A Bit of Fun at the Marine House

Last night I did something fun with a couple of my girlfriends. We were invited to Mexican Night at the Marine House in The Hague and I met my friends (Tove and Marilee) at Central Station and we took a tram to the stop nearest the house. It was a fun evening with Mexican food, beer, Margaritas, and pool!

A few years ago I played on an amateur league pool team in Quincy, Massachusetts and when Alex and I were dating we played quite a bit of pool. I haven't played for quite some time, and I was a bit rusty, or so I thought, but did quite well and beat *four* of the Marines in the house :) I also helped a fellow "sista" as she asked for some coaching when she played against one of the Marines - and she beat him as well.

All in all, a very fun evening. We trammed it back to central station where I hailed a cab to take me back to Wassenaar. The driver spoke only Dutch, which gave me a good opportunity to practice my own, and by the time I arrived home I knew that he had two sisters and two brothers in the States, and a brother in Australia.

Good fun. Just good fun.

Eyebrows...and chocolate (what???!)

This is my absolute favorite ad at the moment:




Ridiculous! Very odd, and wet your pants funny (the first time, anyway).

And a parody of the ad on one of our favorite programs, Soccer a.m. (a three-hour Saturday morning show about all things football). The two in the parody are the hosts of the show.




Honestly, I love watching this show with Alex (Segue:) And another entry for another time, I have become completely immersed in the U.K. comedy culture. Do you all know about the palavre surrounding the scandal involving Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross? And I know, this is nothing to do with living in the Netherlands...but is part of my European training :)

CHAIRBOYS! Barmy army!

Barmy: Full of barm. slang: insane

Adj.
1.
barmy - marked by spirited enjoyment; zestful, zesty, yeasty, spirited
- displaying animation, vigor, or liveliness
2.
barmy - informal or slang terms for mentally irregular; "it used to drive my husband balmy" , balmy, bats, batty, bonkers, buggy, crackers, daft, dotty, haywire, kookie, loco, loony, nuts wacky, nutty, loopy, fruity, insane; - afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement

Tonight we strolled down to Oranje (or-an-ye) - which means "orange" (the color, not the fruit, which is sinaapsappel) for a meal and back home to watch the WYCOMBE WANDERERS (and for those of you who don't remember, this is Alex's home footie team!!!) on television. They are playing Rotherham United - and I will have to let you know how they do...score as I write this is nil nil...fans are shouting "Come on Wycombe, Come on Wycombe" (I've done this at this stadium many times!!)

http://www.wycombewanderers.co.uk/

The game is at Adams Park, the stadium in Wycombe (walking distance, albeit a breathy one with the hills of High Wycombe) - so, as you can imagine, Alex is intent on the game and now that I've finished my Dutch homework I'm now watching. So, fingers crossed, our team in Blue will win.

A visit to the ICTY

Above: Victims of the atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia

From Courtroom 1:

(the third one here is the one who was looking right at me...!)

From Courtroom 3:

Today my friend Marilee and I went to The Hague to sit in on a couple of trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The Tribunal was established in 1993 to address the serious violations of international humanitarian law committed since 1991 and in response to the threat to international peace and security. Its mission is fourfold: to bring persons charged with violations to trial; to render justice to their victims; to deter further violations of the law; and to contribute to the restoration of peace by promoting reconciliation.

This is the court that tried Slobodan Milosevic (and terminated proceedings in March 2006 following his death by natural causes). It will be the court that tries Radovan Karadzic - and I do plan to attend some of his trial, but his defense team is not yet in place.

The conflicts which took place in the former Yugoslavia resulted in the most abominable crimes committed in Europe since the end of WWII (mass killings, murder, torture, rape and plunder.) Formation of the ICTY marked the beginning of the end of impunity for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegvina, Kosova, Macedonia).

The ITCY holds leaders accountable and has indicted a head of state, army chiefs-of-staff and many other high- and mid-level leaders. The question is no longer whether leaders should be held accountable, but rather when they can be called to account. This means that convicted leaders and others can no longer hide behind a group. It shields ethic communities from blame, and contributes the preventing hatred and promoting reconciliation.

As of November 2008 the ICTY has concluded proceedings regarding 116 accused: 10 were acquitted, 57 sentenced, and 13 referred to domestic jurisdictions. Thirty six others had their indictments withdrawn or are deceased. Forty six cases were ongoing with 10 accused, 28 at trial or awaiting judgment, 5 awaiting the beginning of their trial -- including Radovan Karadzic, and two still on the run, including Ratko Mladic.

