Slacking off

I know, I've missed loads of days over the past month. Lots of stuff happening, mostly to do with projects. Lorraine visiting, going clubbing with Ellen, spending lots of time in Lelystad. Really I'm still doing lots of stuff, I just appear to be too busy to write about all this. New years resolution:"Revamp this diary". Merry Christmas to all of you!

And another Sinterklaas-day, this time in Almere. Got a Remote Control-car and various other "little" presents. Cool!

Got a christmas tree with my mum, somewhere in the east of the Netherlands.

Tried arguing with the tax-people but it looks like they're right :-( Went for drinks at the PointLogic bar in the evening. Nice to see everybody once again. Ended up at my place with Adriaan and Remco after food at 'Cafe de Paris'. Both of them now know that 'all women get their periods'

Not sleeping much and waking up early apparently isn't my cup of tea. Hrmpf! Came back home only to find a note from the tax-people that they'd like to see 862 euro's because I ticked a wrong box in 2004 eek!

Celebrated Sinterklaas with parents, drove up and down to Brussels as well. Note to self:"Don't drive up and down to Brussels in one day!" Still had the annual sinterkaas-fondue with sister, Martin, mum, dad, aunt and uncle.

Spent day trying to write sinterklaas-poetry and doing some final shopping. Girlfriend was out most of the day, watched "Deadly Weapons" at night. Brilliantly terrible!

Yep, I've been somewhat busy lately due to which I didn't really have time to experience exciting things. You can probably best fill in all the gaps in the diary with:"Work". Went to the "Nacht van de Wansmaak" film-night at the cinema (which probably best translates into "bad taste"-night) with McR, Martina and Nicktor. Brilliant terrible trailes. Bought the "Deadly weapons" -dvd (with Chesty Morgan) and a compilation one as well.

McR and Nicktor are getting old though, both of them kept falling asleep, McR even during hardcore porn. What's wrong with these people?

Saw Muse play in Den Bosch. Brilliant light-show, good show, sadly they didn't play any Showbiz-songs though. Still had loads of fun. Got stuck in a traffic jam on the way back home, traffic jams at 11pm, WTF?

Worked in Brussels, drove back, felt tired.

Slept, went to the Finnish church to buy flour (don't ask me, ask girlfriend), did some grocery and tea-shopping (bought 3 new teas, *yay!*) And then realised that I wanted to buy a photo-printer. Have been considering which printer to buy ever since. (Some choices are just too hard )

Then I also need to start saving for Ruben's wedding and there's a whole list of gadgets I need to start buying (on it are guitars, game-consoles, PSPs, LCD tvs) Yep you're right, I appear to have recovered completely from buying this new place.

Road to ruins

Had a primary school reunion, the last one before they tear down the old primary school building. (There goes part of life) Spent evening chatting with various old schoolmates. The main realisation of the day was that I've been blessed with my hair, half the people around were either bald or balding. Should do this reunion stuff more often.

Had an interesting meeting in Rotterdam, then rented some dvds, which I failed to watch because girlfriend was going through a "little mermaid"-phase. Played guitar and tinkered with computer instead.

Urgh!

Had a meeting in Utrecht late in the afternoon, spent 3 hours driving the 60 kms to get back home. I should probably swap the car for a bicycle. In the 'yay!'-department:'Mum and dad fixed the couch!'

Election day, voted in the morning, watched the results come in at night. Guess people'll have a hard time creating a coalition over the next couple of weeks/months.

Girlfriend visited, girlfriend tired. Watched Freek de Jonge's election show on tv. Pretty brilliant but not half as funny as when I saw it in the theater a couple of weeks ago.

Amsterdam

Worked in Amsterdam all day, still weird to be back again. Spent the evening playing guitar, with the amount of practise I've been getting lately, I may become somewhat skilled somewhere in the next 20 years!

Moving

We'll blame the whole vomit-incident on McR's pre-moving stress because today was the day where we moved McR's stuff to his new place. Had loads of fun moving stuff with loads of people. Surprised at how fast we managed to do this moving thing, considering the amount of stuff not yet in boxes when I arrived.

A day spent toilet cleaning.

Woke up to a house smelling faintly of vomit, did quite a bit of hungover mopping, cleaned the toilet once again and left with part of my couch (did I mention yet that it crapped itself again last night?) to show my parents. (As in:"Mum, dad, is broken, please do something about it")


Eventually returned to a place still smelling of vomit and went to take photos with girlfriend. (She needed pictures of inter-cultural signs if I'm not entirely mistaken, if I am then she'll probably correct me in the comments. Eventually got back home and cleaned the toilet
once again, this time using bleach. After this mopped the toilet.

Surprise!

With Nicktor turning 30 next weekend, we obviously needed to do something for his birthday. We had already dropped hints that we were planning something weeks ago so Nicktor was on high alert and was planning on watching his back day and night starting at the day of his birthday and ending once he had spotted our plans.

Unfortunately he had forgotten that we could plan something before his birthday as well. Lured to my place with the excuse of a guy's night out, Nicktor found loads of friends, family and even colleagues drinking cocktails and shouting "Surprise!" at his entrance Check the photos and especially the little film at (Arjan's site) and my photos as well for a quick scoop on what happened.

Had loads of fun with loads of people all night with McR being very enthusiastic about all the different cocktails living in my fridge. Unfortunately eventually these cocktails got a bit too much for him. I found out about this when I went to take a leak and found myself up to my ankles in vomit, surrounded by vomit stained walls. (Apparently hitting these was easier than aiming for the toilet bowl). This did explain the moronically grinning McR outside the loo.

Did some drunken cleaning at 2 in the morning and continued partying. McR passed out with a bucket besides his head and didn't move for most of the night. (Apart from the stretch where we tried piling stuff on top of him)

Bought Metal Gear Solid 3 for my PS2 looks like I'll have some fun with it over the next couple of weeks.

Taught class, had girlfriend over at night.

More traffic jams. Then spent the night trying to figure out how to teach a class tomorrow.

Monday 13th meant traffic jams, loads of them. Took forever to get back to work, then took forever to get back again. Yep, I'm back @ ING.

Saw the Kaiser Chiefs play live in the Melkweg in Amsterdam with girlfriend and McR. Brilliant show, even their opening act was cool. Home late

Somehow managed to leave my carkeys at the counter at the supermarket. Somehow managed to not notice this till 5 hours later. Did I mention that the keys to my house were attached to the car-keys yet?

Borat!

Decided that I wanted to go out and see: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan with girlfriend. Asked Mcr to come along but he said he was busy studying *boring!*. For the third time this week McR picked the wrong activity to do. Saw the most painfully funny film I've seen in a long time. Plenty of:"No, please don't tell me this is happening"-moments but did spend an hour and a half crying with laughter while watching it.

Church

Went to see 'sacred selections' in the Laurens-church in Rotterdam, a project by Matt Stokes, who had Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore and Black Metal transscribed to organ. Once again got dumped by McR, who claimed that his homework was more interesting.

I suspect he was wrong, the crowd was very mixed (from 65+ year old organ-fanatics to leather clad metal-heads) and the performance was pretty cool. On top of that:"Yay! I've finally seen my first organ-concert".

Couch!

After getting back home from Brussels I attempted picking up the fixed couch-part at my parents' place. Failed miserably because my parents had already dropped it off and fixed the couch. Yay! Couch!

Brussels!

Went to Brussels for a change, in the evening ended up having dinner with some Polish colleagues.

Freek

Went to see Freek de Jonge's "de stemming", which was brilliant. Was supposed to go and see it with Martina and McR but in the end McR decided that a basketball meeting was more interesting and sent his dad as a stand in. He was wrong. Martina proved this by locking her key in the house and having McR wait for the locksmith while he was supposed to be at the meeting.

Apparently later on this moment turned out to be the most expensive 10 seconds of McR's life.

