July 7, 2011

‘Flemish cookbook is Greek to the Dutch’

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

When I occasionally zap to Jeroen Meus’ cooking show on Belgian TV in the evening, I could play a drinking game and get very messed up by drinking every time he uses Flemish diminutives like ‘evenkes’ (a while) and ‘boske’ (small bunch). As a foreigner who learnt Dutch on the street and who has Flemish friends, I can understand him. So why is a food journalist claiming that the Dutch can’t make out what he’s saying? Because they favour their own words and can’t be bothered to do a little research.

The Dutch journalist said it would be best to translate Meus’ cookbook from Flemish into Dutch, which is a touchy subject. But once the journalist claimed that the cookbook was ‘as good as useless’, it got media attention. It’s a ‘hellish job’ to figure out what the Flemish words mean in the recipes. Really? And all those English/Australian/American variants on products and measurements the Dutch all know by heart? Get real and broaden your horizons already.

(Link: standaard.be, Photo: my easy to understand and make banana muffins, available in normal and vegan variants)

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July 6, 2011

Hustling yourself a job with Twitter

Filed under: General,IT by Orangemaster @ 9:45 am

My only memory of someone being creative to get a job is some guy in my hometown of Montréal who carved his CV in ice and made sure the employer he was trying to win over saw it– and it worked.

“This ‘Job Hustle’ film by Bas van der Poel and Daan van Dam speaks for itself. They wanted a job and got one at Boondoggle by using Twitter in an unorthodox way. It’s on target, inventive and effective. They used technology to get a message across, not just to show they are geeks.”

(Link: amsterdamadblog.com)

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July 4, 2011

Zone 5300, awards and subsidies

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 11:19 am

On May 1, 2009, the major Dutch state fund for the visual arts, BKVB, did something remarkable. They appointed a champion for comics. This champion, Gert Jan Pos, seemed well chosen, because he took a large bag of shiny golden coins, and has been roaming the land with it since, handing out money to whatever comics artists struck his fancy.

The summer edition of Zone 5300 introduces you to a couple of the recipients, either because they felt like it or because by now Pos has saturated the Dutch comics landscape.

Robert van der Raffe (illustration) received a ‘working budget’ from the fund for a 120 pager he is working on, though he has yet to find a publisher. Zone 5300 publishes a light autobiographical comic about the traumatic experience of being graded in art school, in which Raffe is the good guy and all the others are either losers or bad guys.

Jeroen Funke (illustration) won the Jan Hanlo Media Essay Award 2011, and his award winning story is in this issue. The award was given to the winner of a competition for essays in comics form about sensory perception. Funke has his regular heroes Victor and Vishnu discuss how growing up adds filters to our senses that prevent us from seeing (and feeling, smelling, tasting) what’s really there.

Peter Pontiac (illustration), an underground comics giant from the 1970s who went mainstream-ish with his autobiographical Kraut (about a father who worked for the wrong side during the war), received the Marten Toonder Award 2011 for his entire body of work. In this issue he fills the two pages of The Sketchbook Of, a recurring feature.

Awards? Awards?! Eindhoven Design Academy graduate Tim Enthoven (illustration) apparently needs no stinkin’ awards (yet; although he won one for his debut album Binnenskamers – Indoors – before it had been even published). Zone 5300 calls him the jeune premier of Dutch comics, and says of his work that it is “shifting boundaries”. For Zone he wrote and drew a story about his uncle Jos who has lost the ability to read after a traumatic experience. Since the uncle did not want the nephew to write that story, the nephew has hidden the text in the scenery.

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July 3, 2011

Amsterdam parking rates slashed

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 12:29 pm

Amsterdam is the most expensive city in the world to park in. The city’s policy of driving car owners away from the centre by making their stay too expensive seems to be so successful that now an operator of private car parks has started slashing its rates.

In a bid to lure customers away from the competition P1 Parking has lowered its daily rate from 55 euro to 20 euro. The only snag is that you have to make reservations at least two in days in advance.

Competitor Q-Park and others are studying their options. Bloodthirsty financial news site Z24 is already announcing a price war.

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July 2, 2011

Dutch parodies of famous album covers

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:36 pm

As you may have read, after the Rutte government attacked “entarte Kunst” it is now promoting “Blut und Boden” music. Dutchnews reported yesterday that “MPs on Thursday evening voted in favour of a quota for Dutch language music on Radio 2, the public broadcaster which focuses on popular music. The motion, drawn up by Martin Bosma from the anti-Islam PVV, requires programmers to make sure 35% of the music played on Radio 2 between 07.00 and 19.00 hours was produced in the Netherlands.”

The folks at the Amazing Retecool blog have used their regular Photo Fuck Friday to try and imagine what famous record covers would look like if all music had to be in Dutch. Shown here are Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the Netherlands by Ohjajoh and Foreigner’s Double Passport by Gelul.