The Tribunal has provided thousands of victims with the opportunity to be heard. Many of them have displayed exceptional courage in doing so.

"I really wanted to go to The Hague. I wanted to see the (defendants) and to ask them why they did it. Why did they kill all these people? Why did they destroy our village? I just wanted one of them to tell me why they did that." (Statement by a Bosnian widow who testified at the trial of the men she held responsible for her husband's death.)

A convicted person may be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of up to and including life. There is no death penalty at the ICTY. Prison sentences are served in one of the countries that entered into agreements with the ICTY to accept persons it has convicted.

"I cannot bring back the dead and I cannot mitigate the pain of the families by my confession, but I wish to contribute to the full truth being established." (Statement by Momur Nikolic, a Bosnian Serb intelligence officer sentenced to 20 years after pleading guilty for his part in the Srebrenica genocide.)

We sat in on two trials, the first for (Ante) Gotovina et. al. These men have been indicted for persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts, plunder of public and private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, murder, inhumane acts, and cruel treatment. The list for each of the defendants was similar and the lengthy descriptions are horrifying.

I was spooked at one point when I was watching the interpreter in the glass booth above the defendants, and Ivan Cermak was staring right at me (there were only three of us in the galley).

The second trial was (Jadranko) Prlic et al. - indicted for persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, murder, rape, deportation, imprisonment, inhumane acts, willful killing, unlawful deportation, transfer and confinement of a civilian, inhuman treatment, extensive destruction of property and appropriation of property....cruel treatment, unlawful labor, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity...unlawful attack and infliction of terror on civilians. The others being tried with Prlic had indictment lists that were just as awful.

It was strange and disconcerting to read the list of indictments and see the accused right in front of me.

The Tribunal is supposed to complete its work in the 2010s. It has referred 13 cases involving lower-ranked accused to domestic courts in the former Yugoslavia where it is also engaged in extensive assistance, support and experience-sharing with specialized war crimes chambers and courts. The aim is that those courts will continue the work of the Tribunal after it has closed its doors, by handling many hundreds of war crimes cases.

I need to do some homework on the Balkans (and perhaps war crimes in general) and the complexities of the conflicts in that region. It is easy for me to presume that these men are all guilty of the crimes for which they've been indicted (and I still think probably they are) - but I have no basis in-fact for drawing that conclusion - who am I to judge? I suspect that they are, in fact, not very nice men to say the very least - but I shouldn't draw any conclusions simply because they are accused. Innocent until proven guilty - is a lot more difficult than the words themselves.

Heavy stuff. Really heavy stuff.

My first photo shoot

Last night I attended the monthly meeting of IMAGES, the photo club in The Hague. I attended my first meeting before Christmas and learned quite a bit just by listening to what others do and how they do it. I missed the first beginner's course they offered before Christmas and because I didn't have my Canon yet and it didn't make sense at the time.

This meeting was a portraiture session, where those participating were broken into groups, each in front of a professional 'set' with backdrop, professional lighting, an instructor and models (and in one shot you'll see Molly, my friend Peter's Akita). There were four models who rotated so that each group could photograph them. I learned right away that develping a rapport with your model and being able to communicate to him/her what you want - which includes direction on poses, direction on what emotion you want to put on 'film' - is important to getting an interesting picture.

Anyway, it was a great experience and I took some decent shots - and learned a bit more about the creative options on my camera (including that a 4GB card is too small for lots of RAW format shots) - and I've met some very cool people!

These are a few shots that I thought weren't bad (no, this is not my camera in the photo - that'd be quite a trick, wouldn't it? One of the members of my group (Robert - shown shooting above) thought I had a really effective way of eliciting the right emotion and expression from the models - so perhaps my drama background is coming in handy?? Let me know what you think. (None of the pictures has been retouched or modified).

Heart Pillow Project

Yesterday I continued with a project we've been working on at the AWC, the Heart Pillow Project, an idea that originated with the Danish AWC, making heart-shaped pillows for breast cancer patients. Late last year I donated some of the materials, and helped to make pillows with several other women at the Club.

