More book-reading, also watched:"How to start your own country" Brilliant!

Sat on balcony, read book. Exciting, n'est-ce pas?

Skated through Rotterdam (Maastunnel, city-center, maasboulevard, Willemabrug) bought an ice-cream and ended up drinking beer and chatting at Nicktor's place.

Paid the streetperformers-festival another visit. Realised that when you get to see loads of streetperforming acts, they all start to look alike after a while. (Pick somebody in audience, make fun of him, work towards grand finale, perform special trick, applause). Saw 2 more of these acts and bumped into kid-sister.

Then had an "oh, wow"-experience when I saw what later turned out the winner of the festival. If you ever manage to catch monsieur huit-huit doing his street-performance, then do. Really verry impressed.

Dinner at parents' place afterwards.

Marlies' bachelor party. Managed to lock myself out of the house on the way there (fortunately my front door-keys are attached to my car-keys so I couldn't move an inch) and had to ask Nicktor to drive back to let me into the house (he's got a set of spare keys).

Eventually managed to drive to Schiedam, get lost and then do a color-analysis workshop. (Note to self:"You are a bright spring-type. This means that certain colours look better on you than others, you forgot most of those colours and because you work in IT nobody probably cares. Oh, you're incapable of thinking of those colours while buying clothes anyways.)

After some drinks, food and an attempt at hitting the clubs at night (when you find yourself buying a round of water and a coke at 1 am, you know it won't be one of those nights where you have to call your friends the next morning to check what happened). Drove back home after dropping off Anna.

Impressed with Cindy, who knew that I had a bachelor party and still managed to call me at 4 am. Don't know what's more distressing, her expecting me to be sober or me actually being sober.

Read book, listened to music, chatted with girlfriend. Popped by the street-performers-festival in Rotterdam. Saw 1 pretty bad act and 1 which was okay.

In an attempt to up the fun, I watched Vanilla Sky and drank half a bottle of wine (it was standing in the fridge, it needed to be finished). Apparently fell asleep, woke up 2 hours later and went to bed. I'm really getting old.

Stayed in, read Harry Potter. Not the best score ever considering that I probably should have been kite-surfing. (Couldn't make it due to space-time constraints)

Watched the last Samurai want to become a warrior now.

Joined Erwin and his friend Ray during their weekly pub-quiz night. The 3 of us managed to come in second. I'd love to brag but they usually come in second. Helped out on 1 or 2 questions though.

Turned down the excitement even further. Sat on couch, read books, even slept in the daytime. I guess I just wasn't feeling too great. Fortunately eventually I ended up rollerskating through Rotterdam to pick up something at Sabrina's place. Guess I'm not entirely dull after all, just 99%

Went to bed and then received a phonecall from Arjan that he was popping by to drop off the new Harry Potter, which girlfriend decided to borrow him instead of me (grrr!). Eventually in bed around 1-ish.

Not the most exciting day ever, even though I did visit a gardening center, an IKEA store and a supermarket. Failed to buy stuff at the gardening center or the supermarket though.

Managed to call Kirsten to congratulate her on her baby (only 1.5 months late). Got told by Kirsten that my pink card stood out in between all the blue ones. Note to self:"Next time look up the gender of the baby before buying the card".

Watched "dodgeball" at night.

Tired... need sleep! Spent the evening finishing Danny Wallace's "yes man". Which was pretty funny but did not feel nowhere near as convincing as his "Join me"-book.

Drove to Utrecht and teamed up with Bart in the Plato-record store. The plan for the night:"See 'the Posies' perform". May have to define that goal a bit better seeing as the reason we met up at the record store was a Posies instore. So, the plan was apparently to see them perform twice.

Caught half of their instore, then drove on towards "de Helling", where the proper show was taking place. Brilliant show, all the old favourites, some new songs and a band swigging bourbon from the bottle and apparently having a great time. Back home late though.

Apparently had managed to do "the Bierloop" in moderation, there was a complete lack of a massive hangover. But then there was no reason to wonder:"Did we really finish?" either. Did get to experience the worst traffic jam I've seen this summer, I can't wait for autumn to kick in.

Went out for dinner with Annemarie at night. Apparently we both miss girlfriend.

