Hello stranger!: Step Vaessen

[pieter]

Step Vaessen



Stephanie "Step" Vaessen (born 11 February 1965) is a Dutch broadcast journalist, currently working as a Berlin correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

Early life

Vaessen is of Dutch origin and was born in Simpelveld in the province of Limburg, in 1965.

She graduated in psychology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and then took a postgraduate course in journalism in Tilburg. During her student years, she was involved in the Nijmegen squatter movement (Anarchist, Far left, Anti-Fascist, Autonomen) and worked on the squatter radio-station Radio Rataplan.

Career

In 1994, she began working with the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) news department. In 1996 she became the NOS Southeast Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta.

Al Jazeera

Vaessen moved to Al Jazeera English in 2006, when it was founded. She was based in Jakarta as the station's correspondent for Indonesia.

Guest appearances

On Sunday, August 7, 2011, she was the third guest for the 2011 season on the television programme Zomergasten on the Dutch channel VPRO. On 20 June 2012, she was the speaker for the Arondéus Lecture, to discuss the theme of intolerance in the Netherlands and attempts by politicians to limit free speech.

Publications

Jihad met sambal, August 2011 (Prometheus : Amsterdam). ISBN 9044615378

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23 May 2013


Step Vaessen mensions the Kuifje in Afrika comic. A comic a lot of kids and teenagers read in the Netherlands.

thingy size is a much discussed topic among men in Indonesia, where Vaessen lived for 16 years. Most men in Indonesia are competetive about their thingy size in relation to those of strangers. In relation to Indonesian men, Vaessen was always a stranger. This did not help her, in all her years in Indonesia, to create a feeling of trust between herself and the Indonesians. She always felt herself to be a stranger.

Vaessen was not always in the mood to be a 'white alien'. Very often she just wanted to blend in and escape the extra attention. People that are strangers in Holland probably know the same feeling. Is there a way to create trust between people from different cultures? According to Vaessen, there is: by creating a feeling of empathy. She developed this in herself by stepping into other people's lives and getting to know them better. Her neighbours, a taxi driver from the neighbourhood, a Muslim terrorist, to name just a few. By doing this, she changed. This didn't make her one of them, but she also wasn't the same stranger anymore. She transformed into a new person.
This is what we all can do to gain trust from other people. Get to know them better and see what happens.

About TEDx

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[pieter]

The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (French: Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of 24 bande dessinée albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre and film.

The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929, in Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth), a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century). The success of the series led to serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir (The Evening) and spun into a successful Tintin magazine. In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical versions of 11 Tintin albums.



The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its hero is Tintin, a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer aided by his faithful dog Snowy (Milou in the original French edition). Other allies include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock, the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (French: Professeur Tournesol), incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (French: Dupont et Dupond), and the opera diva Bianca Castafiore.

The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ligne claire ("clear line") style. Its well-researched plots straddle the action-adventure and mystery genres and draw upon themes of politics, history, culture and technology, offset by moments of slapstick comedy.