happy hooker

Today was a fine day, sunshine all around, the pavement-cafes on my street were all filled up with Amsterdammers who never seem to have a job to go to, enjoying their Hazelnut Macchiato low fat lattes.
I cycled my way to the Dam square, where i saw a girl holding a sign saying: free tours!
What the #?
Trying to destroy our business? What's in it for them? Must be some catch. Come to my silk shop?
As i listened in, i heard the guide, who was British(sic!) make several crucial mistakes concerning our national history, so you get what you don't pay for.

Anyway i was there to do some tour-guiding myself. A group of about 90 students from Eindhoven with their teachers were to be guided through the red light district. They studied 'recreational studies', so they had come to the right address. Most of them were girls in the ages of 16 to 18. They were to be divided in four groups.

I found that most of the students were of the opinion that prostitutes were in general victims and that they were victims because they were 'weak', as they put it. (I would say there are a lot of girls who have become victims of ruthless pimps because they are vulnerable. But who is not vulnerable in puberty?)

That's why it was so interesting that at the end of the tour they were confronted with a very self assured prostitute. Her name is Samantha (nickname is monster because of her size DD), she was interviewed and afterwards the students could ask questions.
This is an eye-opener, because most people don't know a prostitute personally. Most customers only get 15 minutes, in which they don't do a lot of talking. Most people have never considered a prostitute to be a normal person. Emotionally stable, sympathetic, someone that you can relate to.
She is one of the very very few prostitutes who actually chose from her own free will to do this job. She is married and has two children, the oldest is 7. She likes sex and she likes her job. Ofcourse there are sides to her work that she dislikes, but that goes for most professions.
Her husband used to be a sex worker himself. She says that she couldn't imagine her marriage to work with someone who wouldn't come from the same trade. They have an open relationship, have to with her profession where she not only works behind the window, but also goes on short holidays with her clients. The other day she went on a styling date with a long time customer: did his hair, went clothes shopping etc. The deal with her husband is: never fall in love with someone else.

Samantha believes that a lot of marriages are saved by prostitution. A lot of men have sexual fantasies, testosteron drives the primeval need to spread the seed from their loins. If there were no prostitutes, they'd probably get a girlfriend and could very possibly fall in love with them, which could easily lead to divorce.

Most of Samantha's customers are into SM, where she is the mistress. SM pays better than the 50 euros that 15 minutes of straight sex cost (no kissing, touching or hugging. Basically there's only genital contact with the average John).
SM clients have either traumatic experiences in their youth or hold high power positions. Not everyone has the character to be a mistress. You need to be feared. You need the psychological insight to know how far you can go.

Samantha is very open about her work, but she fears that her children will be teased and isolated in school when people find out about her profession over there. She will tell her children about it when they're old enough to understand, which according to her would be at the age of 12.
She'd like to come out in the open and write a book about her life and then go on TV to promote it, she feels very strongly about showing people that not all prostitutes are victims, and that in fact it is a hard and difficult job that deserves respect.

I believe that in our culture prostitutes are looked down upon because sex is automatically associated with romantic love. And especially women are expected to remain faithful.

In sub-saharan cultures sex is more accepted as a medium of exchange for women. In general, sex is less burdened with morals in black Africa. In Madagascar there was a song topping the charts, where the man complains: moi content, toi content, pourquoi moi payer?. I'm happy, you're happy, so why should i pay? But that's their culture, men pay for casual sex. It's understandable because for women it's more difficult to get any other kind of job. Because of this, prostitutes are held in higher esteem than in europe. With all that poverty, anyone who can provide an income for their family, is valued.

It's still a long way to go before prostitution will be widely accepted as a therapeutic massage of the sexual organs.
Isn't everyone who works for money a prostitute?

letter to the inventor of weapon of mosquito destruction

Dear Jordin Kare,

No one could have missed your development of the weapon of mosquito destruction.
I read that you said that "there is no such thing as a good mosquito" and that "no one would miss mosquitos".

How sure are you of this? are you an entomologist too? A biologist even?

Of the thousands of kinds of mosquitoes, it turns out, only 44 are known to carry deadly diseases like malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and filariasis.

The rest are not only safe, they're helpful. It's a fact that ought to shut up people who wonder why the mosquito exists at all, but we always tend to focus on the bad apples.

The bug's benefit is in toughening up the immune systems of humans and other animals that get bitten, which is a small price to pay for a bit of itching and scratching.

Mosquitos are nature’s way of naturally transmitting immunity, vaccinating people to resist virus.

I believe your intentions are to do good, but you wouldn't be the first who by meaning well actually does terrible harm.

As does Mr Bill Gates, saving all those lives. But to what future? They will face a future of suffering. In 2030 there will be 8.5 billion people. What will they eat and drink?
Isn't the quality of life something to think about?
Provide people with a future!

What future will we have without our immune systems?

Already many people live in such sterile environments that they are developing all kinds of allergies.

Einstein once said that if the bees are going, mankind will have five years left. The bees ARE going.

