International Relations

I'm now living with a couple of guys who are trying to start up their own business together in web design; Bert is a Kiwi of Dutch origin (who speaks fluent Dutch to his parents on the phone) and Haydn is a Kiwi through and through.

On our first day together in the flat we were having one of those terrible "getting to know you" conversations, which inevitably ends in an awkward silence (once you've been through all the obvious questions and don't feel at liberty to ask anything else, for fear of being intrusive). It was in such a moment that I turned my attention to the rather bizar art works that had been left on our wall from the previous tenants; strange pictures of ships and men on horses molded out of metal and framed with big chunky wooden frames- it was quite apparent to me why these works of art had been left behind.

"I think you can tell a lot about people by looking at what they have on the walls, don't you?" I said. My new flat mate, Bert, kinda laughed and said; "Yeh, I know!...I made those metal pictures at school". I could tell that he was playing along with the joke and said; "Yeh, right, so you did!". He persisted in this vain for a while and even started describing how he'd bashed out the mental and filled it with wax so that it kept it's shape. I was quite impressed by this elaborate description and said "I bet you're really good at that game Balderdash..." after a long pause Bert finally said, "Balderdash?" looking quite perplexed; "...I've never heard of that game, but what's that got to do with my pictures anyway?".

I could now tell by looking at the expression on my flat mate Marie's face, that I should drop the whole topic of conversation since these rather intriguing pictures obviously did belong to Bert!
"Oh, never mind!" I said nervously, glad I hadn't made any direct comment about the weird wee pictures...I tell you it was a close shave!