January 9, 2009

Elfsteden update: 25,000 litres of pea soup and 80,000 smoked sausages

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:07 am

Soup and sausage manufacturer Unox are busy producing 25,000 litres of pea soup and 80,000 smoked sausages in time for a possible Elfstedentocht, reports Zibb.nl. The company wants to have 25 stands with volunteers from among its own ranks during the classic 200-kilometer skating race. Should the race take place, the volunteers will hand out the soup, sausages and hats.

Jort Kelder, the country’s most famous documenter of the rich, and side-kick Harry Veenendaal don’t like Unox and its plans very much. In NRC they urge culture minister Plasterk to hurry and apply for a Unesco Intangible Heritage status for the Elfstedentocht (Dutch) to protect the race from commercial interests. Kelder and Veenendaal point to the New Year’s Dive (Dutch), where the sausage giant apparently even got the riot police to keep out the riff-raff that wasn’t going to pay 2 euro to enter a public beach and participate in a traditional event.

Are we going to have an Elfstedentocht? Many Frisians are fuming at the local waterboard (AD, Dutch) which decided to open the sluices in order to drain excess water, resulting in a partial destruction of the ice layer on the brooks, canals and rivers along the Elfsteden route. The waterboard defended its decision by pointing out that moving ice could damage quays and banks.

According to Dutchnews, it should freeze minus 10 degrees or better for at least two weeks before the ice is strong enough to support the 16,000 lucky skaters of the Elfstedentocht—which, by the way, rhymes with Van Gogh. Although it’s been freezing now for over a week, the frost has mainly stuck to the Southern half of the country, with Friesland even experiencing some thaw earlier this week.

Photo of the 1997 Elfstedentocht by Tjeerd van der Werk, used under the conditions of the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2.

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January 8, 2009

Dutch advert about washing one’s vagina

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:14 pm

I thought I had seen everything: adverts with female frontal nudity (very normal occurrence here) and some naked male DJ with his not very impressive kit facing the camera at 9 am in the morning, but this advert just made me stop everything I was doing and post. It’s pushing (no pun intended) a vagina wash product and it is filmed from the between a woman’s legs point of view. Ickeepoo squared.

Besides the obvious OMG (Oh My God!) response I just had, as a woman I am sick and tired of any product advertising that seeks to generate even more useless insecurity in women and their bodies, especially in teenage girls, just to sell a product. Ickeepoo some more.

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Town outlaws use of metal detectors in ‘war forest’

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 8:05 am

The municipality of Haren in Groningen is considering outlawing the use of metal detectors, Groninger Internet Courant reports (Dutch). The town council wants to prevent people from digging up corpses and ammunition in the Appelbergen forest, where the Nazis buried 34 people they shot in retribution. Fifteen of those victims were never found.

A spokesperson of the municipality told GIC.nl that “The police regularly discover treasure hunters who think its exciting to search the forest. Though the chance is small, we don’t want them to start digging and find human remains. There’s a much bigger possibility they will find ammunition, also because the forest is a practice area for the army. That could lead to dangerous situations.”

Photo of the Appelbergen war monument by Wikipedia user Lampje, some rights reserved.

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January 7, 2009

Winter fever Dutch style and time off

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 3:10 pm
elf-1.jpg

Winter seems to be here to stay this year in the Netherlands, which means that canals and ponds stay frozen with or without the presence of snow, birds need to be fed bread so I keep hearing from bird lovers, and the country has skating fever. A business colleague proudly told everyone on a mailing list that she had tailored her work schedule around skating until it lasts. It’s safe to assume that employees are calling in sick as well and are on some frozen pond somewhere getting it out of their system.

As for myself, I just drove through Amstelveen and Oude Kerk aan de Amstel and saw tons of kids skating, like some modern Dutch winter postcard and spotted a place to sharpen my figure skates, should I join the party this weekend.

Tomorrow, the entire Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs gets a half day off to go skating. I asked the approachable and twittering Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Verhagen on Twitter if he plans on going skating, but he keeps telling us about meetings in Paleis Noordeinde where the Queen works.

The not so nice side to this story is that school children in the South of the country where the temperatures are lower and the ice is safer cannot just take time off to go skating because then the schools cannot meet their obligatory 1,040 hours of teaching lessons. What about the kids in the North of the country I just saw?

However, if the Elfstedentocht (The Eleven-cities Tour) is a reality this year, then they will be given time off to go and watch. It only happens every ten year or so and if not, they’ll all call in sick too I bet.

And then half the country will be unavailable, out of the office, sick, and just plain busy.

Last year we talked about a man who brought a piece of his toe to his Elfstedentocht reunion.

