August 22, 2012

Dutchman selected to sing at Elvis’ Graceland memorial

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:33 am

Singer Bouke Scholten from Emmen, by no means an Elvis impersonator, was hand picked to sing at Elvis Presley’s memorial marking the 35th anniversary of the singer’s death last Thursday, August 16.

Although the Dutch media focused on having a Dutchman sing at the memorial, a rare privilege, his performance was overshadowed by ex-wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie making a surprise appearance together for the first time at a memorial since they started holding them in 1980.

The unknown Scholten had two songs to convince some 800 fans from around the world, and he succeeded in his own way, with his second number, Suspicious Minds.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, www.cbc.ca, Photo of Elvis album cover by Jeremy Chan, some rights reserved)

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August 10, 2012

Dutch gymnast Zonderland cranks the bar up even higher

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:31 am

On 7 August Dutch horizontal bar gymnast Epke Zonderland from Heerenveen, Friesland won gold at the London Olympics for his highly difficult routine with a unique 7.9 start value. Basically, by nailing this stunning routine down, he knew he could take home the gold. Instead of doing something very good and hoping to be the best, he obsessively practiced something never seen before and took the risk of either wowing the crowd or messing it up. He’s the first Dutch male gymnast to win a medal at the Olympics as well as the first Dutch gymnast (male or female) to win an individual Olympic medal, according to Wikipedia.

This is one of the last times he performed his famous high flying routine before London. On Dutch television, his coach mentioned several times that Zonderland mucked up this routine quite often, but really wanted to perform it in London regardless. Here’s him nailing his routine down, with the now famous ‘Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman’ elements before the Olympics. The announcer says that the week before Zonderland was not able to do it, while at the end he says, “He’s ready for London”.

Watch the actual Olympic performance here and listen to the crowd go wild.

And here’s the Lego recreation of his accomplishment that has gone viral.

And here’s artsy pictures of Epke Zonderland naked.

(Link: www.huffingtonpost.com)

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August 2, 2012

Gay Pride canal parade to feature Turkish boat

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am

For the first time, Amsterdam’s Gay Pride canal parade will feature a Dutch-Turkish boat that fits 80 people. However, the organisers say that it’s mostly gay Turkish men on the boat and that they have few lesbians. “Many women are still afraid of coming out of the closet although many of them simply don’t have an affinity with the whole Gay Pride thing,” explains one of the female organisers.

They could already be full, but the Dutch film in the link says they could use 10 more lesbians. The whole point of the boat is to show that having a Turkish background and being gay goes together in a positive way. And even though they didn’t get any entrepreneurs to sponsor the boat, they’ve only had positive responses, as “emancipation takes time”.

(Link: www.lokum.nl, Photo of Gay flag by sigmaration, some rights reserved)

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June 10, 2012

Three kids from Utrecht under supervision for being too fat

Filed under: Dutch first,Health by Branko Collin @ 11:42 am

Child protection services has placed three children from the same family in Utrecht, ranging from 6 to 13 years old, under the supervision of a guardian for being dangerously overweight, De Telegraaf writes.

The children weighed 15, 18 and 51 kilograms too much in November 2011. The parents fought the services’ decision in court, but in a decision published in May, an judge in Arnhem found against the parents. The court felt that although it was obvious that the parents cared about their children, they lacked both the drive and the skills to deal with their children’s bad health.

According to Dutchnews.nl, “this is the thought to be the first time children in the Netherlands have been subject to a court order because of their weight”. NRC writes that in the UK, dozens of children have been placed under supervision since 2006 for being obese. Child protection services told the newspaper that they will only place children under supervision “if the parents refuse voluntary help and the problems are such that the development of the child is halted or endangered.”

Supervision means that although the children will generally get to stay with their parents, the supervisor must be consulted for all major decisions regarding the children, and orders given by the supervisor must be followed.

A high profile supervision was the 2009 case of then 13-year-old Laura Dekker who wanted to sail around the world by herself. The intent then was to determine whether Dekker was fit to sail the world by herself, although in hindsight the effect mainly seems to have been to instill a severe dislike for Dutch bureaucracy in the teen sailor.

(Photo by Quinn Dombrowski, some rights reserved)

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May 29, 2012

Schiphol Airport Library, a world premiere that’s taking off

Filed under: Aviation,Dutch first,Literature by Orangemaster @ 12:22 pm
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Although it has been around for two years, the Schiphol Airport Library deserves more exposure, especially since it offers a free service, something that you’d be hard pressed to find at any airport. English Breakfast radio in Amsterdam interviewed head librarian Jeanine Deckers who explained that Singapore’s Airport also started up a library, based on the one at Schiphol.

The library takes up a 90 m2 space and is located in the non-Schengen area, past security, near the Rijksmuseum (State Museum) area. It features about 1,250 books, including translated Dutch fiction in 30 languages, photo books, videos and music on iPads. They don’t offer the most recent books, which is fine with the book sellers at the airport. People also donate books to the library, which apparently more than makes up for the few books that are not returned. The library is also open 24/7 and doesn’t need any staff.

This means that I have walked passed it numerous times without knowing it was there, and that I will try and check it out this month when I walk by it once more. My excuse is not having any layovers at Schiphol; I usually have those in London or Paris.

(Links: www.airportlibrary.nl, www.englishbreakfast.nl)

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May 21, 2012

Two inventions—a charger in a safe, and a power strip in a book (and a bonus invention)

Filed under: Design,Dutch first,Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 11:58 am

Two recent products by young Dutch inventors are all about keeping your electronic gadgets well fed.

Bright reports about the Plugbook by Dave Hakkens, which is a power strip disguised as a book.

