| I'm enfuriated enough with my government to drag out the journal again.
Last May, minister Verdonk of immigration declred that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of our members of parliament, was, in fact, not a Dutch citizen, since she had lied about her identity on her application. Her true name was Ayaan Hirsi Magan. Ali was her grandfather's name, rather than her father's. Hirsi Ali has been open about this subject for several years now. No one knows why it took this long for action to be taken, and the parliament objected. There are two additional notes: 1) there was some lack of clarity about Somalian law when it comes to names and whether or not Hirsi Ali might have been allowed to use her grandfather's name under Somalian law (Somalia being her country of origin) and 2) Verdonk failed to properly inform the rest of the government about her actions.
Verdonk stood by her decision in May. Or so she said. She declared she had no other choice. Except after that debate, she went and researched further. Yesterday, news came out that Hirsi Ali will be allowed to keep her Dutch nationality, since under Somalian law, she is allowed to carry the name Magan. The fact she also lied about her date of birth is suddenly irrelevant. Additionally, news came out that Hirsi Ali was told to sign a statement that she was fully at fault for misleading Verdonk. If she did that, things would be sorted out rapidly.
1) Hirsi Ali has't been misleading anyone for several years now. The statement is flat-out FALSE. 2) Even if it WERE true, the problem is not Verdonk being misinformed or making a wrong decision. It is with her deciding first, researching facts second. The statement is irrelevant. 3) There is so much wrong with essentially trading citizenship for a statement for political gain, I don't know where to start.
The debate is raging in the chamber as I'm writing this. Most likely, there will be a motion for impeachment. Most likely, it will not be passed, since impeachment would mean the government would fall, which would mean elections. The current governing parties are not doing wel in polls and thus don't want elections. The current governing parties have a majority in the parliament. Thus, the motion will be voted out, because impeaching a minister who is clearly not only malfunctioning, but *actively corrupt* would be politically inconvenient.
I am furious beyond words. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday about buying presents for bfs/gfs, and he mentioned women have it easy. "For a guy, you can just walk into home depot and get him a drill. You can't please a woman with a drill."
Me: "Ew! That just gave me the WORST mental image!"
Him: "Not THAT kind of drill! I mean... Yeah, I got that image, too." | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Next time my parents want me to dog sit for them, they'd better come up with some REAL good compensation. I've been dogsitting for two and a half weeks now. For all that time, I've been complaining loudly about having to walk them four times a day (my mom would have my head if I just sent them out into her garden), but really, that's not such a big deal. Sure, it's annoying at times, but I can get over that for a few weeks, even if I find it a good reason to not ever get any dogs of my own.
( Why doggies suck ) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| So today's Live 8. Ever since I heard that Pink Floyd would be performing, and with Roger Waters, nonetheless, I've been determined to watch because I LOVE Pink Floyd, and had never thought to get the chance to see them live, let alone with four members. There had been rumors about that before, and I'd basically laughed them off, thinking there was no WAY Roger would get along with the rest of them enough to do a show. I about fell off my chair when I heard it was going to happen after all.
I've been watching for several hours now, waiting for Pink Floyd, and have seen several great bands pass by - currently, Velvet Revolver is playing, who are also high on my list of "must see live". So I'm sitting here, alone except for my parents' dogs and fishes, actually cheering at the TV. YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY Velvet Revolver! YAAAAAAAAAAAYYY REM (who I just saw live last weekend, in fact)! WOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT there goes the shirt!
I should go to concerts more often :)
ETA: I'm now at the point where I hardly dare go to the toilet for fear of missing Pink Floyd. I'd read somewhere that they'd be on at about 9pm UK time - so that's 15 minutes ago. Where is my Pink Floyd?!?!
ETA some more: Go sign the petition to the G8 at www.live8live.com | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Saturday:
Running into a friend I hadn't expected to see at the house party, and chatting with him for a while. The atmosphere at the party - it was fun, no fights broke out, nothing got stolen or destroyed, everyone seemed to be in a good mood...
Sunday:
The fact that cleaning the mess turned into something enjoyable. A few of us pulled together and just did it, while chatting about the party (and who kissed who etc. LOTS of that going on apparently) and listening to music. Waking up with the boyfriend (which applies to most days, really. I just particularly feel like mentioning it today). How cute he looked last night after the party, so deep asleep that he didn't even move for 4 hours...
I like my life :) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Good things about today:
Cocktails.... Mmmm.... Cocktails...
Dinner with a good friend, and wonderful conversation
Turning in my paper, and getting not only a near-perfect grade, but also a request for permission to send it in for publication | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Bit late posting,but who cares?
Yesterday's good thing was the unplanned date night with the bf. I'd been planning to make dinner for the both of us, but that was all. I made moussaka, and one of course can't have moussaka without tzatziki. And the recipe for the moussaka required wine. So after putting the moussaka into the oven, I went to his room with cold white wine, tzatziki, and fresh bread, which we drank and ate together, while watching some of our favorite series and chatting. We went downstairs for dinner, then went to sit outside for a while, and watched a movie. It was a really lovely evening. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Spreading the joy for a bit...
