Veronique

Spot the differences

2008-11-19T00:08:00.002+01:00

Beignet :)

2008-11-11T17:53:00.003+01:00

Small lunch in Figueres:

Things you should do or maybe not?

2008-11-06T23:51:00.000+01:00

You should not do:
Fight with people who are waiting to pay at the supermarket. Specially not if you shop there twice a week. It's quite accepted here that old people order things or get things before their turn, at least that is how it works at the bakery and people told me is works the same at the butcher. I get annoyed by it, but okay.

It is Wednesday evening I stand in line with my cheese, my tuna and milk. It is my turn to put my groceries on the conveyor belt, so I am absolutely not amused if someone drives into me with a full shopping trolley. It gets worse if that person is putting their stuff in front of my stuff at the register, specially because she just walked into the line, no waiting, no queuing, no nothing. I am not that stupid so I get my stuff and just give them to the cashier, no problem see people do it all the time.
To bad for me the old lady is poking me with her cane and pointing that I should wait behind her in line. I say no and she starts saying things I don't understand. The only thing I could follow was that she wanted help with getting her stuff in the car(?!) She got some more angry and even took my cheese! The lady behind the register was not impressed and eventually said to the lady that I was there first so I will pay first. The whole FIFO things did not work for the old lady.

Next stop fruit and vegetable shop where I would meet with Andy because he was in Terrassa and needed some vitamins because he was starting to feel ill (he promised it was not contagious). We were just discussing what you can eat with figs (for anyone who would like to know Greek yogurt is quite nice) en yes there she is again. By that time I told what happened in the supermarket 10 minutes before and we like to refer to her now as the horror grandma. The horror grandma has 20 mandarins, 10 apples and some vegetables. Normally no more then 2 people are waiting at the registry, and today was also a quite day. Some middle age guy is talking to the cashier so horror grandma decides to go back via the exit to enter the register at the exit. Not very handy since the shop is quite narrow and you are blocking the exit. But since the guy was still taking to the cashier horror grandma puts her fruit on the scale and starts knocking on the wooden boxes next to the register with here cane. She did just drop in but the cashier let her go first?! We wanted to go see what she would do at the next shop, to bad we just had to wait in line to pay and by the time we were outside she disappeared.

You should do:
Get your English certificate. I wanted to do a language course, but after a quick search I found out that most language courses are Spanish-Spanish or Catalan-Spanish. I found one which was English-Spanish, but then you had to sign up for 6 months right away. So I asked around at the University and they told me there is another language program, but it is a bit different then the ones I had been looking at. The idea was that you would meet up with someone who speaks the language you want to learn, and I would speak the language the other person wants to learn. To bad NO-ONE wants to learn Dutch, 160 people not a single one of them want to learn the beautifully language with more exceptions then rules?! I could not sign up for me speak English because it is not my first language. But after some organizing I got a Native English Speaking Certificate, I think it only counts for Spain and Spanish regions. But that is okay, if I would get my didactics certificate I can teach basic English to starters. I thought that was funny. But now I am matched with Sergio Andres Rueda, he wants to learn English for his Master Degree. But as far as I understood he can only say good morning, and my Spanish is really basic so this might be interesting!

Wild Reindeer's

2008-11-04T20:45:00.004+01:00

Since I like to follow the news a bit and the US election are today I thought I watch the news. Turn on the telly for the 7 o' clock news and the headline was: The new name of Beyonce. Where I come from we call that show news! So I had no choice then to watch the NOS news.

Because half the flat is ill and the rest is sneezing and coughing. It was time to fix the heating, or I should say I had to fix the heating. Since I am not having a cold or feel that the flu is getting me, this is because according to my flatmate I come from a cold country with reindeer's?! And the most important reason is that I am the only person who had ever seen a furnace, I was 'privileged' to fix it. Twenty minutes later there was warm water flowing!! Because everyone was happy Antonio (the only one who is not sneezing!) even made me lunch today.

Now we ran out of warm water, which is not unusual. But people did show some skin, I saw a neck without a scarf and someone even went to bed without mittens.

Cold, colder, coldest

2008-10-31T19:15:00.002+01:00

Like I mentioned before the season changed to Autumn. That would not be a big problem if they would have invented heating here and we would have a place to dry our laundry inside. Today I did my laundry, went up to the roof to hang it (sky was actually quite blue instead of the grey we had seen for the last week) I went downstairs, walked to the shop to buy some bread and water. I stepped outside the supermarket and it was RAINING, it rained that hard that you couldn't even see the end of the curb and start of the road.

No problem, just wash it again and try to dry it inside. Now I got a beautiful washing line all the way through my room and I made a pretty good construction in the hallway (has not come down yet, and Antonio already tried t demolish it so pretty decent if I may say so!).

Apart from that we don't have a (working) heater, so around nine o' clock the temperature outside is somewhere around 7C, so the temperature in the house also drops to somewhere around 7C. So this means people wear gloves, scarfs and at least 3 layers of clothing day and night. Karime hasn't taken of her winter coat only for showering, and this morning Antonio came out of the bathroom wearing his leather jacket?! We also found out that typing with mittens is quite hard, and cooking on gas if you wear a scarf is quite dangerous. And all the layers of clothing are also not really handy in bed:

Because my knitted hat slipped over my eyes, so this morning I was sure I didn't had to get up yet because it was still dark.
Because I wore gloves and I touched my face witch scared the hell out of me!

Luckily next week the heating at work will be turned on, the only thing is that it can't be to hot for the chemicals. I read somewhere in a magazine which was in the lobby that the heating will be at a maximum of 17C. Not very warm but at least it is something.

We just hope it gets summer soon or we can use an electrical heater. Not very likely since the fuses already melt when you turn on 2 hairdryers at the same time. But Antonio is convinced we can so we use his deposit if it goes wrong.

Now it is time for a Halloween party and tomorrow I wanted to go to see the new James Bond film, to bad that does not come here in cinemas yet for 3 weeks. But according to my television addicted source original versions (English spoken with Catalan/Spanish subtitles) come out before the dubbed version. You only have to look for them since they are only shown in a small number of cinema's, else we go to a Spanish cult film with little dialogue. Fine by me, at least it will be warm.

Perfect Friday

2008-10-26T09:54:00.003+01:00

After Antonio made us girls all crepes on Thursday it was time to show my housewife qualities the next day so I made apple crumble. In the evening Antonio wanted to watch Mamma Mia de Movie! Perfect, love it, so with my apple crumble and his flan flavored ice cream we sang along with Mamma Mia.

And that ladies and gentlemen is perfection on a plate!

Autumn

2008-10-23T23:15:00.001+02:00

You know it is coming, you don't want it but you feel is it unavoidable...and there it is. I am talking about autumn. This morning I left the house in a shirt, and when I left work around quarter past 6pm it is raining.

This means no leaving the house without an umbrella and a coat, and no laundry. Since we have to dry our laundry outside, and we only have one washing line among 5 people. And I can guess there won't be enough space on that line to dry all our bedlinen, towel. etc. It is not all negative, the positive side to rain is that people don't come out of their houses. And if they do they are wearing pool expedition coats with fake-fur. The whole economy collapses just because people don't like rain?! Lucky I am not melting of my 5 minute walk to the supermarket (and I was hungry and I didn't had a lot of food in the fridge), turned out there is absolutely no-one at the supermarket. So take a bit of advice: go (food)shopping in autumn.

Expoquimia

2008-10-22T22:45:00.000+02:00

Because the biggest chemistry expo of the Mediterranean area is in Barcelona this week, Expoquimia. I couldn't say no to an invitation to this event. The only downside of this day was that it was 26C and everybody had to wear something decent like a suit. So most people were quite overheated, the good part of this was that I had to wait for my colleague to park her car (and so did 500 other car owners tried at the same time) so I sat in the shade and watched them all rushing by.

After we got in we ran into our other colleagues and we figured out what where was and where we should go. The expo is big, really big. And we wanted to go to a few stand for some information about our chemical cell and my other colleageas wanted to go to some companies who purify water en sell machines which do that. After 10 minutes of arguing where everything would be, it turned out to be all in the same room just one door away.

In the morning we did some 'serious' shopping and got a lot of information, after lunch my colleague went home and I went to IKEA. Since the building is right next to the exposition building. I didn't recognise it as IKEA cause it is not a blue box but it is just one big construction side. The inside luckily did look like IKEA :)

After the small shopping (light bulbs and wrapping paper) I went back to Expoquimia because there were some companies which I found interesting to might be doing my next internship. Since I wasn't buying anything and I obviously did not come from the Mediterranean area (I was the tallest person at most stands, that included the men), they knew I wasn't coming there to ask for some brochures. I did ask them if they have interns and do projects. And I did find a nice company I really liked and they are located around Valencia. I might get lucky again next year :)

After I got home the neighbours complained that they thought something was stuck in the ventilation fan on the roof. So I climbed on the roof to find some feathers (?!) but nothing was stuck, and I had a nice view of the sunset.

The end

Català means feeling

2008-10-20T18:57:00.006+02:00

Yes I know I haven't kept you updated as regularly as I was planning to. But I have an excuse! I had to write some (angry) letters to my University, to my international travel insurance, my mobile phone contract and some other nice companies who are giving me a hard time. So I have been writing, just not to you :(

But now I have some time so I will updated you about what is going on here. Last weekend my flatmates and me had a pizza party. The only downside on this good news was that they bought 2 vegetarian cheese pizzas for me. That I had to eat! No sharing and no saving it for the next day!
But after 8 slices I could only smile, and sit.....sorry 2 whole pizzas are just to much for my (small) stomach.

Luckily after a hour or so I could move again and our Brazilian guest wanted to teach us some basic salsa moves. Salsa is nice, unless Antonio starts dancing. So after we all got over our Antonio-shock we just played the latin top 40 and some other South American hits to bad I only knew Shakira, some 80 hits and of course Gloria Estefan. But after that I did play a few ABBA songs so you didn't hear me complain!

For the Saturday I signed up for a Catalan Culture day. Christina and Karime decided to join me because there was wine tasting on the program. The morning started a little bit chaotic, we were suppose to be at a museum at 11 o'clock. The only small problem was we weren't expected, so people got a bit nervous: "what are you people doing here" "why are you here" "Catalan Culture Day", "no doesn't ring a bell". In the end everything turned out to be arranged by someone who talked to the organization for 15 minutes and kept saying: "no idea, no I didn't send those emails" "but here is a print out of the registration mail, with your name here" "No I did not send that". That is what you get if you put middle aged woman with a short term memory in charge!

The day started at a science museum, the majority of the visitors were kids so our guide gave us a tour in 'toddler Spanish/Catalan' so even I could follow it word for word what he was talking about :D

After the guided tour we could wander around ourselves and as responsible grownups you behave well as guest of course! This pictures inspired many people to measure their own head to these skulls, so it is partly educational and the biggest part was just entertainment for us.
After the museum trip we went to the University for Architecture for the lunch and the rest of the afternoon program. To bad that there were only 50 cheese snacks and about a hundred hungry students. To keep us entertained the organisation arranged some music from the region. Some people loved it and would probably bought their CDs if only the band members knew what kind of modern technology CD would be. We weren't that enthusiastic..... After the music about a 100 more foreign exchange students came to the University (also hungry and complaining about the lack of food). Because by now everybody was complaining they decided to continue with the wine tasting (?!).

After the wine tasting the program said that it was time to (lunch??? No) speed-dating, just to get to know each other. To bad this also took really long to organize so I decided to go home to do some work and EAT since it was around 6pm and I hadn't eat anything accept a bowl of cornflakes at 8 in the morning.

Being cultured in Barcelona

2008-10-07T22:20:00.009+02:00

After a Friday night of going out, it was time to go to the market on Saturday. Apart from a lot of people screaming (and then I mean a lot!) and quite a few vegetables I had never seen, there isn't much there.

Saturday around tapas time Karime and I went to Barcelona to join our other flatmate Everling and her friend Maria for some drinks and food. It turned out that we went to some place which looks a bit like the German beer feest, only instead of the beer they drink pink champagne/wine.
But people did eat Frankfurters and a lot of hamburgers. Since it was happy hour drinks were around 0.60/0.70 cents per glass. So after three drinks Maria was already quite jolly and she wanted to find a cocktail bar to have a Moijto. And we did find a Moijto bar! And we had a Moijto! When we came home around midnight Karime mentioned that Moulin Rouge is on television (in Spanish ofcourse because everything is dubbed here). Only the songs were in the original language, so we sang along (and didn't wake anyone up!)

First Sunday of the month almost all museums in Barcelona let you in for free, since we are all (poor) students we took this chance to have a cultured day. To use this day optimal we had to leave at 9am sharp (sharp in Spain is, we leave somewhere around that time). When we left everybody wore gloves and scarfs, an hour later when we came out of the metro the sun was shining and the scarf could go :) We had to wait for Maria and then we were all good to go to see the National Museum d'Art de Catalunya. Which is to big to see in half a day (the museum would close at 14.30h). So after a short orientation we decided we first wanted to see the Gothic Art. When we almost finished the room someone found out that there were guided tours. Luckily no-one speak Catalan so we had the Spanish tour. The tour guide was over-enthusiastic, which made it impossible for me to understand what he said. Luckily I got the summary afterward from Karime :)

After the National Museum tour, we wanted to go to the archaeological museum, but they were only open for another 30 minutes. Because it was 14.30h and I was pretty hungry, I suggested that we should have lunch luckily the rest agreed and we went back into town to have lunch. If you ever decided to take a bus in Barcelona (I don't mean the tourist buses) I think you should have a pretty strong stomach. Bus drivers believe that everybody will stop for them and else you just honk for as long as it is necessary to make the other vehicle/pedestrian/cyclist/dog stop.