Meanwhile, Radio 2 have announced that they have no intention of adhering to any quotas, NRC reports. Two weeks ago minister Marja van Bijsterveldt announced that public broadcasters will have to take cuts of up to 127 million euro.

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July 1, 2011

British criminals big fans of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:03 pm


First, British students who apparently were interested in studying in the Netherlands and now the media tells us of wanted British criminals enjoying the good life in our wee country, mainly Amsterdam because it kinda looks like back home.

“In the past three years, 83 British fugitives – 10 of them wanted for murder – have been arrested in the Netherlands. But the Dutch police are getting good at catching these people and sending them back to the UK. They don’t want them here.”

Well duh! Of course we don’t want criminals here per se, silly journalist. Amsterdam sports some Irish pubs, well known food and clothing chains, and an overwhelming amount of English (Dunglish), let alone good weed and whores. ‘Costa del Crime’ they call it. What’s next?

(Links: badnewsfromthenetherlands and uk.news.yahoo.com)

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June 30, 2011

Amsterdam roller derby team’s first ever bout

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:03 pm

Back in January, we told you how the originally American all-female sport roller derby was taking off in the Netherlands. Now, the Amsterdam Derby Dames, one of the Netherlands’ eight teams (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Enschede, Arnhem, Groningen and Limburg), will be playing its first ever bout (official competition) in Germany against the Devil Dolls Essen team of the Ruhrpott Roller Girls league.

The moment everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived: the Amsterdam Derby Dames will be playing their first official bout! Your dames are busy forming the first official team to represent the Amsterdam Derby Dames league and training hard. We’re so excited, we want to bring everyone along with us. Friends, family, loved ones, supporters, fans. We want you there! And what better way to get everyone there than to organize transportation for everyone? Well, that’s exactly what we would like to do.

There is a sign up form if you want to ride the ADD bus, but you absolutely have to fill in the form (form link here) so that they have an idea of how many people might be interested.

(Disclaimer: Orangemaster, aka Nasty Moves #76, is a member of the Amsterdam Derby Dames. Photo of mixed Dutch team scrimmage (unofficial competition) in Antwerp, Belgium)

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June 29, 2011

Six things you should know about the Dutch cookie law

Filed under: IT by Branko Collin @ 8:12 am

There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around about the fresh Dutch (Internet) cookie law, so Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet set out to dispel the myths in a few excellent articles.

1. First this. The Dutch call their cookie law ‘cookiewet’ instead of ‘koekjeswet’ in spite of the Dutch origins of the English word. (The oo sound is spelled oe in Dutch.)

Says Arnoud (and I paraphrase):

2. Other ways than invasive pop-ups are OK to ask permission to plant cookies. A checkbox on a profile page, a central register, and even browser settings can be used to get and store permission. You are even allowed to use cookies for which you did not ask permission to store the fact that you got permission for other cookies.

(more…)

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June 28, 2011

Data centres in churches kept cool, churchgoers kept warm

Filed under: Design,Religion,Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 3:37 pm

Warming big old churches and cathedrals are a costly affair in the Netherlands. And when it’s too cold, sometimes they even cancel services. Sustainable consumer platform Nudge in Haarlem held a contest called ‘Holy Warming’ to collect ideas about how to warm up Sint Bavo Cathedral in a sustainable way . The winner was ‘Church on a cloud’: heat the Cathedral by putting a data centre in the cellar. The Cathedral keeps the racks cool and the computers keeps the flock warm. Amen!

(Link: bright.nl, Photo of the Saint Gertrude cathedral in Utrecht by Wikimedia user pepijntje, some rights reserved)

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June 27, 2011

Rotterdam plans to give away free bikes from stash

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:53 pm

The city of Rotterdam is currently looking into the possibility of giving people whose bikes were stolen a new bike — well no, ‘another’ bike, one that was ‘towed away’. Illegally parked bikes (yes, if you park it in the wrong place because the racks are too full or whatever, the city takes them away) are to be re-used and given to people who had their bikes stolen.

The odd reason behind this move is to encourage bike use (do we really need to do that?) and help out the ‘victims’ of theft. Very nice spin, PR people. The goal is actually to do something with all the bikes not picked up by their owners taking up space in some Rotterdam city depot somewhere.

Don’t people whose bikes were stolen just grab, steal, borrow or use another one? How many stories have I heard about how time-consuming and complicated it is to find out where your bike was ‘impounded’, never mind having to pay like 50 euro to get it back? What if I had my bike stolen in, let’s say, Gouda, and I needed a new bike?

Shame on you media for buying into this ‘let’s make Rotterdam a less scary place to live in’ when it was crowned for the fifth time most dangerous Dutch city to live in. Your Dutch city really goes downhill when you actually need PR to encourage bike use in one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world.

(Link: blikopnieuws)

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