Category: Daily blogs

This really ought to be a national holiday

More often than not, I don’t agree Hirshi Ali’s ways and politics, but in Nova she said something that I totally agree with: Original Translation Want als Balkenende een echte leider zou zijn, dan zou hij nu zijn minister Verhagen naar de groot-moeftie van Syrië toesturen om hem in heldere woorden te verstaan te geven dat een film hem absoluut niet het recht geeft een eventueel bloedvergieten te legaliseren. Deze theocratische dictaturen organiseren zich om Nederland te vertellen dat zij geen film mogen maken. Ik vind dat de wereld op zijn kop. If Balkenende (MP) would be a real leader,…

In the last few weeks, the media has reported about several tax increases that seem to hit the working middle class the worst. They’re only rumours, because the real deal is going to be announced later in September. But if everything’s true, the effects to our household income are are going to be quite staggering. In the coming year I would have to pay an additional: More than 500 euros more for my lease car 150 euros more on regular products because of VAT (BTW) increase and 125 euros extra on flight tickets for family reunification (each ticket is going…

I think it was about a month ago that I was trying to watch the movie “Blood Diamond” with Haseenah. Being parents ourself, we eventually couldn’t see all the cruelty that was happening in the movie and half-way shut if off. This was actually the first time that we shut a movie off, even though we’ve went through the entire Saw sequel, Texas chainsaw massacre and all kinds of other bloody movies. The terror and powerlessness of the people and children in that movie was just too much. Yesterday, I heard that Charles Taylor, one of the leading actors in…

Not sure why I’m writing this post. It’s not even really a post, but rather a picture. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Milan this weekend, that he was sleeping when I got back and was still sleeping when I left this morning. I miss him.

Recently I’ve come across very good short movies coming through. A movie that I like in particular is ‘Fallen Art’ by the Polish animator Baginski. Also worth mentioning is Elephants dream by the Orange Open Movie Project , made as and open source project, using open source software only!

Yup, the blog is up again. I’ll try to make some very careful first steps again after some pretty stressful experiences. Note to self: The corporation vs the individual never ends in favor of the individual…

The name “Jan” is back in the top-20 of popular boys-names in Holland. The most popular boy-names are currently Sem and Daan and most popular girls-names are Sanne and Sophie.