Sail Amsterdam 2010

Talking about crazy, Sail is happening in Amsterdam.

Sail Amsterdam is a festival focused on (huge) sailing boats, or tall ships, which only happens once every five years. The ships are authentic or remakes. In a convoy of fifty tall ships and over two thousand private ships they sail from IJmuiden to Amsterdam. The tall ships start on their own by IJmuiden and are later joined by all the smaller boats. Once they arrived in Amsterdam, the festival is officially started.
With thundering cannons, the ships announce their arrival in the capital of the Netherlands, followed by the many horns coming from the smaller boats and the cheering from the many people that are standing and looking from the shore. All those crazy boat lovers on their own are already something that makes this happening something worthy to see.

And that is exactly why I’m at a friend of my mother’s place to watch it. They live on the sixth floor in a building right next to the IJ. The IJ was originally part of the ‘Zuiderzee’, which was connected to the North sea. But since the Dark Ages, people built dams to keep the water away from the city. The strength of the water and the danger it brought to the city was one of the reasons that in the 19th century was decided to impolder most of the IJ and to shut off the rest of the water from the sea by building a dam.
And this is where it is all happening. A couple of bridges had to be partly removed so the giant tall ships can pass through. And from my seat on the sixth floor I have a perfect view on the ‘eye-candy’ like the Amerigo Vespucci, an old Italian warship, the Stad Amsterdam, coming from the Netherlands, and the Mir from Russia, together with many other magnificent tall ships.

Imagine pirate like ships, thundering cannons to announce their arrival, seagulls floating on the wind and between the masts and the wind blowing in your face, together with the scent of the sea. It must be amazing to sail around the world on such an amazing and huge ship... If ever possible, that would be a journey that I would sign up for!

Everything is orange...

Lately, the entire city is covered in orange…

That may sound a little strange but for those who don’t know, I live in the Netherlands and orange is our ‘national colour’. I don’t know who picked the colour orange but I’m figuring it has something to do with the last name of our first potential king, Willem van Oranje-Nassau (translated: William of Orange-Nassau), he got killed and in the end his last direct descendant died without having any kids, so the descendants of Williams nephew are now our kings and queens (I was going to type: are now the royal family of the Netherlands, but this sounds way funnier).

Well, since the Soccer World Cup thing started almost every street in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Tilburg (those are the last three cities I’ve been to lately) are covered in orange. Orange flags, orange decorations, orange clothes, it’s making me go insane! Since orange isn’t the most charming colour nature ever created. Now that I mention it.. I don’t think I saw anything orange in nature, ever! Well, except carrots.
I’m not a big fan of soccer, and to show it, I took a nap during the first game the Netherlands had to play (Netherlands – Denmark). Unfortunately, my ‘lovely’ neighbours woke me up because they decided to blow their ‘vuvuzela’s’. Suddenly I hope that it has the same name in English but just in case it doesn’t. Vuvuzela’s are those giant horns that come in every colour of every country and they make a terrible annoying and loud (up till 130 decibels) noise.

I’m planning an evil scheme to end those stupid things. But only because I have to study. My exams are this week (one of them is ruined by school... again!!) and all that studying has weird (and evil) effects on my brain...

Fire drill

You’re actually trying to stay focused during class, are stressing out because of an upcoming deadline or are brainstorming with your teacher when suddenly, the fire alarm sets off. Everyone out of the building!!

In primary school, we had a fire drill at least twice a year. The first time, the school told us the date and time about a week before the actual drill, and the second time it was beyond our knowledge. We had to leave everything in class but got an extra long break. In secondary school, I had it once, in five years. And it was hopeless… Our teachers didn’t take us to the actual point where we had to gather because it would be ‘a waste of time’. Besides, the fire alarm was set off so many times we just ignored it, when it would actually go off because of a fire, we would have probably died…

But today, no one knew. Not even our teacher, who got a little stressed because she wasn’t sure if it was a drill our a real emergency. When we got outside we had to wait for over twenty minutes, and people in weird orange vests were keeping us away from the doors. When we walked back in, something did smell a little bit fried, but it could have been my imagination.

I think fire drills are really important, but could we do it next time while the weather is nice and sunny outside??

Boys vs. Girls

Men from Mars, women from Venus. The battle of the sexes. Boys against girls. It’s as old as time and even at school we actually have to learn about it. Blech...

