Lucky us

You are in your home, office, or yard. Go up, you are in a neighborhood, town, or city. Go further up. You are on an Island, state, within a country, on a continent, on the earth.   Now go further up, we are in a solar system, one planet orbiting the sun among other planets and moons. Go even further, so far that our world, and our sun is but a glimmer in a galaxy filled with millions of other suns swirling around and around. And if you can imagine, our galaxy among other galaxies, millions upon millions of other galaxies, expanding further and further away from each other. Suddenly our own Galaxy has disappeared in the mass of galaxies and has become unrecognizable. Try to find your way back and you'll probably get lost and end up at a completely different planet. But let’s assume you remember your way back to earth and arrive back at were you started out. And think about how fleeting time is and how small we humans are within the major context of things.

To get a visual idea of this you can watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrXTx94aFg&list=PL778ADA8A4726F6C2&index=15&playnext=1

Seeing how infinitely huge the universe is, and how small we all are, think about how we got here, the amount of absolute luck we have had from our planet evolving the way it did, being created from nothing into something, becoming able to harbor life and intern us. We are the ultimate product of millions of years of disasters, cataclysms and planetary collisions. Even the creation of our moon and how it orbits the earth has great implications for life on earth. From our earth forming from cosmic matter, being bombarded by asteroids, meteorites, and even another planets, cooling down to the point where water becomes liquid, and then the miracle of life somehow came about from the smallest elements in the oceans. For a better idea of how this all happened for us you can watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16zeA-c-3vw

We are extremely lucky to have ended up as we are. And as the universe is as immense and old beyond our understanding, think of how much life could be out there. Even if only one planet in every galaxy has complex life, there are still millions of galaxies out there.

So before you think that only we are so lucky, and we are somehow alone, thinking how stupid the idea is that we are alone in a universe permeating with infinite amounts of ingredients for life.

A risk is needed

Why take the risk? Why not?   A life without risks is a life not lived.   Humans have a natural tendency to take risks and do things that could go wrong, it is this trait that defines us as a species and brought us to being where we are. Whether it is Columbus wanting to find a western route to India, and intern finding a new land mass, or if it is your own decision to go after that hot girl and intern meeting your future wife. Every one has his or her own risks and decisions to those risks. One person might decide to take the opportunity to go on a life changing trip, and an other person might turn down the same opportunity, the difference in the two people leis in how they take their risks and if the have the fight or flight instinct, which both actually help humanity go forward. One striving to discover, and further human knowledge, the other to survive, and further ensure humanity's pass into time.

I take my own risks in a manner that suits me, whether it is financial, physical, intellectual, or in comfort. Comfort being a very important one for me. How? Well are you comfortable at home? and would you take the risks to step out of that comfort zone? By moving to an other country or by going on a long trip. Going somewhere to improve your life in the future, so you can lead a better life, or provide better for your children. Or do you stay at home, set in your perfect little world, good job, pay rent, pay-off car, and dog running around, and stay in that little bubble your entire life and do not strive to get more do more and see more.

The person who decides to leave his little bubble and go out to strive further for him self and his future, will get more out of life, will have a richer life, not in wealth but in experience, and will love his life more than the person still sitting at home watching TV. So who are you? The fighter or the fly'er?

Be the fighter, fight through life, get more out of it, and live!

I am rich, I am rich, I AM RICH!!!!!!!

Money is a good servant, and a bad master. It is the duty of every person to be rich, and it is a sin to be poor. So why is 97% of the world poor? I suppose that it comes due to the great amount of hate, ridicule, dislike, dishonesty, jealousy, in the world. Basically the great amount of negativity. If you want to, you can do anything you want, every person on earth has the exact same chemical make up as every other person, and still we think of celebrities, and millionaire of being different. They are not different, they were born just like you, they were also children without care once, just like you, and they also had to obtain their wealth and or fame just like everyone else.

So why do most people live mediocre lives? Because they think mediocre thoughts, and do not expect anything more than that. If you always want more and more and more, you will get more and more, if you hang out with people who are rich and you live your life as they do, you too will become rich. Thinking about becoming wealthy will make you wealthy. If every day you wake up and think; I have no money, how am I going to pay for gas, how am I going to eat, how am I going to do anything fun, I can't do anything because I have no money. And every month you will notice you get more bills, more stress, more and more and more of being poor. It will keep coming to you as you keep thinking so negatively.

