The View From 6,000 Miles

2008-04-07T10:38:00.002+02:00

All my blogs are being neglected. It is time to change that. I guess it's just been too dark for too long; here we are in the first week of April and we finally have a day of sunshine. Who would have thought I need sunshine just to function?

What I did do was update my icandodinner website to bring it into the 21st century. There's still a lot more work to do: I've really just updated one week and I have at least eight normal menues. With those, and a veggie menu, and a low carb one in the making there is still a lot of work.

Plus I'm interested in using the internet to bring in some kind of online income. I'm not falling for those "Make $30,000 in a month" offers; if it were that easy everybody would be doing it. I've sold one article on Helium so far, but I need to put more work into that as well. Also I'm looking at Constant Content as an alternative, but that too needs planning and writing.

So just lately I haven't been taking too much of a look at the world around me. Just trying to sort myself out, really.

2008-02-11T11:20:00.000+01:00

Mary, Mary quite contrary,
Where did your garden go???

Yep, allgone those tall light-blocking trees and prickly hedges. The problem is now, what to replace it with? It looks so bleak and bare.

2008-02-03T09:09:00.000+01:00

Where have all the Big Brands gone?

I don't know if it's because I've moved, or if they've moved, but I never really see advertising anymore. Then again, I wonder how any advertisers would reach me.

1) I don't watch television. We have one now, and Paul puts it on occasionally.
2) I listen to ClassicFM radio in the mornings, through the Internet. However, the advertising is actually so bad it makes me want to turn the entire station off. There's certainly no brand-building there.
3) I hardly read magazines any more, and when I do, there's no brand-building advertising.
4) I don't read newspapers. I don't see them, I don't buy them and they're all in Dutch anyway so they're an effort and time-consuming to read.
5) Daily I get stuff pushed through the mailbox, which I just recycle with reading. This is all special offers anyway.
6) That leaves the internet, and Google ads. Outdoor advertising as I walk and bus. And the shops themselves. It's the only way to reach me. But no branding. Product, product, product.

Is branding dead?

2007-12-27T10:19:00.000+01:00

It's a month! Have you come back to find out how I'm doing on this anti-Heathrow Injection programme?

Well, it's been cold here. Snowing in fact. Temperatures outside below freezing, and I've had to go out in that weather, in clothes that aren't quite warm enough.

Plus it's the middle of winter. The days are at their shortest and darkest, and the nights are at their longest.

This is a surefire recipe for climate-induced weight gain.

Well, I'm 4 kilograms lighter, and my body fat has dropped one percentage point.

I'm not sure where the weight is going from. My face is noticeably thinner, and my belly feels flatter, but none of my clothes are loose yet, and even my E-cup bra is still well-filled. Patience. Patience.

Weight loss did slow when the weather turned so cold. Well, it stopped altogether. But it did remain constant.

So far so good.

I'm not taking the daytime dose of the metformin because it causes me to lose my appetite entirely. I just take it when I need to skip lunch because I'm busy. I think from today I'll try a half dose and start working up, same as I did with the bedtime dose.

The diet has been OK, though I can't eat nearly enough of the recommended volumes. I think she's put together quantities for a six foot seven Dutchman and not a five foot three me. You can read more about the diet here.

I'm thinking of starting a group or forum for Heathrow Injection sufferers so we can explore the mechanics of a solution in depth. I'll post a link when it's set up.

2007-12-07T10:29:00.000+01:00

One week later, and two kilograms lighter after following my version of a low-carb diet with the metformin, I went to see the recommended dietician. Very friendly lady who had a similar ballooning problem when she returned to the Netherlands after spending several years in Central Africa.

The diet she has given me can be summarised as follows:

300 grams meat, chicken, fish, nuts, egg or cheese
800 grams mixed vegetables
500 grams mixed fruit
about 3 tablespoons oil.

All of that divided into three portions across one day.

She calls it a low-carb diet, but I had my doubts. So I fed it t into Mastercook, using chicken for the protein part, and what do I get?

1517 calories
69.6 grams fat
178.1 grams carb (39.6 grams fibre)
50.8 grams protein

Percentage wise:
40.6% fat
46.2% carbs
13.2% protein

Low-carb? Not! In fact, 178 grams of carb is worth nearly 9 slices of whole grain bread. Hmm.

Better description would be grain-free, starch -free, even high-fibre. But there are carbs a-plenty! Cut out some of that oil, and the percentage carb shoots up way high!

So far results have been less dramatic than during my first week on metformin. Not that I'm eating anywhere near that amount of fruit or vegetables; my stomach is the size of a fist, not a football.

We'll see how it goes. I'm blogging the diet elsewhere. If you want to follow the progress, leave a comment and I'll add a link.

2007-11-28T13:06:00.000+01:00

Hello fellow sufferers of Heathrow Injection. I have good news and bad news for you.
The good news is, you are not imagining it. Heathrow Injection is just a fancy modern word for hibernation. When you cross all those lines of latitude and head up north to cold, dark England, a little switch in your body triggers and you go into hibernation.

Your metabolism slows down and your body starts conserving fat. Your energy levels decline.

I'm not making this up either. I'm just back from an endocrinologist who has a specific interest in the effects of climate on metabolism. And that's what he told me. In my case it's worse because I'm past the age of usefulness to the human race. (Yes, he said that too.)

The bad news though, is there nothing you can do about it. It's apparently genetic.

But just as you can't cure a cold, there seems to be some symptomatic treatment.
Reading between the lines, it seems that hibernation triggers insulin resistance.
Because he's sending me off to a dietician for a low carbohydrate diet, and giving me metformin, usually prescribed to diabetics. It helps reduce insulin levels in the blood.

Interesting that when I first started my metabolic typing diet, a low carb diet for a protein metabolism, I did very well on it. It did seem to wear off, though, probably the insulin resistance increased when I moved to a colder, darker country?

Unfortunately metformin has a potentially fatal interaction with alcohol, so I'll have to go dry for a while. I guess the detox will do me good.

He would have given something to boost the metabolism slightly except that my blood pressure seems to have shot through the roof. I'm used to being around 110/70 but he had me over 180! I rushed out and bought a blood pressure meter, and when I woke up it was quite normal at 129/86, but still high for me.

I see the dietician on Monday, but in the meantime I'll dust off my metabolic typing book, my Zone cookbook and my Glycemic Load cookbooks. I'm easing into the medicine, just took one tablet before bed last night, and will work up to the full dose, as suggested.

Come back in a month or so to find out how it's working!

2007-10-21T11:14:00.000+02:00

Way to go, Bokke!

The Dutch hang flags on high days and holidays. Paul ordered flags and flagpoles (of course he would, he's interested in heraldry and stuff like that) so today is definitely a good excuse to use them for the first time.

Of course it's bad manners to hang just the South African flag here. That's why the Dutch one is out too.

2007-10-12T15:33:00.001+02:00

There are only two things I dislike about my gym. But unfortunately I dislike one of them so much that I'm considering either finding another gym or relooking my exercise options.

They insist on having background sound. I hesitate to call it music. It is incredibly intrusive. If I take my own iPod, I can't hear my choice of sound over theirs. I had earplugs made, and while these dampen the noise, they don't block it out entirely.

The gym owner is sympathetic. He's put in a policy of only playing the loud disco stuff after 6 pm, and told me to ask the staff to turn it down if I find it too distressing. And if they don't, I can. Unfortunately he's not always there. While some of the staff are helpful, there are others who consider that the music is there for their own entertainment.

I do gym because I want to feel energised and positive. The crap they play has the exact opposite effect on me. When I'm totally alone, as I often am, I will turn the music in the weights section off completely. One of the young missies challenged me on this one morning, and when I told her I had the owner's backing, she turned up the cardio section's sound to maximum.

Today I was not alone. I went late because I've had a series of late nights. I wasn't much in the mood to go anyway. The weights section was busy, and the background sound was LOUD. The owner was not there, and the staff member on duty was one who has told me in the past he can't change the music because it would mean putting on something he didn't care for. (He didn't use those words, but he didn't need to.)

I left after one set, grumpy, bad-tempered, and wondering why I had psyched myself up to go, for such a bad experience.

There is another gym on the other side of the station. I'll look into it and see if they have a better exercise environment. I've changed gyms before because I couldn't stand their so-called music and I'm quite prepared to do so again.

Otherwise, winter's coming on now so the skating rinks are opening. I have weights at home, and a series of Muscle and Fitness magazines that will help me put together a program. The walk to Delft is 4,7 km. There's a sunbed parlour at the station too.

There are options. All is not lost.

(And for those who are wondering what the second thing I dislike is, it's the TV screens all over the place, each one showing an entirely different program. These guys are sensory overload freaks.)

2007-10-09T16:21:00.000+02:00

Ever since I bought the laptop with that stupid Vista Home Premium on it, I have been barraged with anti-Vista links. Today however, I got an anti-Microsoft link, which is basically pushing for PCs not be sold bundled with Microsoft operating systems.

This has got to be the stupidest thing I have ever read. I'm not particularly pro-Microsoft, and I certainly haven't been supporting their ongoing OS development. If my laptop had come unbundled, I would have stuck my ancient copy of Win2K on it. This is still the original one, before the service packs came out, and installing it on a machine with a large drive is a pain beyond compare.

However, that aside. Let's first look at WHY computers come with bundled software. There was a time when purchasing decisions were made on what software came with the box you were buying. This was what people wanted, a box that was ready to go, with all the games and stuff on it for the least possible effort. That was the marketing technique that has put a computer in every home.

But what about business? Why should business be forced to pay the Microsoft tax?

OK, Microsoft didn't get to be the monopoly they are today by writing free software. They set up a business to do, ran it like a business, wrote marketing plans, ran ads. They paid programmers and created jobs. Microsoft is not a huge organisation of people working for no money.

Apple had a revolution and threw out their creator. They have never captured the majority imagination despite award winning ads. I think the lack of choice is a factor here, if you buy Apple you're kinda stuck with an Apple box and the limited number of applications available for it.

Linux went free, and have built a community of open-source programmers all working together for the Linux greater good. Nobody gets paid for their work, it's all voluntary. So there's nobody marketing Linux, and there aren't ads convincing business to switch to it . Plus, not only are there limited apps, if you write a driver that doesn't yet exist, you risk being sued.

OK, so assume the idiot who wrote that article gets his way and computers are sold absolutely clean with no OS, nothing. And assume big business doesn't complain like stink about this and decides Linux is the ultimate cost-saving system and adopts it internationally, what happens then?

If you're a volunteer open source programmer doing stuff in your spare time, at what point do you ask yourself why are you putting in all this effort so that big business - who is not paying you a salary to do this - can earn extra profits?

It may be that big business will start running Linux departments to work on developing the open source operating system as well as open source apps which will be freely available to their competitors. It may also be that an armada of flying pigs will cause the Sahara desert to bloom by the sheer combined volume of their urine falling as they fly over it.

Just look at what happened to something as low level as the Guild Wars Wiki for a perspective. Some guy had the bright idea to start a community resource which would be developed by the community. He paid the hosting. The resource grew so much that even the developers of GuildWars were using it. Now comes the crunch. As owners of the game, and making money out of it, how can ArenaNet contribute to the GuildWiki without causing upset? And if they were to start their own GuildWiki, they would be accused of stealing said guy's idea. So they did a deal with said guy, and money and share options changed hands.

Now the common feeling is that the original guy has "betrayed the trust" the community had in him. You can read about it here if you're sufficiently bored or interested. Stupid huh? But no money can change hands for Linux; that's part of the open source agreement. As people start feeling that the glory of development doesn't pay their bills while business is getting free benefit from the work they put in, they will just drop out.

Microsoft is to date the only company that has put real effort into developing and marketing their operating system. Their programmers cannot leave and go and work for Linux, because Linux doesn't have paying jobs. Apple is not opposition because it's so specialised and only works on Apple boxes. What would be interesting is if Apple decided to pull finger and write an Apple OS for PC.

Now, having gone on at length about that, I'm not anti clean machines. It does mean I could keep trying to install Win2k for the rest of my life, though I suspect it will get harder and harder as I go along. Linux isn't an option, and I'm not interested in Apple because of the way they pulled out of South Africa.{Yes, and I don't buy Kodak either] At some stage I'm going to have to get a new OS. Unless a new one comes along that is compatible with my investment in software, it's going to be Windows, bundled or not. And if I can save on hardware by getting the Windows bundle, so much the better. As long as it's not Vista Home Premium, that is.

