Kitten update

Well... seeing as I managed to more or less end this blog with kittens arriving, let's pick up with the past 10 months of kittens. After being shy for a couple of weeks, a period of Wodan peeing places where he probably wasn't supposed to (including even once our bed), Wodan running away for a day and lots of shouting either:"Wodan, no!" or "Kissa, no!", both of them have settled more or less.

Wodan is now a giant red male cat who for some reasons loves running taps and doesn't even really mind if you try washing him under one. Then Wodan is obsessed with water, in the past 3 days, he knocked over a flower vase 3 times already (at the last attempt it broke, so I guess Wodan won). Kissa is a bit more slimmer and into high surfaces and jumping. Both like to watch stuff happening outside under our balcony. Both look suicidal enough for us to shout them away from their moments of:"Hey, let's look like we might jump down from this 4 floor high balcony".

As for me... I could be doing worse as well. Might update you on that one next time.

Her majesty

Her majesty
Originally uploaded by selmerv

Yes, I know, haven't blogged in ages. Am still alive, might have loads of things to tell you all about. Will probably have to do so more often. But let's start slowly. After buying a new camera last weekend I've been taking loads of photos of things. Really liked this one of Kissa staring at a fly.

Eeeek!

Yes, I'm still alive, yes I know that I managed to fail to write for almost 2 months. I've apparently been too busy chasing kittens (more pics to be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/selmer). They're currently working on severe demolition of the house. But after 2 months they appear to be almost used to living here.

Besides that I've obviously been working, I'm using trains more and more to get to work seeing as autumn traffic jams are not the ones you want to be found dead in. And tomorrow my mum is getting herself a new knee. Yes, loads of other things must have happened in the past couple of weeks but if seeing as I failed to write about them, I already managed to forget. Booh! Will try to be a better boy from now on.

The kittens have landed

More news on the kitten front. Last Monday girlfriend and I picked up our new kittens. After spending most of the evening looking at kittens sleeping in their travel-box we eventually spotted some movement. Kissa (Maaike's kitten) even walked halfway across the kitchen before disappearing back into it's travel-cage again. Wodan (mine) didn't move an inch all night.

On Tuesday we both had to work but after returning from work hoping to be greeted by two happy kittens we found out that the thing they currently do best is "hide". Kittens apparently fit behind anything you can think of (behind the washing machine, behind the stove, look at any place in your house which has a behind and you can hide a kitten there).

Personality wise one thing has become clear, there's one kitten that hides and stays silent and the other one hides and shouts "meeeew!" continuously. This turns out to be useful functionality. Because of Wodan's meeeew-function we're able to retrace the position of the kittens most of the time. We hope functionality other than hiding develops sometime soon.

Kittens!

After giving girlfriend a kitten for her birthday, we still needed to pick kittens. (Somehow an 's' crept in to the whole equation) Fortunately Karlijn came up with somebody with kittens and tonight we chose the ones we wanted: Introducing: Kitten one and Kitten two (we're still deciding on names, we believe). Maaike picked the grey one, the red one is supposedly mine. They'll enter our residence in the first week of October.

Note to self...

When girlfriend is out and you decide it's more efficient to place the laundry rack in the kitchen, try remembering this when you try raiding the fridge at 3am. That way you won't nearly wet yourself when you spot a weird shape in the kitchen.

Ooops!

Had the nerve to check what the summer did to my account balance, have to say it could have been friendlier. Then realised there still is a credit card bill coming in containing a washing machine. Might need to get a job on the side and live on water and one minute noodles for a bit.

Fun

Apparently time flies when you're having fun. And if that's the case then ever since coming back from my roadtrip, fun I must have had. In the space of two weeks I saw girlfriend finish uni and get herself a proper job, I somehow managed to hit the Utrecht night-life dressed as a gnome and I managed to get away with giving girlfriend a voucher worth "once castration" for our 3 year anniversary. Oh and yes, I've still got both balls, thanks for asking.

There probably isn't too much to say about girlfriend getting her uni-degree, I fear that I didn't have too much to do with that one besides sit, applaud and give a present at the appropriate time (well, actually a couple of days late but let's forget about that). The same thing with the job-interview, girlfriend did three of them for the one job she really wanted and I basically just kept my fingers crossed that we wouldn't end up being a single income household for the next decade (I heard they never have the money to buy gadgets )

As for the gnome-thing, Ingrid threw a p-party at her place because Karen and some other foreigners were visiting. For the occasion, I decided to dress up as a gnome. Not that the Dutch word for gnome 'kabouter' starts with a g but we've got quite the tradition of gnomes starting with the letter 'p' in .nl. For the foreigners that are interested, there's 'piggelmee', 'pinkeltje', 'paulus' and ofcourse Plop.

