all of them, I feel like I’m really getting something out of it. My midterm grades are promising: I predict a victory similar to last semester :).

During my winter break, I spend some time writing a nice letter to the people from Edukans, concerning my cHAIRity. They sent me an email back letting me know that the money (550 Euro) safely arrived. They thanked me for the donation, asking what the next color will be. :)

So thank y’all for donating!

[PS: there are still some Dutch people (you know who you are!) that didn't pay me yet! I'll get you soon!]