June 23, 2015

Football club brings VIP supporters to away game

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:40 pm

2548206259_8eebaff3da_m

Deventer’s football club the Go Ahead Eagles held a contest, and the prize was a dream trip to the club’s next away game in Hungary for two on 9 July. Problem is, the club’s away game against Budapest’s Ferencváros was to be held behind closed doors, with no supporters allowed due to some penalization given to the Hungarian club by the UEFA.

The couple who won the prize, Henk de Haan and his wife, a long-time volunteer, were afraid their dream trip would be cancelled. The aptly named Go Ahead Eagles put their heads together and came up with a solution: they are going to make the couple board members of the club today so they can come along. The couple are to appointed to the board later today.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of Football by Bramus, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

June 22, 2015

Dutchman best looking model of 2015

Filed under: Event,General by Orangemaster @ 6:48 pm

rogierwarnawa

The 2015 winner of the 8th edition of the Men Universe Model Pageant is Rogier Warnawa, 24, from Eindhoven, crowned best looking model at a ceremony yesterday in the Dominican Republic. Warnawa was up against some 40 men from all around the world. He currently studies International Business & Management in Eindhoven and should soon be graduating. He also into mixed martial arts and has talked about getting into the film industry.

“Say hello to the new Mr Universe!” he told everyone on social media. In May, when he had been chosen to represent the Netherlands, he had told Telegraaf newspaper that, “he was still just a ‘cheese head’ from Eindhoven”, in true level-headed Dutch style.

(Links: www.nieuwsblad.be, www.telegraaf.nl, Photo: www.fontys.nl)

Tags: ,

June 19, 2015

Birds and bees found in bike saddle bags

Filed under: Animals,Bicycles,Nature by Orangemaster @ 9:22 am

Swarmofbees

This week there was a woman in Bloemendaal, North Holland who went grocery shopping with her bike and was about to load her saddle bags only to discover that an entire swarm of bees had moved in. The queen bee apparently decided to park it there and her entire buzzing entourage followed suit. They called in a beekeeper and he got them to move to a box.

Recently there was a woman in Oirschot, Noord-Brabant who noticed twigs in her saddle bags and kept forgetting to remove them every time she got on her bike until one day she decided to clear them out and noticed a bird’s nest with five robin eggs in it. She left her bike alone until last week when five baby robins emerged from the eggs.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of swarming bees by quisnovus, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

June 18, 2015

Government subsidies for psychics training under fire

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:25 am

tarot_card-the_chariot.jpg

Back in 2011 the Dutch government already fought over subsidizing astrologers for job seekers, and now companies offering to train ‘psychics’ are under scrutiny.

The contested training is geared towards ‘spiritual consultants’ and ‘hypnotists’, and has been approved for years, a training that particularly attracts the jobless aged 50 and over. Considering the discrimination faced by that age group as being expensive to hire, I’m not too surprised. A dozen people have taken the almost 1000 euro course. They learn about tarot cards, angel cards and reincarnations, the latter could be why the religious political SGP party was the one to complain about these courses recently.

After successfully completing the course, people can start up their own call line and make 0,29 euro a minute predicting the future, helping with relationship and financial problems.

(Link: nieuws.tpo.nl)

Tags: ,

June 16, 2015

Cafe in Utrecht gives away profits and thrives

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink,Literature,Music by Orangemaster @ 11:40 am

11277522_904575222937109_1715756277_n

Cafe Averechts in Utrecht has been around since the 1980s and continues to flourish amidst dwindling profits in the hospitality sector. The cafe’s ‘reverse’ approach to profit-making is the key to their brand of success: it is entirely run by volunteers.

Before anyone thinks ‘why would anyone work for free’, it is important to know that all pop venues in the country rely on volunteers. If you were to remove all pop venues that make a loss in the Netherlands, not a single one would be left standing and the country would be a cultural desert. Even the Paradiso in Amsterdam is subsidised by the city and in order to enjoy a favourable tax rebate as such, patrons pay a membership fee with their tickets. That’s right, the most famous Dutch club in the world needs government money.

During the week Averechts features a small stage with music, poetry and the likes as well as vegetarian food (vegan on demand) at a low cost. It also has lots of beers and more than 20 kinds of whiskey. All profits made go straight to charities and any tips are doubled (you put in one euro, the house matches it, we imagine) to send even more money their way.

Averechts is also a great place to celebrate King’s Day if you’re in Utrecht.

11348928_904575229603775_1534679106_n

(Photos: Cafe Averechts)

Tags: , , ,

June 15, 2015

Amsterdam to get 3D printed steel bridge

Filed under: Architecture,Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:02 pm

3D-printing-robot-by-Joris-Laarman-draws-freeform-metal-lines-_dezeen_8

Startup company MX3D that does 3D printing of metals and resin in mid-air has plans to print a steel bridge in Amsterdam without any additional support structures. Using ‘multi-axis’ industrial robots and an advanced welding machine, MX3D can print with steel, stainless steel, aluminium, bronze and copper in mid-air. In September the city of Amsterdam will announce where the bridge will be built.

