Rain

Rain, rain, rain, you can't escape it.
It's misery outside but it's only rain, known that it snowed on the beaches of north Africa and that southern Europe has it's winter, we know we're poor. We ought to have that weather.
What I'm gonna do is to bed early. My day was ruined by the weekend, in fact I did too much.

I have to buy some food if I wanna have a decent meal.
So I see you around, or maybe better, you leave your comment.
By the way, my feeling is that my English is getting better, is it improving?


at work soup and coffee, lunchbreak

beautiful life

This a striking example of how beautiful life can be. Rose from Bagdad just voted. A true democrate, like the old Greeks saw it. The expectations are high. The picture shows it, it's Rose's victory.

Castles everywhere

Castle the haar in Haarzuilens on my training.

When I was back in Utrecht making a stop at a petrol station, a car stopped next to me. The driver couldn't hardly open his door and asked in the dialect of the area where my roots are, the way to the jaarbeurs.
(yes, the Kama Sutra Fair)
He and his girlfriend were in a hurry, no time to waste, less than 3 hours before the Fair closes.
I couldn't tell the shortest way by car, so he rushed into the shop to ask.
A moment later I saw the yellow car on it's way to the city.

Commercial II

What about this Volkswagen Polo commercial?
Bad taste? Volkswagen thinks so.

Commercial I

Midnight on a roundabout to the city center.

Though Dutch don't watch commercials (acoording to a survey, following the habits of viewers during a commercial break by camera), I don't hope this commercial will be a new trend.

Weekend

Just a little better picture of my block.

It's weekend again. My screen is replaced. The man who brought it said that a lot of LG screens went back to the LG factory. Also many other consumer products were sent back. A plausible reason for that is because it's a mass product with poor final control. Next time I won't buy LG.

This weekend is a Kama sutra fair in the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht.
About sex and erotics I guess.
The temperatures will be pretty low however I just go for a ride. If the weather is fine I also go to make some freightship pictures and probably I gonna visit town.

Work was pretty tough this week, no not really, the week before was more difficult because of the collission with my co worker.
He was very irritated on something I mentioned. But I didn't want to hurt him. In fact he's a good chap.

Delivery; Auschwitz 60 years

I told my co worker the troubles with my monitor.
The Monday before they tried to deliver a new monitor without any appointment. After a call they planned me in for Thursday, today, between 8 am and 6 pm.
That's really crazy, they just think about their time schedule.

Yesterday evening I called them again. They could reduce the delivery time to two hours. Between 14:00 and 16:00 the screen will be here. I hope so, because use of the CRT screen is a huge step backwards. Oh holy sister, we're spoiled.

So, I took this afternoon off and maybe they deliver soon so I can go outside.

The screen arrived early; But I stay tuned with the broadcast of the Auschwitz commemoration. Not all the time, however it's an impressive gathering.

daylight

The moon set when I went to work....

I worked, had fun, tried to be serious and went home


when I came home, the sun set.

But it will not be for long that darkness will rule the day at home.
Soon there will be light.

Exchanges

Different forms of exchanges:

- to transfer my photo's via blogger to my blog;
- an exchange program to the US when I was 16. Unfortunately my dad didn't fill in the paperwork. Else I went with EF language travels for a year oversea to a hosting family. That must be a lucky family they missed me;
- the Stock Echange is doing moderate right now. But my gains are serious;
- a blog: not necessarily a platform to exchange views.

Midnight

At 12 pm CET we all knew the worldchampion speedskating sprint is Erben Wennemars.
And he was happy. For the second time world's best speedskater. The best Dutch speedskater ever. Superlatives everywhere, but this weekend he was the best. Unfortunately another Dutchman, Olympic Champion Gerard van Velde fell on his first 1000 meter. However the mayor threat for the defending champion was Jeremy Wotherspoon. But he was overwhelmed by the adrenaline shot of the Dutchman.