The party turned out to be a big success, as did the gnome outfit... until somebody decided that we should all hit the streets and go clubbing, that is. Well... actually, that was a big success as well. If I had known how popular gnomes are with girls, I would have taken to dressing as a gnome for clubbing 15 years earlier. Apparently if they're up for it gnomes really do get all the action. After passing out in Ingrid's bedroom and waking up still dressed as a gnome, the Sunday was spent recovering.

And then last Tuesday girlfriend and I celebrated our third anniversary (eek!) after which on Wednesday it was girlfriend's birthday. For some reason I decided to swap the presents so that they wouldn't make sense to girlfriend anymore, due to which she received a voucher worth '1 castration' for our anniversary. Because of this girlfriend decided that her birthday present would be so horrible that she'd want to castrate me.

After getting her birthday present (a food bowl for the cat that somewhere in the next couple of weeks should be entering our place), she replied:"But this is a really nice gift, why would I want to castrate you for this??" After that I told girlfriend that I was hoping she'd be using the castration on our new kitten. There's still fear that she'll decide to use it against me somewhere in the next couple of months though.

More Holiday!

Just returned from 2 weeks of holidays, half of which was a roadtrip with McR, Nicktor, Karen and a Dutch girl called Ingrid, only Karen had met before. The other half was a meetup with the people mentioned in the previous sentence and lots of Australian people I had met during my days in Perth. Fortunately Ingrid turned out to be a lot of fun, so the first half was a big succes. My Australian friends were still fun, so that was quite successful too.

Obviously all the pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/selmer

So what did we do?
day 1: Rotterdam->Den Bosch->Vlotho (Germany)
Picked up Ingrid in Den Bosch, got to meet her mum (who was apparently a bit anxious when her 20 year old daughter shouted out:"Mum, I'm going on a 2 week holiday with 3 random 30 year old guys!") Then drove on Germany-wards. Nicktor almost managed to badly dent my door at the camp-site but fortunately I was paying attention. Found out pretty early in the trip that apparently I did bring my mp3-player but that I forgot to bring the cable to connect it to my stereo. Argh!

First night consisted of card-games, beer, wine and lots of fun.

day 2: Vlotho->Berlin
Woke up to McR and Ingrid going swimming at subzero temperatures. Eventually packed and drove Berlin-wards. Stayed at Ulli's place. Discovered gnome-juice (liquor with a picture of a gnome on it)

Went clubbing in a pretty cheesy club. They did play Ice Ice baby though and there were naked women dancing. May have had a bit too much to drink that night. Then we probably all did.

day 3: Berlin
Picked up Karen at the train-station. Walked through Berlin, had Indian food. Eventually ended up playing cardgames at night.

day 4: More Berlin.
Saw a museum, spent time in a RC-airplane shop, had a really good dinner in an African restaurant. Tried clubbing but somehow failed. Played cardgames instead.

day 5: Czech republic-wards.
Karen kept trying to convince us that driving through Poland was the smart choice. In the end Nicktor put his foot down claiming his car wouldn't be able to make it through the mountains. The hills in the Czech republic already showed us that he might have been right there.

Camped near Terezin and had a really good hunting session in a supermarket.

day 6: Towards lake Balaton.
Nice camp-site at the lake. Good restaurant. Probably a bit touristy. Lots of alcohol and cardgames.

day 7: Lake Balaton
Lazed at the lake, swam a bit, read a bit, walked around a bit. My life is hard.
See yesterday for the night entertainment.

day 8: Lake Balaton->Budapest.
After lazing for most of the day at the lake, McR and Nicktor told us they were bored and wanted to leave. We let them. Somehow managed to find the Budapest apparetment without sat-nav and/or a proper map. Yay Karen! Arriving there we found out we only knew the street name, not the house-number. Looked up phone-number of house-guy on the internet, he was kind enough to drop us another set of keys. Let ourselves in, mooned the camera, drank all the beers in the fridge and then had a big reunion when everybody walked in and shouted:"Weren't you arriving tomorrow?"

