September 16, 2007
Today the official world record jumpstyle dancing was improved upon with 749 people dancing on the Coolsingel street downtown Rotterdam for five minuntes to the new hit single from the house duo, Jeckyll & Hyde. The Guinness Book of Records watched on and approved. Yet 60 participants couldn’t keep going for 5 minutes. Yes, it can be tough.
Follow this previous posting and have a look at the explanatory video on Jumpstyle.
(Link: nu.nl)
September 13, 2007
After some 85 years in the air with pregnant staff and thousands of babies later, stewardesses and pilots can now get time off to make babies at KLM. The so-called ‘ovulation leave’ (how very woman friendly) mainly applies to KLM staff who work on intercontinental flights.
As of January 1, 2008 it will be forbidden for pregnant staff to fly and anyone pregnant will have to be grounded. It’s apparently better for their health.
Pregnant staff have been up in the air for some 85 years, couldn’t they have figured this out a while back? What took them so long?
(Link: De Pers)
Tags: KLM, stewardesses
September 7, 2007
This week, the Madurodam, the famous Dutch miniature village in The Hague, got its very first homeless shelter, modelled after a nice one in Groningen. The opening of the miniature version was done by minister for Living and Integration, Ella Vogelaar.
It’s smack in the middle of town, you can’t miss it.
(Link: De Pers)
Tags: Groningen, homeless shelter, Madurodam
September 5, 2007
By 2015, one child in five will be obese in the Netherlands, according to a study carried out by the Nicis research institute in the country’s major cities. Fewer than 10% of children in primary school manage to average half an hour exercise a day. Among teenagers, it is fewer than 30%.
The institute found a direct relation between weight gain and the opportunity to play games or sports in the children’s neighbourhood. Nicis underlined the duty of city councils to develop opportunities for exercise, by encouraging children to bike to school and improving safety at sports fields so children are not deterred by the risk of being attacked. The institute also stressed that parental attitudes were a determining factor: sporty parents tend to have sporty children while lazy couch-potatoes have children like them.
Risk of being attacked should be ‘risk of being beaten up for being fat or an easy target’.
No one word about bad eating habits, not one! Children take on some 90% of their parents’ habits as well, not just their sports habits.
Here a nice list of who’s fat in the world. There’s a cultural explanation for the top 8 and a serious difference in population size.
Some perspective: The US is No. 9, the Netherlands is No. 106. Don’t worry too much.
(link: int.iol.ca.za, via webwatch.be)
Tags: fat children, obesity
September 4, 2007
The Ringtone Society, a platform initiated in the Netherlands by Muzieklab for the artistic development of the ringtone, has been invited by the Grand Canyon Music Festival this month to take part in the festival’s 2007 Native American Composers Apprentice Project (NACAP), for a unique new ringtone initiative in Arizona, USA.
The Ringtone Society, in partnership with New York-based string quartet ETHEL will work with young Native American composers to produce a series of new ringtones. These new mini-compositions will be performed and recorded during the festival.
According to Theo Andriessen, initiator of The Ringtone Society, the public is fed up with terribly produced ringtones that overflow the market. “It is time for an artistic offensive. The ringtone offers a new creative challenge for musicians and composers and a chance to be heard by a new public at several different locations.” The Ringtone Society has already collected more than 500 unique ringtones, poetry tones and videotones worldwide and has been a featured presenter at the popfestival Lowlands in Holland and the Melbourne International Art Festival in Australia.
(Link: earthtimes.org, via webwatch)
Tags: Native music, ringtones
August 30, 2007
The advertising campaign for the launch of the new Renault Twingo caused a scandal in the Netherlands. An anonymous letter was sent to 30,000 Dutch women, which started with “Salut chérie” (“Hi dear”) in which women were invited to go shopping in Paris by a mysterious correspondent.
Of course, it was easy to find out who sent the letter, as two pictures of the new Twingo were in the envelope. However, it seems that many Dutch women are not up on cars (cars maybe, Twingo no) and do not have the same sense of humour as the marketing folks at Renault, who, I think, messed this one up.
The Dutch advertising commission was contacted by many “victims” of this advertising campaign (Renault got 400 complaints, the Dutch advertising commission got 25, according to Dutch newspaper, AD), saying it has caused problems in their relationship. Renault even replaced the second part of its campaign, which was a test drive invitation, by a letter of apology.
I love the smell of a good culture difference in the morning.
(Link: le blog auto, tip: Laurent)
Tags: advertising, Twingo
August 28, 2007
Translation: “Don’t play music from the speaker of your mobile phone. It doesn’t make you cool, it makes you fucking annoying.”
