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OT: Dutch/Junk/Dim S(ui)m

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Monday, September 15, 2003, 23:52
Tim May wrote: (re Dutch Auctions)
> Well, it's not. In an English auction the price starts low and is > raised until you reach a point which no bidder is willing to exceed. > Admittedly, if there are no offers at the initial asking price, it's > dropped until someone is willing to bid, but then it goes up in the > normal fashion (assuming more than one bidder). In a Dutch auction > the price starts out high and decreases until someone bids, and then > the item is sold to that bidder at that price. >
Ah. Thanks for clarifying that; I knew there was something odd about Dutch Auctions. You can just about count on any Engl idiom involving "Dutch" to be at least mildly pejorative, generally implying...cheap. To hold off starvation when I lived in NYC back in the 60s, I had a job as typist/shipping clerk at the NY branch of a Dutch company (we handled something like 60% of all tulip bulbs imported into the US, and actually it was interesting work and a nice bunch of people). This Co. was So Cheap they were still using stationery in the 60s that listed a branch in _Batavia_, otherwise known as Jakarta since 1947 or so. First day on the job, a co-worker recited a wonderful little quatrain about the Dutch, of which I only remember the last line--- "............ ............. somethingsomething the Dutch, For giving too little and asking too much." Would anyone happen to know the full poem? I find it curious that much of my adult life has been spent, one way or the other, with the Dutch-- that job, Indonesian research, and now living near Holland, Mich.

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John Cowan <cowan@...>