June 5, 2015

‘Magic’ roundabout in Purmerend viewed by 250,000 so far

Filed under: Animals,Automobiles,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:27 am

The first webcam I ever watched back in the mid nineties was that of a litterbox were viewers waited to spot the cat using it. Over the litterbox there would be different messages everyday like ‘send tuna’. If you caught the cat going to the box you were asked to take a screenshot of it (nobody had digital cameras or mobile phones with digital cameras back then), you could send it to the owner and he would send you something cool, I don’t remember.

The Archie software company in Purmerend has set up a webcam on a roundabout to test its software. Funny thing is some 250,000 Dutch people have checked it out and it’s getting traction. A journalist on Twitter who wrote about it said he witnessed a car that wouldn’t yield to a scooter, which they should do, making his viewing ‘eventful’. For anyone who wants to see how a typical Dutch town deals with bike paths and cars, this is for you. The stream is in 1080HD and looks good.

It makes me want to go and skate around it for a while. For all we know a happening is being planned. A marching band going around in circles, could be fun. Stay tuned.

(Link: nieuws.nl)

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June 4, 2015

Record number of Chinese for one Dutch visit

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 2:20 pm

The Chinese cosmetics company Perfect has recently sponsored 4,500 of its employees to vacation in the Netherlands, making it the biggest group visit to the country ever, according to Dutch media.

Their entire visit has brought in close to 8 million euro. The Chinese visited places such as the Hoge Veluwe National Park, Roermond outlet centre, the congress centre in Utrecht, and the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, while having to stay in different cities: Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, Rotterdam, and Utrecht.

Many of them were spotted enjoying Chinese food the most, which could be the typical Chinese-Indonesian food the Dutch usually serve. The group will most probably help attract even more Chinese visitors to the Netherlands with their word of mouth advertising.

(Link: rt.com)

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June 3, 2015

Dutchman declared ‘persona non grata’ in the Philippines

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:07 pm

giro_trash

Dutchman Kees Koostra (possibly Jan Kees Koostra) who has been living in Puerto Galera, the Philippines for some time has called his new home town ‘Puerto Basura’ (roughly ‘Puerto Rubbish’) after having posted a picture of the local tourist destination White Beach with “uncollected garbage contained in black plastic bags, with worms crawling on them” on Facebook. Appealing to the local authorities to do something about it, they instead decided to black ball him for his concerns, a move that surprised locals and foreigners alike. Koostra is locally active in tourism and environment-related projects.

Since Koostra’s post, the shorelines of White Beach have been cleaned up by the municipal government. The Puerto Galera Business and Tourism Entrepreneurs Association (PGBTEA) and other groups also expressed their support for Koostra, saying the decision is unfair. “He is a law-abiding citizen and he was just expressing his constructive comments on the present state of the environment of Puerto Galera.”

Koostra has sailed around the world twice in his own yacht. “Out of the 68 countries I travelled, I chose the Philippines to live in permanently. And I chose Puerto Galera to stay,” Koostra said.

(Link: manilastandardtoday.com)

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June 2, 2015

Museum in Zaandam pays record amount for a Monet

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:58 pm

voorzaan-westerhem-small-monet

The Zaans Museum in Zaandam near Amsterdam has acquired a painting from French painter Claude Monet, entitled ‘The Voorzaan and the Westerhem’ for a record amount of 1,160,000 euro. The Zaans Museum is the third Dutch museum to own a Monet from the Zaandam period, the other two are in more well-known museums, the Van Gogh in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. Fans will be able to admire the painting as of this fall.

In May 1871 Monet left London to live in Zaandam where he made 25 paintings. His main attraction was the landscape, windmills, the river Zaan, and the typical wooden houses of the area. “Zaandam is quite remarkable and there is enough to paint for a lifetime,” Monet wrote to his friend and colleague Camille Pissarro. “Houses in all colours, hundreds of mills and delightful boats.”

(Links: www.trouw.nl, www.monetinzaandam.nl)

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May 28, 2015

Marzipan sweets branch out despite legal threats

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am

Marzipan-bags

Last month we told you about beautifully crafted marzipan handbags from chocolate maker Jordino in Amsterdam who had received a nasty letter all in business French telling them to stop making Louis Vuitton handbags with the threat of being fined 40,000 euro for trademark infringement.

This week as I walked passed the shop to see if the bags were still there, Jordino did one better: they have now branched out into Gucci and Chanel bags as well. They were too busy dishing out ice cream to ask them why they continued crafting bags after the threat, but my best guess is Louis Vuitton was either told to get stuffed in Dutch or were completed ignored. I’m happy Jordino decided to keep making their beautiful sweets.