We survived and found the place someone mentioned we should go. It was a sort an all you can eat buffet, but people weren't greedy and the food looked quite good too! I was quite happy that there was no limit of how may plates you could take, because I was hungry! I did eat a plate of pasta salads, pizza, and some warm Italian dishes and some green salad. Of course there was a dessert Yogurt chocolate ice and at least 4 types of fresh melon! And to end lunch: tea. Now I know why people have siesta, eating makes you slow and drowsy.

After a little rest we didn't want to climb the Sagrada de Familia which was the original plan, we went to see a park and didn't do to much exercise anymore.

Christiana and Antonio went home, and the four of us went to the park which has a big fountain with ducks in there. The white ducks swam in top layer of the fountain and the black ones in the lowest layer. We were wondering if they were trained, if there was some discrimination going on in the fountain, no-one had an answer for us!? After some relaxing in the park I went home, but before I got there I did something very un-Spanish. I ran to catch a metro, I thought it would come 15 minutes later but on Sundays they have a different time table. When I saw on the sign that it would leave in 2 minutes I took my chances and ran downstairs towards the platforms. People were very alarmed by me running past, apparently they don't mind to wait 30 minutes in a drafty metro station...

Fruit

2008-10-06T23:14:00.003+02:00

Just because I thought it was healthy.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, a fruit basket a day keeps the cost of your health insurance policy low.

Shoe shopping

2008-10-02T21:13:00.003+02:00

Shopping in Spain is nice! For example Zara is cheaper, the personnel doesn't seem to be in a bad mood all the time. Of course there is a 'but'...

A lot of shops just sell (well almost all of them) one size?! Bra's are sold here in size B, and a really nice t-shirt shop sells everything in size M (weird because people are quite petite here, that might be the reason that everything is a size smaller then it says on the label)
After a closer look at the labels I found out that size M means in the rest of Europe somewhere between 34 till 38. So I bought myself a nice shirt in a size M. Another great disadvantage is that there are loads of shoe shops, but the normal size woman shoes are between 32 and 39. Some shops (of course not the nice ones!) have shoes till size 41 (so there is almost no shoe-shopping for this size 40 girl!)

Watersnoodramp

2008-09-29T21:52:00.006+02:00

My first real workday and what did I do, we went down on some serious business. How to save water after 'the industries' (they kept saying that don't really know yet what kind of industries they meant?!) used it and how we could recycle water. Of course this a funny project because the Dutch are never short on water! So I tried to let them name the project watersnoodramp but it didn't make it. Too bad :(

I did tell them that the last time I hold a bottle of NaCl was in Secondary School, but they have full faith in me, after some short practical rules they gave me a little pop quiz to test my theoretical knowledge about general chemistry (PH level, atoms, Acid reactions, ...) didn't even do that bad! So from today on I am a research assistant in a pollution lab. Sounds pretty cool, don't really know yet what this title means. My desk is now in the middle of the laboratory, if everything goes the way it is planned I will have a desk in an office next week. But for now this is my view.

Airshow

2008-09-29T18:25:00.005+02:00

The nice thing from having a roof terrace apart from that it is easy to dry your laundry, plenty of space to sunbath and you can spy on the neighbors (if you like). You can follow a whole airshow in Barcelona, cause the planes just fly over our roof :)

Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac

2008-09-28T16:26:00.003+02:00

Since Saturday isn't really a day people do a lot here I decided that I wanted to go to a nature parc. According to my brochure I got from the international office it is 10 minutes by car. So I googled my route and it turned out that it is close to a 3 hour walk, and google maps was so kind to put this just above the route "Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."

Saturday morning I packed my bag, water, map, food, sunscream (tho the weather forecast predicted 19C and cloudy, ideal weather to go walking), phone and a sweater. As soon as I walked out of the building I knew the sweater was not going to be used today, so after a quick stop at the bakery I was on my way...

Google Maps couldn't be more right about the pedestrian paths, after 10 minutes I saw the sign 'you are leaving Terrassa'. On the road I had been walking I had noticed loads of cyclist cycling down the road (I had been walking up in a straight line and according to my route that is what I was going to be doing for the next 2 hours). Since I didn't know any other route, and if I would change my route it would probably double my traveling time. I decided to walk next to the road to see if something like a pedestrian path would show up. After an hour of walking next to the road. I saw the first hill which had a dark and steep forest on the side I was approaching it. After a little bit of climbing (my Converse never let me down) I reached one of the sand paths, and there was absolutely no-one :)

Quite peaceful but since the temperature had raised to about 24C and it wasn't even noon yet I wasn't planning on doing any more climbing and just walked around. After 15 minutes I walked into someone who was walking his horse (yes you read that right, the man had his horse on a 'leash' and was walking her). He tried to have a little small talk, but since I don't speak Catalan it turned out more to be a pointing and guessing words conversation about the area.

The only problem of going somewhere by foot, you also have to go back. Luckily this part would be all downhill. And it took me only an hour, just in time for some late siesta.

Ryanair

2008-09-28T00:19:00.003+02:00

I tried to book a flight from Girona to Eindhoven, all of the sudden I got a flight to Brussels? So now I fly to Holland for Christmas via Brussels and ow yes a day earlier then I putted in the online booking. The only weird thing is that this flight could not be selected on the website? Very weird.
And I almost forgot I checked around 21h for flights, and I booked at 23h and they were about €10 more expensive! How ridiculous?!

Brabants Kwartiertje

2008-09-26T13:03:00.005+02:00

Friday 11.00u UPC The Institute of Textile Research and Industrial Cooperation. I was there in time, luckily I already understand that 11.00h means 'somewhere around that time'. It took them 10 minutes to pick me up, and another 30 minutes to come to the appointment (luckily I did bring my book)

After I was picked up by the PhD student I am going to work with (she didn't know herself that she was PhD, just that she did a master and was doing some extra research). I got more then a dozen research papers to read before I start on Monday, luckily they selected only the English ones. After my little introduction I went to the international office to get some more information about language classes. To bad there was only one person there (Friday is not a real workday according to a lot of office people) and that person spoke Catalan and English with a Catalan accent.

I got a welcome bag and in that I found these things, which I found kind of funny

Sorry I haven't bough at new cable for my camera yet so you have to do it with my Photo booth pictures!

After the visit at international office I wanted to rent a bike, since it was only 13.00h and I had no other appoinments for the day. The city lends you bike for free, has something to do with subsides project of ministry of Energy. They only problem was that my passport picture didn't resemble me, and my accent wasn't Dutch. So I was either Scandinavian (probably the pale skin) or I was English. But not Dutch? Hello I want to rent a bike, of course I am Dutch?! They believed me in the end, and I can come lent a bike next week.

In 5 minutes it is siesta time, that means to whole country comes to a stand still and no one can do any labor anymore. So that is a good time to do some grocery shopping since no one does any shopping at that time.

Mara de Déu de la Merce

2008-09-25T17:47:00.006+02:00

Barcelona is easy accessible by public transport, that said you should first find the station in Terrassa! After a short search through the city the station turned out to be under the ground (not very easy to spot.)

But it was worth the 30 minutes search for the station, Steve and I took some picknick stuff and the moment we stepped outside the metro we found a good spot to have our lunch. 24 of September is a holiday in Barcelona, they celebrate Mara de Déu de la Merce. That means people party, get entertained, fireworks, get a day of work, faires all over the city and all shops are closed. And to top all this the weather was great, in the afternoon some clouds but apart from that sunny :)

As Steve and I are bad tourist (we just walk around until we recognize something from the travel guide) we had lunch and wandered around La Rambla, the most touristy street of Barcelona. We saw a small exposition about Giant Dolls, no idea why they were there and what the story behind them was. Later that day we saw in the news that the were specially shipped here for this holiday. Still doesn't really explain what giants have to do with the day a city celebrate the life of their patron saint.

After sitting at the harbor for a bit looking at expensive yachts, we wanted to go up to Montjüic, the best way to get up there is by cable car! The only 'problem' was that to get to the cable cars we had to walk around the whole harbor and since we already walked around for quite a lot we decided to that next time and catch a metro to the Olympic village.

Who ever want to come to Barcelona, please do not go see the Olympic village! There is nothing there, the only reason you might want to go down there is because there is quite a nice boulevard which has a nice view over the sea (and according to my travel guide, they also have nice fish restaurants....but since it was only late in the afternoon it was a bit to early to find out if the authors were right)

To end the day in Barcelona we walked through the old part of the city over some really nice squares. And then we headed back to Terrassa, walked some more, did some grocery shopping, cooked some food, and then my second favorit part of the day: went to sleep!

Rain in Spain

2008-09-23T21:47:00.003+02:00

We've arrived safely in Spain, but I don't really have time to post regularly yet because I have to sort out some work related stuff, meet my flatmates, getting organized with all my stuff and not the least important: see something of the country!

I do have to tell you a few things which I've noticed the 2 days I have been here now.
1. People in Terrassa love, love their banks. For every supermarket, H&M (yes ladies we have one here too), phone shop, etc there are 2 banks?! I haven't found out why people need all those banks. Most people who live around this area of town are students (and old people who dye their hair the wrong color), so maybe students get paid more here, or they haven't invented the bankcard yet?

2. So far the only thing I think I forgot is my camera cable, I think that is quite an achievement. Tomorrow I am going to Barcelona and will see if I can find a cable for my camera and find a nice Spanish prepaid phone.

3. Although one of my travel books said that it will never rain in Barcelona area for more then 5 days in a row, tomorrow will be day 4 of rain so I think we can 'celebrate' that we are going to break this record!!

4. I just found out that 2 Dutch students (same University) do their internships here too, and they are my neighbours. Why didn't anyone tell me this? And the best part was that my Portuguese flatmate introduced them as 'German'.

That is it for now, hasta luego.

Welcome love handles

2008-09-13T21:46:00.007+02:00

Saying goodbye to people is going to make me: fat.

Thank you colleagues! A basket full of chocolate things, you people know me so well :)

And the same day I got yet another great basket full of food! (more chocolate!) Thank you grandpa en grandma.

Bye bye IKEA Breda Welcome IKEA Barcelona

2008-09-12T23:18:00.010+02:00

Since I am going to Spain next weekend and stay there for about 5 months some people have been asking me to keep them updated about my (so far not very interesting) life. So I promise you if I have time after my busy work schedule, me moving to Terrassa and after all the tourist things I want to do...then I will keep you updated on this blog.

Tomorrow is my last day at work for IKEA, who would have thought? After 5 and a half years of selling absolutely everything then can be bought at IKEA I am going to have a break from them. But luckily there are 2 IKEA's in a 50 kilometer range from my house!

So not a lot to tell you right now, I hope all of this will be slightly interesting. Don't be to jealous of me going to a place that hasn't seen the temperature drop below 13C for more then a decade. I will think of you when it is raining in Spain (I promis).

Funny Youtube

2008-08-18T01:10:00.002+02:00

After 40 times, still funny!

Barcelona Here I Come!

2008-08-06T23:03:00.002+02:00

Going to Barcelona for my internship! Looking forward to it, accept all the arranging and emailing people that's less enjoyable! But after that I will go to Spain and escape from the cold Dutch winters, I'm going to eat a lot of tapas, see the beauty of Spain and ow yes I am intend to do some work over there.

HTML can you eat that?

2008-05-22T11:01:00.003+02:00

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Visit TripAdvisor.com

Merry Christmas...

2007-12-20T11:13:00.000+01:00

Hello Everybody,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year....and maybe, maybe I'll post some more next year! (Only if I don't freeze to death or get firework in my hair)
I'm off to England to celebrate Christmas with Steve's family,
I hope I can fly instead of going by train/boat/train/car.

I haven't seen any fog, only snow and a lot of frozen car windows. Well don't eat to much, and yes why not stop smoking next year!!

Facts, Figures and Questions

2007-10-08T17:33:00.000+02:00

The weekend is over, and the week started of not to good! White bread which pretends to be brown full wheat is disgusting! Luckily it went better when I sat on the train and I found out that Steve is the best boyfriend any woman can have, for many reasons...but today because he put chocolate in my bag :)

Question:

Why do 'beggars' come on a train? Why not save the money of a ticket and go beg somewhere free?! (somewhere where you won't annoy me.)

Figures:

Any conversation you'll have with a Russian will end in a political discussion. Don't want to generalise but I spoke to 3 Russians! (out of 141,377,752) quit a good sample?!)

Fact:

I am not going to win a Nobel Prize this year.

The canteen at my Uni employs a 15-year-old-looking-girl why? We tried to find out, we wanted to ask her some question (age?) and we would do this for an 'interview' we had to keep for some reason. But to bad, she didn't want to answer any personal questions...bummer

One last fact: I am going to Copenhagen in two weeks, and I am really looking forward to that.

Talents (?!)

