Stanley Portier - Personal

Handsfree

2007-08-20T06:37:00.001-07:00

My last post in this section has been a little while ago. This one is something I wanted to post a long time ago. This morning I was triggered to write this down, due to one of my road experiences. I drive a lot of kilometers on the Dutch highways (app. 70.000 a year) so I see a lot of things going on. This morning my attention was drawn to a van that had trouble keeping it's own lane. Sometimes it looked like he wanted to take a chicane, only there was none. Usually there are two sorts of explanations for this way of driving behaviour. One is too much drinking, the other is that the driver is doing something else (reading the newspaper, looking for something under the passenger's seat, or indeed: making a phonecall). The driver of the van made a phonecall, but not with a handsfree facility. He was holding the cellphone to his head. Despite the fact that you can get a ticket of € 136,- this doesn't seem to impress a lot of people. The chances of getting caught are not that high of course. Why, I ask myself. If you don't want to install or buy an expensive carkit, ok, but it's so easy (and far cheaper than € 136) to buy a handsfree headset.
What's even more surprinsing to me is that I ofter see drivers of expensive cars who don't use a handsfree facility. I think that most of these cars have an integrated handsfree facility, so use it! But no. What's their philosophy? Being reckless, nonchalant or just showing off ('who can hurt me, I have no problem to pay € 136)? About two years ago a young woman (19) was killed in a car accident on her way to work. Just a few kilometers from work she crashed into a tree. When she was found she still had her cellphone in her hand....

New dobok

2007-04-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

As a part of achieving their black belt a lot of taekwondoka's also acquire a new dobok (taekwondo uniform). This has both a practical reason (your former dobok is probably a few years old now and is ready for renewal) and a esthetic reason. You can take a better quality and you may wish to add some 1st dan characteristics such as the black border on the bottom part of your dobok shirt. In combination with your brand new black belt it looks great. It takes some days before your new dobok arrives, but here it is.

1st Dan, yes we dit it!

2007-04-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

It has been some weeks since my last post in the personal section of my blog. This was mainly because of the intensive preparations for the 1st dan exam in Taekwondo which was held on April 15th, 2007. The last six weeks it meant literally seven days a week of training in hyongs/tulls, stap sparring, self defense, and last but not least the breaktest of a hard plastic beam (kyepa). Moreover, one needs to know about the theory and historical background of teakwondo. The exam was an exciting event. The final training last tuesday didn't go that well, so I was a little tense before the exam started. The first part (hyong) went well, which brought a lot of relief already. The stapsparring and self defense were also quite ok I believe. The most stressful event (at least for me) is the breaking of a beam/plank. For some guys it's no problem at all (they seem to do it with their eyes closed), other (like me) have to concentrate in order to perform the right technique. Using the right technique means that you hardly feel the impact on you arm, hand or foot. If the timing or technique is not right it might cause some pain or even more serious injuries. It was a big relief to me that the breaking of the beams went very well this time.

A special dimension of this dan exam was that I did it together with my 13 year old son. I am convinced this will be one of those father-son lifetime events that me and my son will still remember in 30 years. It was an honour to me and I am truly proud of my son, who sometimes had doubts whether he should continue in Taekwondo. Maybe it was the fact that I joined the club that motivated him to move forward. When I started Taekwondo (at the age of 37) I never thought I would be able to achieve a level that is good enough to become a 1st dan (black belt). Today, more than 5 years later I can look back and say that I managed to achieve quite a challenge. It's a great feeling, achieving a sort of milestone, almost to be compared when you achieve your final exam in secondary education. On the picture (from left to right): Atmane Qoubbane, Andrew Portier (my son), Sabum Ad Dekker (our trainer) and me.