Football

Went to see a football-match (Feyenoord-Vitesse) at the local football station for girlfriend's dad's birthday. Feyenoord probably hasn't done worse in the Dutch football-competition in the past 10 years so it proved to be an interesting evening. Fortunately Feyenoord won in the end, had plenty of fun. Had food afterwards, strangely enough.

Oh and girlfriend's sister and her boyfriend announced they're getting married in 2008. Another wedding-party.

Free!

Girlfriend gave me the day off to do whatever I wanted. Shopped for guitars, dropped off the broken part of my couch at mum and dad's place and did some other stuff. Then failed to think up what to do in the evening so I ended up reading a book and playing with my computer. Need to practise this:"Time off"-thing more often.

Spent Thursday night in a hotel in Brussels, had a brilliant Thai Curry in the Thai restaurant round the corner.

On Friday I had planned a test-drive in a Citroen C4 coupé, for some reason some dimwit had decided that because their coupé was out I should go for a drive in the Citroen C4 Picasso instead. Their reasoning:"It's got the same engine." Gaah!

Spent the remainder of the night playing with my dad's new computer.

End of project meeting for my Rabobank project. Went out for food and go-karting, unfortunately the petrol fumes made me feel somewhat sick during the second go-kart lap due to which my laptimes sucked.

Back where I begun

Got to go back to ING today to celebrate my colleague's last day at work. On and off I'll be spending time here for the next couple of months

Brussels!

The subject says all I fear. Hopefully my last attempt at driving up and down in one day. Then fortunately it is a school holiday in Belgium so the roads were fairly quiet.

Couch!

Took couch apart put old couch back. Booh! Hiss!

Installed surround sound system. *yay, sound all over the place!* At the same time:"Geez, look at all the wires!" Then dad visited and we attempted to buy a laptop *fail!* and bought Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.

At night Nicktor, McR, Laurens and Annemarie visited. Unfortunately my couch crapped itself.

Brussels, brussels, brussels

Found myself working in Brussels almost all week. Unfortunately working in Brussels and having a life at home at the same time proved to be taxing at best. From now on I'll book a hotel. (Taxing as in 2.5 hours 1 way, 2.5 hours the other way). I actually like driving in my car, even for long stretches, but not if there's 8 hours of work in between those stretches.

On Friday visited Shiwa for food and stuff. Had loads of fun but did almost fall asleep nearer the end of the night. Shiwa had bought a new surround sound system and I bought her old one for 30 pounds.

Brussels

Checked out from hotel and straight away went back to the car. Seeing as we had parked it in a shopping center parking garage, we were somewhat afraid that people might have blown up/moved/whatevered our car. Fortunately this didn't happen :-)

Unfortunately we completely ran out of diesel 10 kms out of Holland and had to get 5 euro's worth. Arse!

Was forced to eat takeway curry at night because girlfriend ditched me for dinner. Poor me :-(

One large beer please

One large beer please
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Last time girlfriend and I were in Paris, girlfriend promised me that she would let me visit the Louvre next time we'd make it to Paris. This time she claimed the Louvre sucked balls and that she didn't want to go there.

Cried, made a puppy face and off course girlfriend could resist my charming personality. At least provided it wouldn't be too busy, girlfriend added. (Probably thinking:"Not busy on a Saturday, Hah!". Fortunately for me, indeed:"Not busy on a Saturday, Hah!" Enjoyed the afternoon in fairly un-busy Louvre.

After our museum visit, we teamed up with Crissy and Dan + Crissy's sister, brother in law and niece. Had a beer somewhere and learnt the lesson to enquire first what the exact size of a large beer is in a certain pub. Wasn't really expecting the liter pint of beer they gave me as "the large pint". Had somewhat hazy fun.

Drunk? Me?

How hard can it be?
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Today was the day where girlfriend and I would make our way to Paris and team up with
Dan and Crissy. Did just that and even managed to get rid of our car somewhere in a shopping centre. Unfortunately we were somewhat undecided on whether our car'd still be there when we'd get back but hey, at least we had parked.

Got to our hotel (not too bad for a cheap-ass hotel), checked in, and eventually walked to Louvre pyramid where we were hooking up with Dan and Crissy. Have to say that they don't look anything like a butt-plug (Crissy claimed otherwise).

After a stop at the Canadian pub for poutine and a 9% beer before this poutine *hic*, we had beers in another pub with a wairess who was obviously new to the waitressing-business (yay, cheap beer!), girlfriend and I stumbled back home. Actually I was a whole lot more sober than I look in this photo, I was just having issues keeping my eyes open :-)

A whole week spent working doesn't make for interesting writing, I fear. Did work in Brussels on Wednesday, due to which I got to travel 300 kms in one day. Wooh!

the Hangover

Did hangover for most of the day, then went to a little festival for an hour, where I saw beardyman play. Most easily the best beat-boxer I've ever seen.

Then had to rush back to the airport again because I still had a flight to catch. Arrived at the airport 1.5 hours before my plane was supposed to leave. Entered queue for customs and left that one 5 minutes before my plane was supposed to leave (something had them give everybody a full cavity-search) *gaah!* Then still had to take a train to gate , which had me arrive at my plane 10 minutes after it was taking off. Fortunately it hadn't. Fortunately I wasn't the only person that was late either.

I want to drink your blood!

00029.jpg
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

The reason I came to London was Kaz' birthday party, which is a beast and monsters fancy dress-party. (See my flickr page for all the photos) Spent the day in the supermarket and preparing for the party. Party was a big success, though Kaz probably can't remember most of it

Did pretty okay alcohol-wise myself, I thought, until... I woke up at 6 in the morning to find people trying balance stuff on me. After waking up, I noticed that they had been at it for at least half and hour and that they had made photos as well. (Un)fortunately not with my camera. Maybe they'll still show up.

Decadent workaholic

Worked all day and then took off for the airport to fly to London. At the London side of the North Sea, Kaz picked me up for her birthday party weekend. Started off well by giving Kaz the Join-me book as a birthday-present right after she spent 15 minutes talking about how she wanted to read that book.

Got some some beers and drank most of them. Then managed to watch 164 John and John
comic strips on the internet. We're sad!

Holiday

Packed stuff for holiday, eventually got joined by girlfriend, who was too tired to function.

A company meeting. A bit less beerful than the previous meeting.

Haircut!

Started work in the ARINSO offices, tried working at my place for a short while and eventually ended up working at a colleague's place. Interesting!

The fun of helping my completely disorganised aunt with her computer. "Q: Do you know the password to your e-mail aunt?" "A: Why should I?" "Q: Could you give me the cd for..." "A: Where are they?" SO yes, it basically was an evening of:"Hunt down stuff". Fun

Did some shopping but failed to buy stuff. Does that make me a failure? Oh wait, yesterday I already bought stuff for Kaz' party next weekend. I'm afraid I'll be having fun there in London :-)

Cocktails at Nicktor's place. Biked there and behaved pretty well. Unlike some of us, I have to say :-) McR basically had to carry Sabrina to his car.

Had a copy made of my cellar-key. It didn't work.

D-day

Gave presentation, did well, was funny without resorting to uranus jokes. Drank a bit too much beer afterwards with colleagues. *hic!*

Order

Finally got my sheets in order, I should be fine tomorrow.

Multitasking take 2

Attempted to get sheets for wednesday's presentation organised while watching tv. More or less failed at both again.

Pool

Went to the swimmingpool, yay! Yay! Pool! Also fell asleep near a swan. Got photos of the whole weekend up at my flickr page actually so does girlfriend's brother's girlfriend.

Did stuff, then did more stuff on beach and got my toe kicked in by girlfriend during a football match. Went out for dinner, then did even more stuff at night.

Argh!

Spent the morning shouting abuse at ENECO people. Actually as usual they were really friendly but somewhat clueless. Eventually (after 15 minutes) managed to get somebody to the point where she actually understood my problem. She promised not to shut me down and also promised that somebody would call me in the afternoon.

