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Welcome Event in Tilburg!
The tilburg international club (tíc) will once again kick-off another exciting club season with our annual Welcome Event. We have a fun-filled afternoon planned for internationals in and around Tilburg!
Program – Saturday, 7 September 2019, from 13:00 – 18:00
13:00 Walking Tour starting point
13:30 Discover the hidden gems of the Tilburg inner city!
15:00 Reception “borrel” at the Spaarbank
18:00 End program (more…)
ticnic a success!
by Mala Raman
30 Jun 2019. This year we had perfect weather for our annual picnic. To our regular participants, our once a year, pre-summer gathering is known as the tícnic. In a not too warm, not too cold outdoor venue, a big crowd of tíc members and guests came together to once again help bring the club season to a close.
In the middle of a lush green park on the campus of Tilburg University, everyone happily sat at the picnic tables or on the grass to enjoy a good old-fashioned cookout. Thanks to many of our male members who “manned” the grill, there were hamburgers, veggie burgers, braadworst and kip saté to be gobbled up. Members also brought many delicious types of salad or dessert to share.
No tícnic is complete without some fun group activity. This year we had a rousing game of “Finska” (an ancient Finnish game) that consists of 12 wooden pins arranged into a group. A throwing log (called the Mölkky) is thrown underarm in an attempt to knock down pins to score exactly 50 points. If points are scored that causes the score to exceed 50, the player (or team) has their score reset to 25. The winner is the first to achieve the 50 points. Judging by the theatrics, it was a nail-biter until the end!
All in all, we had a fantastic day; it was great to have so many of our members join this year’s outdoor festivities. To all who attended: we hope to see you again in the upcoming club year. To those who couldn’t make it this year: come by next year and share in the fun!
#TilburgInternationalClub #expatlife #summer #picnic #ticnic
Charity Walk for Refugees
Charity: Stichting Vluchteling (The Refugee Foundation)
tíc Goal: Raise €1000 for Stichting Vluchteling
tíc Raised: €950 raised for Stichting Vluchteling!!
by Dagmara Gielen-Bernacka
15 Jun 2019. This year, between all the fun social activities, tíc members participated in a Dutch charity event — the 10th edition of de Nacht van de Vluchteling (The Night of the Refugee). This event is organised by the Netherlands Refugee Foundation, in which thousands of participants walk in the middle of the night to raise money (and awareness) for emergency aid for refugees worldwide. The team had a goal to raise €1000 for the foundation and we managed to secure €950 in donations!!
#TBT: Another fun TICnic!
In just a couple of days we will once again meet up for our annual “TICnic” on the lovely grounds of Tilburg University. For Throwback Thursday, let’s take a look the fun and games from last year!
x–x–x–x–x–x–x
by Anne van Oorschot. I am back home after attending the annual tíc picnic…tícNic and it was, as usual, really fun. A couple of the guys did a great job of grilling all the different meats and vegetarian options and I feasted (OK, a bit too much!) on all the delicious and unique salads people had brought.
We need your EVENT IDEAS!
The tíc Events Team works hard to plan activities and events that are fun, inspirational and educational for its membership. We strive to create experiences that encourage our members to form social networks while getting to better know the city and country in which they live.
We are now beginning to plan the our 2019 – 2020 club year and our event team wants to hear your fantastic ideas!
Annual General Meeting and Pub Quiz review
17 May 2019. Review by Elaine Ferguson. A group of enthusiastic pub quizzers met at the Grand Café Esplanade, Tilburg University to test their general knowledge. The first 15 minutes of the evening was set aside for the Annual General Meeting (AGM) whereby Yolonda our President and Mala, our Communications and Outreach Coordinator informed us about the current state of affairs of the club – and we are doing really well and 
due to the concerted efforts of our Events team tíc has been able to welcome many new members this year! (read more about the meeting below!)
