Inoltre, come gia` detto, in Olanda e` il venerdi` sera la serata clou, non il sabato.

Dalle 2 alle 5 abbiamo avuto un meeting Marketing & Sales all'American Hotel in Leidseplein.

Alle 5 siamo andati al Cafe` Pirates, un locale vicino a Leidseplein...nulla di speciale, un pub come un altro.

Il CEO ha fatto il resoconto finanziario del Q3, il terzo trimestre (le revenues delle ditte sono pubbliche)... e` poi seguito un quiz (si pronuncia "quis"!) spiritoso sui manager della ditta, per conoscerli meglio e avvicinarli di piu` al resto della truppa (cosi` adesso sappiamo chi e` il manager che ha 8 gatti, 4 cani, una capra e due conigli)...la cena e poi dance e open bar.

L'open bar nelle feste in Olanda e` obbligatorio...e penso sia la parte che costa di piu` alla ditta: tutti hanno cominciato a bere alle 17 e alle 22 quando sono tornato a casa da Brigitte la festa era ancora nel pieno dell'onda festaiola...

Come Special Guests c'erano due rapper da MTV che, per mia ignoranza, non so assolutamente chi siano...ma cmq non erano malaccio*.

Rilevante il fatto che, certamente aiutati dal tepore alcolico, molti alle 22 erano per strada a bere e ballare...oggi sono previsti 20 gradi, sicuramente troppi per la meta` di ottobre: speriamo che poi non arrivi di colpo il grande freddo...

Oggi andiamo al sud...nella terronia olandese, ad Eindhoven, per i 40 anni di Yvonne che, bonta` sua, ci ospitera` a casa sua...

*edit: erano Ali B & Yes-R, due cugini famosi in Olanda:

]]> http://nunetherlands.wordpress.com/?p=918 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:04:59 +0000 nunetherlands http://nunetherlands.ro.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/python-hides-in-car-for-six-months/

A python which vanished from a house in Deventer,Netherlands about six months ago has turned up hiding in the car of its owner Raymond Oosterbroek, reports Friday’s Telegraaf.

Oosterbroek had driven over 3,000 km with the python hiding in the car.

The snake was found in the Volvo S40 by second-hand car salesman Marten van Kastel, who was taking photos of it for his company's website.

'I thought at first it was a leaf, but then I saw the snake's head,' Van Kastel told the paper. 'Then it moved. I nearly jumped out of my skin.'

Dutch savers who put their money into Icelandic internet bank Icesave will get up to €100,000 of their money back, whatever happens, finance minister Wouter Bos promised on Thursday night.

Bos did not rule out taking legal action against the Icelandic government, which is technically guarantor for the first €20,000 of each saver’s cash.

Dutch officials will be talking to the Icelandic authorities on Friday about getting savers’ money back. But discussions over the past few days have proceeded with ‘great difficulty’ the Telegraaf reports.

Frozen accounts

All the bank’s accounts were frozen at the beginning of this week when Icesave’s parent company Landsbanki was put under government control after getting into financial difficulties.

Some 120,000 people in Holland have a total of €1.7bn in Icesave. The Icelandic government is responsible for the first €20,000 or so, with the Dutch guaranteeing the rest up to €100,000.

Central bank president Nout Wellink said on Thursday that most Dutch claims are under €20,000. Savers will get a form to fill in next week to make their claim.

I seemed to have missed a couple of more Judo Bears from the Beijing Olympics.  Here are two handsome Dutch judokas.

The first one is the babyface Grim Vuijsters:

(higher quality version)

[dailymotion id=k6lkzexMnosWxAmCyX]
Just when Grim's judogi gets fully untucked, he gives us a frontal peek
then turns sideways and closes it.  How cruel!

The other is the handsomely husky Dennis van der Geest.

(higher quality version)

Savers should be careful where they put their money, finance minister Wouter Bos is reported as saying on Thursday in a debate on the problems at internet bank Icesave, which has hit 120,000 Dutch customers.

