Random people I meet, part 1 (?)

A little more than one month ago I had a job interview in Eindhoven. The interview went well (although it didn't lead to a job offer) and when I got back to the train station I learnt that due to a train accident there were no trains going on the route between Eindhoven and my home town Houten, so I was looking for an alternative route. After looking at the map one more time I realized that I could also take the "touristic" route. For the Dutch readers (or the foreigners that love to use Google Maps): I would go from Eindhoven further south to Venlo, then to Nijmegen and finally I would travel back to my hometown Houten via Utrecht Central Station. I had no idea how long this was going to take, but it couldn't be more than the 3 hours I would have to wait at the train station if I didn't do it, so I hopped on the intercity to Venlo.

You should know that people in the southern part of the Netherlands are very social people who really like to talk. This led to an interesting situation. I was sitting in this train when a man sat down opposite to me. This is not special and I was reading a book, so I didn't pay too much attention to him. Out of the blue the man said to me (in Dutch): "Hi, how are you?"
Though this is uncommon in my country, I just replied in a friendly manner and asked him how he was doing. He was doing fine. Great. Now I could read more in my book.

Or not. The man had been silent for about a minute and then he started talking (more or less to himself) about how there was yet another disruption of the train traffic and how it could be that the Dutch Railways could not prevent such disruptions. I felt it wouldn't be very nice if I just kept on reading, so I put my book down and started nodding towards the man that was sitting opposite to me and took a better look at him. His hair was messy: he was getting bald but he seemed to think that as long as he would let his hair grow longer it would go unnoticed. Furthermore the man had dirty clothes and long fingernails. It was clear to me that this man was living alone. When he started talking about his canary and how much work it was to clean up the cage of this bird ("because it's always escaping from the cage! You know how difficult it is to catch a loose canary?!?"), I knew for sure.
I tried to ignore the weird things this man said to me and have a normal conversation with him, as this was clearly what he wanted. We talked about the beauty of the southern part of the Netherlands, getting stuck with your bicycle while cycling through the forest and the economic crisis. The highlight of the conversation was when the man told me he had to live from unemployment benefits and how proud he was that he came up with an idea to save money: not switching on any lights at night.
"It's really not a problem for me to pee in the dark," he said.

The man got off the train in his home town Deurne and I looked around in the train compartment. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like the people were relieved that this man and his dirty stories were gone.
I didn't feel relief though. In fact I felt a bit sorry for this man. As I started reading in my book again I thought about how this man was probably living a very lonely life, with his canary and his house without lights.

7 songs to counter the Winter Blues

When that the days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder, people are more likely to get a sad feeling. This phenomenon is known as the Winter Blues. This blog is written with the purpose to counter those sad feelings with music. In just 7 songs I will guide you to a happy feeling. Based on every song I will give you an advice on how to become a happier person. You can also see these 7 songs as your personal 7-step guide to happiness.

I guarantee you that you will have a happier feeling after listening to all these songs.

1. Wake up the right way (Alex Day - Good Morning Sunshine)
Have you ever wondered why British people always seem so happy? A happy feeling starts with waking up the right way. The video below shows how British people like to start their day. It's clear what you need to do with this step: wake up with a smile, sing a happy song, wear a colorful t-shirt and do crazy things with the people close to you.
You can start with that new lifestyle tomorrow, for now it will be sufficient just to watch the video below.

2. Be happy with what you have (Gerry & The Pacemakers - I Like It)
One of the first steps on your way to happiness is to appreciate what you have. It's always better to think about the things that you do have than to think about the things that you don't have. So please start up the video below, watch the old commercial about Mikey who gets used as a guinea pig by his older brothers, close your eyes, listen to the song and think about all the good things in your life. Friends, family, beautiful things you have seen or maybe even memories of a warm spring day in the park. Or just that delicious chocolate you always eat... Anything will do.

Are you feeling happier already? Yes? Good, you are well on your way to become a happy person. Are you not feeling happy yet? Wow, you certainly are a tough one. Maybe the next song will do the trick for you.

3. Jump up and down a few times (Munamies - Pomppufiilis)
You always feel happier when you are physically active. Therefore step 3 on the road to happiness requires you to jump up and down a few times. I know it sounds silly, but just do it. It works. To give you energy while while you're jumping, here is a video with an egg-man who is singing (in Finnish) about the bouncy feeling he is experiencing.