Spent the day taking a pretty interesting course and eventually drove to Port Zelande with girlfriend for a weekend with most of her family *eek!*. Drank loads of beer and eventually passed out. No phonecall just yet.

Fun with ENECO

Got back home and found a letter from everybody's favourite gas/water and electricity company to tell me that they had been on my doorstep to shut off water, gas and electricity but that unfortunately I wasn't at home so that now they were going to shut it off on their side.

Wait a sec, this sounds familiar, didn't this happen before? Ummm... yes. Didn't somebody visit last week to make sure that this wouldn't happen in the future? Ummm... yup. Did it work? Apparently not really. Shouted some words that I won't repeat here and went to bed.

Watched football on tv, read a book and worried about a presentation that I'm supposed to be giving next week. Due to me attempting to do multiple things at once, I probably failed at all three of them.

Napoleon Dynamite

Watched Napoleon Dynamite with girlfriend. Fun!

Paris

Only a month till I'll be in Paris to celebrate my 9 year e-niversary with Crissy. Completely clueless about who'll be joining me though. Kid sister might or might not hitch a ride to come and visit a friend in Paris, girlfriend may or not come along. The only definite person appears to be me. (And hopfully Crissy)

Happy birthday

Visited kid sisters' birthday party. Failed to bring a proper present. BOoh!

I am sailing

Went sailing with girlfriend + plenty of colleagues. While the weather was really rainy in Rotterdam, we went without rain all day on the IJsselmeer. Recommended!

Another day of work in Rotterda *yay!* Bought a garden gnome for kid sister's birthday and then teamed up with McR to go to the release party of the new Blind Justice (a dutch metal band) cd , with everybody's favourite hip-hop act the Osdorp Posse as a support act. Really a brilliant concert, very much recommended. Tried waking up girlfriend when I finally stormed into my place but she failed to acknowledge my existence. Booh!

The missing days

Kind of forgot what I did on Tuesday and Wednesday. Probably books, girlfriend and guitar playing but I'm not entirely sure, in all honesty. Somebody help me, please?

Had to work in Rotterdam on Thursday and managed to work till past 7 which meant I got back home even later than usual. All my fault though, I got caught in my own arrogance, I fear.

Oh, yesterday was kid sister's birthday, I called her

Mum's the person of the day

My mother probably already regrets ever having children. Today she once again got to spend an afternoon at my place, this time to receive somebody who came to fix a leak in my heating system. She had already spent an afternoon at my place a week and a half ago to have somebody diagnose my leak as:"Yep, it's leaking" but today they fixed it. Sadly for her they also found something else that needed fixing but for which they didn't bring any parts.

Was also somewhat succesful with the water/electricity/gas company, who I now finally managed to convince that "yes, it really is only 1 house with two house numbers". Somebody even noticed that the meter numbers on number 119 and number 120 were exactly the same. Now all they need to do is send a repairman to check whether that's not a mistake in the computer system. *Gaaah!*. No, I'll take this one, mum can stay at home for a change :-)

Home alone

After girlfriend left me to go to the cinema, i got to entertain myself. Walked into town, did some shopping and walked back. Definitely need to practise more in the self-entertainment part of life.

Played with vmware at night (if you don't know it you don't want to know anyways). Doing geek stuff is fun!

Bicycle

Rode bicycle in one direction until I suddenly got to Gouda and realised that this was almost 30 kms from Rotterdam, then had to bike back another 30. Felt somewhat tired afterwards, in all honesty, I already felt tired while biking back, I definitely need to ride my bike more often.

While riding my bicycle back home, I planned on asking girlfriend whether she could do the shopping because I was too tired. Chickened out in the end and dragged myself shopwards anyways.

Watched "The Kebab Connection" at night. Funny

Infadelic

Saw Infadels play Rotown with girlfriend and McR. Brilliant concert, which had everyone in Rotown jumping up and down within notime. Afterwards had drinks with Maaike's sister and Walter. Ended up a bit on the drunk side of life. Spilling a glass of milk because you actually miss your mouth while aiming is probably not a good sign.

Girlfriend and guitar, that's probably all.

Where's the cheese??

Went to see:"Miami Vice" with Lorraine. Plenty of violence, plenty of fast boats/cars but it was really lacking in the cheesiness department.

The future's bright

All sorts of rumours about what I'll be doing at work for the next couple of months. (The Rabobank project is ending at the beginning of October). Heard some big names being mentioned, it should all be fun.

Cleaning

Cleaned out my little car, which still had plenty of holiday-cruft lying around (not to mention all the food stuff that Nicktor managed to drop on the floor). Had help from the parental unit with this (don't really know why). They were great help but... note to self:"Don't let your father near your car with carpet cleaner, your seats are now somewhat soggy".

On the upside:"The car stopped smelling of Chianti!"

Birthday!

Girlfriend decided to celebrate her birthday at my place. This meant stress testing it with shitloads of people (both girlfriends' family, my family, friends, eek!). Found out that the house can contain that many people.

At night girlfriend showed her excitement by talking to people in her sleep. Usually I'm a pretty solid sleeper but when somebody shouts:"Hey! Welcome! Come in!", I have to bat an eyelid to find out who the visitor is :-)

Beer!

Discovered that I've got boring friends. Was supposed to go out for lots of drinks with lots of people ended up with Lorraine, girlfriend and Nicktor. Still worth it, especially because I got most of my beer free because I managed to get the internet working on Lorraine's phone *yay!*

May need to ask Nicktor for a urine sample, he scared us all by talking at twice the volume, twice the speed and 10 times the volume of his usual self. Eek!

Friday night

Played guitar. Main objects of study are Keith Richards in the 60's and Chuck Berry. Still need a lot of practise.

Guitar hero!

Bought my guitarport today. Really a brilliant piece of equipment. For $7 a month you can download guitar lessons online (+ backing tracks), download new guitar sounds, etc. etc. Had so much fun that at 22:00 I realised that I was completely forgetting to eat and made myself pizza.

Guess I'm now on my way to becoming a rock star.

Gotta love that pub smell

Went to supermarket, bought wine and pizza's (I've been known to buy more exciting food-things from time to time). While driving back home from the supermarket, I realised that my car smelled a bit like a pub. Apparently 1 of the wine bottles broke and spilled in my boot! Gaah! Guess I'll have a car smelling of chianti for the next while.

Rode bicycle and played guitar in the evening. Expect me to do a whole lot more guitar playing once the guitarport arrives. I'm planning on having fun :-)

Birthday!

And obviously the day after the anniversary it's girlfriends' birthday. Managed not to forget about this one but failed to come up with one great present. Thought up 3 pretty good ones though so now girlfriend gets to point out which one she wants herself.

Ended up having artichokes for dinner.

Anniversary

... and before you know it, it's two years later, you're two years older and still with the same girlfriend. *Yay!* Celebrated with a Japanese dinner at Fugu in Rotterdam. Really nice food!

Garlic!

The plan for the day had been: Garlic soup! Leading up to this plan I Did some food shopping with girlfriend (mainly plenty of garlic). Discovered that while 11 clovers of garlic in soup is survivable, trying to make your own garlic bread with 6 cloves of garlic would be considered "overdoing it" in some regions of this country.

Played lots of guitar at night. Have decided that I may need to own a line 6 guitarport. They're actually really affordable and sound great fun. Until I discovered that the toneport is for some reason actually cheaper in most Dutch shops, while it offers more functionality. Guitar gadget + laptop could mean fun. Expect one to show up somewhere before the end of the year.

Actually I'm about to buy this straight away, the only things keeping me from doing this are me walking into a 77 euro speeding ticket (20 km too fast, *argh!*) and some birthdays (sister, girlfriend) and other events happening this month. Add Paris and London next month and I may wait till November before buying this one.