2007-10-02T14:28:00.000+02:00

There is absolutely no reason for anyone to buy Vista Home Premium unless they have children. And only one computer.

All of the stuff you actually WANT from an operating system is in Vista Business.
Simple things like joining a domain. And backing up your PC. OK you don't get DVD maker, but any DVD you put into your box is going to have DVD writer software with it, and even if you have to buy a copy it's cheaper than an upgrade.

Having just got a laptop with Vista Home Premium on (a laptop note! This is the recommended system for a laptop, omfg!), I find I can't connect it to my home network. I cannot communicate with any other computer on the network despite a host of "really cool" features like meeting space, media centre, parental controls and DVD Maker. Smart huh?. Windows Home Premium easy connectivity is a palpable lie.

And Windows are wondering why people are staying away in droves? I'm going to be writing to them and telling them.

I mean, why in the world do they distinguish between home computers and business computers. That is like so last century. What about all those people who work at home? Their recommendation for home office, btw, is Home Premium. Bah, Humbug and a host of four letter obscenities!

Maybe it's time their marketing department entered the 21st century and made the distinction between leisure computing and work computing. That may give them a better idea of what to package in these artificially defined who-gets-what categories.

There is no low-cost upgrade path to Business. And I haven't seen a laptop with Vista Business on it. You have to upgrade to Ultimate or nothing. And that sets you back another 202 Euros. That's a lot of money per operating system. And it looks like sheer greed on Microsoft's part when you look at the offerings.

So am I going to be upgrading my two home office desktops to Vista? Or am I going to be joining the droves who are staying away? It's a no-brainer.

2007-06-29T15:49:00.000+02:00

Isn't it amazing that in these days of communication overload, major communication companies fail to communicate at all. Well, they fail to communicate the important stuff.

Let's take cellphones, mobiles, or whatever you want to call them. This should make communication portable and easy, right?

Wrong!

And ignorance is not bliss.

Linda was due in the Netherlands for a very short stay, so I sent her a number of texts about which train to catch after finding out that her 'plane landed early. I got no response, and she didn't arrive. I checked websites and found out there had been an accident on the track between Leiden and Hoofdorp, so all trains were delayed or diverted, which explained something. But I still didn't hear from her and assumed that her phone's battery was flat.

She eventually arrived about 1 o'clock, and I asked about her phone. In surprise, she said she had been texting me her progress regularly and was surprised I had not responded.

So we did a test and sure enough, no text on my phone from her. So we compared networks - I'm on Orange and Paul's on T-mobile so she sent the same message to both us. Paul got his, I didn't get mine.

Hmm.

Then I remembered accusing Susan one time of not responding to my SMS, and she assured me she had sent a long message back.

Hmm.

I have been getting text messages from South Africa, but interestingly enough, only from people on 083 numbers - the MTN network.

All the people I expect to hear from who have been unusually quiet are on 082 numbers - the Vodacom network.

OK, so I head off to the Orange outlet to report the problem. They're all very confused, they phone the technical centre who's equally confused. I can send, but not receive. How strange. They check out my phone with a fine tooth comb but all seems fine. Finally they say they will reset something, and I should put my phone off and then on again in about half an hour and see if that helps. But they will escalate the problem and if it persists until Wednesday or so I should go back.

It persists. In the meantime I find out my stepmother's father died - this through an email from my sister. It was late when I got it, but I phoned South Africa immediately and she said she had sent me a text about his fall but it seemed to her I hadn't received it as I didn't say anything when I texted her about something else entirely.

So yesterday I head back to Orange. Anyway the guy opens up my file and there is my query about no SMS. It seems that Vodacom has been blocked by Orange for serving up too much spam via their network.

Ouch.

Besides the egg on the face for Vodacom, there are some serious issues here.

Neither Orange nor Vodacom let their subscribers know in any way at all that there is limited communication between the two networks. I would expect at the very least that if Orange blocks an entire network (like nearly half of all South African cellphone users???) that they would at least send out a form text message to their subscribers mentioning this. They do it for everything else, your invoice is ready, your account will be debited with x amount on such a date, we have a new service available, see website for details, etc.

At best, they would pick up that you are texting a blocked network and alert you to the fact that you might not get a response.

It's been a while since I had a Vodacom phone, but I would expect there too that they would at least warn customers that their service to certain networks has been ...curtailed for reasons not entirely beyond their control. But no, they just issue a Message Sent Successfully, take the money and run. They don't say anything to anyone, causing a great deal of grief all around.

The worst is that this has been going on for a couple of months. How long I don't know, because I don't keep every text I get and cannot look back to see when the problem started. You would think two big companies like that could parley a little and resolve the problem? But nope, it seems that talking would involve the major focus of their business: communication.

It's not just the cellphone companies that do this, mind you. I've had ISPs block entire domains without telling a soul about it.

Anyway I've written to both parties. Let's hope they'll come to one.

2007-06-25T14:40:00.000+02:00

Ha ha ha, it seems the Australian legal system is now climbing on the laughing stock bandwagon.

It's bad enough when some American klutz can sue Winnebago for not telling him he has to stay behind the steering wheel of his vehicle while on autocruise, and win the case.

But when an appeal court finds a bad restaurant review defamatory, then you know the whole system of legal justice has gone out the window.

The jury, it seems had more sense. They ruled the review was not defamatory. The proprietors of the restaurant, Coco Roco in Sydney, disagreed and had the verdict overturned by the appeal court. The restaurant has closed in the meanwhile, and the proprietors are seeking damages from the newspaper which published the review.

Well, I'm glad to hear the restaurant has closed. One that sues instead of trying to improve its food and service is not worthy to exist. What I'd like to know is the identity of the owners, so we can warn the world never to eat at any place they open. Or do business of any kind with them, actually.

But it's a worrying trend. I'd like to propose a suitable counter if it becomes impossible to publish bad reviews (what happened to this freedom of speech thing that used to be so popular in democratic countries, btw? Did it go out of the window when the war against terrorism came in?).

Perhaps the owners of crappy restaurants would prefer it if dissatisfied customers refused to pay for bad food and poor service. Just walk out. Or demand compensation for your wasted time, even better. I once knew someone who used to deduct 10% from a bill when the service was bad. I forget who it was, but the occasion I was with him the restaurant didn't complain.

I'm not sure what he did when the food was below standard. Perhaps we all need to become more aggressive about sending it back.

How about it, Coco Roco? Would this arrangement suit your bean-counting better?

2007-05-23T10:44:00.000+02:00

Liam Sternberg and The Bangles got it wrong. There's really nothing terribly interesting about the way Egyptians walk. If you want to walk like one, just put your head up, your shoulders back, and one foot in front of the other just like anybody else would. Dancing however, is quite another matter!

So tomorrow's our last day here. It's been hot. The thermometer by the pool registers 42 degrees. The sea, at 29.4, is warmer than Amsterdam. It's been either flat calm or too windy to sail, so Paul is a little frustrated. Never mind, we've been lying in the shade listening to lots of books and drinking gallons of water.

And of course, eating three cubic meals a day. Mostly we don't need the pre-meal or post-meal snacks. I think I forgot to mention there's pre-lunch as well. Anyway, I've been filming so you'll be able to see Egyptians walking quite normally and lots of interesting food on YouTube quite soon, as well as kitesurfing and a whirling dervish.

2007-05-17T10:37:00.000+02:00

One week into the holiday. My tan is doing well, my bikini is too big already and my hair is several shades lighter.

I'm still pondering the thinking behind a heated pool in the desert. Yes, the main pool is heated. The sea is not significantly colder. Paul is sailing and I am windsurfing, though today there is little wind.

This internet connection is slower than paint drying.

2007-05-12T17:31:00.006+02:00

So here we are at Club med El Gouna. I'm kinda glad Paul's mom decided not to join us, as we would have gone to Bodrum again. This place is worth a repeat visit, and I've only bben here 2 days. We arrive late on Thursday, 10 pm, but got dinner. They kept the dining room open for us, how sweet.

It's the first Club Med I've been in with a lift. We're in room 910, on the top floor, with a fabulous view.

There is no beach. The desert goes up to the water's edge. The place is warm, at 27N10 it should be! After a day and a half of snoring in the sun and shade, we decided to go snorkelling. There was a stiff wind, choppy water, and viz was not great. We'll try again when conditions are better.

Tonight Paul will find out about his sailing course and then we'll investigate diving.

So far the food is not bad but not great. However, there is plenty of it and I think you can find something to eat 18 hours out of 24. Breakfast, late breakfast, lunch, late lunch, afternoon tea, pre-dinner snacks and dinner.

2007-04-25T09:58:00.000+02:00

This morning I log on to write a blog and everything is in Dutch. Not my blogs, all the other stuff in Blogger.

Is this Google's stupid doing again?

Why do idiot programmers think they are being smart by matching your language to your IP address? Will an idiot programmer please tell me why you think this is a good idea, then I can tell you in person what an idiot you are.

Amazing how these brain-challenged dimwits can get all sorts of information from your computer without your permission, like what browser you use, what your operating system is, but they can't actually work out what language you're set to.

It's not just Google. There are lots of websites that decide they know better than you what language you speak.

Hey guys! Catch a wake-up! I speak English! What part of the European Union don't you understand?

2007-03-14T08:15:00.000+01:00

So millions of YouTubers around the world are waking up today to find out that their Internet presence is being threatened.

Viacom, it seems, wants to sue YouTube for $1 billion on the grounds that it "harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale" and had "brazen disregard" of intellectual property laws."

That is of course, willfull rubbish. YouTube does no such thing, and a brief glance of the ToS will confirm that. And last time I looked, I had to sign away my life confirming that I owned the copyrights to the material I was uploading. And YouTube says it removes unauthorised content as soon as it is notified.

There are some things to comment on here. Firstly, have you noticed that Viacom have only decided to sue since Google bought YouTube last November? I think that will give you a very clear idea of what Viacom's real motivations are.

Secondly, Viacom seem to think it is Google's job to find the unauthorised content off its own bat and remove it. Excuse me, how is Google supposed to know who owns what content? That's like saying car manufacturers are responsible for bank robberies committed in cars made for them.

The fact of the matter is that Viacom has an outdated business model and is trying to destroy the technology that is threatening them. Sure, they're selling stuff through iTunes. But have they sat down and thought about how to harness the Internet themselves? No, they're luddites, trying to burn the machines or claim compensation from the makers of the machines.

Move with the times guys. The fact of the matter is that youTube is used by millions of people who daily upload personal movies. It is impossible for anyone to view every upload, and much of it is such crap you wouldn't want to sit through it. ("Asshole running into the sea" is an example that immediately springs to mind.) However, Viacom sues Google for the infringements rather than the individuals who upload stolen material, because Google is rich and an easy target. Don't go after the robbers; car manufacturers are a much easier target.

Personally, I'm interested in what the YouTube community will have to say about this. I doubt that they will sit back quietly. I suspect some of the better movies on the subject may make the network news of the larger TV stations. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a huge backlash that will have a negative impact on Viacom and possibly even sink it.

I guess it won't be too long before I found out.

2007-03-12T16:42:00.000+01:00

One of the things I hate about ClassicFM is the advertising.

They play such lovely music, and then go to great lengths to drive you to the point of switching off with boring, repetitive, unimaginative advertising.

It's not just the advertising that pays for the station that is so dire. Even their own advertising is an instant turn-off.

I guess advertising is a lost art. It died with the advent of the internet. Now everyone has a medium, and who could be bothered with saying anything in a manner that attracts attention as long as you can reach the inbox? Target markets no longer exist. You don't have to be able to spell the product name. Nor does your message even have to make sense. Today's inbox grabber, entitled Gain 3 inches in length (note lack of target marketing), contains the following copy: part jejune greene bitch parley cereus rabbi fahey accuse.

Well, I'm not even going to read this rubbish. But what is sad is that this attitude seems to have leaked from spam into other media as well.

Unfortunately the radio has no delete key, nor a button to report it as crap.

But it does make me wonder how any manufacturer who has something which will interest me, will ever attract my attention now.

2007-02-15T09:33:00.000+01:00

Well so far, so good.

Blogger has been trying to get me to move across to their Google version for some time now, and after the last fiasco I have been steadily refusing.

However, it does not pay to be too resistant to technology changes because they will eventually be forced upon you.

Examples that spring to mind are the Music Industry for one, who are desperately fighting a losing battle against the emergence of new lines of supply for music. There was a news report recently about an unsigned group hitting the top 40. I gather they mostly sell their music through MySpace.

