November 6, 2009
No idea what to get your cat for Christmas? Well, your search is over! Get them something they’ll cherish forever: a cat sauna!
That’s right! Keep your feline friends toasty warm and at no more than 50 degrees celsius with their very own cat sauna from Interhiva. To see what it really looks like, cat and all, check out the pics and videos.
(Link: Bright.nl, Photo: Photo of Cat in human sauna by jsade, some rights reserved.)
I bet it was an honest mistake, but I’m sure it sounded estúpido when Prince Willem Alexander, currently on a state visit of Mexico, unknowingly bungled a Mexican proverb in a speech by using the dirty version rather than the clean one.
I’m prepared to bet you muchos pesos that the speech writer punched up Wikipedia and picked the wrong proverb.
“Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente” means “Shrimp that sleeps gets carried by the tide”. “You snooze, you lose” is a good English translation.
The speech apparently contained “Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la chingada”, which roughly means “Shrimp that sleeps will get screwed”.
I can also picture Princess Máxima whose mother tongue is Spanish either being completely embarrassed behind the scenes or had a huge laugh at her husband and told him it was time to learn her language, considering how well she learnt his.
Royals, go kick that speech writer’s culo.
UPDATE: Watch the film, merriment starts at 0:28.
(Link: nu.nl, Photo: Photo of Mexican sombreros by José María Aguirre, some rights reserved)
Tags: Mexican Spanish, Prince Willem Alexander, Princess Máxima
November 5, 2009
Although parents keep checking their children’s hair and volunteer to check other children’s hair at school, the number of elementary school children with head lice has doubled in the past 15 years, according to a survey from the Dutch National Head Lice Support Centre.
An online survey filled out by over 750 parents and students showed that 25.5% of parents say their children have head lice in the past 12 months as compared to 11% of children with head lice in 1993. Researches do not understand why there is more head lice going around than back then.
Let me see… Many parents really don’t check for all kinds of dysfunctional family reasons? They in fact get it from children elsewhere than at school, like day care, camping, etc?
Theories, parents, anyone?
(Link: expatica.com, Photo tapirback.com)
November 4, 2009
While my latest Canadian passport is now machine readible — the one before was the same price, not machine readible and would have caused problems for me flying to the US — Dutch passports are getting even more high tech than they already are. The identification page of the latest Dutch passport is made of hard plastic, has watermarks and probably even hidden secret messages for added safety. Ironically, having flown to the US two weeks ago, a young Dutch girl I met on the plane was held for two hours with her brand spanking new Dutch passport by Interpol, with the excuse that her passport had been reported stolen. How they came up with that story is beyond me and freaked her out pretty good.
The new Dutch passport law passed earlier this year requires that as of 21 September 2009 all new Dutch passports and national ID cards issued have matching fingerprints stored in a national database. This information is placed in the RFID chip of the documents themselves. Hell, Canada and the US don’t even have chips on their credit cards yet!
A Dutch group called Privacy First (Dutch) is fighting the storage of fingerprints at the national level, claiming that it goes further than the EU agreement to do so and that it makes the databank a target for hacking criminals. We’ll probably keep you posted on this.
What I don’t get, or what seems ironic to me is that to fly to or via the United States, the Dutch (and many other countries) have to be fingerprinted at US customs. Who says their system is any safer or hacker-resistant? Why care about possible leaks in the Dutch system when the most powerful country in the world feels obliged to fingerprint its foreign visitors? Sure, not everyone flies to the US from the Netherlands, but a lot of people do.
And to tie this whole story into a neat bow, Canadians are exempt from being fingerprinted and do not need any visa or waiver to go to the US. In fact, you can probably still drive to the US from Canada with a driver’s licence and a smile. I’ve personally walked over the border by foot at Noyan, Québec into the state of Vermont, as the border check place was closed.
The First Nations people of Canada and the US Native Americans on the border can move back and forth freely, as long as they don’t get caught smuggling cigarettes, booze or cheap gas (petrol).
When I politely told the young male customs offer I had waited 2 hours to go through customs (a total of 4 hours for that young Dutch girl) with about 1,200 other people and was missing my flight as we spoke (there were only 4-5 customs officers at work at Washington Dulles airport!), he said to me verbatim “and our computer system sucks too”. And that’s where the Dutch fingerprints are stored. Took me two minutes at customs; takes EU members 5-10 minutes, I timed it.
