Tag Archives: Rotterdam

August 28, 2023 · 13:49

The speculated danger

Yes, that is where I am. Whatever I am about to give you, there is a decent amount of speculation involved, as such there is every chance that there are issues that aren’t covered and people with that kind of knowledge aren’t speaking out at present. Not to debunk my speculations and not to enforce it. I believe that the filtered media we are getting is now likely the more danger we face. This all started last night when I saw ‘UAE records hottest day of the year as temperature crosses 50 degree mark’ (at https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2023/08/27/Temperature-crosses-50-degree-mark-again-as-UAE-records-hottest-day-of-the-summer). Here we see “The rising heat in the UAE crossed the scorching 50 degrees Celsius threshold on Saturday, marking this summer’s highest temperature. According to the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), the mercury touched 50.8 degree Celsius in Abu Dhabi’s Owtaid in Al Dhafra region at 2:45 p.m.” We see all kinds of heat messages, but for a place like the United Arab Emirates to give that to the readers is a little new to me and that place is warm on any usual day. This started me to mull several things over and it also made me think back to the 60’s (when I was young and innocent. Yes, I was innocent once). That year is forever marked in my brain. Not because of the year as I am not certain what year it was. Yet I remember that it was -20 Celsius. The coldest I could ever remember. In addition to the ice flowers on my window, something I had never seen before there was something else. The streets were iced. Now we had ice in the winter, I grew up in a city named Rotterdam. But this was different, the streets were covered in ice. I could literally skate to school which had never happened before and I do not recall that it happened since. This is what I would call a temperature outlier. These things happen and there is nothing strange about it. Now consider this heat in the UAE. In addition consider (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/10/the-part-we-seem-to-forget/) the stage I reported in ‘The part we seem to forget’ where I quoted “Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather” (source: the Guardian) You can forget about the decennia part, I personally believe we are there now. To get that stage we need to add three elements. 

  1. “Researchers say deforestation has caused the Amazon to absorb less than half as much carbon dioxide as it did twenty years ago.” With the added “In the last fifty years, Brazil’s Amazon has lost about a fifth of its forest cover—almost 300,000 square miles. This includes at least 5,110 square miles lost in 2021”
  2. “From 2001 to 2022, Indonesia lost 29.4 Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 18% decrease in tree cover since 2000, and 21.1 Gt of CO₂e emissions” which gives us Indonesia. 
  3. “Beginning in March 2023, and with increased intensity starting in June, Canada has been affected by an ongoing, record-setting series of wildfires. All 13 provinces and territories have been affected” with a total of 13,999,922 ha displacing well over 250,000 people. With Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/23/mapping-the-scale-of-canadas-record-wildfires) giving us “Canada is battling more than 1,000 active fires, and nearly two-thirds of them are out of control”

This is where the speculation starts. We have decimated our forests and the ability to regain the oxygen. Now, this is not going anywhere soon, our atmosphere has a curtain of well over 5 miles of oxygen, so we aren’t running out. But we now have a markable point where we use more oxygen than nature can correct for. The three largest places with forests are down by too much and there are side effects. The smoke of the Canadian fires, that go all through to the US will have a secondary impact

People wear protective masks as the Roosevelt Island Tram crosses the East River while haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires shroud the Manhattan skyline in the Queens Borough New York City, June 7, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The sun will warm us less and you might think that is a good thing, but you would be wrong and that is why I made mention of the outlier in the 60’s. I personally believe that we are about to face the harshest winters ever and it will not be one year. This will start a trend that will be a 3-7 year stretch, not all at once, but we will face at least 2 harsh winters over the next 5 years with a few more after that. Even if the forests in Canada are replanted using Team Trees with Mark Rober, it will take close to a decade to see that impact and the forest fires will return next year too. Less likely to the same scale, but forest fires are a normal setting in Canada, the three elements combined is different and new.

Some will have seen the Netflix movie How it Ends and we aren’t facing that, but the nuclear winter that follows such fires are not entirely impossible, I would go on stating that they are becoming more and more likely. The media will trivialise this and state that I am a doom sayer, yet they have never given us the real deal in this and they are unlikely to do so now. I am not saying this will happen, but I feel certain that we are heading to really harsh winters and the first one will hit us before January 2025 which is expected to cripple the UK and Europe to a larger degree. Canada and the nordic nations will not be crippled to such a degree, but they too will feel the bite of the winter that comes. In the meantime with the winter hitting us and the heat being a larger problem extreme weather is coming our way and it is coming now, not in a decade. 

So consider what I told you, fell free to check the numbers you can and be certain that you take note of the trivialisation you see in the media and take note of the media that trivialised it. They are no longer to be trusted ever. They are filtering the information to keep you asleep, especially in a time when you should have been awake a lot more. It is not the one thing, there is no one thing, it is the combination of a whole range of issues and it is not the private jet setting, that is utter bullshit. What they are all happy to ‘ignore’ or forget is what I mentioned in ‘A COP26 truth’ a setting we see (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/13/a-cop26-truth/) two elements stand out. “over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create?” The Guardian was all about private jets and made no mention of this element. Do you really think that these flights were essential? Then there was “We are that close to suffocating. On the other side, we have seen clear reports that 50% of the damage comes from 147 plants, the media ignored it, I wrote about it and placed the documents of UNEP and the EEA for you to read, they had graphics too.” How interesting was it that the Guardian and its environmental pages did not mention that report. Two elements and you were kept in the dark and now these elements start to form a biased opinion (from me) but feel free to come up with better settings and this has been going on since 2021. So with all the space they had they ignored the European Environmental Agency? 

