Curiosidades da Holanda: Morando no Barco

Barco-casa em Amsterdã

Você já imaginou fazer o seu barco de casa? É isso que muitos holandeses fazem. O barco vira residência fixa para muita pessoas, que passam o ano morando ancoradas aos canais. O barco funciona como uma casa normal com eletricidade, gás, aquecimento para o inverno e com acesso à água. Esses barcos-casa são encontrados por toda a Holanda em canais onde a água é calma e navegável. Lá é possível alugar barcos para morar como se aluga apartamentos, uma opção que é viável para muitos pois os alugueis dos barcos-casa costumam ser mais baratos do que os alugueis convencionais. Mas se o barco for luxuoso, o aluguel será obviamente mais caro. Outra curiosidade é que o proprietário do barco deve pagar a hipoteca como pagaria para morar em qualquer casa, sendo que a propriedade aonde o barco está localizada pertence à prefeitura. Normalmente os barcos não saem do canal pois estão ligados à circuitos elétricos de luz e gás, e assim ficam a maior parte do tempo estacionados.

 

Curiosidades da Holanda: Restaurante em Amsterdã era casa de pesagem de bruxas

  

Restaurante "In de Waag" em Amsterdã

    O restaurante “In the Waag” no centro da capital da Holanda escolheu ter como prédio um lugar com uma história bem interessante: o edifício costumava ser uma casa de pesagem no tempo medieval. A casa era de grande importância comercial no tempo em que a cidade Amsterdã começava a se formar, pois era necessário pesar animais, materiais de construção, matérias primas, etc. O fato curioso é que, no tempo da inquisição da igreja católica contra os protestantes, a casa era usada para pesar pessoas que o governo desconfiava serem bruxas. Acreditava-se que as bruxas, por suas características mágicas, não afundariam debaixo da água, ao contrário de uma pessoa normal. A lei era que se uma pessoa pesava menos do que um pato, sendo que patos flutuam, era comprovado que essa pessoa era mesmo uma bruxa, e assim, devia ser enforcada. Na verdade, é provável que a pesagem fosse alterada para provar que protestantes deviam realmente ser bruxas, afinal hoje em dia todos sabem que uma pessoa, bruxa ou não, nunca pesa menos do que um pato.

    Instalado nesse edifício, o restaurante “In the Waag” é muito famoso pela sua comida típica holandesa, e por sua decoração interior medieval. Ele é iluminado com cerca de 300 velas que devem ser trocadas muitas vezes diariamente, velas que aliás, dão um charme especial ao lugar. Quem entra para almoçar ou jantar no restaurante dificilmente pensa em bruxas.

 

Curiosidades do mundo – Holanda: “Parabéns pelo aniversário do seu namorado”

Típica casa holandesa

Quando uma pessoa celebra seu aniversário na Holanda, amigos e parentes devem dar o parabéns para a família toda, incluindo o parceiro do aniversariante (namorada ou namorada). Muitas pessoas chegam até a presentear os membros da família com pequenas lembranças, livros ou cartões,  por causa do aniversário de seu filho ou filha. Os holandeses acreditam que a família toda celebra o aniversário do seu ente, não só o aniversariante, e por isso o parabéns é coletivo.

Outra curiosidade é que o aniversariante muitas vezes trabalha para servir seus convidados durante sua festa de aniversário. Parece que esse povo tem mesmo prazer de servir o outro, então ser educado é para eles um dever pois fazem questão de ver seus convidados satisfeitos.

 

UNB startup company wins 60,000 dollars for invention

Kumaran Thillainadarajah demonstrating Smart Skin to a group of high school students.

Kumaran Thillainadarajah is one of eight UNB  students and a professor in a small startup company, with one idea that is about to break through: smart skin. After winning 60,000 dollars at the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation competition and being chosen to participate in the CBC’s Dragons’ Den, he and his team are ready to go into the real world and sell their product.

“We’re the first people in the world doing this,” said Kumaran Thillainadarajah, creator of smart skin.

Smart skin is a material that is sensitive to touch because it’s made of carbon nanotubes that are conductive to electricity and that can measure the intensity of touch from a light stroke to a hard squeeze.

The students see their product as the next step in the video game industry because smart skin is closer to human skin, and it can make virtual interactions seem real.

Smart skin could be made to fit around a joystick, and when people play sports on the video game they could squeeze and have more functions. Smart skin could tell people if they’re playing tennis wrong, if they’re squeezing the racket too hard.

“This material is the key. Pressure sensors have been around for decades, but the difference between our pressure sensors and ordinary pressure censors is that our smart skin can go right where other materials can’t,”he said.

“A hundred thousand of those carbon nanotubes would fit on the head of a needle. That’s how small it is.”

Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical carbon molecules that are stronger than steel, but also flexible and soft, and they conduct more electricity than copper. These molecules are part of nanotechnology, a science that studies the matter of the smallest existing particles: atoms.

 

UNB student gets over 64 thousand hits on YouTube

When Coady Cameron bought his Macintosh computer, he wanted to see if the webcam on the computer worked, so he went online on YouTube and posted a video. Little did 18 year-old Frederictonian Coady Cameron know that his comment would receive over one thousand hits the very next day.

“I was really bored, I was extremely bored. We had just gone out of school, there was pretty much nothing to do,” Cameron said.

Cameron’s video was on the top ten videos of YouTube for about a month, and his video has received over 64 thousand hits from the day he posted it.