‘Savers have their own responsibilities. High interest rates can bring high risks. You have to look at who is offering these stunt rates,’ the Volkskrant reports Bos as saying.

The paper says Bos has not yet agreed to compensate Dutch savers whose assets have been frozen by the Icelandic bank. The first €20,887 of savings fall under Iceland’s responsibility, while the Dutch state will make up the rest, to a maximum of €100,000.

‘But a lot still has to happen before I will let the taxpayer pay for the failure of an Icelandic bank,’ Bos said.

Efforts behind the scenes to reach a deal are continuing at a diplomatic level, he said, adding that he did not rule out legal action.

Office closed

Iceland took control of Icesave’s parent bank, Landsbanki, on Tuesday when it ran into financial difficulty.The Icesave Dutch office is now closed and the 30 staff sent home, the Financieele Dagblad reports.

Name plates and its letter box have also been removed, the paper says. The bank’s website carries a statement saying that all transactions made since Monday afternoon have not been processed.

In Britain, Dutch banking group ING has bought up the savings activities of two Icelandic banks in trouble.

From literary tradition, epic stories and colonial government reports, pencak silat developed rapidly amidst the communities of Central Java, East Java and Madura during Dutch colonial times. Many poems and folk tales tell highly stylized images of the young master of pencak silat, called jago or pendekar, studying the Al Qur'an, and practicing pencak silat in the monastery as an eager youth. Then, after mastering the skills, the jago rises to the role of opposing the Dutch, by becoming a marauding bandit who steals from the rich and distributes the spoils of this thievery to the poor, sometimes donating it in order to build a village mosque. The legend of these "Robin Hoods of Java" have become well known and their actions are described in Malay and Indonesian literature, some of them in the form of popular comic books. The adventures of Sakera (a hero from Madura), Sarip Tambak Yoso (a jago who won Surabaya), Sawung Galing (a jago from Pasuruan) and Si Pitung (a jago of Batavia) have spread far and wide in the Indonesian archipelago, with many of their stories being passed on orally from generation to generation, and some even being adapted for cinema and television.

It is believed that the development of silat in the Dutch colonial period is closely related to the social-economic situation during the 18th and 19th centuries in Java. At that time, pencak silat spread across Java via mass (trans)migration, which resulted from the development of transportation and infrastructure, as well as from changes in the agricultural economy. In 1808 hundreds of thousands of farmers from the whole northern coast of Java were mobilized as forced laborers (kuli or coolies) to build a highway, known as the "Grote Postweg", stretching from Anyer (in Java 's westernmost point) to Panarukan (on Java 's east coast), covering approximately a 1000 km (Koentjaningrat 1994:66).

In the very little spare time they had, the kuli from each region who were involved in the construction, entertained themselves and each other by practicing and showing off their pencak silat-skills. Their expertise in self-defense was, clearly, also useful for them in facing conflicts or robberies, which often arose amongst the different groups of laborers or against their often tyrannical overseers and work-bosses. So it happened that different, regionally based styles of pencak silat, in this case various Javanese branches of pencak silat, became mixed. This eventually resulted in the creation of new pencak silat styles.

The Ikatan Pencak Silat Indonesia (IPSI) or Indonesian Pencak Silat Organization is a national umbrella organization for Indonesian pencak silat schools. The members of IPSI are independent pencak silat perguruans spread all over the country. It is said (but official statistics are lacking) that IPSI counts more than 800 pencak silat perguruans from 26 provinces as its members.

Visite o site e saiba mais sobre o projeto em le-clochard.com

Courtesy to Pokernews.com, they just posted an article about how a Dutch Professor has used a formula to calculate that poker is more of a skill game that it seems to be. Using the formula, it has been used to compare games of skill to games of chance. The formula  they used was

Skill = Learning Effect/ (Learning Efect + Chance Effect)

A game of total chance has a skill rating of 0 such as dice. Poker was examined as .4 which is apparently quite high compared to fantasy sports which scored a .3. It also scored way higher then blackjack.

