Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

I love clouds. I love nature. I love taking photos.  I love taking photos of clouds.  So, here's a photo of a gorgeous cloud. Enjoy! Cloud on the Horizon | Nimavenl

This is A-MA-ZING! and actually has me nodding at almost every point. I am autistic - I have Asperger's Syndrome. I am not weird or strange or unnatural, however it is likely that I am not what you would call normal or average. I am different, unique, special and amazing in my own way. Best of all - I like who I am and I do not need to be 'cured' by anyone. I simply want to be accepted for who I am as a person instead of treated as less than adequate because I don't fit someone's narrow interpretation of 'normal'. this is v me #actuallyautistic pic.twitter.com/ZgZMWeJgEu — heely doc martens (@ekamangan) January 28, 2015

Disclaimer first: I know Tommy personally. He's a great guy with a head full of amazing ideas. I honestly wish I'd written down some of the stuff I've heard him say in the past as he's an inspirational guy who never stopped following his dreams.    That out of the way, now let me say:  WOW!  This sounds ab-so-lute-ly amazing !!!!!!!! I'm a big fan of rock music, anything that sounds like I can dance to it while singing along, really. Trance music however tends to give me a headache - no joke. This music I turned on to listen to, thinking I wanted to reTweet it and needed to know it wasn't horrible or headache-inducing. Twelve minutes in I'm still listening and enjoying the sound. Half an hour in I'm surprised I'm still enjoying myself. I'm still in my chair - barely - however I'm certainly moving to the music and honestly, I'm liking the sound. A lot. An hour on and I've listened to the whole set. My very first hour of trance ev...

Let op: Spoilers voor de aflevering van 26-02-2015 helemaal onderaan Ik ben geen televisie fanaat, al kijk ik wel naar het nieuws en geniet ik van een aantal tv series. Ik ben allereerst een fan van science-fiction en fantasy en geniet van series / shows zoals Star Trek, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Defiance en Supernatural. Bijna net zo goed als echte science fiction is Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden - een heerlijke show om te kijken. Verder ben ik gek op crime-shows zoals Bones, NCIS, Criminal Minds en Flikken Maastricht. Ook reisprogramma's doen het altijd goed bij mij - de wereld fascineert me enorm en nieuwe interessante plekken ontdekken vind ik fantastisch. Mijn lijst met "Places To Visit One Day..." wordt alleen maar langer dankzij Floortje Dessing, Chris Zegers en hun collega's! Programma's zoals De Wereld Draait Door en RTL Late Night zorgen ervoor dat ik weet waar Nederland het morgen over zal hebben en kaarten belangrijke onderwerpen aan met int...

Have you ever smiled when hearing a favourite quote or instantly liked someone because of the book they happened to be gushing about? Language connects us and words are powerful. The way we use them says a lot about who we are as people and as a society. Personally, I'd love to live in a world where insulting or belittling others is unncessary and hurting others using words is a thing of the past. A world where people talk to each other, accept and respect others as they are and do not feel the need to try to change people just because they don't happen to think or believe as we do. I am very much in favour of free speech and believe it is extremely important that people are able to honestly say (and write) what they think or feel, without having to fear for their lives. However I also believe that it is important that we respect others as they are, without belittling them using words or actions and without the need to insult the choices people have made in their lives or be...

Just imagine having a bad day on Mercury... Some say men are from Mars and women are from Venus... Today I'm mighty glad that we (women!) migrated to earth a long, long time ago as a bad day lasting almost 117 days is so not my idea of fun!  How long does a day last elsewhere in the solar system? #Space #Astronomy pic.twitter.com/2zHD17wQEn — Upper Atmos (@UpperAtmos) February 21, 2015

Money makes the world go round. According to website UK Essays "the quotation 'money makes the world go round' was first used in a musical play ' Cabaret', it was written in the 1960's ... The main aim of this line was to say that it is money that makes the world turn, not nobility or love. It highlights the fact that our society is heavily dependent on money." Our society is indeed heavily dependent on money. The Dutch say that 'geld maakt niet gelukkig' which translates as 'money does not make one happy' - a statement I agree with. Personally I am afraid that our society as it is cares WAY too much about money, power, wealth and influence. We seem to have forgotten that people matter and that living beings should come before money, before power and before wealth. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports today that Google will now be allowing developers to promote their Apps in the Google Play store . Just as sponsored results in Google S...

This remains one of my favourite photos ever! There is beauty all around us, if only we stop and take the time to look at our amazing world - something too many of us forget all too easily. "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in."   ~ George Washington Carver Source: Quotations about Nature | The Quote Garden Bloomin' Beautiful * * * Gozo, Malta * * * Feb 2013 A photo posted by Nicole M. Verhaaf (@nimavenl) on Apr 20, 2013 at 2:43am PDT

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” ― G.K. Chesterton Just heard this quote on Criminal Minds and liked it. Feels very true.