(Everyone keeps telling me I need a MySpace page. I've been resisting that too. I've made it onto YouTube and have exactly one video. But MySpace? Or am I just being old and inflexible?)

The book industry is another that hasn't cottoned onto technology yet. Collins are desperately trying to find ways of encrypting their electronic word list for Scrabble® to prevent it falling into the hands of normal people. Flow with the technology guy, make the electronic list available and SELL IT!

Right, so I'm taking my own advice and have now moved to the Google version of Blogger. This time it all seemed to stay intact. My blogs are still here and I can post my normal gripe.

Next stop MySpace?

2007-01-16T08:37:00.000+01:00

2007 seems to be mad at us. I had intended to greet the new year with pancakes and irish coffee but just couldn't stay awake long enough. We had pancakes for breakfast on new year's day, and irish coffee some nights later, but it seems the expected combination at midnight on the day was called for.

We started off sick. First Paul, then me. The kind of sick that keeps you in bed for a week, with a never-ending cough. I finally got rid of the cough with mustard soup, which was just like a warm mustard poultice for the inside. Currently I am searching for a good recipe that I can use when it's no longer possible to go and buy a bag of the stuff from the supermarket.

Then, having recovered enough to get out of bed, it's cold. Temperature inside the house only 19 degrees. Boiler needs filling. Paul comes home Friday night and refills the boiler.

Next morning, downstairs is flooded. Water dripping through the ceiling. We bring out the towels and buckets, another leak develops during the day on the other side of the ceiling.

Hmm. And all we did was refill the boiler.

There's a bit of history here. Just before Christmas we noticed a leak starting which seemed to be linked to filling the boiler and called in the plumber. He came (three days later), checked it out and assured us it was NOT the central heating. He said it was almost certainly water leaking from around the bath, because the seals were faulty and he would send someone to fix that.

So we used the upstairs bathroom for the next few weeks, but still there is leakage. Usually after filling the boiler, but now we know that the central heating system is not at fault. The expert has told us this.

Until Saturday.

Anyway, the leak cleared up, and when the central heating system kicked in later in the day, out came more water. So we turned it off. More water came out. So we refilled the boiler and turned it on again. Now the water gushed through the ceiling! S o we turned it all off again.

In the morning, the leaking had stopped. But the house is of course icy cold and there's no hot water for showers. And nobody, but nobody, does plumbing work on the weekend in the Netherlands.

Monday morning first thing I phone the insurance company. I reckon if anyone can get change out of the lackadaisical plumbers they have here, it's them. I phone again at noon and again at two. At two they put me through directly to the company that does the stuff for them. Oh, nobody told us it's an emergency, they say.

At three I get a phone call from the guy who's supposed to be handling and he'll see what he can do about getting me a plumber tomorrow.

Tomorrow. What about tonight? What am I supposed to do after four days with no central heating? Get pneumonia?

We are not happy.

Even worse, we can't get gas for our gas heater. The companies who deliver don't do butane. Today, I will make this the insurance company's problem as well.

Paul has decided not to brave the bath in a bucket, heated lukewarmly by the contents of a kettle. He's taken his clothes off to work, to use the shower facilities there. I will need a shower today, I can't stand myself any more so I'll take myself off to the gym and shower there in their somewhat public (eek!) facilities.

We are definitely not happy. Perhaps tonight I should make those pancakes and the irish coffee. 2007 needs placating.

2007-01-05T17:54:00.000+01:00

Oh God, we lead such short, brutish lives!

2006-12-05T14:15:00.000+01:00

Zwarte Piet mag niet!

Today is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. Traditionally, this Santa Claus type guy sails up in a steamboat with his black companion Zwarte Piet and they dole out gifts and joy to the people in the low countries. Everyone eats pepernoten, a kind of ball-shaped spice biscuit, speculaas, and they give each other chocolate letters (of the alphabet, not the kind you write) and I think there's even special alcohol you drink.

This little festival, which is not religious, is coming under attack now, and I gather it's got to do with Zwarte Piet. It seems he's not welcome in the Netherlands any more. People are going to great lengths to sail the ship through rainbows so that he comes out any colour of the rainbow except black.

The PC-types seem to think his presence is insulting to black people and that he is a symbol of slavery and oppression. Hmmm. I never got the impression that we was being forced to come against his will, and that he'd rather hang around Morocco which I gather is his country of origin. Nor does he seem to be in servitude to Sinterklaas. Everything I've seen has him boogying, giving out gifts and having a good time. I can't see how this would be insulting to black people, but then I'm not black. Perhaps they prefer the standard stereotyping?

No, I think the real reason is the current popular upsurge against illegal immigration into Europe. People from Africa are going through nightmarish journeys to get to Morocco so they can then scale the fence that separates it from some Spanish enclave. Once this is successfully done, they have all the rights that people in Europe get and must be given free money, clothes, accommodation and all of that while they apply for asylum or just fade into the woodwork and take up criminal activities because they can't get any real work.

The authorities are probably terribly worried that Zwarte Piet will decide not to return with Sinterklaas when the festival is over but will remain in the Netherlands and start drawing social security and demanding support.

Whatever it is, perhaps Rita Verdonck should step in and just deport the guy. And also make sure he doesn't get a visa next year. That should keep everyone happy. Except possibly Zwarte Piet. And the kids. But in this gloriously PC world of ours, they hardly qualify for a say.

2006-11-01T10:31:00.000+01:00

Molehills turn into mountains with no real effort on anybody's part.

Last week I bought a new electric blanket, because the one we have only works on one side, and it's not mine. Today I thought I would quickly install it.

First I had to uninstall the old one, which is tied onto the bed. I didn't want to just snip the cords, because even half an electric blanket can be useful for a cold visitor. It's very difficult to move a double-bed mattress single-handedly but I managed to turn it over to do the necessary. Also good to turn the mattress every so often, though possibly every five years or so is pushing it.

Anyway, during the uninstallation, I noticed that the plugs on the blanket are still South African. And we had a South African adaptor plugged into the three-way multiplug, which is plugged into another three-way multiplug, which is plugged into another three-way multiplug. Now this posed a small problem, because that left one socket free for the two European plugs for the dual controls of the new electric blanket.

Now, some months ago, we bought a fancy power skirting kit destined for the study. This has never been installed, because we were going to do it when the study moved into the bedroom, when we moved upstairs, which hasn't happened for reasons I won't go into here.

So I went and looked at all the multiplugs in the study, and decided that if I were to install the power skirting in the study as it is, then I would have a suitable multiplug for the bedroom and also reduce the number of three-way adaptors.

So I had to unplug two computers, various peripherals, two printers, link up the skirting options and replug everything, doing a long overdue cable tidy-up in the process. However, the operation did get a lot of stuff moved, and in addition to finding some long-lost stuff, I also uncovered two years of dust bunnies that have been hiding amongst the cable and computer pieces debris, so a major vacuum will shortly be in order.

Anyway, it's nearly two hours down the line, and I still don't have the electric blanket installed. It was just a little molehill to start, and is now a smallish mountain.

2006-10-27T15:27:00.000+02:00

There's been a media furore about Jack Straw wanting women to remove their veils when consulting with him.

This morning on the radio, I even heard it reported that we should not be interering with Muslim women's right to wear veils in public.

I'm sorry, they have no such right. They are compelled to wear them in public by their male owners. It marks them as nothing more than chattels, beings without souls or feelings. And they have no rights in the society that makes them wear the garb.

Has everyone already forgotten why the Taliban were despised?

The veil is an insult to emancipated women throughout the world. It is the symbol of having no rights at all, a symbol of domination by males simply because they are male.

At one time women used to burn their bras. Now it's time to burn the veils.

2006-10-19T11:22:00.000+02:00

It's strange that someone else's birthday can have such a profound effect on you. I turn 51 on Sunday, and hadn't really thought about that much. Until Ann turned 45 on Tuesday.

I always think of her as being a teenager, even though she's married and has fairly large kids. So when Paul casually said, "Oh she's 45 today", it was a shock.

Where have the years gone? Suddenly I know that I have already lived more than half of my life, unless I get to 102 which is not likely given the current world situation. I guess I spent too many of them being too busy. And what do I have to show for it now?

Vincent says he thinks I've done more than most, which is sweet of him, but I can't think of anything which has made even a little impact. Sure, there a couple of forgotten awards in a dying industry (which proves a career can be just as unrewarding as parenthood in the long run), but nobody remembers me as some kind of guru. It's just another discardable entity in the end.

Even my hobbies and interests have never transcended mediocre. I will never be a Grand Master at Scrabble®, a brilliant solo guitarist, a renowned chef, or an international dance star.

So what am I doing here? There are too many things unfinished, undone, not even thought of yet.

It's that same feeling I get whenever I see a baby. Tough on you, kid. Everyone has so many expectations from you, and you'll probably just disappoint. Like everyone else.

2006-10-04T08:36:00.000+02:00

Every since I got my blog back, I've done nothing about blogging. Seems to me even the slightest obstacle (wow look at that word, do you think you would ever unscramble it for Scrabble®) seems to end up with nothing being done.

Or is just the trend for 2006? The year that nothing happened?

Let's think back. Of our list of things to do, what happened? We wanted to move into the upstairs bedroom and move the study into the middle floor bedroom and have two guest bedroom on the middle floor. This was mainly for the benefit of Paul's mum, who has been having trouble with stairs. As it turned out, she decided not to visit, so nothing happened there.

We put in a skylight, because we wanted more light in the bedroom. That happened. I asked for a quote for lightspots for light in the bathroom, what will become the dressing room, and the landing. That was June. I haven't had the quote yet, despite asking for it three times. So nothing happened there.

I got the guy who did the middle and downstairs bathrooms to come in so that he could quote me on doing something similar to the top bathroom. I haven't heard from him again, so nothing has happened.

Then in August we had the rain that flooded the sewing room. So I moved everything out into the bedroom that has two walls painted. The plumber did a temporary fix, and gave me a quote on doing a permanent one. However, he won't make a time to come and do the permanent fix. I can't move anything back into the sewing room, because last time I did that we had another shower that drenched the ironing board again. It usually lives just under the leak, and there's nowhere else for it to go. So I can't finish painting the room. And nothing is happening about fixing the leak.

As I can't finish painting, there's no point ordering the wooden flooring I want to put in. So more nothing.

And then there was the kitchen. I got a man to quote on a revamp before we went on holiday in May. He gave me his quote the next day, I guess because I said I only wanted it in two weeks time when I got back from holiday. That was just for the kitchen and not for the fitting, so I got his fitting guys to come in and quote on the fitting. I never heard from them for two weeks, so I phoned the kitchen guy and they then sent me a quote a week later. In the meantime I had been to the bank to arrange finance. The fitting quote was about double what the kitchen guy had estimated so now I had to think. There's lots to do in the house.

Then I began wondering if I wanted to spend that amount of money on the kitchen. I think not.
So I've done nothing more, not even looking at alternative solutions.

So nothing has happened. Still the same unsatisfactory cooking arrangements. Still this fancy new fridge not plumbed in to give us ice, and the winter is arriving and we won't need much ice.

Yes, winter is arriving, so the days are getting shorter and shorter. And the shorter the days get, the less I can do in them. So from now until next spring, I guess nothing more will happen.

2006-08-28T23:31:00.000+02:00

Google hijacked my blog.

I tried to log in to do a new post last week, and I couldn't. It kept signing me into blogger with a gmail account, and wanted me to create a new blog from scratch.

Nothing I did would fix it, Google just kept making new blogger accounts for me!

Anyway, I just got it back. I pretended I had forgotten everything about my account and followed the instructions from there.

But now I have this strange Google account that I have no idea what to do with. I don't seem to be able to delete it either.

*shakes head*

2006-08-14T12:23:00.000+02:00

Summer was wonderful for the kitten. As he grew up, the days got longer and brighter and dryer. I'm sure he was convinced this was all part of becoming cat, and once you were fully grown, that's how life was always going to be!

He settled in nicely. He learned where he lived and he learned his name. A shout of "Evvi" into the garden would bring him inside within minutes.

He learned to hunt. Birds fascinated him, but he brought home a couple of mice too. I wonder where he found those? And he would have long naps in strange alien poses. A happier kitten would be hard to find.

Then on Saturday 5 August, he didn't come upstairs after breakfast as he usually does, to be brushed and play scrabble.
(His version of the game was trying to swat the tile in mid-air and chase it around the room.) He wasn't around when I went to gym at 8am and I didn't call him because he always tries to follow me!

He still wasn't around when I got home and didn't come when he was called. Strange. He's a hungry, growing boy and wants to eat every couple of hours.

