Smells like Team Spirit

I always thought that Nirvana song ‘Smells like team spirit’… Yes I did. Well and it was actually Bettina who informed me that Kurt’s text was rather ‘Smells like teen spirit’. I find it a bit weird, but hey it’s his text.

Well one thing is for sure: the past days have smelled like team spirit! I returned back home from a successful meeting with Ministers of Youth yesterday morning. Youth violence response policies have been adopted by the Council of Europe member states, which I perceive as an important recognition! Not that it was necessary to attend this posh meeting for, taking place in an expensive hotel in Budapest, no rather IGLYOs attendance was successful in terms of raising awareness and being visible. Having so much European youth together feels like team spirit!

Saturday the conference was closed with a street festival on Human Rights. I participated as book in a ‘Living Library’, a beautiful idea which takes some prejudices people have away. The idea is that stereotyped people become books which can be rented. The library takes for instance place during Popfestivals. People who want to know more about an ex-prisoner rent a ex-prisoner for a hour and get to know him. Of course I was the gay book, and I was rented by Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and by two German gay tourists, unfortunately no Hungarian with prejudices rented me as I would have liked to learn a bit from that.

Earlier Saturday morning we had the closing session in the Hungarian Parliament. After the official part I did a short self-guided tour through the building with two Norwegian friends. I can tell you: the building is huge and has got many empty halls, rooms and stairways… We ended up in one of the highest towers which was quite exciting…it smelt like teen spirit.

Saturday evening I went out with my good friend Judit, which was very nice seeing her again. I’m so jealous on the amazing library she has… At four o’clock in the night I got back to the hotel, where a taxi would pick me up one hour later to bring me to the airport. Somehow, maybe being a bit drunk and suffering from a general lack of sleep, I only woke up at the moment my flight was already leaving… Or actually I was woken up by an hysterical receptionist who became very angry at me that I did not wake up… So I arrived to Amsterdam a bit later than expected…

Yesterday evening I had another nice evening in the theatre I used to work for a while (mime theatre). There was a nice play called ‘Homo’s in Venlo’, about the life of three young gay guys. The script was actually based upon the lives of the actors, which gave a very touching edge to the play. My friend Tania and I liked it, Tania even liked it so much that she wants to bring it to COC Amsterdam.

This morning I had to wake up too early to get to Brussels. IGLYO and ILGA-Europe are going to cooperate on a publication on Social Exclusion, which looks very promising and on which I am very proud! Then sweet Maxim took me for a delicious lunch where we in one hour discussed so many different aspects of life and work, which I enjoyed. After having another meeting with Luis Pinto from EPTO including a nice dinner, I’m now in the train back to Amsterdam. Satisfied after hard working, tired and looking forward to all the nice projects that are coming up, and especially to continue the team spirit that we have been working with lately!

1-10 from 73

"1-10 from 73 for "Björn van Roozendaal", the result of Googling my name. It seems to have become a new indicator for success. Who can not found with Google does not exist. It surprises me that when I talk about name googling so many people actually still don't use it. I use it when I get a new colleague so see what he/she is like, I do it when I have to meet somebody whom I don't know, I do it when I read an interesting article and I want to know more about the author. I do it when I talked to a press agency and want to know where my quotes have been published.

This morning I watched a documentary about Google. Due to the great amount of (personal) data which they collect Google is more and more subject of criticism. I might be naive, but somehow I do like the vision of Google: to make as much information as possible available for as many people as possible. Google seems to have become the victim of all criticism regarding the information era we now live in. Information is eassily accessible, and it is rather easy to find out things about somebody's life from whatever place in the world you are.

McDonalds was the reason for people becoming fat, Google is the reason for insecuring our personal privacy. I think these comments are too eassily made.

Of course Google should not make appointments with the Chinese government on what information should be censored. And of course it should be clear on what information is passed on to US secret services. But for me its a bit too easy to blame Google for this. We should look to governments and ask ourselves and them why they need such information.

Still I think it is good that these discussions take place. It is important for people to be aware about what happens with information they leave somewhere on the internet, and its good to discuss ethics when it concerns storing personal information. But it's too simple to only appoint one scape goat.

Wooden Shoes, Wooden Heads

Asylum policies in the Netherlands. Never I understood much about it, and coincidentally I did some research on it a few months ago. It became apparent to me that even though the policy is clear, the system does not function. The Immigration and Naturalization Office makes decissions on the status of Asylum seekers (should you stay or should you go), on the basis of non-transparent and unaccessible research. Often 'Country Reports' issued by Dutch embassies are used as a basis for decissions. Putting six country reports next to each other made it clear to me that there is no guideline on how these reports should be presented, let stand what should be in it! Can you believe this....

