Post by willem van der holt on Jun 6, 2012 15:49:57 GMT -5
WILLEM VAN DER HOLT
Sometimes being quiet makes more noise.
| B A S I C S |
Name Willem van der Holt
Nicknames Please don’t call him Will. It may make him cry. You may call him Chai though. That’s OK.
PB Kirill Nikolini
Age Nineteen
Sex Male
Year Junior
Major Political Science
Minor Modern Languages
Occupation None
Hometown Haarlem, Holland, the Netherlands| P E R S O N A L I T Y |
For always being the kid who bounced around from country to country, Willem, better know as Chai, is shockingly average. He’s the relatively passive type who isn’t overly encouraged about voicing his opinion. In fact, he’s really quite quiet around people he doesn’t know. In class, he’s usually not the one answering questions or talking to people sitting near him. No, he’s the type to be sitting in the back of the classroom and doodling on his hands with permanent marker. It’s not so much that he doesn’t like to talk to people, but his shoddy English makes him self-conscious. The more self-conscious he becomes, the more difficult it is for him to speak in English. Needless to say, Chai is the type of person who likes to lounge around the house by himself and could stay all day in his pajamas and watch movies, which he does every-so often on Sunday, usually with a tub of ice cream in his near vicinity. Speaking of ice cream and sweeties, Chai has the worst sweet tooth and it’s a true miracle that he stays as slender as he does. But he seems to have miraculous inherited something from his sweet tooth, because as a sweetheart by nature, Chai is a very affection boy to people close to him. He is perpetually upbeat about everything and has an incredibly undersized sense of personal space. More often than not, he uses his cheeriness to camouflage his own insecurities. A constant smiler, he is willing to wave to just about anybody on the street and he doesn’t seem to understand the idea of social boundaries. Loners, skaters, artsies, jocks—he’d make friends with them all if he could. As a general rule, Chai just seems to be a very happy person. If his language barrier didn’t get in the way, Chai would love to surround himself with as many friends and people as he possibly could. Unfortunately, his perceived language barrier makes it difficult for him to see past his inability to pick up the language quicker and tends to obsess over the slowness of learning the language until he’s simmering in self-annoyance.
When he’s not worrying about his English, he’s worrying about his diet. The teen is a constant health nut. Constantly worried about his weight, he is insistent about balancing his diet and eating to his wellness. Although lactose intolerant by nature, he is a vegetarian by choice. From this obsession with health, he has discovered a love for the culinary art world. One of his biggest hobbies has become finding exotic recipes and trying to reproduce them. If he’s not cooking for his health, he’s out jogging for his health. Chai takes a morning jog every morning at ungodly hours when the only other living creatures up are video-gamers, prostitutes, and headless pink bunnies. His pursuit for wellness continues with a hard run in the evening after classes have finished. Although he loves to run, Chai is not much of a sport person. Not because he doesn’t want to, mind you, but because of partial blindness in his right eye that causes him to have a lackluster depth perception. Seeing as he can’t draw, act, or play football, Chai has found new hobbies in the United States: badminton, paintball, and eating every sweetie he can get his hands on to. By no means can he play these sports with any shred of skill, but he will explain at some length about his love for the games. Still, for what he lacks in sporting ability, he makes up with his grades. Quick-witted, hard-working, creative, and charming, Chai has always done well in school. Motivated to achieve academic perfection, the nineteen-year-old invests unparalleled time and dedication to his schoolwork to acquire that perfect 4.0 GPA. An aspiring member to Congress, Chai has looked towards law and business school for a post-secondary education, which he is both excited, and nervous over.
Day to day, Chai is like a piece of cake in many senses of the word. No, he’s not lathered in a strawberry-vanilla frosting, nor does he taste like said cake, but he is composed of a variety of layers. Some are zestier, some are pink, and some are filled with sour cream. But for reasons of comparison: they’re all very sweet. Chai is just your everyday sweetheart who enjoys a good spot of jazz and has an unhealthy obsession with American sweeties. A frequent victim of incessant blushing, he can’t take the smallest of compliments without having his pale complexion go to lovely cardinal (Good thing he wears the colour so well). Even with this blush pandemic, a quality he sees in himself as very unflattering, Chai adores to be pampered. Having grown up relatively well-to-do, he has gotten used to several luxuries. Being told he’s attractive or cute, having people give him things, he can’t get enough. He’s a grown man, yet he can, at times, act like a young boy. Even as the most down to earth guy one could ever meet, he is subject to being self-centered and spontaneous. Although a certain level of spontaneity is a good thing, Chai can sometimes taking it to the extreme, which often leads to trouble. Chai being Chai, he can usually get out of things by using his dashing pout and charming nature, the same charming nature he uses to receive validation.