I woke up, noticed it snowed in the night, went to work and made one picture on my way to work.
This is a Dutch winter, no snow at all. It's white but cocaine is white too.
And now when the sun sets and the land is dark and contrast with the deep blue clear sky the white powder has gone, the roofs are dry and the streets are wet and fellow citizens and I are not stoned.
But snow, no. Let it snow Caren!
Men spoke -let there be snow-. And there was snow. If it could be so simple...

Sports and coffee

Sports on a wintery morning and after that a cup of coffee of Douwe Egberts, brand of the Sara Lee company in Europe.
I've met a lot of sporters who disgust drinking coffee before running, some who are not in favor of beer after being in a sporty mood.

But when at work someone asks loudly: "Coffee?" there is hardly anyone who rejects the offer. Offering coffee at work is a social habit and not accepting the offer is more or less breaking the rule. Not accepting can be a token that something is wrong.

I can hear you saying; Bullshit

Stats:
30.00 k
24.84 k/hr
1:12:29 hr
37 k/hr
26,914 k

Congratulations house...

that we get along with eachother for 2 years right now.
This is the apartment I live in for 2 years at the moment. The top floor is mine.
January 23 2003 was the day of my removal from Groningen.
I was commuting 5 months, 5 hours a day, when I could rent this apartment.
Well, it was a lucky shot really, but I would be very happy I could buy it.

Snow

After a short night I feel real good.
It's weekend. And tomorrow it's gonna snow.
Allright, worldchampionsships speedscating, in Salt Lake City.
The 500 and 1000 meter are always exiting to watch. A lot happens, it goes fast and Erben Wennemars is sympathetic.

Stats:
33.37 k
24.17 k/hr
1:22:53 hr
31 k/hr
26,884 k (total on the Giant)
Total '05 218 k

basement

Actually this is the basement. I've stalled my bikes here, wine, books and things to throw away. The door in the middle is mine.

site

On my way home I alway cycle along this monumental site of beginning 19th century and buildings of the late 19th century.

hope

Hopefully this one is without a title cause it says it all; beware of reindeer!

fatigued

It was a long day again. At my work I had a lot to do but it was a monotonious day.
The atmosphere was good, but not one of laughing 40 times.
But above all I feel tired.
So many things to do.

Surprise

This day I fooled myself.
I wanted to wake up at 6.58 am, when my alarm went off I thought to sleep for 5 minutes.
No way, 110 minutes later I woke up for the second time. I immediately called my co worker that I slept a little too long.
That messed up my day. I worked till 5.30 pm. Happily there was a lot of work to do.

Yesterday Ayaan Hirsi Ali started work again in our Parliament. But today was her first day without the necessary pressconference, etcetera. Well, she was welcomed warmly and stated that she would go on fighting against the extremes of Islam.

I can say ..."Some people say..." but that is the voice of the right wing... here in the Netherlands as well as in the United States.
I just say that there is a possibility that her party sees her as a heavy weight they wanna loose. Without security she's an easy target for fundamentals who want to do her something. Life will be difficult for her as we all can see.

Btw. the upper photo I use as a screen template.

idea

Where have I been in the months since July '04?
I can remember all except three quarters of an hour on last Saturday.
What did I do? I didn't know that photography would take so long.
But I must say it felt good to be out in the cold.
Next thing I got on my mind is a project to keep a photolog of all ships passing by in the channel in front of my house.
There are a whole lot of them. I'll show you when the project is started up.
When ships are more times photographed I'll stop the project.

selfreflections

Today is my day off. It's good. Some music, no sun, time for doing the things I don't have time for.
For instance my Lg monitor malfunctions. When I'm busy behind the screen the view suddenly fades away. And after minutes it's black but not for long.
I called LG electronics and as they have a service center which brings a revised screen in return for this broken one I'm a little bit pleased or satisfied with this 3 year service/guarantee. But in fact I paid for it.

Also I could do some paperwork, my pension (It will be grown to a reasonable amount when I'm 64) Have a look at my stocks, they grow too, but they give me work to do.
In 2004 I had a better performance than ABP, one of the world's largest superannuationfunds. They control, supervise over 150 billion Euro.