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May 27, 2015

Swiping the Tinder app with meat fits the bill

Filed under: Art,Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:40 am

Tinder

A Dutch art installation entitled ‘Tender’ created by four students at Leiden University features a piece of meat (pork?) that swipes profiles approvingly in a fake version of the popular dating app Tinder. The artwork is set to debut at the Habitat art exhibition in Amsterdam this weekend.

In casual Dutch, ‘checking people out’ is called ‘vleeskeuren’, which literally means ‘to check out the meat’. The creators have an actual piece of meat doing that for them in the video: by swiping right, the ‘user’ is approving all the profiles it swipes, going for a match, but maybe all ‘porky’ will get is a flash in the pan. The four students are probably guys because their app is searching for women, so they’ll get bikinis and sunglasses but miss out on guys petting tigers and holding fish — take my word for it.

Just last month Tinder reunited a brother and sister both searching for a ‘sex date’.

(Link: www.tech365, Photo of Tinder app by Wayan Vota, some rights reserved)

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May 26, 2015

A Dutch hit about Paris and its Grunnegs cover

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:47 am

Eiffel_tower2

This spring, Dutch artist Kenny B released a Dutch song entitled ‘Paris’ with interspersed French words, filmed in Paris. He meets a girl who happens to be ‘Néerlandaise’ (Dutch) and goes on to sing ‘Praat Nederlands met mij’ (‘Speak Dutch with me’), which should become the new mantra of many struggling to practice their Dutch. Kenny B often mentions in the media that he doesn’t like the qualifier ‘Surinam-born’ as he is Dutch, although he does have a characteristic pronunciation from his background, which adds to his appeal.

Then, there’s a short but sweet Groningen cover version by Michael, sung in local dialect Grunnegs. It’s going viral and we’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Yes, it needs more verses and I want more versions: Internet, do your thing!

(Link: www.gic.nl)

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May 24, 2015

Some children ‘not white enough’ for school

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:52 pm

The disturbingly casual Dutch terms ‘black schools’ and ‘white schools’ in the Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam refer to schools with ‘kids that don’t look Dutch’ and ‘kids that look Dutch’ because Dutch is code for Caucasian and everything else gets lumped into ‘black’.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, ‘black schools’ don’t do as well as ‘white schools’, and smart parents of both groups try to get their kids into ‘white schools’. Many parents will claim to want their kids to go to a ‘mixed school’, but they are only considered good schools when there’s more ‘white’ kids than ‘black’ kids.

Two schools in one neighbourhood decided to challenge this segregation by getting the ‘kids that don’t look Dutch’ to wear T-shirts that say ‘Is this white enough for you?’, so that two ‘mixed schools’ don’t close because more parents are sending their kids to ‘white schools’ in other neighbourhoods. It’s sad that small children are being taught that their skin colour is putting people off, to put it mildly.

Amsterdam is a city that proudly keeps counting how many different nationalities live together in harmony, but when it comes to schools, segregation is commonplace.

(Link: politiek.thepostonline.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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May 23, 2015

Very rare copy of Mein Kampf on display in Amsterdam

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 5:28 pm

mein-kampf-adam-jones

After having been prosecuted for selling ‘Mein Kampf’ and getting a slap on the wrist for it, the Totalitarian Art Gallery in Amsterdam is back in the news with a ‘very rare’ signed copy of Hitler’s controversial book.

The local Anti-Facist League is demanding the book be confiscated and that the gallery be closed down, but the police told them they cannot legally do either of those things. ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’) can easily be found on the Internet since about 1998, but the book version is still banned. As well, the copyright on the book will run out in 2016, making it even more difficult to control any distribution of the work.

Gallery owner Michiel van Eyck is currently displaying the book in his shop, not selling it, and there’s nothing illegal about that. There’s an appeal currently ongoing on the original verdict against Van Eyck. However, banning a physical book that can be found easily and for free is ‘mopping the floor with the faucet running’, as the Dutch would say.

(Link: www.parool.nl, Photo by Adam Jones, some rights reserved)

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May 22, 2015

Bosch your photos, there’s an app for that

Filed under: Art,Photography,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:01 pm

Bosch-app

Making the rounds since last fall and distributed by Dutch company No Strings, the Bosch camera app lets you add some Hieronymus Bosch characters to your pictures. I gave it a quick spin with my paper bin (see pic) and it is fun and easy to use.

“Bosch camera reanimates 500 year-old creatures and people taken from the paintings of Bosch. A stroll in the woods or a visit to the local supermarket could turn in an awesome adventure.”

It’s Bosch’s famous characters that keep so many people intrigued, even to the point of deciphering buttock music from the famous painting ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, which is currently the object of feuding Spanish museums.

(Link: Hieronymus Bosch The Movie on Facebook)

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