Vanmorgen een berichtje ontvangen: "Heb je de aardbeving nog gevoeld?" We kijken elkaar aan - Welke aardbeving? Bij ons in Noord Holland of bij jullie in Groningen? , vragen we ons af terwijl we naar een nieuwskanaal zappen op televisie en druk beginnen te typen op laptop en telefoon om online ook eventjes te lezen wat er aan de hand is. Ik naar de website van het KNMI om daar naar hun kaartje van Nederland te kijken. Appingedam (in Groningen) staat bovenaan met een 2.3 op de schaal van Richter - uit eigen ervaring weet ik dat een 2.3 een lichte beving is die wat zal voelen als een vrachtwagen (of bus... of trein...) die langs rijdt, misschien wat stof naar beneden zal doen dwarrelen. Maar dat is in Nieuw Zeeland waar aardbevingen normaal zijn. Dat is in Nieuw Zeeland waar aardbevingen van nature voorkomen omdat er daar tektonische platen tegen elkaar aan schuiven die aardbevingen veroorzaken. Dat is in Nieuw Zeeland waar men op aardbevingen voorbereid is, er op bouwt en...

As much as I love eating cake, adoringly gazing at photos of delicious-looking cakes and other gorgeous food is lots of fun too! This cake makes me hungry, makes me want to visit my nearest library and may be one of my favourite cakes ever! Yum! Post by Title Wave . In case you can't see a photo above this text, click here to visit the Title Wave Facebook page to have a look at this super-gorgeous Library Cake for yourself!

A description of my day so far. Dramatised (if only a little) to insert humour, edited because my exact daily schedule is no-one's business really and polished because certain things simply don't need to be shared online with strangers! Wake up. Get dressed. Make coffee. Sit down to drink coffee while reading. Make myself breakfast and head out for the morning. Come back home, make coffee, then sit down to write down some thoughts. Get up to make more coffee - Walk to kitchen, rinse coffee cup and turn Senseo on. Wipe bench and stove, promise myself I'll clean the kitchen floor today. Fill sink for first load of dishes. Load washing machine and turn on. Sit down again. Turn laptop on, check emails.7 Remember I wanted coffee earlier - head back to kitchen, actually make cup of coffee. Check Twitter and reTweet interesting Tweets from my timeline. Sit while staring into space contemplating gender inequality and literacy rates around the world. Remember that I made coffee and ...

I love how easy it is to copy words, head over to Google Translate, paste the words and find a translation online without having to search through a dictionary to find the words. Having translated to and from languages I know, I understand that Google Translate is not foolproof or always right, however translations tend to make sense, especially when one understands the context of the words one wants to translate. With the recent murder of Özgecan Aslan in Turkey and my desire to learn more about what people write about that, I've been trying to translate Turkish via Google Translate. Whether I translate to Dutch or to English does not seem to matter - I am stumped by sentences that barely make sense to me. I'm used to being able to to translate Arabic and Hebrew with relative ease... I can only hope that Turkish translations will soon be as easy. I learnt some basic Turkish a very, very long time ago from friends. These days, I can still say some swearwords, count to ten and...

Bored Panda With all the anger, hatred and senseless violence humans bring to Planet Earth, it can feel like the world is going to hell in a hand-basket (to use a popular phrase). Some days I am mighty proud (to be a member) of the human race, other days I actually wish this was not my planet and that those committing atrocities were not my fellow human beings. The human race is capable of so much goodness and kindness, yet we are also capable of horrors and atrocities beyond even my wildest dreams (or should that be beyond even my scariest nightmares?) Will we ever learn to love and respect our fellow human beings just as they are? Will we ever understand that violence and destruction will only lead to more violence and destruction? Will we ever stop fighting and hating each other? Today, I am fed up with the human race. We may be capable of so much goodness, kindness, love, friendship, respect, hope, compassion, understanding and balanced thinking, however we do not show that...

While I applaud this initiative, it saddens me that it is necessary. Hating others simply because of who they are, what they believe or who their family is, makes absolutely no sense to me. I oppose discrimination and senseless hatred, no matter what. We are all human, all equal, all one big family, all inhabitants of planet earth. We may look different, think different things, speak different languages, read different holy books and believe different truths, however we are all human and whether we like it or not, we are all stuck on this planet together. The Facebook page for the event has mostly Norwegian posts however I've read several English-language posts from those who applaud the idea and wish they could join in themselves. Personally, I believe that this is a good idea, it reminds me of the " I'll Ride With You " campaign in Australia after the Sydney Siege. Hatred is not the answer, intolerance is not the solution. Oslo Muslims to form 'peace ring...