If you wake up every day thinking; I have so much money, I am happy, I am wealthy, I am successful, I can do anything I want, I can have anything I want. These things will come to you! Just because you think about them, and they make you feel good. Haven't you ever had one of those day where everything went just the way you wanted it, right into the smallest detail? And haven't those days been some of the best days in your life? That it because your entire consciousness was in line with what you wanted, you were positive the whole day and only got more and more of it as you went on. This is something everyone has encountered, you’re a child, you don't want to go to school, you tell your mom you feel sick and act like your sick. Mom believes you and puts you in her room, AC on, TV on, a glass of water or milk next to you and your favorite TV show on, and all of a sudden you start to feel sick, groggy, and it keeps getting worse! That is because you set yourself, your mind set, to being sick, you wanted it, so acted it out, and you felt it, just so you can stay home, and then you are it. Saying, acting, and convincing yourself, in order to portray your character to your will, and getting what you want, you’re sick in bed.

So if you want to get anything in life, anything good or bad, think it, say it, feel it, will it, and then get it. Just like when you were a kid.

Irresponsibility behind the wheel

Every day I get into my car drive around and come across people who seemingly, do not know how to drive! Just this morning I was going to work and it had rained a bit, driving calmy I was comming to a part of the road with some dirt on it, there was a car comming opposite me and at the dirt came onto my lane in order to avoid the pot holes. All good and fine in my book, as I was still a good distance from the car and the dirt, I got concernd when the car got off the dirt and contineud to drive on my side of the road. I quickly turned on my brights and honked at the car as I went to move to the right to go around the car. Having been nearly run off the road, I waved my arm in protest, at what I now know to be a woman in a wine red old mitsubishi lancer. As I waved my arm I look straight at the woman to see what she looked like, and seemingly the woman was yelling at me; "Wak bo kaya!" (Watch the road). Confused at the crazy lady who thinks she lives in the UK, I went on toward work as normal leaving the crazy lady in the back of my mind.

Some people drive as if they found their licence in a cerial box as a prize, and this seems to be the norm here somehow. I concider myself a definsive driver, always looking out for crazy people on the road who don't know how to drive. But this lack of driving skills is not limited to just pedestrians, bus drivers, taxi's, and bikers also exhibit the symtoms of crazy drivers. Not so long ago, I had to swerve around a small 9 pasenger bus, the driver saw a customer at the last moment and wanted to stop for her. Not concidering he was on a busy raod going 70km/h, he slamed on the brakes in the middle of the road, the car dircetly behind him did not react fast enough and went staright into the bus, I was had a bit of distance from that car and the bus and had to go around them in order not to crash into the both of them. Just an other case of crazy drivers.

One thing we have here on the Island that bothers me constantly, is people who don't use their indicators. Instead of moving their finger a few inches to let others know what direction they are going, people just stop and turn with no thought of using the left or right indicator. Subsequently, I've seen plenty of accidents where using an indicator could have helped avoid the crash in the first place.

I don't even want to start about people with out safety belt, texting while driving, or women putting on their make-up behind the wheel. But one thing I do have to say about irresponsible parents, is please, plaese put your child their seat, with the seatbelt on! Everyday I see kids playing, jumping looking out the back window, and leaning over the fromt seat, and some times I can't help but voice my dislike of this to the parents in the car. And I think that when the day comes that one of these kids goes flying out the front window will be the day parent will take better care of their children and make them sit down while in the car.

So if you love your kids, please, have them buckle up and sit still while your driving.

Black or Green?

Going 'Green' is much more than buying a hybrid car, or putting a solar panel on your roof, or installing energy efficient light bulbs in your house. You have to do them all, every thing you can do to go 'Green'. Whether it is to save money, or save our planet, you do it because of the guilt we all have for polluting our world.