By lunchtime we were worried and by nightfall we were frantic. If he was locked in someone's garage, then it wasn't just for the day. Next morning I went calling around, but no frantic meows from behind any of the doors. He had just simply vanished.

I stuffed neighbour's postboxes with leaflets, and put up a sign at the shops. Several people called to say they had seen him (liars!) but still nothing. One person said I should phone the Asiel, but when I looked in the Yellow Pages there was nothing in Rijswijk. However, there was a place called Katvinder, which claimed to be a central point for missing and found cats.

I called them and left a message. Then I looked at their website. On 6 August, a grey and beige cat found, a long way from home, on the busiest road in Rijswijk. It sounded a lot like Evvi.

On Friday evening we went along to identify the body. Yes, it was him. He'll never find out that the nights grow longer and the days get colder and wetter, year in an year out.

I really don't believe he woke up and suddenly decided to go exploring instead of playing with his big cats. Especially as he came to wake us up. Especially as it was a Saturday, when we lounge around for a long time. So what happened? None of the neighbours have complained about him, and those that are anti-cat have catwatch units in their gardens, supplied by me.

Still, I suspect foul play. And I have a prime suspect too. It will be interesting to see what karma has to show in the coming year.

2006-08-02T15:13:00.000+02:00

Well, July was an interesting month weather-wise.

Officially, we've had two heat waves in one month. If I remember correctly, prior to that there were four heat waves in the Netherlands since 1948, so two in a month is quite something.

We have a thermometer in our garden, which sends the temperature there to a central receiving station. Those records tell me that the lowest temperature outside in July was 14 degrees, and the highest, 39 degrees.

Not bad for a temperate climate.

2006-07-27T17:23:00.000+02:00

A shiny new gym opened up just next to Rijswijk station at the beginning of April. Of course I joined, I like weight training and it likes me.

However, it is part of a lot of new building so things have been a little slow when it comes to all systems go. Plus it's summer, and nothing happens in Holland in summer.

But... this week they are introducing the security system. It involves taking a photo, which they took yesterday instead of Tuesday when I actually had a bit of make-up on. So the photo is my usual first-thing-in-the-morning scruffy look.

What's really neat is that the access device cannot be abused. You cannot lend it to anyone. You can't forget it at home.

All I do to open the turnstile is press my fingertip on a small oval panel.

Cute, huh? SF comes to the gym!

2006-07-18T09:30:00.000+02:00

From Scrabble® to Guild Wars®, my new online gaming pre-occupation and procrastination tool.

This is an online fantasy role-playing game, the kind of thing which my other procrastination tool - Kingdom of Loathing - spoofs.

No stick figures here. Here we have glorious graphics and adventuring in real-time with friends. So come on friends, get Guild Wars so I have someone to play with.

My inner blonde is a ranger/elementalist with the unimaginative name of Reg Nara. In Guild Wars you have to be dual-classed, though the second class comes as a quest. Your first class determines what you look like and what you wear. So of course I'm a gorgeous blonde in tight-fitting purple and blonde leather, showing off my kickers which go all the way up to my knockers.

Rangers are good with bows, and as soon as I reach 9 in marksmanship there's a really great bow I can start using. In the meantime I have learned beastmastery, and have a wild cat called a Metlandu Stalker to accompany me on my quests and help me fight monsters. It's a higher level than me too, which is great. It's big like a panther, but spotted like a leopard. I can make Troll Unguent with my wilderness skills, which is a healing potion. With all this nature that I'm so in-tune with, I decided elementalist would be a good secondary profession, because then I can harness the earth, wind and fire - wait, isn't that a band? I have water as well, so no singing.

My inner brunette is a necromancer/monk, Recna Mor Cena. I keep forgetting how I divided that up. Maybe I should just name my characters Janet P or Janet K, do we really need these semi-mystical names?

Necromancers are great! They suck the life force out of enemies and use it themselves to heal up. Every time I pass a corpse I get healing points. I've learned how to turn corpses into zombies that will fight for me and trigger traps. Hell, they're dead already and it saves me the bother of resurrection. Monk is the healing class, which is why I think it goes so well with necromancer. I hold life in one hand, death in the other, just like a mini-god. Goddess. Whatever.

I haven't created my inner redhead. Two characters are quite enough. Besides, I can't think of another combination I want to try out. I have only Warrior and Mesmer left unused. though there's nothing to stop me trying out all sorts of other combinations. I gather Warrior Monks are quite popular.

Anyway I've only been playing a couple of days and am still fiddling with game mechanics.
There is a learning curve. Standing around is a lot like in Second Life, where you get 3D views of the characters and can chat in real time. Moving around needs getting used to new mouse movements and too often I end up with leaves and rocks obscuring my view. Learning to use the mini-map to help solve quests also takes a bit of practice. And it can be quite hard to keep up with in-game characters as they run along.

So far, I cope by clicking on their names whenever I can to initiate a chat, in which case my character will run along after them until they stop to fight off an enemy. For characters in the same party as you, clicking on their name makes them the focus of your attention, then you can cast a healing spell on them whether they need it or not and your character will run off and find them to do so. That's also quite handy when you have to resurrect them but can't see them, just click on their name and then cast the spell.

I gather there's a big change in the game after you go to the academy, but I haven't got to the academy yet. I'm still doing all the Tutorial quests, mostly solo. Recna Mor Cena had a game with Vinny Ridara, Vincent's inner hunk, a Warrior/Mesmer. Funny he likes the combination best that least attracts me, but isn't that what fantasy role-playing is all about.

Maybe I can persuade Julius to resurrect Poofter Bruce. This was his original magician way back in the days of text-based Wizardry. A mesmer/elementalist maybe. Or Elementalist/necromancer. We'll see. I'll email him.

In the meantime, add me to your friends list. Maybe we can play together when we're both online at the same time.

2006-06-29T13:23:00.000+02:00

One of the things the Driving School gave me as part of my little mini-course was a theory book, with the somewhat bemusing title Learning your Driving.

I had to wait some time to get an English copy, as they had just sold their last one on the day I joined up. However, it is a little gem worth waiting for.

For example, section 9.2 Driving away.

matters requiring attention
When you want to drive away, you must give way to the other road users. You observe:

the available space;
the view;
...etc

Personally I would put road conditions way ahead of admiring the view before I pull out into traffic, but it's clear that I just don't take enough time to smell the roses. Thanks to Veka-Best, the publishers, for putting me straight on this one.

2006-06-28T08:19:00.000+02:00

It was a terrible flight back. Not because the flight left after midnight their time and landed at three a.m. our time. That I could have coped with, a cup of coffee and I would have at least got a bit of sleep.

No, it was the infants who couldn't cope. In surround-sound stereo. The 'plane was full of them. I eventually managed to get the one next to me off to sleep by giving him the chocolate from my dinner box, but the one behind me kept throwing tantrums. Of course, this woke every other kid ont he 'plane, and when kids are woken when they want to sleep, they scream.

I tried a coffee but it was too weak. I think even a double espresso would have been too weak.

The issue of how to get home from a three a.m. flight had occupied our minds a great deal. We took some internet time and worked out that trying to do it on public transport wouldn't get us home before six a.m. no matter how we did it. So we tried the pre-paid shared-taxi thing Schiphol offers. Very dubiously too, especially as the website that takes your credit card details wasn't secure. Ouch. I must write to Connexxion about that.

We expected to find some sleepy clerk yawning "oh a driver will be along in around an hour". Instead it was a hive of activity. Much bustle. Even the adjoining snack shop was open, though its stores were much depleted by this time of day.

We reported in, and waited to be routed. Within twenty minutes we were called (you can wait up to an hour), boarded onto the last vacant seats on a minibus and driven home. The routing software links into a navigation system on the taxi, and people are dropped off in the most economical manner possible.

We got home at around quarter to five, much more comfortably than on public transport and much sooner. We had tea and watched the sun rise then went to bed.

Anyway, the weather was hotter than in Turkey. I hear it started the day before we got back. And it lasted until Wednesday.

Monday we collected the cats, Wednesday I had another session in the driving simulator, Thursday they came to fit the skylight in the top bedroom, so it was a busy week.

I haven't yet got around to dowloading the footage to extract photos. I don't know whether it's my motherboard, my firewire or my camera, but it drops the connection so regularly I need an expanse of time to watch it. Which right now I don't have, as you can gather from the lateness of this blog.

2006-05-30T16:45:00.000+02:00

It was so nice last year we're back again. Club Med, Palmiye Bodrum, Tureky.

The flight was delayed so we arrived around 2 am Sunday morning. Too late even, for Club Med, I fear. We were met by a familiar face, Levent, who bundled us off to our room post haste.

Needless to say, day one was largely spent sleeping in the sun (morning) and in the shade (afternoon) though I did manage a swim. The water was so cold it took my breath away.

We're now on day three, and thanks to Clarins auto bronzing aftersun, I'm bluffing my way through a tan as successfully as I bluff my way through Dutch.

Yesterday I swam in the afternoon, and the water was less icy. A lesson to be learned there, I think. Today, it was the pool. I've brought my videocam so I'll edit these blogs when I get back and add photos.

Today I read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at last. Disappointing. Tomorrow? Who knows.

2006-05-23T12:03:00.000+02:00

Aaargh! I thought it would be bad but I didn't think it would be this bad!

They taught me to separate my hazards when driving in order to avoid accidents. So currently I have a lot of hazards.
1) I haven't driven for 4 1/2 years
2) The cars are the wrong way round now
3) The streets are the wrong way round now

There are more but those are the main ones. So what I did was I found a driving school with a simulator, and asked for a re-orientation course. They have a refresher course which fitted the bill fine; 4 x 1/2 hour sessions in the simulator, 90 minutes practical in a car and a theory book.

So I had my first simulator session on Friday. Not knowing how it works or anything, I hadn't thought about what I wanted to do other than get the hang of driving again, and on the right hand side of the road.

Well. Um. She put together some left and right turn scenarios with traffic to get me going. This can be very cute, they have pedestrians and everything. They don't actually cross the road, they stand on the corners. And no cyclists either.

I was very glad to be in a simulator and not in a real car. I kept reaching for the gearshift with my left hand. It's on the right, of course. I did really weird things like going around the corners with the clutch in. I banged onto the pavement a couple of times, but luckily I didn't kill any sims.

Anyway, after the weekend and a weird dream about driving (I got my old Golf back, the one I had in South Africa and thought I would see if driving a left hand drive car would be easier even though the streets are the other way around. I took a shortcut through a patch of grass and ended up in a canal which was well hidden by grass. I got the car out easily enough, and onto the road, but they were all one way streets against me. Then I woke up.) I actually put together a program which I tried yesterday.

First, I did the simple clutching and declutching exercises that all the beginners do. Then you drive on a straight road, starting at 30 and going up to 80. I failed this, because I was sailing along at 80 when the sim instructed me to drive at 30. So I braked, of course, instead of slowing down and moving backwards through the gears which is what they expected me to do.

Then I did simple left turns and right turns without traffic. Or pedestrians.

Then I did the turns with light traffic. This worked much better than on the first day now that I had done all the deliberate orientation stuff.

And then... then... then I did the multiple lane roundabout. They are common here. Anyway, I started with no traffic to get the hang of how they work.

So I felt much better after that and now have a good idea of how an orientation course should be structured. I've booked an extra sim session (2x 1/2 hour slots, but they always give you an hour) for when I get back from holiday, and then with luck I will feel ready to step into a car again.

2006-05-12T13:10:00.000+02:00

If I could just actually manage to finish my Redemption novel, I'd be very tempted to try my hand at crime stories.

A while back I posted about the mysterious slayings of the underworld kingpins, certainly wonderful material for a story.

Here's possibly an even better one.

On Wednesday, in Amsterdam, a young man of 24 was seriously wounded in a shooting. someone called an ambulance, but when it arrived the victim had vanished! It seems someone tried to take him away in a car, but accidentally crashed and then abandoned the guy. Another ambulance managed to find him.

Then yesterday, in Oosterbeek, people heard a gunshot and saw a young man in his car with a blood-stained cloth pressed to head. Once again, someone called an ambulance, and once again when it arrived the guy had disappeared!

What's going on? Doesn't that just fire up your creative imagination? Don't you get an urge to write a novel about it?

2006-05-11T15:30:00.000+02:00

Paul and I bought ourselves one of these cute gadgets for our anniversary on 7 May.

It's called a Beertender.