Alexander Klöpping, a student at the Universiteit van Amsterdam started a website that expresses his annoyance with people who play loud music from their mobile phones in public transport. His website, fucking irritant (fucking annoying) lets people get it out of their system.
“Enough with this asocial behaviour! Almost every mobile phone comes with earphones, so the decent thing to do is use them.” Unfortunately, then they just turn up the volume, which irritates folks as well, according to the reponses on the site.
A similar movement was launched in London and was a huge success. Four thousand commuters signed a petition against the “noise criminals” and about a 1,000 told their stories online. The government came into action soon after and signs were posted in buses and metros.
For anyone going “oh, but the use of swearing, how poor”, let me explain the cultural context. The Dutch don’t consider swearing in English a bad thing, in fact, it seems to reinforce their point, as swearing in Dutch is considered less cool and wrong.
(Link: Blik op nieuws)
August 22, 2007
Amsterdam is again in 2007 the most multicultural city in the world, according to the City of Amsterdam. As of 1 January 2007, 177 different nationalities were living in the city, making Amsterdam No. 1 in this respect. Runner up is Antwerp with 164 nationalities, while New York has 150.
In 2006 a new nationality was added to Amsterdam, as someone from Malawi went to live there. Most foreigners come from Morocco (64,588), Turkey (37,421), Great Britain (10,244), Germany (6,670) and Suriname (5,609).
Despite the constant hordes of people, Amsterdam only has 743,104 inhabitants, who are mostly Dutch, as 532,548 only have the Dutch nationality. As well, another 123,204 have two passports, including a Dutch one.
And what’s this picture? This is De Bijmermeer or ‘Bijlmer’, a suburb of Amsterdam, an architectural feat and the city’s symbol for where to put all the poor and usually non-white foreigners. I’ve lived there as a foreigner, so I know first hand, although I did see some poor, white, retired Dutch folk. It was also world news for the plane that crashed into one of the buildings. If you don’t know this story, grab a beverage and read it, it’s really something.
(Link: trouw)
Tags: Amsterdam, Antwerp, multiculturalism, New York
August 21, 2007
Unlikely problems will get you unlikely bed fellows: Dutch parliament is divided across traditional ideological lines and across the current government opposition division over astrology and talking to trees. The matter at hand? Whether the unemployed should be subsidized to pay for assistance from astrologers, tarot card dealers, and folks that talk to space aliens. The Christian governing parties CDA and CU, and the socialist opposition party SP think the idea is ludicrous, and feel that UWV, the organization that pays unemployment benefits, should be more careful about which re-integration projects it supports.
UWV denies any allegations of carelessness: of about 40,000 people that make use of the opportunity to have a tailor-made re-integration plan, only a few dozen follow a “spiritual” route to a job. The offices that assist the unemployed work according to a no cure, less pay principle. Daily De Volkskrant reports (Dutch) that there are about 2,000 such agencies. “It’s a new market; anybody can start an agency,” Ryanne Dijkstra tells the paper. Perhaps an idea for the unemployed?
But UWV warns that not every agency will be subsidized; “[An agency] must be registered with the Chamber of Commerce, must employ sufficient personnel to assist all customers, must have complaints and privacy regulations, and must make a personal development plan together with the job seeker,” PR person Anna Beekjes tells Planet.nl (Dutch). “[What’s more], if after two years the project is still unsuccessful, we will only pay the agency 50%.”
According to De Volkskrant, parliamentarian Eddy van Hijum (CDA, Christian centrists) thinks it is good that people are looking for meaning. “But we should not have to subsidize this. These woolly projects are not helping anyone find work.” And so 150 parliamentarians are busy investigating the dealings of “a few dozen” unemployed. Now that’s service! Or pico-management. I always get them mixed up.
Tags: Astrology, business models, Dutch government, unemployed
August 17, 2007
Pastor Harm Schilder of the Heilige Margarita Maria church parish in Tilburg was fined 5,000 big ones (euro) today and already another 5,000 big ones last Friday because his bell rings too loud. Too loud means 80 decibels instead of 70 decibels, which in laymen’s terms is the difference between a car and a noisy factory. Nevertheless, when the bell hits you very early at 7:15 am, I can imagine it’s loud.
The pastor was told by his boss the bishop not to ring the bell until they get the volume fixed. Stay tuned until next Friday.
(Link: Omroep Brabant)
Tags: Catholicism, church, Tilburg