And if you get tired from the jumping, you may also sit down and just happily move your head a bit from left to right for the rest of the song with a huge smile on your face. That should also help to make you feel happy.

4. Don't create a monster; fight your fears (The Hoosiers - Worried About Ray)
The next step is an important one. To become a happy person you must know yourself and your weaknesses. You should actively do something to make sure your bad qualities don't make you into a bad or annoying person. Moreover, you should never be afraid to do something that you want to do. Keep in mind that at the end of their lives most people feel more regret about the things that they didn't do than about the things that they did do.

Unfortunately Ray from the video below hadn't read my blog yet. As a consequence, he decided to create a monster. Luckily he has a friend who did read my blog and fights his fear, a.k.a. the monster.

5. Think about how it's all going to be alright in the end (He Is We - Happily Ever After)
It's not always easy to maintain a happy feeling. At times you may be worried about something or it may seem that things are going wrong. If you encounter such a situation, just think about how it will all be alright in the end. Can you imagine yourself 5 years from now still worrying about the things you are worried about at that moment? I bet you can't. See, you know it's all going to be alright. Then why should you let it ruin your good mood now?

In line with this, you can listen to the following feel-good song:

6. Do something you like to do (Alexander Rybak - Roll With The Wind)
If there is one singer who always gives me a happy feeling, it's Alexander Rybak with his everlasting smile and his violin. So if I select 7 songs to guide you to a happy feeling, I should also include a song by the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009.

I chose a song with the title "Roll With The Wind". It's quite difficult to come up with an advice from this song. I guess the main idea of all songs by Alexander Rybak is that everyone should just do whatever they like to do. If you like to make catchy pop music with a violin, then just do it. If you're happy being in love with a fairytale, then just do it. If one day you wake up and you feel like rolling with the wind (and you actually know what this is), then I guess you should also just do it.

7. Maintain your happy feeling throughout the day (Scouting For Girls - Gotta Keep Smiling)
There you go, you're in a good mood now. And is that a smile on your face? Yes! It is! Congratulations, you have made it to the final step and you already have a smile on your face. Now you just need to make sure that you will continue to have this happy feeling for the rest of your day. How can you do that? Scouting For Girls, my favourite band, has the following advice on how to do this:

Have a happy rest of the day and don't forget to keep smiling!

A new design!

After three years of having the same old boring design, I'm confident that my blog looks a lot better now and invites you to come back some other time. The background photo may be a bit distracting, so it's possible that I change it later if I find a better photo.

List of changes:
- New background photo
- New, more attractive, font type
- The "about me" section has been removed
- It's now easier to find back old blog posts through the new search-function
- You can now ask Google to translate my words into your own language
- It's now possible to comment on my blog posts without having to login first

So if you have any remarks or tips about the new design of my blog, feel free to leave a comment. :)

Penpalling without a pen

Penpals are defined on Wikipedia as people who regularly write eachother, particularly via postal mail. In the early 1970s my mother already had penpals, with whom she exchanged long letters. Back then penpalling was a very exciting hobby: one did not know a lot about other countries and therefore it was a great way to get to know other cultures. It was however a very time consuming hobby and a lot of time would pass before you would know whether or not you got along with the other person.

With the introduction of internet penpalling has gotten a lot easier. It has not only become easier to find penpals with interests that are similar to yours, also a new kind of penpalling emerged: e-mail penpalling. Obviously this is a lot faster than the old fashioned snail mail and it allows you to quickly build international friendships. At the moment exchanging e-mails with people from other countries may be my biggest hobby. In this post I will share my experiences about penpalling and tell you where you can find your own penpals.

The beginning

I don't recall the exact circumstances, but in March 2007 I somehow discovered a website designed to help people find penpals. The website was simple: I had to fill in a couple of field about myself such as birthday, my hobbies and the languages I speak. After filling in these basic information I could start penpalling. In the first week I received a lot of mails, as my profile was listed under "new members". Unfortunately, due to the very basic design of this website, it was not easy to find suitable people to write to, since the information about potential penpals was also very basic.

I kept on writing messages to the few nice people that I met on that website until in November 2008, while being bored in the university library between two lectures, I discovered another website: Interpals. On this website one could make a comprehensive profile and besides this the search engine was just brilliant. I quickly signed up and in the past 4 years I never regretted this decision for a single moment.