You are not helping. STOP this nonsense. Please, dude, this is not a film!

I'm not insensitive to the problem. I have spent several years in Africa, had 4 infections of the falciparum parasite, the most dangerous type of malaria, have seen people die from it.
Ask your friend Mr. gates to invest in development of a vaccin. Your lasergun is not the answer.
It must be so hard to give it up after you've spent so much time on it, but you are on the wrong path, my friend. But it must have been great fun, developing something like this! And that joy is what it's all about, after all. Don't hold on too firmly to what you believe, be open to new insights.

With admiration for your work,

Wybe Rood

i'm a yogi

Yesterday I had my second ever yoga class.

My first yoga class i took 12 years ago. I suffered from backache and someone suggested me to go to this Hatha yoga class. It was the heavy-duty kind where they make you stand on your head and take all kinds of impossible positions. I had told them this was my first yoga class and that i had back problems. However they didn't give me any different instructions. So i participated as the competitive me, trying to perform as good as the next guy, preferably better, best. The participants were all semi professional athletes, like ice speed skaters. Besides the standing on my head i remember one other practice where i had to spread my legs as far as possible and then touch my left ankle with my right hand and then the right ankle with my left hand.
My backpain got much worse after that experience, and in fact it proved not much later that i had a slipped disc. So i swore never ever to take yoga classes again.

After years of nagging, my dear friend - let's call her poodle- finally persuaded me to join her yoga class. After all it was less than five minutes from where i live and only costs 5 euros for an hour and a half of supreme yoga instruction! I woud be 'a thief of my own wallet' (as the expression goes here in the stingy Netherlands) no to go and being the stingy bastard that i am, i went.

As i entered the building the aroma of a bio dynamic wholesome food store entered my nostrils, a bit of a sickly, slightly offish smell. There is a raw food restaurant in the building too. Will try that next time and tell you about it.

It was a whole different setting then my previous yoga experience. The large class room was dimly lit. The smell of inscents filled the air and sitar music was softly playing. Several people were already sitting on mats, meditating. I followed suit. There were about 25 people in all. We meditated for half an hour.

The yoga instructor was Indian. Which made sense since yoga originates from India. I've seen yogi's in India aged 70+, standing for hours on one foot, while the other was on their shoulder. I saw yogi's with large heavy rocks hanging on a rope from their penises too.

The instructor - let's call him Anal- was very Indian in the way of an outspoken guru with unshakeable beliefs.

He made everyone bow for the one who created everything, to whom we owe everything and then chant his name: Om shiva hare hare, om shiva.
Anal talked a lot during class, apparantly this is due to problems with his third chakra.

He said that yoga, if done properly, could stop the ageing process and in fact turn it around and become rejuvenating. I must say that he did look quite young for his age, but undoubtedly his hair was turning grey.
He said a whole lot of things that would get a lot of laughs in the biology department of any university, except maybe the aryuvedic ones.

The excercises we did i found fairly easy. There were one or two that i couldn't do. I still feel a bit lame when i'm the only one in class who can't do an excercise, but that's my ego talking. In fourty years from now, i won't be able to do any excercise, whatsoever. Stop! there is no future, there is no past, there is only now.
Most of the participants were young, goodlooking women. Unfortunately during class i needed all my attention on the excercises and after class i didn't have time to chat up to them since i had a dinner date with some friends from high school, Dieke and Nathalie - let's call them Huey and Louie.

Today, the day after, i feel a bit stiff, some muscles ache a bit, but after some yoga excercises, im fine again. I even meditated for half an hour. Recent research has shown that regular meditation changes the brain: meditators do excercises slower, but make less mistakes.

pauvre Madagascar

It's so saddening what's happening to my beloved Madagascar. This article in the economist sums up what's been happening.
Mankind is the most destructive species on this planet, greedy and selfish. There are many examples of exceptions, people who managed to get rid of their ego's. But that they are, exceptions.
Maybe the best way to cope is to not care. But unfortunately, i'm not a robot.
And some of the best days in my life were when i had the privilage to walk through primary tropical rainforest. A religious feeling comes over me when i walk through that cathedral of life. Huge, majestical trees, centuries old, each being an ecosystem in itself. A sort of homecoming, a feeling of belonging. Everything is so vibrant and battling for light. Such an abundancy of life forms. Amazement awaits at every centimeter. It's magical.

And in Madagascar, being an island where evolution took its own course, almost every life form is unique, endemic to Madagascar. Something so valuable, you can't express in money. Cause when it's gone, it's gone forever.
Species come and go, and so they should. But at this rate...i would feel so lonely when all were left with are just the few animals that are usefull to us: cow, chicken, goldfish and poodle. (by the way, did you know that goldfish naturally live in groups and hide between weeds and rocks? The cruellest thing to do to them is to put them all alone and totally exposed in a bowl!).

And now because of lawlessness, organised crime and foreign traders are looting the National parks, the few bits of primary forests that is left.

