December 10, 2008

Blackfaced police officers in sting op

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:15 pm
Zwarte Piet

Last weekend the police in Utrecht used decoy men in blackface, so-called ‘Zwarte Pieten’ (Black Petes), to catch rowdy youths who had been taunting real Black Petes with their own candy.

Black Pete is Saint Nicholas’ helper in the Netherlands. His face is black because he is the one who has to climb down the chimney to deliver gifts and bring back up carrots for the horse and any naughty children that he might find. Over the years, the image of Black Pete has made generic, taking the blackface look from the deeply racist USA and multiplying the number of Petes so that they became more like huge Smurfs. We’ve even got the Smurf etymology down pat, naming individual Petes for a single outstanding quality: Fix it Pete, Gift Pete, Horse Pete, and now even Bait Pete.

Usually it’s Black Pete’s prerogative to give nice children candy and to put bad children “in the bag” and take them back to Spain with him (where, as you all know, Saint Nicholas comes from), but I guess the concept of good children turning bad after getting candy was a little too much for the Utrecht Petes, so they called in the cops. Methinks the arrested 10 and 11-year-olds should have an excellent line of defence in court.

UPDATE: We are very aware that many Dutch folks now consider Zwarte Piet a racist stereotype.

(Link and photo: tobysterling.net, via trouw.nl)

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December 9, 2008

HEMA essential brand, followed by 8 o’clock news

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 9:06 am

The Dutch cannot part with their HEMA department stores, a recent EURIB study revealed. Some 81% of the population thinks the cheap retailer with a sense for design is indispensable. The number two and three positions are taken up by Blokker (housewares) and Kruidvat (cosmetics). Among men, NOS Journaal—the state-run TV news show—took the top position (77%), among women HEMA leads (91%), with Pickwick (tea) taking second place.

The researchers determined three factors that could explain the indispensability of a brand:

  1. Consumers see a brand as a part of Dutch culture
  2. Consumers can interact with the brand
  3. Consumers are exposed to a brand on at least a weekly basis

I think HEMA’s perceived indispensability is caused by the fact that nearly everybody buys their underwear there. Ipso facto, the Dutch are an underwear wearing people. Free scientific analysis from the 24 Oranges’ towers, there ya go.

The study (Dutch, PDF) can be downloaded at the EURIB website.

See also:

Via Blik op Nieuws (Dutch). Photo by Hans Vandenbogaerde, some rights reserved.

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December 8, 2008

Peep shows are cultural events claims tax office

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:11 pm

Peep shows where men and couples pay by the minute to sit and watch women (no men or couples?) perform sex acts behind a glass are taxed with the lower VAT rate (Value Added Tax) of 6% instead of the higher rate of 19%, being considered ‘cultural’.

The original case was brought by a sex club owner who argued the shows were similar to theatre because they were attended by paying customers. If you follow the link below, you can see two men getting ready to go at instead of women behind a glass. Casa Rosso is also the place to be in the red light district if you’re going to see something like this apparently. I just happened to like this picture of the Moulin Rouge – not the French version.

Going off on a tangent: a female acquaintance of mine back in Montreal, Canada, working on a university paper about prostitution was thrown out of a peep show place because she was female. Any woman entering the place was a possible prostitute and so even though it is against the law to refuse entry to women, they did so. I wonder if it’s still like that today.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of Red Light District in The Hague)

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December 6, 2008

Delayed construction killing unique bookstore’s business

Filed under: General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

There’s a lot of ways to kill walk-by business and one of them is having heavy duty construction right in front of your shop for as long as The Bookstore Exchange has had—13 months and counting. This second hand, English-language bookstore (photo), apparently the largest on the European continent with over 80,000 books, located near the Faculty of Sociology of the Universiteit van Amsterdam has been around since 1978 and is going bankrupt due to this construction.

