Did you see the Olympic Opening Ceremony? How beautiful was that? My hubby and I made it a special occasion with making our pizza’s with extra toppings. I thought the ceremony was very impressive, but a little bit long. I loved the first part where the Chinese showed us important parts of their history and culture. I adored the costumes they were wearing. So pretty!!! They all looked so beautiful. Somehow I don’t think they need acne treatment in that country. They all seemed to have a flawless skin.

I also loved the part where they introduce the participating countries. I had never even heard of some of the countries. The emotions on the faces of the athletes are just so great to watch. I can only imagine how they must feel. All in all I thought it was a great show.

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This week I was surprised to see that the movie channel was showing a Dutch movie called Black Book (Zwartboek in Dutch).  Usually you don’t see any foreign movies on the regular movie channels, so I guessed that it must have been a good movie. Eager to see a Dutch movie and hear my own language on TV I got comfy on the couch and watched it.

The movie is directed by Paul Verhoeven who worked on the script for 15 years with screenwriter Gerard Soeteman.

Plot of the movie:The story is set during the final days of World War II in Holland, and follows a Jewish singer named Rachel Stein . Rachel attempts to avoid the Nazis and remains in quiet hiding until her family is brutally slain, causing her to join up with a resistance movement. On a subsequent undercover mission, Rachel crosses paths with a smitten German general named Ludwig Muntze, with whom Rachel begins a relationship in order to feed vital information back to her colleagues in the resistance. But as the action and bloodshed escalate, Rachel realizes that she has genuine feelings for Muntze, and soon she is in enormous danger.

Apparently the press has been divided about the movie. In Holland the movie got mixed reviews, but international press was much more positive. Personally I thought it was probably one of the best movies coming from my home country. They paid a lot of attention to detail and the performances of the cast were outstanding in my opinion. If you are into war or historical movies, you might want to check it out.

Did you see Zenni on Fox news? It is amazing how much money normal optical shops are charging you for their prescription glasses, while Zenni Optical offers cheap prescription glasses for as low as $8 with a $4.95 shipping and handling fee.

Not only are the prescription glasses very cheap, the selection of frames you can choose from are very fashionable too. And they come with a full guarantee. Guess where my hubby is getting his next pair of glasses from? Yes, you got that right… From ZenniOptical.com.

At the moment they have a few shows on TV that I absolutely love; Human Weapon, The Ultimate Fighter and the other one is The Contender - Muay Tai. They are all related to Mixed Martial Arts, which is great. Muay Tai is one of my favorite Mixed Martial Arts fight styles and I think it’s great that they made it into a TV series like The Contender. My favorite fighter is of course John Wayne Parr, a well known Australian fighter.

I know that the series have already finished, but unfortunately we’re always behind in this country. You’d think that with paid TV  you get more recent shows, but unfortunately that is not the case. So if anyone knows the outcome of any fights, please don’t spoil it for me!!! We’ve only seen two episodes so far. In the next episode John Wayne Parr fights French man Rafik Bakkouri. I can’t wait to see it. Rafik is a bit of an arrogant dude, so I would love to see John Wayne send him home.

I remember as a kid and teenager that I was watching the six o’clock news religiously. I always wanted to stay up to date and know everything that went on in the world.  I can’t say that the news made me feel good; there was so much bad stuff going on in the world. It made me feel helpless… Helpless because I did not know how to help these people other than donating my pocket money to charity and writing letters for Amnesty International.

One night they showed on the news how Pakistanis were beating up Israeli’s with rocks. I saw how they beat the life out of them. I could literally feel the pain those tortured people must have felt. It made me sick to my stomach, it made me cry and I was getting bad nightmares about it. I don’t know why this particular news item got to me so badly. Maybe it was for the first time I truly realized that some things in the world were not only not fair, but some people were downright cruel. For the first time in years I did not want to watch the news any more.

I still have a love-hate relationship with the news on TV. I am curious and I do want to be aware of what is going on, but I hate being confronted with only bad news. Why can’t they have a little ‘Good news” section? Why are we only shown the bad things that are going on in the world? Yes, I realize that awareness is important, but how about focusing a bit more on how you can help or on the good or inspirational things in the world?

So lately I am getting my news updates mainly from an online newspaper. Why? Because I can just skim through the headlines and choose what I want to read. I don’t want to read articles about how many more soldiers died in a war, I don’t want to read about another case of massive mesothelioma victims, I don’t want to read about how a father killed his whole family and then committed suicide, etc. I want to read about how the Dutch swim team got a new world record, I want to read about all the blunders Clinton & Obama are making, I want to read about things that put a smile on my face or that inspire me.

I do not want to hear or read about things that make me feel sick and helpless because I can’t change a thing about the situation. Does that make me ignorant? It probably does, but you know what? I donate as much money as I can to charities even though I can’t really miss the money. And I sign petitions to make a statement. But watching the news? No thank you!