The Delft butcher shop, Leo van Vliet, on the Oude Kerkstraat, is a well-known establishment in Delft city centre, especially for students. Or in any case for the students residing at Brabantse Turfmarkt 21, the ‘nicest huysch (house) in Delft’ and a Virgilian stronghold, where twelve students live.
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For the past year, this student house has a new tradition, explains Roy Hopmans, a resident. “One time all the housemates took the youngest guy in the house with us to Leo the butcher’s shop, where we then had him announce that he was the youngest guy in our house and he must sing a song for Leo. The shop was full of customers. Leo just stood there grinning: o what fun, he said.”
The joke grew into a tradition. “Each time all the housemates go together. And there’s also a little performance made of it, which is very funny. We always go to Leo’s at midday, because that’s when his shop is full of people buying sandwiches.” The victim who must sing can choose the song himself. One of the most popular is the two-line song, ‘Leolicious’, whose refrain is ‘Leo Leolicious, Leo Leolicious’, rhyming with delicious.
“They can also take props along to make a real performance of it, like, for example, a toy xylophone, which the guy can play while he sings. One time we also did the polonaise dance. Sometimes the guy is really nervous, like our last two performers, who’d even rehearsed their little dance routine.”
Roy and his housemates hope this tradition will last: “So that when we come back in ten years time, the tradition will still be going strong. Perhaps it’ll even evolve to include magic acts or other theatricalities.”
TU Delft’s ‘c,mm,n,’ the car of the future, was a big hit at the opening of this year’s AutoRAI exposition in Amsterdam. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkende, and the Minister of Transport, Camiel Eurlings, were both present at the unveiling of the ‘c,mm,n,’ concept and were given copies of the ‘Driving on Electricity’ plan of action, drawn up jointly by the Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment and the three Dutch universities of technology. The plan’s key goal is to ensure that a million electric cars are driving on Dutch roads by 2020. C,mm,n is an innovative mobility concept, a new way of developing, manufacturing and using cars. By making the blueprint of the c,mm,n car publicly available under an open-source license, it’s possible to develop truly sustainable mobility. Just like open-source software, c,mm,n focuses on services around the product, and c,mm,n can be used to offer people lease cars, rental cars or other mobility services. C,mm,n can also be sold, but any derived work must be made publicly available again.
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