Poker to me seems to be compared to blackjack more then it would be compared to chess in a person's mind. People automatically assume that poker is more like blackjack because of the casino quality and maybe the old time thought they have in their head of old people saying "All-in" in savy texan accents. I would rather assume its closer to chess though. With each decision there comes benefits and consequences in both games. Each one relies on the skill of the player to make the correct decision every time. When making the correct decision every time in poker, statistcally if luck is favored in each players way, then the person who makes better decisions wins more money. Though, if this is true, poker bots would theoretically beat humans everytime, but they haven't. Poker bots do not have the instincts that humans do. While pokerbots do the correct decisions now, humans have reasons they might have caused a mistake, or use their mistakes to influence their future decisions. And also, there is the factor of luck.

Even though, I love the fact of people coming up to me and telling me how they can beat me in poker. This means that it is spreading quite quickly and I encourage it go also. For people who do believe poker is a luck game, all they have to do is get lucky right? When you watch poker on TV, whent he amateurs get lucky, Pros can get away most of the time. But when the pros get lucky, then what can you do? Professionals are professionals because they earn the most money, and thats true. The more money you have, the more famous you are, and then when your a constant winner, your a professional. If poker was just a luck game, there would not be any professionals. Because there is a skill involved, and the pros are still constant winners, that means luck cannot be that big of a factor. There are blackjack professionals because there is some skill to blackjack. While being only maybe 2% favorite over the house, that is still a favorite and that small amount of skill sometimes does change if they go home a winner, or if they keep on losing.

So if you wanna play poker, LEARN it, and then call me up or play with me at Pokerstars sometime. I'm not that good, but I have learned it.

Premature ejaculation gene found

A third of men are believed to suffer from premature ejaculation

Men who suffer from premature ejaculation may be able to blame their genes, work suggests.

A study of nearly 200 Dutch men found those who climaxed too soon during intercourse had a version of a gene that controls the hormone serotonin.

Men with this version ejaculated twice as quickly as other men in the study.

Serotonin levels are what control the rapidity of ejaculation, say the Utrecht University researchers told the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Not in the mind

The volunteers in Dr Marcel Waldinger's study were 89 men who had so-called primary premature ejaculation, meaning they had always suffered from it from their first sexual contact onwards.

For a month, their female partners were asked to use a stopwatch at home to measure the time until ejaculation each time they had intercourse.

Premature ejaculation is definitely not purely psychological Paula Hall, a sexual psychotherapist for Relate

The results were compared with 92 men with no history of such problems.

In the men with premature ejaculation, serotonin appeared to be less active between the nerves in the section of the brain that controls ejaculation.

Dr Waldinger says this low activity of the hormone means nerve signals do not transfer in the normal way in these men.

"This contradicts the idea, which has been common for years, that the primary form of premature ejaculation is a psychological disorder," he said.

Fast reactors

The findings also mean it might be possible to treat the condition with gene therapy, he said.

Paula Hall, a sexual psychotherapist for Relate, said: "Premature ejaculation is definitely not purely psychological.

"But there can be a psychological element. The acid test is how much control they have on their own. If the problem only occurs with their partner then it is more likely to be psychological."

She said men with primary premature ejaculation tended to be fast reactors generally.

"These men have very quick reflexes. They may be excellent at playing tennis or computer games, for example."

She said there was good evidence that serotonin was linked ejaculation and that researchers were developing drugs for the condition that prolong this hormone's action.

Currently there is no medication for the condition on the market.

Treatments involve counseling and the use of anti-depressants - not for depression but for their unexpected yet wanted side effect of delaying ejaculation.

A third of men are believed to suffer from premature ejaculation.