After the AGM had finished and having received a complimentary drink from tíc, we settled down to some serious quizzing. The teams were divided per category, so the first team to find their group received a bonus point. The first round was general knowledge which including some pretty tricky questions such as *Which planet sits 
between Earth and Jupiter in its proximity to the Sun? There were questions for everyone including the picture round (name the three Princesses). The Foodie round: Where do bagels originate? and for Travellers: What is the name of the airport in Belfast? The quiz ended in a tie-breaker with team 
Foodie entering at the last minute with their bonus point and due to the knowledgeability of one team member managed to guess the approximate height of the Eifel Tower.
All in all, it was a fun evening and so well organized by the Events Team of Jessica, Anne-Lise and Molly that the owner of the Esplanade asked if they were willing to host another evening!!
*Answer: Mars
More about the AGM
Secretary/Membership: We are in search of a replacement. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in taking this open position, please let us know!
Membership: We have gained many new members this year, bringing our total to 128, a new club record! We represent 35 different nationalities so we are truly an international club! Our membership is split pretty evenly between Tilburg University employees and individual members.
Communications: We are diligently active on our website, as well as the social media outlets of Facebook and Instagram to make our club activities more visible and easier for expats to find. We continue to have partnerships with Sligro, Holland Expat Center South and P&D Care to our list of partners to improve the expat experience of our members.
Events: We had a total of 32 events this year including Socials such as our smashing Welcome to Tilburg event, tícMovieNight , tíc Book Club, Outings such as to the
DESTIL Trappers ice hockey game, Workshops and of course all of our annual events such as Annual Christmas Cookie Workshop. We are also doing our first charity event: Night of the Refugees. We are still looking for participants for the walk and donations. We have already started planning some great events for the new club year.
Finance: In tandem with increasing membership, we have also increased income more than 43% from last year. We also experienced a surge in in expenses mainly due to our 10th Year Anniversary Welcome Event (but well worth it!!) Our deficit is counterbalanced by a major subsidy received from Midpoint Brabant.
#TBT: tíc Annual General Meeting and Pub Quiz
It’s once again time for our Annual General Meeting to inform our members about the health of the club, an update on current activities and our future plans. For #ThrowbackThursday, here’s look at our AGM and Pub Quiz from 2017.
18 May 2017. Review by Anne van Oorschot If you missed TIC’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 18 May 2017 at the Grand Café Esplanade on the grounds of Tilburg University, you missed a great time! A great time at an AGM? Yes, you read correctly!
We had a nice turnout and, after a welcome introduction to our members and guests, we began the evening as we do every year, with a short presentation over the club and how we are performing.
tíc is doing well and we can look back on a very successful year full of many fun and interesting activities, with attendance being up from last year. With the Event Director position vacant for most of the year, the remaining Board members have shared the event planning and hosting duties which has been a challenge at times. We are thrilled that Andrew Kelly stepped forward to fill this position and we look forward to having him on the Board.
All board members are still in term, so no need for a vote but our treasurer, Emerald Busser, has vacated
her position and we are in search of a replacement. Due to her departure, we do not have an updated financial overview to present this evening. We will communicate that to our members at a later date.
Anne van Oorschot, Secretary/Membership, gave an update on the club’s membership. While we have lost some members, we have gained 9 new members this year, bringing our total to 31, up slightly from last year. While that may not seem like many, when adding in member’s partners and children – who are also TIC members! – the total number of expats we serve as a club is 66. We have 20 different nationalities in TIC so we are truly an international club! The vast majority of our members work full time and while Tilburg University is the employer for about a third of our members, the remaining members are employed by a variety of companies, or self-employed.
Mala Raman, Communications and Outreach, has worked hard this past year to increase our online visibility. With a big increase in postings on our website, the number of hits we have gotten has greatly increased! Mala is active on the TIC Facebook and Twitter accounts and we recently added an Instagram account to make our club activities more visible and easier for expats to find. We continue to have partnerships with Sligro, Holland Expat Center South and P&D Care, and have added Theaters Tilburg to our list of partners to improve the expat experience of our members.