The Plugbook contains two outlets and two USB ports and is available in three colours. Dave is still looking for backers over at Kickstarter. He needs 45,000 USD in pledges before he can start manufacturing Plugbooks. Backers get to co-decide on a fourth colour. When the power-strip-meets-book hits the streets, it should retail at 30 USD.

Meanwhile, business news site Z24 reported on a cross between a safe and a charger, the ChargeCase.

Arif Yilmaz and Ersin Cumsit from Zaandam—the ingenuity of its townspeople already impressed Tsar Peter The Great of Russia in the 1700s—are aiming for traditional financing through banks, and will sell a closet with three safes and connectors for all current mobile phones for “a couple of hundred euro”. While the Plugbook is aimed at consumers, the ChargeCase seems to be a product for businesses.

Yilmaz explains: “I have worked in restaurants for years when I was a student. Customers asked every day if we had chargers for their phones, but we didn’t have them. I suggested that my boss would get some, but he didn’t know which type to get because there are many different phones and at that time every phone had its own unique charger.”

“We experimented with speed charging, but that turned out to be very bad for the phones. The ChargeCase does not charge the phone completely, but will let you get by for a couple of hours.”

Production of the ChargeCase in Turkey has commenced, albeit slowly (“it is a very bureaucratic country”), and the first shipment should arrive this week by truck.

If those inventions aren’t enough to get you through the day, check out the multiple bun slicer by YouTube user Idea Ed. The Internet is making fun of him and his inventions, calling them Dutch chindōgu, but I say that it’s better to have invented and built, than to have perfected and never built at all.

(Illustrations: Dave Hakkens and ChargeCase respectively. Video: Idea Ed.)

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April 27, 2012

Weed pass kicks in 1 May, for NL residents only

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

Some 19 coffee shops and several interest groups went to court to fight the government’s plan to introduce a ‘weed pass’ to prevent foreigners (actually, non-residents of the Netherlands) to buy marijuana at coffee shops and lost. The weed pass will come into force on 1 May in the southern provinces and eventually be rolled out throughout the country. The lawyers representing the coffee shops plan to appeal the decision, and even the Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard Van der Laan is opposed to the pass and wants to work out a compromise.

Besides the fact that coffee shops in big cities are major tourist attractions, they felt they were being forced to discriminate against certain clients, as a weed pass can only be obtained in the city where one resides. Collecting personal information about clients brings up a lot of privacy issues as well.

The original plan was to stop drug tourism in border regions like in Maastricht, but that doesn’t apply at all to cities like Amsterdam. Coffee shops will basically become private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

Discriminating between EU citizens on the basis of where they live is apparently illegal, making coffee shop owners responsible for drug enforcement sound like a burden, and who’s to stop me for going into a coffee shop and buying joints for somebody else? I don’t see the point of this, besides the government owning a database of people who smoke marijuana. I think drug dealers will make a small fortune selling bad quality weed to tourists and I don’t see how that looks like stopping criminality.

In the mean time, the people who can’t be bothered to get a pass down south will buy their drugs up north or start growing more of their own, which is perfectly OK as long as it’s limited to a few plants.

And for the record, smoking marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, but it is tolerated.

Here’s a famous Dutch song about ‘nederwiet’ (Dutch weed) by megastars Doe Maar:

(Links: www.coffeeshopnieuws.nl, www.nu.nl, Photo of Joint by Torben Bjørn Hansen, some rights reserved)

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April 20, 2012

14-year-old signs record deal with Universal

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 8:47 am

Known in the music world as Erik Arbores (aka Erik van den Boom — nice pun, boom means ‘tree’), the 14-year-old boy has just signed a deal with Universal, making him the youngest composer they currently have.

He makes pop-oriented house music (a happier, slower sounding Armin van Buuren who supports him and was surely an influence) and can play a piano properly. He’s quit school for the time being and plans to concentrate on his music career and get back to school in 4-5 years. He graduated from high school at 13 (!) and was already studying physics at the Delft University of Technology, so he really does have the time.

He comes across as happy yet serious, and seems to deal with all the attention he gets pretty well.

Listen to his first hit, Bliss from the EP Take it, out last fall.

(Links: www.rnw.nl, www.whompingstereo.com)

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April 18, 2012

Donald Duck a big hit in the Frisian language

Filed under: Comics,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 1:50 pm

Created in 1952, the Donald Duck weekly magazine has just been translated into Frisian, the language today’s kids would associate with speed skater Sven Kramer and supermodel Doutzen Kroes. After just three days, Donald Duck is almost sold out, with only 10,000 copies left of the original 40,000, enough to supply one tenth of the Frisian-speaking population. Donald is still speaking Dutch here, but he is doing something typically Frisian: fierljeppen (far-leaping). Frisian, as well as English, German and Dutch, are part of the same language group of West Germanic languages.

As of 27 April, they’ll print more magazines to meet the rising demand, which I would imagine also makes it a collector’s item. Just this year, we had the First ever national advert entirely in Frisian and if cutie pies like Sven and Doutzen speak Frisian, it’s bound to be increasingly trendy.

(Link: www.dehuisaanhuis.nl)

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March 27, 2012

Netherlands get its own Vogue magazine

Filed under: Dutch first,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 11:48 pm

Although there’s a crisis on and journalists and photographers all over the country are fighting over jobs, they decide to launch Vogue in the Netherlands. Launched on 22 March, it joins 18 other international editions around the world. Edited by former Dutch Glamour editor Karin Swerink, the debut issue features models Ymre Stiekema, Josefien Rodermans and Romee Strijd.

As long as they don’t make fashion mistakes like Jackie magazine did by calling singer Rihanna a niggerbitch, they should be just fine. And we do hope it won’t be all super blond and Caucasian as well.

(Link: www.vogue.co.uk, Photo of Dutch flag by Guido, some rights reserved)

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