Hij leefde van 1843 tot 1913.[...] Zijn echte naam was Leonard Corneille Dudok de Wit. Hij leefde van 1843 tot 1913.
Dudok de Wit kwam uit een rijke familie..[...]Hij liet hij de gemeente Breukelen een legaat na, waarvan de Breukelse kinderen 1x per jaar, op zijn verjaardag op 3 oktober, gratis poffertjes mogen eten.

E` vissuto dal 1843 al 1913. Il suo vero nome era Leonard Corneille Dudok de Wit e proveniva da una ricca famiglia. Era chiamato tippelaar, il camminatore perche` aveva fatto a piedi alcuni lunghi viaggi come Amsterdam - Parigi. Ha stabilito che una volta all'anno, il 3 ottobre, ciascun bambino di Breukels potesse mangiare i poffertjes gratis!

[fonte: Lekkeretenisnietvies.punt.nl]

English:

Kees de Tippelaar (Kees the Trotter)
3 October is the anniversary of L.C. Dudok de Wit, better known as 'Kees de Tippelaar'. He was given this nickname because of his many long distance walks across the globe. He lived at country estate 'Slangevecht' which is now a restaurant and he determined in his will that every kid in Breukelen should be treated to 'poffertjes' (small pancakes, typical Dutch) on his birthday. For this occasion, the 'poffertjes' stall of the Van der Steen family especially comes to Breukelen. In the local bookshop you can find a biography on Kees de Tippelaar and his bronze statue can be seen in the park Boom en Bosch.

]]> http://ralphbooms.wordpress.com/?p=61 Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:33:14 +0000 ontwerpaholic http://ralphbooms.ro.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/marc-driessen/ Talented photographer Marc Driessen has a new website. Visit it here Marc Driessen nl

DEEEN HAAG - Het kabinet trekt 405 miljoen euro uit om de koopkracht van minima te verbeteren. Chronisch zieken en gehandicapten die erop achteruit dreigden te gaan, worden voor 250 miljoen euro gecompenseerd. De overige 150 miljoen euro is bestemd voor algemene lastenverlichting.

Anyway, I joined this social networking thing for gay people about a month ago. I thought it would be nice if I could find someone there. After all, I'm close to 20. If one's life ends at 30, then my life is more than half gone. So, I met this person online. He's not a local. He said he's from Holland. And he's much older than I am. I think he's around thirty-ish? Or younger, but definitely not younger than 25.  I realised I have this weird preference for older men. Dr Dobson would probably say it's due to a lack of paternal affections in my not-too-distant childhood, or perhaps stemming from a strongly rooted memory of violent sexual abuse. Well, uh, I dunno. I wouldn't say that i was abused sexually or emotionally, at least none that I can remember. So why the preference for older men?

So coming back to the older Dutch guy - He's good looking. Very nice. Quite hunky. And he speaks in a sweet, endearing manner that foreigners tend to do (from what I gather from the words he type). And he has asked me out for a movie. Or to his house for DVDs. Hahahahaa. I know what he wants at his house. So anyway, I haven't replied cos I just broke out in a freakin spots after eating some vague seafood-like food yesterday. Just as well - I won't have to go out. Gotta miss school this week. This way I can ponder over his invitation and catch up on my studies. So if you're reading this (though I do wonder who comes here anyway), and you have a suggestion, do tell me.

Vaatstra was murdered in Friesland and her body dumped in a field. Despite an extensive police investigation, including DNA checks on hundreds of men, her killer has never been found.

The higher reward is on offer until the end of the year.

In the first article, on Steps Ahead, a fusion-music group from the late seventies/early eighties, I added the second paragraph. It was checked almost a week later, on the 5th of October and some minor edits were made.

The second article, which is in Dutch, is an explanation of the rudiments, the basic building blocks, of our modern drumming. Being a drummer myself, I thought it was vital that this information is available in my mother-language so kids can get easy access to it and learn their chops. This article immediately got noticed by peers, and within a matter of hours three people had checked it and made minor edits.

The whole experiece was quite fun, and certainly tastes like more...;-)

{beautiful old tiles in my friend J's *lovely* little house}

Dutch tilework is one of my favorite things in the Netherlands, & my friend's new house has an entire corner of them...gorgeous.