--edit--Obviously the second I posted this comment, I got an e-mail from somebody selling a guitarport online, to tell me that he was accepting my 70 euro bid. Guess I'll be buying one this month after all :-)

Shopping

Threw another housewarming. This time Lorraine was in the country and she hadn't attended a housewarming yet. Nice to see Lorraine again, nice to have loads of people over and nice to get a Barbapapa toilet seat cover. What you ask? Check the pictures if you really want to know.

You can even check the video, you may need to tilt your head though.

Housewarming

Annemarie's housewarming, cocktails, plenty of people and then being able to crawl back home afterwards. Nice!

update

Spent night updating web-diary and chatting with Crissy and Anna.

Girlfriend

Showed girlfriend the highlights of the bad taste film. May be catching a cold.

New hair

Got my hair cut and had Cindy visit to pick up an orange cowboy had (don't ask)

Not mucn

Had planned on doing nothing but reading a book all night. In the end Nicktor popped by to make a copy of his passport and we watched a "bad taste night"-highlights dvd. Saw some pretty bad film trailers. While Zombi Holocaust would probably already rate as somewhat distateful to some people, crippled masters really made me wonder how people come up with film-ideas like these.

Demolition man

Helped McR take out his kitchen. This turned out to be a piece of cake so I did some painting afterwards as well. Watched a film at night.

Weehee!

Went car testing with McR in the morning (he needs to pick a new company car). Tested both a simple 1.6 Seat Leon as well as the 175 hp 2 liter version. Guess which one we liked best? :-) While my own car isn't exactly underpowered, I wouldn't mind swapping it for the 175 hp-version. Neither did McR, apparently it's now gonna be a 2 liter 150 hp one, which should be plenty fast. Needed some effort to convince McR that the sport seats were more important than sattelite navigation but after some longer seating exercises, I managed to convince him.

Visited parents in the afternoon and went clubbing with friends at night. Fun! Friends are sissies though, at 3 am everybody had left already.

books galore

Spent night reading a book. Girlfriend did the same though with another book.

Argh!

So... Why did I forget to take the day off today again? Drove work-wards in a possibly not entirely sober state of mind and suffered a feeling of spinning for most of the day. Nearer the end of the day I felt a whole lot better and joined in the Wednesday Night Skate fun.

It being the last one of the year, we all got to skate down the Maasboulevard, right along the river. Really awesome! Fortunately I got back home only seconds before it started pouring down with rain. Too bad I still had to bike out to my sister's place to pick up her mail. (she's on holiday)

Still holiday-ing

Fortunately I had taken today off as well for I'm still not feeling 100%. Spent the day unpacking stuff, doing laundry and buying a wireless network-card so that now I can finally use my wireless router. (I gave up on somebody fixing it at work without losing my laptop for a long while) Played with wireless for most of the afternoon untill I fell asleep again. Oh and while I was waiting at the police station to report my missing passport, Nicktor gave me a call to tell me that my passport had been sent from Austria by the camping-people. Yay! Camping people!

Joined up with Remco, Adriaan, Ronald and Remco's colleague Rik for the annual bierloop. (A sponsored pubcrawl basically held around my place). This one didn't even do too badly on the list of "best bierloop". They had proper beer-mugs, they had t-shirts, entry was cheap and on the way out Remco stole another stamp-card so that we had to down 24 pints of beer with 5 people. (At this point I started to suspect that my plan of only drinking 3 pints might not work this night).

Sadly for the bierloop people they left us a phone number to call in case of an emergency. And call we did. With some interval, 4 of us claimed that the local Belgian beer-pub (and a stop at the bierloop) had completely run out of beer. The organisers believed us and promised us more beer. Then by the time we made it to Plan C, it had closed as well, which gave us even more beer. By this time I was starting to suspect that the:"Yay! Loads of beer!"-sound in the back of my head would tomorrow probably be drowned out by a severe hangover. When did I have to start work again?

Back home

After packing our tents (yay! dry again!) and taking buses and trains, eventually Kaz and I arrived back at my place mud-caked and dead tired. Had pizza and worked on invitations for Kaz' birthday party in October before I eventually got to drop her off at the airport. After getting back home, I more or less passed out, dead tired.

Muddy waters

... and some more
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Completely forgot to mention that yesterday afternoon McR and Marlies went back home again. McR claimed he wanted to do house related stuff, Marlies went back home to take care of her husband, who somehow broke his hand while falling of his bicycle.

Sadly for them they missed out on a whole day of fun in the rain and mud. Note to self:"Don't wear crocs in mud, you'll end up stumbling around with mud-filled crocs". Highlights of the day for me were the Arctic monkeys and Johan, even though Muse was pretty good too. Pennywise somewhat less so, I've heard them play better.

Failed to join in with the mud-sliding people. Danced the night away till late once again. Music wise I've seen better editions of Lowlands but fun-wise we're doing pretty well, I believe.

Feeling somewhat yellow

And more yellow
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Please don't ask me how I got to be this yellow. It sometimes just happens. Had plenty of shouts of:"Whoa, yellow!" or:"Hey! Tweetie!"

Apparently I missed out on loud neighbours while sleeping. Booh Hiss! Highlights of the day were a band playing Beatles covers translated into dutch, the Dirty Pretty Things and Infadels.

For some reason Kaz already went to bed around 11 and so did Ellen and Gary, still had lots of fun with Nicktor, girlfriend and Sabrina.

Words and music form da Lowlands

More everybody
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Somehow we had to wait at Schiphol airport because some moron (yes Nicktor, that's you) managed to leave his tent at Rotterdam central station. Fortunately McR was bright enough to call the Dutch railway services and fortunately they found the tent and put it on the next Lowlands-bound train.

During the rest of the day saw various bands play (highlight for me was Hard-Fi) and I even got my own 15 minutes of fame when I somehow ended up in a secret bar, where for a free beer I performed as a ballet dancer with diarrhea.

Clubbed the night away till fairly late before passing out.

Back home

Woke up a bit on the early side and drove back home. Nicktor and I have survived (All roadtrip photos can be found in this flickr set (I actually got round to writing descriptions with them so now you may know what's on them). Quickly did laundry had girlfriend over for an hour and a half and then I had to pick up my Australian friend Kaz who's coming along to Lowlands.

Quickly popped by a shopping center to let Kaz buy wellies (lots of rain has been forecast), showed her a windmill, went for a beer in de Oude Haven and got laughed at by the lady at sandwich shop "Broodje snor" for appearing to use a really bad pickup line. Want to eat this here or take it away? Me:"Let's do takeaway, then we can eat it at my place!"

Linda!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove up to Bonn to visit my friend Linda. Managed to cross the border without the passport (yay! Schengen!) And a couple of hundred kilometers later arrived at Linda's place.

Great to see Linda once again (it's been 2 years since the last time). Eventually ended up drinking wine at her place before passing out.

Liechtenstein

a piece of art found in Liechtenstein
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove towards Liechtenstein (which was pretty hard to find seeing as it was not on a satellite navigation map and seeing as Nicktor refuses to even look at cards ever since he's been replaced by an electronic device).

Eventually found Liechtenstein and found out that it was a public holiday there. Did souvenir shopping, walked around for a bit and eventually drove back home. Went for a walk, fixed my car (a blown fuse, due to which my cigarette lighter stopped functioning) and lost my passport.

Driving west

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Switched off Nicktor once again, switched on satellite navigation and pointed it towards Nenzing in the west of Austria. Apparently this town had a camping which got 88% in our camping guide and we were curious about what this would offer.

Deciding to avoid toll-roads meant that once or twice we got to drive high up in the mountains (I'm pretty good going up but I kind of suck at going down, even though I'm a lot better than the Hungarian guy whose brake-lights I was looking at for about 20 kms while going downhill. Even I know not to do that. Also managed to get stuck in really dense mist before eventually making it to Nenzing.