Here in Curaçao our new government wants to go 'Green' as well, new wind turbines, cleaner gas, and so on. One problem though, we have the biggest oil refinery in the western hemisphere sitting in our harbor, good for the rest of the world, bad for our Island. How can we here go 'Green', if we are one of the most polluting places this side of the world? Well simple, we get rid of the refinery. Now allot of people would say, we need it for our economy, cleaning the mess in the harbour is impossible, jobs will be lost, and so on. Yet these arguments are all false, some jobs will be lost, but many others will be created by the project of disassembling the whole place and building something else. Cleaning the harbour is not impossible, with such a small entrance to the harbour blocking it off and draining the whole thing would be relatively easy, this step is crucial to cleaning as the deep layer of oil sitting on the bottom would have to be dug out in order to go any further with the cleaning process. And concerning the economy, all the jobs from cleaning to dismantling, and rebuilding would give money to those in need of a job, which intern supports our economy, and I don't think we actually make that much money from the refinery in ht first place.

If you look at the harbour you can see how much pollution comes out of it daily, so much so that going 'Green' would be a farce and a joke if not done to the highest degree.

What would be good to have replace the oil refinery? A truly 'Green' project, hotels, apartments, beaches, coral reefs, and all of it done in such a way that it would remain 'Green'. Hotels running on purely 'Green' energy from wind turbines, solar panels, any other form of clean energy. Rejuvenating the coral reefs in the harbor, springing life back into it and creating a beautifully addition to the Island. Beaches stretching along the coast of the harbour bringing in a clean way to have people enjoy the water, to go diving, boating, swimming, and playing beach games, a far sight from the giant oil tankers and smoke stacks rising out of the ground and water, killing any thing nearby.

Would it not be better for everyone to have the oil refinery disappear and in its place see and beautiful clean harbour teaming with life from all sides, underwater and above. Seeing beach going tourists instead of clouds of smoke and poison, setting an example for other countries around the world sowing how the worst of places can be turned into the most beautiful of them all, made by the combined efforts of humanity to do the right thing instead of just leaving it at what it is and thinking we can still go 'Green'.

If we put it there we can take it away, and if we take it away, clean it up and bring it back to its former glory, our planet will thank us. Because what is more important than our mother earth?

For more information and pictures on the Curaçao Oil refinery please visit; http://www.gcmonitor.org/article.php?id=92

Than send an email to our government, voice your opinion, and make a differance!

The buddy system

Does being friends with rich people intern make you rich? And does hanging around poor people have the opposite effect? You could argue that the rich person, who hangs out with poor, drug abusing, bums, will eventually spend all his money on alcohol drugs and junk food and thus become poor. But can you argue that the opposite is true? If a person, who comes from a family living in poverty, becomes friends with a person whose family has mansions, wealth and stature in society, will that person later on in his life be better off because of his association?

Without the key factor of being able to loan money easily, a person’s prospects seem to dwindle. A bank is not always open to loaning money to those who seem to not have any themselves. If a homeless person stumbles upon a new concept, something that he knows will not only bring him riches, but also happiness to others, would simply his idea be enough to get a loan? No, a bank would not and probably never loan money to a homeless person.
Now let’s say the homeless person has one friend in the world, a person with a job, a home, and a car, he approaches that person and shows his idea and asks for help.
This friend cannot do much, few would put up their house as collateral, or give an out of pocket loan to even a friend, homeless or not. Yet if that friend happened to be rich with multiple cars, houses, and a large amount of money, he could give a loan without having to worry about himself falling into financial issues. Than the homeless man can have his idea turn into a prototype, than a product and then with good sales, he will no longer be homeless.


So if you want to get rich, or just better off? Start meeting rich people and become friends with them.Knowing the right people has always been an important part of human status, making it big means knowing others who are already big, and can help you up. When you want a better job what do you do? You go to a company dinner, and you start to mingle with the higher-ups, smooth talk them into liking you and having them either offer you an opportunity, or simply convince them to take a look at your portfolio. Thus giving you a head start over you competition. Going from rags to riches would need some kind of connection to a more financially able person, even with a genius idea; a person is nearly unable to profit from that idea without having the means to make it available to others. That is where a rich friend would come in, helping you with popularizing, advertising, and producing your idea, so you can make a profit, and possibly also become very wealthy.

Kids have all the fun!

Our modern world, in this time of high speed everything, it is unlike any other time that humans have ever seen, technology that was only dreamt of 15 years ago, travel possibilities that could not have been comprehended a 100 years ago, and most of all, communication that has only developed in this last 10 years. We are all privileged to live in this modern age.

