Arend Luc Groosman is selling lamps (called Woodoo) that you can put together from a minimum of 6 wooden frames. A bit hard to explain perhaps for something so simple, so check the video:
(Photo: Playwoodoo.com. Video: Youtube user playwoodoo.)
March 21, 2010
March 20, 2010
Vote for 50+ hunk of the year
A cosmetics brand is looking for the best looking man of the Netherlands aged 50 or more.
Candidates include actor Tom Hofman, DJ Erik de Zwart (photo) and musician Frank Boeijen. The election is part of a campaign for the brand’s line of hair colouring for men.
Voting is simply a matter of studying 10 photos (one per candidate), clicking the Stem (Vote) button, and filling out and submitting your e-mail address.
It is not clear to me when the voting period ends, so vote quickly. The results will be made public at the end of April. According to the website’s disclaimer, the cosmetics people may use your e-mail address to spam you, and they will become the owner of everything you send to them, so be careful about what you submit.
(Source photo: Wikimedia Commons)
March 19, 2010
Inntel Hotel in Zaandam opens its doors
Inntel Hotel in Zaandam was officially opened on 18 March and also has a ‘remarkable interior’ with old images of the Zaanstreek (Zaandam area). Each hotel room has a theme, such as Verkade (chocolate) or Albert Heyn (supermarket founder), both major brands that come from Zaandam. Other Zaanstreek traits include the use of famous local mustard and dessert with Duyvekater bread, which are local specialities. The stack of houses has four shades of green and one of blue, which can be found traditionally in the area. You really can’t miss it.
Four of us from ironically four different countries representing three continents drove by this hotel on the way to Paris at Christmas and collectively freaked out. Just looking at this hotel driving by was enough to have an accident. It could be architectural humour, but we didn’t get the joke. We’re too poor to stay there anyways, after all we were carpooling.
(Link: missethoreca.nl, Photo: WAM Architecten)
March 18, 2010
Bring your whore some flowers
Youth television and radio channel BNN has declared 15 March ‘National Whore’s Day’. They surely mean well and believe sex workers should be given a bouquet of roses as a token of appreciation for their hard work. It already sounds too much like North America’s ‘Secretary’s Day’ now known as the more politically correct ‘Administrative Professionals Day’. There’s also Mother’s Day that made it over to the Netherlands and again involves giving flowers. I see a pattern here.
According to estimates, since actual numbers are hard to come by, some 0.6% of Dutch women between the ages of 15 and 46 can be classified as sex workers, including someone with a sugar daddy, a rich man who gives out money or expensive gifts to poorer, younger women in return sexual favours. (Yup, you’re a whore too, girlfriend).
Also according to this article, some 300,000 Dutch men frequent whores a few times a year. “Let us hope that clients [men] have time today [15 March] to bring the working girls some flowers. They should also buy flowers for their partners while they are at it, since surveys show that 70 to 80% of pro’s clients have partners.
(Link: kennislink.nl)
Tags: flowers, prostitution
March 17, 2010
Dutch politics primer just in time for the parliamentary elections
Whoa, I thought. It’s one thing to be intellectually aware that modern Dutch society is pretty calm about people having long-term relationships and raising families without the sanction of old-fashioned marriage. It’s another thing to see a rising center-right Catholic political leader using, as the acceptable storyline to explain a resignation, his desire to spend more time with his family by a woman to whom he isn’t married.
It’s these little moments of eye-opening difference that make PPK’s blog coverage of Dutch politics so fascinating to me.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why the things I take for granted about Dutch politics may be absolutely fascinating to outsiders.
Or as Abi Sutherland explains in the posting that Nielsen Hayden responds to:
We’re in an election cycle here in the Netherlands, after the government fell (and fell hard) in February, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen in the English-speaking world.
We have a controversial figure who tries to make the entire conversation about himself. We have two major-party resignations on the same day, both to spend more time with their families. We have parties moving left and still picking up right-wing polling numbers, witness parties both religious and animal-rights, socialists, greens and populists.