The Cauldron has a monthly challenge, and this month's is to note something good about every day. So I figure I'll give it a go. I'm going to try and remember to do this every day, and write it down here.
Today's good thing: biking home from university in the sun, going through the park and looking at the baby goats there. Even if the reason for being there was not so great, it was really lovely. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| As some of you know, I used to paint and draw a lot, and with fairly good results (some of which can be seen here). I pretty much stopped when I left highschool. I'd been following courses there with some regularity, and after I graduated, I simply didn't get around to it anymore. I occasionally thought I should start again, make an attempt or two, get frustrated because I'd gotten rusty and didn't get things right easily enough, and give up again.
A while ago I dropped by at my old highschool, and one of the teachers there asked whether I still painted. I told him not really, and he told me it's a shame, and I should pick it up again. I fully agreed, but didn't do anything about it.
Now the new bf is an avid Magic: the Gathering player, and owns all the related novels. He knows I'm a fantasy fan, and brought me some of them to read ("You don't *have* to, of course! But if you want to, you can! Don't HAVE to though!"). I'm running out of things to read anyways, so I picked the first of them up, and started reading. It is, in fact, better than I'd expected. Not brilliant, but quite readable, and I suspect that if I were any good at the kind of thing, I would even find meaningful symbolism and such.
Somewhere halfway through, there's a panther, whose body gets taken over by another being. Somewhat nasty scene, since it first involves killing said panther in a somewhat painful manner. Somehow I got images of a stylistic drawing of a panther, and just HAD to get up and draw it. The stylistic thing wasn't working though, and I soon decided to go for something more realistic - which has always been more my style. So I googled for images. My first google was "walking lion" which didn't quite get me what I wanted. "walking panther", however, got me an image of what I think is a mountain lion that I thought would work. A good half hour later, I've got a drawing of a mountain lion, that isn't quite the one on the picture, since I made some minor adaptations in the pose, and started drawing from a seperate mental image after some time. It's not perfectly realistic. It is, however, pretty much at the same level I used to work on.
I keep staring at the drawing going "where in the worlds did THAT come from?" and wishing I had paper for water painting, since I could probably make an even better *painting* of this. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Messing about for a bit. I'm not quite happy with the colors yet, so I guess that'll change a bit still. But I'm in a reddy mood these days, so...
Also, look how cute I was as I little kid! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Tori Amos - Welcome to Sunny Florida | | Subject: | Concert woes | | Time: | 08:48 pm |
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| Damnit, why won't certain of my US friends move to Europe already? Tori Amos will be performing here soon, and I would LOVE to go. However, I can't seem to think of anyone here who might want to go with me, and going alone is no fun. Right about now, having Star f'ex, living nearby would be a VERY good thing. But then, I complain about the fact that certain people live way too far away pretty regularly anyways.
Also, why is Bowling for Soup sold out? No one here even KNOWS them, and *I* wanna go, dammit! | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm being awfully unproductive, so I'll update here for a bit - as long as I'm typing, I at least LOOK productive. Which is useless, but better than nothing anyways.
There's a few thing worth blogging about anyways. At the top of my mind at the moment: my brother's friend. M was diagnosed with cancer a good while ago, and died last weekend. I didn't know him, but I've been fairly upset anyways. There is something so horribly wrong with a 19-year-old coming to the point where he has to personally make the decision to have life support removed. I can deal reasonably well with people my age dying in, say, an accident. I mean, it's awful, but it happens, and is a natural consequence of, well... young people being stupid about things, often. But I just find it awful that someone that young would die that slow a death, and would have to be so aware of death approaching - to the point of having to invite it in.
My brother is understandably upset. He knew this was coming sooner or later (and I think they had been doing a few of the "I wanna do x before I die" type things), but... well, they'd been out partying for an evening just 3 weeks ago. I do think it did finally come as a shock anyways. After all, there's a big difference between KNOWING something and LIVING it.
A thousand of bread, a thousand of beer and a thousand of every good thing...
The other thing is much better news, really. I've got a new boyfriend, since a week and a half. Remember the housemate I wrote about earlier? The one I watched CSI with, which the rest of the people here so loved to gossip about? That's the new boyfriend. :) I blame the gossipers - I wasn't even interested in him before they started gossiping.
It's all good though. He's sweet, and makes for a relly nice boyfriend - even though he's like a foot taller than me, which *I* call "too tall". Biggest drawback is DEFINITELY the fact he smokes. I've broken conversations off to get out of the room once or twice, since he smelled like cigarette smoke. Working on that though - he KNOWS I hate it, and that it's big enough a deal to me so that if he doesn't start working towards quitting, I'll likely leave him over it. I just find it THAT disgusting. Not to mention the resulting health issues.
