The Tatty Teddy story (My girlish side)

The oldest, smallest house you can imagine was about to be knocked down. All the things that once made the house nice and cozy had been thrown outside and piled up in the front garden, from the soft springy bed the owners slept in, to the old wooden floorboards they used to walk on and even, surely by some mistake, a little brown teddy bear.

He was trapped amongst all the other unwanted things, and couldn’t move. Then, one day, a very cold day, something fell from the sky… a little snowflake.

It landed on the teddy bear’s little nose and then was followed by many more. He began to get cold, very cold indeed. More and more snow fell, heavier and heavier. The little bear was now so cold that his nose started turning blue… so cold that his brown fur started turning grey.

He was cold, unloved and all alone in the world, and felt very, very sad.

Winter finally passed and the weather got warmer. One beautiful spring day, a little girl was playing near the old house, when she spotted the grey bear in the pile of unwanted things. He was like no other bear she had ever seen and she pulled him out from where he was trapped.

She dusted him down and lifted him high in the sky to look at him.

“A grey teddy bear… with a blue nose?” she thought. “How strange!”

The teddy bear wanted to cry. He thought she didn’t like him and would throw him back with the other unwanted things.

“But he’s lovely!” she continued and she fell completely in love with him.

She ran home as fast as her little legs would carry her, to see if her Grandma could patch him up as a lot of his stuffing had fallen out, and he was very much in need of repair.

She looked on as her Grandma replaced his stuffing and patched up his holes. His stitches had started showing where the fur had worn away, but the little girl thought he looked perfect.

It was all cozy and warm in the little girl’s house and the bear felt all cozy and warm in his heart. However, his nose was still blue and his fur was still grey, and they would never return to brown.
He was unique among teddy bears.

The little girl gave him a great big hug. She loved him more than anything else in the world, her little grey, blue-nosed Tatty Teddy.

ABN culture vs. Obama strategy

How is it possible that ABN, which has been drown out of its debts by the government-money-infusion, can't change its bonus-culture like the way it is going in U.S.?
It's odd... America is the country that is a symbol of rewarding its managers and hardworking CEOs etc. Now, even U.S. is cutting these bonuses from the financial systems that are in trouble and got cash infusions, but our minister of finance (Wouter Bos from the labor party) is still defending the bonus culture in ABN, claiming that these bonuses are just tiny amounts and give more incentive to the individual employee to work...
COME ON, you can't possibly mean than! The bank did a bad job already; it was in trouble and still has huge government debts. Shall we just take U.S as the role model and wait until they pay their debts first before they are rewarded??

And now back home

My Oh My, the things that can happen in just a few days…
I went to Paris for ONLY a couple of days, for a face 2 face meeting with the National Iranian Congress organizers, and also met my favorite Iranian Economist (Dr. Shahin Fatemi), and then I came back and see that everything has changed here.

Coming back, I found out that the Prime Minister (Jan Peter Balkenende) suddenly has changed course, and was willing to let an independent commission investigate the whole Iraq/ Bush/ Netherlands affair; this while he had keenly resisted the whole idea for month (since December last year).
What was more surprising was that everyone (mostly PVDA – the labor party) was so amazed of this change of course, that they started jumping up and down without taking a good look at the offer.
The questions of the parliament-members are going to be sent to this independent commission which is going to go through a 9 months investigation period to finally give birth to answers behind some closed doors. The parliament members are not going to be able to participate in any hearing, listening to any under oath witnesses (actually there are not going to be any witnesses answering anything under oath!!), they won’t be able to ask any questions directly… In short, they won’t be able to do the things they are elected to do.
The Prime Minister (the Christian Democratic party) is saying that it would be much better if the commission did their job independently, without any political baggage. And afterwards, if the answers were not sufficient for the Parties, then the Parliament may or may not choose to do another investigation transparently, and publically, but that is something that should be decided after the commission is due.
It’s a shame how these parties are just forgetting the basic essences of a democratic country; giving their votes to just waste time.
I think they are taking this the wrong way; it is not important who did what and this is not a matter of blaming this or that party, for a decision made in a different time period. The main issue is to be able to learn the lessons…
Like Alexander Pechtold (Party leader of D66), I think this is going to take just too much time to get to the bottom of things, and by the time (in 10 years from now, when) we do, no-one even cares about US invasion to Iraq, let alone thinking that there are lessons to be learned.
Moreover I also noticed Alexander has changed his haircut!
Come onnnnnnnn, how much change can a lady take at once? Give me a break ;)

National Poet's day

I was invited to the ruimte-X on 29th January for the National Poet's day, as one of the six honorary guests (3 Campus Poets and 3 City poets of Tilburg).
Of course there were also many other very talented poets who presented some of their poems. And one in particular, Esther Porcelijn, who was a pretty girl, with a very fragile (like her name) structured body, and beautiful erotic poems... I relished her “acte de prèsence”.