The following is a quote from a Times of Israel newspaper article regarding the fatal shooting outside a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, this past weekend. T he mother of the girl who celebrated her bat mitzvah at a Copenhagen synagogue when a gunman opened fire outside, killing one Jewish security guard, recalled the attack with horror and grief on Monday, and expressed sorrow at the death of the beloved community member, Dan Uzan.  “Only an hour beforehand I went out to bring [Uzan] cakes and sandwiches,” Mita Ben-Tov told Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “All of the sudden the celebration looks vain, [my daughter] Hannah told me ‘Mom, I wish I had not had a bat mitzvah and that Dan would have stayed alive.'”  Ben-Tov said guests and children were forced to hide in a basement for two hours following the shooting.  “We were dancing and singing, and suddenly the second guard entered and told us to turn the music down,” she said. “We were not aware that there was ...

Last night I posted a photo of a very foggy street - which, due to the fog, was pretty much invisible - and asked myself what would happen if flesh-eating zombies suddenly came out of the fog to roam our streets. Trying to find descriptive words that somehow work well with vague photos of trees and descriptions of fog and mist and zombies, I came across the following explanation for the word haze. I like language and am no stranger to complaining about Dutch / European weather, which makes this description a must-share. Do enjoy! Haze    n.   1706, probably a back-formation of hazy. Sense of "confusion, vagueness" is 1797. The English differentiation of haze, mist, fog (and other dialectal words) is unmatched in other tongues, where the same word generally covers all three and often "cloud" as well, and this may be seen as an effect of the English climate on the language.   Word Origin and History for haze  | Dictionary.com

The Day The World Disappeared | Nimavenl After enjoying the latest episode of The Walking Dead tonight, the world beyond the living room windows suddenly seemed to disappear.  As the fog rolled in and the footpath and houses across the street turned invisible, I couldn't resist the spectacle outside and - of course - took a gazillion photos. It isn't every day that the world practically vanishes, after all!  The street and the footpath below, the windows of houses across the street, trees beyond those houses and buildings in the distance - all gone. All that could be seen was what the photo shows - vague shapes nearby with lights behind them; the shapes only clearly recognisable as trees due to the brightness of the lights. With so much of the 'known world' suddenly missing, we wondered - What would we do if a Walker [a zombie] suddenly appeared out of the mysterious haze? How would we respond to such a strange sight? Would we even react to flesh-e...

On navigating meltdowns when your child has autism. http://t.co/qd0iACmx9R #JDAM15 pic.twitter.com/VFtW3kjYbx — Kveller (@Kveller) February 5, 2015 Growing up, I knew I was a little different from others. I didn't always react or respond as I was expected to. I didn't always understand sarcasm or social cues or say the right thing. I preferred reading to group sports, didn't like being touched by strangers, would insult people without noticing they were insulted, loved learning but hated school, was (and am) pretty much obsessed with Star Trek, loved learning about people and society but sometimes had trouble understanding others... Today I understand that I wasn't strange or dumb or weird or unsocial or unfriendly or awkward or stupid or silly or anything of the sort. I was simply me, simply being true to myself, simply too young and innocent to understand that all people are special, individual, unique and amazing. I was too young to understand tha...

I spent most of today thinking, reading and working on a story. After dinner I checked the news to catch up on what's going on in the world. One dead and three wounded in a terrorist shooting in Copenhagen, Twitter practically screamed at me. It seems likely that I'll write more about that, however first I want to write about another attack, this one in Turkey. A 20-year old Turkish woman named Özgecan Aslan was buried today. According to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News she'd been missing for two days, last seen by a friend while on a bus travelling home from university. Her burned body was found Friday in a riverbed near Tarsus disctrict in Mersin province. "Three suspects have been detained for stabbing Aslan to death and later burning her remains. According to their testimonies, the woman was killed when she fought back a rape attempt by the driver of the minibus she took to go home." Assaulted, almost raped and stabbed to death. What must this po...

Out walking last month I came across numerous bridges. To be expected, as I was walking in an area with lots of little streams and rivers, an area that attracts many who want to enjoy nature and 'the outdoors' without having to go very far. There's something about bridges that speaks to me, something that draws me to them. Standing on a bridge looking down, watching the world below go by, it can feel as if the world below is separate from the world above that I am in. Which bridge one stands on makes little difference - whether it is people and cars passing down below or ducks and boats, the feeling remains the same. A different world, so close yet also so far away... One world above the bridge and another separate world below it. When it comes to enjoying bridges as a lover of photography and an explorer of the world, I most enjoy photos that show not just the world above the bridge and the world below it, but also the separate world that connects the two. Today's ...