Just did a stock transaction, I sold 2000 Euro in a bankingcorporation and suddenly realized how it would be not having the capacity to do these things. It would be horrifing not to be seen as a normal person, not being capable of doing transactions on your own.
But in moments of selfreflection I'm asking myself how am I doing.
The answer is O.K.A.Y

Sometimes I'm afraid to transact, it gives so much pressure. I can't make up my mind. I have to think about something for so long that when I've an answer the moment is gone.
So a couple of years ago I started to speed up my action and reactions.
This is one of the reasons why I got the job I'm doing right now.
So a little change in attitude or behavior can have a huge effect on personal life.

Castle

On my cycle tour I came along this castle. It's hidden behind the trees so I saw it not until spring 2004.
The castle is called Sterkenburg and is situated between Werkhoven and Doorn. The photo has a sepia effect to accentuate the age of the building.

Stats of the cycle tour:
56.11 k
21.91 k/hr
2:33:39 hr
40 k/hr
26,851 k (total)
144 k (total giant)
T '05 185 k

54.21 k

Finally home, after 3 houres (where did I spend 3 quarters?), 54.21 k

52 k

I just passed the bridge named after Prince Claus, married to our queen Beatrix. (52 k)

35 k

The Lek at 35 k

At the same time

20 k

After 20 k

15 k

After 15 k

panorama

Let's see if the Panoramic view on the Lek works.

Update:
Despite the colder weather (after days of mild temps.) suddenly lower temperatures remind it's January, I made my necessary bikeride and took my new camera with me.
Well, I made many pictures, most of them can be wasted. But I got some of the bridges over the channel and of landmarks which guided me when I was new here.
These landmarks give the feeling of being home, or almost home.

Stats of my tour:
54.21 k
24.58 k/hr
2:12:22 hr
38 k/hr
26,795 k
88 k (total this year on the giant).

A digicam

Pancakes, at 8 pm. Yes, alfterall I had a busy day.

Bought myself a camera

There are so many people who have a digital camera. One can't go without one these day's. It's a necessity for the internet blogger.
So After long waiting, shopping and thinking I decided to buy a digicam after work.
It took an hour for the accu to load but then it works.
I got to install the software and have to find out some more features.
It's a NIKON btw.

Labour productivity

Tomorrow I'll have nothing much to do at work.
The people who keep the system updated don't want to work in the weekend.
So Friday at 12:00 pm the main system will be down. In the weekend they won't do anything and not until Wednesday we can work in het main system. This is really stupid. At the same time the Government wants to stimulize labour productivity.

Let's not forget I got to fill in an inquiryform for NIPO and donate the payment to Doctors Without Borders, even they don't need the money for relief in Asia right now. They can use the money on different places on the globe.

Survival of the fittest.

Scientists want to excavate an old middleageous burial site of people who survived the pest-pandemic. The team tries to get DNA from the survivers which can possibly lead to a cure against AIDS.
The scientists hope to find out why a part of the population HIV-positive don't get AIDS.
The team presumes that survivors of the pest-virus have built up a defense mechanism which also resist the AIDS-virus.

Hopeful news, but only on the wrong page of textpage. On a page with merely questionable and cynical news or news without content.

Next weekend will be a long one. Monday I'm off.

Laying eggs

In spite of the storm we had great temperatures in the last 10 days.
Yesterday we had a record warmth recorded on the mayor weatherstation of De Bilt.
The 10 day's average is 8.1 C right now. The average over the last 30 years is about 2.5 C. There must be a greenhouse effect in it.

Nature responds with early birds returning (yesterday evening I heard some geese, but they were not going to far north) I see trees developing leaves and blossom. Rare, but in the last decade almost normal.
But when winter hits, nature will face an enormous setback. In about a month the first bird will lay an egg, I 'll tell you. It's absolutely abnormal but true.
April is the month for the first bird and in May all birds will have laid their eggs.

We are changing the world's climate wanting more, more and more.
As consumers we want food from the other end of the world, while transport is environmentally ineffective. Why do we do that? Why don't we pay the fair price, I mean environmental cost included?
It's because we don't know the effect of the pollution or we minimalize it.
But everybody does it (flying intercontinental, consuming local food from the other side of the world, using too much energy, etcetera, etcetera) and it becomes a huge problem.