For ages me and my friends have been taking part in the "VRiSBI bierloop", a sponsored pubcrawl that usually gets loads of people you vaguely know together in a pub and lets them stumble around drunkenly, through Rotterdam, wielding porcelain beer-mugs. Some of your uni-lecturers will be there as well (usually at least as drunk as you are), in every pub you'll meet people wielding the same mugs and and the next morning you'll wake up with a massive hangover and a porcelain mug to add to the collection (I've now got 6 or 7). After the clouds of the hangover pull up, you have to call all your friends to check whether everybody came back home safely, whether some things really happened, and usually also to check whether your team actually finished or not.

Many drunken stories start with:"Well, it was bierloop-time and..." and for ages this event was deemed to be un-fuckup-able for the organisation. You get loads of people together, you give them beer and everybody will have a good time no matter how badly you fuck up.

For some reason this year I was not going to take part, Lorraine had pissed off to a far, far away place where she'd probably be sitting in her living-room, clutching a half empty bottle of Vodka, retelling bierloop-tales, Nicktor was in Italy trying to impress friends with stories about the epic event he was missing, Ellen is in Dublin and McR decided that basketball was more important than beer.

Decided to pop by myself just to chat with drunk people, as I had decided that I had become old, responsible and that I'd finally act my age. (Actually this plan had been devised by Remco, who appears to be a lot better in responsible thinking than I am) Showed up an hour after the event was supposed to start and noticed that an essential element to the bierloop was missing, where were the people? The second Adriaan walked in, we decided against Remco's orders (something to do with him not wanting to appear hungover on his second day at his new job) that we just had to take part (mainly because there was nobody to talk with). Entered us (and Remco), got shouted at by Remco (for entering him) and promised that we'd only stop at the official bierloop bars.

Sadly something else was different (in the old days everything used to be better), where in the early days, bars used to be within crawling distance of eachother, there now was a pretty hefty hike between the two ones furthest apart, so we had to compensate for that by adding some extra bars. Also for some reason managed to pose as a first year student and almost became a member of RSG. At the end of the night apparently only 10 teams (that's 30 people) showed up, no first-year students at all, no uni-lecturers. And still we had fun, I fear. Note to the organisers:"Next year don't forget to bring in the people"

For some reason Cindy and I decided that we needed to go out for dinner in Scheveningen. Did just that. Since Lorraine disallowed me to mention that we had fun, I'll just point out that Cindy had her hair straightened and that I didn't get back home till around midnight :-)

Screw Lorraine, I like being dull, on with the daily postings :-) (Leaving out the dull days just seems wrong, then if people dig up my diary 1000 years from now they'll think I was this person who would continously stumble around drunk) I fear you readers will just have to skip lots of posts :-)

Obviously this is just me trying to act tough about Lorraine's departure. She will be severely missed, with girlfriend a zillion miles away and Lorraine back in Russia, now who am I going to fight with? :-)

Fortunately today was action packed. Laundry, McR visiting, us buying a bicycle pump, a bicycle lock and a clock. (I've now once again got a working clock in my living room) And us playing GTA vice City.

A quick trip to the shops got rugby tackled by McR, who demanded I'd pop by his place to play the X-Box. Obviously couldn't say "no" and spent the remainder of the day (and evening) playing games.

Got joined by Lorraine for a while and got told that half my readership (i.e. Lorraine herself) thinks that either my life is dull or that my diary is repetitive or probably both. Hey! We can't all be super-heroes who get to save the world every day :-) May have to admit that Lorraine knows me too well, yes, my life has got its dull moments and yes, my diary does get repetitive once in a while. May have to give up my daytime job and become a fulltime blogger :-)

Back home even before midnight due to me feeling somewhat sleepy-ish.

Went out for dinner with Shiwa and Cindy in Bazar to celebrate Shiwa's birthday (which was in April by the way) Appeared a bit on the late side because the thunderstorm that had been going on had knocked over a bottle of glassex (window-cleaner) and I had to clean my kitchen floor. Geez, there's loads of fluid in 1 bottle of glassex. Seeing as glass is spelled with only 1 's' in Dutch, this gave me the opportunity to text:"Will be a bit late, had sex on the kitchen floor."

After explaining that "no, there's nothing girlfriend should know immediately about this sex on the kitchen floor-thing", we had dinner, moved on to see "the Island", which I thought was pretty cool, even though the product placement stood out in a somewhat bad way.

Eventually teamed up with Femke and moved on to Rotown, where the DJ-ing wasn't exactly the best I've ever heard. Still had loads of fun. Back in bed by 4:30.