Went out for food with the 5 of us, had cocktails (hic!) and came back to a sleeping house. Played cardgames.

day 9: Budapest.
Looked around, saw red bull air-race preparations. This means planes but no people (yay!) and drank beer. (Yay! again) All the girls went to the baths and Ingrid managed to lose her contacts. Till Tuesday (the day Ingrid leaves) McR is nice enough to borrow her his glasses. Seeing as he's only got his prescription sunglasses and his normal glasses this renders him blind at night.

day 10: More Budapest. Walked around with Christy, Sar and Jess. Had a good laugh while looking at the twins taking identical pictures of all the sights.

day 11: Even more Budapest. A national holiday. Spent most of it sitting in a park playing cardgames with Kaz, Ingrid and Mike. Got shouted at by McR when we more or less left him standing in the rain getting wet.

day 12: The day Ingrid took off. Walked around castle hill with Mike and all the girls. Decided to do a self-guide wine tour, where we bumped into McR, who had already been wine-touring for an hour. Tried tasting all the wines and after that things got a bit hazy. Woke up at 10:30pm lying on the couch thinking:"Hmmm... let's get McDonald's" Did just that. Apparently there was chunderage at the wine-tour.

While I was passed out, Maz managed to sit on McR's glasses. So he's still blind at night.

day 13: Felt somewhat hungover (wonder why) Took a boat-trip on the Danube and looked around a bit in the end-village. Still felt somewhat hungover on the way back.

day 14: The last day in Budapest. Spent shopping and doing Mario Kart. Dinner at night. Sadly no big party because many of us had to drive.

day 15: Driving back. Fortunately Kaz had decided not to go to Greece but to come back with us so that we could drop her off in Gent. Stopped for the night near Nurnberg. Lots of beer, card-games, snuff tobacco and kangaroo impersonating Germans might have been all part of the night. Fun!

day 16: Nurnberg to home. Mainly lots of driving and me slagging off Belgians because Kaz thought they might be cute. Eventually made it back home, where I got to cuddle girlfriend. And look at the Polish girl she brought in.

Holiday!

Was far too busy playing with my DS to update the diary, then a copy of "Bit of a Blur" by Alex James showed up and there was even less an excuse to update the diary. Really love the book, now need to find a way to have good looking hair. (Apparently all you need as a bass player is good hair)

In another couple of days my second big holiday of the year should take place. This time it'll be a roadtrip with Nicktor, McR, Karen and a girl only Karen knows called Ingrid. It should be taking us to at least Berlin, Budapest and Vienna and it should be a blast. Willl try to have lots of fun while traveling.

Nintendo!

After last week's budget-chicken, where I told Nicktor that I'd get a Nintendo DS if he'd get one. There's now a new addition to the Selmer and Maaike househ0ld. I'm still trying to work out whether now having a DS means I won or I lost. Our collection of games is still limited to two (which might either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it) but both have received quite a bit of gameplay already.

Mario-kart DS just needs to be played so that hopefully eventually I'll be able to spank Lorraine's behind from one somewhere in the near future, while Mario & Luigi (partners in time) needs to be played because it's the other game in our household and because, while it started off dead boring for the first 3 hours, it's slowly starting to pick up its pace. Yes, there's also Sonic but that one's more a Maaike thing.

Owning a DS also makes for a great excuse to take the train into work. Somehow playing while driving is still not on my skills list. Now can Zelda and the new Lego Star wars please get released?

Still alive

Hi all, got told off by Ellen, Lorraine and girlfriend for considering ending this blog. So... that must mean that I do have readers ;-) I'd better get back into writing interesting stuff soon then. Sadly tonight I'm too busy to write because somehow I ended up buying a Nintendo DS. I blame Lorraine and Nicktor's eager-ness to join in.

Lunch!

Went bookshopping in the morning, then teamed up with Ruben and Wendy for lunch. They managed to make us eat all the things in the "what to eat in Singapore"-booklet, which we failed to cover yesterday.

Eventually left Ruben and Wendy behind and did the night safari in Singapore zoo. Recommended.

Back to Singapore!

Flew back to Singapore, got measurements made for a suit for lots of money (still a whole lot cheaper than at home though) and eventually teamed up with Ruben and Wendy for food, food and food.(Ruben is trying to get us to eat all foods of the "what to eat in Singapore" booklet within 48 hours. We're not complaining ;-) Walked around town for more food, tea, coffee and nice views. Got told off by a police officer for not sitting on a bench but on the handrail behind it.