Lariekoek en apekool, zo heet het vrijdag de dertiende nummer van Kinderen voor Kinderen, van cd nummer dertien. Ik vond het vroeger een fantastisch nummer en zodra ik zag dat het vandaag vrijdag de dertiende is, had ik het deuntje te pakken. "Iedereen is bang voor nummer dertien. Bang voor zwarte katten en ladders op straat..." Ik ben niet iemand die bang is om zwarte katten te zien of onder ladders door te lopen, al zal ik eerst zorgen dat er geen glazenwasser met volle emmer water bovenaan de ladder staat... Ik gooi geen zout over mijn schouder, vind het niet nodig om 'af te kloppen' en ben zeker niet bijgelovig. Mijn oom en tante grapten vroeger wel eens dat als er een UFO op straat zou landen, ik de eerste zou zijn om de aliens tegemoet te rennen. Ze hadden gelijk. Ik ben nu zeker wat voorzichtiger maar niet minder gek op verhalen over buitenaardse wezens, monsters, weerwolven, vampieren, geesten, spoken, elven, kabouters enzovoorts. Nadat ik dit liedje leerd...

Dear Reader,  This is a bit of an angry rant.  Please read at your own discretion.  Dear Google, I use your services. Well, I use Google Search, Gmail, Blogger and Translate. Most of your other so-called services I just complain about. Or actively avoid, as in the case of YouTube. You see, dear Google, I am liking you less and less. We became close friends some ten years ago -- our 'ten year anniversary' is coming up... Will you congratulate me and tell me you love being friends with me? Of course not. At most you'll hassle me about buying something, spending my money on something, installing something that will allow you to better track my online movement or... No, wait. Let me start over. What will happen is this: In your quest to learn more about me, who I am and how I behave, you will only collect more information that gets passed on to more parties wanting to use that information to send me advertising you or they think I might like, send me offers to s...

Dracula by Bram Stoker My rating: 4 of 5 stars I tend to enjoy books featuring magic, vampires, were-animals and supernatural creatures. Not because I'm such a big fan of horror and gore, but because I like reading about worlds similar to yet different from our own where people live mostly as we do, however with several huge differences. Dracula did not disappoint - I enjoyed the story and am glad I finally read this classic. Written as a series of diary entries (and letters and a newspaper article) by the main characters, Dracula is a gripping tale and kept me reading right until the very last page. I like the Diary format as it allows one to really see events from a character's point of view; to get into their heads and experience events as they lived them. Even though I knew (in general lines) what would happen in the story, I still wanted to read a very detailed diary entry of how those events would play out, simply to experience the book to its fullest. This book w...

I put my headphones on earlier (as there was some construction work going on close by) and was listening to Manu Chao which tends to make me smile and want to dance along. As I walked (or waltzed? seeing my hips were definitely moving) into the kitchen trying to remember all the words to " Me Gustas Tu " I was focused on the music. And on the smell of coffee coming from the coffee maker, in all honesty. Which means that, without pause or hesitation, I walked straight into the open door of a kitchen cabinet which struck my forehead and has now left me with a pretty impressive bruise. As I stood in my kitchen repeating "owowowowowowow" I figured this might make for a fun blog entry which is why instead of drinking my coffee while it's hot, I am writing down these words. You know what - I've decided that hot coffee comes first after all; it smells divine.

Fair Game by Patricia Briggs My rating: 5 of 5 stars A fun and interesting read that I enjoyed a lot. Possibly one of the best books set in this universe. View all my reviews

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, the floor creaked. Not unusual, however something that still reminds me of our cat who died last year. Just for a few seconds lying there in between sleep and waking, I allowed myself to imagine our cat was still alive and prowling through the house; that it was her making the floor creak. Catching some Sunshine | Nimavenl As I wiped away a tear I smiled and reminded myself of the famous quote from Alfred. Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam that it is "Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." How true indeed and such perfect words for when one remembers a loved one who is no longer with us (no matter the species of that loved one!). Today's photo is for all those who have loved and lost - Always remember the good times, the sunshine and the times that made you smile, laugh and love.

This photo is from last month, when it was super-misty / foggy and the world beyond my direct surroundings seemed to just disappear - It was awesome! I may complain about the Dutch weather and climate from time to time, however it can also be extremely beautiful here and this photo shows some of that beauty. It's a very Dutch scene where man-made objects and nature seem to work together to make the world a happier and more beautiful place. With all that's going on in the world these days, I can sure use some beauty and happiness! Come fly away with me! Come Fly Away With Me | Nimavenl