Over here in the Netherlands, part time working is pretty normal. I've been working four days a week for a couple of years now and I can really recommend it. Perhaps you will be a little bit less productive, but definitely not 20%.
Modern trench warfare using massed firearms, entrenched positions, and artillery arguably began in the mid-19th century (the American Civil War and the New Zealand Wars, for example). It wasn't until after the first World War that the major powers started treating it as an intractable problem.
That's not surprising. The Netherlands have a long history of producing quality XTC / MDMA and are one of the biggest XTC exporting countries worldwide. Furthermore, given the relaxed weed legislation a lot of marijuana is produced here.
A 99 euro vacuum food saver will get you a long way in sending drugs worldwide. Combine that with some clever packaging and the chances of it getting caught at customs are pretty small.
Heard the same from friends - they were sending meat products that were a little on the grey side of import rules across a border. Vacuum packing + bleaching it overnight seems to keep the sniffer dogs away. Whether that works for drugs I can't say though.
Dealers use moisture barrier bags that are heat sealed now as apparently dogs can detect vacuum sealed bags though unclear if it's outside contamination, like somebody putting together a package in a room full of weed shavings or smoke.
Both heat sealed and vacuum sealed are air-tight, so that difference should be a non-issue. Its the stuff sticking to the outside of the bag that might be an issue. For meat I'd imagine bleach should do the trick...no idea what you'd need to remove drug traces though. Not a skillset I plan on deploying anytime soon so didn't research it.
It works pretty well though. Giving 1 meter of clearance is just not possible in the very tight old city centers of the Netherlands, which also have a lot of biking traffic.
You really should. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised. The skill level of European drivers is far above that of American drivers, and because of laws like the one mentioned, they're much more respectful of riders and walkers.
Why not? As a tourist in Holland, there is absolutely no reason to drive a car. If you go to Amsterdam, there are a lot of interesting cities within 45 minutes by train. Even Groningen or Maastricht are within less than 3 hours by train (which is too far to do fore one day, but if you book a hotel over there for 1 or 2 nights is perfectly feasible)
Traffic in downtown LA, NYC or even Rome is worse than Amsterdam, and I'm really glad that I never had to drive in places like Vietnam or Cambodia. Sure, driving in Amsterdam requires you to pay attention but it isn't that bad.
Is that relevant? Local currency is still currency. A European business that accepts USD and converts it to EUR does not particularly matter, because most businesses that accept USD are not foreign businesses and will keep it in USD instead of converting it.
As someone who is working for one of the travelling agencies who had people on board (and I'm 99% sure one of my previous employers also had customers on that aircraft), could we please wait with all the speculation? Querying the database to see who might have been on board was no fun. I think that our customer rep's had an even harder time to answer questions. The suffering of relatives and friends must be much worse. I'm pretty sick of all the speculation in Dutch media right now, let's wait for some kind of official investigation and in the mean time light some candles for the deceased.
If you can handle it financially, just do it.