Can you remember the first mobile phone, when your parents, came home with it not so long ago, those brick shaped, sized, heavy phones you could knock someone out with? That was not so very long ago, and from that brick that was only for the businessman or rich person, to today where we give our children cell phones, starting at an age when we assume that they can operate it properly in order to call if there is an emergency, or to call their friends. And those computers that could only use a wordprossesing program, today everyone needs a laptop or desktop with Internet and games. A far cry from what people had "back in the day". And it is not like we've slowed down ever since we've gone high speed, no, we're only gaining more speed and momentum, computer power doubles every 2 months, so in a year your brand new desktop is going to be called slow and useless. In a year that super cool blackberry will be replaced by a hand held super computer, or hand top as I like to call it, and you will share not only pictures, but you can have your entire family follow you the entire way to your ski vacation in the Swiss alps while you take your first lift up to the top of the mountain, talking to your parents while you and they look at the stunning view as you go further up.

This sharing comes at a price though, your privacy. Yes you can still turn everything off sit on your couch and do nothing. But would you even want to turn everything off? No! Your T.V. has to be on, your cell phone has to always be accessible to others, your computer can't go too long without being opened and lodged in to FaceBook, and the same goes for the person next to you. We share everything in your daily lives, or as much as we can that is not embarrassing, what we think of something, how we feel a bout someone, what we just did a minute ago, what we're going to do in a bit, every second of your life can, and someday will be uploaded for all to see, share and ultimately ridicule.

If you are worried about your loss of privacy, your kids won't be, because they've grown up with out it, they won't know what it is like to go without constant communication, or what it means to even log out. When my children will be my age, what will they say of our time? That it was slow and pitiful? That is was sad that we weren't as modern as them? Yes, they will say that, don't we say that about our parents youth? With their no Internet, no cell phones, no high tech anything, we would not want to go back in time and stay there...admit it.

Science fiction is quickly becoming science fact, and we don't even realize it. But I can't wait for the day when my kids are older, have the newest Xbox, or what ever they'll have, and family time will no longer be boardgames, but rather, video games. Oh wait that's already here, well ok, than I can't wait till my Xbox in outdated and it will be called a piece of junk that only I want to play, while the kids are jumping around en front of a motionsencor and playing a new version of Mario. Wait, also already here...

Okay okay, I can't wait for the day when skate boards will be replaced by hover boards and crossing a small lake is no harder than taking a single step. Yea that's what I'm waiting for! BRING ME MY HOVER BOARD!

I give the hover board 10 years to be available, and then be replaced by the fly-board, and then the space-board, and then anything else kids will get their hand on.

Will you be my friend?

What is a friend? Is it just a person you choose to talk to? Someone who you trust and believe? A person to whom you convulse your feelings, thoughts, issues and insecurities? Friends can be allot of things to allot of people, whether it is to just have fun with, help you in good and hard times, or always be there to give advice. A friend can be forever or just for a moment, it is what they do for you that defines them and their version of a friend.

A friend with whom you have a drink, talk to, help out, and trust is a good friend, they can be trusted, even if you don't know them that well. A friend to whom you tell your inner most feelings, is a friend who can hurt you the most, because they are so close to you and because they know you the best. A friend that is just there to have fun with is not always there and can come and go with the wind, there one moment and gone the next. Who are we to define the meaning of friendship? Can we be so judgemental to put a label on those around us? Old friend, good friend, best friend, BFF, terms in our lives so new that they hold many different definitions. Is a BFF, best friend forever, truly forever? Is an old friend a friend you had a long time ago, or a friend who is not a friend any more? Are good friends actually good, and can you actually trust them with your feelings? Is a best friend better than an other, or is he/she just there more than others at that time?

I've learned over time that friends can come and go, they are neither silver nor gold, good nor bad, forever and never. The friends you had when you were very young probably won't be there when you are older, the friends you have today may not be your friends tomorrow, and you best friend may turn into a great enemy, if things unfold so. Even an entire group of friends in vulnerable to such transitions, whole clicks of best friends divided and torn apart by just one discussion, misunderstanding, or fight.