A couple of years ago a popular politician introduced
the idea of 'civilisation courses' for immigrants to the Netherlands. The idea became a hype and Rita Verdonk, our current Minister of Strangers (this is the literate translation of her Minister post) now even defines an immigrant as: 'Somebody who did not succesfully passed the civilisation exam'. Welcome to the Netherlands. I see it as one of the defenses against the 'scaring approach of the Jihad', one of the most wrongly understood words in the West. The Netherlands is slowly loosing its identity and reflects its sadness about that on those who come new. For me it's close to pure Islamophobia, or even better: foreignophobia.

Of course the idea behind the civislisation course, which is more a culturalisation course, is not bad at all. It aims to provide foreigners with knowledge on the Dutch culture, language, values and principles. I would like to follow the course as well, because I'm extremely interested to learn about the for me unknown Dutch Standards as well. Standards.

Standards. I'm currently in the preparation of a training on EU perspectives for Balkan states for gay activists in that region. A team member from Belgrade this week rightly mentioned: "What are EU standards actually?," when I proposed to have a training component on EU standards. He made me realise that we are often talking about non-existing standards.

I think that it's actually one of the biggest challenges in the globalization: meeting standards. I would logically say that this is always a mutual process. But in the Netherlands we like delegating so we give this huge responsibility to our foreign guests!

Let us first decide what our new identity is. All people should talk about principles and values, not only our 'guests'. And then I propose that when we decided what our national identity looks like, we all go to school again.

This week my favourite Dutch party expressed its doubts about the functioning of the Immigration and Naturalization office. Finally! It made me decide to finally become a member of the party.

Nights singing white satin

‘Nights singing white satin’. Did you ever wonder what that means? I didn’t, until tonight. I visited the local queer club in Delft: Outsite. While walking back to the station I suddenly wondered: what does it actually mean? So when I took the train from Delft to Amsterdam I switched on my laptop, started iTunes, to find out that the actual title of the song is ‘Nights in white satin’. Mais naturellement.

Since I was very young I have loved listening to music. That feeling of affection was probably given to me by my sister, who has a much better developed music taste than I have. She visits small pop concerts in Dublin of music stars nobody has ever heard about, but who she found on the internet. I adore her for that, as most of my music selection belongs to the so called popular category, not so exciting… Or maybe it was fed by my father, who often blew up the speakers while listening to the Doors’ ‘Light my fire’. I rather played my mothers’ sensitive music. Simon and Garfunkel or Herman van Veen.

‘What’s your favourite music?’, is the question I fear the most whenever being in a getting-each-other-to-know conversation. Honestly I never know what to say. Why? Because my taste of music has developed into a thousand different directions during the past years. I started listening Queen when Freddy Mercury died. I thought I could sing along very well, my mother thought differently. Even though she has never been pushing me into career moves, I can say she encouraged me not to start a singing career. And it still hurts.

Then I started developing my taste further. Most of the music I like is connected to something that happened in my life. It’s not about the vocal qualities or the high musical performance. It’s about the situation or person that touched me and which I connected to a particular song. ‘An Der Schönen Blauen Donau’, because my grand father was buried with it. Donna Summer’s ‘Last Dance’ because one night ended so great dancing on that song. ‘Unbreak my heart’, because I came out when Toni hit the charts. ‘Paint it Black’, because my parents finally allowed me to stay up to see Tour of Duty. ‘Damn those eyes’, because damn those eyes.

After I realised that my vocal qualities do not even meet the standards of Idols I also slowly started to discover that the song texts I sung where not really corresponding with how they were written. But how can I help it, as child I did not like the Dutch songs, so I was forced to sing along in a language I did not speak! And so I sang ‘I want to break free from a life as-za easy but I really neeeeeed, oooohhh ai want to break free’. Nobody ever told me!

A few weeks ago, when I was going out with people in Montenegro, I heard myself singing along a Serbian song … and I don’t even speak it! Imagine what I was singing…

Learning

Yesterday I got accepted for a course on Human Rights Protection and Promotion in Europe! Was searching for some new learning experience for a while. Even though my work is all about learning I sometimes have the feeling that I can not see how I'm 'growing' in my work... Therefore I decided to apply for this course - and eventually got accepted! Which makes me very happy. Time management is something that I will learn now as well: the course takes place starting next week till the beginning of December. Exactly overlapping the period that I'm both travelling a lot for COC, as well have to do many activities for IGLYO... But I'm happy with it, even though it'll be 24/7 working, travelling, reading, studying, etc. the upcoming period :)

Jelena left this morning at 4.30, Jasna at 8.20 and Ruth left yesterday afternoon. We finished so much work! The draft version of Ruth's minutes consisted of 25 pages... Nicest thing is that we finally solved some long outstanding debts, made decissions on IGLYO's future stucture and activities and planned the procedure of handover and other details.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget: my sister heard she graduated as bachelor of social pedagogic services last week! I'm so happy for her!