Run by Jeff, a perfectly integrated American—a real ‘Amsterdammer’—who has been living in the capital for 30 years, said in November already to different media that he was as good as bankrupt. The construction blocks the view of his shop window and so passers-by don’t just pop in anymore, never mind the sand from the construction outside that gets into books, the noise and what have you. In a city with 1.5 million tourists a year, being invisible is deadly. The City of Amsterdam has no intention of compensating the mess they are still making for something that was scheduled to be finished by end of 2007.

Sources tell us that Jeff has neither the time nor money nor energy to fight against the bureaucrats and we get that. The closing of his shop is not just his loss, but a loss for anyone who enjoys hard to find English-language books. Apparently, the source of pride from being able to say that the continent’s biggest second-hand English-language bookshop is in Amsterdam and the labour of love built by Jeff himself means nothing to bureaucrats who can’t even finished projects on time or within budgets anymore. We won’t get into the hugely delayed North-South metro line, which literally put people out of their sinking homes and ruining other businesses.

Christmas is around the corner and so I invite you to check out The Book Exchange in Amsterdam (click on the link for directions). It’s short walk from Central Station. We plan to do so as well.

More info: bookexchange.nl. Thanks to my friend Nathalie for pointing this out!

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December 5, 2008

How to celebrate Sinterklaas

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 3:07 pm

If you were uncertain on whether to put the carrot for the horse in the left or the right shoe, whether to start singing Zie ginds komt de stoomboot or Sinterklaasje Bonne Bonne Bonne first, or whether it is allowed to make veiled references to the thing you had with your best friend’s wife in the poem you wrote for his surprise, fear not, NEN to the rescue! Last year, the Dutch Standards Institute (NEN) published its standards for the celebration of Sinterklaas (PDF, mostly Dutch) so that now we know how all participants should behave during the celebration.

Oh, that poem thing? The rules are defined in a separate document, NTA 0712.

Link: Sargasso. Photo by Aloxe, some rights reserved.

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Screw nannyism, smoke the best weed and be merry

Filed under: General,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:11 am
Cannabis Cup

I read on Twitter this morning that someone could not buy any chocolate cigarettes at the sweets shop as a Sinterklaas gift for their kids. Apparently, the shop doesn’t carry them anymore because that would encourage kids to start smoking at an earlier age. I can think of a multitude of things you shouldn’t buy your children, full stop. Will ordinary mushrooms be next? What about ice lollies?

All this nannyism (in Dutch, betutteling) is putting a damper on some people’s holiday spirit much more than any financial crisis could, it seems. Besides small cafés ignoring the smoking ban and the waves of protests and enforcement problems, many Dutch cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam will be closing down coffeeshops (where you buy weed and hasch) that are located too close to schools. Not a bad idea per se, but why let them set up shop there in the first place? Back then, I guess the government was liberal enough to let parents explain right and wrong to their kids. Then, there’s Maastricht being pressured by neighbouring Belgium and Germany to shut shops to cut down on cross-border smoking.

Blaming the Netherlands has been going on for ages. During a speech held in Amsterdam a few years back, French President Jacques Chirac blamed the Netherlands for their cross-border dope-smoking problems, failing to notice that the Netherlands doesn’t share a border with France. That border is called Belgium. Belgium was not amused.

But, in order to show you that things are still smokin’, coffeshop De Greehouse in Amsterdam, which I had heard of even before living in the Netherlands, has just won the prestigious Cannabis Cup, well known by readers of High Times magazine, the magazine for pot smokers and growers, for some weed that sounds more like a kind of lady’s tea: Super Lemon Haze. Follow the link below for a good, educational video with much English in it.