The campsite in Nenzing turned out to be a bit of a Frankencampsite. All was really clean, showers and toilets looked as if the belonged in a 5 star hotel but it was all a bit too neat and too clean and all the sites were just squares on gravel. Still nice to know what an 8.8 on the camping-scale looks like.

Went for a walk at night (for a change). Nicktor sat in front of the tent (again, still can't walk) Really sad for him seeing as it's great a great hiking spot. Btw had rain almost all day until we arrived at our campsite.

All by myself

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

With Nicktor still being unable to walk, he decided to stay right besides the tent. Seeing as the weather still was awesome, I decided to walk towards the north-side of the lake. This turned out to be a 2 hour walk instead of the 45 minutes I was expecting. Took the boat back to St Gilgen, drank a beer on the boat and then walked an hour back to the campsite. Me really like!

Fucking in Austria

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Left Slovenia while it was pouring down with rain (looks like this may be a theme for this roadtrip). Probably a good thing that we're sitting in a car all day, not in the least because Nicktor twisted one knee, then kept the weight of that knee for a day and now can't bend his other knee. The 'Allo 'Allo fans would have recognised the Gestapo-walk he's now got.

Switched of Nicktor, switched on satellite navigation, pointed it to Fucking and drove most of the day. Yep, besides the name there's fuck all to do in town but it was still worth a visit. Felt a bit scared about people asking us:"What have you been doing today?"

Decided to drive a bit further towards St Gilgen. Once again situated besides a lake. It being Austria, doing almost anything appears to be forbidden. Went for a walk down the lake at night and visited St Gilgen. Nice little town.

Nicktor's demise

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Drove down to Ljubljana where we visited the castle while it was pouring down with rain. Nicktor decided that he couldn't deal with rain while visiting a city so we were not supposed to see too much else of the city, if it weren't for Nicktor screwing up his map-reading so badly that he completely pointed us in the wrong direction on what was supposed to the way back home.

Me shouting:"We drove into town this way" got demised as:"Bollocks, we drove around town before entering it" and me predicting all the sights didn't really help either.

In the end Nicktor finally admitted that we were now on the opposite side of town and that we really needed to turn around. Decided to make sure that Nicktor wouldn't read maps again, tomorrow we're switching to my satellite navigation system.

Enjoying the sun

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Our first really sunny day. Nicktor wanted to do he-stuff, so I ended up walking around the lake all by my self. As you can tell by the photo, the lake has got a really cute church in the middle, which you can get rowed towards (ringing the church-bells gives you lots of luck, apparently)

Failed to do so but did visit the castle, which had a really great view over the whole lake and the church. Had an awesome garlic-soup for dinner. Now want to make garlic soup myself.

Enter slovenia

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Arjan's reply to my text-message never came, fortunately my colleague Jeschael was nice enough to tell us to either go to Italy or Slovenia. Because Nicktor apparently didn't like Italy, we went on Slovenia-wards.

As you can tell from the picture, here in Bled, we found sun and a really nice campsite besides a nice lake. In the evening only just managed to finish our barbecue before it started to pour down with rain. Barbecue turns out to be enormous, by the way.

Beer and loathing in Vienna

Beer in Vienna
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Took the bus/tube into town and explored. Saw buildings, had food, drank beer and got threatened with a bashing if I'd ever again try to hit Nictor in the nuts. (I now know where to aim).

It wasn't even that rainy today. Eventually back to the campsite where for a change we could actually sit outside and play games.

Austria

Being caught out in the rain for 2 days, we decided to drive on to a drier place, hoping that Austria might be it. If not then we could always text Arjan to ask for a drier place. After a day of rain, aqua-planing and more rain, we eventually made it to Vienna, where we had the most rain this far on our road-trip. Had food at Mc Donalds in the rain. Looks like this rain-thing might become a theme here.

Greetings from Loket

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Found ourselves in the rain again in the morning. Decided to look around a bit and ended up in Loket where we visited the castle, which apparently was playing along with the:"People believe that torture is fun"-theme, then we got caught out in the rain and decided to have a pizza in a place nearby. (Obviously I forgot the name)

At night actually cooked dinner before we got chased back into the car again for more rain.

The beginning

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Today our roadtrip to God Knows Where started. We'll probably figure out everything along the way. First things first though, after picking up Nicktor, we still had to go to the supermarket McR's girlfriend works at to pick up all his underwear.

Eventually set off on our travels and gave McR a phonecall to let him know that he'd be underwear-less for the next 10 days. McR apparently didn't believe us and didn't really realise this mistake till he wanted to put on new socks an hour later.Dork!

Drove eastwards all day and eventually ended up in Plzen. It rained! Played games in car all night.

Leaving tomorrow

Whatever happened during the past 3 days? Don't ask me! Girlfriend must have left for Finland and I probably did stuff preparing for leaving on holidays but seeing as I'm trying to recall 2 weeks later I don't think I'll ever really find out.

The parental unit is back from their holidays, so they spent the afternoon in my place waiting for the dishwasher repair-man, who miraculously already called at 10:00 to ask:"Can you please open the door, I'm downstairs", replied with:"Sorry, you're not supposed to be there till 1" and repair-man promised to get back.

Then at 2 he returned, my father attempted opening the door for him and then managed to lock himself out, while my mother was on a shopping-trip with the keys. Repair man failed to kill father, promised to return but didn't look too happy apparently. And at the third attempt they managed to let repair-man in and he fixed my dishwasher. *yah!*

Dinner at parents' place at night.

Girlfriend's back...

After spending the whole weekend in Almere, girlfriend returned again today. She brought me a dvd with on it episodes of the A-team, Miami Vice, Magnum PI and Knightrider. Watched A-team with girlfriend. Spent the remainder of the evening singing the A-team tune. Girlfriend now dislikes me severely.

Also kid sister apparently still owed me a birthday present, she bought me lamps. They look brilliant!

Reading

Spent most of the afternoon and evening reading books, except for a short trip to town to get tent-pegs. (yeah, I'm dull)

Racing

After spending the afternoon doing house stuff, shopping and attaching a new lock to my bicycle, I eventually went to Almere to go bowling (don't ask). Got a bit side-tracked after the bowling and at 11:45 realised that I should have been in Rotterdam at least an hour earlier.

Somehow managed to do the 100+km drive within 45 minutes by flying low instead of driving and did the second half of the night with all my other friends drinking beer outside in "de Oude Haven". Fun!

Spent the evening keeping Nicktor awake. nicktor spent evening falling asleep on his couch.

Still sunny! Woohoo!

Wednesday night skate

The Wednesday night skates have started again in Rotterdam. Joined in with sister and one of her friends. Apparently tonight 20.000 people showed up. Fun!

Out for dinner with colleagues. Good food, sunny weather, fun.

Monday!

Library, pizza and girlfriend storming in and out of the house within a minute. most people'd say it's a quiet night.

Thievery 101

Accidentally lost the keys to my bicycle while shopping in Rotterdam. Had already lost the previous set of bicycle keys a while ago. Fortunately I placed my bicycle right in front of a bar so while I was sawing through my first lock (which took me forever), at least many people asked me what I was doing. Actually most people walking past except for the police. Apparently they thought that somebody with an iron saw sawing away at a bicycle lock was perfectly normal.

On the other hand, anybody taking over an hour to open my locks can't be a thief :-)

The second coming

Spent the day cleaning up the house, baking cakes and preparing for my second housewarming. Had plenty of people over. (In fact most of the previous housewarming party + some family members). Nice weather, fun!

Check the photos at my flickr page. Apparently McR decided that it's cool to wear a beard now.

Read till you drop

Bought a guitar-stand and became a library-member. Girlfriend and I now share a library card. One small step for a man...

More bass

Ended up playing bass and grinning madly all night. Girlfriend played groupie. For the first time in my life I ended up in bed with a groupie. This means that my musical career is really starting to take off!