Sports and blogs

First I wanna thank the Dutch citizen of the peaceful Low Countries to donate almost $ 160 billion for the victims of the Tsunami. Hey, mind The Netherlands only have 16 billion people.

Lance Armstrong will ride the Tour de France at least one more time.
He and his sponsor Discovery agreed on one entry in the most difficult cycling competition in the world.

Shani Davis skated a worldrecord on the 1500 meters, the most difficult distance in speedscating. He improved the record of Derek Parra. And what about Chad Hedrick, he missed changing lanes. Cindy Klassen set a new worldrecord on the 1500 meters too.
Congratulations for both of them, but remember the World Championships are not until February in Moskwa. The Dutch will have many opponents on the W.C. in Moskwa.

And blogs, what are we blogging for. 8 Billion Americans blog and the number is growing, why? Self-esteem? What? Yeah, for me.

The aftermath, Scheisse

Yesterday I wrote in my diary what happened in the last 2 months in the Netherlands.
It started with the Van Gogh assassination on November 2 2004 and now we got the Tsunami in Asia for which deprived people we collected over 120,000,000 Euro.

One can criticize that because other regions get less money for even worse disasters.
But I think that for a lot of people it opened their heart from a more hedonistic lifestyle to a more caring attitude. However the Dutch always give a lot personally to care-organizations as well institutionally (0.8 % of GDP is meant for development aid).

Aid workers fear the aftermath of this Tsunami disaster for the rest of the disasters which will occur in the next year. For these disasters will be less money of private persons because they only can give their money once, so the Tsunami affects the whole world.
For example Memisa (a member of Cordaid) will be fundraising for a project in Haiti next month. Memisa fears the worst.

And since January 1 2005 I am living like a tourist from a country far away because I need my passport near me wherever I go. That's difficult. Just going on a cycletour to the hills on my racingbike, where do I leave my passport? I don't know. What in summer when the heat arrived and I want to go for a swim, I seldom take money with me. A passport is not in question till now.
And this all is to make it saver? Don't fool yourself.
It's all Scheisse.

Stats of today:
41.30 k
25.89 k/hr
1:35:43 hr
45 k/hr (max)
T 582 k (batavus)

Stormywinter

Just over a year ago, winter '03, we had such weather as today, windforce 10, storm. The whistling and howling of the wind, the speed of the Dutch milkcoloured clouds, with some spots of lightblue. The trees are bending with each sweep of the wind.
The ferries to the islands in the north are cancelled. The wind is too strong for the relatively light ferries.

This weather is the reason my nick is stormywinter. I like this kind of weather. And I had to make a hotmail account. So I just looked at the weather and my name was born.

Here I am Stormywinter

update:
On my way back home from Albert Heyn (the Dutch US foodservice or Stop & Shop) I could not control my bike against the wind.
Later, after the storm reached its high, I trained some K's.

1st trip
34.19 k
25.12 k/hr
1:21:42 hr
39 k/hr
26,740 k (Giant)

Free as a bird

European championships icescating have begun this Friday
The wind is blowing from the medditerean and makes the temperatures rise skyhigh.
This weekend I'll do some training on my racingbike.
But first got to do some shopping at the groceries.

And the Tsunami? According to some people, within a fortnight the Tsunami will be forgotten and the world will be back to normal. And what an amount of money the worldcommunity collected! Why don't we do that for the people living in poverty, in fear and pain in central Africa? Aids is killing thousands of people per day. Yesterday the last son of Nelson Mandela died of A.I.D.S.
Who is next?

a breaker

What has become of those people?
the dude was here too

Charity, don't speak

The Germans chose the most beautiful word in their language: Habseligkeiten, gadgets.
In the Netherlands it's: liefde. Just love.
The English chose mother.
The Americans chose the word charity
No doubt about it.

mindcontrol

Allright, there are days like this day. Almost like this day.
Not completely similar like this day because 3 minutes of silence at noon is extraordinary. Especially when the whole of Europe is silent, commemorates the victims of the Asian Tsunami disaster.
This is mass mindcontrol.
Trainstations full of people standing still at noon.

