Written by Jip Kok

Whoever says ‘Précieuses’ says ‘applesien’. But when did that start? The first book of minutes shows that in 1952, when the new members were inaugurated, the meeting was adjourned to enjoy a tangerine. It is unclear whether this tangerine is related to the ‘appelsienedief’ (“orange thief”) from our association's anthem, but it is certainly plausible.

The first hard evidence (found so far) that the ‘Et viens’ was sung by our association is the following card:

Written by Tim Bertrams

During their exploration of the archives underneath the Spinoza building, the members of the archive committee made a peculiar discovery. Hidden inside a box, they found the ‘guide for using the V.P.-D.I. (vice-praeses decision-instrument)’. Without the contraption itself however, the instructions were quite hard to understand, so they were put aside. Later that afternoon, two small pink trays were pulled out of a different box, followed by three yellow weights and finally a blue pair of scales. On these scales, we found the four letters we had been looking for: V.P.-D.I.

Written by Jip Kok

There is a breath of fresh air within the association this year: (for the first time in forever) there are five enthusiastic board members, about twenty new members and, can you believe it, an active Archive committee! After we had blown away the dust from some archive pieces, there appeared to be some very interesting objects. The Media committee had the brilliant plan to let us write blog posts about these artefacts, to share some of the fascinating history of our association. As head of the Archive Committee, I have the honour of writing the first edition and I have chosen two related subjects: the original Pouleke on the one hand and why I joined the Archive Committee on the other.