Friends all around the world

Soon I started making real friends all around the world. Some of them wrote me lengthy mails that consisted up to 3 pages in Microsoft Word, others wrote me a couple of short messages and then invited me to chat on MSN or Facebook. All went well, until I got an idea on how to get even more fun out of this website. In the summer of 2010 I was planning to do volunteer work in Estonia and I wanted to learn a bit about the country before I would arrive there so I sent a message to some Estonian people on Interpals. In the end I became good friends with one of them and we decided to meet in Tallinn. My new friend picked me up from the airport, showed me around the city in such a way that I still believe Tallinn is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and I quickly realized that this was something I should do more often.

In the years that followed I traveled a lot. A few months before each travel I would use Interpals to find friends in the cities I would visit, send a message to them and then see how it would go. In 2011 I made a trip of 11 days during which I met 4 penpals from Interpals and I still consider that trip still to be the best trip I have ever made. I learnt that there is nothing as good as being shown around by a local in their home town. They can show you all the good places in town, take you to places that a normal tourist would never see and if you're lucky you become good friends afterwards.
I may have gotten a bit off-topic here, but at least you know now why I always seem to have friends abroad to meet up with during my travels.

My experiences

Over the years I had lots of penpals and despite the fact that every long e-mail communication is doomed to end one day I stayed friends with quite a few people. Below you can read the stories behind three of my longest lasting international friendships.

My oldest penpal is Yodit from Ethiopia. She first wrote to me in March 2007, when I was still new to this. We quickly started talking on MSN and became good friends. One day she asked me for my home address in the Netherlands. I was confused and didn't know what to expect, but I gave her my address. I had already forgotten about the fact that I gave her my address when one week before it was my birthday I suddenly received a big brown envelope in my mailbox. It was a birthday present from Yodit: a cd with traditional Ethiopian music. It gave me a really special feeling to receive such a present from a relatively unknown country. Over the years we haven't always been that close friends, but we never lost touch. I still plan to go to Ethiopia one day to meet my first penpal in person, but I'm still not sure when I will have the possibility to do that.

The second penpal that ever sent me a real letter plus some gifts was Reinhardt from South Africa. We started off writing in our native languages (Dutch and Afrikaans are really quite similar), but changed to English soon as long messages in Afrikaans are not really easy for me to read. The messages kept on getting longer and longer and in the end Reinhardt even sent me photos related to a certain topic in each e-mail. Those e-mails were always a pleasure to receive, although it took me quite a long time to reply to them as well. Even though we have stopped exchanging e-mails we still talk from time to time on Facebook or WhatsApp and I still have an outstanding invitation to come to South Africa.

The story of how I met the third penpal I'm going to mention here is an interesting one. In my final year at the university I met a lot of exchange students. Soon I started to like a Lithuanian exchange student and we had a lot of classes together, so I had plenty of opportunities to go and talk to her. I just didn't know what to say. So I decided to search for a Lithuanian penpal who could teach me some funny pick up lines in Lithuanian. This is how I met Rima. It never worked out with that Lithuanian classmate (one day I tried to talk to her, but my pronunciation was so bad that she didn't even recognize my words as Lithuanian), but I became good friends with Rima. We already met eachother three times (once in 2011 and twice when I was in Lithuania last summer) and always have a good time because we share the same sense of humor.

Final words

I could have mentioned many more wonderful stories here, but I won't, because otherwise this blog post would be way too long. I hope that my stories have gotten you as enthusiastic about this hobby as I am (if you weren't enthusiastic already).

If you want to meet new people from other countries as well, you can register yourself at www.interpals.net.

7 songs that will put a smile on your face

I always love a good sense of humor. Whether it's a joke in a comedy series, a comedian doing a one-man show or just a funny remark by a friend: I'm up for it. A couple of days ago I discovered a new song with funny lyrics and then I came up with the idea to share some of the best funny songs that I know with you guys. Here it goes...

1. Weird Al Yankovic - Amish Paradise
The master of the genre is of course Weird Al Yankovic. This guy has been making parodies on popular songs since the late 1970s and millions of people have already enjoyed his music. His most notable covers are White & Nerdy, Pretty Fly (For A Rabbi), Like A Surgeon and Eat It! (on the music of Beat It by Michael Jackson).
My favourite song by Weird Al however is Amish Paradise: a parody on Coolio's Gangster's Paradise. This song has everything: good music, good lyrics and a very funny video.