It is my personal speculated believe that these elements are part of a greater impact and the Canadian fires with the deforestation elements are adding up to a new picture. I might be so brazen to suggest that the 8 billion people this year onwards (for some time) will be using more oxygen than the planet can renew, this has a larger impact now, the winters and summers will both be harsh, more harsh then anyone can remember. I would leave it to the media, but I don’t thin they can be trusted any longer. In fact there are trust issues on all sides and so there should be, but those who give us the news aren’t (it is now filtered information). Am I right? Am I wrong?

I honestly do not know, but this is my speculated opinion. I might be going from numbers, but it remains speculation. 

So breath and get through the day, the weekend is behind you the next one might be coming in 5 days. Enjoy.

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August 22, 2023 · 20:51

Turning the pages

This is Aterm we use, sometimes correct, sometimes incorrect and sometimes literal. We all do it and I am no exception. Yesterday I had a detour and the detour kept on going in more and more directions, seeing more and more new ideas based on the old premise and that is not where it ended. In all honesty, part of the ideas flowed from the ideas of John Spilsbury (always look back to old masters when you get stuck) and he was no exception. There were more parts connected to this, but that is for another day. Whilst doing this my mind wandered towards the CBC article ‘Every developer has opted to pay Montreal instead of building affordable housing, under new bylaw’ (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/developers-pay-out-montreal-bylaw-diverse-metropolis-1.6941008), yes avoiding doing the right thing by paying the fine is the way the greed driven work. In the end it is always about the bottom dollar. I think the best quote comes from Mel Brooks in History of the world part 1 with “Leader of Senate – The Roman Empire: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote? – Entire Senate: Fuck the poor!” This pretty sums up the bulk of all real estate developers. And the picture isn’t pretty. Especially as the (a speculated view) the fines are so low that these developers will continue to ‘Fuck the poor!’. The article gives us “Two years after Valérie Plante’s administration said a new housing bylaw would lead to the construction of 600 new social housing units per year, the city hasn’t seen a single one. The Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis forces developers to include social, family and, in some places, affordable housing units to any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet” and when you consider the added “Those fees (read: fines) have so far amounted to a total of $24.5 million — not enough to develop a single social housing project, according to housing experts”, as such I see the math as “there have been 150 new projects by private developers, creating a total of 7,100 housing units” giving us a fine of $3380 fine per housing unit and the housing units go well over a million each, sometimes well over 3 million, as such the fine is a joke and it is that yoke that hits Valérie Plante in the face. Now, normally I will not care. I do not live in Montreal, I am not Canadian, but this setting will be copied by developers towards the UK and Australia making their wealth a lot more and gained quicker. As an example I would like to raise the paperback setting of the London Administration with their Powerhouse. So how many became social housing? The answer is laughable and this will run over to Australia as well (perhaps it already has) and these administrations are seemingly a joke. I have been waiting for 10 years for a decent affordable apartment and the waiting list is nowhere in sight at present. So whilst the CBC presents us with “The city of Montreal had promised in 2021 to release the two-year results of the bylaw by early 2023, but hasn’t done so. Ensemble Montréal says it compiled the data itself, using the city’s open data. It is calling for Plante’s administration to disclose what it plans to do with the five new plots and $24.5 million.” As such I have no real hopes that anything will be achieved and I fear that a similar setting will make matters worse in the United Kingdom and Australia. New Zealand has a tight grip on exploding greed, as such they are in a much better position than any of the three others. Even as Australia might be in the least problem of the other two, it does have issues and the UK is in a really bad shape as it is allowing investment groups to buy out complete suburbs at present. CNBC gave us in February ‘Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes since the Great Recession. Here’s what that means for rental prices’ and it is not merely the US, as I wrote about it in the past, the UK (London Specifically) is a great way for these players to store their wealth and watch it safely mature, in the end we all need a roof over our heads and the boasted returns for London are too good to pass up and I personally believe that places like Toronto and Vancouver are about to meet those same returns, especially as we see events unfold now in Montreal. So how much longer until these places as well as Sydney are set in a similar stage? I will let you figure it out, but the numbers aren’t looking good if you are in a shifting position of housing. And matters are getting worse. In the last 10 years in Sydney things went from bad to disastrous and I reckon that more cities are on that list of shifting tides. And this amounts for the Commonwealth and the EU metropolitan pressure points. Munich, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Madrid and Rome being prime examples. Weirdly enough Paris escaped the stage. If Le Monde is to be believed with ‘‘Adapting the existing’: Paris’ plan to reach 40% affordable housing by 2035’ they could be ahead of the curve by a massive amount. I wonder if Australia, Canada and the UK have looked into this as a possible solution. Not sure if it is possible (as I am completely ignorant of building codes in these places) but it is a setting I had not seen before as far as I could tell.

