It is weird the things that pass you by when you are incredibly busy. You know, when you are doing schoolwork, and are completely absorbed in whatever is most important at the time.
The same happened to me in December 2007. I was busy preparing for the test week scheduled for after the Christmas holidays, and had stuff to sort out for Sinterklaas.

What completely passed me by was the ending of ‘the trial of the century’. In December 2007 Willem Holleeder was convincted, and put away for nine years. The trial had been very eventful and had started in April. Over the course of the trial there was a bombing, and Holleeder fell ill.

Something like all of that wouldn’t be too hard to miss you’d think. It completely passed me by, and I was only reminded of the existance of Holleeder the other day, when one of my best friends said: ,,What actually happened to Holleeder?”

To which both myself, and another friend responded: ,,I don’t know.”

I hate it when people lie. I don’t care if it is becuse they are convinced of something, a lie is a lie is a lie, and I hate lying.
Especially when it’s big blatant obvious lie.

A lie like this one: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5923927.ece

The pope says condoms are not the solution to AIDS?! IS HE KIDDING?!

People just don’t abstain, not matter what, sex drives usually win out over reason. Especially when there’s a horny teenager involved. So what do you do? You give out condoms to try to make sure that there’s no unprotected sex.

Dear, dear pope, you seriously don’t know what you are talking about. Get stuffed, and take your faulty idiotic study with you.

My dad is a frequent visitor of the Groningen Archives, because he likes to do genealogical research. He always knows people there, and today he posed a very thought provoking question to some of them:
What do you think is worse, 9/11 or 03/03?

9/11 obviously refers to the terrorist attacks, and 03/03 refers to the day the Köln Archives, that had some priceless historical documents, collapsed over a a new tunnel for the subway. This is a very interesting question. What do we measure, when we measure the amount of tragedy? Do we measure the loss of human life, or do we measure the historical artefacts, when passing on knowledge is something that makes us human?

I’m not saying that the loss of life that happened on 9/11 is insignificant, I’m certainly not saying that it’s no big deal, but how much of it will we remember in 100 years? Will people still mourn? Will the family of the people who died still see it as a huge tragedy that happened to them? After all, most of the people who lost loved ones now, will be dead in a hundred years.

On the other hand, the one things that separates us from the rest of the Animal kingdom is the ability to store knowledge and pass it on. Is it not a tragedy to western civilisation that several pieces that were from as early a 800 were lost? In a hundred years historians will still be interested in the  documents that  were lost, they may have been able to base whole new theories about some historical event on those documents. In other words, people will still care about them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle what happened on 9/11, it was a very, very sad day for all the parties involved. But looking at 03/03, don’t you think that’s sad too? Parts of our history were just lost, gone, swallowed by a subway tunnel.
History as we know it, is gone.

Obama’s inauguration was today. People from all over the globe were streaming into websites to watch it. Or turning on their televisions.
I did neither. For some reason this was not as exciting as the elections back in November. He already got the job, all he needed was the official bit.

I like the fact that America made history today, but somehow it will never be as exciting as the day after the election. After all, you don’t often do this, right?

Yes We Can written on my forehead and cheeks

I was so excited I couldn’t stop smiling all morning, and on my way to school decided that I had to do something big. (This was back in november, and not today) So I dropped into a farmacy and bought some eyeliner. Which I then used to paint my cheeks, with the help of a nice girl a year below me.
I got funny looks all day, and my little brother and sister have never been more embarrassed (YES! xD), but it felt good to do so.

I watched the news tonight. It’s not a very common occurance, as I really don’t like watching people die. Something that happens all too often on the news these days. However, I wanted to avoid a scene like last week, so I decided to claim my chair early.

That’s not important though, what is important, is that as I watched the news, something struck me about the line up of the days events. I think, and I think most people would agree with me, that you should always start with the most important story of the day, and do the more trivial things later. That’s not what they did though, they started with pretty winter wonderland pictures, and even though I agree that ice in Holland is very unlikely, it somehow doesn’t seem right to start with that. Especially not when you’ve been covering the same story (ooh ice, ice, ice) for the past week. >.<

However wonderful these pictures may be, and however long it has been (12 years) since we last had it this big (several lakes are frozen over, and the ice is strong enough to have professional marathons, and support thousands of people skating), I still don’t think that’s enough of a reason to show pretty pictures over the horrible mess that’s currently going between Palestine and Israel.

Especially since people are dying. And the most horrible things that happened in the ice story, was the fact that hospitals were over crowded, whilst this was probably very stressful for the staff, I don’t think the guy with the beat up face who exclaimed that it was worse than it looked, and he would probably go ice skating again tomorrow, quite weighs up against people dying from bullets and bombs.

Two days ago, something happened. Something that made my dad all excited and very happy:
The Belgium government went into crisis.

Now, don’t take this the wrong way if you happen to be from Belgium. My dad does not think your prime minister is an idiot, or that your country is stupid. He just appreciates the entertainment value of such a thing.
Back when you were having your fights about BHV (Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde), my dad watched it intently on TV and he followed it throughout newspapers, and on teletext.

For those of you who aren’t in the know: The Belgium Government went into crisis on Thursday, when the news was released that Yves Leterme had tried to influence the judicial system on the Fortis trial. Ofcourse this is not allowed, seeing how Belgium has division of the three systems and all that. Immediately people started yelling for his resignation.
There were heated debates in parliament, and an endless show of Villa Politica (the program that broadcasts live from both the Flemish and the Federal parliament).
Yesterday, Yves Leterme finally took his letter of resignation to the king, and the dicision now lies with the king.

My dad followed all of this on tv, and he found it to be very enjoyable. These kind of crises, when you’re not one of the people affected can really only be regarded as a spectator sport.

If you’ve been reading Dutch newspapers (which I doubt you have, but anyway) you must have come across the article about the Muslim lawyer who refuses to rise for the judge.

He refuses to rise for the judge because he says that according to the Koran everyone is equal. When the court ruled that he doesn’t have to rise because of his religious believes, all hell broke loose.
Several political parties yelled ‘disgrace’ and the Minister of Justice, Ernst Hirsch Ballin said that when you rise for the judge you don’t rise for the person, but for the profession.

Wanna know the ironic part? The guy didn’t get a job with the social services because he refuses to shake womens hands. So much for all humans are equal I guess.

A tulip shaped polder.

Yes, you did read that right, a tulip shaped polder. It’s the latest of long line of crazy ideas the new government has been putting before parliament. Really, after Plasterk (Minister of Education, Culture and Science) suggested to get rid of the basic scholarship, so that teachers could get paid more, I thought we’d seen it all.
But, apparently not.

No. The government wants to polder in a piece of the Northsea, in the shape of a tulip, to create more space for Holland. The worst thing is, that that’s not even the worst part of this news. No, they put it before parliament, and so far, they think it’s a good idea.

Really, I thought that islands (polders, who cares) in weird shapes were something for Arabian sheiks with too much money…