2007-10-04T08:31:00.000+02:00

Okay I am seriously bad at blogging. People stop emailing me about it! I know, but think of all the things I am good at...?! Like I am really good at making strawberry cheesecake, dressing a bed, sleeping in a plane. All talents that I might need in my adult life!

Preferably I also would like to have some more useful talents, like having a natural instinct to find a cure against cancer or to have a body and muscles of a professional ballerina...but no I am blessed with whipping and baking talent!

Notting Hill

2007-09-15T08:56:00.000+02:00

What's better then a 'Notting Hill' party? Well chocolate and a lot of other things, but the theme of the party was 'Notting Hilll'. Why? Because Wouter and his girlfriend were in London last weekend and visited Notting Hill and the blue door of the film..which was a bit of a disappointment apparently. So they decided to top the film with a fabulous party.

What do you expect of a 'Notting Hill' party? Accept a cardboard Hugh Grant? An inflatable cow... did not came up with me immediately, but there was an inflatable cow. So everybody had to watch the movie (Without subtitles because that would distract you from seeing the cow?) I didn't see it, but if anyone sees a cow in Notting Hill (the film not the area in London) please call me...I'm in the phonebook.

The party was great, with a lot of Jip & Janneke champagne was that in Notting Hill too? I think they lied to me! I was planning to go home early but at 2am Carolien finally showed up (old housemate of Wouter, and absolutely hilarious) so I stayed till 4.30 which wasn't a good idea because now I am already awake and quit tired.

Another really strange thing I have to share with you all. Wouter and co. live in a quit neighbourhood in Tilburg. The people who live next to him are around 70 or 80 I don't know they were old and reached their retirement age a long time ago. When we went out at 2 to see who was banging on the door, the had (quit) loud music on and the whole flat was crowded with people... I didn't know 'old people' like to party? Maybe next time we should complain about the loud music?!

Hedgehog

2007-09-13T22:43:00.000+02:00

Yes it is Thursday night, and my weekend has started!
Friday a party at Wouter in Tilburg, Saturday work and a welcome back 'drink' with Sander in Tilburg. Anoushka is coming to and from tomorrow on she has a drivers licence, so she is going to drive to Tilburg!?!
But before my relaxing weekend starts...

It's Thursday night 9pm, I walk outside to try to scare the neighbours cat away and there he is...he looks like 'Pim' (I had seen him last year) but you never know. He wasn't scared at all, he sat long enough on the terrace for me to grab a dish with milk, and later to get my camera... you see for yourself. That is what I like to call: multi-culti in your own garden!

1001 and 1 night

2007-09-09T19:46:00.000+02:00

Anoushka and I decided to do some serious dancing on Friday. It all went well, they played all our request, the food afterwards was not to bad and we didn't bumb into a lot of annoying people. Accept Anoushka and Joyce's dart partner, yes you heard it correctly. If being a dart partner of 2 girls is not bad enough....he decided to share is whole life story. So thank you Robert, that was the only thing missing on this almost perfect night out....your rambling.

Saturday I had no plans, so I tried to do as less as possible. Because I was in a good mood I waved to my neighbours girlfriend, which I think she found horrible of me...?! (she looked really frightened then mad then confused and then back to mad again)
Saturday evening I had to work, but not at with my beloved lamps, no we were going to rebuild the whole textile department. So the kickoff was at 8pm, some instructions and every 'team' got a different color shirt. We were the last team, and we had the white unflattering shirts. Luckily there were several sizes, only not the white shirts. They were all Medium sized, and that even meant for my colleague (twice my size, with -and length wise) that it was hug....imagine that!

There was entertainment, there was a DJ, there was food there was even a lovely lady who did henna tatoes. You might think that is a bit weird, I thought so to....but because we rebuilded the carpets department they made it into a 1001 and 1 night/Aladin theme. Which was hilarious, when else do you see your colleges (sober and in very white light) dancing and singing 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light'.
My work was done earlier then expected so I was home at 12.45am. On the condition that I would be back at 6am to rewire some things.

Six in the morning is normally not such a big problem, only I chated to Steve for an hour and a half (he is in sunny Portugal, surfing...bastard! ) Then my brother and friends decided to start singing in the garden in the middle of the night so that meant I fell asleep at 04.50am. Nice if you have to get out at 5am....

Good, but quit weekend. Now it is time to wave to my neighbours girlfriend again...see how she will respond today :)

Tilburg

2007-09-05T19:33:00.000+02:00

Because blogspot.com changed the template a bit I've been saving my post instead of publishing them on my blog :)
So now here is some 'old' news.

New news is that I found out that most of my old classmates study in Tilburg now. The public transport in Tilburg is really bad! Only 2 buslines for 2 very big Universities, I could do a better job. Instead of going on strike every month the could better make a better timetable.
But that's just the frustrating of student who came late 3 times so far...

Uni + Paperwork = disaster

2007-08-31T18:20:00.001+02:00

Holiday is over, back to Uni!

This year in Tilburg, which I don't really like because I don't like Tilburg. New building also means a lot of searching.
But before all this is going to happen I need to fill in another (the third!) application and still need to pay tuition and need to gain access to our BlackBoard website again.
According to my University they send me a lot of letters with information and dates?! They did send 5 of the same forms but no letter how much I had to pay for this year...But it wouldn't be Avans if not everything would go wrong (Like the last 2 years).
We'll see Monday!

IKEA Summerparty

2007-08-26T12:23:00.000+02:00

IKEA Summerparty: "La Perla"
The theme: black and red/Spanish.
Date and time: August the 25th starts at pm.

The first time an IKEA party was with a partner/friend. Instead of bringing my partner I took my old (IKEA)colleague. Karin (my 'partner' for the night) was dressed in white, not good! Although some partners of my collegeas thought the dresscode was pink or a lot of klevitch?!

Like every IKEA party there is alot of 70/80 and 90 music. So a lot of dancing and for this party they hired a mechanical bull (bull->Spain). After everyone went on one time (and had a few beers) some storage department employees thought it would be funny to go with 2 person and see how long they would last on the bull. This was an instead hit and this concept was even expanded for 3 to 4 people. And after a good conversation with Jeroen (old classmate and not Jeroen on the picture) he decided that it was a good idea to stand up straight on the bull. Which the people who owned the bull did not allowed, poor Jeroen.

Good party, which ended reasonably (before 4am) early for me...luckily some of my colleagues misbehaved, so enough to talk about next week.

Rain, scenery and lager = England

2007-08-23T10:12:00.000+02:00

After a splendid holiday, where we drove around a lot (well Steve drove, and I slept). Visiting Rob in Cardiff and 2 days later visit Kate in Seaham (next to Sunderland, for anyone who is interested). 500 kilometers up north.
Luckily there was also time for some walking and food shopping, people might not know this but I love to shop for foreign food! After visiting Rob we went with the whole Hunt Family to the Brecon Beacons quarry where we walked all the way (photo made on "Lord Herefords Knob"?!) and we went to the Malvern quarry, I wanted to go to the heighest point. That meant quit some walking up to a steep hill, and (of course) the way back was just one stair flight down...

We visited Kate and Dave who moved into a new flat where we also met 'Jack'... Jack is little, grey, furry and a bit aggressive but very very cute! Because we were over in the north over the weekend we had a chance to see what Sunderland had to offer on a Saturday night.
One thing I noticed, besides that I can't really understand anyone there because of the accent, there are a lot of not-very-bright-people. I bumped into someone at the toilets and she asked me: "Where are you from" so my reply was to keep it easy: "Holland". She seriously replied with "Ow yea that's next to Dover yeah, down south". I thought it was pretty funny.

After only a week it was time to go home. Friends of Steve who were going to stay over in Leiden for a week were on the same flight to Amsterdam. I found out that Alex works for Apple! So after I didn't wanted to let go of his personalized MacBook he promised me some brand new software :)

Holiday!

2007-08-11T23:44:00.000+02:00

After trying to re-register at my university, try to make the cats listen to me and fix the internet connection it is time to tell you that today was my last day at work.
Did I quit my job? Nope, today was just my last day of work before my holiday started.

I am so looking forward to my holiday! I am going, no I should say Steve and I are going to England :)
I am so much better prepared then last time we went there! This time I bought a travel pillow and boots! So no muscle aches and sore feet anymore...

So I should start doing some laundry and packing, but that can wait for tomorrow.

Bossy, me?

2007-07-26T19:37:00.000+02:00

Things you shouldn't say to people who work at your department over the holiday:

- Where are you going?
(if someone leaves for the 15 time and you have no clue what or where someone is going?)
- Could you hang this, and try to hang it the same height as the one right next to it.
- Why are lying to customers? (if something is in the storage department and you are just to lazy to get is for these people who are already waiting for 10 minutes)
- What do you mean you want a longer break? (What do you do if your new college calls that he wants a longer break?)
- How can you not see these are not the same?
(There is a 40cm x 30cm x 15cm box and there is a box with the size 15 x 10 x 10, how difficult can it be to see these are not the same products?)
- I don't care that you like Niels Holgerson!
(Start working please!)
- Are you planning to put this together or...?
(Or you just stay there and chat for another 30 minutes?)
- Come back right now and I explain it to you again!
(you take this bag, walk to the registers and fill the product from the bag into the white boxes, though one!)

Where did I went wrong that people say I am bossy? I can't help it if you don't use your full brain capacity!

Another lovely day of work, I entertained myself and this day gives me enough material to keep nagging at least till the end of the holiday.

Troubles in Macland

2007-07-26T00:02:00.000+02:00

Today I was a bit upset because I thought my Mac was letting me down, it was going weird and I thought I lost all my folders. Luckily Steve came and fixed the problem, thank you Steve :)

Now my Mac is back in its full glory I found out another strange/nice thing about my iMac and iPod.So for anyone else who wants to know where their Mac is built or when your iPod, iPhone or anything else Apple like is built click here. Well I am off to bed now, because tomorrow is yet another work-get insulted by campy customers-work day.

A place where I would like to live

2007-07-25T07:37:00.000+02:00

Hooglandse Kerkgracht in Leiden

A holiday-day

2007-07-25T00:54:00.000+02:00

Being busy busy busy, I finally got a day for myself. I went shopping for a new rugsack, I found a few nice ones. The only strange thing which I noticed was that all the hiking rugsacks have a laptop pocket?! Which I thought was a bit weird, if you go hiking why would you take your laptop? Just in case there is a free WiFi spot somewhere in the forest?

After that I bought some really cool accessories for the bathroom that I am redecorating (although there was no decoration before, so can't really go wrong there!)
After a 'short' late afternoon nap, Steve had done food shopping and he was ready to make dinner! And is is was not the everyday dish, like curry or Mexican food. No for this dish he stayed in Europe, Italy to be more specific. He even bought black olives, although he hates them :) That was some nice food.

This is what Steve like to call 'being inventive with small spaces' and you can see behind him we also have been doing some DIY-ing. Some painting a new shelve, new things for the bathroom and kitchen. Yes I am having a productive holiday.

Rain and sunshine

2007-07-17T00:16:00.000+02:00

I had great plans for the weekend! Steve and I would go to the Navy days in Den Helder, to the beach on Sunday. We didn't got to do these things, but nevertheless we did had great fun.

Friday evening we first needed to do some shopping before the weekend could start. I decided that I wanted to make my favorite food: Strawberry Cheesecake! The only problem was that we had no cake tin. So Saturday we were lazy, slept till late in the morning. Some shopping (olives, cake tin, really cool bracelet, Mexican food).
At 10pm the moment was there, the strawberry cheesecake was ready :)
I am getting hungry again!

Sunday morning when we wanted to go to the navy day it was pouring and lightning all morning. Until around 2pm, then it became extremely sweaty warm. So to late to make the 2 hour trip to Den Helder so we hanged around in Leiden and went to see the new movie: Transformers. The film was a bit silly, but of course it is based on a television series I thought I never really watched it. Tho I did recognised the cars.... and the film was really well made.

Monday was a work day for Steve but a day off for Appel! So I decided to do some DIY shopping. After coming back to the flat, Steve got over excited about his new 'toys'. Like a level, metal detector, and WD40. He didn't want to work anymore so he got his drill and drilled a few things without any success?! And I also got very excited because I am going to pick new colors for the walls (they are now very strange yellow with water stains!) Maybe Dark/Blue green for the kitchen??

I went back to Etten Leur, when just 10 minutes before I would arrive the sky opened their doors and poored down the one and half day of saved up rain! My mum was very nice to pick me up from the station, while I was waiting I got a nice shot of the weather while waiting at the station.

Exotic Green Rally 2007

2007-07-16T21:41:00.000+02:00

I just got back from Leiden, after I stopped dripping and found a towel I uploaded my photo's from my camera. And just like I predicted in my last blog I forgot to write something about the Exotic Green Rally.

I must first tell you that I really like rally, when I was little I even wanted to become a rally driver. But that aside. Two years ago I went to the same rally and it was nice but not spectacular. We sat at a special stage, and 'semi-professional' rally drivers went around a difficult corner just where we sat. You sort of expect (hope is not the correct word here) that someone will go straight ahead instead of taking the corner which you suppose to do. But no they all changed back to the third gear and went around the corner nice and slow!

This year Steve and I went for an ice cream to the city center where we heared some cars driving around and a presenter (who found himself very very funny, and of course he wasn't).