Minus 6 weeks

2007-02-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

In my post from Nov 7, 2006 I mentioned my ambition to achieve a black belt in Taekwondo in the near future. The examination was already planned for May 27th, so I would have precisely 3 months from today for my final preparation. However, last week the examination date was rescheduled and moved to April 15th, which is six weeks earlier. That puts a little stress on the preparation because there are still some issues that have to be excercised thoroughly, e.g. my hosinsul techniques (self-defense) need to be improved and I need to work on a couple of new series of so-called step-sparring. It's good to know that I'm not the only candidate at our Taekwondo School. There are two more (one of them is my 13-yr old son). Fortunately, there is a lot of help from fellow taekwondoka's who achieved their black belts earlier. They are helping us to get through the exercises and provide us with useful feedback. The parallel with education is obvious. If you have to figure it out all by yourself, the learning process will be much slower compared to the situation where you have a role model who also gives immediate feedback on what you're doing. It is mainly for this reason that I am still confident that we will succeed on April 15th. Our trainer is also confident, which gives a good moral support. I'll keep you posted.

Telephone terror

2007-02-24T05:33:00.000-08:00

Is it also bothering you that much? A phone that seems to ring the whole day, taking away the attention of what you're doing at that time. A caller who automatically thinks that you have nothing else on your mind, besides picking up the phone and have a conversation with him/her. The mobile phone made it all worse. There is a sort of moral obligation that you need to be available at any time, any place. The famous television commercials 'So Hi' (in the Netherlands) want to make you believe that you're really cool, oh no, not me. The last couple of months I have developed a sort of resistance against this telephone terror. Modern technology is great! It's good to have a profile on your phone called 'silent' or 'meeting'. When you look at the display (by coincidence of course), it's my decision whether or not to answer the call. Another great advantage is the possibility of displaying the phone number of the caller. Beware the fool that dares to disengage the number recognition mode on this phone. Anonymous callers have a great chance that their call will be neglected. I have answered too much telemarketeteers trying to sell me an insurance for my funeral or a new mortgage for my house. Is number recognition put on, then I always try to identify who is on the other side. In case that person is also in your contacts list, it's easy because you see the name of the person. A nice help to decide whether or not you want to talk to this person. In case of no name, there is a 50% chance that I take the call, otherwise it will disappear in the black whole called voicemail. Because it can really be a black hole in case a person neglects all his voicemails. You give someone the impression that he has reached you, the way Minister Rita Verdonk once did, trying to call prime minister Balkenende, but it strongly depends on the way how someone deals with his voicemail. A collegue once told me: well you can leave a message on my voicemail, but why bother. I never listen to it. Sometime you see people start running when their phone starts ringing. Not me, too late, well sorry, try again when you're house is on fire. In case I forget to put the phone on silent mode, there is always that little red button on top: shut down that miserable thing. Well you know, it really helps. A strategy of 'hard to reach' causes the number of incoming calls to decrease dramatically. A sort of out-of-office assitent effect. When someone has the feeling that you can't be reached anyway, there is a considerable chance that he won't send you a message.

Armin van Buuren

2007-02-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

You may have been wondering what this post is all about. Well it is an embedded object from radio.blog.club. Radio Blog contains a huge amounts of music links that can be listened to in their own webpage, but you may also want to embed it as an object into your own webpage. The disclaimer states that "Radio.blog is a free software exclusively designed to offer a promoting tool to musical artists and/or any member of the music and entertainment community". One can create track lists. Radio Blog can be compared to You Tube in the sense that all liability is for the user: Any individual, group or company using Radio.blog for the purpose of transmiting, distributing, storing any musical content represents and warrants to Mubility that, among other things, they have the rights, licenses, clearances and/or permissions necessary to do so, that the titles, lyrics, music, artist names and marks under which the Content is promoted do not infringe any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights and that all Content available for use through Radio.blog do not infringe privacy or moral rights, neither is defamatory, obscene, threatening, abusive, or hostile. The owners of Radio Blog explicitly state that they typically do not own musical compositions, musical recordings, artwork or visual images of third parties that are available through Radio.blog. For the end user it is an interesting site, if you happen to have that title or artist's name, you get a big chance that you can actually hear the song. Although looking for some older songs, you might get disappointed. Try for example "The Way we Were" from Barbra Streisand. I couldn't find it. Justing searching on the songs name gets me 1132 hits, a bit too much at this time of the day. A little bit odd is that you have to click twice on the embedded object before the song starts playing. I like the small size of the embedde object and you can also make some colour changes so it fits better within the design of your web page. In general the quality of the sound is rather good. An interesting idea is that you can create your own playlists just by creating a list of embedded objects. That's great, but of course when one of the objects is removed from radio blog (for whatever reason), your object won't work anymore.