Here's something about it from the FAWCO (Federal American Women's Club Overseas) website:

Registered Nurse Nancy Friis Jensen, AWC Denmark, attended a worldwide Congress of Operating Room Nurses in Washington D.C & was shown the pillows by Janet Kramer from her home state of Tennessee. Having lived in Denmark since 1976, she implemented the heart pillow project through the American Women’s Club in Denmark and Pink Tribute, a fundraising group for breast cancer projects. As Nancy“I thought instantly back to a dear colleague of mine that had died 2 years ago of breast cancer at 38 years old. One of the things that were really painfulfor her was the pain and swelling under her arm. I so wished that I had known about the pillow and could have helped eased some of her pain.” She makes heart pillows the objects of her own crusade to bring cheer to newly-operated breast cancer patients.

If you remember from previous entries, the AWC raises significant funds for breast cancer research in the Netherlands, primarily through our annual Pink Ribbon Gala. And after hearing about the heart pillow project and spoken with one woman in particular for whom the pillow was a comfort in her recovery from her own surgery, I wanted very much to participate.

The pillow is designed to be placed under the arm to ease pain from the surgical incision and tension along with helping reduce lymph swelling under the arm. It can be used in this way and under the seat belt when driving and also while lying on your side. The "v" in the heart fits very easily under the arm or the area where one is seeking relief. For many, the the pillow provides emotional comfort as well.

Yesterday, we delivered 20 of the pillows we made to the Mammapolikliniek at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Pictured in the photo above are Diana Boyd, Gemma Ranke, Celeste Brown (FAWCO President) and Anu Dan. We plan to do the same for other local hospitals and I suspect this will become an ongoing project as the treatment centers and patients request more pillows.

Happy Valentine's Day

That's it! :)

A bit of indulgence

Yesterday I attended our monthly General Meeting for the AWC, which included an interesting art lecture by an American woman who has lived here for many, many years. The lecture had a theme of romance, passion and deceit and has inspired me to attend another lecture in a couple of weeks on crime in art.

After the meeting, I attended a "Perfume Lunch" which was really just a couple of hours to attend a 'high society' event, have a couple of glasses of wine, an amazing lunch and a gift of some very expensive perfume (purportedly the most expensive in the world - Amouage) all in a very posh hotel, Hotel Des Indes in Den Haag.

The menu was meant to be coordinated with the fragrances and included:

Gold man

On oakmoss and fir needles smoked baviere rump with duck liver and a dressing of pine nuts and rosemary. (Sounds a bit funky, yes, but it was deeeeelish!!)

Jubilation XXV (Man)

Grilled monkfish in coriander nage, ravioli of buffalo ricotta perfumed with lavender. (Now, I'm not a lover of fish, and I had a bite of the monkfish, and the ravioli, but my acquaintance Edgar ate the rest.) A side note here, Edgar, as it turns out, was a famous soap opera star here in the Netherlands, so really I was mingling with the stars :O)

Jubilation 25 (Woman)

White chocolate with poppies, financier of almond and foam of Tahiti vanilla. We weren't really sure which was which, but it was all delightful. The not-more-than-a-teaspoon-full of ice cream - the Tahiti vanilla - was the best ice cream I have *ever* tasted (and chocolate is how I roll).

We were, naturally, given a gift bag (they distributed a man's and a woman's version) - which contained some bath salts, and a bottle each of the Gold Woman and the Jubilation. And yes, it is very pricey - €200 a bottle! I don't plan to become too fond of it as I think paying that kind of cash for perfume is ridiculous, really. But hey, these bottles were free :)

The woman in the silver dress won the 'best dressed guest award' - but I also have to comment that she was massively overdressed for a luncheon :)

The Aalsmeer Flower Auction

This morning I did something I very rarely do - I got up voluntarily long before the sun rose!
"Why??" you might ask (particularly if you know me well enough to know that I am the antithesis of a morning person). Because I wanted to go to the Alsmeer flower auction - and one has to get up awfully early to do such a thing. I walked to the designated pick-up area for the bus at just after 6:40 a.m. to catch the bus by 7 a.m. And was it worth it? Unquestionably.

We had a guided tour of the facility and saw how entire batches of flowers are bought and sold in seconds. Interestingly, in the bidding rooms, they start with the highest price for each batch and work down (yep!) - a system designed to make things work very quickly.