(Link: elsevier.nl, Photo: tvglorie)

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January 6, 2009

Film theatre computer divulges personal data

Filed under: Film,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:52 pm
Pathé de Munt

A ticket machine at the Pathé De Munt film theatre in Amsterdam offered access to a list of online reservations for 2008, including the names of people who had reserved tickets online. According to Bright.nl, Reinder Rustema discovered this during the holidays when he walked along the ticket machine in the Pathé De Munt film theatre and saw that the Windows trash can was displayed on screen. “Through the trash can I was able to browse and look through the entire system (…). Finally, I saw a file called presales.xls (…) that I could open in Wordpad and there they were: all of the online reservations of 2008.” Bright.nl is still waiting for a response from the film theatre.

And yes it’s a big deal because it’s a breach of privacy and most probably illegal. Someone will surely explain it to us all here.

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: film.ziggo.nl)

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January 5, 2009

Annual Christmas tree bonfire in Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:36 am
Bonfire

Yesterday around 4 pm families on bikes and on foot dragged their Christmas trees to the Museumplein, the huge park in front of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where people can skate on the pond this winter. They piled trees as high as they could and at 5 pm they set the whole thing on fire while hundreds of people watched with friends and families. Not many events have this spontaneous community thing going for it, but this one did. I managed to join up with at least 10 people I know from Twitter (aka Tweeps) and their children for the event.

Just when I thought the security for the bonfire was exaggerated in a country that does not allow even the smallest of campfires at camping sites in the summer, the pile of trees set aside to feed the bonfire caught fire. A fire truck had to disperse the crowd while people just laughed and cheered on.

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January 3, 2009

Free bike parking possibly on last legs

Filed under: Bicycles,General by Orangemaster @ 1:34 pm
Pink bike

At first, it does sounds like a logical argument. Way back in the day you could park your car for free on the street, but nowadays there are too many cars so you have to pay because space is scarce. In a country with more bikes than people, bike space is becoming scarce and the idea of paying to take up that space is now an issue. Many people already pay to park their bikes safely indoors, but parking it unguarded in the rain for money doesn’t sound like a good deal at all.

Back in 2004, a huge bike flat was built at Amsterdam Central Station as a temporary solution to all the bikes cluttering the station area. If there’s one thing I learned about Dutch ‘street furniture’ is that temporary things become permanent very quickly. According to mimoa.eu, the ‘flat’ was supposed to be torn down in 2006, which was later pushed backed to 2009. It’s of course still there and it’s fuller than ever. One of the reasons it is full is because many people leave their bikes for a longer period of time or ditch their bikes there altogether, a national problem. If people were to pay, this would probably not happen as often.

However, the day has come where the idea of paying to park your bike could just be a few years away. Apparently, 40% of people bike to the train station, making the upkeep of bike parking spaces costly. There are all kinds of arguments against paying to park your bike, such as people turning to their cars to get to the train station, causing even more traffic, the environment (bike vs. car), the logisitics nightmare of it all and hiring people to fine cyclists who park their bikes illegally.

(Link: parool.nl)

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January 2, 2009

Banks refusing legit sex businesses as clients

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:50 pm
Moulin Rouge

When I first talked to a Lebanese-Dutch coffeeshop owner back in, oh, 1997 when I was just visiting the Netherlands, he told me that even though coffeeshops are legal, kids won’t wave to their coffeeshop owner on the street when off shopping with their parents. In other words, they definitely are of a lesser breed, just like sex industry workers. Imagine some guy saying a casual ‘hello’ to his favourite ‘pro’ at the snack bar while grabbing a burger with his mates.

And now in 2009 Dutch banks are refusing to let sex industry businesses open bank accounts, with the excuse that they are responsible for the trafficking of women and money laundering. The VER association, which represents sex businesses, is really pissed at the banks, although oddly enough, if a business has a “neutral sounding name”, it can open a bank account without any problems. Some truth is out there, read the Dutch link below.

Trafficking of women and money laundering, you say? Sure there’s a chance, but it can’t possibly be that bad. And what, the idea of such terrible practices only popped into the banks’ head in 2009? Are they on drugs? Hey banks, didn’t you cause this crisis we’re in?

The world is going mad – stay tuned!

(Link: z24.nl)

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January 1, 2009

Baby born on flight to Boston, USA

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:56 pm

A baby was born on New Year’s Eve on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 from Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam to Boston, USA, reports Fox News. Phil Orlandella, spokesperson for Logan International Airport, said that a doctor and paramedic who happened to be on board assisted with the birth. Upon arrival the baby was treated as a Canadian citizen, as it was born while flying over Canada.

I would assume that births in airplanes to the US are rare, as women who are more than 32 weeks pregnant a rarely allowed to fly on American flights.

Welcome to this big blue marble, baby, and a happy new year to you, and also a happy new year to all our readers!

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December 29, 2008

Branko’s favourite 24 Oranges postings of 2008

Filed under: Design,General by Branko Collin @ 10:38 am

A short selection of my favourite stories of 2008, some of them funny, some sad, some just weird:

So, which 24 Oranges story of 2008 would top your list?

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