So enjoy the week and consider your rent, and how much it could go up this year when it is owned by a Wall Street player, a fearful page turner is ever there was one.

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August 10, 2023 · 19:35

When the past and present meet

I made a promise yesterday and it is time to keep it. This idea is freeware for EXCLUSIVE development of this in game form for the Amazon Luna or the Tencent Handheld (or both). This will be a streaming game, Sony does not need my help and it is too big for the Nintendo. A few nights ago I took a walk down memory lane regarding the Dawn of the Dead. I saw both the remake and the original by George Romano. 

I loved the original and I enjoyed the remake, yet it was then when the investigations I recently did regarding my new IP and looking into malls took a sidestep. You see, there was once a CBM Amiga game based on that movie. I barely remember it, but I knew of it. Then my mind took me to a new setting. You see our computers and streaming systems are a lot more powerful. So what happens when we make the setting a lot more realistic. Not waves of zombies with trigger points and trigger events. But a scene with a set amount of zombies and the setting for every level is a mall and the two blocks around the mall (whenever possible). As such the game could start in London giving us
Trocadero mall
Liverpool street station mall
Battersea Power Station

The setting is that the malls are completely mapped out, the Liverpool Street Station Mall is above a station, so you need to find other ways to get a secure location, the malls have doors, shutters, just like in reality and the task is more than just take out the Zombies, you need to survive for 5 days in each place. As you progress you will find upgrades, new weapons and unlike all other shooters, ammunition is an issue, so you might find weapons, but ammo is an issue making weapons like bow and Arrow, crossbows a lot more important, as do all kind of melee and slash weapons. The stage is that the initial level will give you the intro and will introduce a party NPC. Party NPC’s could be anywhere and you need them to upgrade skills and keeping places more secure. As you progress through the game you will get additional resources from NPC’s and that gives you the larger game. The big burger is the mall, where there is an abundance of goods, but swarming with Zombies. 

Then we get the Netherlands with
Bijenkorf Amsterdam
Magna Plaza Amsterdam
Shopping centre Rotterdam

You basically get to test and try options to secure places and stay alive. As far as I can tell there is no game like it, not one that takes zombie apocalypse survival in a serious way. They are all about the turbo and the cutscene setting and there are all kinds of games in this we get to the third place which is Los Angeles, and after that Dubai with its Malls making the last one (Dubai Mall) the largest enterprise, with over 5.4 million square feet will be the largest challenge and it also has a supermarket (Carrefour market) and when you get through this you will be zombie apocalypse master certified.

The nicer part is that as a streaming game you get to tweak a few things, there is no way you get this right without serious testing and the setting of using the actual mall in a game is novel to say the least. I have no idea of the legal implications, yet I believe that visibility to well over a million gamers will be a boost for any mall. 

In the setting I looked at the environment. How to survive and how to find stuff you can use. I still have some internal questions on the NPC’s, some stay, some will come with you to a new mall (one per city), the rest you need to find, but the boosts and skills they gave you are permanent, so over the towns you will learn more and more. The idea of an Alpha Zombie comes to mind. One in every level. You can kill them from a distance, you can engage them (very dangerous move) but they will always have a unique thing. It could be a bulletproof vest, it could be a piece of clothing you cannot acquire any other way. There are a few things more, but I will let you figure that out for yourself. So good luck and I hope you get a nice slice of these gaming billions that some claim are out there. 

Close to the end of the week now, so enjoy the day.

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March 26, 2023 · 05:54

What business plan?

The very first thought when I saw a Nordstrom video less than an hour ago. In light of the closure of Nordstrom someone made a 4K walkthrough of the Nordstrom shop in the Eaton Mall in Toronto, which is their flagship. The shop is about 220,000 square foot and the first thought out of my mind was ‘Are you flipping kidding me?’ And I suddenly understood why Nordstrom never made a profit. I cannot understand why the people there did not see this right off the bat. In the first the shop looks pretty amazing, but overly spacious and not in a good way. The shop has about 70,000 square foot of unused space, that is a third and mall space is expensive. So to be wasting space to the likes of 70,000 square foot. I found one source with a price (not verified) of $1,450 per square foot, implying that Nordstrom was wasting $101,500,000 EVERY YEAR on empty space. So what kind of business plan is that? And the video (at https://youtu.be/6IQMgV_7uqE) clearly shows the waste of space. You could setup the entire shop in half the space and when you reduce the cost of one shop by $51,000,000 it amounts to a large sum of money. I do not care what the vision of these people were, when you optionally have 13 stores in the same setup, you are wasting hundreds of millions a year. Now, we know that the others are smaller, but it still implies that the stores were wasting close to half a billion every year. So what gives?

When I wrote ‘The unplanned story’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/21/the-unplanned-story/) on the 21st of March, I did make mention of “there is a weakness in your business model, but I do not think it was enough”, in this malls tend to be the same and I did not give it the consideration I optionally could have. I never expected that Nordstrom wasted space to the degree they did. There is more, it seems to be some elite store and Canadians aren’t too elite based (well over 40% of the male population loves their hockey jersey). A shop like this fits Los Angeles, optionally Rodeo Drive, but even then this flagship there would become a money pit soon thereafter, especially when you waste 70,000 square foot of space. 