Hit and run

2007-02-06T01:37:00.000-08:00

A woman runs into a 14-year old boy on his bike. The boy falls and is injured. The woman gets out of her car, inspects the damage on her car and then goes off without even looking at the boy.
A 7-year old girl gets hit by a car. She suffers a complicated fracture in her upper leg and literally has to crawl to a nearby house to get help. The driver did not stop to see if the girl needed any help, and simply drove away.
These are just two examples in one week about hit and run accidents in the very neighbourhood of my home. The 7-year old is the younger sister of a girlfriend of my daugther's, so it makes the impact of the latter accident sort of personal. In my opinion the two accidents illustrate a more general trend towards avoidance of responsibility. I don't believe anymore in explanations calling these events 'incidents'. There are just too many occurences of incidents nowadays. Individualistic behaviour (me, me, me, materialsm, hurry, "I want it, and I want it now") are key drivers. There is trend in society in which only indivdualism is the most important thing. If people can't get it soon enough they become frustrated. In the last 10 years I had to make a lot of kilometers on the highway (about 60.000 km a year), and it seems to become a jungle more and more everyday. People trying to "push" you from behind (even in a traffic jam), overtaking by using the right lane are daily practice. There is no consideration of consequences and lack of responsibility seems to become the default modus.
I do not consider myself a preacher of morality or anything like that, but it's a f.... disgrace that some adult people think they can hit a child, run off and leave it seriously injured on the street. The girl could have been run over by another car when she was crawling on the street. Yes, hit and run is considered a criminal offense, but the problem is that you have to catch them first. The only thing we know is that it concerns a white-coloured car.
As a psychologist I try to imagine what makes the decision to hit and run. Is it indeed this lack of responsibility I was writing about, is it a panic reaction, or is it something else like the driver had no liability insurance? Whatever the reason was, it's no excuse. Even if in panic, you could at least make an anonymous 112 (911) call for help.

Rutte or Rita?

2006-11-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had a premiere in Dutch parlementary history: the number 2 on the election list for the Liberal Party (VVD) got more preference votes than the number 1, the party leader. The interesting issue here is that the number 1, Mark Rutte has been elected party leader by the party members, above the current minister of integration Rita Verdonk. She became the runner up on the VVD-election list that was used on Nov. 22nd. However, the final election results show that Verdonk achieved about 70.000 votes more than Rutte. What next? Rutte reacted that he was glad for Rita, but that he was elected by the party members and as a consequence his leadership is not at stake. Verdonk was enthousiastic about so many personal votes for her (about 620.000!). Should she take over the lead? Well, she did not firmly deny this suggestion anymore. In the past few months she consequently used to answer that Mark Rutte is the leader of the Liberal Party. Yesterday (27-11), she didn't do that. Instead, she answered that she would evaluate the current situation and come up with an answer later today. What will be her answer? (1) Claiming the leadership, which will cause an immediate crisis in the party or (2) accepting her second position, even when the voters have indicated something else. The problem of the 2nd scenario is that Rutte will have an authority problem within his own party. He is formally the leader, but everybody knows that the people prefer Verdonk instead of Rutte. Of course, there is also a third scenario: (3) Verdonk will leave politics and look for a job elsewhere. That way she can make a statement that she is not willing to play the runner up role in a situation where she actually is the winner. At the same time it creates space for Rutte to be the undisputed leader for the liberals. Rita is not there to undermine his leadership. Well, in my opinion if the VVD would take the 'D' (stands for Democrats) in their name seriously, they should listen to the voice of the voter. Neglecting the election result by saying 'I stay at my position because the member have elected me, no matter what' can be considered a form of disrespect to the voter. In any scenario, the result must feel pretty awkward for Rutte. Maybe, just maybe he will have lunch with Rita today. If he takes his responsibility seriously, he shoud leave. An electoral loss (both for the party and personally for him as a party leader) are two reasons that should convince him to leave. That would show true leadership.

Voting upsidedown om Nov. 22nd?