Sat at home, finished book, MSN-chatted with girlfriend. Yes, life can't always be exciting, I fear :-)

For some reason Lorraine decided to call for a "guys night out" on a schoolnight. Now my mum used to teach me that going out on schoolnights was a bad idea. And now schoolnights are a euphemism for:"The nights before you get up at 6:30 am, drag yourself to your car and drive to work", they're probably even less of a good idea. And then I haven't even mentioned that guys night out usually take place in a Belgian beer pub in Dordrecht, which is a 45 minute bike-ride away from my parents' place and probably an hour and a half from my own place (sober, that is). Oh and I have quite the liking for the stronger Belgian beers.

But seeing as Lorraine was bringing in her new boyfriend for a thorough inspection, I just had to be there just to decide whether this Richard guy deserved my seal of approval. Decided to sleep over at parents' place, asked my colleague if he could take the early shift and got all set for this guys night out. (Which meant finding my porn playing cards and poker-chips)

Biked to Dordrecht, drank beer, played silly games (as usual) and found out that old people probably aren't as scary as I supposed they'd be. Rolled into bed around 2-ish.

Guess I'm pretty good at this living on my own thing already. For some reason I own more alcohol than I own non-alcoholic drinks, I've got more chairs than there's ever people in my place and in the past couple of months I haven't nearly died from food poisoning once. Does this really mean I'm becoming a grown up? Eeeek!

Probably a bit sad but because it's the summer holidays and because there are no traffic jams, I completely didn't get round to do any shopping during all of last week. Usually just leave the road and find a supermarket whenever a traffic jam pops up (Though I only do this once every trip back home, doing it more would be somewhat silly).

But now without the traffic jams, I get back home, act surprised at the time I managed to arrive and rush out again to go and do fun stuff because I've still got a whole evening ahead of me. For example the last time I actually had a properis meal at my place was exactly a week ago, the last time I entered a supermarket was Saturday a week ago.

Because of this my house became pretty foodless. Yesterday I had to have three minute noodles for breakfast because that was the only breakfasty thing that was available (except for eating jam or chocolate sprinkles out of the jar/box). As for any of the other food-categories, my place was slowly running out of them as wel, no beer anymore, no quick snacks, no drinks, nothing.

Managed to stock up on food items and made myself dinner. Spent the remainder of the evening trying to finish the Baroque Cycle trilogy I've been reading ever since Italy (you try reading 3 800+ page volumes while at the same time having a working life, it apparently takes a while). Chatted a bit on MSN with girlfriend and went to sleep,

Somehow failed to leave the house the whole afternoon and missed the Formula 1 cars driving through Rotterdam as a result of this. Just lounged and read books instead. Teamed up with Remco, Marjoleine and Adriaan at night and managed to end up in yet another pub. I should get this blog pub-sponsored!

Felt a bit hazy in the morning, but had apparently promised Ellen last night to drive her around the country. Picked up McR, picked up Ellen and Gary and drove all the way to Volendam, where we watched tourists and had our picture made in traditional Volendam dress. (It was Ellen's idea, McR and I were forced to do it!!!)




Decided that we had to counter all the cheesiness somehow and drove on towards Bloemendaal, still the place to be when it comes to beach-clubs in the Netherlands. Managed to somewhat blend in and had some drinks while lounging in the sun.

At night went out with most of the people that showed up last night, and got joined by Lorraine for a bit. She claimed old age and pissed off pretty early but I won't say anything bad about that seeing as she brought me "yes man" back from the UK. Yay Lorraine!!!!! Big fun to have the whole old gang together in one place again for a change, even managed to bump into Haas.

Ended the night in Calypso, where we stumbled into Kaz, Katherine and Kaz's friends. All had a brilliant night out. Back home far too late, fearing the stand-by phone I had been carrying with me all night.

Out for dinner and drinks with Ellen, Gary, Sabrina, Marlies, Nicktor, Arjan and McR. Loads of fun was had by all. Even more drinks were had by all. Hic! Great to see Ellen again.

Popped by my parents' place for a barbecue with Kaz and Katherine. Dad managed to tell Katherine that she had grown fatter since the last time he saw her. Us van Alten man can be so charming :-)

Attended another Wednesday Night Skate with Arjan. Managed to bump into Karlijn and Katherine (one of Karlijn's friends I met in Paris once) as well. Loads of skating, loads of fun and eventually applepie-icecream. Managed to bump into Ruben and Wendy afterwards and have drinks with them as well.

Because Arjan hadn't seen Star Wars 3 yet and because I hadn't either, went to see that. Thought the story was somewhat implausible from time to time.

Spent the night chatting away with girlfriend, while skype failed miserably.