You can get barrels of various beers to go inside it. The barrels hold 4 litres - the equivalent of about a dozen bottles, I guess. And once opened, it stays fresh for 28 days.

The Beertender keeps the beer chilled, and delivers beer on tap at home.

Sigh. It's so civilised to sit out on the patio with a glass of draft on these long summer evenings.

It just goes to show there are advantages to living in the Netherlands.

2006-04-29T18:50:00.000+02:00

Who is killing the Great Crooks of Europe?

No, seriously. Since we've been here, there have been a couple of well-publicised assassinations of underworld kingpins. But according to Expatica, this has been going on a long time!

In brief, it seems to go like this:

June 1991- Drugs baron Klaas Bruinsma
January 1993 - Former TV pirate station operator Pietje Hendriks, also linked to the ecstasy trade.
May 1993 - Escaped convict Danny Leclère who played a leading role in the first large ecstasy case in the Netherlands.
June 1995 - German drugs dealer G. Hoffman.
March 1996 - Belgian drug dealer and police informer Martin Swennen.
December 1999 - Former drug dealer Steve Brown shot, but not killed.
September 2000 - Top criminal Jan Femer.
October 2000 - Top criminal Sam Klepper.
March 2002-Egyptian drug dealer Magdi Barsoum. His brother was murdered in 2004.
January 2003 - Freddie Heineken's kidnapper, Cor van Hout.
December 2003 - Bulgarian drugs criminal Konstantin Dimitrov.
March 2004 - The man who killed Klaas Bruinsma and drugs dealer Anton Hijzelendoorn, Martin Hoogland.
July 2004 - Reputed drug dealer Mounir Barsoum.
November 2005 - Suspected money launderer John Mieremet, two days after the prosecuting lawyer investigating him was murdered. Hours later his friend Kees Houtman was murdered, as was his associate George van Kleef some days later.
April 2006 - Anthonie van der Bijl, arrested in March for questioning about a drug gang. He was murdered days after his release.

Some people have been arrested and convicted of various of the murders described, but many go unsolved. The main issue is that nobody understands what has sparked this wave of gangland violence.

It reminds me of a short story I once read about a man who learned he had just six months to live. He spent those six months eradicating nasty people, but more on the level of shop assistents who were rude to old ladies and bullies who traumatised younger kids.

I'm not suggesting that there is a vigilante group wiping out gangland kingpins who might otherwise escape justice. What I do think, however, is that this makes wonderful material for a novel.

2006-04-18T13:09:00.000+02:00

The latest testimony in Moussaoui's trial is that he is mentally ill.
He is apparently a paranoid schizophrenic suffering from delusions.
This is news?
Do sane people plot to kill thousands upon thousands of people?

2006-03-31T10:03:00.000+02:00

The humour's a bit black for me.
Am I supposed to know who the person is?

2006-03-31T09:58:00.000+02:00

Toasted sandwich, anyone?
Except they're not. They're COOKIES!
However, the presentation was irresistible and I had to buy them just to make a photograph.
They're filled with almond-paste. The Dutch have numerous cookies and cakes filled with almond paste, in different shapes for different seasons.
I guess that means March must be Sandwich season.

2006-03-31T09:55:00.000+02:00

Linda sent me an email with pictures of award-winning shopping bags.
I like this one the best.
Great.
Why can't more shops get interested in award-winning shopping bags?
Or maybe a firm that does generic shopping bags?
Until they do, where is this shop? I need to buy something there urgently.

2006-03-29T15:07:00.000+02:00

Paul's mom has lived in South Africa for over 40 years, and she still calls Ireland "home".

When I lived in England, one of my neighbours asked me whether I was going "home" for Christmas.

Where is home, I ask myself.

I don't have a home in South Africa any more, so I can't go home there. I just go back to a country that has changed so much since I left, I no longer feel qualified to talk about it.

I've steadfastly refused to join a South African Club of any kind, because I don't know why I'll get on better with people who share none of my interests, just because we're 6,000 miles from South Africa. And in any case, within three minutes they'll be talking about how bad things are "back home."

Where is home?

2006-03-23T13:41:00.000+01:00

Let's find something to smile about.
Isn't this cute?
Especially the tail.

2006-03-22T13:01:00.000+01:00

No wonder the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Not enough people are doing mothering any more.

Someone at Paul's office spent twenty months planning her wedding, but no time doing any family planning it seems. Now she's pregnant, and already working out how soon she can get back to work after having the baby.

Excuse me? Why is she having a baby then?

This is a commitment, not a part-time hobby. When you choose parenting, it's your job to turn that bundle into a competent, socially-acceptable adult. You have to teach it right from wrong, give it self-respect and self-esteem and turn it into a he or she with morals and ethics. Otherwise you end up with the delinquents who think the world owes them a living and they'll take by force what isn't tossed into their laps.

Mothering is a serious business. It's hard work. Why is it so undervalued?

2006-03-14T17:02:00.000+01:00

When I used to run my own business, I had a giant pinboard next to my desk. This was thanks to a rather wonderful book byAnne McGee Cooper, with Duanne Trammell, called Time Management for Unmanageble People.

Every time a new job came in, or there was something else to do, I created a little note for it, much like a Post-It®, but not sticky. I had hours of fun drawing little picture squares as backgrounds for these notes (you can see why I needed to read that book.)

I had headings pinned up on the board, such as TODAY, FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS, INVOICE, etc, and I would move the little note around until it was done and finished.

So if a client said, I want to brief you on a new brochure next week, I would do a not that said X Brochure for example and stick it up under Forthcoming Attractions. That would remind me to phone the client about it if I hadn't heard any more. It would eventually move to Today, when I would work on it, and Invoice, when I would send out the bill.

The was a wonderful system and worked very well for me.

Of course, since closing my business and moving to Europe, the whole system is shot. I don't have a business, for a start, and I'm not likely to start one given the anti-entrepreneurial system here. So lots of things just don't get done. And I got tired of it. I tried the Flylady system for a while, but there were too many irrelevant emails and the time zones were too different for it to keep on working. I made my own schedule off that, but of course I wasn't set up to send myself emails automatically.

So I did a search to see if I could find some software that would serve a similar purpose. What I found was CuteReminder.

And it really is cute. And simple. There's a central control panel where you can set up daily, weekly, monthly or annual reminders. You know, like "Make the bed." (Don't laugh, I do need to be reminded.)

Then you have permanent sticky note that hangs around your screen. And a thing for "ideas" that pops up every couple of days, for things you don't want to think about now, but don't want to to forget about.

It's working brilliantly! I have a little tune snippet (We have all the time in the World) which plays when the regular reminders come up, and another which plays when I click Done! (Another one bites the dust.) The button doesn't really say Done, but that's what it means.

It just reminded me to write a new blog. (Weekly.) So I thought I would return the favour. It really is helping me get re-organised again, and while I can't catch up on everything at once, every long journey starts with the initial few steps.

2006-03-11T17:54:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting aspect of Dutch culture.
They seem much more comfortable with death than most.
My neighbour dropped down dead suddenly on the last day of February, while unpacking the car just after a long weekend away. (This is covered in my mini blog, so I won't go into it here.)
From Wednesday until Monday morning, the day of the funeral, his body lay in state in the living room of his house.
And his wife asked if I would video the funeral for her.
Different, indeed.

2006-02-24T13:34:00.000+01:00

So the dieticians are telling us to eat fish three times a week and the environmentalists are telling us not to. Well, not to eat endangered fish.

Do you know how hard it is to find a list of fish that you can eat without ruining the environment or depleting the seas forever?

It took me about an hour, with some innovative search terms, but eventually I found some information. You have to *know* about a thing called the Good Fish Guide. Everything else takes you to the Endangered Fish Alliance which tells you the four fish you shouldn't eat ever. Big help. None of them are cod, and I do know that is being overfished, certainly in Europe. Perhaps not in the US.

The Good Fish Guide, however, is for the UK. And it has somewhat different information to the Viswijzer, which is for the Netherlands. How far apart are the two countries? 45 miles?

Scottish Salmon is on the avoid list for the Netherlands, which may be part of the problem. However, let's stick to the exercise in hand, and find out what fish are sustainable and what we can eat. And let's see what the lists have in common.

1) Pacific salmon. Well, this is really useful. The pacific ocean is on the other side of the world from here, and I've never seen pacific salmon offered anywhere here. That limits us to frozen pacific salmon in reality.

2) Mussels. Well, it's hard to walk around the Netherlands without stumbling over fresh mussels everywhere you go. But they're not something I would eat three times a week. Especially as Paul has a thing about shellfish. (Mostly, it makes him gag.)

3) Hake. Yay South Africa. I've seen this in England but not much in the Netherlands. I guess the distance is the real problem once again. So we're still left with frozen.

4) Oysters. I've never acquired the taste for oysters, so please don't even consider overfishing them on my account.

5) Alaska pollack. I buy this for the cats. It's always frozen, I've never seen it fresh.

6) Herring. This is a dead ringer for the national dish of the Netherlands. The cats won't eat it, maybe the Dutch kitten will. You need to serve it with masses of raw onion not so much to disguise the taste, which is OK, but the texture.

7) Pollack from the North Sea. Well I've never seen this anywhere, but that should be fresh enough.

8) Sprats. I presume that's what sprot translates as. I've never eaten them, but I gather THE way is dipped in flour and flash deep-fried.

9) Pacific halibut. Looks like the Pacific has sustainable fishing all round. Pity it's so far away. Then again, maybe it's a good thing it's so far away. There's a reason overfishing is a problem here, and the argument that we've been fishermen for generations doesn't hold if there's no fish to leave for your grandchildren.

10) Grey gurnard. (This is poon in Dutch). I've seen recipes for poon, but never the fish itself. Perhaps it's time to start widening my fish shop horizons.

11) Pouting. Whatever that is.

12) North Sea Shrimp. UK includes Dublin Bay prawns, and the Netherlands includes Hollandse Garnaal. Surprise.

And that's what they have in common. On the Dutch Acceptable list there is also European Catfish, Red Mullet, Crayfish, Haddock (on the UK avoid list), Turbot and Tilapia.

The English list is quite a lot longer, but they don't have a Grey Area like the Dutch list. (The Grey Area is preferable to the Avoid list, but really they'd like you to stick to the Acceptables.)

From the Grey Area I think I'll stick with the occasional Norwegian Salmon but for the rest they're not fish I know. What is clear, is that the list is very short. Most of the fish readily available here falls into the Avoid list.

Looks like I'll have to start planning holidays in the Pacific if I want to eat more fresh fish.

2006-02-22T12:13:00.000+01:00

So it seems Apple take the iPod market quite seriously.

Saturday Paul put in a service request at their website and was told he would receive instructions on how to return it. Nothing seemed to happen.

Except yesterday, a courier arrived with a parcel. In it were all the instructions, packaging and telephone numbers required to return it. Pre-paid courier service.

So that will be going back this afternoon.

So far I'm impressed.

2006-02-21T13:58:00.000+01:00

Thousands of Muslims protested in central London on Saturday to express their anger over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.... The cartoons were first published in September in a Danish newspaper and were then reprinted by papers in other countries but not Britain... but a smaller demonstration in front of the Danish embassy earlier in the month provoked outrage as masked men called for those who insulted Islam to be beheaded.

Can someone explain this to me? The cartoons were not published in Britain, so the British Muslims never saw them. Yet they protest anyway. And in February, months after the publication in September.

To me it looks like manipulation. I think these cartoons are being used to whip up anti-West frenzy. The behaviour of the Muslims in London certainly supports this.

Muslims protesting angrily in Muslim countries I can understand. Muslims in Muslim countries demanding that the perpretators be beheaded, I can understand.

But Muslims in the free world behaving as though they live under Muslim law, I can't understand. What are they doing in London then? And how many of these protesters are natural-born English? I suspect the vast majority are asylum seekers, or the children of asylum seekers, seeking a better and freer life.

Freedom of speech does mean cheap insults. And everyone gets insulted, not just the Muslims. You just have to look at the politicians in England if you want cheap insults, though I have yet to understand how pitting cheap insults at your political opponents is going to get you more votes.

I haven't seen these cartoons, and I have no idea how insulting they are. But from what I read in the news, it seems just drawing the prophet Mohammed is insulting. How intolerant is that?

The issue of course, is not religious at all. It's a question of power. Man has always imposed his wishes and his demands upon the word of God, and called it religion. And wielded religion to further his power. (Usually also to subjugate women, but that is another story.)

So the question in my mind is, what is really behind these protests? Anti-West frenzy I can see, but why? And I think the answer is ugly.