2. Napoleon XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha
My all-time favourite funny song. From 1966. About the things that can happen when a girl leaves her boyfriend...




3. Sons Of Maxwell - United Breaks Guitars
How do you get back at an airline that has done you harm by breaking a guitar and not taking any responsibility for it? Exactly, you write a song about it and make sure that more than 12 million people watch it.

4. Shawn Elliott - Shame And Scandal In The Family
A couple of years ago my dad heard an old song on the radio while we were driving in the car. The volume was turned up and this way I was forced to listen to this song. My dad said the lyrics were quite funny so I started listening to them. I didn't quite get them yet, but remembered the song in the back of my mind. Some years later I heard the song again and started paying close attention to the lyrics, which were in fact quite good. I recommend that you listen to this song at least twice, so you can fully understand why the title of the song is Shame And Scandal In The Family.

5. Bowling For Soup - No Hablo Inglés
Some funny songs can also give you advice on how to live your life. In the following video Jaret Reddick, lead singer of the band Bowling For Soup, will tell us exactly what to do in situations where someone asks us to do something that we really don't want to do.

6. Cory Williams - The Mean Kitty Song
About a little kitty that didn't turn out to be as cute as it looks...

7. Ylvis - Stonehenge
This song is a very serious song (maybe a bit too serious) about one of the more important questions in life. At first it seems like there is nothing funny about this song, but as this Norwegian talkshow host gets closer to the end of the song it just gets crazier and crazier.

I have done some research before posting this list, but if you miss a song that should have been in this list, please let me know. I'm always up for new music.

5 non-standard must-see destinations

Hi all,
Sorry for not writing so much here any more. When I'm not travelling, there is not so much to write about. :)

I have written a guest post for a friend's blog though, with some recommendations for unusual travel destinations. If you want to read it and get inspired, you can find it via this link.

Why I am still single

People often come up to me and say: "Laurens! You are such an attractive guy! How can it be that an amazing man like you is still single?" A couple of weeks ago, when asked such a question, I would have given a vague and unclear answer such as "I'm just a happy single", "it must be the fact that I am travelling so much" or, in case I'm in a funny mood, "girls must be intimidated by my magnificient looks". Today I read a couple of articles about online dating that made clear why I am still single. Apparently I am doing it all wrong.

The first article basically describes the link between how successful guys are in picking up women and their profile pictures. It basically states that if a man wants women to be interested in him, he should either take off his shirt or pose with a cute animal. Showing off with your travel photos is NOT a good idea at all. In fact, guys with profile pictures like this have the lowest success rate of all. According to the evidence, it's even better to have a profile picture that shows yourself drinking alcohol. If one girl reads this and can explain to me why my travel photos keep you from liking my pictures, please comment on this blog post and explain it to me.

The second article shows that I buy the wrong gadgets. My camera, a Nikon Coolpix, takes the least sexy pictures of all good cameras (only phone cameras score worse) and also statistical evidence indicates that my phone is keeping me away from sexual intercourse. I have an Android phone, which, according to the data, allows its users to have had on average 6 sex partners at the age of 30. iPhone users on the other hand will have had approximately 10 (men) or even 12.3 sex partners at that age. I will keep that in mind next time I see a girl walking with an iPhone in her hand.

The third article, assuming that the conclusions they reach about female beauty there are also true for male beauty, shows that I am probably looking too normal. I need either tattoos and piercings or big bicepses plus a sixpack to be more successful with girls. I am trying hard to go for option number 2 but so far the results are not really visible (I admit: I'm not trying THAT hard) and I will certainly never go for option number 1, so my chances of being successful with girls in the near future appear to be slim.

Unless of course I buy that new iPhone.



Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this blog post was written with the purpose of entertaining the reader and does not reflect my thoughts or opinions in any way. All conclusions in the articles are based on statistical evidence and therefore seem to describe reality. However, there are many exceptions on these rules. Being successful in love has nothing to do with the superficial traits that are mentioned in these articles.

Oh, and you were right... In reality no-one ever asks me the question I used to start this blog post. I just thought this would be a nice way to attract your attention.