When we walked around it really turned out to be that this rally is just some Sunday afternoon hobby club for men in their forties. Bit of a pity, but no need to complain: sunshine, ice cream and a few nice cars.

2 weeks!

2007-07-12T18:19:00.000+02:00

After working my ass of at IKEA for the last two weeks I finally got an evening off. And what am I going to do? Enjoy my new Birkenstock's, take a bath and watch an episode of 'House' and then BEDTIME!

I didn't really do a lot the last 2 weeks accept getting insulted by costumers and vice versa. I booked a holiday to England :) I went to the park festival in Breda last Tuesday with my colleges which was great fun so we decided to go again next Tuesday, the theme then: salsa! I probably did a lot more then only work, sleep, and book a holiday but it was so interesting that I can't really come up with it now.

Engagement party old fashion

2007-07-03T13:22:00.000+02:00

Finally summer! There are the parc venues in Breda, there is a fair in Etten Leur and I stayed in the car for 10 minutes today because of the rain, lightning and hail. Welcome July!

Yesterday I got unexpected secondhand invitation. I got an invitation for an engagement party. Steve's friend is getting married next year and she is giving a engagement party, and like I expected no one here (by this I mean my friends from the Netherlands) ever had an engagement party or had ever been to one. The only person who gave an engagementparty was a mum of a friend. She only had the party so she could make a selection between people she wanted to come to the wedding itself (friends) and people she rather only had over for a formal party (family).
So I am quit curious how this is going to be...

Sausages, potatoes and olives

2007-06-27T01:51:00.000+02:00

People might think I have blog-stress (sorry John, I am just very busy). So I like to tell you all I do not have blog stress. Who don't I post regularly then? Few options: don't want to, busy or I have to chose between food and blogging.

Well I give you a little update about what's going on in my life. Accept I really need a holiday, I went to see Steve's friend and his girlfriend last weekend. Dan (or as I like to call him 'Shirley') doesn't like green things (vegetables), but he is very font of fried food. So what did Steve & Shirley make for breakfast? They made sausage and potatoes! I was waiting till they opened the can of beans, but that moment never came...

Shirley, Lucinda and Steve went to Amsterdam while I stayed in Leiden. This weekend there was some kind of 'dutch songs' festival, so every five minute you saw (and heared) a boat coming with jet another (tearjerker) dutch song. After seeing 3 boats I lost my interest in the singing people and I decided to go to the market, one of the bestest things of the market in Leiden is that the have at least 3 stalls with olives :)
After S&S&L arrived back in Leiden it was time for food, my favorite part of the day! After food we watched a dance film which I forgot the title of. (It was so bad and that obvious!)

Sunday Shirley and Luce went back home, but they could not leave before attempting to put the sleepsofa back into a sofa.

after arriving at Schiphol Steve and I soon found the new list what you can take on board of a plane and what not. It was a hilarious list, you can't take fake mines on the plane, neither can you take samurai swords in the plane, no toxins , no kayaks. All quit obvious, although they didn't think of: umbrella's, rockets, people with a black belt in kickboxing, fountain pens and cutlery. Sorry people, flying is still dangerous.

Monday Steve and I hopped on the train to go back down south, it all went well until just before Dordrecht. Apparently the train did not go to breda, which is the station I had to switch to got to Etten leur and Steve had to change for Tilburg. From Dordrecht we catched a stoptrain to Roosendaal. In Roosendaal there were about 3 busloads full of people waiting for a bus to Breda. Luckily we found a bus who brought us to Etten Leur. Thank you very much public transport for not driving to or from Breda!

Viva a España

2007-06-22T12:48:00.000+02:00

Note to myself: never go out with Spanish people, if you're not in Spain!
You might ask why, well to start they do fiesta...or I like to cal it a disco-nap (so when I was knackered, they were still full of energy). They are used to eat later, so they are not hungry at 11pm (they're not even finished eating). And last but certainly not least they are all very good dancers, speak Spanish and handle tequila very well.

So when it was 2am, me and Ronald (who got me into this!) were ready to call it a night. The Spanish did complain a bit (tho I couldn't really understand, but they sounded a bit grumpy about the idea of going home). Next time they are going to cook, and we are going to dance. There was not really a point of discussion, it was more an announcement. Which I think is fine, love food and love dancing even more.

véale la vez próxima (is that right? I certainly can't pronounce it right)

Good old Floppy disk

2007-06-20T00:28:00.000+02:00

A friend asked me recently if I could do some calculations for his research project. I said yes, and sort of forgot after that.

Today he called to ask me if I still wanted to do this calculations and if he could drop by the information that I would need. Nothing strange you would think. Until he gave me a floppy disk, a FLOPPY DISK! I don't even have a floppy drive, luckily my dads computer is ancient! So I will be able to get the information but still... He does some fancy course he walks around in a suit, you at least aspect that he switched to USB sticks too?

Desserts

2007-06-18T14:05:00.000+02:00

What do you do if your grandpa invites you to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant with the family? You don't say no!

My claim to fame that day was my record breaking 6 dessert. Luckily Steve had some time (he only had one dessert!) to make some pictures of my dessert, which were created and served by my cousins.

Well not a lot of time to blog today, because there is Uni work calling. But first some lunch :)

A Mighty MacBook

2007-06-13T19:25:00.000+02:00

To start the week there was an exam, about 50% of the people didn't even show up and. About 20% of the 50 % of the people who did showed up, left before putting anything on paper. I think everyone needs a summer holiday?!

Yesterday evening my week got even worse (well not really, but I was a bit jealous). Steve came around to show his newest toy 'Arthur'. This new toy is a brand new MacBook, and did he pay for this piece of perfection? Of course not, the University for which he works paid for it.
If their hardware budget every gets to big....call me? (please....!)

How much fun can you have, who doesn't love Photo booth?

Good things also happened. I spoke to my aunt, she has a brother who lives in Brazil. He actually owns a couple of (holiday)apartments there. She said that everyone in the family is aways welcome to come visit him. Most people of my family are afraid to fly and others think a return flight to Brazil is about €3000. So not a lot of people are really willing to go there?! He lives there for a few years now and none of them have visit him jet. Well he must be lonely there with his (dominant) wive and his (creepy) mother-in-law. Maybe I should keep them company for a few days and travel around Brazil for a bit??

Last week I was looking around for the book: A Mighty Heart and my mum found it by accident this week for only €4 :) If only Oprah Winfrey would know, she reviewed the book on her show a few months ago.

Public transport victim

2007-06-08T16:55:00.000+02:00

Another blog about public transport :) or should I say :(

On a quit Friday morning I went to Breda, the bus came in time (and soon came clear why that was!) A trip from my bus stop to the station in Breda is officially 20 minutes. And let me tell you, this bus drive also made it in 20 minutes. Every red light we came across, he skipped and after a few emergence brakes (those strange pedestrians and cyclist who walk or cycle through a green light!) We made it in 20 minutes to the station. Then a short run to catch the train to Tilburg, and yes I made it. I sad in the train and it was time to leave. But not really because Prorail (the company who owns the train tracks in the Netherlands and make the timetables for the trains) thought it was a good idea to make 4 trains stop on the same platform. So after 10 minutes the problem was solved and we were off to Tilburg. Which we also did in 20 minutes.

I had lunch with Steve at the University, I complained a bit about my University and he was a bit nervous for his evaluation interview....so it was a good lunch.

Going back to Etten leur was less entertaining, I had to wait for 20 minutes on the station. That's okay, I was a bit sweaty and I needed the loo but apart from that I didn't mind waiting. I take that back because after standing there 2 minutes a family came standing right next to me (Tilburg West station has a particular long platform to wait on, but okay please stand right next to me!!) After both of the blond children stopped crying they decided to go annoy their dad by asking him every other minute: "can we have an iccccceeeecrrreeeaaaammmm". Yes after 20 minutes the train arrived, and the family went into the front part of the train. So I walked to the back part.

Arriving at Breda station I looked on my watch and saw that my bus would leave in 4 minutes. Nice, then I don't have to go by train (and I don't have to walk 25 minutes from the station to my house). Of course the bus did not came....after looking around at the bus station I recognised a few people who were in the same bus as I was last week. On of the fellow passengers came to me and sort of tried to be funny: "let's hope that the bus comes and that he knows what route to drive" (last week we had some problems with bus drivers who had no idea where to go and what busstops they had to stop). He did not know jet how right he was going to be!

After half an hour waiting we saw a bus coming. Then we saw someone in a white blouse walking to the bus, meanwhile all the people who needed to catch that bus were standing on the platform. At appeared that the guy in the white blouse was some kind of boss and said to the driver that he did not needed to drive. He said this because he was late. The company who owns the busses in this part of the Netherlands decided a few weeks ago to have a 'stiptheidsactie', this shortly means that bus drivers don't need to drive if they are late from their last route, or that they can skip bus stops if they think they are going to be late at their destination point. Marvelous idea of course!

The bus driver said he was going to drive anyway because he couldn't let all these people down (probably a good idea because next to me stood some angry housewives, they had become very red in the face and sweaty...or maybe they just had hormonal mood swings?!) The driver looked a bit like a convict who was just thrown back into society. But he wanted to drive so we were happy. It went well, until just before IKEA. There's a school and normally there are always people waiting at that stop. The bus before us stopped briefly, he wanted to drive away when everybody got in...but there were still 3 girls running towards the bus. He didn't really care, and took of. That pissed of my bus driver and he talked to him over the radio, well I call it talking it was more swearing and every now and then he took a short break to catch his breath. He apologised to us (he was from Dordrecht, didn't know that was an official excuse to go crazy but anyway). The fact that he came from Dordrecht did not really concerned us, the fact that he had only drove this route twice did concern the passengers a bit.

We got onto the motorway, and then he took the wrong exit. People got nervous and they tried to tell him how to get back to the other side of Etten Leur. He went around the roundabout and then he hit a very big concrete block. He damaged the wheel. Everybody got out, and he called the company. They said he had to come back with the bus to Breda and leave us behind and they would send another bus for us. Most people were already quit angry at the bus company and they didn't really believe they would send a bus they started walking in any direction. So there I was, on the industrial estate in Etten Leur, most people didn't even needed to be in Etten leur so they had no idea how to get to their destination. Some people knew there was another bus line close to where we got kicked out. So most people started to walk in that direction.
I on the other hand needed to go home, and that was a whole different direction. So I started walking towards the city center (27C and no wind, ideal walking conditions...and not to forget I needed the loo!) They guy who I ran into at Breda station (the one who tried to be funny, and his joke was a reality again, yes that one) also needed to be at my busstop. So we walked to the city center, came across 2 more busstops with a lot of people waiting at each one (not a sign that the bus was driving this route today). We promised ourselves an ice cream when we arrived at the center, but after 15 minutes of walking my fellow 'public transport victim' saw his old driver instructor. After some enthusiastic waving he came and asked us why we were walking here. After a short explanation we got in the car and he would bring us to our busstop. Well not really the instructor but the very nervous kid behind the wheel. He was driving around on the industrial estate, that normally means he hasn't been in the car very often. That last thing was a good guess, because he never had to deal with other traffic jet. After a scary 15 minute drive, he dropped us of at our busstop.

I said goodbye and walked home, I would love to say right now I'll never travel with the busses here anymore. Only I have to go to work soon, could go cycling but I rather not go further away then 5 kilometers. Last five years I have the idea that my bike could fall apart any minute. So back to public transport....

Satéhut

2007-06-08T01:31:00.000+02:00

After a warm day at Uni, it was time to get my new diploma. I got there in time, most people where dressed up very nice (I wore my old jeans and a shirt!) Most people who were there, I didn't know. The few people I did recognised, are a bit 'slow' ( I can write this because I told them before and they agreed). I had a chat with them (also because they were at the table with the drinks, and I didn't want to be completely rude). They are a bit older then I am, but they still have to finish their secondary school, way to go!

After this not very interesting afternoon, I tried to get home. Of course it was not my lucky day (again) normally I can catch 4 busses an hour (well actually 6, but then I have to walk a bit further). Only non of the busses showed up, and when a bus finally came it was stacked with sweaty people! Thank you public transport.

After 5 minutes of refreshing, it was time to go back to Breda and have dinner. Anoushka has a new job at a restaurant, so I promised her to come and have a bite to eat there. Because it's sort of an Indonesian place, and I know Roland loves Indonesian food I asked him to come along. After an hour of waiting we got our food, it was a lot of food....but that wasn't a problem, because we were hungry! If anyone was planning to go to the 'Satéhut' I can't recommend the roasted soya!
After a nice little dinner Roland gave me a lift back home, we behaved like teenagers (loud eighties music, and wave to old people?!), or should I say Roland behaved like a teenager because he owns the hi fi system and I couldn't touch it :(

Irritations versus nice things

2007-06-06T17:17:00.000+02:00

After a busy week and even more busy weekend. I thought it was time to post something on my blog again.

To start with my irritations of today, my bus did not drive today (and the on that suppose to come after that neither). My college supervisors is stalking me today, with a record of 4 emails so far with useless information?!

The good news of this week is that my grandparents invited me and my family and Steve to have dinner at a really nice Chinese place on fathers day (Food!) Tomorrow I get my VWO diploma (pre-university diploma). I finished my secondary school a few years ago, but this year my certificates of different classes are acknowledge as a diploma. So tomorrow I am going to see if all the people who were in my year 3 years ago if they are still there (probably without a diploma!)