I keep on coming back to the thought, who were these people wasting money to this degree? You see, covid or not, I expect that covid had a massive impact, but the clear waste of space is boggling my mind. Malls are expensive and that keeps on badgering my mind. It also reminded me of a place called Meddens in Rotterdam. A fashion store with exactly the same setup in a place called ‘Lijnbaan’, there is however a difference. The people behind it were brilliant and they bought the entire block. They became an eccentric and exquisite shop, but as they owned the block, their $100K gamble became a multi million euro win and it funded expansion after expansion and after 180 years (in 2010) the 6 shops stopped. I reckon 180 years is a good run. A shop like Nordstrom that stated to CBC last month “Despite our best efforts, we do not see a realistic path to profitability for the Canadian business.” Well, when you waste that kind of space I am not entirely surprised. And it will not take long for places like Holt Renfrew, Hudson’s Bay, and Simons to gobble up the clients. Personally I hope that the staff members will find space in these places as well. They tend to be victims of a business plan, not the instigators of it. It took the parent company less than 10 years to see wisdom and with an earlier quote (I think it was CBC) that they never had a profitable year I actually wonder why it took this long. 

The more I saw of this video the more questions came to me and I have no idea what these board people were thinking (if they were thinking). I might seem happy, but I am not. I do not relish anyone’s downfall (Microsoft being the exception) and this shop was managed floor by floor by people who loved their job and their space. You can see that with EVERY display in that shop and there are many of them and we would want to give them a pass for covid, but the shop was not doing well years before that point and that partially angers me, waste tends to do that. A weird start to Sunday for me, but when I see the evidence I am not really overly surprised on the outcome, merely on some people not seeing this clearly years before me.

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November 3, 2022 · 15:18

That second police force

Yes, it comes as a shock. I know it. Although, it does not affect me (I think). But there is also a weird balancing act that derives from there. It was given to me by the Dutch NOS. You see the stupidity of one opponent (Russia) should not decide the inactions towards another (China). So there I was reading (at https://nos.nl/l/2450783) giving us : ‘China denies existence of police bureaus in the Netherlands, calls them ‘service points’’ there we learn that China has at least two of them in the Netherlands. One in Amsterdam and one in Rotterdam. Stations that China erected without informing the Dutch authorities. Next to the usage for administrative duties like the Chinese authorities self indicates, there are strong suspicions that China uses these offices to keep track of the Chinese with critical views of China. 

China responded “They are meant to assist local Chinese citizens who apply for an expired driving license. The people are ‘enthusiastic oversea Chinese people’ not police officers. 

The Dutch ministry of foreign affairs have stated that these offices are unacceptable and must be shut immediately. In other news, Germany is now investigating whether such an office exists in Frankfurt. 

No matter how this plays, China seemingly has a much larger intelligence operation in Europe, or did you think that ‘offices’ would be erected for expired driving licenses? The problem that this creates is twofold. What is merely for China, and what is used to give Russia additional material? The fact that Pro Russian collaboration is going on in the Netherlands has been clear for well over a year and it goes way beyond the borders of one seemingly mentioned name like Thierry Baudet. It goes a lot further and the question is how far? The fact that Russia’s efforts are monitored is one, the fact that China has an intelligence structure beneath the waterline is quite another and that is a setting that neither the Dutch or European forces will find acceptable, and the very same could be said for their alleged German activities.

Is one true? It is hard to say but the Dutch tend to have a sober view on matters, and the fact that the NOS gives us this hours ago whilst Reuters made mention 5 days ago implies that certain evidence has been checked and categorised implies a foundation that some will see as evidence. Of course we wonder how Reuters had it 5 days before the Dutch NOS, but one might have been a rumour, whilst the other one is verified information. The one question the UK (and commonwealth) needs to question is how far does this go, especially with a larger Chinese contingent in Australia, especially Sydney and Melbourne where we find a huge chunk of the 1.3 million Chinese immigrants.

Yet, that is not my concern, but it should be someones concern, don’t you think so?

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August 10, 2022 · 00:06

Peek a boo

I have no idea what drove it. I was watching an advertisement, I was thinking of non-repudiation and for some reason the cogs in my skull started spinning. Before I knew it I had an entirely new set of IP. OK, a set is a little bit of an exaggeration but it is definitely more than one IP. The implementation is something else. I would need to confer with whomever buys my IP. Whether it is Amazon, Google, Netflix or Tencent. The IP is meant for streamers. The idea could apply to consoles as well, but they would not benefit as much, although, when I think of it. Yes, it could apply there too. So it is a larger field. 