Einstein once said something like: "when the bees have gone, mankind has five years left". Well the bees are going!

weapon of mosquito destruction

I came across this article when i was surfing on the BBC site for news about the coup in Madagascar:

LONDON, England -- Scientists in the U.S. are developing a laser gun that could kill millions of mosquitoes in minutes.

The WHO has reported that around half of the world's population is at risk of malaria.

The laser, which has been dubbed a "weapon of mosquito destruction" fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings.

The laser beam then destroys the mosquito, burning it on the spot.

Developed by some of the astrophysicists involved in what was known as the "Star Wars" anti-missile programs during the Cold War, the project is meant to prevent the spread of malaria.

Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes."

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people from the bites of female mosquitoes.

It is particularly prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and kills an African child every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization.

There are an estimated 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than one million deaths, the WHO reports.

Responding to questions about any potential harm the laser could pose to the eco-system, Kare said: "There is no such thing as a good mosquito, there's nothing that feeds exclusively on them. No one would miss mosquitoes," he said.

"In any case," he added. "The laser is able to distinguish between mosquitoes that go after people and those that aren't dangerous. What remains to be seen is how precise we can get."

He added that other insects would not be affected by the laser's beam.

Kare said the lasers could be mounted on lamp post-type poles and put around the circumference of villages, to create a kind of "fence" against mosquitoes.

The research was commissioned by Intellectual Ventures, a Washington, U.S.-based company that was founded by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corporation executive.

His previous boss, Bill Gates, who funded the research, asked Myhrvold to look into new ways of combating malaria

Sometimes reality sounds weirder than you could imagine. not in this case though: the idea for a mosquito-laser was already hilariously advertised in 2005 on youtube by the Groen brothers

That was my first thought. The second brought me back to an old and wise man in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In july 2008 i did a ten day meditating retreat in a buddhist Temple (a report on that great and in hindsight hilarious experience will follow later on this blog).

On the day 'i got out', still dressed in white meditational clothing, i decided to pay a visit to the little insect museum. I was welcomed by the owner/founder/cleaner/guard Mr. Manop Rattanarithikul , 76 years old. Yes the museum was open. So open, in fact, that weaver birds came flying in and out. Though most of the other animals in the museum were dead. 4,668 species from all over the world.

The animals he had worked with all his life were mosquitos. When he was nine he had to flee with his parents to the border with Burma. Malaria was prevalent in those mountains and the young boy got ill. Very ill. Everyone who saw him thought he would die. His spleen was huge and so seemed his head, much bigger than the rest of his body.

His parents finally in all despair took the boy to an old witch/ herb-lady who lived at the edge of the village. She gave him several infusions to drink and pierced the skin around his anus with a citrus pine. It started to bleed. He told me he had never endured such pain again in his life. I can believe him. She repeated it 9 times.

He broke to sweat during this treatment, which is a good sign apparently and amazingly, this boy who was given up by most, recovered.

After the war there was no money to go to university in Bangkok and at the age of 18 he got a job as an assistant to Mr. Ernestine Thurman , a world renowned entomologist, who was doing research on malaria prevalence in Thailand. The eager and bright Manop soaked up everything he could learn and when Mr. died a year and a half later, he had become the no. 1 expert on mosquitos in Thailand.

He then went to university and met his wife who is now a professor specialized in....mmmosquitos!

They did a lot of research together and Manop discovered no less then 18 new species some of which now carry his name. In order to determine a species you have to let it draw blood. And sure enough, both Manop and his wife Dr. Rampa Rattanarithikul became contaminated with the malaria parasite more than once. He came very close to dying again!

Nevertheless, he says he has never killed one mosquito on purpose in his life and he never will. Of the thousands of kinds of mosquitoes, it turns out, only 44 are known to carry deadly diseases like malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and filariasis.

The rest are not only safe, they're helpful. It's a fact that ought to shut up people who wonder why the mosquito exists at all, but we always tend to focus on the bad apples.

The bug's benefit is in toughening up the immune systems of humans and other animals that get bitten, which is a small price to pay for a bit of itching and scratching.

“Mosquitos are nature’s way of naturally transmitting immunity, vaccinating people to resist virus. An illness is a living being that will have to die like any living being.”, he explains. “it is us humans who are the most villainous species on earth”.

This shooting with a gun on a mosquito is a typical example of subtle american solutions: we'll nuke em!
And Bill Gates, who wants to be remembered as the biggest philanthropist who ever lived, is spending all his money on saving lives, which is great. But to what kind of a future? By not giving the Windows source codes Microsoft is obstructing the development of a 100$ dollar computer developed for third workd countries by MIT. You can't keep people alive so they can have kids and then many more will suffer and die of starvation later!

The museum is at 17 Nimmanhenda Road Soi 13 and open daily from 8 to 5. Admission is Bt300, plus Bt100 if you want to take pictures, and it's wellused income. Call (053) 211 891 or email insectmuseum@hotmail.com.

Did you know that the humming of mosquitos is actually there love song?