Mala also reported on the activities we have organized in the past year – a whopping 34 events – up from 26 events last year! Member Coree Forman has breathed new life into our monthly borrels, and TICMovie group has met more frequently as well. The TIC Book Club continues to have a strong and consistent membership and will have met 8 times by the summer. We visited 2 sporting events this year – the 
DESTIL Trappers ice hockey, and Willem II soccer and both teams won specially for TIC!? 😉 We have a number of annual events – Sinterklaas party, Annual Christmas Cookie Workshop, Annual Holiday Dinner and the TICnic – and many new outings and events, such as our visit to a cheese farm, a chocolate making workshop, a ballet performance and a lecture on the Dutch Parliamentary election, to name a few. Next year will mark TIC’s 10th Anniversary and we have already started planning some great events for the new club year. We closed with an encouragement for members to let us know what they’d like to do – after all, it’s YOUR club.
Then came the fun part! Three teams battled it out in the chance to be crowned the Winners of The Pub Quiz.
Presented by Andrew Kelly, the questions were challenging and informative, complete with drinks, and snacks. Questions flew over 4 rounds of play. What a drama!! We had bartering for partial points, we had contesting of the answers (even though they were right there in black and white), we had debating amongst the teams and we had to do all this without looking at our phones for help! In the end, after much laughter, eating and drinking, a winning team emerged and went home with gift certificates from Intermezzo, while the Losers of the Pub Quiz went home with a “beautiful” magnet.
#TilburgInternationalClub #expatlife #TBT #AGM #PubQuiz #members
DESTIL Trappers Game win again!
24 Feb 2019. by Mala Raman. On a slightly chilly February day, a large crowd of tíc members met to watch the local hockey team potentially make their way to the play-offs. The DESTIL Trappers, coached by Bo Subr, swept the ice with Hanover Indians in their home game Sunday afternoon with a final score of 6 – 1.
This match was an action-packed game where the team ran circles around their opponent. In the midst of all the trash talking between the two teams and a helpful trip by an Indian team member to the penalty box, the score continued to increase in favor of the Trappers.
Unlike the many national hockey leagues, there really is almost no fighting during the games making it appropriate for people of all ages to attend a game. However, it wouldn’t be a hockey game unless there was a little bit of blood and gore.
Thanks to this big win, the Trappers are all set for getting into the playoffs.
#tilburginternationalclub #icehockey #destil #trappers
TBT: The TIC Annual Dinner 2015
This weekend we’ll meet up again for our annual Holiday Dinner where members have a chance to wish each other a Happy New Year while enjoying a bite to eat together. For #ThrowbackThursday, here’s a look at gathering from 2015 at the Square!
x—x—x—x—x—x
by Jean-Francois Hennart
Jan 2015. This year the dinner was at Square, a mere slip and slide across an icy Heuvel. I admit that I wasn’t expecting a lot from a Lounge-Club-Restaurant, too much like never-ever-good dinner theater, but on the night was disabused of my spread-too-thin preconception. Our coats were deftly taken and the owner was pouring us a welcome drink before our cheeks had lost their winter-wind glow. The décor at Square is loft-simple, the lighting is kind, but not dim. Whole-group menus are hard on a chef, but the fresh starter and simple dessert seemed to go down well, as did the well-chosen and generously-served wines. Sondra and I hedged our bets when it came to selecting a meat-or-fish main, but need not have. My venison was just-right pink, and her cod with sauerkraut (a combination we intend to crib) well-nigh James Beard worthy. No doubt, we will again “be there”.
Never been to the post-holiday dinner? Are you thinking it might be like a Sierra Seniors do, with awards handed out, speeches made? Wrong. I’m tempted to compare the TIC answer to the winter blues to My Dinner with Andre, because what makes for a good time around the table is, if I can borrow from Roger Ebert, “conversation, in which the real subject is the tone, the mood, the energy.” The tone is set by mutually-held curiosity about what lies beyond our own national borders and by shared determination to make the most of living in the Netherlands; the mood is sometimes jubilant, sometimes mellow; and the energy comes from within.