I think it started with the Greek mythology. The famous Amazon kingdom. A nation build by women, and women only! The Amazons had strict rules against men in their community. In this empire, women were the hunters, the warriors, the rulers. Men on the other hand did the housekeeping, the cleaning, the nursing and they took care of the children. If they even lived in the same society. The other story about the Amazons is that only once a year, the Amazon warriors and the men, the Gargareans, came together. When the women gave birth to the new generation, the boys were send to their fathers and the girls stayed with their mothers. The girls were raised to be amazing warriors on the island where the Amazons lived, the boys lived on the mainland, on the domain of the Gargareans, where they lived as farmers and craftsmen.
Did you knew that one of the great warriors in the Trojan War was a woman? Her name was Penthesilea and she was a daughter of the god of war, Ares. Unfortunately she was killed by Achilles. I think that when a guy says that boys are better in sports and other stuff then girls, he doesn’t know much of the Greek myths. Penthesilea killed hundreds of men and her death was one of the bigger losses towards Troy’s army. Another amazing person was Atalanta. A Greek woman who was furious that men thought they were better than her, even when she hunted way bigger animals. She decided she would marry the one men that could beat her in running. Many men thought they could outrun a girl easily, and many men died because of this.

But that isn’t what we have to learn for Anthropology. If we had to learn this, I actually would be interested. No, we have to learn how in some cultures men are superior to women, as if I didn’t knew that already. And it raised the old fashioned ‘battle of the sexes’ inside the lecture hall, since some boys couldn’t resist saying that boys are better in a lot of things then girls. I think that if one of those guys was sitting in front of me, I would have slapped him at the back of his head with a book. And if you think that is unfair, I would do it again in front of him!

Alarm

There is one thing that I really hate. And the worst part is, it is with me every morning, and on Thursday morning it is even earlier than normal… The alarm clock.

On Thursday I have to be at school at 8:30, which means I have to get out of bed at 6:30 and getting up early isn’t my strongest point. So, since I’m cranky because of the time, you get a picture today that you can print and throw arrows at it, or something like that. Have fun with it.

Bored

Verveeld, langweile, aburro, ennuie, secaro, надоесть, bored.

Yes, I just translated bored in Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian. Although the Russian version says ‘bore’. I couldn’t find a translator that could help me with verbs (in case a translation isn’t right: don’t blame me, blame the online translators!!).

But this maybe explains how bored I am because truly nothing is happening today!! I don’t have any grades back yet so I can’t start celebrating (or cry, you never know).

So I went searching for a list of stuff you can do when you’re bored. This are the best/funniest 10 things I found:

1.
Give a Rorschach test to your gerbil
The Rorschach test is that weird test with ink spots.
NOTE: Hamsters, rabbits, dogs, cats, fish, etc. work too. Birds are more difficult.

2.
Rate passers by
Rate between 1 and 10 and give them expert criticism over their clothing, hairstyle and footwear. It’s even more fun when you do it with more people.
NOTE: You do this inside your mind, don’t say anything to people or you’ll probably end beaten up!

3.
Have a philosophical conversation with a tree.
Who knows what comes out of it.

4.
Design a better toilet seat
Most efficient when you’re actually sitting on the toilet.

5.
Try and sound from a different country
Maybe a Scottish accent? Or maybe Russian, or even French! Have fun.
NOTE: After practicing, you’ll need someone else to judge you.

6.
Read Homer in the original Greek.
With a special extra assignment: Learn Greek.

7.
Write your memoires, about the you of a previous life.
Hé, it’s never too early to start.

8.
Carve you and your girl/boyfriend's initials...in a marshmallow.
You know what they say, Love goes through the stomach.
NOTE: I have truly no clue if that is a saying in English but here in the Netherlands (and in Germany) it is.

9.
Learn to type...with your toes
I hope, for the sake of your keyboard, you did wash your feet.

10.
Comment on this (and hopefully more) blog.
I would truly appreciate it.

Have fun with it!!

Article

The power to combine image and sound into a piece of your own mind.


Nina Yuen is a young artist who travelled from New York to Amsterdam witch a exchange program, and she decided to stay. Besides being an artist herself, she was a teacher for a couple of years at an Art Academy in New York. She tried to get another job as an art teacher here in Amsterdam, but until now, she hasn’t had any luck on that point. Luckily for her, her art exhibits have been going on all over the world.



Nina Yuen became an artist because through a camera, she was able to tell things about her personal life that she couldn’t express in writing or in speech. She learned that this was her way to speak her mind by making her first movie, which contained a series of apologies to one of her ex-boyfriends. It is what started her interest in art, even though her parents are still having trouble with accepting her choice of life. ’They have a hard time with me being an artist since their both really into helping society.’

Childhood
Nina grew up in Hawaii, and her mother taught her and her sister every Saturday about different kinds of art by showing them books full of paintings and pictures. Although Nina didn’t understand all the paintings her mother showed her, she did develop some kind of taste in them, she knew what she did and didn’t like.
But her parents aren’t that happy with Nina’s choice to be an artist. Both of them are activist for society and the environment, and her sister is buying land to make it into forest. ‘My movies, like I’m dancing around in a funny costume, I’ll show it to my father and he’ll just be like: What, what is the point? Why are you doing this?’ She knows it wouldn’t be that hard for them if she had decided to become a political artist, but that just isn’t how she is.