Concluzia mea, dupa ce-am vazut "Cartea neagra": tradatori sunt peste tot.

Image via Wikipedia

'God doesn’t exist but I sorely miss him.' Not his own words, admits Verhoeven. It was something an atheist told him recently. But he does subscribe wholeheartedly to this notion (which isn't necessarily foolish).

Verhoeven was promoting his new book, a historical biography of Jesus, in De Rode Hoed in Amsterdam today with his biographer, Rob van Scheers. Verhoeven's book seems to be as controversial as the man. Reviewers usually mention at some point that Jesus 'could' have been fathered by a Roman soldier, for example.

During the talk Van Scheers pointed out that Verhoeven always has religious symbolism in his films. Every film. He showed a scene from Showgirls (where one dancer was raised up to 'heaven' while another girl lay at her feet in tears, Spetters (where a guy is briefly raised out of his wheelchair by a spiritual healer) and the scene where Robocop walks on water.

I'd always wondered whether writers - and movie directors - added this kind os symbolism deliberately or whether it was the teachers at school who made up stuff about the rose in Iris Murdoch's novel The Unofficial Rose representing truth. I thought it was just something to fill up the lesson time.

The interviewer from the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant asked Verhoeven whether his religious symbolism was deliberate.

It wasn't, he said, in Showgirls but it was in Robocop.

Asked if he minded that people didn't get the symbolism, Verhoeven said he didn't. If the audience enjoy the main story of a strong guy winning then fine. If they see the second story too, then that's also good, he said.

Verhoeven added that most of the symbolism probably came subconsciously from the computer program that is his - and all our - brains.

That's pretty much what I thought.

Other stuff that Verhoeven mentioned was that The Black Book (Zwartboek) was his personal favourite among all the films he's made but maybe only because it was voted the best Dutch film of all time last week at the 2008 Dutch Film Festival.

His least favourite, surprisingly I thought, was Hollow Man. It has been one of his biggest earners but it is his least favourite.

As for the future, he wondered how many more films he would make. He did say he's working on a few scripts, all based on novels.

The journalist in me force me to mention that he also said that if this don't change soon in America - i.e. if Barack Obama doesn't get elected - then he is seriously considering moving back to Holland permanently.

But that's not what this blog is about, despite the slightly misleading title of this post.

Another interesting article from New Zealand discusses ‘tattoos in the workplace’.

The British article ‘tattoo culture under the spotlight’ brings to our attention the fact that tattoos in the West are usually about individuality, self-defining and rebellion against society while more traditional, ‘tribal’ tattoos were/are about belonging to and defining one’s status within tribe. Somehow it also reminded me of an article about Woodabe people in the newest National Geographic issue according to which, when asked about drawing a self-portrait, Wodaabe and many other tribal peoples focus not on the physical features of their faces and bodies but on their tattoos/scars/etc. as those are the elements that define them and make them who they are (Maori chiefs in the 19^th century come to mind here, too).

On a different and yet still relevant note, in the West tattoos can mean so much more – a letter from concerned parents to a psychotherapist shows it clearly.

Finally, something light from Belgium – eye jewelry (with a video).

PHOTO: Meet two Srebrenica genocide denial activists:
Aleksandar Gavrilovic (left) and Marco Van Hees (right).

Proteus (2003) is an ambitious film featuring the story of an interracial gay love affair in a Dutch penal colony. There is an imprisoned white sailor and a black prisoner who carry on a lustful affair that transform into something deeper. There is also closeted married plantation owner. 

The plot tries to weave into subtexts deeper than the overall theme but does not overcome the campy almost Harlequin Book feel of the movie. There are emotional highpoints for the actors and edgy gay love scenes but the film never rises above its B rated soapish plane.

The cinematography is beautiful and the period costumes are well done.  If you are in the mood for a soapy gay film, then rent the DVD.