I'm fairly impressed with how he's dealing with things. He's been a total sweetheart about the thing with my brother's friend, offering extra hugs and all that. The other thing that tends to make me mildly nervous is the whole religion thing - I fully realize that being Kemetic isn't exactly average, and I can imagine that it weirds people out somewhat. Milton's not been making a secret of the fact it takes some getting used to - but he has that right. He's been wonderful about accepting that it's just the way my world works though, having me explain stuff... I wouldn't say I can discuss everything - but it certainly isn't a big issue either. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I am:
12%
Republican. | "You're a tax-and-spend liberal democrat. People like you are the reason everyone else votes for guys like Reagan or George W." |
Are You A Republican?
Wow... I scored above zero! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So Monday I have to turn in two more chapters for my paper and the rewrite of the first two, and I postponed doing stuff about that far too long. Now that would've been okay - hard work this weekend, but I can deal with that. However, yesterday I started sneezing and then last night I woke up every 30 minutes or so till 4am because I had to blow my nose, and I was having some weird dream I never quite got out of in which my blowing my nose somehow had something to do with determining who the true queen was or somesuch.
Today my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton, I go from being cold to being warm and back (rinse & repeat...), and I'm not certain my brain woke up with me. I really just want to curl up in bed to nap and read novels. However, there's this big deadline hovering over my head. I'll be damned if I know how I'm going to get this done. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Some of you may know that the Netherlands have a layered education system. After primary school, you can go to one of five levels of secondary school, from "lowest" to "highest": IVBO, VBO, MAVO (all three four years, and these days, usually joined), HAVO (5 years) and VWO (6 years, and sorta-split into atheneum and gymnasium, with the difference being that the latter offers classical languages). After that, you get more specialized educations: MBO and HBO, which require MAVO and HAVO, respectively, to get in, and are mostly *professional* schools - that is they teach you to do a certain job, in the first place - and WO or university, which offers academic training and requires VWO to get in. There are some ways to get from one level to the next, but this is the basic system.
( Rant about society and our views of education ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I am finally (after two days of being unproductive in the extreme) working on my paper again, re-writing what I'd done so far - both for editing reasons and to translate. The teacher who's overlooking the whole project, Rafaele, offered that I could write in English if I wanted to, and by Gods, am I glad I took her up on that. English is easier for me to write in, especially when all the literature I'm using for the paper is in English as well - translating back and forth between Dutch and English is a PAIN.
However, this means that currently, I'm writing stuff I've already written. Which is, y'know, not the most exciting thing ever. Which makes me want to put in witty remarks to relieve my own boredom. I'm not convinced that that is a good idea. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Luck | | Time: | 11:07 pm |
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| I've pretty much always known that I drowned when I was two. Don't remember it happening, but my parents have never made a secret out of it, so I know what happened, how it happened, how much the ER sucked when my dad came in with a 2-year-old who had needed CPR twice by then and was far colder than she should be ("I'm sorry, sir, we're busy right now." Not once, but THREE TIMES. After which he was going to put me into an incubator, which I didn't REMOTELY fit into). I know I spent three days in a coma.
Not too long ago, we were discussing the whole Schiavo thing at home, and I found out things I didn't know. At some point while I was in a coma, my bloodgasses dropped dangerously low. The doctors were going to put me on a breathing tube. My parents considered it. My father told them to wait an hour, see if things got better. The way he thought about it, if my body wasn't capable of performing certain functions, it might be for the better. He didn't want to end up with me on the machine indefinitely, or so severely brain damaged I couldn't function anymore. My mother didn't know WHAT to do, but trusted my father's judgement, and agreed with the reasoning.
An hour later, my bloodgasses were back up by a bit. I made it out without the machine. I function - and well. I'm capable of living independently, I study at a university and do well. I've got some minor issues with being under water (I'm fine with being under water... as long as I am completely in control.) and such, but I came out pretty much unscathed.
As some of you know, my mother used to work in an academic hospital. Several years after all this happened, her work brought her into contact with a girl my age. She'd drowned at about the same age that I had, gone into coma, and had been put on a breathing machine. The reason my mother came in contact with her was that she had severe brain damage. It hit her very hard that *this could have been her daughter*
I've known this for about 2 weeks now. It's something that won't really get out of my head, which is why I'm writing it down now. I've got some things going on at the moment that are... far from how I'd want them to be. However, I'm alive and able to do just about anything I might want to. I'm incredibly lucky. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| I just watched the funeral of the Pope - that is, I had the TV running while doing other things. I cried. The service was beautiful, and I found it wonderful to see how deeply loved John Paul II was. Before the litany, the entire square burst out cheering his name, and asking for his sanctification. It went on for minutes, and if the Cardinal hadn't started the prayers, they would have gone on far longer.
Before walking the Pope into St. Peter, they turned him back towards the people - as was said here - the Pope who had once wanted to be an actor turned towards his public one last time. The crowd cheered, and will be cheering for a long time still, I suspect.
We've lost a good, beloved man. May his God accept him in his arms. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
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