Her own way
Although her parents don’t understand her choice, they do play a big role in Nina’s personal and artistic life. And a lot of movies are filmed in her parents’ house. ‘My sister made a rule that I’m not allowed to videotape her anymore.’ It turns out that her sister was annoyed by Nina directing her while making the movie. Luckily, she can laugh about it.
Nina chose film a long time ago as her way of art because she could combine the images and the sounds in every way she like. No one would or could control her during the progress when she creates something. It was her way to create order in the chaos of her own thoughts and mind.

Her movies don’t only show a piece of her mind and thoughts, she also makes movies about how she makes her art. At the end, that movie will be the final piece in the puzzle of her exhibit. In that way, she wants to get people involved in her art. It is a very important thing to her and it was the reason that she became an art teacher.


Till this day on Nina travelled from New York to Amsterdam, to Spain and Denmark, to Brazil and Romania and all for her own exhibits, in a week she will have a solo exhibit opening in New York and in April starts another in Utrecht. And as for her future she hopes she can stay here in Amsterdam and she wants to make a feature link film and show it on international movie festivals or movie contests as well as in art contests.

A new start

Lately, I’ve been having trouble keeping up with school, life and two blogs at once. My biggest problem with my English 365-blog became the blogs itself, I kept translating my Dutch versions.

But that wasn’t original and it started to bug me. So today I made a decision! For a few weeks I’ve been thinking about simply eliminating this blog but now I decided I’m not going to do that, it’s just the ‘easy way out’. But I’m not going to translate every Dutch blog I wrote in the past three days to get back at my arrears either. No, I decided to start my English blog over again. But since I'm (aparently) unable to keep up with two 365-blogs, my English 365-blog will start after my Dutch one. This doesn't mean I'm going to forget it, it will just take a little longer for new things to arive. I'm thinking about starting a 52-blog (every week one blog, instead of every day). You'll hear about it later!

But for the rest, the new blogs will be purely originals written for my English blog only.
I promise!!

Snow, ice and wind

Snow, ice, cold… It is known for something regular in the Netherlands. Funny enough, it isn’t, actually.

The first time this winter, when the snow came. There felt five centimeter snow in one night, the morning after it, it became ten centimeter. In a country that had a lot of snow back in the history, you would expect that we have some kind of plan so a normal life can continue. No chance…


That one day, and the entire week following, started a mess that was incredible. Trains didn’t ride on time, or they didn’t came at all. “The weather is too bad.” The persons that had to deliver the mail during that weather became almost allergic for the whining of the public transport. And they kept whining. Trains kept being delayed, busses didn’t even come and at the train stations like Utrecht Central Station, people kept waiting and waiting while it was getting colder and colder.

People, friends and family, actually called me to tell me that if I had to take the train, that I should call someone that I wasn’t coming to school or whatever kind of appointment. My dad called me with the question if he had to pick me up somewhere. He forgot that IF I was in Utrecht, he would never be able to pick me up within an hour, just because of the traffic jam there was.


In the harbours are the boats frozen solid. People are walking on the ice that was part of the IJsselmeer. And there are actual chances of another ‘Elfstedentocht’ (a big ice skating event. People are crossing eleven cities in Friesland, gaining a stamp at every city). People want the ‘good’ things of winter like ice skating and soft snow that makes the cities seem all sweet and stuff. But they don’t want the cold and the icy wind.
The Netherlands and snow, once they were each other’s friends. But now the regular Dutchmen curses the ice that keeps the country in its grasp. If it’s up to a lot of people, ‘King Winter’ will packs its bags tomorrow and go back to the North Pole.

Trains, delay on wheels

A jumper. That is what we call a person who decides to end his or her life by jumping in front of a speeding train. It is one of the two most annoying reasons why a train can be delayed for over an hour. The other reason is a possible bomb.
Both are totally annoying. Especially if your already in a hurry. But if you have to ‘choose’, then you better have a jumper.


I was waiting over half an hour for the train to come when the announcer finally told us: ‘The train from Amsterdam Central Station to Utrecht Central Station is delayed for an unknown time span because a crash with a person. We apologize for the inconvenience.’
Great, I was already late!! But yeah, they can’t keep the train driving with some kind of massive bloodstain on it. Even that idea makes me a little nauseous. And then there is the train driver... Train driver is officially one of the most traumatising jobs there is. It was put on that list one or two years ago. And that isn’t weird, in the Netherlands looking at the statistics, each day at least one person throws itself in front of a train.