Time to go to the supermarket!

Being sick, sucks

2007-05-27T23:47:00.000+02:00

Having a throat infection, is really boring! No-one visits you because you have some kind off contagious virus. After laying in bed for more then 12 hours, and 7 episodes of Will & Grace later. I was bored, normally I love not to have to wake up at a certain time and hang around the whole day.

I thought I could practise one of my favorite things in the world: EATING! After a bowl of cornflakes I found out that food and a throat infection is not a good combination.

Luckily I felt a bit better in the afternoon so I could spend some quality time with Mr. Hammond. I found out I really like the music of a margarine add.

Well to bed now, because tomorrow is jet another Christian holiday, Whitsun (has something to do with remembering the Holy spirit) and of course that also means for me that it is a work day!

It's a cats life

2007-05-25T01:05:00.000+02:00

What do you do when it is 23C? Most people sit outside, but not me I still had to do some work. I looked outside my window, and there was a 'strange' cat in the garden. Most people might know my parents have 4 cats. One is trying to move in here, and I think he's going to succeed.

But here's a little quiz: which of these cats did we not chose to come live with us?

Smart(ie)

2007-05-24T10:30:00.000+02:00

I went to do some shopping, and there he was... a new duck in the pond! He looks really though and a bit overweight, but he is sweet. He even followed me to the supermarket, well not all the way to the supermarket. He followed me to the roundabout. Because he is so smart, I decided to call him "smart(ie)"

Huge meringue, half meringue

2007-05-24T02:14:00.000+02:00

Just when I was planning to go home, Dennis called. I haven't seen him for ages because he sort of lives in Venezuela. But now he is in Holland for 3 days and he decided I was going to be the third person he was going to visit, yes yes :)
He had 2 nice surprises, one he finally got a real tan, and second he brought huge meringue!

After half a meringue I got a sugar overdoses and was wondering if you could balance a meringue on your head. The answer is yes, should you do it: No!

After catching up quickly he had to go visit his parents, and he is flying back the day after tomorrow :( But he did invite me to come over to Venezuela.... The only problem is that I don't have time and flight tickets are extremely expensive in our summer holiday. Anyone who wants to sponsor me?

Jazz festival

2007-05-23T19:00:00.000+02:00

From Thursday to Sunday it was Jazz festival in Breda. I am not a big fan of jazz music, but I do like hanging out with friends, drink some beers and see what people dare to wear when they are over 60.

Thursday was the busiest day, but we had great fun. There was a nice band who covered 70 music, only Anoushka and I thought the (male) singer was a bit over the top and not such a great singer. After making a bit fun of him people behind us got annoyed.....maybe they didn't find a parking space at IKEA that afternoon, or maybe they just didn't like our little impersonation of the singer?!

After a short visit to Lars and Ivar's party on Saturday, where I was most amused by a very cute cat named Kees. We went into the city where we ran into Anoushka and after a short toilet-break I ran into my colleagues. Everybody was in Breda!

Sunday was I-have-to-study-but-I-don't-want-to-day. So Steve and I played some checkers and after that we played Monopoly, and let me tell you that both games were not lost by me :)

Hemelvaart

2007-05-23T15:58:00.000+02:00

For everyone who doesn't live in Holland, last Thursday we had 'Hemelvaart' it's a Christian holiday where we celebrate (?!) that Jesus from Nazareth goes back to heaven. No-one really knows this, but what we do know is that we have the day of then! Accept if you work for IKEA...

I don't mind to work on this day, it's fun and I get paid 200%.

The only problem we have had for the last 2 years now in Breda, is that the IKEA is close to the motorway exit. So last year everybody who came from the motorway after 13h drove into cars standing still to get to IKEA and the rest of the furniture shops. This year wasn't an exception only that at 11.30 it was already necessary to send some people outside to make people park on places we want them to park (so not in front of the fire exit, or the elevator or in front of a lorry who came to deliver some more fresh food).

When I stepped in the car back home I turned on the radio. The presenters of the radio station (which is not the most serious station, but they love to do useless surveys) told me that for the fifth year in a row, peoples 'favorite' thing to do on 'hemelvaart' is go to IKEA!

Monday is dentist day

2007-05-15T00:27:00.000+02:00

Monday morning 09.29h. I walk into the dentist practise. There he is my new dentist, he is smiling, I am too.

When I went to the dentist a month ago, he surprisingly said that my old dentist did it all wrong. I had braces about 8 years ago, and not only was there still glue on my front teeth. He also made the wrong decision with the type of braces, 2 teeth grew in a sort of triangle instead of next to each other. No problem I thought. The only problem was that now years later some kind of lighting has started between these teeth....

So this problem my new dentist was going to fix. He suggested to give me some anesthetics, I never had anaesthetise before so I agreed (life is short, you should try everything once). After one injection I didn't really feel anything change. So he gave me another injection with the announcement that this was the last one, he couldn't give me more because I am not very heavy. After this shot I felt that my lip started shake like it just caught Parkinson disease. This was apparently a good sign and he started to drill, suck, paint in my mouth. After a very entertaining 15 minutes (do dentist aways look this serious?) he said that there was something else in my mouth that not suppose to be there.

I asked if it was an animal, and if it was bigger then a guinea pig not to tell me. But with his lack of humour he immediately said there was still a piece of metal threat on the same side but upper side in my mouth. I remember complaining about bleeding gum around that area, but my dentist always said that was scar tissue. Okay fine, I couldn't see it and he studies quit some years to be a dentist...so I believed him. But no, the mental was stuck between my teeth. So there was more drilling!

Walking out there at 10am he said the anaesthetise would last for 2, maximum 3 hours. This basically meant no drinking in public, because I had no control over the left side of my face. After a few hours I got some feeling back in my mouth, this also meant I got nauseous and I got a bit dizzy ...
But after 14 hours, I still can't feel my tong, my left ear and my lip... maybe 2 shots were a bit to much for this tiny person?!

The first holy communion, exhausting!

2007-05-14T17:16:00.000+02:00

Saturday evening Steve and I went to Antwerp to go see the new film 'The number 23'. Metropolis cinema is huge, that also means their buckets of popcorn are huge :)

That was the entertainment for the weekend, because Sunday we had to attend to my nephews communion. After a 2 hour mass, everybody was happy to get out of the church (who doesn't love cold and hard benches?!) When we returned to my aunt & uncles house, the highlight of the day for my nephew came. PRESENTS! When people did their first communion in my class years ago they all got a bike and (a lot) of money. Time hasn't changed much jet....

After discussing all the diseases in the family, and they discussed all the bad qualities of all the family members who weren't there. It was time to go home. Coming home at 6pm I was tired! I never knew family visits were so exhausting...

May holiday in the UK

2007-05-11T08:13:00.000+02:00

After leaving at 7am sharp, I found out (after 10 minutes, that I left my phone on the bed). After quick thinking I decided that I needed my phone. I decided to run back and get my phone. To make a long story short, I ran back to the flat and then to the station (even got lost on the way to the station!). I ran up the stairs at the station and there it was the 07.30 train... yes I made it! But no, for the first time since the new time table of the national railways the train left early! Only 30 seconds but I could have made it.... it's not that we couldn't catch the next train, I was just very annoyed because I ran more then 3 kilometers (and everybody that knows me, knows I am more a cycle person then a running person!)

After that everything went fine, check in, security, flight, hire car we even found the way from Birmingham to Steve's parents immediately. And that was the start of a great holiday!

After arriving in Malvern we almost immediately went to the forest with the dogs. I was looking forward for to see some bluebells, it appeared that we came in the right week! There were loads of bluebells :)
After coming to Malvern for the third time I thought it was time to do some real sightseeing around area. So Wednesday we went to Wales, to be more specific we went all the way to the coast, to Aberystwyth. When we arrived there after a 3 hour drive, I found out that people in Wales were not the prettiest people in the world and they walk around in a bikini when it is only 23C...bit to chilly for me to go sunbathing but Aberystwyth was nice. Of course being in the United Kingdom I couldn't resist to eat some real English things, fish and chips with pees, not out of a newspaper but on a normal plate.
After Aberystwyth we went to Devil’s Bridge, which is absolutly amazing! Not only did they build three bridges over each other there (?!) You can also walk down the hill and see a waterfall falling down almost right next to you, absolutley gorgeous!
Thursday we went to Iron Bridge. Which I can best described as a very picturesque village with a very scary teddy bear shop!
In the evening we went to Worcester to go out with Kate, Ally, Jazz and Rob. After spending some time in one club we decided to go to another club. Big mistake! When we got in there Kate and I soon realized we were the only one wearing jeans....and on top of that I wore Converse. I definitely missed the dress code there! Apart from that the woman who were there were a bit "strange". If you go to the toilet you don't expect that some blond lady with way to much make up asks you if I think her hairextensions look good and if I could rearrange them a bit?!

Friday it was the day of Luke's birthday party. Steve, Ben and Luke formed a band for this occasion. That meant Steve had to go practise in the afternoon, we first went to Kidderminster to see how nerves Luke was for this gig. After a little practise in the garden 'The Band' left and I helped make a lot of food (specially a lot of sandwiches!) with Luke's family. Who had some troubles believing that almost everyone in Holland owns a bike.
Luke's 21st birthday party was really entertaining, the 5-song-gig was good. Some things when a bit wrong but overall they rocked. Although I didn't really know anyone, and I couldn't really understand anyone (People from Kidderminster speak 'Kiddy' that's a world away from English ) But after a few drinks everyone was social and were willing to dance. All good things come to an end, the party ended early (at midnight!)
After a week of sightseeing we took it easy on Saturday, untill Heather suggested that we could go ride the ponies :)
I never did that, but this was going to be the first time. I got the nice and calm pony, and Alan walked next to him to ensure he wouldn't go anywhere with me screaming on this back. I had great fun , we walked trought the forest. We saw some agressive sheep. It was a really nice day.
In the evening Rob came around, and he did his usual thing (ordered pizza). We watched some snooker, I finally understand the rules of the game! After some packing I went to bed, because Sunday was the day we had to return home :(

Sunday morning we had to leave early, because we first had to return the hire car to Birmingham Airport. From Birmingham Dave brought us to Coventry, because we were quit early we thought it would be nice to eat somehting at the city center of Coventry. We soon found out there is absolutely nothing in Coventry! Although this winter IKEA is opening their first city center store of the UK in Coventry (my question would be, do they know where the city center is? We didn't find it...)

After a short flight we landed on Schiphol airport, when I got out of the plane the first thing I saw was clouds filled with rain. I went to England "The country of rain", I come back to Holland: rain.

Queens day in Amsterdam

2007-05-07T17:24:00.000+02:00

Finally it was spring holiday!
This week Steve and I would go on a holiday, but April the 30th is not a day to go on a holiday, it's a day to go out party all day! It was Queens day, this day we celebrate our queens mum birthday (?!) We don't nationally celebrate our queens birthday because that's in the winter. Queens day I normally start with walk around in Etten leur where we normally have a fair, and after that it's time for a beer and some live music.

This year I wanted to go to Amsterdam, Roland and his friends would also come to Amsterdam so that was arranged. Steve also wanted to come along and see this queens day happening. After arriving in the capital around 2pm we found out that because of the good weather more than 1.3 million people were in Amsterdam. It was crowded, very crowded but we had fun. We couldn't find Roland after walking around for more then a hour. We decided to have a drink and walk around the canals. Orange is our national colour and I can honestly say I had never seen so many orange boats, orange dressed people and I even saw a little dog with dyed orange hair! We finally found Roland and his friends, who were not dressed in orange! We had a good time and around 6ish Steve and I decided to go back to Leiden.

When we arrived in Leiden it appeared that there was not a lot going on anymore so we decided to call it a day and have a good night sleep. Because tomorrow morning we would fly to England....

Cats and their ego's!

2007-04-26T23:10:00.000+02:00

After a not very busy day at IKEA, I came home to find a few nice surprises. I found a new email in my inbox which had something to do with surfing :)

Second was that we would be having cheese fondue and last but definitely not least... My camera had arrived! I was playing with it, and I thought it would be nice to take a few pictures of my cats. They don't generally move a lot and they like attention, so it is a win-win situation. Or at least I thought, the first cat I saw was Bas (black and white lazy tom-cat, who's pretty much afraid of everything that moves....that includes ants and birds?!) He was laying on a chair having his siesta-beauty-sleep. I took a pictures, and he was fine. Then I turned on the flash.... and he got mad?! He was so upset that he didn't want to pose for me anymore! Cats and their ego's!

The sky looks more blue with a bottle of wine, or two

2007-04-25T23:56:00.000+02:00

After getting up quit early to pick up my new passport, I wondered around for a bit on the market. I was searching for vegan treacle wafers. Because Steve's parents are vegan, and they let me stay in their house for a week. I thought the least I could do is bring some typically Dutch cookies!

I asked the local 'wafers salesmen' and he told me that normally there is a stall with reform dishes and they also sold vegan treacle wafers! But not this week...

