March 26, 2010

Armin van Buuren wins world’s best DJ award

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:51 am
800px-Armin_Van_Buuren_2

Dutch trance DJ Armin van Buuren has just won Best Global DJ award at the International Dance Music Awards (IDMA) in Miami, US. His record label Armada also won Best Record Label for the second year in a row. At last year’s awards, Van Buuren won Best European DJ and Best Podcast.

World-famous DJ Tiësto who won Best Global DJ in 2008 and 2009, as well as a total of four awards in 2009 probably picked up something this year (winners not yet officially announced as I write this), while Ferry Corsten was nominated as Best European DJ and nominated in other categories.

There is something to be said about the Dutch and DJing even just looking at the IDMA nominees for 2010: Van Buuren, Tiësto and Corsten as well as Laidback Luke, Sander van Doorn and Joris Voorn are all Dutch and some of them have been nominated in more than one category.

I saw Armin van Buuren live at Dance Valley in 2009 and although I am not a fan of his work per se, he really knew how to please his audience.

(Link: parool.nl, wintermusicconference, Photo of Armin van Buuren by Peter Drier, some rights reserved.)

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March 25, 2010

Daring entrepreneur scores with free food

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 2:11 pm

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Giving things away for free these days usually arouses suspicion, but one Dutch restaurant owner decided to give it a whirl anyways: free entree and main course, you pay the wine and the dessert. The article also makes sure to mention that the bread and butter is included, because in the Netherlands, you usually have to pay for that.

Restaurant owner Jeroen Verpaalen of L’Entrecote in Breda serves a salad with mustard dressing and walnuts, French bread with herb butter, entrecote and fries for free. Nope, the wine is not overpriced, nor is the dessert. Verpaalen considers it marketing, as “we all need the help of our clients”. In return, his clients are so happy with the food and service that they order more expensive wine and leave more tip, the latter already included in the price.

Letting clients decide what your product or service is worth and paying for it accordingly is a trend in business circles here, but doing the same with food in an industry that is constantly raising the prices is pretty daring. (Skip the steak, I’m a fan of the seafood platter!)

(Link: bizz.nl)

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March 23, 2010

Turning green waste into biodiesel

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm
greenwaste

Having obtained her Ph.D on 19 March from Wageningen University, Kirsten Steinbusch found a new method of turning organic waste into energy, which can be used to produce biodiesel. Her method uses ‘volatile fatty acids, formed when microbes break down the waste. Apparently, it stinks like you wouldn’t believe. However, Steinbuch was able to apply micro-organisms and some hard chemistry to transform them into biodiesel.’

The process Steinbusch has developed provides more energy than burning green waste or extracting methane gas through fementation. “Extracting energy from green waste is sustainable, but it has to be energy efficient; you should not have to put more energy into it than comes out of it”, Steinbusch explains. Her approach doesn’t need any land or crops and has no negative impact on food production.

(Link: depers.nl, resource.wur.nl, Photo of Green waste by canonsnapper. Used under the terms of GNU FDL.)

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March 19, 2010

Inntel Hotel in Zaandam opens its doors

Filed under: Architecture,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 5:01 pm
Inntel Hotel Zaandam

Inntel Hotel in Zaandam was officially opened on 18 March and also has a ‘remarkable interior’ with old images of the Zaanstreek (Zaandam area). Each hotel room has a theme, such as Verkade (chocolate) or Albert Heyn (supermarket founder), both major brands that come from Zaandam. Other Zaanstreek traits include the use of famous local mustard and dessert with Duyvekater bread, which are local specialities. The stack of houses has four shades of green and one of blue, which can be found traditionally in the area. You really can’t miss it.

Four of us from ironically four different countries representing three continents drove by this hotel on the way to Paris at Christmas and collectively freaked out. Just looking at this hotel driving by was enough to have an accident. It could be architectural humour, but we didn’t get the joke. We’re too poor to stay there anyways, after all we were carpooling.

(Link: missethoreca.nl, Photo: WAM Architecten)

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March 18, 2010

Bring your whore some flowers

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:43 pm
Moulin Rouge

Youth television and radio channel BNN has declared 15 March ‘National Whore’s Day’. They surely mean well and believe sex workers should be given a bouquet of roses as a token of appreciation for their hard work. It already sounds too much like North America’s ‘Secretary’s Day’ now known as the more politically correct ‘Administrative Professionals Day’. There’s also Mother’s Day that made it over to the Netherlands and again involves giving flowers. I see a pattern here.

According to estimates, since actual numbers are hard to come by, some 0.6% of Dutch women between the ages of 15 and 46 can be classified as sex workers, including someone with a sugar daddy, a rich man who gives out money or expensive gifts to poorer, younger women in return sexual favours. (Yup, you’re a whore too, girlfriend).

Also according to this article, some 300,000 Dutch men frequent whores a few times a year. “Let us hope that clients [men] have time today [15 March] to bring the working girls some flowers. They should also buy flowers for their partners while they are at it, since surveys show that 70 to 80% of pro’s clients have partners.