And in the end, how much does a friend matter? Is a pitiful squabble enough to end the friendship? Can even the worst of actions be for given? Yes and no, depends who you are and what you personally find of the situation. I find a minor squabble forgivable, and depending on the person, even a great pain could be forgiven, given that the underlying reason be understandable. From a personal note; one of my "old friends" choose to remain friends with those who, pestered me, hacked my email, vandalized my car multiple times, and spread rumors about me, called my loved ones ugly names. such actions are not expected from friends, yet they did happen, and to this day I don't know what the reason was. That is what I mean by when I say, how good is a friend, as good as gold or as good as a news paper left in the rain.

Yet I find that even as some disappear in a cloud of distrust, other tend to arrive from out of nowhere, and stay for longer than you expected. And that is why we keep friends around us, not just for the moment, or forever, but for as long as they are there, and for as long as happiness is present.

And that is what it all boils down to, happiness.

So be happy, think happy, be happy, and be happy for your friends, you need them.

For the love of the game

For as long as I've been playing Xbox I've never loved a game as much as I love Assassin's Creed. I bought the first game years ago, first an old Friend was obsessed with it, before I ever started playing it, playing it every day for an entire weekend. I wasn't such a fan of that first game, but I did like to run around and kill people, rather than do the missions and investigations.

Now with the second instalment of the game I play it everyday for several hours and I've finished the entire game 3 times. A great improvement on the first one, it operates much better and the missions aren't as  repetitive, more fighting styles, weapons and moves, the whole game just flows with a good story line and a great new main character. Ezio, the descendant of the first games main character, is flung into a world of violence and conspiracy's that he's never heard of before, Templar's versus Assassins. Bringing down his enemy's with swift and stealth, he grows from being a young 17 year old noble man, into a master assassin, leaving a wake of dead Templar's behind him.

Now in 8 days, 6 if the game store was telling me the truth, the next game is supposed to come out, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I've been researching, watching videos, checking with game stores what day they get it, and becoming as obsessed with the game as much as I am with the current game.

In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, you still play as Ezio, older stronger, more skilled, and wiser, he has become the leader of the assassins order. Ezio's villa in his town is attacked by the son, and general, of the pope, and every thing you worked for in the previous game is demolished and destroyed. You fight a loosing battle for your villa, and thus you take the fight to the heart of the Templar power, Rome. As the leader of the assassins, you get to recruit new assassins, bring down watch towers and bring the renaissance to Rome.

I need this game, so much that I dream about it sometimes and watch videos all day. If ever there was an addiction to gaming, I think every addict will be playing this game all day!

Just had to get that off my chest :)

A taste of my portfolio

Their here...

Blue night sky

Bursalen voor pagina van AMIGOE

Dia di bandera voor pagina AMIGOE

Vector beauty

Vector beauty (Before)

Red wall

Red wall (before)

Flames

Louis

Louis (before)

Rossy

Rossy (before)

No we don't actualy have that many tattoos ;)

Kade met schip

Kade met schip (before)

Iguana

Iguana (before)

A game craze

The movie and television industries grovel at the feet of the gaming industry, no other media can compare to the combined powers of Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox. These three consoles have changed the way we entertain our selves and how we go about our day. In a world where not only children play video games, but also teens and adults, the gaming industry has struck gold by being able to release more violent, more complex and more expensive games.

I remember my very first game console, the Nintendo with those stick your toung out to clean games, that would only work after licking the nodes in the bottom of the cartridge. The nintendo had allot of different games, and only a very few very good ones like Mario. Later I got the Sega Saturn, it worked with Cd's and being the 8 year old destructive kid I was, those Cd's didn't last verylong.

Today I have and Xbox 360, and it owns all the older consoles, I love playing my free time away, late nights, and long hours of continuous game play. With a collection of games I've built up over the last 4 years, there is always something to play, first person shooters, third person shooters, role playing games, strategy games, racing games, fighting, racing and shooting, and the list goes on and on. Favorites like, HALO, Need For Speed, Burn out, Assasin's creed, Tekken, Soul Calibur, and sooo many more games that just captivate you when you get them right through to playing it through the 10th time around. And every time you start it over you learn more and get better and find new achievements, and then you go online, and get your ass kicked, so you stay online till you kick some noobs ass and feel the POWER INSIDE YOU GROOOOW!!! Sorry got a little carried away there...