After I went to Uni I was heading to the center to buy a SD memory card. You might ask why do you need a memory card, well I bought a camera and it will probably be delivered tomorrow. The moment it arrives I of course want to play with my new toy :)

After this short shopping break it was time to go to Anoushka, to enjoy the beautiful weather and discuss the newest gossips. 2 Bottles of wine and some food later it was time to go back to Uni. Another meeting about our company. Luckily we also discussed we might needed to do some team building, and what is a better way to raise the team spirit then to go karting against each other!

Guido Weijers

2007-04-22T11:47:00.000+02:00

Quit day at IKEA, it's Saturday evening 19.30. Roland from the storage department is hanging around at my lighting department. Then the reception calls...it's my mum. Why is she calling? My cat already died a few weeks ago so that can't be it, I won the lottery? Not a very big change, because I never buy lottery tickets....
What is it then?

A few months ago I was determined to go see Guido Weijers, for anyone who doesn't know him. He is a brilliant comedian, he's living in Breda and not unimportant one of his favourite stores is IKEA. The only thing was, that he his show was sold out everywhere in the country! So I put my name on a few back up list. Just in case some people can't come, I wanted to make sure I was going to see this show.

I didn't thought of it anymore, until my mum called last night at 19.30h. Can you be back in Etten Leur in half an hour? We have 4 tickets for Guido's show! I asked Roland if he wanted to come along because we had one spare ticket, and then we had another problem.... The store is opened till 20.00h that meant, I was not going to be home before 20.00h. So we made some arrangements with other colleagues, and we had to rush home. The first time I cycled to my work this year, and now I needed to be home quick, luckily my dad was in Breda and he picked me up :)

We made it to see the show at 20.15! It was great, the men is really funny. He discussed all sorts of subjects from eggs, to snails and one of the funniest things: rear screen wipers! So we had an unexpected entertaining evening...

Is ignorance a bliss?

2007-04-20T00:51:00.000+02:00

One of my best friends is moving to Washington,USA. I am very happy for him. This is what he always wanted to do. Today I spoke to an old classmate of mine who happens to know him too. She thought it was really strange that he was moving so far away, and he is leaving his girlfriend behind (she on the way to the top, so she is not really willing to move to a country where their national pride is that they invented MacDonald's.)

The strange thing is that I think I am actually going to miss him. The strange thing about that is, that he moved away years ago. He moved from Etten Leur to Amsterdam, to Brussels and a few years ago to Madrid. All these cities are on the same continent, but now he's really moving timezones away! It 6 hours earlier and he's moving to another continent!

It's not that went out together every other weekend, we call, we email we try to send postcards every now and then (although I've send maybe 10 cards so far, and only 2 arrived!) I never have time to come to Spain when he has time to show me around. He is always busy working and spending 'quality-time' with his (Belgium) girlfriend. Who responded very cool to all this: "He'll come back in less then 2 months, either he got enough of the bigger the better mentality. Or he gets fat and bored of the hamburgers and he comes running back for his sushi place (which is on the corner of his street, and he refers to it as "my sushi place"). That lead his girlfriend to another question, what does he loves more 'his-sushi' or her....?!

He rang me this week, he didn't call me right away when he made his decision because he didn't want to upset me during my exams. He was doubting about this USA thing for a long time, and he was dying to ask my opinion?! Which I found strange because he got annoyed if I called him just because my favourite brand of squash was sold out (for these sort of things I needed advice, what to do, which brand to buy....well not really, but I just like it to annoy him with these sort of unimportant questions sometimes.)
He didn't ask my opinion before because he thought I had enough on my mind. But I can't stop wondering wouldn't it be nice to share this important decision? We went from almost sharing everything, to sharing tips which would make your eggs boil faster!? The advantages of all this is that I don't have to wonder will he go away, what will he do. But maybe it would have been nice to discuss this probably big decision. So is ignorance a bliss? Or wouldn't it be nice to share this?

A few good reasons to avoid Etten Leur

2007-04-17T17:38:00.000+02:00

A few good reasons not to be or go to Etten Leur

If you're going to cook and need papadums which is quit easy to find in almost any supermarket in Leiden. It's not that easy to find in Etten Leur. It took me 2 supermarkets and 1 oriental food shop to finally find it at (my favourite) supermarket!
On your supermarket trip (the second supermarket you walk into) you see your old PE teacher. He was always a bit 'strange'. Finally I have an explanation for his 'strange' behaviour if I see him leave with 18 cans of lager.
At the end of your trip you ran into your ex-boyfriends mum, who's having a go at you because I am mean and I destroyed her sons life.... and what is the real problem here?!

It was a good day in Etten Leur.

Schnitzel

2007-04-17T02:30:00.000+02:00

Monday evening we had a meeting with our supervisors from our 'clock company', and my classmate told me the most hilarious thing. It might be the most hilarious thing of the week (maybe of the month!) He cutted himself with a frozen Schnitzel!

I can play a Metallica song.... :)

2007-04-17T00:32:00.000+02:00

After a visit to the town-hall on Friday morning, I went for some shopping to The Hague.
After 2 hours of shopping, and 1 pair of shoes and trouser later, I was bored. Luckily a friend would come to the Hague and we would have lunch together. After a (very tasty) mozzarella sandwich and a bottle of Rose later. I found out that I still didn't know the name of our new princes which was announced Friday at 10am.

Luckily our Queen lives in The Hague, so I decided (after Ronald declared I was absolutely crazy) that I would go to her palace and ask what they named our new princess. Call me crazy, but I found out the name of the princess first hand! Not from the queen, or one of her personal guards, but from someone who was on the other side of the fence...

In the evening I cooked at Steve's and Marieke was also joining us. After the food, I was entertained by some live music and singing! I learned to play a bit of guitar, I can play a whole Metallica song now. I am not going to tell you which one, but I learned it in 15 minutes :)

Saturday my parents came to Leiden to come visit Naturalis and see something of the city. Well they picked the right day to come, not only was the weather perfect the tickets for Naturalis were free because of museum-weekend. After a visit to Naturalis, which I can absolutely recommend to everyone, we went to have a bite to eat.
After lunch and a short visit to the H&M, we walked around and ended up somewhere on a floating terrace. Leiden is known for having a lot of people who own boats. Saturday this stereotype was definitely confirmed! Every 2 minutes we saw a boat passing by, this made me want to be a boat-owner...

In the evening we went to an Eritrean place (which is east African, for the people who have troubles with geographic). Steve and I went there before, but now we would go with my parents. The food was good, and it's quit something different. Eating without cutlery, and I don't mean like MacDonald's. You eat your food by putting it together with a sort of pancakes, which is really filling but really nice.

Sunday Steve and I went to the beach (29C in April is a good enough for me to go to the beach!). Mariekes her parents and her brother and sister were also there. After a bit of reading, an ice cream and a lot sand everywhere. It was time to go to have some food, Marieke invited us all to come to have dinner at hers. After that it was time to go back to Etten Leur.

Although I didn't really do anything (didn't save the world, or cured cancer), I had a really nice and hot weekend!

Milling in the sun

2007-04-12T19:23:00.000+02:00

Today I finally had my last exam! Normally we would celebrate this with going to the city and sit in the sun with a beer.....

But that was not the case today, we had to mill 5 more clocks to show our supervisors for our meeting this Monday. It took us 2 hours to just get started (normally you check a few things, you download your program and that's pretty much it, so that's about 10 minutes!)

Meanwhile I kept myself entertained by discussing with Claudia what would be the best place to go to in Australia, what's the best sex exercise-exercise and what not to wear to a meeting. Just a summary of all the very useful subjects we discussed while waiting till we could get started.

The best thing of having the Friday off, is that I was planning to go shopping! The only thing I still need to do before the end of the week is that I need a new passport before I go on holiday. It appeared to be that the municipal of Leiden is a very busy municipal. The first appointment I could make to renew my passport (which only takes 5 minutes!) is in 2 weeks! So I decided that I'm going to camp there and be the first one on the desk at 08.30h at the town-hall.

There goes my sleeping late plan, sit outside (weather forecast 23C), and a bit of shopping!

We have a new princes!

2007-04-10T23:31:00.000+02:00

Because our king and princes to be are just like rabbits, they got a third baby today. After Amalia and Alexia, we think our crown prince wanted a boy. But no, he got another princes.

My mum and I were speculating about the name, it's likely to be something with an 'A'. Although I would like it if they were a bit more progressive and called our newest member of the Royal House something like: Belinda, Christa, Danni, Erica, Florentine... anything as long as it it not an extremely long name like her sisters: Catharina-Amalia Beatrix Carmen Victoria & Alexia Juliana Marcela Laurentien. Everybody must admit that this is just child abuse. By the time you called them in for dinner, the food is cold!

I will let you know in a few days.

Easter weekend

2007-04-10T17:07:00.000+02:00

Thursday I visited Leiden because Heather (Steve's mom) and Laura (a friend of Steve's mum) were in Holland. This meant we got to do some tourist things. We went to the van Gogh Museum (which I had never been to!), the museum was much nicer then expected. I'm not a big van Gogh fan, but he has made some incredible paintings.

After wandering around a bit more in Amsterdam, we went back to Leiden to have dinner at Cojico a really nice Mexican restaurant. After dinner Marieke joined us (only because Steve has 400 grams of heavenly, delicious Cadbury chocolate!), on the way back to Steve's flat we also found out Leiden has an English/Australian food shop! That means I can eat salt and vinegar crisps the whole year :)
Friday I had to leave early and Heather and Laura had to catch a 6 o'clock flight back home.

Saturday Steve and I made a personalised trifle. This had fresh strawberries, white chocolate, custard, cake and whipped cream in it. Can't go wrong with those ingredients!
On Easter Sunday I woke up to find a massive (50cm tall) chocolate Easter bunny and duck! Thank you Steve... The rest of the day we didn't do a lot. Everybody just relaxed. Steve and I went to the forest, and we did a lot of cooking (and we tried to eat a lot but my stomach can only have so much).

Monday was a work day again, which was fun. Specially because people tend to be annoyed or mad quit fast with other people (or our staff) on a bank holiday. Don't know why, probably because it is crowed and they have to queue at some places. Whatever it is I find it entertaining!

An entertaining 'goodbye' party!

2007-04-06T16:16:00.000+02:00

After 2 exams on Wednesday all I wanted to do is not think about Uni for a while. But that evening we suppose to have a second share holders meeting. That meant stay at Uni till at least 21h! The only thing was that we had nothing new to tell everyone and we only had our supervisors who would come to this meeting. So we decided to cancel it and postpone it for a while.

This meant that I could come with Steve and Marieke to their colleagues 'goodbye' dinner. After hearing so much about all these people I would finally going to meet them. It was good evening with a lot of (vegetarian :) ) food, and apart from that it is entertaining to have dinner with other people then my own colleague's (who are absolutely crazy, all of them!)

After dinner went to the Irish pub for a final drink, which Marieke particularly liked cause she loves Bailey's. She loves it so much she even wanted to pose for a picture with her Bailey's!

Bye bye Karin

2007-04-02T00:32:00.000+02:00

After a training at my work on Friday I decided to go to Breda. It was time to exchange the last news and gossips with Anoushka. After a few beers Steve and Bart joined us and we decided to be lazy and eat in the city. After that we went to Anouhska & Bart because Steve still had to fill in some forms for his tax return. Bart likes to fill in tax forms or should I say he is interested in our tax system so he helped Steve while Anoushka and I discussed what was the best song from the nineties. After a few more drinks we went home (on a very decent hour!).

Saturday I had a day off!! How great is it to just hang around and don't really do anything? In the evening I went with a friend to de Lama’s (based on 'Who's line is it anyway' from channel 5). A hilarious show with a mixture of cabaret, improvisation and real comedy. I know it's sold out everywhere, but please try to get tickets!

Sunday was a workday again, it was nice. Today I exactly work four years for IKEA so I expected cake but no :) It was a good day anyway, it wasn't to busy (mainly cause it was 18C outside!) It was also the day that it was Karin's last work day. Karin is the first employee to leave our team, from the lightning department. So we decided that we had to something. Everybody likes food, so we would go out for dinner with Karin's closest colleague's. Only she didn't know we would go out , so she was quit shocked when my boss and another colleague were waiting for her in the restaurant. The look on her face: priceless!

It was a very nice evening, we gave her some nice presents, we had good food (Indian curry!) and a lot of laughter. And now to bed cause tomorrow I'll have an exam!

Goodbye winter, welcome spring

2007-03-21T22:20:00.000+01:00

Today spring season began. So when I opened my curtains this morning I expected a little sun shine, birds singing and the first green leaves... It wasn't even close to what I saw: it was sort of snowing or raining or it also could be hail, and my neighbour was walking in his living room half naked! Welcome spring.

Another quit interesting fact is that people don't seem to know where the Canary Island are situated and some people think that freckles are the result of some kind of scary disease?
When I came back to Uni after my very nice surf trip someone said to me: "I didn't know you were that ill", I looked very confused, so he explained himself. He thought I was away cause I was ill. He meant my patched face apparently? What he really meant were my freckles. Some people just need a (little) bit more education....

My hand(s) burned in Fuerteventura, so first they were a bit red and now my old skin is coming of. Nothing special, only most people have this in the summer and I have it in the winter. Today someone asked me, "so did you skied without gloves?" I looked confused again and replied: "Ehm well I have never skied in my life, but if I would do I would probably put on gloves (I don't like cold, and snow is cold so yes I thought my answer made sense). Because he was confused about my answer he said: "but you went to an island to ski didn't you?'