Bass man

Bass guitar
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

... This is the bass-guitar I managed to buy today. It was definitely an instrument missing in my instrument-collection so instrument wise I'm a happy camper. Was a bit annoyed that I missed out on going swimming with my sister and friends though. Better luck with that next time, I hope.

So... apparently I lost quite a bit of coolness buying crocs. For some reaon I'm one of the few people who actually likes them. I'll just have to prove all you people wrong now.

My Crocs

My Crocs
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Just wondering, last saturday I decided that I really needed new sandals, which I know these are not. Then I decided that I needed to buy these in a low-key colour such as black but apparently I failed in that department as well.

Gilfriend thinks they're the most terrible things on this planet, girlfriends' family all appeared to react in a WTF are you wearing there? Kind of way on Saturday. But besides them I've been getting some positive reactions as well. So, hit or miss?? (See if I care )

More rollerskating at night. Weather is hot, me like, am seeing some sort of an issue with me enjoying myself and girlfriend talking about thinking of moving to Antarctica the whole time.

Aiee!!

A whole week of updates missing, does that mean that I've actually got a life now? Possibly. The main cause for this has been the beautiful weather, which has been causing me to sit outside in the sun, drink wine, rollerskate, etc. etc.

Actually, the weekend was a tad different, with a visit to Lelystad on Saturday and a traditional guys night out on Saturday evening. Even managed to sleep over at my parent's place and cuddle the cat in the process. Nicktor appeared to be even more drunk than usual.

And Sunday we all had a picnic in the park with drinks, food swimming and rollerskating, it was great fun.

Oh, I believe I also accidentally bought a electro-accoustic bass-guitar on the internet. Not that I needed one but hey, sometimes you need to buy on impulse :-)

Python

Played with python most of the day. The programming-language, not anything snake-like. Enjoyed myself.

Eventually went to see "Over the hedge" with girlfriend. Not brilliant, still nice.

Went to Bobbejaanland (a ride-park in Belgium) with with girlfriend. This was all work sponsored and quite a few colleagues showed up. Ended up doing most of the rides that didn't get me dizzy (I can do most rollercoasters but I get dizzy in a simple merry-go-round at the same time). Fun!

Was supposed to have loads of people over in the evening but Nicktor fell asleep and forgot to invite them all.

Applied some polish to my newly installed pc while girlfriend sat on coutch doing girly-stuff. Pretty dull to write about actually.

Ubuntu

Did Thursday-ish stuff by staying in and reading a book. Then decided that after 10 years of having Linux installed on my home pc it was about time I'd ditch Windows. I haven't really been using Windows at all over the past couple of years and it was about time.

Shocked about how simple installing has become in the past 1.5 years. It's never really been hard but this time Ubutu actually let me surf the internet while it was installing itself. That's right, I hardly did anything at all and everything worked in the end.

Having really looked forward to spending a couple of days tinkering with stuff, this kinda sucks. I may need a new hobby now.

France!

The upside of the Dutch football team getting kicked out of the WorldCup pretty soon is that now I get the chance to watch the football matches as an impartial viewer. Watched France-Portugal this night, good match!

OK Computer

Spent night at girlfriend's place repairing her computer. Note to self:Next time girlfriend asks:"Can't you install Ubuntu on my pc?" Reply:"Yes! Of course!" Instead of:"You probably want to install that besides windows, at least for the first part.

The second answer may be the safe one, but you're really not fond of doing the:"Install Windows"-part, not even when girlfriend has already done most of it.

Meet Thingo and Baba

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Got my hair cut before I ended up at home, taking photos of thingo (the purple doll that girlfriend made for me during a DIY-kick) and Baba, possibly the first love of my life. In all honesty, this is the second Baba which my mum made after she promised me to make a new sweater for the old Baba, the old one resides somewhere at mum and dad's place. I slept with this doll and his predecessor during at least the first 12 years of my life.

Metropolis

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Spent half the afternoon walking around the Metropolis festival, looking at bands all alone. And then the other half doing more or less the same with Nicktor. It being a terribly sunny day this was enjoyable even with Nicktor ;-)

Picked up girlfriend and Annemarie at night. She hasn't grown any tentacles or extra limbs during the week she was on holiday. She is however pretty tanned.

Bicycle Repairman

Biked to Ridderker because my bike was falling apart. Hang in there, I'll start making sense soon... The spokes of my rear wheel are a bit on the thin side so they keep breaking. Now my dad had some rear wheels lying around with better spokes and he's got a lot more tools than I have.

Spent 3 hours changing the wheels (some parts wouldn't fit, some parts had to be swapped, etc. etc.). Fortunately one of my father's colleagues was visiting and the both of them spent their afternoon shouting useless tips at me with big smiles on their faces. Bastards!

At night played golf in Arjan's backyard. Found out that golf is a daytime sport.

Typical

Out for dinner with Haidar and Arthur (2 colleagues) in the Hague. Showed up a bit early and found myself near the "Zuiderpark" in the Hague. This is a park I only visited during the Parkpop festivals and it looks a lot larger without the 300.000 people in it :-) Already almost no signs left of last week's festival.

Sunny days are back gain.

Lamp
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Sat on balcony, drank wine and read a book. Weather is really nice at the moment. Me like!

Skate around the world

Went rollerskating in the evening, took a wrong turn, kind of got lost. Eventually found the way back and realised that "de Esch" is a pretty cool neighbourhood. Should put it on the:"May move there sometime"-list. Still that won't happen for at least the next 5 years.

Chatted with Crissy till late. (Or at least late if you have to wake up at 6:45 the next morning)

Sunny days are back again.

Ate pizza, rode bicycle, enjoyed. Wondered how McR's watch ended up under a stack of dirty underwear.

Baptism

Filled one of my 1/3 bottle of wine wine-glasses, put it down next to my mouse and then managed to spill all of it, while hitting both a wall as well as the power extension chord. May now need to re-paint wall.

Parkpop till you drop

Decided with McR and Nicktor that the weather alert wouldn't hurt us and that we should be able to survie a little tropical storm while on a free festival. So took the train to Parkpop and actually watched bands for a change. (It was raining so we couldn't lay down on the grass).

Really impressed by Babylon Circus and Infadels. All go out and see.

At night I watched football but let's not go there.

Moving...

Helped Annemarie move in the afternoon. Moving a student is great, finished in no time at all. I dread the next wave of people moving, if McR ever gets round to buying a house we'll have a lot more to carry.

Afterwards did some shopping and somehow managed to decide that I needed to only buy stuff starting with a 'K' in the supermarket. (Girlfriend asked me for dinner with cheese, (Kaas in dutch, which sounds like k's). Girlfriend amazed at my determination.

Rainier's party at night. Cool place. Nice to see Arnold again! Rainier drunk.

Weekend again!

Girlfriend's father visited Rotterdam to take a look at my new place. Girlfriend finished thesis. I missed the final in the Worldcup lingerie because of this. (For the foreigners, one of our tv-channels has got girls in their bra's and panties taking penalty kicks during half time, they suck at football but nobody's complaining ).

A fun night. Still... can anybody tell me who won ?? ;-)

Yay!

Had my 16 year old cousin Bo over for the evening, had food, ice cream, played airhockey and basically behaved like a 16 year old boy all night. Yep, nothing out of the ordinary :-)

New balls please

Watched football with Sabrina, Nictor and McR. A pretty dull match but still nice to have them all over.

Yep, me

Found out what I had been doing wrong yesterday morning. Apparently I had to hold my plastic card in front of the sign saying:"Hold plastic card here". For some reason yesterday morning I had decided that this sign meant:"Drive 3 meters, then hold plastic card to the structure with the microphone. It ain't easy being me.

Girlfriend at night. Still not wearing glasses (she ordered glasses which are supposed to show up somewhere over the next couple of days)

Dumb? Me?

