Saturday, November 26, 2011

One of the things that distinguishes The Netherlands from Iceland is Christmas. In the Netherlands they don't give presents on Christmas. They give presents in the beginning of December (5-6th) at Sinterklaas which is a winter festival. The character Sinterklaas is a bit like Santa Claus but is dressed like a pope and has little black helpers called black Petes (Zwarte Piet). The Christmases themselves are held in peace and quiet with family. In Iceland there is no Sinterklaas. Everyone goes overboard buying expensive gifts that no one wants, at least not long. People stress themselves out doing preparations and trying to get into the holiday spirit. In Iceland the Christmas begins on December 24th, at six o'clock when Christmas dinner is eaten, after which children open their presents. Then everyone sleeps for the rest of Christmas, exhausted after the preparations.

One possible explanation, of the jump start people in Iceland take on Christmas, is that in the old days it was traditional to give books at Christmas. If they packages are opened  up at the beginning of Christmas, everyone has something to read so no one is bored during the beginning of the holidays.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

One of the places I'm having difficulties in finding here in The Netherlands is a musical instrument store. I'm looking to buy a classical guitar. There are not many stores with musical instruments in Iceland either, but I know where they are. :)

Friday, November 4, 2011

The reason we keep having more and more unwanted features thrust upon us in all our tools; phones, computers, cars and other thingies, is that a stupid highly educated person in charge of some design team is desperately thinking about extra features, to add to their thingamingies, to make their product stand out. Since this is all done by design teams and no one wants to object, for fear of losing their jobs we, the customers, end up paying shi,, well loads of money for features we don't want or need. I'm sure that soon we end up with phones that don't make voice calls and the sheeps public will praise them for their good looks and high quality sound the sms message beep plays in. They have to praise them because they spent so much money on them that to actually critisize them would be admitting that they made a mistake by buying them. Hey, maybe that is why Apple has such a fanatic following.