So I would like to know of you if I have to reply to this, and if I had to what to answer? Remember I went to an island on the coast of north Africa!

Those were the days...

2007-03-20T18:19:00.000+01:00

Those were the days. You should really watch this video! Everybody would instantly understand why everybody loves Mac. And if that's not enough watch this piece of masterwork! Even Hollywood is addicted to Macs!

Apple's computer 'Lisa' (1983)

The word of the day, is not jealous

2007-03-19T17:28:00.000+01:00

Imagine, you go to University to do some serious PLC programming. You come in at half past 8, you go sit behind (or is it before?!) a computer. Everything is fine, until some kind of teacher (or whatever his profession might be) comes in, and until the moment he leaves. He said the word serial (about 25 times in 4 hours). Speaking of a word of the day!

When I came home I read something about jealousy, there was a test involved and I decided to do it. It appears I'm not a very jealous person...

Is this good or not? It's not that I don't care, but I'm just not the type of woman who's gonna hit another woman on a party just because my boyfriend is talking to a blond-big boobs-leggy woman with perfect teeth ;)

Merpel & Appel went on a surftrip Fuerteventura II

2007-03-18T20:07:00.000+01:00

Saturday evening Marieke came around to upload the more then 300 pictures we made in one week! I didn't even upload my pictures jet and she was already talking about a new surf trip: Portugal!

Later that evening I went to Anoushka and Bart. It was Anoushka's birthday when I was away, but that wasn't really a problem cause they were skiing on my birthday! The first hour I was there I finally went through about a 1000 pictures. From their last ski trip, carnaval and a party where they made more then 300 pictures on one evening. So 300 pictures in 8 days isn't to bad?!

Well anyway, Fuerteventura! After a good night sleep on Friday, it was time to go surfing again. Saturday we went back to Playa Blanca to find the waves much calmer then they were Thursday. After some falling of my board I made 1 really good ride, after lunch and yoga on the beach I had another good ride in the afternoon session (And Saturday wasn't even my best day!)

In the evening Marieke and I went to see the end of the carnaval, that meant there were a lot of floats who would start as a parade at the roundabout at our hotel and would end somewhere close to the main street in the centre. The parade would start at 6pm, and at 19.30 the parade started (the locals always take it easy, why rush?). It started with a lot of half naked woman, which we are not use to in parades in Holland. The reason could be that it is most of the time freezing when it is carnaval here.

When we saw all the floats, we returned to the hotel to pick up the other who were ready to go out.
After 5 minutes Demelza stood on a float?! 2 minutes later, Marieke was on the same float which had an Indian theme.
Jilly, Lucy and me decided to have a drink in the center and would wait till the float with Demelza, Marieke and the Indians would show up.

When their float finally showed up, we all joined the Indians. After dancing, running away from a scary Spanish guy and a lot of trying not to fall over (the driver was not the best driver in the world!) we found out that we were on the only float which didn't go to the after party area, but to the harbor!

And then it was already Sunday! Sunday we went to Playa Blanca for the last time, and it was great! The waves were not to big, but we did had a lot of green waves. That meant a lot of paddling, and a lot of nose diving. Because I am not very heavy I could play around where the waves were white, and still could have good and long rides. In the morning I made 2 rides all the way to the beach, in the afternoon session I made some turns (I did got to turn before, but that was more a coincidence cause I moved on my board). At the end of the day I was exhausted but happy!

In the evening Marieke and I walked into the dune area, where we wanted to make some dessert pictures. The only problem was that by the time we reached the white sand it was totally dark! (and is was only 19.30h) After we wandered back we went to bed around 22h.

Monday we went surfing on the west coast of the island, at El Cotillo. At Cotillo beach there is ground swell, that I found very odd. With the ground swell there, and we were surfing on a reef. We had waves coming from different directions! For me that meant I found my talent, I was a master in catching the wrong waves. When you catched a wave another wave which came from the beach would come straight at you. Which was fun, but was very hard to surf on.
In the afternoon we went to a lagoon, which was absolutely gorgeous.....the only thing which was not so nice were the old-naked-German people who where glaring at us (probably cause we were wearing wetsuits).
Monday night was shopping night, and I finally found a 'sex wax' shirt! I was looking for that when I went to Hossegor, but then I only found stickers and XXL size shirts. But now I am the proud owner of a 'sex-wax' t-shirt!

The last day of surfing had arrived, for the last day of surfing we went again to El Cotillo. In the afternoon we did a 20 minute contest. Which was won by Marieke, not surprisingly cause she was the best surfer of the week.
That night we went out in our new bought '7 Island surf' (the name of the surf school), some food, a few drinks and to bed (everybody wanted yawning all the time).

Bye Bye Fuerte! Wednesday was the day we had to go home. After an (English) breakfast at the hotel for €4,21??!! I found that a very strange amount, but it was literally counted back from 700 pesetas?! We went for a last visit to the beach of Corralejo, where it was a nice 22C.

At 12, Sara came to pick us to go the airport. Our flight was delayed for more then an hour, because there were people on the plane which did not had the right papers with them?! With this delay it would mean we would miss our connection flight...
When we landed on Madrid Airport and got to the terminal building, it was the official departure time of our connection flight to Amsterdam. Madrid is a very very big airport and you find out how big it is if you have to run to the other side of the building. Then when we reached our gate, people were still waiting to board the plane.... All the running for nothing, but we did get to go home.

When we landed on Schiphol, got our main luggage and were walking to the trains, Steve showed up just to say hi and see if he had a tan! :)
For more pictures see my photo page.

Merpel & Appel went on a surftrip Fuerteventura

2007-03-17T00:36:00.000+01:00

Our trip began March the 7th at 6am. We hopped on a train to Schiphol Airport, there we said goodbye to rainy Holland and we were off to Madrid!

Just 30 minutes before we would land on Madrid Barajas Airport we had some serious turbulence. Which I found funny, it saved me a trip to a theme parc to go on a roller coaster. Other people on the plane weren't as enthusiastic about the heavily moving plane?!
Madrid Airport is hugh, it even has a Zara and a Starbucks....but no shopping for us, we had another plane to catch!

After 2000 miles of flying we reached our destination: Fuerteventura!
Instantly we noticed we were not dressed for this type weather, Sara who came to pick us up from the airport wore a top and a skirt...I still wore a long sleeve, a jacket and still had my winter coat on me.

After a 30 minute drive through a very dry landscape we arrived at our hotel in Corralejo. There we met the other 3 surf girls, Jilly, Lucy and Demelza. Marieke already met them before on previous surf trips to Newquay (UK). That evening we went for drinks and got to meet our surf coach Tom. After a few drinks we returned to our hotel to go get some sleep, because Thursday we needed to be well rested for our first day of surfing!

Thursday we went to Playa Blanca, a beach on the East side of the Island. The waves were much bigger then I had ever surfed on. So for the morning session I took it easy, in the afternoon the waves were a bit better luckily.
We would have 5 days of surf coaching and 1 resting day, and this day is normally on a Saturday. You got to go to a beauty spa and could have different treatments, like a Belgium chocolate mask, red wine bath or a massage with volcanic rock. Cause of bad wave conditions on Friday, we decided that Friday would be our day off. No-one really felt like going to the beauty spa, so we decided to go do some sight seeing on the Island.

Marieke, Lucy, Demelza and me decided that we would go climb up Bayuyo, a (non active) volcano close to Corralejo. Jilly would go discover the old part of the town, and later we found out she went to Lanzarote!
We started walking, and after a 2 hour walking we found out we didn't quit knew which volcano we were heading for and none of the volcano's seem to come closer! We arrived in a village with a supermarket so we decided to have an ice scream and ask where our volcano was. Marieke asked in her best Spanish the way to our volcano, apparently the volcano was very close to the last roundabout of Coralejo....(the roundabout was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel!) This meant or a 2 our hike back to the volcano with a chance of twilight or even darkness by the time we reached the summit. Or we could take a bus, but Spanish people live on a different pace. They just sit and wait for the bus, bus could arrive in 5 minutes could also be a hour?!

The volcano trip

So we called a taxi, which brought us to the foot of the volcano. Where we hiked up to the 270m volcano. The view from the top was really spectacular. After we descended I found out there were goats living on the foot of the volcano. I did not wanted to leave before I stroke a goat, of course the goat were better climbers then I was and they ran away. That's not entirely true cause a few goats did follow Lucy until she got a bit scared of them!

That's it for today, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is another workday, and I can start save money for my next holiday!

I love my apple

2007-03-06T17:54:00.000+01:00

My day wasn't very special until (besides that I am going on holiday in a few hours) , I came home and there was parcel delivered for me (this is exiting for me, normally I only get normal mail like bills and other trash.) Steve send me a cushion which says "I love my Apple"! How cool is that!! This is also a belated birthday gift, this also took 5 to 6 weeks to come to me.

And then I went upstairs and found my room turned in a pond again, just like yesterday and last night.

Fuerteventura here we come

2007-03-06T12:43:00.000+01:00

Just one more night of sleep to go, and then it's time to go to Fuerteventura!

Me and Marieke go on a surf trip for 8 days, today it's 22C there. Where I am now it's 10C and it's raining all the time!

But there is no need to be jealous! I will think about you folks...

Traffic light

2007-03-05T15:12:00.000+01:00

Imagine, you walk up to an intersection with traffic lights....
There are about 25 cyclist waiting for the traffic light to change to green. They are standing on the left side of the traffic light, you are walking to the right side of it.

As soon as you push the button of the traffic light, changes into green, and someone says to you: "I wish you did that before, that would have saved me a lot of waiting"?!

What do you think, I have special powers? Are you just really thick and think it is my good karma that is doing the job? NO! It's a regulated system, but it's always nice if someone tries to be funny!

Food, food and more food

2007-03-04T20:21:00.000+01:00

Kate and Rob, Steve's friends, were over so I decided to visit them and see how they were since I last saw them at Christmas.

Rob still appeared yo be hyper active, and he still loves to talk about shoes (sorry guys he is straight...) We didn't do a lot accept eat, we had some good take away Chinese. Next morning I tried to re-heat my rice (which didn't succeed, so I ate my rice cold). Steve and Rob played a few hours of Halo on the Xbox. Around 2 we were hungry again and decided to go and have some pizza.
After some food, and a little sight seeing in Leiden it was time to say goodbye to Kate and Rob. We walked them to the station, where Steve almost forgot to give Rob his bag back! Nice to be at Schiphol without your passport...

Saturday Steve and I did some shopping, Steve wanted to buy a Gibson guitar and he wanted to buy a microwave. But after some serious shopping for towels, pillows, pillowcases, candles, incense, food and so much more. We decided that is was time to go home.

Saturday evening I made reservation at a really nice Mediterranean restaurant named Frezza. You pick 3 courses, doesn't matter what (cold, warm) or in what order. We found out it was quit a posh restaurant, small dishes on a big plate. But the food was delicious, and the last course that we had (number 4) was dessert, I had chocolate cake and it was gooooooddd and big!

And then it was Sunday, a working day so back to Breda....luckily Steve made me pancakes in the morning, that's a good start of the day :)

After working at a busy IKEA, I found out the company who send me the Mighty Boosh DVD send me another copy! Dave (Steve's dad) reported the DVD missing after it didn't arrive after 2 and a half week, so the company send me another one.

1 year

2007-02-28T19:03:00.000+01:00

Me and my boyfriend are dating for 1 whole year now! Time flies when you're having fun!

The only strange thing about this day is that I told someone at my University about my '1 year dating-day'. Everybody has more respect for Steve now?! They never met him, but they seem to think that it is very hard to get along with me?

Remember people (specially Jeroen and Michel) he's dating me voluntarily!

Housewarming with an American

2007-02-26T15:33:00.000+01:00

This Saturday I had a housewarming of my classmate. Steve and Luke came along and as I expected, they behaved well.... Until we set foot in Ronalds new house!

Luke decided that he would introduce himself as an American?! The only tricky thing was when people asked him where he came from he just answered: from the South. So that didn't quit work, he found a new group of people and he introduced himself this time as an Irishmen, and after that he tried to be an Australian....and then Ronald introduced him and Steve as 'The English'.
That meant the end of the roll play, a pity it was entertaining!

Bit later on the evening Steve fell in love with a guitar and Luke fell in love with a girl who did not jet reached the appropriate dating age. So it was a good party and we had some live music!

Sunday morning I was woken up very abrupt, because Luke was awake everybody needed to wake up. So the rest of the the day we took it easy, Steve en Luke played with my Mr. Hammond and I found out I like the word 'Kiddy' (comes from Kiddeminster, the village Luke lives).

Nintendo Wii & Nintendo DS

2007-02-23T21:31:00.000+01:00

What do you do if an English friend of your boyfriend comes to visit Holland?

You do a little bit of sight seeing and a lot more tourist things. Luke ("the friend") was suppose to land on Schiphol on Wednesday night around 19.30h. The thing was that he had a three hour delay, because.... a flickering light on the toilet of the plane...? That is a damn good reason not to take off!

Luke brought 2 of his favourite things in the world. A Nintendo Wii and a Nintendo DS.... What do you bring if you visit a friend, besides clean underwear? Exactly a few Nintendo's!