2006-11-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

This rather ambigious title should not be interpreted literally of course, but refers to an initiative by BNN broadcast to vote for the candidate that is last (or almost last) on the candidate list of his/her politic party. In case you had the patience to follow the political debates on TV and radio and listen to the so-called leaders, you may have noticed that there is nothing new to be heard compared to the first statements they have made when the campaign started. Prime minister Balkenende is still bragging about the achievements he made during the past years, Bos wants the (rich) elderly to pay more taxes and Rutte wants to terminate all types of social income for young people of 27 and younger. So, a student who achieves his master degree by let's say 23 can't get a social income anymore until (s)he enters her/his first job. It's easy to say to either take education or to get a job. Else you won't have any income. The oneliners in which these young adults are literally called children who have to work on their personal development or else they will become social outcasts with no chances on the labour market are really too naive and shocking to hear. Wasn't it Mark Rutte himself who took 7 years to finish his study? Nowadays the students have to do it in 4, maybe 5 years. The political leaders strive for polarisation, using populistic oneliners, looking for as much conflict and disagreement with their opponents as possible, with the one and sole goal of gaining electoral advantage. Therefore, I support the upsidedown initiative (http://www.ondersteboven.nl/index.php). It's my true believe that the people who don't get all the media attention are still authentic in their ideas, their believes and their ambition to create a better society. Their discussions are still about the things that matter to us, to the citizens, and less about how to gain as much power as possible. It's just a matter of days (3 to be exactly) before the political leaders I am writing about, will 'forget' their promises in order to form a new coalition. Nevertheless, the elections do have an interesting aspect: the results may be more differentiated than ever, which will cause that a workable coalition will be difficult to form, if possible at all.

7 days till election day

2006-11-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's only 7 days till election day for the Dutch parliament. Daily forecasts are displayed to us, politicians striving for as much time on television and radio as possible. Two weeks ago everything was set for a close finish ("too close to call") between our current prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and coming man Wouter Bos from the social democrats (labour). The campaign started off with a radio debate in which Balkenende played an unusual tough battle. Bos was more or less crushed. Nevertheless, Bos kept his campaign in the direction in which his party (PvdA) would probably settle for a coalition with Balkenendes CDA (Christian Democrats). Looking at the current predictions this may have been a crucial mistake. A lot of citizens don't want the current coalition and/or their policy to continue for another 4 years. By stating that a coalition with CDA is the most preferable one, Bos has set for a course in which people believe that Balkenende will remain prime minister and therefore will be able to continue his current policy: voting for Bos means voting for Balkenende. Therefore a lot of voters seem to move further to the left (in the spectrum of politics) and found the Social Party (SP), led by Jan Marijnissen. Jan has an image to be a modest and honest politician, a guy you may want to drink a beer with. A politician who worked in the meat factories of Oss and who knows what it is not to be rich. Jan is hot at the moment, looking at a predicted number of 28 seats (compared to 9 seats the SP has at the moment). The fourth party that has pretentions to become part of the new cabinet are the liberal democrats (VVD). They - in my opinion - have a leadership problem: two leaders battling, and -which is worse- who have different visions about major issues. As a consequence the voters don't know where the VVD stands for and they tend to leave the VVD for an alternative. Finally, where do the democrats of D66 stand? From an inside view (my wife is involved, as she participates in the elections) I witness a rather modest campaign strategy. Alexander Pechtold does get some television time, but there is no movement in the number of predicted seats. They don't spread around posters to draw attention from the public. There seems to be a little trend upwards. I have a simple mathematic prediction. Twelve years ago D66 gained 24 seats, eight years ago they decreased to 12, four years ago to 6. So in my prediction would be that D66 will end up with 3 seats in 2006. I truly hope it will be more, they have a lot of good issues and ambition, especially in the field of education.