All in all, Chai is a good person who is both eager to please and eager to be accepted. Although subject to some very concerning character flaws, his intentions are good and he is as much subject to his personality as everyone else.
Talents & Skills:
. Culinary prowess and specializing in exotic cuisine.
. Growing plants. His secret to the lush green?: watering plants with hot tea to give them a “calmer and more peaceful life.”
. Finding, and consuming in mass quantities, lactose-free, vegetarian-friendly sweeties.
Weaknesses:
. Can be subject to temper-tantrums at times.
. Feeling the constant need to be praised with acceptance from people.
. English.
Likes:
. Jazz and blues
. American sweeties
. Hot brew
. Foreign languages
. American things and American conveniences
. The heat (Holland can be so, so cold)
Dislikes:
. English
. The cold
. Dog-eared books
. The telly
. Birds. He hates them. They’re OK if they’re out in the wild being birdy, but he can’t stand birds up close.
.
| H I S T O R Y |
Haarlem always got a little cold, especially in winter time when it would plunge well below zero degrees and puckered the land in a painfully cold layer of ice. It, Haarlem, was an antique city in the far Northern reaches of Holland, beyond the grips of normal civilization and in to a sort of unruly land that was cold, strange, mysterious, and bleak that grew people who were equally strange, intrinsically funny, wise, sometimes standoffish, but ultimately wonderful. As antique and out-of-date as Haarlem was, it wasn’t a bad place for a kid to grow up. Even though there was no functioning heating, the plumbing was shoddy ar best, and the food was as tough as the land, there was always something to do. Willem grew up with his four older sisters on a farm where the chickens were treated better than the children. His parents, Alto and Didrika van der Holt met in secondary school and, having gotten on just fine, did the most obvious thing: they had sex. They were Dutch people through and through: they ate a lot of deep fried food, they biked everywhere, and enjoyed, frequently, their activity: complaining about the weather. As a result, they raised very Dutch children. Chai, the youngest born, given his nickname for his extreme love of Chai tea, inherited the hard-working, blunt, charming personalities that are often bred deep in to the Dutch. As Chai grew older, he began to grow restless to know what more was out in the world besides the cold, bitter Dutch landscape. He was a bit of an oddity in his family and his parents weren’t quite sure what to do with him. Where his sisters had contented themselves with working the family farm, Chai began to wear his mum’s makeup and put on plays for the neighbors. Where his sisters began to talk about children names, Chai began to discuss at great length his future career in music. Finally, at fourteen years old, his parents sent him away to a boarding school in Italy to try and get his head on straight.
He studied in Florence, Italy for two years and began receiving top marks in all of his classes. His professors would often write home to his parents and speak very highly of him. As he graduated from the Florence Institute a year early, Chai was in no mindset to come home. Chagrined, Chai’s parents allowed him to begin attending university in Madrid, Spain. His parents would write him frequently, asking about his schooling, about his travels, about when he was going to come home and settle down, get married, and have children. They were very traditional parents in that way. Hard working, money-hoarding types that, although they wanted what was best for their children, didn’t always know what was best for them. In many letters, Chai’s father would try and guilt him into coming home, writing things like: “You are just a bird searching for a cage” and “Just because you are not home does not make you a man.” Still, Chai was ignorant to his parents’ pleas to return home and ever more ambitious he grew. He fell in love with languages and he, with ease, disowned his mother tongue Dutch in favor of French, Italian, and Spanish. The thought of going to America was a dream that had never crossed the now seventeen-year-old Willem and he never would have been inspired to go had he not met a man who went by the name Smiley.
Smiley was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties, who sold hotdogs on the corner of Rio and Preto streets, close to his university in Madrid. He was a friendly, gruff sort of man who was always in over his head with family problems that would talk at some great length to Chai whenever he walked by. Smiley was American who had married a Spanish girl, and would go off for a good hour about how he thought his wife was cheating on him, his first daughter wanted to go to an expensive university, his second daughter wasn’t passing any of her classes, his aunt was dying of lung cancer, his dog died, and, of course, he was selling hotdogs for a living. One day, he happened to mention to Chai that he looked like the type that would fit in in America. From that day forward, Chai was sold. He was sold and that Dutch determinism kicked in so deep that he was going to get to America or die trying. Six months later, Chai was accepted in to Orange Island University and was on a plane to Florida. Now, he hadn’t bothered to tell his parents about this little trip until he had actually arrived in the States. And, for a few moments, he held great doubts. But the moment he stepped out of the airport and in to the summery evening where everything felt sepia-toned, where anything and everything was both glorious and entirely correct, he knew he had found his home.| E X T R A S |
. Loves to garden and waters his plants with tea to give them a “happier and more peaceful life.”
