Christmas

This year it was a completely different Christmas. My brother asked me to come over to his house.

His little darling of 16 months was overwhelmed by presents of the family. A nephew commented on facebook if  Santa crashed above his house seeing so many presents.
The food was good and the wine was a kind of heavy for me.
I only slept for 3 hours. A short night it was. :)

The 27th I had an appointment with company which will deliver my kitchen. Some say it's better to have a floor first and then to install the kitchen. That depends I learned. I will have a wooden floor.  Maybe it's better to have the kitchen installed first.
Yesterday I visited a company for wooden floors. It's quite difficult to decide what to choose. Yes I have to make up my mind for what I'll do with the walls and how will the ceiling look like.
Today I visited my house and I saw the fence was opened so I had a look on the building site.  It looks great. The garden has been flattened. If it wasn't winter I could sow the grass seeds.

It's almost New Years Eve. I'll stay at home. It'll be my last one in this house. Kind of sentimental tearyuerking event. O man, I getting old :)

***HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013***

space

Cassini, launched in 1997, made 60 photograph and put together this was the result.

An eternal flight into space...

On Oct. 17, 2012, Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, a perfect location from which to look in the direction of the sun and take a backlit view of the rings and the dark side of the planet. link

Malala

It's a sad story we all heard of about a 14 year old Pakistani girl Malala Yousafza, a childrenrights activist.

A midieval savage cruel act of men who think Malala's voice shouldn't be heard.

Her voice shouts for help to condemn the Taliban. Her voice shouts for education for girls. Her voice shouts to people all over the world, especially Pakistani to listen and accept education for girls.

She might be heard if I may believe the newsreel. Hopefully Malala recovers from this.

My thoughts are with her.

boarder

I guess my blogger problem is over now. I just deleted the history and cookies from firefox. Now I'm able to log in on blogger.

What is happening on the boarder of Turkey with Syria has much to do with Turkish citizens in Europe. Their country is more or less under attack. It's even a NATO problem because an attack on one of the members is an attack on the other members. Hopefully the shelling doesn't escalate.

It reminds me of s song of Bruce Cockburn titled if I had a rocketlauncher.

Good feeling

For a while now I use Firefox instead of IE. I Don't understand why I got problems with accessing blogger to write a post. So I use my iPad to update this blog.

I visited my house which is being build and to my surprise the roof is almost ready. Inside, the stairs are installed. Again it was a wow feeling.

Politicians

 A week ago we weren't sure what was going to happen, but now politicians did their work.
The 2 parties who won the election have assigned 2 people each to start an information round. These 4 man have to examine the possibilities to form a new cabinet.

Last Tuesday we had the State of the Union (prinsjesdag) and the Netherlands has to cut spending. Life will become more expensive that's for sure. Maybe also more attractive.

wow

In Dutch Politics A Landslide of votes to the progressive left party PvdA and the right wing Party VVD gives new opportinies to get out of the mess Europe left us. But now these 2 big parties, who have a majority in Dutch Parliament (Tweede Kamer), have to work together in a coalition to run this country.  However they haven't  a majority in the House of Commons (Eerste Kamer).

My question and hope is that we can create some rest and might be able to negotiate and use the poldermodel instead of let all happen and do nothing.
If it's true and tomorrow morning there will be a draw, or a close call, I hope Democrats 66 will make a difference.

I'm trilled....

The beach

When you ask the name of a famous beach in Holland, many people say Zandvoort.
The picture below is one of the beaches of Bloemendaal aan Zee, which stretches out to Zandvoort. The picture was taken on Monday August 13 at 12.10 pm.

There are more beaches of course. Bergen in the province of North-Holland has a nice beach if you like nature and an artistic atmosphere. In Zeeland there is a nostalgic beach town called Domburg.

We got 5 inhabited islands in the Waddenzee on the edge of the North Sea. Each of the islands has it's own characteristic. But everyone has a wide beach. Slightly different then what you see on the picture. A little bit more heroic.

ostrich

My department is in a transition. Another word for cutting in the expense rate by working lean and especially cutting in the number of employees, colleagues. So in the few last weeks the pressure was really on. There was a kind of doom or an ostrich like scenario among people. Some people just faced the facts: It will come like it is. Other people seemed to be powerful: nothing will happen to me. I felt all of it. In fact I was scary. But when I face the facts I know there is a social plan, a livebuoy. But still I felt not really sure. On Monday we had a mail of the transition manager. He excused himself for the fact that he couldn't keep the agreement making clear the position of all the 235 employees. At the end of the week a letter with our position in the transition would be send. That means that Saturday the letter would be delivered by the postman. Have a good weekend! The weekend was not really bad. A lot of cycling (Tour the France) was on television. The weather was fine. But I didn't cycle for myself. That mountain experience and the orthodontist made me sick. I could cycle for almost ten days after the mountain when I catched a cold. The brace doesn't feel good. Eating is difficult. Maybe I don't get enough Vitamin C.

