Tuesday, May 27, 2008

More Eurovision

I have an idea: Every country is banned from voting for themselves. Obviously. Now we should also ban voting for a country if there are more than say 15% of native people from that country in the country that is voting. For example, if there are more than 15% native Poles in Ireland, then Ireland cannot vote for Poland as well as for Ireland. That would automatically mean that the rabid native Russians in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cannot vote for Russia...

The only issue I see here is what to base the percentage on, obviously it can't be citizenship... Therefore maybe the latest census/ immigration data or something...

Monday, May 26, 2008

Queens of The Netherlands

So I was reading up (on Wikipedia) on the Dutch queens. I knew about the whole Wilhemina-Juliana-Beatrix succession before and have felt some affection towards the royal family ever since my own attempts of speaking Dutch were met with "you have Princes Maxima's accent". Weird since she's from Argentina. I've never heard any of her speeches so I don't know how true that statement is.

Anyway, I was talking about the Queens. The current one is rather awesome, I think. And the Dutch seem to love her very much, even thugh they make fun of all her hats.

She was on state visit to Estonia... last week, I think. On which occasion there was this whole documentary on the national tv on the visit, complete with interviws with some of the less than 100 Dutchmen and -women living in Estonia.

I particularly like the tradition of abdication (it can be called that if it's been the only way of transferring the title in the past century, from Wilhemina to Juliana and then from Juliana to Beatrix, right? Is twice in a century enough to be considered a tradition?), whith Beatrix seems to want to continue, but not before "Willem-Alexander is out of diapers". Of his children. Which is a completely new way of looking at monarchy for me... can you imagine ruling a country and at the same time trying to take good parental care of your infants/toddlers/pre-schoolers? Especially considering that the royalty of the Netherlands has a much more active hand in actually ruling the country (particularly the foreign politics) than, say, the British royalty do.

hip hip hip hoera!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Eurovision

Estonia and The Netherlands both out. meh. I didn't see the semifinals and haven't been paying attention to what the songs were like but from what I gather of Estonia's song, it deserved to be left for carrion.

Everyone seems to be complaining of a bloc-voting, which... well, in some ways is true. I think it also has to do with certain types of songs being more popular in certain areas (nordic people not understanding the beauty of the ululation of one of the Balkan entries and the balkans not getting the Nordc guttural growls... and everyone being mystified by the German polka-entry... or whatever).

My theory is that this bloc-voting only comes to play when there aren't any truly original songs.. like the Ukrainian one a few years ago (yes, gimmicky and a bit Xena-ish with drums, fire and lots of leather) which had this very primal feel to it. And then the Finnish horror-metal entry that actually had very sweet lyrics and a catchy tune. For the Finnish one you should take into account that in my memory they have only once finished higher than 5th from the back and that was when they won.

Usually the 0-countries, or OK very low point countries, are Britain (I don't even wonder with their teenpop entries of late), Finland (the year before they won they entered with a middle-aged Finn performing a tango... in Finnish... *shudder*) and very often Germany.

There are of course songs for which I don't get why they don't get any votes. Like the Netherlands song last year. I tought it was quite strong, if a bit overblown. But still, good. And it didn't place high enough to be straight in the finals this year... and there are songs for which I don't understand why they do get votes. Like any Turkish or Israeli song (ok, so I do know why, there are millions of Turkish immigrants all dispersed in Europe, and the Jewish have a strong community feeling as well) or like the song that won last year. Personally I thought it was very bland. There was no originality to it and the singer wasn't good and overall I didn't like it. But EVERYONE voted for it, and then those countries who didn't give any points were later accused of being unfair. Noooo, really? they should have voted for it even if they thought it was horrible? it's called a matter of taste :) Or lack of it, whatever.

meh... I'll try to catch the finals though, it'll at least be a little entertaining.

I do know what's even sillier than Eurovision and it took place some tme ago. It's called - are you ready for it - Eurodancing. Or something like that. That was hilarious, it was like Dancing with the Stars but with country representatives and then two dances for everyone (first a "classical" and second a "national" dance). ah, the polkas and riverdance-like tries... painful





edit: russia won. oh the pain. I think now is a good time for Estonians to take a break from the Eurotivoli for a year... It'll mean one less douze points for Russia, and that's always good.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

mmm... books *drool*

This past weekend (May 18th, to be exact) Amsterdam held the biggest bookmarket in the world. I only managed to walk through about a fifth of it (if that), making a circle around the Waterlooplein, not even noticing I was headed back to the tram stop I started from - that's how distracted I was by all the streets full of books...

The market covered most of the old centre and I just chose the part that was easiest to access with public transport. So, armed with a sturdy Body Shop bag (linen, less likely to break than plastic) I headed to the market. There were a few things I was specifically looking for, although not for me. A friend had asked some history-literature, and another friend had also made a wishlist...

As I wandered along the streets I felt a little hurried: so many books so little time to look at all of them! despite the vast majority of the books being in Dutch, there was also a rather respectable selection in English, French and German. Maybe it's my mania grandiosa again, but recently I've had this urge to try and read The Three Musketeers in French... But even if the book was on sale on the market, I didn't see it. Ah, well.

Three hours later, a hundred euros poorer and 12 books richer, with my migraine throbbing again and the effects of my last painkiller waning, I headed back home. The best part of my loot was the chronicle of Antwerpen, based on a manuscript from the 17th century (in turn copied from a manuscript from the 16th century) printed in 1843 and WITH the transcription of the manuscript. In Dutch, of course, or rather in mid-19th century Dutch. But that's ok, I already peeked inside and it's rather understandable. If I make it through that one, I might even pick the tome of Dutch economical history (in Dutch) that I bought when I first got here, up again.

The second-best book was Keisri Hull (De Gek van de Tzaar, I think - sorry, I don't have it at hand right now) by Jaan Kross in Dutch. I knew it had been translated at some point but had never seen an example so when I saw it on the market I promptly bought it. I'll make all my aquaintances read it now. I just wish I could get them hooked to Estonian culture with a bit of Kivir2hk's "Rehepapp", which is much more fun to read and in a way just as deep. But yay! I now have the book that would usually be among the first 3-4 books mentioned when discssing the best of Estonian literature (after/among Tammsaare's "T6de ja 6igus", Luts' "Kevade" and the aforementioned "Rehepapp").

I'm also thrilled that I found two books on the psychology of music, or rather... on how music affects the brain. Now those were nice gifts for Sander. Even if he doesn't find anything useful in there for his thesis, they'll still be interesting for him to read. And me too, of course. Thing is though, that I already have a pile of books (literally, a pile) awaiting to be read...

Ah, life is good!