Managed to fail to work out how to open the gate in Eindhoven with my plastic door-card. Had to park quite a walk away because of this. Booh! Hiss!

Found http://watchmyloss.blogspot.com a pretty inspirational website. Wonder how this one will work out over the next couple of months.

Father's day

Did some shopping in the afternoon, bought some shirts and that popped by parents' place for father's day and barbecue.

Big tits, big tits, bye!

I know, today's post and the title don' t have anything to do with eachother at all, it's just a quote that came back from my time in Sydney.

Spent the day at Trailerpop, which while not having any connection to trailer-parks definitely could have. Dusty and not a piece of grass to sit on. Still a fun day out.

Fly like an eagle

Spent the whole afternoon on the beach, kiting with colleagues. Recommended!

Watched footbal at the beach afterwards.

Both McR and girlfriend stormed in today. Had Chinese takeaway for dinner and played airhockey.

Huppie Huppie Huppie

Apparently my cousin Bo graduated from highschool. Spent evening at her place celebrating.

Sunny!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Still sunny weather in Holland. Me like. Unfortunately girlfriend no like. Had food and watched footbal on tv. Took loads of picures of girlfriend.

Summer in the City

Started work at a project in Eindhoven, while it's 110 kms away from home it's a lot easier to do than the 80 kms Amsterdam-wards I did until the end of January.

Biked through town in the evening, took a look at the Volvo Ocean race-boats that are currently docked in Rotterdam (they're a lot smaller than I'd expected them to be) and biked past plenty of other things. I really love this summer-thing!

Every day I love your hairy breasts

Cleanup day. Mopped the floor threw away loads of bottles and cleaned out the paper bin. Watched football in the afternoon and a film at night.

Housewarming

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

An action filled day. The day started weird, when my phone rang and McR told me:"Hi, I'm your personal agenda, in an hour and 15 minutes, you're supposed to be at home, I need to drop something off". This something turned out to be a pretty large pack which I needed to stow away in my cellar.

Then I managed to buy a table and two chairs for on my balcony. (Yep, I'm getting /that old/). We can now sit and enjoy breakfast and dinner on my little balcony.

Then I skated around Rotterdam for a bit (the weather is brilliant) before the housewarming preparations started. Actually, girlfriend had been making loads of food while I skated around Rotterdam (I know, shame on me... )

And then the housewarming started (all pictures can be found on my flickr-page)... fortunately loads of people showed up, Nicktor was mixing cocktails, until I eventually got to find out that the large cardboard package contained an airhockey table and that my "God only knows"-room needed to be transformed into an airhockey room. Brilliant! :-)

People played airhockey all night, drank Nicktor's cocktails and Rainier passed out near the end of the night (apparently 6 tequila's and other drinks do that to people). Left Rainier a bucket and a note to tell him where he was and went bed-wards my self. All in all a fun night :-)

Change of colour

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

For those of you who know my mum, she's decided that after 20+ years of dyeing her hair she's going back to her natural colour again. Seeing as this natural colour is currently white this takes quite a while.

This week mum apparently un-coloured her hair and now looks all set for the world cup football. (Don't worry, apparently she managed to get it a bit more blonde with another de-colouring session)

Did shopping for tomorrow's housewarming.

Rode my bicycle. Eventually got back home again. Fun!

Aunt

Had dinner at parents' place with my aunt Ria. Failed to make photos so no pretty picture to go with it. Still fun.

Bicycle

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Rode my bicycle around town in the evening. Took some photos, which you can find in my randomsnaps-section.

All comes to an end...

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

And so did our long weekend in Paris. As you can see in the picture, our tent looks a bit wonky. I blame this on Kaz (whose tent this actually is). Apparently the last time she used it, she managed to lose half the tent-pegs while at the same time the bent the other half pretty badly. Girlfriend and I were both pretty glad that we didn't get any rain.

Managed to do the drive back home a lot quicker than the drive to Versailles. Unfortunately failed to make it home on 1 tank of diesel (I only get free fuel within the Netherlands), so I had to spend 10 euros to make it over the Dutch border :-)

Spent the evening watching tv and testing out my Fatboy.

Paris

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Went to Paris, walked around for quite a bit, not really planning on doing or seeing anything. This means that after visiting Paris twice, I still need to actually "do" both the Eiffeltower as well as the Louvre. Hmmm...


Plenty of parks, plenty of sun, nice!

Did many sausage related things in the evening. (Chorizo, what else?)

She salutes!!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Finally, after a year and a half, all the training I've put into girlfriend is starting to pay off. As you can see in the photo, she now salutes me when it's needed. I wonder what else I can make her do :-)

Woke up at a reasonable time and set out to explore the Versailles castle. (For those wanting to see all the photo's I took during our Versaille trip, check out my Flickr-page) The moment we walked into the castle square, we spotted a pretty large queue and a sign saying:"Wait from here is 90 minutes". Fortunately we were bright enough to go and check what everybody was waiting for, the reply:"Well... if you want a day pass, just walk over to the coach museum, nobody goes there". And owners of a day-pass could skip all the other queues as well. Now that's 20 euro's well spent :-)

Did loads of castelly-stuff before eventually walking back home again and eating.

Versailles, part 1.

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

I know, it's not the picture that should go with a Versailles-trip. But I still needed to show you all a shot of my back after Cuba. While on the boat trip, I quickly slapped some sunblock on my shoulders and then managed to burn the rest of my back. Apparently the sunblock did it's work :-)

Day consisted of a 5 hour drive Paris-wards, followed by at least an hour and a half being stuck on the Périphérique. Note to self:"Arriving at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon is not your brightest idea ever". Then mis understanding sattelite navigation and being forced to drive 3/4 around Paris instead of just 1/4 probably isn't exactly bright either.

Fortunately found a camping before we even started thinking of looking for one (the Versailles camping is really pretty great, a short walk away from both the station as well as the castle, it's one of the better campings I've stayed on in the past couple of years. Okay, festival campings aren't that hard to beat and nature campings in Australia are pretty easy to beat in the facility-department. But it did beat many Italian campings hands down :-)

Lots of Baguettes and cheese at night.

Fatboy! Yay!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Two things happened to me today, digital tv, which is still having some problems playing nice with my internet connection, and a Fatboy suddenly showed up in my livingroom.

Seeing as digital tv is basically just tv, only a tad sharper, I'll focus on the Fatboy, which is *Huge* (It looks a lot larger than in this picture) But at the same time it's the most comfortable thing I've ever sat in. And all thanks to mum and dad, who decided that they wanted to give me one. *Yay mum and dad*

Had a homeowners-meeting in the evening. Managed not to get elected into any committees.

Birthday girl...

My aunt's birthday. Fun with family was mainly themed about a screaming match between my sister, my uncle and me about why my aunt and uncle had our Bert and Ernie LP's stacked besides their couch. (They've been lost for the past 15 years) Most puzzled look was by my aunt

Back to normal

... and today was a normal workday again. Failed almost completely to do jetlag (except for feeling a tad sleepy in the afternoon). Still plenty of chat going on in the office about our holiday :-)

Back home

Slept for most of the plane-ride before arriving back at home and finding out that my parents had been working their behinds off at my place again. A window sill appeared out of nothing, a painting appeared I've now got 4 extra doormats and probably hundreds of other small things I'm just forgetting at the moment. *yay parents!*

After a bit of sleep, buying a concert ticket for the Lowlands festival this summer (yay! I'm going) and replying loads of e-mail, I spent the remainder of the night watching tv till 1 before I passed out in bed (there was an interesting progam on, I didn't dare to switch it off :-)

Queue

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

One of the downsides of free company holidays is that most companies don't like having all their staff stuck in foreign countries for weeks and weeks (actually, they were already really generous with the whole week) so today we're flying back.