So Steve and Luke spend the first 12 hours of Luke's visit playing with the Wii, after that they got hungry and we decided to do some sigh seeing in Leiden. Of course in the evening there was sometime to play with the Wii and I got to play with the DS. Luke brought about a dozen games for the DS, and 5 of them were in Japanese! Really nice and understandable if Super Mario speaks Japanese to you!? Luckily there was also an (English) game you got to do operations on people, more my game.

And of course we did the ultimate tourist thing, we went to Amsterdam. To see a lot of coffee shops, the red light district and a lot of Chinese take aways. Luke has some nice pictures to show his family now (him sitting in a really big wooden shoe, him hugging a statue next to Madame Tussauds, etc.)

Carnaval 2007

2007-02-21T08:41:00.000+01:00

It's over, today is ash Wednesday. Some people think that's a good reason to go have a drink again and discuss this carnaval (maybe I'm one of these people, I don't know jet).

A few statistics about this carnaval:
The carnavals song of the year: Theo Maassen - Lauwe pis.
Number of different bars and pubs I visited in the last 6 days: 9.
Number of people we started with Friday: 17.
Number of people we ended up with Tuesday: 6.
What did I drink: beer.
How many drinks did I have this carnaval: ??
Best dressed: the people who we're dressed up as 'De toppers' (They are 3 singers, 2 over the top gay guys and one straight guy, who are gonna give a series of concerts in Amsterdam).

And as promised a picture of the wedding dress!

Mighty Boosh

2007-02-20T12:42:00.000+01:00

Just one more day of carnavalling to go...and then we have to wait for another year!

All good things come to an end (and financially, it also comes to an end!). Between partying and sleeping I received a parcel from Steve's parents. It was for my birthday, the parcel was send on the 29th of January but I received it last Saturday (18-02-2007). It took a while to cross the channel!
But now I'm the proud owner of a Mighty Boosh DVD!

For everyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about... If you like the British sense of humor and receive BBC3, you're lucky you can watch this hilarious program. If you're not that lucky to receive BBC3 you can watch them on DVD. It's about 2 guys (Vince & Howard) who live in a house with a shaman and his gorilla familiar. They have 'great' adventures together, and there is always some poetry or a political statement from the moon?!

Who doesn't like this type of humor?

Carnaval

2007-02-15T16:12:00.000+01:00

Today is the day, the start of 6 days of drinking to much, unhealthy eating, and cloths which smell like you have been sleeping in an ashtray. Yes people, it's CARNAVAL, and we love it!

I'm not entirely shore about the outfit jet, but tonight I'm going to dress up like a ' famous' dutch singer (see picture) who once made a song about Mexico. She doesn't have an artist name, that's why she called herself: 'Singer without a name'?! The only thing I have to do before I can go tonight is comb my wig.

Tomorrow I'm going to dress up like a post order bride (it's a real wedding dress, and it's really over the top! I bought it second hand, so that means someone real wore this for her wedding....pictures will be posted soon!)

Valentines flowers

2007-02-14T23:40:00.000+01:00

I did not find out jet from who the cards are, I thought they were from my boyfriend but he said he didn't send them?!

My boyfriend send me something far more better, he send me flowers! Call me old fashion, but I like my flowers!!
Fanks boyfriend!

Valentines cards

2007-02-14T11:16:00.000+01:00

It's not even noon, and I already got 3 (anonymous) Valentines cards. This year, is a good year :)

The Frames in Antwerp

2007-02-11T22:47:00.000+01:00

For the second time in 3 month I went to a Frames concert.
The first time I saw them live was in de Melkweg in Amsterdam, the only problem back then was that I was sick and couldn't really enjoy it.

But luckily this Irish band crossed the channel once again, this time to Belgium. The concert was in Antwerp in the 'Petrol', only a 45 min drive away. It all went well, we left in time, we arrived in Antwerp, and then trouble started.... Belgium is known or should I say notorious cause of their bad roads and the lack of traffic signs. My navigation system send me everywhere accept the place we should be. We had already seen on the map that it was quit outside the center and there were no real parking spaces close to the 'Petrol'.
After 15 min of driving around in a city with a lot of roundabout we found a parking lot. According to Steve's map it was about 2 km away from the ' Petrol' . We were walking into some remote industrial estate, we weren't to shore we were going the right direction.

We ran into some other people who also had troubles finding the 'Petrol club'. But we found it, and (of course) there were a lot of parking spaces at the club! From the outside the ' Petrol' seems to be a second world war bunker. On the inside it was all very relaxed, there was a DJ with a love for futuristic music, some nice sofa's and a film screen which they used to project Barbarella (which is quit strange, at least the parts I have seen).

For the start of the evening they had a local band and a band who toured with the Frames for a while. After that it was time for the band we came for!

The area where the concert was wasn't even half full, there we about 100 people. So you could say it was an "intimate gig". They're really a great live band, they even have a fiddler...How cool is that?
Most people didn't came for the the Frames so the audience was not as enthusiastic and warm as the last time in Amsterdam. Still it was great gig!

Afterwards ' Petrol' turn into a disco, where Marieke and I tried to make Steve dance. Then Marieke saw the Fiddler and she almost jumped onto him! I saw the bass guitar player walking by, and I said the next time he's walking by I'm going to shake his hand. And there he was again, Joe (the bass guitar player a.k.a the ' dwarf') again. I thanked him for a great evening, and he thanked me for coming... :) By the time it was almost 3ish we discussed if we were gonna stalk the band or go home, we went home.

Lamington Nature Parc, Coolum Beach, Byron, and so on...

2007-02-09T18:40:00.000+01:00

I got a postcard from a friend, who went for an internship to Australia and she sticks around there a bit longer (3 more months!) to travel around. The postcard was filled for 95% with all places she's been, just a small selection of places she has visited: Hervey Bay, Fraser Island, Aboriginal centre, scuba diving on the Whitsundays, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rain forest and a lot more!
In the next 5 days she's going into the outback, then 5 days to Melbourn and then... she's going to travel around Malaysia for 12 days.
No of course I'm not jealous...
we had snow you know!

Car accident

2007-02-08T18:11:00.000+01:00

Today my mum got hit by a car while she was standing still in a mini-traffic jam. The girl had driven 60 km an hour and she hadn't seen that there were people standing still to enter the motorway!?

So now she's home with a black eye, bruises and most important she lost her beloved blue Seat Marbella (without airbags...). So the hunt for a new car has started.

Another not very amusing thing is that, today we have a share holders meeting with our student company. My mum was one of the few who would actually come as a shareholder. Other people called today they couldn't come cause of the snow. So this share holders meeting is not gonna be a very long one. Luckily we're gonna have a drink afterwards to celebrate our company success.

Happy Birthday to me.....!

2007-02-07T17:40:00.000+01:00

It's my birthday! And the general advice I got for this year: "you're an adult now, try to act like one" Well I only turned 21, not 80 so we'll see.

My boyfriend knows exactly what woman want, he already got me two presents on my birthday eve! The first one was a USB-light and the second thing was a bag of potato crisp!

I came home after a longgggg day at University and my parants got me a really cool presents,,,it's apple green and made of plastic!
Just the way I like it :p

Woman

2007-02-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

- Why do most woman think the ultimate goal of happiness is marry before your 35th and have at least 2 kids before your 29th?
- Why do woman hit the brakes before a roundabout, even before the other car has entered the roundabout?

Mr. Hammond has arrived!

2007-02-04T19:02:00.000+01:00

The weekend started off very well, my beloved iMac came Friday afternoon. The delivery guy said it was a computer...not just a computer mate, it's my iMac!

From the moment my Mac arrived I didn't do a lot anymore besides working and playing with my new toy (worked 3 days, so not a lot of time to play with the Mac).

That same evening Steve came to play with my Mr. Hammond (yes for everybody who missed it, Mr. Hammond is the name of my iMac!) Steve installed all sort of useful things while I was admiring all the colours and nice gadgets (such as photo booth, and a million colour screen!)

Saturday I had to go to work, and Steve got to play with my Mr. Hammond all day. When I came home, I had two nice surprises the first one was that I got my first birthday card. And it was a ' by air mail' card, the card was from Steve's family...call me a loser but I still like it to get birthday cards! Second thing had to do with Mr. Hammond. It was actually more Steve who was very exited about it: he found a combination of buttons, push them and the screen colours go negative...

Saturday evening Marieke came around, and she brought gifts (not just cause I'm such a nice person, but because this Wednesday is my birthday!) She got me some accessories for carnaval and some very useful things for our surf holiday to Fuerteventura like suncream, tribord and some very big pink sunglasses (or where they for Carnval?) Marieke also got me my first (and only?!) birthday card for Mr. Hammond, she herself is the proud mum of two Macs!

Sunday at work some old grumpy guy in a electric wheelchair decided to drive over my feet. I was very polite and said: "excuse me sir" (and I thought he would apologizes) but no he said: "you were in the way, weren't you!" Okay??!! I definitely hate old grumpy men in electric wheelchairs from now on!

Rolli Rookworst

2007-01-31T23:44:00.000+01:00

I finally, finally got a good influence on someone! Apparently my colleague was on the verge of doing something stupid. But before he was going to make his mistake he sort of heard a little voice in the back of his head; telling him not to do this, and this was my advice I gave him in the past! Yes people if you want to stay out of trouble, talk to me...

We all love public transport!

2007-01-30T16:30:00.000+01:00

Normally it it takes 17 minutes by coach from Breda station to my stop in Etten Leur. If you travel by train from Breda to Etten Leur, it's a 7 minute journey from station to station. Today this trip took me 2.5 hours!

The train station in Roosendaal was closed, cause of a gas leak or bomb...? That meant the trains to and from Roosendaal didn't drive anymore. That means the intercity train to Etten Leur didn't drive and that also meant that all people who where going to Dordrecht/Rotterdam/Amsterdam were still in Breda cause theire train could not pass Roosendaal station. And that means it was very busy at Breda station!

What do you do if the trains don't drive? You go by coach. That was my first choice anyway. Normally if the trains don't drive for a good reason, the national railways makes sure there are enough coaches to surrounding city train stations. But cause of the new time table of the coaches (the existing lines drive more frequent now) there were no coaches left.

The first two coaches to Etten-Leur/Oud Gastel/Roosendaal were full under a minute. We waited 10 minutes till the next regular coach came. The driver who went to Etten Leur decided he would only take people who lived the most distant away?! That simply meant people who lived not even close to Etten Leur got to go to Etten Leur and people who needed to go to Etten Leur (and old people which didn't do a lot of elbow work) stayed in Breda.

25 minutes later we finally got on a coach to Etten Leur. Someone in that coach had a bad karma I think, because this coach broke down on the motorway. So we got kicked out off the coach next to a forest. Everybody got a little bit annoyed, and we decided to see if we could order a taxi. The answer was clear after one phone call, there were no free taxi's in the area anymore.

The only thing we could do was walk to Etten Leur (not that far away about 5 km, but still). Of course the normal asphalted path was temporary gone, they're making a new cycle path. So we did a little hiking through the forest (with my almost new boots).

Luckily I needed to go to Etten Leur, most people needed to go to Roosendaal (about 30 km further away).

Apple up-date: Estimated delivery date: 02/02/2007

Chocolate brown

2007-01-29T16:30:00.000+01:00

I finally cleaned my room, moved my furniture and organised my desk!

With my birthday coming up my parents asked me the same question every year 'What would you like for your birthday' this year it was easy. I want a desk, and I found one at my favourite Swedish furniture shop.

So with this idea I came home Friday evening and decided to move my furniture, just to see if my new desk would fit. In the evening Steve came around and he had decided that he wanted to paint his apartment (it was really necessary, the whole living room is light yellow!).

On Sunday we went to the Gamma (D.I.Y. shop) to get paint. Finally there, a nice salesperson tells us that the colour Steve picked was probably not possible to make (?!) The colour was chocolate brown, but the colours for this season are light like lilac, beige and light grey. And that's why the machine could probably not make the colour.... that makes sense!
Steve took his chances and decided to buy 5 liters of the 'somewhat-dark-brown-paint'. Then we went back to walk 30 minutes with a mini stairs, brushes, rollers, sticky tape and 5 liters of paint.
I wasn't very enthusiastic about the colour first, but after it dried and had a second layer it looked gooood! The only negative thing on this whole experience was that afterwards the whole flat smelled after white spirit. Even the shower (which is cold and has no water pressure, don't even make me start about that!) smelled very chemical and toxic.

Monday morning I woke up feeling a bit strange, 2 reasons the whole flat still smelled after the white spirit, can't be very healthy!? Second reason my phone alarm went off and my phone was somewhere in the living room and the flat had a lot of obstacles on the floor (lack of organising). Not very fun at 06.30h.

Summary of the weekend: good weekend

Trifle

2007-01-25T00:15:00.000+01:00

Yay IKEA send me my salary (the €13.45 was from my retirement fund and IKEA got a private retirement fund so they pay it back at the end of the year bla bla). All this meant that I got enough money to order my iMac. All I have to do now is think of a suitable name for him/her?!

The second best thing that happened to me today was that I found the recipe of one of my favourite desserts: trifle. I had never tasted it or heard from it before, until I ate it at Christmas at Steve's family. It was good....! Today at work I was going through a dessert book and there is was page 12. My dessert: trifle! So next week I'm going to make trifle!