2006-02-16T18:02:00.000+01:00

There was a time when I thought the big international companies all shipped their junk to Africa because they thought we wouldn't know the difference.

Like the Miele dishwasher we bought. Fabulous reputation, very expensive. But it boiled the dishes, melted the plastic, and even after it was fixed under guarantee it never washed anything properly. Then I discovered some other people who owned the same dishwasher who had exactly the same complaints. And then I discovered it was a model that had already been withdrawn in Europe.

So I haven't bought a Miele anything again.

Then there was the General Electric fridge. Huge, double door American fridge with built in icemaker, dispensing iced water, and whole or crushed ice. Once again, very expensive. I can't remember what the initial problem was, but the local office sorted it out. It didn't last five years before breaking down and needing a major repair.

It turned out to be unrepairable in the end, but that is a different story.

It wasn't just big things. There was all those boxes of unformattable diskettes. That kind of thing.

Now, with more experience, and a couple of years in Europe, I have an entirely different view.
The large companies think the consumer is a fool, and push out junk everywhere.

The Indesit dishwasher we had in London didn't last for three years before dying completely. Not repairable. No wonder they always try and sell you those extended guarantees when you buy something, you need them.

Paul's iPod that I bought him for his birthday. Within a week it stopped working. Luckily we had the original packaging still, and the cash slip, and took it back. They exchanged it, and now, six months later, it won't hold a charge.

The AOpen DVD writer I bought in August. It wrote a few DVDs, then stopped. It would still write CDs, DVD+RW, and dual layer, but not the straightforward ordinary DVD for which I bought it. And it never ever authored a DVD for me, it always failed. Though it would author a SuperVCD.

I no longer have the packaging or cash slip, so I look on the support forums on the internet.
Wow. Seven pages of DON'T BUY THIS CRAP. Fine. I've taken it out and replaced it with an NEC, which is the one to have if you're only having one.

Hah. I have the cash slip inside the packaging safely stored in the attic. We'll see.

2006-02-03T14:30:00.000+01:00

When I was six years old, I had a life-changing revelation. It came to me, in a flash of understanding, that I was just like everyone else. Or everyone else was just like me. Whatever.

This is a great turning point for a six year old. To know that other people have the same kind of feelings, happiness, sadness, puzzlement. That other people feel pain and pleasure.

It changed the way I dealt with other people, which is where the life-changing part came in. Essentially I began trying to treat people the way I wanted to be treated myself.

But as the years marched on, I've had to question that revelation. Because it seems that as I grow older, I become less and less like other people. Or that other people become less and less like me.

I wouldn't dream of cheating a business colleague out of their earnings on a job, yet they seem to think this is a fair practice that can be justified by their own lack of money. (Caused, be it said, by gambling away their entire bank balance.)

If I say I will do something at a particular price, then that's the price. I don't up it without warning, out of contract, or bring in other people or contractors to help out at extra charge.

If I accept an invitation to your home, I try to arrive at the appointed hour and phone if there are transport problems. I don't just not pitch because something better came up.

I'm not going to push my way through to the front of the queue so that I can get on the bus before you, even though you've been waiting so much longer than me. Or let you stand even though I can see you are old, and weary and weak.

When I began composing this blog in my head several days ago, I was going to speak about much bigger differences. Like how I wouldn't strap bombs to my body and blow up a crowd of people celebrating a wedding, for example.

I was going to continue to wonder at how unlike other people I am becoming.

And then I had another revelation.

I am still exactly like other people, and they are still exactly like me. Certainly in terms of emotions and feelings, though possibly not in terms of motivation.

The difference is that the majority of them have never had that realisation. And so they continue to behave as though they are the only person in the world that matters.

In short, emotionally, they've never turned six.

2006-01-12T10:33:00.000+01:00

The Heathrow Injection is so common that it even has its own name. Yet nobody has bothered to do any research into the subject. Isn't that surprising? Or is it just a case of closed minds jumping to predefined conclusions?

This peculiar syndrome affects mainly South Africans and Australians moving to England. I'm sure it must be valid for other parts of Europe too, but as England, and especially London, is the siren call, we'll leave it at that for the moment.

Within a couple of months, all of these people put on a surprising amount of weight. The joke is that when you land at Heathrow, you are given a secret injection of fat, which takes a bit of time to work its way through the system and manifest, but manifest it will.

When you read the blogs of the afflicted, they all take personal responsibility. Or seem to think they should be doing so. The food in England is so awful they're putting on weight, and as soon as they fix their diets they will be fine. Or as soon as they start exercising again, they will be fine.

Really?

Let's think about this. South Africans have no public transport to speak of. To get anywhere, you need your own car. In London particularly, public transport is the way things go. You have to walk and walk and walk, and catch buses and trains, and walk some more. I'm not sure how true it is, but Americans apparently lose weight coming to London. It was certainly true in the case of visitors stopping by for a couple of weeks.

So why do South Africans leave their cars behind and gain weight, while Americans do the same and lose?

In my case, I moved to London and gained a kilogram a month while looking for a house. This was on a a low fat diet, around 1200-1500 calories a day, and walking solidly for at least four hours a day. Once we moved into our house, I joined a gym and did weight training, and managed to slow the weight gain down to 1/2 kilogram a month. I was dreadfully tired all the time, though, and slept most of the day as well as through the night.

At first I thought I needed to detoxify. My liver must be sluggish. But reading up that, it was clear that my symptoms matched those of thyroxin deficiency. I managed to find an OTC supplement, which would have hardly more than traces of thyroxin, and hey presto, the weight gain stopped. I didn't lose, but I stopped gaining so rapidly. I still slept all day, though.

So I consulted a doctor. He sent me for blood tests and pronounced me entirely normal. It was not thyroid function slowing down. Next I consulted a diet expert, who moved me from low fat to high protein. Still no weight gain, no weight loss, but my energy levels surged up.

What a mystery.

The Heathrow injection should, in the normal course of events, start reversing after about three years. That's around when I moved to the Netherlands, and the weight gain started again. Slower, just under half a kilogram a month, but certainly steady.

So what is the problem? What is the difference between South Africa and Australia, and England and The Netherlands.

My first answer was that it's colder. Average temperatures are lower all round. Is the extra fat an attempt by nature to protect the body from the cold? My diet expert says you need to eat more protein in cold weather.

I went to Turkey for two weeks at the beginning of summer. I ate three rectangular meals a day, including the occasional dessert, drank lots of beer and wine, did some exercise but mainly lying on the beach in the sun. I lost two kilograms. So cold could be an option.

Getting back to the temperate zones, the weight creeps back, even though it's summer, and warmer. Am I not eating enough? Is my body going into starvation mode, conserving fat to cope with the famine? Does one need more calories in colder weather?

I tried a search on the Internet. That's when I found nobody has done any research at all. Just blogs and comments by people in similar situations, putting it down to self-indulgence of some kind. Only one person mentioned something about being told it was the lack of light, and the body not making enough serotonin.

Lack of light. I did some more research and discovered my weight gain stopped during one of the brightest summers in English history. This coincided with the OTC thyroxin supplement and the change to a higher protein diet. Which was it? Was it the light in Turkey, which was very bright, or the warmth?

This is cause for investigation to be sure. And as nobody else is interested in it, perhaps it is up to me to solve the mystery of the Heathrow Injection. I wonder if I can get a Ph.D. out of it.

2006-01-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

Happy 2006! And what better way to start the new year than playing with new toys?

Toys, yes. For Christmas I got a toy. Games I have aplenty, but this is the first time in a long time that I got an actual toy. A Century 750 remote-controlled model sailboat.

The reason why it has taken to New Year's day to start playing, is quite simple really. The boat came 95% assembled, which meant we had to finish the job and do the other 95% of the assembly. This comprised putting the keel on the boat, assembling the mast, attaching the sails and checking that the remote controls all worked.

Not quite as simple as it sounds. For a start, the manual came in German. Ja, nicht sehr gut. I did study German once upon a time, a long time ago, but my command of the language does not stretch to boat assembly.

First we started out by searching for an English manual on the Internet. For once, this proved an entirely futile exercise. We did, however, find the German manual on the Internet, and Paul bravely copied it, paragraph by paragraph, into Alta Vista's Babel Fish Translation page, and got a working translation, along the lines of:

Connect first the large tree (1), which at the lower end of the rear sail (grosssegel) (2) are pre-mounted, with the lower mast part (3). Do not tighten the fixing bolt too firmly, with it the large tree easily to the side to swing can and secure you the nut/mother (4) with screw stor varnish. Subsequently, you remove the large tree at the mastfuss. The small carbines (5) can be opened and closed best with a fine spitzzange. The clamping slidegate valve (6) is only adjusted after the final sail assembly. Put now the upper mast part on the lower and hang you the line (Baendsel) at the upper point of the grosssegels

So, we did all that. However, we lacked some fixing lacquer to put on the nuts to stop them coming off, adhesive glue to put on the sail knots, and servo double-sided tape to fasten the batteries and the receiver inside the boat. Off I went to the model shop on the 27th of December to get these essential bits, but they didn't have any. They did give me some other model shops to contact.

Next day, I went to the hardware shop. He gave me the servo tape and told me to use nail varnish for the other stuff. Cool. Got all that.

Except by now the canal had frozen over, and I have a yacht, not an ice-cutter. And then it snowed. And then it rained, and melted all the snow, and today the ice in the canal has mostly melted.

So we played. The boat did get stuck in a small floe, and there wasn't even wind to get it out of trouble. But at least we got an idea of how the basic things work.

Now I just need the weather to warm up some. Roll on summer!

2005-12-29T10:35:00.000+01:00

Scrabbleman left a rather strange comment on my blog about the earth. What he said was "It is astonishing that intelligent people continue to think this way in modern times. Despite rock-solid scientific facts you continue to ignore all evidence and career down a path of make-believe with the soul aim of making yourself more interesting. The wordl is a mundane place unless you are into science and then it is absolutely fascinating."

I find the narrow-mindedness of this comment absolutely startling. It is hard to believe that people still exist who see the world in just one dimension. Science is absolutely fascinating, and I regularly read Scientific American and New Scientist for exactly that reason. But so is spirit fascinating. And I personally see no reason why they can't co-exist, because they are simply examining different sides of the same question. Seekers of truth keep an open mind.

There has been a long war between science and religion. By religion, I do not mean spirit. I have long defined religion as the imposition of man's culture on God's word. Spirit is the quest for inner truth. Science is the quest for physical truth.

The Christian bible says God created earth. It doesn't say how or why or when. Written when it was, for the audience of the time, it used language and similes that people understood then. And so it created a system of belief rather than facts.

Science currently says earth was created in a big bang. It doesn't say by who, or why, though it tries to address the when. And even then, science isn't entirely sure. It's all theories, with scientists trying to find the proofs that will justify their own beliefs.

Neither side has all the facts. Both sides are building on beliefs and theories, on incomplete information. And neither side accepts anything from the other, when to do so could open some interesting new paths of thinking.

Let's take the existence of a cake. It's on the table and you would like a slice. "Have some cake", say the religionists. "God made it." "Rubbish!" say the scientists, "this cake was made by creaming together butter and sugar, then adding eggs and flour." "Heresy!" scream the religionists. "How can you dispute God's word that God made it!" "Actually," say some other scientists, "this is a sponge cake and it doesn't have any butter in it."

Silly, isn't it, when you apply the arguments to a cake. Just as silly when you apply it to the earth, science, religion etc.

One could simply take the view that it doesn't matter who made the cake, or how, as long as it tastes nice. Sit down and have a slice and stop arguing. Enjoy it. Live for the moment.

But if all you know is the cake, it is interesting to wonder not only who made the cake, but how. When? Why?

I think I know the answer to the last question. So that mankind can spend out its days pointlessly arguing the answers ...

2005-12-28T11:40:00.000+01:00

Hobby cooking. At first this may sound a little unlikely; after all, some of us enjoy cooking but as we have to eat every day it does tend to be more of a necessity than a hobby. Then again, you do get people who leave the day to day cooking to others, and cook once in a while, and perhaps you could call them Hobby Cooks.

Not in Holland. Here, hobby cooking is elevated to a real hobby status. There are cooking clubs all over the place, and you join one in order to, well, cook.

I was alerted to the existence of these clubs by Robert of the Cooking Dutch list. He had heard of one such club, and asked if anyone knew anything about it. Over to google, and at once I was fascinated. The nearest one to me, in The Hague, has over 274 members. They meet in groups of 15-17 a night, and cook a multi-course French meal.