Or actually, today we spend first doing origami with money for our room-maid (who had folded us a nice towel-swan), then sitting on a bus for hours and hours (Havana again), then queueing, queueing and more queueing before finally taking off homewards.

Proper Cuba

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Woke up early, drove to Havana (which turned out to be a 2+ hour drive) and spent a pretty large part of the day exploring the city. Guess I could live there for a couple of months. This would require me to become somewhat more heat resistant though, this would also require me to find a way to scare off all the street salesmen :-)

After loads of walking, girlfriend decided heat really wasn't her thing and we drove back home in 3- hours (wrong turn somewhere ) Strangely enough we had cocktails at night before going to bed :-)

Cars, cacti and Cardenas

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Decided to spend far too much money on renting a car and drive around for a couple of days (well, exactly two, because two days from now we'll be flying out of Cuba again). Sadly enough most really cool sites are a pretty far drive away from Varadero but tomorrow we'll make it to Havana and today we spent driving around exploring Varadero and popping by Cardenas.

Cardenas turned out to be pretty dirty and poor one of those times where you feel you're really out of place, instead of "just one of those tourist people". Back in Varadero we managed to do the cactus-walk, where we learnt both very interesting details about cacti and also that the cactus walk was pretty crappy. Still a pretty cool 500 year old cactus at the end of the walk.

Also visited a cave with plenty of bats before eventually making it back to the resort.

Exploring Varadero

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Didn't really have much planned for the day so we ended up exploring the premises of the resort we were staying in (large, swimming pools with bars) and walk into Varadero.

After finally seeing some of Cuba other than water or bedroom, the first thing that struck us as interesting were the Dutch buses riding around everywhere, even with Dutch city-names still showing on the signs. While girlfriend got mightily excited when she saw a bus displayin Almere (her home city), I'm still somewhat puzzled by the busses showing the:"Not in service"-signs, while transporting people :-)

After a very lengthy walk, we realised that Cuba is hot, humid and that we were sweating pretty badly. So took a Coco-taxi back resort-wards and after food and plenty of cocktails, I ended back in bed again.

Did I mention yet that all the other Cuba-photos reside over at my photo site??

Boat trip

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

What better way to start your holiday than a day long catamaran trip along Cuba's coast? Can't think of one either. Did the whole boat-thing for most of the day, with stops for swimming with dolphins, snorkeling and obviously food. Found out that while they aren't near, girlfriend is trying to take a firm stand on dolphins, she softens up quite a bit once they're near.

For those at home trying to get a cheap "swimming with dolphins"-experience:"Put on your rubber boots, sit in the bath-tub and then close your eyes and stroke your boots". Yes, dolphins have a pretty rubbery feel to them :-) Btw, make sure that you lock the door, your family/roommate/boyfriend/girlfriend my think you're a bit weird for sitting in the bathtub, stroking your rubber boots :-)

Eventually got overtaken by a thunderstorm and managed to get soaked in the 20 meter sprint (swim??) to the bus.

Big party at night, which due to the rain couldn't be held on the beach. Bummer! Still had a lot of fun in a silly club, where one of my colleagues actually took over the DJ booth. Found out the downside about the hectic travel schedule when eventually tried to find my way back to the hotel. Seeing as I hadn't yet been able to do any exploring of the surroundings, I was completely clueless about how to get back home from the club. After first finding myself standing on the beach, wondering:"Where on earth am I??", eventually I did manage to find back my bedroom.

Planes, trains and queues

After taking the train into Schiphol, checking in, waiting for quite a bit and then almost being stampeded by loads of colleagues trying to board the plane, we were on our way to Cuba. Main observation during the plane-trip: girlfriend is the most impatiant person I've ever sat beside in a plane. I may have to consider performing a B.A. Baracus on her next time we're flying.

Then after picking clearly the wrong queue at the Cuba customs and after a 1.5 hour wait, we were finally properly on Cuban soil. The wait could have been worse, apparently a colleague had the same 1.5 hour wait a couple of days earlier, only to see his queue changed in a VIP only queue once he made it to the end.

Busride, hotel, dinner, cocktail and then bed.

Holiday!

Holiday!
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

The last day of work before tomorrow girlfriend and I take off for Cuba. Took it fairly easy (a quick trip to the Hague, after which I worked from home for the rest of the day).

Got my hair cut in the evening and am now all set for Cuba. Will be back next Tuesday!

The invasion of the mother snatchers

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Worke up feeling lightly vague but nothing too bad, spent most of the morning playing with my Playstation (something which I found McR doing when I eventually woke up), all great fun. Then Nicktor called and for some reason made me throw up. Seriously, he called, I suddenly felt ill and threw up in my toiled while Nicktor was listening on the other end. Called back later to check if this was now my standard reaction to having Nicktor on the phone but fortunately no.

Eventually exchanged McR for girlfriend's mums (no more throwing up, fortunately), who popped in to admire my new place and to give me plants. (The total plant count has now gone up with 200%) Eventually had Mexican food for dinner *yay!*

Holiday!

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

After Thursday's certification, I spent the day walking through Rotterdam, looking at stuff without really buying anything. Girlfriend hates doing this but it's actually one of my favourite pastimes. Eventually did buy two books to read on the plane to Cuba (T.C. Boyle's Drop City and Jared Diamond's collapse) before ending back at my place.

At night visited Sabrina's birthday party. Because McR kind of forgot about this happening and not being able to take the last train back home again, I ended up with McR sleeping on my floor. Also managed to get soaked by the rain and probably drank too much *hic!*

Film

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Originally uploaded by selmerv.

A silly start of the day, after brushing my teeth and opening the tap, I suddenly realised that I had seen a note telling me there wouldn't be any water this morning due to maintenance. This left me with a mouth full of toothpaste looking for water everywhere (found some in my Senseo eventually)

In the evning Shiwa visited by because we still needed to take eachother out to the cinema for our birthdays. Saw:"The lucky number Slevin". Very cool film. Also ended up eating chicken from "the Kip Gallery". Definitely the best chicken in town. Had loads of fun.

Fully Certified

Fully Certified
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Apparently I now know the contents of these binders by heart. Together they measure around a meter in information but today I finished the last certification of the 2 I needed to do . Fortunately I passed (80% score) because I really don't feel like doing any more studying for this summer. Combined with the uselessness of the questions, the whole exercise just feels pointless.

But hey, apparently I rule! It really feels like it's finally holiday-time again!

Yay!

Yay
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Apologies for the bad photo-quality, it was a bit hard to find a more optimal angle. Still, as you can see, it's now upright!

Girlfriend, Help!

IKEA
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

If you're having trouble telling, it's called Expedit, it's made by IKEA, my sister helped me get it (she had a stationwagon with her, from work) IKEA tells you that you need two people to put it together. They're wrong. Being cooler than IKEA thinks I am, made my penis grow with at least two inches, while progressing with the assembly.

And then a problem occured... I needed to get it upright (the bookcase, not my penis), it's 90 kgs (once again, the bookcase) Apparently I can't do this by myself. So now I've been using my hallway to get from my livingroom to my kitchen (glad we broke through the kitchen wall). Now tomorrow I'll have to beg girlfriend to help me get it upright (hopefully the bookcase, penis optional)

For those wondering, my penis is half an inch smaller than usual now.

Sunset at my place

Sunset at my place
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Me with the sun in my back
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Another work-week has started, only 8 days left before girlfriend and I fly to Cuba, only 3 days left till it's certification time. So I'm trying to do as much studying as possible. (unless I get distracted by sunsets, obviously )

Now can somebody tell me why Flickr can set subjects to my blog-posts and why I can't?

New couch

New couch

Yes, I should clean up before taking photos of my place but for those interested... This is a photo of my new couch in its new place. Yes, it's huge! :-)

Played with my camera and my washing machine in the afternoon.

Celebrated Mother's day at parents' place in the evening, took more pictures. Still need to figure out how to easily blog multiple pics.