Dutch customs asked me on the way there and the way back to prove I lived in the Netherlands by having to show my resident’s permit as well as my passport. A foreign passport in the Netherlands has no indication whatsoever that someone is a resident and not a tourist. Everyone’s a suspect somewhere.
(Link: webwereld, Photo of my wonderfully bilingual passport)
Tags: computer security, fingerprints, passport, United States
November 3, 2009
I saw this while not being able to fall asleep two weeks ago and I just realised that it was poking excellent fun at the recently bankrupt DSB bank.
“Aaaand it’s gone!”
Tags: Dirk Scheringa, DSB Bank
Ah yes, Dutch singer Dries Roelvink does it again, all while teaching everyone else the importance of backing up your work.
According to Dutch TV show RTL Boulevard, he went out to grab a bite with his assistant and realised he forgot his backing tapes. He went back to the bar where he performed and lo and behold, the tapes were gone (shock). However, he did leave his phone number on the tapes (aaah) and hopes to get them back before his next show (stress).
And since back ups are for mere mortals, Dries never made any. What’s today’s lesson, children? Always back up your work, no matter who you are.
UPDATE: Thanks to TV show RTL Boulevard, someone found the tapes and returned them. Dries, back that stuff up now.
(Link: at5.nl)
Tags: Dries Roelvink
November 2, 2009
The Dutch have this party tent idea they bring with them and set up at the Olympics and other major sporting events called the Heineken Holland House. It’s a bigazz orange party tent for the athletes and their fans to have a drink, watch Dutch athletes perform on TV and party. It’s been a hit for years and of course the Dutch want to bring the party over to the Vancouver winter Olympics 2010 to watch stars like Sven ‘Svencouver’ Kramer kick all the men’s asses at speed skating. For three weeks, people would get to hang out with Dutch athletes, celebrities, politicians and maybe even Dutch royalty while enjoying a Heineken and some choice Dutch junk food.
But oh no. Canadian bureaucrats in the province of British Columbia and in Ottawa at the national level are being more difficult than the Chinese were in Beijing about permits, building codes, Canadians losing potential jobs to Dutch people and an array of other undiplomatic stupidities.
I’m truly embarrassed for British Columbia and Canada right now. Sort that out!
(Link: vancouversun.com, Photo by Quistnix, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0.)
Tags: Canada, Heineken Holland House
It’s not carnival or ‘Alaaf!’ yet, but I just came back from a smashing night of DJing at the 125 jubileum of Maastricht’s Bonnefanten Museum and felt like writing about Maastricht. Just imagine a party in four huge rooms with some 700 guests accompanied by food, drinks, a live band, musicians and DJs, and the entire thing having to be cleaned up in time for Sunday’s museum opening.
Yes, Maastricht that hidden jewel of a fun-loving yet classy city way down in Limburg near the German and Belgian borders is very different than the rest of the country culturally and linguistically, the two being linked and all. For Jasmijn, a Dutch student from Gelderland who must get around in a wheelchair, she writes as if she had ‘immigrated’ to Maastricht for her studies.
Jasmijn likes the ‘relaxed attitude’ (translation: more ‘Latin’ like) of Limburgers, as here in Amsterdam you have to make an appointment with most people just to grab a beer and the fact that they generally speak of things ‘indirectly’ (translation: more politely) rather than blurt things out like they do here in the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague area).
Read about Jasmijn’s cultural experience in her own country.
(Link: Crossroadsmag.eu, Photo: a Maastricht carnival prince, 2008)
Tags: Carnival, Maastricht, Randstad
November 1, 2009
In elementary school I was taught about the founding legend of my city of birth, Venlo. The story went that the leader of a local tribe, the Bructeri, fled a lost battle with the rival Chamavi tribe towards the fertile ground on the Meuse river in 96 AD.
In remembrance of this chief, called Valuas, giant dolls of him and his wife had been carried around the city for ages, and all kinds of companies, schools and clubs had been named after him. Valuas was Venlo.
Recently though I learned it’s all a crock, and all it took was a visit to Wikipedia. There is no such legend. Instead, the story was made up in its entirety in the 18th century, because the bishop of Roermond wanted to outlaw the use of dolls depicting Goliath and his wife in processions.
With Goliath given a new, non-religious identity, the bishop could no longer object to what was basically idolatry. Today, the local ceremonial shooting club, Akkermansgilde, still carries giant dolls of Valuas and his wife Guntrud around in processions and during carnival.
(Photo of Venlo city hall by Wikimedia user Michiel1972, some rights reserved.)
Tags: Catholic church, Catholicism, guns, legends, Roermond, Venlo