Also bad news, they changed our flight back home from a 12 hour day stopover to a 14 hour night stopover. Because we already booked a flight with a 12 hour stopover we're not getting a free hotel.

Templed out.

After visiting 3 more temples in the morning, we ran out. No more temples to be seen in Angkor. Our tuctuc-driver advised us to take a boat-ride on the lake, which we did. An interesting boat-ride but for the $20 each the 1 hour trip was probably a bit expensive. The boat-trip only taking us to an overpriced restaurant made it feel even more of a scam. Still.. interesting to see how people live on boats.

More temples

Woke up really early to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Nice. At the same time this meant that we were finished looking at temples around noon. Slept most of the afternoon, then had dinner in Siem Reap. The city center looks like more fun to stay than our place. Still.. for $USD 12 the room is really nice.

Angkor

Day one of visiting temples. Slept in, booked ourself a tuctuc-driver for the next 3 days (USD $60), got access passes made for Angkor ($40 each) and set off to look at lots of temples. Really interesting, really hot and sweaty and every other step 10 childeren will jump you to try and sell you something. (Usually "only 1 dollar") Still definitely worth it.

Crossing Thailand.

Woke up in Bangkok, had a bit of trouble finding the place where we were supposed to be picked up for the next bus (arrived there at 6:50 while we were supposed to be there at 6:30) and spent an hour wondering whether we were still on time. Just as we started to consider whether we should book a place to sleep for the night, we got picked up for another bus which would take us to the Cambodian border.

After getting our visa we were told to follow a Cambodian guy, who'd take us to the other side and who first told us to get lots of Thai Baht out (which I failed to do) and then on the other side told us that we couldn't pay in Thai Baht and that we'd have to change all the Baht to Riel (the Cambodian currency) because all banks would be closed in Siem Reap for the weekend.. Fortunately we had been warned that nobody uses riel for anything so we skipped that part of the scam as well.

After a long, hot wait at the border, we got to spend 7 hours driving the last 150 kms. Eventually made it, booked into the hotel and found out that:"Yes, the non-existing ATMs in Siem Reap do actually hand out US-dollars."

Leaving Chiang Mai

In the evening our Bangkok bound bus would pick us up. Till that time we stocked up on books, fruit and other useful things. I'm now finally the proud owner of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", Mangosteens and anti-diarrea medicine.

Managed to get picked up by the bus and spent the rest of the night bussing.

Cooking Class

Woke up and did the "chilli club cooking class". Mr. Visutt is still the brilliant teacher I remembered him to be and girlfriend and I got schooled in Thai cooking + food decoration. Still suck at the food decoration, still having trouble finishing all the food. Did survive though and eventually at dinner time set out for a look at the night market. Failed to buy anything useful.

Thailand it is.

Woke up early, crossed the border on a boat and after a little wait at a guesthouse on the Thai-side (why wake up early again?) we made our way to Chiang Mai. I spent quite a bit of time there 4 years ago but apparently most of it was spent drinking beer seeing as I can't remember seeing much of this town.

Walked a bit around town and tried booking a train out of town. Found out that that train would miss the connecting train Cambodia-wards and decided to opt for the hellish 24 hour bus-ride instead. We'll probably regret it later but at least we'll spend an extra day in Chiang Mai, which means we'll be able to do a cooking class there (which I already did 5 years ago but a bit of a brush up won't hurt, I guess.)

Spent most of the evening reading outside. Until girlfriend went to bed and I decided to walk a bit more to see if I could find more recognisable things. Really bad news... on this walk I finally found where all the hookers lived. If only I had known 5 years ago! :-(

The river continues.

Up early again, into the boat and then did basically the same as yesterday. Arrived late in the afternoon, found ourselves a guesthouse, had dinner and passed out.

Floating up the Mekong

Got up fairly early and set off for the boat-station. Here we hopped onto a slowboat, which took us slowly up the river to Pakbeng. Floating slowly upriver means staring out at scenery (mainly trees and bushes with the occasional cow, goat, fisherman and elephant.) Still good fun for the 10 hours it took to get to Pakbeng.

There our bags got dragged off the boat by a friendly local, who offered to carry them to our guesthouse. When I tried tipping him, he reacted offended by the size of the tip and demanded a tip, which was even more than the price of a room for the night. Eventually had to push him out of our bedroom and shut the door on him to get rid of him. Apart from food and a river there's not much to do in Pakbeng. Fortunately sitting in a boat for a whole day makes you sleepy.