The transition might have some consequences for my team. One girl has to move to another department because her work is 50% or more what will be done somewhere else in this municipality. Now she lives close to her work and that fits her, because she has 3 little children. She can be home in a moment. Now she will have to go to work at the other side of the city. This all will be implemented in early 2013. The whole transition will only be effective on the first of January 2015 and will gradually be implemented.

French alp

Hi, it seems a long time I've been written something. Busy with cycling, house, work, etcetera. Concerning cycling, I did the Alpe d'HuZes on thursday 7 June. I climbed the mountain Alpe d'Huez 4 times. 14 Kilometer climbing with a fast downhill and that 4 times. I am glad I did it. My team collected more than 24,000 Euro.

 

Gruppo Sportivo

cycling in May, 110 km through the countryside

Getting ready for the Alpe d'HuZes cycling mountainstage to fight cancer

deficit

Today, May 5, it's 2 weeks ago that the Dutch Cabinet fell. Luckily the Dutch parliament was quick enough to find a way out off the stalemate in politics. A new agreement to cut the deficit was concluded in 2 days. At the same time the elections will be on September 12. We avoided an EU-penalty of 1.2 billion euro by making the financial houshold healthy. How long will it last I ask myself.

AlpeduZes

Life goes so fast nowadays. There are happening a lot of things around me. - a new house is being built - I am training for the bicycle ride on mount Alpe d'huez in France to earn money in the effort to beat cancer. - I am working in a bad atmosphere. - in national politics there is happening much. We don't have a mayority cabinet, even with support of a third party. It stranded on the financial reforms to keep the deficit below 3% of our national budget. Talks about those reforms lasted 7 weeks. No information was given. When it stranded 5 other parties who were neglected made a compromise to come to a quick agreement to save the country and to avoid a EU penalty of 1.5 billion Euro.

universe

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D. (born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and science communicator.

nice

terminator

After all the news about how Apple makes their products I like this video.
However I admit that the iPad is a great invention.

lean

At work we have had some workshops about lean. What is it is my first thought when I heard before that we are going to work more lean. When I googled the word lean I found this embedded video.



That opened some doors, we are talking about (Toyota) Kata. Kata is the ongoing process of improvement of your products of production process. My idea is that it is a part of how the employee approaches his work. Do I get the best result if I do this or that. Or there would be less bottlenecks if the process would be like this instead of that. Kanban, Just in Time management and the other stuff from logistics. But in fact it is a management tool how to cut the costs.

This is my last post without. Tomorrow I'll see the orthodontist for my brace. I'll have it for a couple of years. The quad-helix will be for 6 months.

winter

Finally the winter of 2011/2012 is coming. Next week the temparature will drop to -15 degrees C.

Last season (december 2010) this video has been made.

Sailing

Congrats Laura Dekker. You made your dream come true; sailing solo around the world in 1 year.

spain

Por qué conseguiría en este sitio la vez última tan muchos visitantes de España? Viene porque es una crisis económica. Eso aplica más a allí que aquí. El porcentaje del desempleo en España va al 21%. En los Países Bajos el 6% está. El "Spanjaarden" conoce los Países Bajos de los años 50 y de los años 60 del siglo anterior. Por esta razón no es ciertamente extraño que los jobseekers intentan en los Países Bajos. Qué haría si tocaría a parados. Iguales pero entonces en los Estados Unidos de América. Un libro a escribir referente cómo la gente que trabaja en el gobierno piensa referente a su trabajo. El trabajo periodístico. Haría mi trabajo de mi manía. (automatically translated with Bing!)

Why would I get on this site the last time so many visitors from Spain? Does it come because of an economic crisis? That applies more to there than here. The unemployment percentage in Spain goes to the 21%. In the Netherlands it is 6%. The Spanish know the Netherlands of the 1950s and 1960s. For this reason it is certainly not strange that jobseekers try to get a job in the Netherlands.

What I would do if I would touch unemployed? The same but then in the United States of America. A book to write concerning how people who work with/for the government think concerning their work. Journalistic work to do. I would make my work of my hobby.


Waarom zou ik op deze site de laatste tijd zoveel bezoekers uit spanje krijgen?

Komt het omdat het een economische crisis is. Dat geldt meer voor daar dan voor hier. Het werkloosheidspercentage in Spanje gaat naar de 21%. In Nederland is het 6%. De Spanjaarden kennen Nederland van de jaren 50 en 60 van de vorige eeuw. Het is daarom zeker niet vreemd dat werkzoekenden het in Nederland proberen.

Wat zou ik doen als ik werkloos zou raken? Hetzelfde maar dan in de Verenigde Staten van Amerika. Een boek schrijven over hoe mensen die werken bij de overheid denken over hun werk. Journalistiek werk doen. Ik zou van mijn hobby mijn werk maken.

Canadian

I heard this song in the morning from the Canadian band Walking off the Earth. It's a lot better than the original.

Happy New Year 2012

Everyone best wishes for 2012.

Be positive in everything you do. That is the way you deal with setbacks which will be.

But learn from what happened in the last century


I watched Cultura24 and saw Nneka with Soul is heavy. Astonishing!