But a crash with a person?? I mean, you can hit another car and crash it, or you hit someone in the face or something like that. But you DON’T just ‘hit’ a person with a train! Everyone knows that the person probably threw him/herself in front of it. But somehow they decided to say the ‘political proper thing’ as we say it here. If you don’t want to say that there was a jumper, then just say that there was ‘a crash’ or something like that.

The other thing I said was a bomb. Today was such a day. At the train station of Den Bosch, there was a bomb warning. The result: no train can get to Den Bosch, or leave Den Bosch. And of course everyone says something else. ‘We did found explosives.’ ‘We’re not sure yet if it is a bomb.’ ‘They found a bomb inside a train.’ ‘We didn’t find anything yet.’ Make up your mind!!


Ooh…there is my train. Catch you all later!!

Amsterdam VS. birds

The rose-ringed parakeet, a feathery friend here in Amsterdam. If they are very quiet, you can barely see them because of their green colour. But being silent isn’t their strongest point. A lot of people here in the Netherlands don’t like them anymore. You can even say that there is a war going on between the parakeets and (older) inhabitants of the bigger cities.

Nobody knows the exact year, but somehow a couple of rose-ringed parakeets escaped from their aviary and flew away. The previous owner didn’t do anything to get them back and maybe he thought they wouldn’t survive the weather of the Netherlands, since it is a lot colder here than it is in the natural habitat of the parakeets which is Africa and South-Asia.
But the parakeets were smarter, or their evil masterminds. You can pick one. The point is they survived, and now the population grew to four thousand of them only in Amsterdam. They also decided to live in Rotterdam, Den Haag, Haarlem, etc, and in Belgium, England, Germany and other ones I don’t know so fast.

Aah well...somehow people started to hate those birds, most of them are owners of such small gardens which are far away from their home and for which I don’t know the English word right now (what?? I’m from the Netherlands!!). And of course you have the ‘older people’. Funny enough, you would expect them to love birds, and most of them do. But in ‘Het Parool’, one of the newspapers here, there was a letter send by one of the readers. He asked people to support him in stealing the eggs of the parakeets and help him. He seriously wrote: ‘Everyone should grab a ladder to climb up the trees and get their eggs, just like we used to do with the eggs of lapwings.’ What was his reason: the cycle path beneath the tree he was talking about wasn’t red anymore but white because of the bird poop. THAT was his reason to exterminate the populations. How childish can you be??
In my defence, since I am only talking about the parakeets and not about the lapwings, I didn’t know anything about those lapwing eggs.

Am I the only person who doesn’t understand those people who want to ‘exterminate’ the parakeet populations?? Maybe it is because I really like those birds. When I’m cycling to school very early, they are the only ones that are awake and sometimes they even fly along with me for a couple of meters. And not so long ago, during some kind of mini-storm, a branch broke and apparently the ‘wound’ left on the tree was full of ‘spilling’ tree sap. The effect of this tree sap was that the tree, and especially the ‘wound’ was covered in green feathers and beaks. The birds really liked the tree sap. It was really funny to see but when I came near to the tree, it became more fun. My head was at the right height for the tree sap. I was ‘attacked’ by several birds who had I fight for the spot on my shoulders and head to drink tree sap, and at the end they were even looking at me if maybe I had something to eat. One of them stole my leftover lunch. And even with that fact, that some bird stole my lunch, I still love them! And this will not be my last blog about birds! Poor readers :P

RTV Noord-Holland, a really small TV station

RTV Noord-Holland. A small television channel known here in the Netherlands, it only shows news and items about the district North-Holland and almost nobody at school (School of Journalism Utrecht) knows it. But yesterday, our ‘beloved’ (notice the air quotes and the sarcasm) teacher decided that we had to visit it, and make an item about it. The other group was send tot De Wereld Draait Door (The World Keeps Turning or something like that), a much bigger channel with much more viewers. We were jealous as hell.

Today, we visited the channel. With two camera’s, a microphone and fifteen students who were sick of travelling. The headquarters of the station is in Amsterdam, and only one person in the group actually lives in the capital of the Netherlands. I do, the rest of the group, fourteen persons, live spread over our (very) small country. I already needed more than half an hour to get there, the rest needed more than one and a half hour.
Even with our bad humour because of the cold and the travelling, we wanted to have a fresh start. So we attacked the coffee machine (poor coffee machine, it didn’t stand a chance). After we got awake and warmed up a little, we got the tour around the building and were able to ask questions while armed with camera’s and coffee. And actually, it was kind of fun. The atmosphere around the people working there is very comfortable and easy going, even when they had to get a program done in a couple of hours, which is nothing when making television programs.

I think there is a chance we had more fun than the people who got to go to DWDD, just because I know that such a big program is way more stressful and hectic. Now I’ve been to RTV Noord-Holland and had such a fun day, I don’t mind that I didn’t go to a ‘big’ program. And...I did learn something while not on school. Damn, even today wasn’t a day off for my brains...