Luang Prabang

Walked around Luang Prabang, looked at temples and got soaked in sweat. Looked at some more temples, had dinner and did some shopping at the night market.

Oh, we also managed to book the boat out towards PakBeng and Houayxai (sp?). Over the Mekong. That should take us most of the next two days.

Argh!

Today only a 200 km bus-ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. That can't be too challenging, can it? Actually, our expensive bus turned out to be fully packed with foreigners and legroom was a bit of an issue. Also, apparently it is possible to take more than 6 hours to travel 200 kilometers. (Then there was a mountain in between)

Eventually did make it though, found a guesthouse, had dinner, looked around a bit at night and then passed out in bed.

Floating...

Had break-fast, jumped on a songthaew and got taken 15 kilometers up the road for some caving, some trekking and eventually some tubing back home. The caves were really cool, 1 with a big Buddha shrine, one with really sharp, slippery rocks and one which we swam into floating on inflated car tubes.

After lunch we trekked back to the main road, caught a car back a bit and then jumped into the river to float back to Vang Vieng. Floating on a river is quite relaxing, especially with all the beer-bars with flying foxes surrounding the river. Eventually made an arse off myself falling out of a flying fox and made my way back to Vang Vieng for food and internet.

Another day, another road

After seeing enough of Vientiane, we decided to move on to the next place. 150 kms of travel took about 6 hours. Eventually we made it though, checked into a guesthouse and walked around town (which consists of 2 streets), after which we had dinner in a restaurant showing simpsons-episodes (somehow it seemed a better choice than the place which was showing Friends). Tomorrow we're going trekking caving and tubing.

Vientiane

Spent the day walking through Vientiane, checking out temples, bookshops and other things to do. A nice, small city but also somewhat warm. Had food and beers on the riverside at night.

Another bus, Vientiane this time.

Seeing as Savannaket wasn't the most exciting place ever we took the first bus out in the morning. Actually, we skipped that one, it left at 6:40 but the 8:15 bus did the trick as well and seeing as Vientiane was only 400 kms further up the road, how long can it take?

The answer: Apparently 10 hours. Locals have to get on and off the bus all the time, the bus-driver needs a break every 2 hours, etc. A tuctuc-ride later we found our hotel in Vientiane then had a drink and some food at the river and passed out early.

Savannaket

Got up at 5:30, got in the bus and landed in Savannaket at 4 in the afternoon. This envolved several busses, and while at the first stop they told us:"No, you're not supposed to enter the bus to Savannaket all other tourists just entered", at the Lao border they made us enter that bus after all.

Not much happening in Savannaket, except for a torrential rainstorm for which we had to take shelter under some random person's house. Had dinner, sat outside, walked around for a bit and then went to bed.

Boat trip

Completely forgot to mention the boat-trip we booked on the Perfume river. Got thrown on the back of a motorbike in the morning, got put in a boat and boated up and down the perfume-river while looking at temples and perfume river-life here and there. Probably more exciting than I make it sound here. Managed to bump into Fiona, who was taking the same boat tour.

Probably not as much a surprise as it sounds, seeing as everybody in Vietnam is travelling in one direction. Dinner at night and then to bed early because we're leaving really early tomorrow moring, for Savannaket in Laos.

Yes we've only spent 7 days in Vietnam and we're missing loads so I guess we'll have to go back some day.

Hue

Woke up in the train and jumped out at the Hue train-station after a while. Apparently I'm pretty good at sleeping in trains. Apparently girlfriend had more problems.

Got jumped by 1000 people trying to sell us hotel-rooms, jumped in the back of one of their vans and got rushed to a beautiful hotel-room in Hue. A bit on the expensive side (if one is allowed to call USD $15 a night for a double expensive, thatis) but still nice.

Tried riding bicycles into town in the afternoon. Some oversights here.

1. The sun is shining pretty badly.
2. This makes it pretty fucking (sorry) hot.

Sweated like otters while biking through Hue and walking through the old citadel. Eventually back for dinner at a place where they more or less freaked out at the sight of foreigners:"Had to point at the plate of the people besides us to order" Still nice.

Leaving Hanoi

Spent most of the day getting back to Hanoi, then getting some more US-dollars, showering and eventually at 7pm the overnight train to Hue. Slept really well.