. His mum calls him once a week or so and, being the good little mommy’s boy that he is, he always answers. He never forgets her birthday, always sends her mother’s day gifts, Christmas presents, and such.
. He’s fluent in Dutch, Spanish, and Italian but his English? Not so good.
. He’s lactose intolerant and a vegetarian.
. Oh, right, and he’s very openly bisexual.
| S K I L L S |
It had started out as a beautiful day. It had taken him nearly two and a half miles of walking time to realize the gravity of his situation and, by the time he had, he was already soaked through and through. The downtown was as calm as it was cold; the air picking harsh paths between the buildings and whistling expectantly with each dying breath of the storm. And the rain had resorted to nothing but a soft sigh of drizzle, just enough to remind him of just how cold and wet he had become over the last half hour, but not enough to remove the sensation that he was still being rained upon. Normally, Milo Petrove wasn’t one to take a whole lot of long walks, especially in this weather, but it had started out innocently enough. The day was bright and sing-song and it wasn’t until he was the farthest possible distance from the dormitories that the mighty front crossed over the skies and downpour fell shortly thereafter. Still, the light fingers of water were dripping consistently from the sky above and occasional bursts of sunshine broke through the clouds, bobbling like a vessel in the sea of clouds. The pathways of the park were otherwise vacant as he strolled, hands in his pockets, and water beginning to soak through his light jeans when, quite suddenly, a spectacular sight came in to the seventeen year old’s field of vision. Normally, Mister Milo was not a coffee drinker. In fact, normally, he loathed aforementioned beverage, but when the warm beige of the cafes lights spun fingers of wool, webbed warmth out over the cement walkway, Milo couldn’t help but feel the lust for coffee. Maybe it was just the idea of getting out of the rain and in to a dry place, but Milo was dead-set on that café from the moment he saw it.
The café inside was warm, but just as lonely as the outside rainy world had been. Nobody but a bored cashier, from what he could see, took residence in the friendly room. The damp Junior just huffed out a long breath. Well, if nothing else, he’d have a nice cuppa and be on his way. So, ordering and receiving his coffee, Milo went and collapsed in to a booth, spreading out over its luxurious cushions like jam on toast. Resting the side of his head against the window, he looked not out, but at the sheet of glass, which thick silver veins running down it. The rain did not just platter against the window, but rather it exploded upon impact like a handful of pebbles would have done. He let his mind wonder off for a while: there were some people who were perfectly capable of looking good, happy even, when walking in the rain, but Milo just ended up looking wet and miserable. Everything outside was gray with a sliver of gold from the street lights reflecting off the water-slick pavement: like some gold and gray soup. Milo was just dejected looking really, his faded, torn fringe of jeans darkened with the wash of water and his gray shirt sticking to his skin.
After randomly stretching his legs in the confined space, he closed his eyes and listened to the sound of his own self dripping. Snuggling back in to the cushions, he got curled up and comfortable. He had no intentions of leaving his current seat anytime soon. The room was heated, he had coffee, and he could watch the rain without being in it, thank you very much. Quite suddenly, one eye of his popped open as he got an idea. Ho, ho, ho, he smirked a quirky little smirk, reaching down in to the breast pocket of his jacket. He had forgotten all about this little treat! Sliding the glass vile from his pocket, he flipped it over in his hand. The amber sloshed around excitedly, clawing up at the stopper. He quickly glanced back at the cashier, whom was paying him no mind, and slipped a shot in to his coffee before returning the little glass to his pocket. He wasn’t exactly sure how coffee mixed with rum would taste, but not being much of a coffee drinker from the beginning, he doubted it could actually make a vile liquid anymore vile, right?
“Well, isn’t that right,” he muttered quietly to himself and cursing to himself under the vigor his breath, ebbing away at the spiked coffee with a snort,
“Karma my ass.”| P L A Y E R |
Name Viva!
Age Twenty
Gender Female
How you found us Through an affiliate link at another site I roleplay in.
Who else do you play? None ): How sad.
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