And best of all, we have someone explaining it all in clear and accessible English.
Tags: politics
March 16, 2010
First peewit egg of the year found
In the province of Friesland, it is a tradition to be the first one to find the year’s first peewit egg (‘kievitsei’, in Dutch). Unlike other birds who lay their eggs in nests, the peewit (aka Northern Lapwing) lays its eggs in the ground. There are wide open fields in Friesland where people go ‘egg hunting’.
Over the years, there has been much commotion about picking these eggs, as many Dutch people see it as unnecessary and what have you. As well, following a ruling by the European Union, harvesting these eggs is now forbidden — except in Friesland where a cultural exception was made. After much lobbying, the province of Friesland is now allowed to look for peewit eggs between 1 March and 9 April. I believe the difference is finding them is one thing and picking them (stealing them?) is another.
According to website Expatica.com, “It is a Friesland tradition to give the first lapwing egg of the year to the province’s royal commissioner. Originally, it was given to the sovereign.”
The finding of the first egg is a symbol of spring and always makes the news. The eggs in the picture are different and from Australia, albeit of the same bird.
(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo of eggs by wiccked, some rights reserved)
March 15, 2010
Scissor-shaped door handle
Yesterday I came across this pair of scissors doubling as a door handle at a barbershop in Abcoude.
This simple and elegant solution presents a win-win-win situation for everyone involved:
1. Potential customers will be able to tell what kind of business this is.
2. Customers can use the handle to open the door.
3. The owner can now also serve passing giants.
I forgot to note the name of the barbershop, but it is the one on the corner of the Stationstraat and the Burgemeester des Tombeweg.
March 14, 2010
Book-shaped stamp (also: stamp-shaped book)
TNT Post has issued an 8-page stamp in honour of the Dutch book week, which runs from March 10-20.
The stamp is valued at 2.20 euro, which according to TNT’s press release should be enough to send somebody a book.
The book on the stamp was written by Joost Zwagerman (photo), and can also be downloaded here. The book stamp was designed by Richard Hutten. It measures 3 × 4 centimetres, and 266,000 copies were made.
(Source photo: TNTpost.nl. Photographer: Roy Beusker. Link: Bright.nl.)
Tags: stamps
March 13, 2010
Half a billion euro’s worth of unclaimed guilders floating around
Before the euro was introduced as a pan-European currency in 2002, the Netherlands used the venerable guilder.
Until 2006 citizens could still exchange their guilder coins and bills for euro. The deadline for trading in guilder banknotes is 2032, and the Dutch national bank (DNB) estimates there are still about half a billion euro worth of guilder bills floating around.
According to Z24, DNB bases its estimates on the missing banknote numbers. About 24 million banknotes are still to be traded in.
See also:
* Rules for trading in guilder bills (Dutch)
* Oxenaar exhibit in Museum for Communication, The Hague
(Photo by Robin Papa, some rights reserved)
March 12, 2010
First ever Dutch beaver tunnel opens
Driving down the Dutch highway I have seen overpasses for deers and I have heard of frog overpasses and tunnels, but this is a first for me too: the very first beaver tunnel in the country.
Yes, as of today, the wee village of Panheel (189 villagers) in Limburg has opened a 30-metre-long tube, 70 centimetres in diameter so that beavers don’t wobble down a busy street and get turned into road pizza. Not only have many beavers died, but they damage cars when then do because they are bigger and bulkier than they look.
The people and animal lovers involved believe that other small woodland creatures will use this tunnel as well. It cost 40,000 euro and was paid with contributions as well as tax money.
I have only respect for beavers, and OK, this one is darn cute. I spent part of my youth at summer camp tearing down their dams only to see them fully rebuilt days later. It was either portaging (carrying a canoe over your head because of lack of water or obstacles), with two 9-year-old girls lifting an aluminium canoe of 45 kg over their heads with backpacks for 2 kilometers through the woods being eaten by mosquitoes or tearing down a beaver dam that grows back like weeds and canoe on the water like normal kids.
(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of beaver by stevehdc, some rights reserved)