So, if you weren’t there, you missed something. Now you could wait until January rolls around again, or long before then you could take part in a different event. You might just find yourself, as we did last night, caught up in a wide-ranging conversation touching on learning to waterski, a Lang Lang concert in Amsterdam, raising bilingual kids, a selfie with Henry Kissinger, Fontys fledgling Academy of Circus and Performing Arts, trailing penguins in Patagonia …
Another fun TICnic!
by Anne van Oorschot.I am back home after attending the annual TIC picnic…TICnic and it was, as usual, really fun. Jasper and Jonas did a great job of grilling all the different meats and vegetarian options and I feasted (OK, a bit too much!) on all the delicious and unique salads people had brought.
There were also interesting desserts, with several delicious “ethnic recipes” – like making a little trip around the world while staying right in Tilburg 🙂
After our meal, the new Event Team had a fun photo scavenger hunt planned. There were teams of adults and kids scurrying around trying to complete their list of tasks. The team that completed all of their “tasks” and finished first as well as most creatively was declared the winner.
Every year, we take a moment to give a big Thank You to the TIC Board Members who work hard to make sure TIC remains an interesting, educational and fun club for its members. And, after 10 years, I am leaving the TIC Board (but not the club!) and it was nice to take a moment to say a “proper” goodbye to our members.
After the inspired competition, great food and good company, most of our group stayed to enjoy the rest of the afternoon in the sunny weather while catching up with their TIC friends. A fitting close to another fun TIC year.
Our great new Event Team is already hard at work planning many fun activities for the coming club year (1 July 2018 – 30 June 2019). They have lots of new and interesting ideas, but old favorites such as book club, movie nights and borrels will continue, as well.
We have a very special Welcome Event planned for Saturday, 8 September 2018 to mark TIC’s 10th anniversary, so jot it down on your calendar and plan to attend!
#TBT: 2017 TICnic
In just a couple of days we will once again meet up for our annual “TICnic” on the lovely grounds of Tilburg University. For Throwback Thursday, let’s take a look the fun and games from last year!
x–x–x–x–x–x–x
by Mala Raman
This year we had perfect weather for our annual picnic. To our regular participants, our once a year, springtime gathering is known as the TICnic. In a not too warm, not
too cold outdoor venue, a big crowd of TIC members and guests came together to once again help bring the club season to a close. In the middle of a lush green park on the campus of Tilburg University, everyone happily sat at the new a
nd improved picnic tables or on the grass to enjoy a good old-fashioned cookout. Thanks to Andrew, our grill master (who received many compliments on his handiwork), there were hamburgers, veggie burgers, chicken drumsticks and steaks to be gobbled up.
It was great to have so many families join this year’s outdoor festivities. On this Father’s Day, TIC presented all of our TIC father’s with a take home gift basket of a Trappist Dubbel bier with nuts and a commemorative Trappist Brewery glass.
No TICnic is complete without some fun group activities. This year we had a “TIC-athalon” that had 5 teams racing around trying to accumulate as many points as possible in the
Great Egg Race, TIC Tac Toe darts, Obstacle course, Mini golf, Jump Rope, TICpic, Bowling, Bean Bag Toss, Pass the Parcel and Air Guitar.
All in all, we had a fantastic day. To all who attended: we hope to see you again in the upcoming club year. To those who stayed home or couldn’t make it this year: come by next year and share in the fun!
#expatlife #Tilburg #picnic #fun #TBT
Pub Quiz at the Esplanade
Article by Mala Raman
This year we had another rousing pub quiz at the Grand Café Esplanade, that once again sparked the competitive streaks amongst our stalwart TIC members. A group of hard core TIC members met at the grounds of Tilburg University to battle out the chance to be crowned the Winners of The Pub Quiz. Presented by Yolonda, the questions were challenging and informative under various international categories.