I am not being secretive, but it is a less complex idea, so I would give too much away, as such I will put it in a safe place (not 4 Chan though). The idea is growing as I type. I am considering more sides and more options. There are a few practical sides too and it could drive other elements to a larger extent. But it is too soon for that, for now I have a new piece of IP that I can add to IP bundle 1. Will there be more? I honestly do not know. I never banked on this side, but here it is and more might follow, but I do not know. This idea came quite literally out of the blue. I have been brooding on the Line (Neom), certain solution would fit nicely there, yet too much of that place is still in the planning phase, so as more comes out into the open, it is likely that more will come to mind, but there is no way to tell. There is still the gaming side to consider. After the ideas of zombie survival, the citadel conundrum and a few other games, I seem to be digging into one direction. There is nothing wrong with that, but it comes with the danger that I design too similar themes and gamers are not appreciative of that, and neither am I. There is the setting of a new stealth game, based on Tenchu Z, set in a city but not in Japan. This is not a Ninja game, but a stealth game based on an individual and vengeance. Too many elements are not set yet. I was thinking of a place no one tends to use. A place like Stockholm, Rotterdam or even Washington DC. Just an idea, the place is less important than the fact that there is a water element. I am using Amsterdam for a very different game (a game that I wrote about 3-5 years ago). An idea that I had before, a setting that suits the streamers well. You see we seem to create maps again and again, but what happens when we reuse them? Streamers would benefit and not the same map. Not the identical map, well identical yes. But the ability to respawn the game and every building based on the era the game plays in. We seem to forget that the city we live in is the same city we play in, but what happens when that game is set in 1950? 1926? It is not always clear how that map ends, but it is time we explored a different way of creating and enjoying games. It started when I was considering the RPG Generations. You see evolution goes in 2 directions, we merely forget the one direction, but that does not mean it is not there and as such my mind went places. I reckon that there is a lot more to look at, but for now? I have new pieces of IP and I am celebrating that with a cold beer, I believe I deserved it today. 

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July 23, 2022 · 16:45

Where the colossus is no more

Part 4

He arrived a little past 20:30 at de Gaulle, he went straight to the counter to get a ticket to Rhodes. There was one in an hour, it was Italian airways via Milan, he took it and went pst boarding to the gate. It was all a repetition  of something he had done dozens of times. The airport was almost new, he had been in this airport once as he had to change flights, he never went through the departure lounge though. There was nothing significant here. And there was nothing really interesting at the gate. He got on board and sat down. His mind started to wander as they took off. 

The map showed Rhodes, but nothing stood out there. The documents and the drawings were different, the drawing was what seemed like an old oil lamp, the text was in French and referred to the sight of Helios. Yet how the lamp fitted into this was unknown to him. The writing gave that there was a shrine, a shrine to Helios. The lamp of illumination would shine on the places it reached and it could reach more if the items were united. That part did make even less sense to him. Jacques III Thuret came 2 millennia after ancient Greece and likely the same time when the shrine of Helios was lost to the world. There was a cult to Helios, but he knew nothing of it. As such he would be going in blind, but what was more important, someone knew a lot more and that was never a good thing. Even as he knew that his ancestors had created some items or relics, the ones that survived are a lot more powerful now, then they were in those days. As such when he arrived on Rhodes 6 hours later he would be considering his options. He took a taxi from the International airport to Rhodes and asked the driver to take him to the Rodos Park Suites hotel. He got there 15 minutes later, paid and tipped the taxi and booked a room. His credit card could take that hit because it did not look cheap. He got a nice suite a double room, it was not large but looked comfortable. The bed felt nice and the TV was clear. He switched the TV off and as he walked into Rhodes he looked his Olympian sight it was almost dark, almost, there was a small spot that was seemingly illuminated. He walked in that direction. It took almost half an hour to get there. He looked again, the place looked a lot more illuminated, when he switched back to his normal sight, he saw that no one would notice it, but that might not be for much longer.

