October 16, 2018

Mayor of Heerlen to DJ a metal set

Filed under: Dutch first,Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:09 pm

Mayors in the Netherlands are appointed and not elected, and it’s not uncommon to see well-known national politicians, such as Ahmed Aboutaleb in Rotterdam (Labour Party), Ahmed Marcouch in Arnhem (Labour Party), Femke Halsema in Amsterdam (Green Party) or Emile Roemer in Heerlen (Socialist Party) step out of national politics to become mayors of a big Dutch city. In the case of Emile Roemer, he became the first ever mayor of the Socialist Party in March of this year, in a town that regularly votes for his party.

My sources tell me that Roemer enjoys being addressed informally and is a fan of heavy metal, the right kind of soundtrack to a city filled with empty buildings where the youth leave to find jobs and a more stable future. As for Heerlen, Limburg, a former mining town of some 87,000 residents, it is the rock and roll answer to the more conservative and tourist-savvy Maastricht some 30 minutes away.

And I don’t know if this is a first, but it’s most probably a first for Heerlen: on Sunday, 23 December, Roemer will be DJing a thrash metal and hard rock set at De Nieuwe Nor, the city’s only pop club. He’ll be opening for Amsterdam band Death Alley who apparently won’t be playing for a while after this.

And if Facebook is any indication, people will go because the whole idea is kind of amusing.

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October 15, 2018

Christien Meindertsma’s new view on recycled materials

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 1:33 pm

Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma, who got noticed in 2007 with her award-winning project PIG 05049 (shown above), featuring185 products made from a single pig, currently has an exhibition entitled ‘Beyond the Surface’ at the Vitra Design Museum in Basel, Switzerland, which examines her work with wool, flax, incinerator ash, and recycled wool.

Video and printed matter demonstrating her working process are displayed alongside products made from each material, to best demonstrate Meinderstma’s research-based practice. Rather than present the designer’s work chronologically, the museum decided to group the exhibition around the four materials.

“We realised that we would prefer a different format in order to give visitors a sense of the thoroughness that Christien applies to her work, which usually drives her to investigate a material or over long periods of time, producing a number of outcomes, not just a single product,” curator Viviane Stappmanns said.

The exhibition is the designer’s first outside her native country and is on display until 20 January 2019.

(Link: dezeen.com, Photo: Indexaward.dk)

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October 14, 2018

Musical street in Zaandam sounds ‘too gay’ for some

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:07 pm

The city of Zaandam, North Holland has a street that is getting a name change, from Piccolo to Hobo (Oboe), both of which are musical instruments. The Zaandam neighbourhood in question already has a street called Hobo and is now going to extend it. It also has streets called Cello, and then gets into musical-related terms such as Aubade, Prelude and Mazurka, to name a few.

The people who live on Piccolo street don’t want their street to become Hobo street. In Dutch, Hobo rhymes with ‘homo’, which is used as a derogatory word for homosexual, an issue brought up back in 2016 when the area was created. And I know what some of you are thinking, ‘Hobo’ doesn’t sounds great for anybody whose first language is North American English, as that refers to a vagrant, but that’s besides the point.

There are other Hobo streets throughout the country and apparently, that’s not a problem. I’d like to think that going from Piccolo to Oboe musically is a bit of an upgrade, because – and I held back on this – in that tooty-fluity neighbourhood, there’s also a street called Fagot, the Dutch name for a bassoon, which nobody seems to complain about.

In the Netherlands, you can always live on Fart Street, but then you could also live in on a street named after Lord of The Rings characters.

(Link: noordhollandsdagblad.nl)

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October 12, 2018

Baby invited to meet bureaucrats at town hall

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:21 pm

Baby-booties

The town of Schagen, North Holland sent a letter to one of their newest residents, inviting them to town hall in order to find out about what bureaucrats can do for them. At this point in time, the answer is so not much because the town sent a letter to a three-month-old baby girl whose diary is pretty much full up for the foreseeable future.

Yes, she is a new resident of Schagen, but why didn’t the town have a good look at the baby’s date of birth before sending this kind of useless correspondence? I’m quite sure that the rest of the country checks these kinds of details first.

In true bureaucratic form, and even though the baby’s parents and the town had a good laugh about the mishap, the bureaucrats managed to blame the newly implemented privacy law (possibly the General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR), saying they could not easily check a date of birth, which I call bullshit on. All newborn children as well as every single resident of the Netherlands must be registered with town hall, making it pretty clear when reading their date of birth who is a baby. The GDPR has enough articles about when to use personal data and when not to.

After the father posted the invitation for his daughter on Facebook, people commented that they too had received weird letters from their town: an eight-year-old boy was invited to come and talk about real estate law.

A few years back, the Dutch tax office, a very different breed of bureaucrats,
pestered a nine-year-old for not filing a return when of course they didn’t have to.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo of baby booties by Winam, some rights reserved)

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October 11, 2018

Google Home Minis understand some Dutch, but not enough

Filed under: General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:12 pm

According to someone who works for Bright.nl, yesterday all of a sudden their Google Home Minis, a type of wireless speaker and voice command device with an integrated AI-based virtual assistant started to understand his commands in Dutch. Before then, his entire family had to ask for everything in their best American English.

