— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ तिरासी —
I did some dinking around online this morning, and found myself curious about the most densely populated countries in the world. I did remember that The Netherlands has a high population density, and I wanted to see where it ranks.
The thing is, though, to get a sort of more fair comparison, I wanted to find out a ranking of countries that were neither city-states nor microstates, which consistently
crowd the top rankings of densley populated countries, even if they also have a tiny population as it is, like, say, Monaco, or Gibraltar (both of which have populations of only around 40,000—that's, like, smaller than Olympia).
So: I did find
this page, which contained this very specific information I wanted:
Many of the world’s small islands or isolated states have large populations for their size. The five most densely populated are Macao, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar. Singapore has 8,225 people per km², around 200 times as dense as the United States and 2,000 times as dense as Australia.
Of the larger countries, Bangladesh is the most densely populated, with 1,366 people per km². It’s followed by Rwanda (604), Lebanon (577), Burundi (574), and the Netherlands (548).
This includes a footnote, after "larger countries":
Here, we use an arbitrary cut-off of 10,000 square kilometers to define a "large" country.
In any event, this makes The Netherlands not only the fifth-most densely populated country in the world that is not a microstate; it's
the most densely populated, non-microstate country in Europe. And with that kind of nationwide urbanization, that really makes The Netherlands the most natural choice as the first European country we visit, even setting aside World Pride Amsterdam!
Naturally I had to text Shobhit these details. He added:
And they had to build dikes to keep the land from being flooded. Oh, right. Should I put dikes on my list of points of interest? I should. The key concern here is that makes this the one point of interest that exists outside of the metropolitan city centers we plan to be concentrating most of our time. This brings up new questions. Should we rent a car? Book a bus tour? Honestly I'm leaning toward the latter. I'm finding tours that are basically all-day excursions so far, but they also include the windmills I've been told I have to see while there, and the prices vary. The ones on the cheaper side wouldn't be much more than renting a car and at least we'd have a tour guide. I should see if Cathryn, whose sister lived there many years, has any pointers on this front.
That said, looking up information on the dikes and dams in The Netherlands, I learned a pretty pertinent detail. Amsterdam is made up of tons of canals, the biggest of which is the North Sea Canal, connecting the North Sea across a peninsula (effectively creating a large island) to a huge, inner body of water that at first glance on a map would be quite easy to mistake for a bay—which is what I always thought it was, until this morning. But, thanks to the
Afsluitdijk, a 20-mile dam connecting the north end of the aforementioned peninsula to the mainland to the northeast, that huge body of water is actually
a lake. Two different lakes, in fact: the
IJsselmeer, which covers the northern portion of this body of water; and
Markermeer, which stretches below that toward the city of Amsterdam. These two are themselves separated by
another dam, the
Houtribdijk. I'd love to see both of these dams in person, but that covers a rather large range of area.
In any event, all this time I thought Amsterdam sat on a canal fed by sea water. I guess IJsselmeer and Markermeer did once make up an actual bay, but now they are filled with fresh water. They are lakes! This is very fascinating to me.
Now, Amsterdam itself
does still sit on a major canal that connects Markermeer to the North Sea, which means that water—and the water of the many canals throughout the city—does get a saltwater mix to it. It turns out that water is neither like that of a freshwater lake nor fully sea water. I guess even among the canals the salinity
can really vary. I do already have a canals tour on my list of things to do, but that's a lot easier done as it's in the city proper. It's just that I'm now starting to consider what things
outside the cities are also not to be missed.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ तिरासी —
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ तिरासी —
As for yesterday, I took myself to AMC Pacific Place to see what may very well have been the first Iraqi film I have ever watched. It was called
The President's Cake, and I really liked it a lot. It's set in 1990 Iraq and is about the 3rd-grade girl who is chosen in her school to bake a cake as part of the country's compulsory celebrations of Saddam Hussein's birthday. That guy, what an asshole narcissist, huh? All I could think about was how much President Fuckwit would love to do exactly the same shit.
I was very impressed with the production value of this film, and although most people on Letterboxd love it, as always it had its detractors. This one-star review really stood out to me:
cutesy naive world cinema following a sweet girl and her pet chicken through the turmoils of Saddam's war torn country in the 90s; disguising as genuinely Iraqi for the appearance while having proper money floating in through Sundance, Doha, with the backing of Hollywood granddads Eric Roth and Chris Columbus among other US producers.
impossible to unsee those influences with this film made for the liberal audience longing for such arthouse products; a film you might have come across a hundred-and-twenty times before if you're familiar with the festival circuit.
First of all: it was a rooster, you idiot. This was clarified more than once in the film. Secondly: jaded much? Jesus Christ. Get a grip! I did check the budget, and according to Wikipedia it was $2 million. That's peanuts compared to American budgets, even indie ones, but surely went a hell of a long way in Iraq, where it was shot on location. That, I presume, explains how impressive the production was.
Anyway, I walked home, wrote the review, had dinner, and then binged a few more episodes of
Shrinking on Apple TV with Shobhit. Season 3 seems to be setting up Harrison Ford's exit. I get it; he's 83! He's still got more charisma than any other 80-year-old I've ever met. I was very moved by his acceptance speech getting the Life Achievement Award at the Actor Awards last Sunday.
Totally irrelevant side note: he and Calista Flockhart have been married since 2010. He was 68 then, and Calista Flockhart was 46. She's 61 now.
— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ तिरासी —
[posted 12:34pm]