There was something at play here. He looked around, he was at the Platia Rimini. The hotel mentioned this place, they called it the “Sound and Light Garden”, it was beautiful, nicely arranged and quite peaceful. But it made no sense, he was now close to the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, which was somewhere in the 7th century. He needed answers and none were coming forth. He walked into the garden and looked. The garden were alight in Olympic views and normally nicely lit in normal view. He tried to focus but the light was way too illuminating for that. So he sat down on the bench that stretched the sides of the path in the park and suddenly he saw it, it was as small as a flicker, but it was there. So he walked to the well in the middle, it was dry but there it was, a little out of the middle, the circle of discolouration. He looked around. Too many people here now. He looked deeper and closed his eyes as fast as he could. Whatever was there was bright, really really bright. He had closed his eyes. As fast as he could, but he was seeing blurbs of white all over and he saw them everywhere he looked. He closed his eyes for a minute whilst sitting on the bench again. Most had dissipated, but there was still a few spots, they would subside soon enough. He was thinking of the vault he had. So what happened if he created another portal? With a hole that led to the hole under the well? The problem was that he did not control it as well as he wanted to, so he might have to resort to brute strength. He hated that because he would leave a mark, but he saw no other way, he did not know where the others were and how soon they would be here. So he walked across the street to the Dromos Street Food where he had the Satay Chicken and nachos with Greek Salsa, both were really nice, and the coffee was good, nothing to write home about but still good. He sat at his table with his back to the wall and his view on the park entrance. He looked at the people, but the two in Paris were not showing up and the people seemed uninterested it specifics of the park. For a moment he thought there was a catch, but it seemed that the couple there were remembering the park and what they did there. They were still in love and softly speaking in each other ear on what they did there. He smiled, to be young and still this much in desire for one another, these two had no idea how lucky they were. It was almost dark when he finished the Papara Beef which made him more hungry. Odd, but that was the result of a really nice beef, better than anything he had had in London. He ordered another coffee and paid, he took the coffee with him as he scoped out the area. There were no people in the direct area. He got rid of the coffee and walked into the park again, but now keeping a close eye on the entrances and who was around, he stepped into the empty well and stood as far away from the lighted spot, there was no one so he summoned his bident and focussed he tabbed the well once and pushed hard, harder then anything he pushed before and slowly the ground and the well gave way. There was not much sound, but too much to his liking, the hole was large enough, he jumped in and ended in a well lit room. He quickly put some shades to protect his eyes, but it was not needed. This light was strong, almost a strong as a LED torch, but not too strong as long as he did not look into the flame. The oil lamp was on top of a golden hand, he got the lamp, blew out the flame and looked around, it was an empty room, there was a path going north and down, he saw that the corridor had collapsed a little further down. He got out of the well and he got away as fast as he could. At the wall of the park he summoned the vault and placed the lamp, closed the vault and walked off. He left the golden hand, it would add to the puzzle and it would leave him unexposed. He went back to the hotel, enjoyed a nice hot shower and he went to sleep. The next morning he had his breakfast and he bought some clothes and a nice duffel-bag. He made a point of of buying postcards and posted them with names he remembered from London. He kept them around for most of the day as he walked the streets of Rhodes, it was late in the afternoon when he noticed the orthodox priest, he asked for the postbox, the priest pointed down the road and he went there to mail the cards. He returned to the Dromos Street Food, he had another Papara Beef with a coffee and smiled at the woman who helped him the day before. He was happy that he got the pink shades, it did put the woman on the wrong food, alas, the waiter liked them a whole lot better. He asked if I asked pink and my solemn response was “υπήρχε μόνο αυτό”, he sighed and walked away, something she really liked. She started the conversation “Have you heard?” I shook my head, “heard what?” The well in the park collapsed there was a golden hand under the well. I tried to look shocked “Really?” Yes she responded, the hand was large it took several man to get it out, the police have closed the police have closed the Sound and Light Garden for now. There were reporters, so he backed off, he did not want to give the wrong people a shine on him. He looked at the commotion, and noticed that all the camera’s were pointing at the park. He nodded to the woman and paid for the coffee and sandwich. He was about to walk off when she handed him another coffee in a takeaway cup with the smiling “for the walk”, he nodded and smiled. He gave here the customary ‘Antio’ and walked away from the scene in the general direction of the hotel, walking and shopping most of the day. When he got back he made a point of keeping eye on the people going in and out of the hotel for at least 10 minutes. His Olympian sight saw that there was nothing watching the place or him, yet he had the feeling that someone was staring at him, he had that feeling in Paris but not as strong. He saw nothing, so he went to his room and packed the bag, he signed out and knowing that he could get the 22:45 from Rhodes to Gatwick with Easy-jet was his sign to leave Rhodes and the parts they were looking for were not on him, more important, they were in a place where no one could ever find them, so the relics were safe, but he was really curious on what was going on. 

End of episode. 

This was part two and the parts over the last day would be the two parts of a three parter. The third will not be tomorrow, because I have a few more parts to figure out, but consider I had all this in under an hour, what more could I get done? I reckon that I might be one of the never published 30,000 wannabe’s in Hollywood, but it is not about selling this, it is about the story and you will get more soon enough. 

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July 22, 2022 · 20:56

And then there were two

Part 3

He woke up the next day nice and refreshed. He had breakfast, read the paper and was considering what to do next. He knew he had the watch, but the watch was dangerous, even the trip into the past of Rotterdam was a lucky but dangerous setting, he realised that. He basically survived a bombing that might not have killed that many, but it made 20,000 homeless, even if knocked down the impact could have been severe, so he was happy that the watch was in his vault. He was about to walk away when the paper caught his eye. He had looked at the International news, the business news but it was a corner that he usually ignored that was the eye catcher. Vandalism in Paris, there was a photo of a place he recognised, it was an image from the Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis Church he visited the day before. He looked over the article, someone broke in broke several of the tombstones, the ones on the side of the one he visited. These people were less subtle. The authorities were investigating the senseless act of vandalism, they were pursuing leads.  

He put the paper aside. Apparently he got there in time, but who else was looking for the clock? There were several thoughts, but none of them made sense. Too specific for tomb robbers, too violent for thieves and in that the surrounding stones were damaged, not the most subtle of ‘explorers’, there was more to this. He checked out and walked back to the train station and boarded the train to return to Paris, this needed to be investigated. 

CROSS Architecture. Wir sind ein junges, international tätiges Architekturbüro mit Standorten in Aachen und Amsterdam.