After choosing Dutch as a default language, all devices stopped working except the Hue lamps, a line of colour changing LED lamps with wireless control, and the Honeywell thermostat. Sending images from the front door to the television with the Dutch command ‘Hey Google, show me the front door on TV40’ produced a YouTube video about front doors on the telly.

A day later, Hue dropped out, with an error that the lighting was no longer available. Bright hopes that Dutch language support will be working properly on 24 October when Google Home speakers will officially be available in Dutch shops. I’d hate to be working in a shop that is going to get a wave of complaints with no fix in site or be told to use it in English or German. And I wonder if it will understand those of us who speak Dutch with accents.

For the advanced class, here’s the discussion about Dutch accents within the country, such as is it Leiden, Leide or Leye? It depends where you’re from, but that’s still not good enough.

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: consumentenbond.nl)

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October 10, 2018

Dutch first: wrestling and punk music with sign language

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 5:08 pm

On 13 October Hilversum venue De Vorstin will host some live wrestling from Dutch outfit Dropkicks ’n Moshpits along with some live punk music from Green Lizard, with both the match and the music entirely presented in sign language.

Ruth Krooshof, who will be signing the event, says she usually has cramps in her fingers at the end of the evening, but what she is doing is making a night full of entertainment accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing.

It is also a first for her and for the country. She will also translate what people are screaming at the wrestlers, which, if anybody knows about live wrestling, is a large part of the fun. Krooshof also believes that since wrestling is so visual, it is a great sport to watch for people who rely on sign language.

Here’s what Green Lizard looks and sounds like:

(Link: gooieneemlander.nl, Photo: dropkicksnmoshpits.nl)

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October 9, 2018

Sending Dutch troops to Norway without winter clothes

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:16 pm

It’s actually front page news that the Dutch military does not have to buy their own artic winter clothes for military exercises in Norway this month. A few days ago, the news was that the Dutch Ministry of Defense did not order winter clothes on time for them, with no explanation as to why they messed up, which probably means someone plain forgot or worse.

The military were asked to buy their own special winter clothes to the tune of 1000 euro per person, which was fronted by Defense. Defense claims it had to ‘possibly’ break its own rules on calls for tender to get the winter clothes on time to the more than 1000 military off to Norway later this month to carry out exercises. However, due to the time crunch, some military already bought their own gear.

What the hell was Defense thinking? Or were they thinking at all? Even Dutch Parliament was “very critical” of the idea of sending military who were given 1,000 euro to buy their own winter clothing. It may be 14 degrees in Oslo today, which is in the South of Norway, but it will be close to -20 soon enough in the North, and forgetting to equip your military is unsafe, dangerous and embarrassingly stupid.

The Dutch military have also had complaints about the quality of combat uniforms and even female military personnel have been forced to travel during work hours just to buy military approved bras.

(Link: nu.nl)

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October 8, 2018

Student sushi chef gets his own pop-up restaurant

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:09 pm

Back in May we told you about Kitsanin Thanyakulsajja, a student who ran a sushi restaurant from his dorm room and all the praise he got. Of course, he was doing it for the money, but he also wanted to improve himself as a chef.

Kit is now working in a posh hotel downtown Amsterdam in his own private, pop-up restaurant. He now also has a Bachelor’s degree, the main reason he came to the Netherlands. Since the media has announced that he is working in a ‘real’ restaurant, he is booked solid for all of October, with November and December reservations opening up soon. The cost of an intimate 15-course meal is 125 euro per person. He was also booked pretty solid when he was running Ephemeral, the name of his sushi joint in his dorm room. There, he slept a few hours a night, so he is relieved that era is over.

Kit now has a choice to make between starting his own restaurant, going back to Tokyo or Bangkok, or getting a Master’s degree here in Amsterdam. If he opts for Asia where the level of learning about sushi is the highest in the world, chances are he won’t come back to Amsterdam. To be continued!

(Link: parool.nl, photo: munchies.vice.com)

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October 7, 2018

KLM house number 99, a nod to coffee

Filed under: Aviation,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:57 pm

Back when flying was less democratic, KLM would give
house-shaped bottles filled with Bols genever to folks flying on intercontinental flights in business class, which over time became collector’s items.

This year to celebrate KLM’s 99th anniversary on October 7, a new house, number 99, was unveiled: the first shop of coffee merchant Douwe Egberts, in Joure, Friesland. These houses are so popular that people are already selling them on Dutch online auction sites.

KLM currently serves Douwe Egberts on their flights, in their lounges and in their offices, which would explain their choice. And all of us are wondering what house number 100 will be. OK, not all of us, but KLM and all those collectors for sure.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, image: klom.com)

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October 4, 2018

Children discover error in 2019 Dutch tax plan

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:01 pm

During an economics lesson, secondary school children in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant discovered a calculation error in the Dutch tax office’s plan for 2019.

While learning about the plan, which apparently can be found online and lets people know what’s coming tax-wise, a girl noticed a mistake. After discussing it and checking with the rest of the class, they sent an e-mail to the Dutch government, telling them about it, but didn’t immediately get a response. The next day, the error had not been corrected.

The economics class did some recalculations the next day and to them it still was wrong, as well as still being wrong online. They sent another message, and at some point, a cake was delivered to the school during their class. The cake had a QR code on it, which made them all laugh, with a personal message from Secretary of State Menno Snel thanking them for having found the mistake.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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