(Link: parool.nl)

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December 3, 2008

Speak English with Poles, don’t bother with Polish

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Literature by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am
Polish sausage

Yesterday on telly (Nova) I saw a report about how Poles were getting on in Rotterdam. Once they showed the Polish food store (ethnic groups are often automatically associated with their food), I watched the rest. What I heard was well educated, normal looking Europeans who just happen to have crappy jobs that apparently pay less than minimum wage in 40% of cases and homes that are overpriced and crowded. As well, some 50% want to stay in the Netherlands because their chances are simply better. Some politicians says this will prepare them for the next wave of Eastern Europeans (Bulgarians and Romanians) who are due to arrive soon. These people are more often than not highly educated, speak several languages and do jobs the Dutch apparently have the luxury to refuse to do. They are not illiterate housewives or too old to integrate.

Then I found this recent article that reads “Poles speak English too well”, which is some weird complaint. On telly, they said that many Poles came to the Netherlands from England and Ireland, so it is logical that they speak some English. The article, however, basically points out that setting up Polish lessons for employers (known as reverse integration and highly criticised) is a waste of time if the Poles speak English. The people setting up these courses could have known this if they 1) bothered to get information from the Polish community like the telly did and 2) looked further in Europe than their own miniscule backyard.

And remember, when the Poles do stay they are obliged to learn Dutch anyways, so communication will be even easier! It seems the municipalities and the people setting up courses could use some serious cultural communication lessons themselves. Poles often speak Polish, some Russian and/or German, English and even other languages like French. Ah but learning Polish was a way to make money which backfired big time hence the complaint.

(Link: leeuwardercourant.nl)

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December 1, 2008

Blame the navigation device

Filed under: Automobiles,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:36 pm

According to the police, a 47-year-old man on a scooter in Apeldoorn, Gelderland was fined last Friday for driving on the A50 motorway. The man listened and blindly obeyed the advice of his navigation system (I’d love to know which one, as I can’t automatically assume it’s from that Dutch brand, but it’s a distinct possibility).

The guy drove his scooter over the emergency lane of the A50 in the direction of Zwolle en route to Leeuwarden. The police eventually stopped him and fined him. The man claimed his GPS ‘told’ him that the quickest route to Leeuwarden was to scoot over the A50.

So the GPS obviously screwed up, but the man deserves a ticket for forgetting anything he learned about driving and safety. And how about that GPS software?

And just in case it was that Dutch brand:

(Link depers.nl)

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November 30, 2008

Flemish student loses her job due to drunk Belgian minister

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:36 pm
Fortune cookie

What a lovely bit of gossip. A Flemish student living and working in New York blogged about a drunk Belgian minister and got fired for it.

The story goes that Nathalie Lubbe Bakker who until recently worked as a barmaid in New York City to pay for her room and board described the loud, lewd and drunk performance of Belgian defense minister Pieter de Crem at her bar in detail on her blog. Then, after some discussion between a representative of the minister and her boss she got fired without any explanation. Lubbe Bakker asked and heard from the defense minister’s representative that the minister wasn’t even supposed to be in New York as his meetings were all cancelled. That last bit was immediately picked up by the Belgian parliament and has been fueling the Belgian media and talk shows as of late. Lubbe Bakker asked the respentative, “didn’t you know beforehand that your meetings in New York were cancelled?”, “oh yes”, answered the representative, “but you know, it’s so quiet in Brussels at the moment, nothing is happening so we’d thought we’d come to NYC since we’ve never been here before”.

Yes, this is not really about the Netherlands, but I was weak. I will repent soon.

UPDATE: The girl is Dutch and lives in Antwerp. I have repented.

(Link: telegraaf.nl)

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November 28, 2008

Jeroen Krabbé has no time for Grey’s Anatomy

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am
Krabbe

World-famous Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé, known for many Dutch and English-language roles (playing a meanie in the James Bond film ‘The Living Daylights’ comes to mind quickly) has refused a guest role on one of the most popular American television shows, Grey’s Anatomy. Dutch television show ‘SBS Shownieuws’ said on 26 November that Krabbé’s schedule is so full that he had to turn the American medical series down. He said they’d probably ask him again soon. What kind of character would he play? Hopefully not some Russian general called Koskov with a weird accent.

(Link: zappen.blog.nl)

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