Achieving a black belt

2006-11-07T02:41:00.000-08:00

Last week I achieved the 1st kub in taekwon-do, which is the last degree before you can take your exam for the degree of 1st Dan (black belt). If everything goes well, mentally and physically, it is expected that I can take the exam by May 2007. When I started in 2002 (almost 38 years old) I never thought I would be able to get a black belt (too old, no condition). I was always interested in Martial Arts, already in the days that David Carradine starred in the TV series Kung Fu. Sometimes I tried to imitate some of the techniques I had seen on television. I used to play tennis and badminton for a lot of years, but my left knee kept me more and more from being active in these sports. After both of my children became members of our local Taekwondo school I decided to participate myself instead of watching them from the sideline. I experienced that looking at Martial Arts is completely different from being an active sportsman yourself. My first 20 minutes in taekwondo were devistating. I was literally lying on the floor, gasping for oxygen. Nevertheless I went on, but was realistic enough to see that I could not participate in sparring competition anymore in which I might have to compete guys of 20. My focus therefore is more on the technical part of taekwondo. In the past years I got my D and C license as a taekwondo referee, so I can have my contribution in a completely different, but still challenging way. So my sports ambition for 2007 is clear: getting a 1st Dan degree at the age of 43. Besides my own ambition this exam has a special personal touch, because my 13 year old son will probably take his 1st Dan exam on the very same day. I think it will be a unique achievement when a father and son can reach this milestone on the same day. Hopefully it will be a great experience in which we will both succeed. Whatever the outcome, I'm sure it will be a day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Have we seen the last of Michael Schumacher?

2006-10-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday October 22nd, Michael Schumacher retired after 16 years from Formula 1. Looking at his track record (7 Championship titles) and other great records he is certainly the best of all times, although sometimes criticized because Michael was always pushing to the limit and even beyond. Up till the very last laps of his final Grand Prix in Brazil he was pushing to get as far in front as possible. An 8th Championship title would have been certainly his, if not for the technical problems he had to deal with in the last two races.
What will next year be like? I think there are at least three candidates for the 2007 title: Fernando Alonso (reigning and already 2-time World Champion), Kimi Raikkonen or maybe Felippe Massa. Alonso and Raikkonen have to get used to a new car and a new team, which is probably a disadvantage. Massa has shown in Brazil to be an excellent driver and more importantly he stays with Ferrari. However, will he be able (together with Kimi) to help developing the car the way Schumacher could. It was Michael's input that brought Ferrari back to the front row of Formula 1. Well, it won't surprise me if Schumacher will be around some time to give some advice. Maybe, a team manager in the future?
It's hard to imagine that a man who lived for racing for so many years will simply withdraw to live in privacy on his very own island. Rumour has it that Audi has offered him a 24 Le Mans drive for 12 Million Euro. I don't think money will be a key driver here for Michael, he has enough of it. However, his motivation to drive will bring him back on the track again some day, if not in Le Mans then on some other track. It was a great pleasure watching Formula 1 with Schumacher behind the wheel. There was always competition and spectacular driving action. Hopefully 2007 will be interesting again, looking at the three youngsters I already mentioned. They all have the talent to achieve one or more championship titles, but will they also be able to be competitive for so many years as Michael Schumacher did?

Disappointing A1 GP Zandvoort?

2006-09-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

Next Sunday, Oct 1st, 2006 the A1 GP will be held for the first time in the Netherlands. After one year A1 (with 24 national teams) proved to be a great success an indeed a serious competitor for the Formula 1 Championship in the sense that the cars are all the same in A1. With a lot of effort the Dutch succeeded to get A1 GP to Zandvoort, and more specifically see Jos Verstappen drive a A1 race in his own country. Verstappen - still the best Dutch racing driver ever - if you take the number of Formula 1 championship points he achieved - was expected to compete for a place on the podium, maybe even for victory. However, this week it turned out that there are some financial disagreements with the team management. Verstappen won't drive, leaving his fans behind in utmost confusion and anger. Looking at the discussion lists and fanzones it is a big question whether the fans will forgive him. Why not wait till after the Zandvoort race? Will this be the end of his popularity? I was planning to take a look at the A1-race, but maybe it's better to watch the Formula 1 race, held the very same weekend in Shanghai. Double Dutch with Robert Doornbos behind the wheel of the Red Bull Ferrari and Christian Albers in the Spyker Midland F1 will be a more than excellent alternative...

Welcome to my personal blog

2006-09-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

This blog is to share my personal experiences, viewpoints, etc. which may come from things I read in the newspapers, with special interest in sports and politics.