“The robots will begin printing the bridge on one side of the canal and will create rail supports as they go. They will be able to gradually slide forward on supports, literally creating the bridge upon which they are crossing the canal.” MX3D’s bridge will be made of a new steel composite designed by the University of Delft.

MX3D will be collaborating with many parties on this project, including Amsterdam’s Joris Laarman Lab with their supportless, magical 3D printing of metal.

(Link: phys.org, Photo of freeform metal lines from dezeen.com)

Tags: , , ,

June 10, 2015

The art of noise reduction at Schiphol Airport

Filed under: Aviation,Design,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 2:11 pm

Buitenschot

Visual artist Paul de Kort was asked a few years ago to design the Buitenschot land art park, a huge 33-hectare park with a series of ribbed hedges and ditches surrounded by trees that form a noise-reduction green space right off Schiphol Airport’s biggest runway, the Polderbaan. Sadly, you can’t see the park from the air and that would partially explain why I’ve never noticed it before.

The airplane noise experienced by nearby residents is mostly low frequency ground noise that radiates backwards in an oblique fashion from planes during take-off, and De Kort’s aesthetic yet functional park of furrows was inspired by 17th century German acoustic techniques as well as local farming techniques.

Completed in October 2013 Buitenschot features small parks, bike paths and foot paths. De Kort also incorporated art pieces that drew on the history of the project, like the ‘Listening Ear,’ a parabolic dish on a small pyramid one can stand in that amplifies ambient sound, echoing the park’s noise reduction purpose and a diamond-shaped lake where visitors can create ripple patterns on the water surface while standing on a bridge equipped with a wave generating device.

(Links: www.pauldekort.nl, www.smithsonianmag.com, www.schiphol.com)

Tags: , , ,

June 9, 2015

First ever Dutch flamenco singer graduates in Spain

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:46 am

4161769045_710f27153a_m

This week Amsterdam’s Luna Zegers, 40, has graduated as the first ever non Spanish flamenco singer from the ESMUC conservatory in Barcelona, a top Catalonian music institution.

A few years ago Luna move to Spain, where people call her Luna instead of her real first name Lonneke, after graduating from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam as a jazz singer. At the ESMUC only one student a year is admitted, but in the year Zegers applied, the institution let two singers in, and she was one of them.

Zegers had to work hard as a Dutchwoman entering a foreign space as well as study half of her courses in Spanish and the other in Catalan. She says she found what she looking for in the expression of flamenco after losing her father, mother and sister in a very short time span. “Jazz is very polished – that started to bother me. I was looking for something rawer. Flamenco is a mix of lamentation about things like death and unbridled joy. For the level-headed Dutch this is quite an intense form of expression.”

Here’s Luna Zeger with ‘El Amor Dolido’ from the ballet ‘El Amor Brujo’ by Manuel de Falla:

(Links: www.parool.nl, nos.nl, Photo of Guitars by tarale, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

June 7, 2015

Dutch singer voted worst dressed at Eurovision

Filed under: Fashion by Orangemaster @ 6:42 pm

Trijntje-decollete

After failing to make it to the semi-finals, Dutch singer Trijntje Oosterhuis did scoop up a Eurovision-related prize (not ‘price’ dear award people) in the end: the 2015 Barbara Dex Award for the worst dressed.

“She surprised the Eurovision audience with a navel-deep cleavage during the rehearsals, but then changed into a parachute-like suit. She gained 1324 votes. Number two was Serbia’s Bojana Stamenov with 605 votes. The top three is concluded with the UK’s 20’s couple Electro Velvet with just 397 votes. A record-breaking total of 4163 votes were cast this year.”

The cleavage dress was original, but detracted from her actual singing talent, a choice that could have gone either way. However, the black parachute of death she wore in the end also detracted from her talent. There’s no lack of design talent in the Netherlands, which makes one wonder why these wardrobe choices were made.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl, screenshot YouTube)

Tags: , ,

June 6, 2015

Dutch model too thin by British standards

Filed under: Fashion,Health,Photography by Orangemaster @ 12:23 pm

I read the article ‘Yves Saint Laurent advert banned for using ‘unhealthily underweight’ model’, but only when I read a Dutch article did I find out that the banned advert featured 18-year-old Dutch model Kiki Willems from Maastricht.

I can’t judge if she has a weight or eating disorder, but I can say that there are many tall, thin yet healthy Dutch girls and women around me that have diets ranging from strict vegan to burgers and fries.

According to a Limburg radio interview with a Vogue fashion expert Willem has been a ‘plank’ her whole life. And yes many Dutch people are apparently offended by the advert. Arguing that seeing super thin models sends a bad signal to girls is surely a valuable point, but it’s funny how with today’s trend of using bigger models nobody is pulling adverts saying that big models promote bad eating habits because that would be fat-shaming and assuming they eat poorly.

France has a specific BMI for models that can be circumvented if we believe the media, the UK has the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) monitoring adverts and the Netherlands to my knowledge has nothing but opinions.

(Links: www.waarmaarraar.nl, www.l1)

Tags: , ,