Mock fights, allegations of cheating and most of all laughter rang through the night. As usual, the drinks and snacks provided helped to calm even the most ardent pub quiz participants.
At the end of the night Estela, Tanya, Anita, Mike and Mala were crowned the Winners of The Pub Quiz and presented with a prize. Also lucky were the table that were crowned the Losers of The Pub Quiz as they were also presented with a small prize.
#expatlife #pubquiz #Tilburg #happyhour #borrel
Match review! Willem II vs. Roda JC
by Andrew Kelly
A visit to Willem II is becoming an annual occurrence for TIC and I must say we need to keep doing it, as they always win!!
It was a great turnout of 14 people and probably 50% of our group had never seen Willem II play live. After finding our places and singing the Williem II song, I would like to say, at this point, it was already really, really cold! The game began!!
There was a minute silence to commemorate an old player of Willem II & Roda who had passed away a few days earlier. It really showed how people can come together and have respect for the game.
And then, after only 14 minutes, Willem II made the first and only goal of the game. I am afraid to say the quality of 
football was not the best, but for a price tag of 8 euro a ticket, you can’t beat it. Roda never gave up and did fight for the ball resulting in two yellow cards being given; one for Willem II and one for Roda.
It’s always a great day out, but just don’t think you are going to see Barcelona, but of course you can always be pleasantly surprised.
#Tilburg #expatlife #voetbal #football #WillemII
TIC at DESTIL Trappers
by Andrew Kelly
As many people do not know, Tilburg has the best club ice-hockey team in the Netherlands, the DESTIL Trappers (Pedals). So, in the sprit of getting to know our city and club, we arranged a trip to see one of the games, Trappers vs MEC Halle 04 Saale Bulls, the Bulls being a team from Germany as the Trappers are at a too high level to play in the Dutch league.
We started the day by finding our seats in the victors sections 
which due to distance was very empty. Anne was very good to print out the rules of Ice hockey, as for many of us this was our first game.
Then with a bang, the games started with a light show and the fans singing Trappers songs. Anyone that has ever attend a William II game would know all the songs.
The game was fast and full of action with no team having a clear advantage in the first half until, of course, the away team scored just before the end of the half. During the break I did enjoy some of the fatty foods that are on offer during sporting events.
In the second half, Tilburg had something to prove. They came out fighting and managed to even the score, but in Sport, that is never enough. So, the Trappers do what they do best and put a puck in the net to end the game 2:1 . A great result and a great game. If you get the chance, please check them out.
#Tilburg #Expats #Trappers #Expatlife
Annual Holiday Dinner review
by Molly Johnson
New Year seems to stretch itself out in the Netherlands, so in true Dutch style, TIC celebrated its 
holiday dinner on January 20th – better late than never! It was great to see so many members, both old(not like that) and new, turn out for this popular event where we ate, drank, and mingled.
‘t Elfde Gebod (the 11th commandment) created an almost exclusive atmosphere in itsupstairs room for the 30+ internationals, and among the religious-themed decor, we alltold stories of Christmas and New Year, with a welcome drink of bubbly. According to Andrew, the 11th commandmentis “thou shalt drink” and several of us were more than happy to oblige.
After an initial hour of catching up, it was to the tables, where a delicious three course meal was served, and conversation turned to country cultures, as well as the usual “how I ended up in Holland” story for those newer members. Curiosity kicked in when another group joined us in the upstairs space and we were keen to know what club they belonged to.
Between courses some seat-swapping went on so everyone had chance to catch up and introducethemselves to any unfamiliar faces, as we filled ourselves on salmon, steak, pasta, dame blanch, and other treats in between.
It seemed as though a great night was had by all, which made for the perfect way to kick-start the second half of the TIC season and get chatting about some of the exciting events coming up on the agenda.