Meetings 24/7

Tonight IGLYO board came home from a 4 day board meeting in Beekbergen, East Netherlands. We are all taking home a to do list which contains enough work to be busy for another year, though reality leaving us with nothing more than 3 months... So many activities coming up and so many great plans... Though still in the reality that the transition of an organisation based on ad-hoc activities into an organisation based on continuity and structure takes a while...

Now we're all tired... finished discussions at my place, meeting with a funder tomorrow morning and having follow-up activities starting tomorrow afternoon already.

And now I'm off to bed!

Everything changes

My manager Margo just informed us she will be leaving us shortly. I kind of predicted she would leave, as she always states that you should only be in an organisation for 3 or 4 years, but it still comes as a surprise. It is never nice when people from whom you learned so much and with whom you cooperated so nicely leave. On the other side it will bring changes and thus challenges in the organisation.


Tomorrow the whole IGLYO board will arrive in Netherlands. We'll be having board meeting with a million items to discuss. We're having it in Beekbergen, a bungalowpark in the woods in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. I'm really looking forward to it!

Plumber

It was too early this morning, or too late last evening. The weather in Amsterdam is great so I spent half the day on my bicycle yesterday. Had coffee with friends and went to a goodbye party of friends moving over. For the evening I and a few friends had planned to go dancing. We went to a new party, which was apparently so new that it was only visited by 12 people. Nevertheless we had fun. Afterwards I went dancing a bit and went to bed too late.
This morning I had to wake up for the plumber - you never know what time they really come - who is making a water meter in my bathroom. So here I sit on my couch, not having had time to take a shower yet... he is already working on it for two hours and I want him to go because my best friend Kees is coming over together with Sam from Australia, whom I didn't see for many years.

Photo's

Finished! Was working on IGLYO tonight a bit. Decided not to go out but to stay in and have an easy going evening at home.Then I realised I didn't do anything with all my photo's for ages... so I picked them up from my box in the basement... and sorted all of them out and put them in albums. 25 packages of photo's! The only thing I still need to do now is finalising my photo book of Italy, from the journey me and Kees made 3 years ago...

Amsterdam

So,

I came back from holidays last Monday. Spent wonderful days in UK, was in London, Brighton, Bath, Wales, Liverpool and Manchester. It was very nice seeing my friends Darren, Judit, Beverly, Jasna, Sabi and Klaire again! Darren found himself and his housemate Joe a very nice appartment on the first day I was in London. He immediately invited me over so I spent the first days in Elephant & Castle instead of in the Picadilly backpackers Inn, which was very pleasant. The first weekend was packed with shopping, drinking, dancing, talking and relaxing. On Sunday I met Judit, my friend from Hungary, who was having holidays with her family in England as well.

After that I was confronted with the Western bureaucracy. I hired a car at EasyCar to tour a bit through England, of course without reading the terms and conditioins... Whilst picking up the car I discovered I had to pay an additional 50 pounds of Young drivers fee, as well EasyCar did not sent me a bookings voucher, whatever that may be. Including the deposit I had to pay 650 pounds! Already when I arrived in Bath the second day my bank card refused working as consequense of this.. so I had to call my parents :)

My next lucky accident was that I pushed the on/off button of my phone so hard that it ended up being in the phone....with the result that my phone wasn't working anymore and I'd lost all my phone numbers.

The rest of my holidays was much more peaceful. Driving through Wales was very nice (though they drive so hard that you barely have time to enjoy the views), but it rained so I decided to only spend one day in Wales and move on to Liverpool immediately. It will be the European Cultural Capital 2008, and that is more then visible. I really liked the athmospere in that city.

Manchester was my last destination. Stayed at Beverly's place and met her girl friend. Jasna and Sabi were also staying there, they arrived the same day with Klaire who had driven them there from Edingbrough. It was gay pride... so lot's of alcohol were consumed. So much that we decided to stay at home on Saturday evening, suffering serious tiredness. It was nice seeing Canal Street and the Manchester Pride. It was less nice to take note of the treaths that the Brittish National Front had given prior to the pride. They're intention was to disturb the Pride, but the severe attendance of the Police prevented this from happening.

Now it is weekend again, I've worked four days in the office and finished loads of small tasks I had to do. This week I'll be working on IGLYO, Wednesday the board will arrive in Netherlands and we'll be having board meeting. Prior to that I've to finish some preparations, and start preparing myself for the Conference with Ministers which I'll be attending later this month in Budapest.