Here, flowers are traded from and to all parts of the world, with 60% of them grown in the Netherlands. On average, 17 million flowers and 2 million plants pass through the auction house every day and are sold through 13 auction clocks. (The buyers, by the way, arrive well before 6 a.m. as the auction begins at 6:30 a.m.) More than 7 billion flowers and 150 million plants come through this facility each year. This is where the international pricing for flowers is determined.

In some auction rooms the buyers view the actual flowers within the room , but in others (as with the roses) they simply see a stock photo on a large screen (although many would have walked through the refrigeration rooms earlier to see what they'd be purchasing). Of course, they have a very good idea of what they're getting as they do this every day.

Today the volume was up from normal (20+ million flowers) as this is Valentine's week - the busiest of the year. All of this happens in one the largest trade building in the world (a million square meters - which is absolutely enormous) with about 2,000 auction employees and another 12,000 other workers doing what it takes to make it all work. Amazing stuff.

The beautiful flowers and the hustle and bustle of it all was just amazing.

And see the guys on the orange vehicles towing the racks? They must all be mad! They drive like maniacs with no obvious set of driving rules (though we were told there are some) - but we saw a couple run gently into one another, and actually one guy who, because he looked up and waved at all of us on the catwalk above, caused a little crash! This is actually pretty serious, as the flowers are guaranteed by the auction house, and means that a shop steward needs to get there asap to evaluate. Any damage done will mean that the buyer gets money back (in this case a handful of white roses), so this doesn't happen very often - and he was clearly embarrassed.

This film is quite short, but you have to pay attention as the individual shots will go by very quickly - but still gives a feel for what we saw today.

The Afsluitdijk

Yes, it has been a while since I've posted something new - but I have not fallen off the face of the earth - nor drowned in the almost-entirely-below-sea-level country that we now call home. Thanks, in large part, to the engineering miracle called the Afsluitdijk.

A side note - it is snowing here today! And actually, right now it is coming down in big, fluffy, sticky flakes. Fortunately it is Sunday, a day in Holland set aside for relaxing and family time, so the snow is not a problem as we're not likely to leave the house but putter around the house, enjoy the fire and just have some down time. It is also no problem because it wont' be the kind of snowfall that requires shoveling - something neither of us misses about New England this time of year :)

Yesterday we decided to drive up to the Afsluitdijk (Closing Dam - pronounced af-slout-dike) which connects the provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland, is what blocks the salt water North Sea and the fresh water lake of the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuiderzee) - so on one side of the dam is a lake that used to be the sea! The dam is 330 feet wide and 23 feet above mean water level, and 20 miles long. I think that is just incredible. As my friend Roberta says, it is one of the engineering miracles of the Netherlands.
The Zuiderzee itself was an inland lake until Roman times, but during the Middle Ages the level of the North Sea rose resulting in storm tides that broke through and made the Zuiderzee an inlet for the North Sea.

The Netherlands wrestled with the problem of recovering the land drowned by the sea for many, many years, but it was not until the 19th century that the technological resources for carrying through such a project became available. After severe food shortages in the Netherlands during the First World War and further heavy damage caused by a storm tides in 1916, the government approved a plan devised by a water engineer named Cornelis Lely (see the picture of the monument here).

The dam was built to reclaim land for agriculture and to prevent further flooding. It is really an engineering wonder. Imagine, they have actually closed off the sea here!

Unfortunately, many communities along the shores of the Zuiderzee lost their livelihood when access to the open sea was cut off. Some of the fishing boats that now sail the IJsselmeer fly dark brown sails as a sign of mourning for the lost fishing industry.

The Netherlands is really quite interesting (and a bit scary in this time of global warming) in that much of its land has been reclaimed and the majority of the land here is below sea level, protected by dikes. The Netherlands is among the most densely populated on earth. I won't go into more detail here - if you're interested you can find plenty of information on the landscape of the Netherlands, and the country's expertise in water management. It is really something.

If you watch the movie clip I've created here, you'll see views of the low sky for which this country is nick-named. I sometimes swear I see mountains in the distance, but it is just the way the clouds and colors of the sky create that illusion across this extremely flat landscape. You may also notice the windmills (those shown here are the ubiquitous modern windmills that are critical to managing water here.) Keep in mind that we were in a moving car when I took the majority of these shots - not shooting the same group in one spot - they really are everywhere. I'm sure that the locals think it odd that tourists are so fascinated by something which has simply 'always been' for the Dutch.