Normally you should be introduced by a fellow member, but not knowing anyone I took the bulls by the horn and wrote to the Secretary. Thus I got an invitation to an introduction evening, of which I must attend two before being allowed to join. And even then, the existing members get the final say.

My letter told me to bring 35 euros, an apron, and two drying cloths. Also a contribution for the person who washes up. When I arrived I was introduced to everyone and we all had a glass of wine before starting on the business of the evening.

There were fourteen women all told, and a chef. The chef had put the menu together, I gather, and allocated teams to each course. The menu for December was:

Sardines farçies sur feuilleté à la vinaigrette bagna cauda
Stuffed sardines on puff pastry with a bagna cauda vinaigrette

Cailles à deux manières sur son nid de gousses et de choucroûte
Quails in two ways on a nest of mange tout and sauerkraut

Crème de poivrons Yin et Yang
Yin/Yang cream of paprika

Filet de sole poché dans sa sauce de coco aux légumes de mer
Poached fillet of sole in a coconut sauce with sea vegetables

Sorbet de kumquats au lavande et au champagne rosé
Kumquat sorbet with lavender and rose champagne

Couronne d'agneau à l'orientale
Oriental crown of lamb

Larmes de chocolat et griottines
Chocolate tears with cherries

As it turned out the sorbet was ditched, so we only had six courses to do. I was sent to the Quails team, which was supposed to be three people but ended up with just two.

We really just followed the recipes and the chef answered questions. For example, we had to remove the quail legs and fillet the breasts. The quails were whole. He showed us to chop off the head, and how to cut the legs and breasts.

These are complex recipes. The quail involved making a confit of the legs in goose fat, sealing the breasts in butter, then cutting them into fans, wrapping them in pork fat and leaving them in a low oven until the pork fat melted, making a stock from the carcasses and a huge mirepoix of veggies and herbs to use for a sauce basis, making the sauerkraut bed, making a complex sauce, cooking the mange touts, boiling quails eggs, and then presenting the dish according to the instructions.

The idea was to cook from 6 to 8 and then eat from 8 to 10. Each recipe comes with a time to be served.

Everybody went over time and we only started eating around 9. What you do is prepare your course as far as you can, and then finish it up just before serving. Generally everyone chipped in at this point, helping to dish up and spoon sauce and carry the plates to table.

At the end, everyone cleared up and cleaned up. People who came in cars took a (filled) garbage bag home to put in their garbage cans. If you had leftover ingredients you could take them home with you. By this time most of the dishes were washed, as the washer-upper did that as we went along. He also got served a plate of each course, and was given the champagne from the unmade sorbet to take home. And he got paid. If you don't mind washing up, this could be a very nice job.

All told, I enjoyed the evening. I wonder why this concept hasn't spread further. I'm looking forward to going again.

2005-11-27T10:03:00.000+01:00

Some months ago, Tip magazine had a recipe competition looking for desserts made with gelatine. So I sent in my star recipe, being champagne jelly. What's nice about this, is the bubbles get trapped in the gelatine and burst on your tongue as you eat it.
I had to rejig the recipe for Dutch gelatine, which comes in little sheets. For one bottle of bubbly, you need six little sheets. Seven is too many, the jelly becomes tough. Just chill everything well beforehand, the glasses, the mixing bowl, the bubbly. About four hours before you want to eat it, soak the gelatine to soften it, dissolve it in about 65 ml of hot water, add a tablespoon or so of sugar, then pour the gelatine mixture into the chilled bowl, add the chilled bubbly, and ladle the mixture into the chilled glasses. Get everything back in the fridge as quickly as possible.

So last week I got a call. I've won a prize, not the main one regretfully, but a cooking workshop at the Tip Cooking School. It was on Tuesday night, the 22nd November.

It started with tea and coffee with speculaas. I was the only one who hadn't brought along a friend, and had I, you would have been the only male visitor and very welcomed. They were a little disappointed there were no men. Each of us had to describe our entry to the competition and the chef, Yolande, commented on each. She was clearly one of the judges. We were each given an envelope with 5 recipes in.

Then we divided into three groups, 6, 6 and 5. I ended up with the others of much my own age. One was a very vivacious "meegenomen", another was a woman much older than me who seems to regularly win prizes in cooking competitions.

Each group had to make three desserts: a mousse of grapes, a fresh berry jelly and a semolina pudding. The woman who regularly wins competitions made the semolina pudding on her own; I gather she didn't want any help cooking. So her friend teamed up with me and we made the mousse of grapes. This involved making a grape puree and pushing it through a sieve to get a clear juice. There was a magimix for the puree, and mine was the only one that came out green. The chef came over to ask what I did, because the others were both brown. It seems I'm the only person who knows how to use a magimix properly, because I pulse the grapes first. It seems that was the trick.

Ours turned out the best. :) Like way the best. Yolande actually went out of her way to tell me that.

While we were all cooking up this lot, they served wine to those who wanted it. They also had jugs of water with lemon for those who don't imbibe.

Then we tasted two pre-prepared desserts from the same list. One was a rice pudding and the other a marbled raspberry/melon cream dessert.

Then our groups made these two desserts. We split up and worked with different people. The woman who often wins prizes (you would think I would have asked their names...) hung around and looked on, that's why I think she prefers to cook unaided.

We added some extra ingredients to ours because we thought their recipe was a little bland. A touch of aniseed, extra lemon peel, extra pear liqueur. I beat the egg whites and cream.

Then we tasted our first bunch of desserts and the evening was officially over. We also tasted our second set of desserts, and got everyone else to taste it and agree our rice pudding was an improvement.

The desserts were all cream except for the fresh berry jellies and there was a sameness about them. They're none of them the kind of thing I would make again, unless it was part of a huge dessert buffet where you want some variety. I probably got several daily fruit portions in, though possibly not in the manner the health authorities intended.

Although everyone left at various times soon after, we all ended up on the same bus, albeit from different bus stops! The bus driver was most amused.

I had a long wait for a train at HS so I got home just after midnight. There were no trams in that time either, so waiting for the train was still the fastest. Then Paul and I had a couple of glasses of wine and I got to bed after 1. Needless to say I was very tired.

The winning recipe - main prize a workshop in Milan - was a ginger pudding with honey and lavender. I'm not sure when the recipes will all be published.

2005-11-19T09:02:00.000+01:00

Monlee Saqqara
6 October 1997 - 18 November 2005

It was quite terrible really. There she was, halfway up the stairs, unable to climb them. Her back legs had just suddenly given out. We carried her up onto the landing, and she began dragging herself toward the bedroom. We put her on the bed, but she dragged herself to the edge and pulled herself off with a thud.

She would lie stretched out for a bit, then roll over, then drag herself some more. Her eyes were clear, but her tongue was out of her mouth, a clear sign of pain, and from time to time she gave little cries.

Meantime I was trying to phone the emergency vet. This was 9.30 at night after all. Our vet belongs to a circle and they seem to share the 24 hour service between them. My hand was shaking so much I couldn't dial the numbers properly and had to keep retrying. The first number I dialed, the guy told me to dial my own practice as they had someone there. I dialled that after several tries, and got another number to dial, a Dr Makker. He said to bring her around immediately, so we put her in the cat box and headed for the bus stop. He was only six stops away on the 23 Bus, but there was a longish walk. By this time poor Zaq was meowing continuously, in pain. And Nisa was staring on in wide-eyed horror.

When we took her out of the cat box the vet took one look and shook his head. He tickled her feet and got no response. "It's a thrombosis in the back legs", he said. "It's terribly painful for the cat and there's nothing you can do. One can try aspirin, but I've never seen a cat recover. The best I can do is put her out of her agony."

First he gave her a sedative to calm her and let her sleep. We cuddled and stroked her as she sank into unconsciousness. Then he gave her an injection which stopped her heart.

He asked what we wanted to do, but one look at our faces and he offered to arrange a crematorium. Yes, that would be good. Did we want the ashes? Of course.

We went home in shock and very morosely drank a bottle of wine. Nisa was waiting, all agog to find out what happened. We gave her some catnip drops. Zaq was the people cat, the one who came to greet any visitors and entertain them, walking from lap to lap to spread her favours out evenly. It was she who came out to meet us when we got home. And every morning she would present herself in the bedroom to be brushed while we drank our tea.

So this morning there is a very cat-shaped hole in our lives. And I'm feeling very weepy about it.

2005-11-01T14:08:00.000+01:00

The World Scrabble Championships take place in London from 16th to 20th November this year. Well, that's the theory.

As things currently stand, qualifying countries can't all send their participants. An ickle little legal matter about visas. Nigeria has managed to get visas so far for two of its three qualifying players. Kenya hasn't managed any, and at this stage are thinking about sending anyone who even knows what a scrabble board looks like provided they can only get a visa. Otherwise, of course, they lose their slots for the next world championship.

Tony Blair, are you listening? I recall you were the one going on about how wonderful it was that London landed the Olympics bid for 2012. Are you planning on getting all the gold medals for the UK by refusing visas to qualifying participants?

If London can't run even a World Scrabble Championship because the participants can't get visas, it's going to be a pretty poor Olympics, methinks.

2005-10-20T08:58:00.000+02:00

It's happening again. The sun is rising after 8 in the morning. At the end of the month, it will only rise at 8.30 am. Then the clocks will go back an hour, we'll get some 7.30 sun, but by the end of November it'll be back to 8.30 again.

The sunrise clock at googol.com can be a bit depressing like that.

The cats, of course, aren't happy. They just love those long summer nights. And who can blame them? I've been doing some of my notoriously bad arithmetic, and here's what I conclude.

An average human lives 72 years, an average cat around 12. That means one of our human years is equivalent to 6 cat years. So the six years our cats spent in quarantine, was like 3 years in jail for human. And of course, the six month seasons from equinox to equinox are also 3 cat years long.

That means the cats are now facing three years of winter! Yikes! Followed by three cat years of summer. I know which one I would prefer.

It's a strange concept, seasons which are three years long. I wonder how humans would react to that kind of time stretch. Could be a good setting for a science fiction novel, though now that I think about it, Ursula le Guin wrote a book called "Winter." Except I don't think they ever got any summer in that one.

Anyway, this got me thinking even further. If one of our years is six cat years, how long is one of our days? I guess the answer must be six cat days. No wonder they seem to sleep so much: they need six sleeps to every one of ours. And probably six meals too.

Now why is my cat smiling me at me so?

2005-10-18T09:21:00.000+02:00

Generally speaking, I'm a WYSIWYG person. And generally speaking, I expect other people to be too.

Which makes me wonder whether I can ever be friends with the English.

It may simply be a case of meeting the wrong people at the wrong time. But I discovered, while living in England, that English humour is not humour at all. It's just a statement of the way things really are! And English humour does not point to a WYSIWYG culture.

I'm not speaking about passing politeness and social grease. That is not friendship. But when someone says "Let's get together when you're in the Isle of Wight, come around for dinner", or "I'd really like to meet up with you when I get to Amsterdam" that is not passing politeness. When someone initiates a deep conversation, that is not social grease.

So what am I supposed to think when I phone the Isle of Wight contact and get a "For god's sake give me a break" ? Or the Amsterdam visitor prefers to meet up with a complete stranger you mentioned in passing? Or the person who initiates the deep conversations says you're the one whose getting too personal?

Huh?

And this is before we get to the people who seek out your company only because they have an Armani jacket and you don't. All the better to sneer at you with, m'dear.

Forget it. I'm not playing any more. Good morning. Nice weather. And actually, I don't give a fuck how you are, so don't tell me.

What I'm seeing is your designer labels, your posh address or your cabriolet. What I'm getting, though, is an asshole, hiding insecurity behind the trappings of success.

They're no substitute for integrity.

2005-10-13T09:03:00.000+02:00

If you believe that Earth is a conscious organism with a soul, which I do, then you gotta believe she is one unhappy lady at the moment.

Consider last year's tsunami, the hurricanes and typhoons, the earthquakes.

Does she have any control over this? Are they antibiotics designed to get rid of the bugs that are destroying her? Or do they hurt her as much as they do us?

My mind boggles at the immenseness of the question.

2005-10-10T12:14:00.000+02:00

Giving aid to Africa isn't working.

Just last week over 1,000 would be refugees stormed the Spanish enclave of Melilla, trying to get a foothold into Europe. They have an idea that once there they can stay, that a life of crime as an illegal alien in Europe is better than being with their families in their native countries.

And what is Spain to do? Their own govenments won't take them back. And everyone is criticising Spain, as if these would be immigrants have a right to invade Spain.