His video was a comment on a controversial pop song by Katy Parry called ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it,’ saying he doesn’t like the music and that it has no content.

Katy Parry fans from all over the world posted many videos attacking Cameron’s views, and Katy Parry herself made a comment about Cameron’s video on her website.

Cameron’s mailbox was filled with hate mail the first two weeks after he posted the video. Many blogs posted his video, half of them on his side and the other half on Katy Parry’s side. Even the famous blogger Perez Hilton posted a comment about Cameron’s video on his blog.

 

Fredericton man skies to the North Pole

Frederictonian Brian Jones is a business man, but he’s also an adventure lover.  And so he sets out to high schools in New Brunswick to talk about his journey from Norway to the North Pole.

 

Future journalists in the midst of economic turmoil

“These are uncertain times in the field of journalism,” my professor said. That stuck to my mind and to the minds of my classmates, and it hunts me sometimes in my sleep. We’re graduating in the middle of a crisis that’s accelerating the changes that were taking place in journalism. The newspaper form as we know soon will be extinct, and the future of journalism is in blogs like this one. But what’s going to happen to us, professional journalists? I talked to my graduating class to have them share their concerns and how they see what’s about to come.

Click here to listen.

 

Former students of murdered professor carry on his legacy

Bakesale at St. Thomas University's cafeteria.

John McKendy, on the far right, and his sociology students.

The man standing in line at the cafeteria has a long beard, the kind you might see monks wear in a monastery. His shoes are worn, stained with a beige hue from years of use. His brown khaki pants hang loosely from his body, matching a plain white t-shirt.

As he approaches the cash counter, he sees someone he knows. Putting his coffee down, he waves his hands and smiles. “How’s it going?” he says. The line has moved, but he doesn’t notice it’s his turn to pay. Then he suddenly shifts his eyes from his friend to the cashier and hands her some money. Taking some change in his hand, McKendy and his friend stroll into the cafeteria, with McKendy listening to his companion and nodding his head.

That’s how I imagine John McKendy even though I never met him. But ever since October 31, 2008, everyone at my university in Fredericton has come to know the bearded man as the pacifist professor who was murdered by his own son-in law. Many people already knew McKendy because of his volunteer work in Africa, or because they had taken a sociology class with him, but now everyone was talking about him – because of the horrible way he died.

But John McKendy’s students want people know who he was, not just how he died.

They want to keep his memory alive, through events on campus such as bake sales, coffee house concerts, and just by talking about what made him the special person he was.

“We all knew we had to do something,” says Karolyn Martin, a former student and organizer of some of the events to honour his memory.

A few weeks after McKendy was killed, Martin and Amanda Jardine started talking about ways they could raise money – and soon they were sharing their ideas with other students who knew McKendy and who also wanted to do something the remember him.

“That’s what he was really about, people coming together, communities coming together,” Martin said.

 

“Art is the first thing to go”

Theatre St. Thomas' actors, and student actrice Sarah Sovedt on the far right.

With economic crisis and recessions, arts funding is the first to be cut.  Although art is not as essential as health care, it still plays a key role on people’s lives. But what’s the real importance of art? What function does it serve?  I talked to some artists in Fredericton to find out why art is a part of our lives.

Click here to listen.

 

Nine year-old boy raises money for a friend with cancer

Marilu Hynes and her son Matthew.

There’s something about Matthew Hynes and Mackenzie Carr. At school, they spend lunch in the classroom, sitting together, hanging out. Sometimes Mackenzie draws, but not always. They’re both shy, often grinning and blushing, drawing their arms forward in an awkward way. They don’t waste words. They talk when they have to – their friendship is that simple.

They’ve been friends since they met each other, five years ago, and now they have more reasons than ever to stick together. Mackenzie – a little ten year-old girl, with bright blue eyes – has a rare type of ovarian cancer, and her friend Matthew is campaigning to help her fight the disease.

The campaign is called the ‘Road of Hope.’ Matthew says the distance from the school to Mackenzie’s house is 56,313 inches. Since a loony measures an inch, he wants to collect that many loonies to cover the distance. So far, Matthew has collected 7,350 dollars for Mackenzie.

“There’s enough people in Fredericton that can spare a loony,” Matthew said.

 

Irving’s promise to repair the train station leaves many skeptical

The Irving company says it will repair the train station, and that it’s looking for tenants to start the work on the property. “I’ve heard it all before,” said Tim Scammell, member of the Friends of the Railway. The Irving company doesn’t keep its word on fixing the York Train Station, he said.

 

A night in the life of a Fredericton cabby

Mike Gillen pulled over the parking lot, grabbed a cigarette from his pocket and put his arm on the window. On it was the face of a girl with fine straight hair and clear eyes.

Gillen is a large man. He looks like he’s built up of tires, a larger tire on the edge of the seat and a slimming one at the top. He wears square rimmed glasses and has straight fine hair like his daughter did. He’s quiet and only says what he has to. But he’s straight forward, says what he means.

When I asked him about his life, he said “I’m just a cab driver”, and turned back to the road. He’s the kind of guy that keeps his eyes on the road and his arms on the wheel.

When his 16 year old daughter died in an alcohol related accident, his doctor suggested he keep a journal to help him cope with the loss. The journals developed into an internet blog called “A night in the life of a Fredericton cabby”.

“There’s something intriguing about what goes on in the cab,” Gillen said.