He needed to learn who else wanted to stake a claim on that watch. Getting the ticket and getting to the train was relatively simple, he got off where he needed to board. There would be a train in 35 minutes. He saw a shop, bought the Guardian and got to the platform. It was 10 minutes later when the train arrived and he got to the seat assigned to him. He didn’t feel like looking at the environment he was travelling through, he did that yesterday. He decided to read the paper, even if the information was pointless and in some cases useless. It kept him occupied. Some of the information was interesting, but for the most it was the proverbial waste of time, reading it was as useful a passing of time as watching paint dry. It took a little over 157 minutes to get where he needed to go and from there he walked the same path towards the church. When he got close to the church he saw the abundance of police cars. Too many to be useful, this was a presentation to the people. He kept his distance and looked around. It was then that he saw the Imperial House just next door. He walked on the other side of the street until he was directly opposite the Imperial house and crossed straight to the restaurant. He saw that one of the tables was free and sat down. He waited to be served. He ordered the spring rolls and noodles. He ate slowly taking in all the traffic, all the people and memorised it all. He switched between his normal and Olympian vision and nothing sprang out to him, it was about 20 minutes later, just as he was ordering more tea when he noticed it. A man and woman, passing by a third time. His Olympian vision saw nothing stand out. They were human, nothing special. Yet they were observing the church they were taking turns at looking around and they had each others back. They were a near perfect team, observing and checking all the elements they could see. He felt decently safe, as he was eating and drinking tea. He was done, he saw them walk off and they would be back in minutes. They were very good. He got up and took a turn to the left. He saw the crossing and crossed the Rue de Rivoli. He walked into the small street and looked around, there was not that much traffic, there was none looking at him. He stood in a corner and waited, the couple walked past the crossing focussing on the church. He focussed his Olympic vision on the couple, he would now be able to find them anywhere fast. He walked away and left the area of the church. It took 20 minutes before he passed a nice cafe. He walked in, ordered a beer and took a small table. The beer was served, it was a Stella Artois, he took his time, savouring every sip and let time pass by. Every now and then he looked out and focussed on the two he needed to investigate and it was not before 7 PM when their direction changed. He waited another 10 minutes and he moved in the direction the couple had vanished towards. It was a small trip, a mere 15 minutes. When he got close he saw where they were. They had taken shelter in the Cour Des Vosges, what seemed to look like a suite on the second floor. Very convenient for him, so he slowly walked around until he had enough privacy to get up and he did as fast as he could. At every moment looking around for prying eyes. When he got to the upper floor he saw that one of the windows was open, it was one that led to the corridor where they were staying. He waited in a corner, he saw the couple leave the room, they were talking to each other, speaking softly, but for him it was not a problem, they were discussing diner and the excellent quality of food that the Cour Des Vosges served. That was a nice surprise, it meant that he had time to investigate the room. He waited around 10 seconds and walked into the corridor, walked to the door and slowly gained entrance to the room. He was cautious not to leave any prints, not to leave any footprints or any kind of disturbance. The drawers and lockers were all filled with clothes and all kind of stuff, so far they looked like perfectly ordinary tourists. It was then that he noticed the small safe. It was easy to get entrance and there was what he hoped for. Hopefully a clue, images, documents and maps. The maps were of Paris and Rhodes. He memorised the documents as fast as he could and he memorised the maps, the Paris one was useless, he had been there, but the post-it on the map stated that the watch was most likely in the tomb of Jacques III Thuret. He looked at the other map. It was Rhodes, there was no post-it, but the documents gave the information he needed. He carefully put everything back in exactly the same order and left the room. He left the hotel in the same way he came in, as he left the hotel he saw a window with the restaurant, in the corner he saw the two enjoy whatever they were eating. It seemed to be a lamb dish. He walked off. Whatever came next, it would be in Rhodes. So he signalled a taxi and asked the driver to take him to Charles de Gaulle airport. Time to see what Rhodes brought to the equation.

Part 4

Still to be continued (remaining as evil as I can)

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March 6, 2022 · 03:13

The intelligence nightmare

Yes, that is how I see it. You think that you have seen it all? It is about to get worse and the BBC actually is showing us the start of it. With ‘Thousands of pro-Russia Serbs march in Belgrade’ we are merely scratching the surface. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60630351) does not give much, but it gives us “Friday’s march was a show of support for Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. Serbia has religious, ethnic and political ties with Russia that have existed for centuries” You see it is a lot worse, Serbian arms dealers are all over Europe. Paces like Rotterdam, London and Paris come to mind, but there are more and now as we see all the pro Russian events starting, we see a stage where Serbs could destabilise most of western Europe. They can fuel lone wolves tying hands all over the place and they sit back and watch the chaos unfold. A setting Moscow really likes. So how speculative is this? Well the issues with arm dealers in these three places alone are worrisome and they have been for the longest of times seeing a lot more visibility in 2020. Now with this BBC article it is still speculative to connect the two, but I am not sure that it is merely speculation. There have been issues for the longest of times and it is merely brought to the surface and a more visible pedestal now. 