But playing online has made games become more than just games, they are more like social networks, talking trash, kicking ass, sharing maps, videos and pics, co-op missions and so many more possibilities, your life can fall into darkness, literally, if you don't decide to step out the door every once in a while.
Today, I still have to wait 2 weeks for the next great game I need to have and play, Assassin's creed: Brotherhood. The third game of the expanding series, focusing on Rome during the Renaissance, in the story of an assassin working to destroy the Templar's in Rome. I've played and re-played both the previous games, actually busy with my 3rd run around of the 2nd instalment, and still loving it. I'm kind of trying to time this one so that I can jump into the next game just as I finish this one.

As games get better, graphics get more detailed, TVs get bigger, and player get older, and more and younger players join the ranks, our old consoles still hold a dear place in our heart, as we we're there as it all grew from pong into what we see today. The new generation doesn't know, or care for older consoles as they were spoiled by starting with the brand new consoles, and one day when I have kids old enough to play games at my level, and I pull out an old xbox game like HALO REACH, and I kick their asses, I'll look at the new consoles and think; "That thing is going to give me a heart attack by making me move so much"

I'll stick to my "old" Xbox, with a hand held controller, no jumping around for me.

MORE FROM TOMAS

Car? what car?

Storms are big problems for most countries, powerful winds, pouring water, streets flooding, and after the storm has passed, figuring out how to get from point A to point B, without having to stop for several hours waiting in the middle of a pond while still in your car.
And there is a simple solution to this, a car that can go anywhere, one that can move through the highest waters, can speed over pot holes, and even go right over other cars with out so much of a second thought. What I mean is, a TRUCK.

 Like most people who already own a truck, I have a normal stock truck, a Mitsubishi L200. It's strong, slow, slightly raised and angled, diesel turbo, and has gotten me through some very high water. I LOVE MY TRUCK :)

 A small step up from the L-200, you get the Toyota Hilux, faster, bolder, and just a bit bigger. This one was featured in Top Gear and was the first truck to ever reach the north pole! Of coarse this one was fitted with several extras to get there, my favorite addition, the side mounted rifle.

 The Americans also think they can make a stock standard truck, well they can but they always seem to be a bit overweight?  very wide, and very long, the Ford F150 is a bit of a fatty, and isn't set that high either, it can come with a big engine, but does that help you traverse a river?

 Here is another Ford, American, fatty, and I don't know if the woman next to the truck is really short, or the truck is really big. Yes this is the Ford F-650, a six door, bus length, monster height, V8, throw your mini van in the trunk kind of monster. This can get your whole family over that shoulder high puddle of raging water.

 The Ford not doing it for you? just a little too big, to drive? Well here is your answer, a dodge. This Dodge Ram BFT, think that stands for Big Fucking Truck, six-wheeled V8, power house can get you anywhere you want, nothing can stop you from reaching your destination, more traction than you know what to do with and as big as a house!

 All those super trucks are fun and nice, but if you don't feel like spending 80,000 dollars for a new truck, just get that old guy, and raise it!!!! This F150 seems to have gone through a growth spurt and gotten its self some bigger shoes. You'll need a stair case to get into it though.

 Deserts are a fun place to go, but you can't be to careful about what you go in, just like these guys. A Pro truck is made for the impossible, gets over anything, never stops, sees all, and fast to. Not for the faint of heart, these things can cross the Sahara, and have fun doing so.

 4 wheels? 6 wheels? No, 10 wheels, and a whole lot of steel. don't just transport you family, but you entire neighborhood! Miners got the best trucks, monsters that can flatten a monster truck, and have a house sitting in its trunk, NO JOKE! If ever the world is going to end, wrap your self up in this puppy!

And while your at it, moving your house round, why not throw on some 1000 inch rims, they'll go perfectly with that 5 foot air intake and that 7 foot turbo. No pimp or rapper will mess with you when they see this ride! This truck comes standard with a staircase.



So what ever you drive, unless its a car, your truck can be helpful at the worst of times and can save you family from disaster. So do the right thing, and buy a truck. A BIG ONE!

AFTERMATH TOMAS CURACAO!!!!!

 Saliña isn't called Saliña for nothing...