Why? Don't they think about the misery underneath? Can't they go on doing the things they do on a trainstation? Hello fogs time is ticking!!! Even trains stop in the fields.
This is mindcontrol. The media and the Government have decided there should be 3 minutes of silence to commemorate.
What can an individual do not to go with the flow and reject the mindcontrol?
This is an open-end question.

Instead of warfare

Just thought 0.000001 second it was December. All the misery. It's spinning in my head all the time.
I don't like to watch the evening news. I've seen too many corpes of dead people. They can be found in the most impossible positions.

In a village half an hour drive from a mayor tourist town in Thailand people don't do anything with the bodies. They don't bury them, just cover them with plastic, a cloth or palmbranches.
The army over there has no eye for the death. They just care for the recovery of the motor of one of their speedboats.

And the head of a village on Sumatra begs to burn the death. But as they are Muslim the death have to be cleaned in a proper way and should then be buried.
This shows the inflexibility of Islam. People who rot away can not to be cleaned, washed or whatever. To prevent spreading diseases they should be burned.

Hopefully the world will offer a lot of money to do the right thing instead of warfare.

All Americans I ask not to be so naïve to watch FOX news and to believe the things they're saying, the supposed facts about the Netherlands, my country and Anne Frank's. Everything this newsstation puts in the air is covered with a dark black extraordinary conservative sauce.
The station is the litmuspaper of American attitude. And that minds me that the state is bad, very bad, I sorry.
My country is pure. The inhabitants do their utmost when others are in despair.
My country is curious, my country tollerates other opinions, my country is in some way smart enough to see that we can't cope with the USA, but that's not we're less. It's because we're smaller.

Being creative...

.... to give more to Asia.
Of course everyone has from time to time an idea to be better off financially.
I had one that's needs cooperation of the people who want to take advantage of my ingenuity. -Someone- has to say it!
In the Netherlands gifts to charity are tax-deductible for the amount above 2% of ones annual gross income.
So if the cooperators give money to our national charity organization for Asia, they should give the money to one person in a group who can transfer the total amount of money to the account of the charity organization. For example if the highest tax level is 50% (the maximum in the Netherlands), 50% can be claimed if the amount is more than the 2% burden.
This 50% can be a gift again next year.
The pity is that one got to earn a lot of money to exceed the 50% tax level
The people who do that don't have to use this cooperation.
The people for whom it could work earn too little that it's not worth it and the taxcollector won't accept high amounts of gifts without any questions.
Theoretically it might work, but practically it doesn't.

What a week....

What a week we had, I mean the whole international community, a seaquake triggering waves beyond imagination, killing maybe up to 200,000 people.

This killer has a name; Tsunami.
As a least 2 new born children, a boy and a girl are named after the wave, there is also some beauty in it's strength.
And the wave can't help it took so many lives.

This flood doesn't discriminate. It's strength flattened whole area's and destroyed everything on it's path.
Waves on a sea for which the hedonistic consumers, tourists from Europe, come, took their lives.
-It's disgusting how some tourist claim their beach after it's cleaned of the death people. Rats do that when there isn't enough space-.
The power of this disaster is interesting and tells us that we shouldn't underestimate the power of nature.

Welcome in 2005

Everything is quiet on New Year's day.
My first post in 2005 -shall I call it twenty five?-

I just came home by train after being with family.
The fireworks were beautiful, the food was good and happily we didn't consume any TV trash. We played Colonists of Catan and were all eager to win.
Okay, the night was a little short for me and the morning was dull. The New Year's concert at Vienna was prime. Reason to go out, into the fields.

Google words -to find my site (amongst other sites)-:
1. netherlands 3
2. fundamentalism 3
3. rif 3
4. caren 1
5. blog 1
6. site:blogspot.com 1
7. lissner 1
8. Hotmail 1
9. 2004/2005 1
10. web 1
11. Bagdad 1
12. Sint 1 13. girl 1
14. bagdad 1
15. Maarten 1
16. CristmasDay 1
17. writer 1
Total 23