(Link: kennislink.nl)

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March 16, 2010

First peewit egg of the year found

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 4:53 pm
peewit-eggs

In the province of Friesland, it is a tradition to be the first one to find the year’s first peewit egg (‘kievitsei’, in Dutch). Unlike other birds who lay their eggs in nests, the peewit (aka Northern Lapwing) lays its eggs in the ground. There are wide open fields in Friesland where people go ‘egg hunting’.

Over the years, there has been much commotion about picking these eggs, as many Dutch people see it as unnecessary and what have you. As well, following a ruling by the European Union, harvesting these eggs is now forbidden — except in Friesland where a cultural exception was made. After much lobbying, the province of Friesland is now allowed to look for peewit eggs between 1 March and 9 April. I believe the difference is finding them is one thing and picking them (stealing them?) is another.

According to website Expatica.com, “It is a Friesland tradition to give the first lapwing egg of the year to the province’s royal commissioner. Originally, it was given to the sovereign.”

The finding of the first egg is a symbol of spring and always makes the news. The eggs in the picture are different and from Australia, albeit of the same bird.

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo of eggs by wiccked, some rights reserved)

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March 12, 2010

First ever Dutch beaver tunnel opens

Filed under: Animals,Architecture,Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 5:08 pm
beaver

Driving down the Dutch highway I have seen overpasses for deers and I have heard of frog overpasses and tunnels, but this is a first for me too: the very first beaver tunnel in the country.

Yes, as of today, the wee village of Panheel (189 villagers) in Limburg has opened a 30-metre-long tube, 70 centimetres in diameter so that beavers don’t wobble down a busy street and get turned into road pizza. Not only have many beavers died, but they damage cars when then do because they are bigger and bulkier than they look.

The people and animal lovers involved believe that other small woodland creatures will use this tunnel as well. It cost 40,000 euro and was paid with contributions as well as tax money.

I have only respect for beavers, and OK, this one is darn cute. I spent part of my youth at summer camp tearing down their dams only to see them fully rebuilt days later. It was either portaging (carrying a canoe over your head because of lack of water or obstacles), with two 9-year-old girls lifting an aluminium canoe of 45 kg over their heads with backpacks for 2 kilometers through the woods being eaten by mosquitoes or tearing down a beaver dam that grows back like weeds and canoe on the water like normal kids.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of beaver by stevehdc, some rights reserved)

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March 11, 2010

Chairs with odd legs

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 10:25 pm
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Anna_ter_Haar

The chair on the right is ‘Cinderella’s Chair’, a follow up of designer Anna Ter Haar’s 2007 graduation project ‘Buitenbeentje’ (meaning ‘odd man out’, but literally translated ‘outside leg’).

“Glass is a malleable material when heated, so the glass was blown onto the chair, which provides every chair with its own unique prosthesis.”

The chair on the left is from the original ‘Buitenbeentje’ project. Anna Ter Haar also designs other types of chairs, shoes, movies and more.

(Link: trendbeheer.com, Photos: annaterhaar.nl)

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March 10, 2010

Dutch art goes for record amount

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:13 am
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On 8 March, Sotheby’s auction house in Amsterdam auctioned off Dutch art belonging to cigarette makers BAT (British American Tobacco) to the tune of a record 13.6 million euro, the highest total for an art auction in the Netherlands. All but four of the 161 lots offered in Amsterdam found buyers.

Back in October 2008 we posted about a major art sale due to cigarette factory closing in Zevenaar, which is where some of these works used to hang, like Karel Appel’s ‘Tête Tragique’ (shown here), a 1961 oil on canvas, which sold for close to 493,000 euro.

(Links: bloomberg.com, nrc.nl, Photo: fast.mediamatic.nl)

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March 9, 2010

Fast food chain exploits Dutch stereotype

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am

I saw this on Dutch commercial television, which more often than not features American series and subtitled or dubbed American advertising ‘like you never left the US’.

Translation:
Guy: Hey, you owe me money.
Girl: …
Guy: For the burger.

Voice-over: So very Dutch! Our new (product name), etc.

Guy: Yep, right amount.

Voice-over: It can’t get any more Dutch.

The adjective ‘Hollands’ meaning Dutch has this reference to the olden days when the Netherlands was just North Holland and South Holland. It can be used in a neutral manner, derogatory or positive manner, depending on the context. In this case it denotes comfort food (brown bread and cheese being a classic here), which is positive.

The negative part remains the stereotype that the Dutch are cheap, which is a gross generalisation, but sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The Dutch are traditionally thrifty and save a lot of money and don’t run rampant with credit cards, not so much cheap. Oh, and all the Dutch television shows with people about to lose their homes due to overspending kill this stereotype, with the Dutch calling their situation ‘an American one’.

‘Going Dutch’ means paying your own way in English, which in American dating land is surely not a given. And of course, anyone who only wants to pay half the bill at a fast food chain while on a date could easily be labelled poor, not cheap.

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