The problem is that a lot was not monitored for the longest of time and now the intelligence organisations are lacking information on too many sides. Some sources (unconfirmed ones) give rise to activities in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, USA, Norway, Montenegro and Austria. Do you really think it is all speculation? They have been busy under nearly everyones noses for over a decade and now that Russia is pushing the buttons, some are claiming allegiance, some are waking up and some are set to set Western Europe on fire. Which is which? I cannot tell, but there are connections on all kinds of levels. Did no one consider why Russian weaponry was relatively easy to get in Amsterdam and Rotterdam? In 2020 the Times gave us “While Serbia had a glut of Cold War-era stockpiles and a robust but underused defence industry, the Iraqi government was ill-equipped to battle an insurgency. So in late 2007 the two countries struck a £190 million deal to bring Serbian assault rifles, machine guns, anti-tank weapons, ammunition, explosives and other ordnance to Iraq”, I personally believe that these pipelines were there to also get Russian weapons into Iraq, and not merely the ones they have, to a larger degree the Russians provided hardware and that sets a new station, the station of storage. The Netherlands has been (for the longest time), a transitional port of arms, but there is also the speculation (never proven) that at times a container was ‘misplaced’ and ended on Dutch soil, a container filled with arms. So, how much of this is speculation? There is a fair amount of it, but I worked in the harbours of Rotterdam, when I was young and gullible, so anything is possible. Yet in this day and age, when serbs are ‘proclaiming loyalty’ do you want to take that chance? I will let you figure it out.

And whilst you do the Intelligence organisations of Europe will have to take a harsh look at what they have on the Serbs in their domain, because they really do not get to have a choice in that matter, not anymore.

And me? I have found a few more cogs to add to the previous story, I like to remain creative.

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October 19, 2021 · 02:47

Direction and Course

We are all driven by doubts. We are all driven by needs and we are all enticed by desires. There is no exception, none at all. Not if you are a cleric, Christian or Muslim. Not if you are a farmer or a politician (although too often I think that the first party is more intelligent than the second one). We are all driven by surges, by vectors and by elements outside ourselves. They are the particles that fuel the internal engine in us and the mindset that accompanies it. I remain on the fence regarding the building scandal in Rotterdam, the political power-drive for a place called Vestia. The simplest side is a mere tally, 524 homes are removed to be replaced by 137 locations to inhabit, with an added 101 apartments for higher incomes and 143 apartments for sale, the tally does not add up. A new station is created with -143 locations. This was about money, plain and simple. So whilst Vestia hides behind “We achieve this by taking an effective and innovative approach to rentals, sales, liveability, maintenance, investments and operating costs. We are committed to providing good service to our customers: the people who rent and buy our homes”, so whilst we see one, we also see that they enabled the removal of 387 social housing locations, it was the simplest math problem. Someone got rich here. Yet in the setting of greed, there is so much out there, Rotterdam is not even the smallest blip on any, not even a Dutch radar. 

There is more out there, the stage of the media is getting out of control, stake holders, the setting of lobbyists that are gracing the foundation of media is getting larger, os getting stronger and the media itself does not care, it is like watching a crack whore reach for the goods. Their grasp towards digital dollars without contemplating the larger stage is ludicrous. As an example look at the home page of the Independent (independent.co.uk), the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com), The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com), and Dagens Nyheter (www.dn.se). Notice the advertisements? Let’s be clear, the papers are allowed to do that, yet consider who can afford that. Consider the cost of a front page advertisement in the paper versus the front page of a website. Consider the stage of who gets the visibility and how they got there. Now there is an opposing side to this some are merely advertising, there is no ‘stake holder’, there is no political need, but that stage is fluidic and siding with the stake holders. Consider the past, how many advertisements for some Microsoft device passed you by? How many claims of mobile data for less, how many ads are localised? Consider seeing the LA Times, seeing “Coliving Homes in Sydney. Coliving homes for rent in Sydney from A$1,300/month, inclusive of weekly housekeeping”, now there is nothing wrong with the ad. And it is powered by Google Ads and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet consider that an apartment costing A$1300 a week has an ad on the front page of the LA Times. The setting is so much larger than even I can understand. This is global and this is not some anti-Google setting, I am making the claim that there is a layer between the media and advertisers. Electronic lobbyists, I call them Stake Holders, and they are raking in millions. The view is not easy, and I am not making a claim that I have it, it is so convoluted on the global scale that no one really has an idea, it would require the Google source data and a very powerful computer to suss it out to the smallest degree. I saw glimmers as Microsoft was advertising its Surface pro, but that could just as easily be seen as a glimmer of delusion. The problem is not me, it is not anyone who might not be able to see it, it will be the media, they are part of it. They are setting a new course, they are setting a course towards their digital dollars at the expense of the people, what I often refer to the ‘click bitches’ they create though emotional articles. A newspaper will give you ‘Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful’, whilst they also give you “the move was not illegal, and there is no evidence the Blairs proactively sought to avoid property taxes” Consider that journalists waste time on non-illegal actions whilst we see some papers give us ‘Houthi blockade restricts aid’, is that not interesting? The UN was all about attacking Saudi Arabia recently whilst keeping (according to media) Houthi and Iranian elements out of that think-tank presentation. So why are we not given the full view whilst some are wasting our time on “the move was not illegal”. I believe that political lobbyists and digital lobbyists are uniting to some extent, optionally the political lobbyists are also on the digital platform calling themselves ‘stake holders’. This is speculation, this is not proven (yet) and there could be all kinds of ‘evidence’ proving me wrong. I do not know yet, but the views I have seen over the last 15 months proving me to be correct more and more. And now, I am taking the light to my work and looking deeper into it all, because anyone not criticising and digging into his own data will fail from the start, and I do not like failure. But that is just me, to seek a direction and course requires energy and it needs a drive, but what that drive is remains open to debate, even for me.

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