But who is at fault? It has to be the African governments that drive these people away in the first place. And I repeat, giving aid isn't helping. The object of aid is to help people stand on their feet, to get their lives together and be able to tackle the future. But it's not happening.

I turn 50 this month. My entire life, the world has been giving aid to Africa. As a kid, we used to knit squares for the poor, we were exhorted to "adopt" children financially. And what is the result, 50 years later?

Nothing. Zero. Zilch. If anything, Africa is poorer and worse off than it was. It's not learning to stand on its feet. It just needs more aid, more debts written off. And the people all want to move Europe, the continent from which the hated colonists came.

I guess the African governments feel that the First World can be relied on to take care of the African people, so they have no reason to bother. We are blitzed with pictures of starving women and dying babies; though I have yet to see a photo of a skinny, starving soldier. Where is the aid going?

The object of the democratisation of Africa was to free the people from the tyranny of the Colonists. Instead, we have the tyranny of corruption and eternal poverty. Democracy in Africa more or less takes the form, "vote for us or we'll shoot you." That's why incumbent governments are returned with landslide majorities. That's why the Hutus wipe out the Tsutsis.

Somebody smart needs to draw up a bigger picture for Africa. Tackle the problem which lies at the root of government, and not just the symptoms, which are poverty, illness, despair.

When I was younger I had dreams of a United States of Africa, not just a mouthpiece Organisation of African Unity. A common passport, free travel and free trade between all the countries of Africa. Even a common currency. I guess now it would be a bit like the European Union. The countries would have to join together in pursuit of a common prosperity, instead of indulging in endless wars which persecute and impoverish.

Is there anyone smart enough to make that come true?

2005-10-07T09:08:00.000+02:00

It has always been a source of surprise to me that people are stupid enough to give their credit card numbers to someone who has already stolen their email address.

OK you wouldn't do it and I wouldn't do it. But there are people out there who are doing it every day. How else can you explain the ceaseless flow of spam? If nobody was buying, it would dry up. If nobody was buying, the spam masterminds wouldn't have the cash to pay the hired spammers. (I wouldn't think the spam masterminds would be stupid enough to put their own internet accounts at risk, but who knows?)

Of course, the hired spammers may just be stupid enough (or greedy enough) to think that they have stumbled on a great way to work from home using their computer.

"How stupid can people be?" I hear you cry in dismay.

You can get your answer here.

2005-09-04T18:26:00.000+02:00

" New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen" wrote Scientific American in October 2001. "A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands."

When I read about what happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I remembered that story. It was a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the problem and what solutions would be needed.

So why didn't anybody listen?

The problem, it seems, was the $14 billion price tag back then.

Now, we have an estimated $30 billion in insurance costs. And, according to Guardian Unlimited, "no one knows how much it will cost to rebuild the streets, the highways and the bridges devastated by Hurricane Katrina. One thing for sure, however: It will cost more than any other post-disaster reconstruction effort in U.S. history."

And they still won't have spent any money on fixing the problem. That will be extra.

No one predicted the tsunami.

But what can you say when a government like that of the USA won't invest in protecting its own people from the inevitable?

2005-08-18T12:22:00.000+02:00

While I'm on the marketing bandwagon, let me tackle some unsavoury tactics. Let's talk ...telemarketing.

Why do these fools think they have the right to pester you in your home, in your own free time?
Or is it simply a matter of preying on the gullible?

A case in point.

Soon after I arrived here in Holland, someone phoned me from some Lottery company. For a simple x euros a month, I forget the number, they will make sure I'm in the draw every week.
Well, send me the forms I said, hoping this would get rid of them fast. Oh no, not necessary, said they, just give us your bank account details over the phone.

Not so fast, I said. How do I know that you are who you say you are? Perhaps you are some agency collecting bank account numbers so you can pass through fraudulent debits? What protection do I have if give you my bank account number over the phone?

She tried hard to convince me. But when I asked her if she would give her own bank account number to a complete stranger over the phone, she agreed I had a point.

I soon learned that 99.9% of the phone calls I receive here are telemarketing calls. So now I just don't answer the phone. Unless you've made an appointment first.

If that sounds weird, it may comfort you to know that I do have a message service. And genuine callers leave messages.

If it's an emergency, send me a text.

And blame the telemarketers along with the spammers for ruining modern communication.

2005-08-16T11:09:00.000+02:00

What is it about software copyright that makes people's brains freeze up?

What is copyright supposed to do? In my head, it's there to stop other people making money out of your work. So someone who designs a beautiful graphics program that designers around the world can use to make a living, clearly wants to protect their interests. You don't want designers ripping off the CDs and handing them out for nothing. So dongles, licence agreements, CD keys etc have a place there.

You design a brilliant computer game that everyone wants to play, you deserve the profits from providing great entertainment, just like writers and singers and artists.

But how's this for complete lunacy?!?

I have a little program called MediaFace 4.0. Anyone from MediaFace reading this? I hope so.
What does this program do? It allows me to design CD labels that ONLY print onto particular stationery made by the same company that makes MediaFace. So the more people who have MediaFace, which is a one-off utility designed to sell label stationery, the more label stationery they will sell.

So what do they do to encourage this? They have a fucking CD key! And a licence agreement that says you can only install it on one computer! Do they want to sell programs or do they want to sell label stationery?

If I had known in advance when I bought the CD label kit - and there were other brands to choose from, I would NEVER have wasted money on this complete idiocy. On principle. If I were in charge of MediaFace marketing I would GIVE away copies of the stupid software so that people would load up on my brand of CD labels. Please feel free to make copies and give it to your friends. Do not fork out money for a program like SureThing which supports all the competing brands of labels too.

It's not like it's even particularly wonderful software, or that you can use it to make professional CD labels. All it's good for is making something better than handwritten scrawl that says "Backup 16 August 2005". And I certainly don't want to support their brainless paper marketing efforts by giving their software to anyone I know. They don't deserve to sell CD labels!

It's time, I think, to buy a different brand of CD label. Or get a printer that prints direct onto the CD and dispenses with labels altogether.

Though I doubt they'll wake up to the lost opportunity.

2005-08-12T11:02:00.000+02:00

The new Harry Potter is lying untouched and unopened on the coffee table downstairs.

It's not that I don't want to read it. I just know that once I pick it up, that will be me out of cycle of life for about two days. And right now I seem to need all the time I can get.

Not that I could tell you where it actually goes. Nor can I look around at the end of the day and say "Well, at least I did that".

The problem, I think, is lack of routines. Routines get a lot of stuff done without your even noticing it, leaving you time to read the new Harry Potter. But now, I don't even have a routine for getting up in the morning, or taking a shower, or getting dressed. A whole day can pass without my ever making it to the shower.

Or have the days just become shorter?

When I was a kid, I used to have stacks of the stuff. I could read five to seven books a week, eat meals, play in the swimming pool (I have videos proving that I did play outside), star in home movies, do homework and visit friends.

Now I have trouble just getting to the meals. I've tried to read two books this year, but I fall asleep after a couple of pages. Mostly I listen to them. I download them from audible.com and listen on my mp3 player while I futz around aimlessly trying to iron something here or tidy something there.

It may be that they weren't very good books and my tolerance for poor, self-indulgent writing has faded. But my scrabble history doesn't show too many games in the past few weeks either, and I've been here!

There are a number of branches in the garden, attesting to a certain amount of domestic activity. There are clothes in my cupboard, so ditto. The fridge is somewhat bare and I lack inspiration for tonight's dinner.

So I will have to go out and stock up on comestibles at the very least.

And the new Harry Potter will have to remain untouched for another day.

2005-08-05T16:58:00.000+02:00

Sigh.

Yesterday I got an email from ClassicFM in England.

"Dear Janet Keating", it said.

"Thank you! What more can I say? Well quite a bit actually.

The latest independent audience research has just come out and at Classic FM we're celebrating some good news. More than 6.3million people across Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England now tune into Classic FM every week - that's 330,000 new listeners in the last three months."

So on this morning's 6 am news I hear "46 policemen were injured in Belfast after rioting."

Interesting. Why were the police rioting?

6.3 million people are listening to this stuff. You have been warned.

2005-08-03T09:11:00.000+02:00

My father was a movie addict.

For as long as I can remember, on Friday a precious parcel would arrive from Johannesburg by train: the film of the week. He converted an entire suite in our house into a little movie room, complete with tip-up chairs he bought from a demolition sale, and a projection booth with two 16 mm projectors.

Friends and family used to gather at our home to watch the film of the week, and nothing was censored. I saw Psycho when I was five, and didn't take a shower until I was fully grown, as a result. Horror movies were a favourite of his, but not mine, and I learned to walk out as soon as the eerie music started, or the shadows began to lengthen, or the kids knelt by the bed praying 'Now I lay me down to sleep...'

When television first came to South Africa in 1975, my dad used to tape the test pattern. We had a smart Philips video recorder, a standard now long forgotten and gone.

But one thing my dad never had was a videocam, which is a pity. Because he also loved making movies. We helped. We dressed up in swimsuits with towels caped around our shoulders, swooping onto roofs and rescuing drowning babies - SuperJan and SuperRen were the result of my dad's forays into special effects. We used to compose titles for his productions using letters and backing boards akin to fuzzy felt, but made of shiny plastic stuff.

When he died, before the videocam was really around I think, his collection of 8mm tapes came to me. I stuck them in a cupboard, not really knowing what to do with them. Until we moved to England. Then I left them with Paul's sister and asked her to get them transferred onto CD, a more manageable medium.

When I finally got the CDs, a good while later, maybe a year, I bought some video editing software. Oh what fun that was! Going through all this ancient footage, extracting existing movies and making some new ones. I can't remember what got in the way, but the videos and video software were left languishing for a long while.

With my recent hard drive crash, I had to reinstall all my programs, and I found the video editing software again. And once again I began going through the footage. Some I had saved to backup, but not all. I cut a movie using all the bits of us as children and made a music video. I've recut the footage of my youngest sister's 18th birthday and added music.

I think the bug has bitten.

And today, I'm getting a videocam.

2005-08-01T08:18:00.000+02:00

Tanis had a crappy weekend. Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to stay in a household with cats if you are violently allergic to the animals and stop breathing in their presence. This wasn't Tanis, but her boyfriend, hence the crappy weekend.

But it did get us out of the house and to the Rotterdam Summer Carnival.

2005-07-27T07:53:00.000+02:00

From today's news:

"Emergency services were searching for victims with dogs and helicopters after the avalanche near the Mont Blanc du Tacul summit in the afternoon."

What happens to the victims without dogs and helicopters? Are they not allowed rescue?

2005-07-26T07:31:00.000+02:00

Some people are wilfully stupid. Most are just wilful.

2005-07-25T19:59:00.000+02:00

So they shot the wrong guy. And you want to blame the police?

The way I understand it, they followed the guy, challenged him to stop, and he ran. He was wearing a thick overcoat on a warm summer day, and carrying a rucksack.

Quite frankly, were I the policeman, I would probably have done the same thing. England is the first world, after all, and the police are not going to shoot you for stopping, like they would elsewhere in the world.

What if he DID have bombs strapped to his torso? What if there were a bomb in his rucksack?

Or have the Brits now become so Politically Correct that they'd rather let a suspect bomber onto the tube where he can blow up and kill another 76 innocent people.

So don't blame the police. Jean Charles de Menezes was as much a victim of the terrorist attacks as any of the ordinary people trying to get to work who were killed on the 7th July.

It's a pity, though, that the superpowers had to wait until terrorism struck them where it hurts most to do anything about. If they had taken action against terrorism years and years ago when it first started, perhaps it might not have grown into the world force it is today. But because the "freedom fighters" as they were then called, operated in countries the superpowers disliked, the attitude was "I don't condone it but I understand it."

And now, we are all reaping the whirlwind.

2005-07-23T19:45:00.000+02:00

While I've won the lottery on several occasions, it's never been more than ten pounds at a time. I suppose I could spring to a couple of beers with this windfall, but usually I plough it back in, hoping for the big win. The first prize. The cheque for millions.

What would I spend it on? Not a bigger house, or a fancy car.

The first is Karl Jenkins' Christmas Oratorio. I even have a great name for it: Adoremus. I have sent him email about writing such a work, but I received a polite note back from someone called Helen that it wasn't under consideration at the moment.

If he's not going to do it himself, I suppose I will have to commission it. But I don't think £10 will quite cut the fee. I don't think it covers the cost of even one of his CDs. Amazon tells me there is an Adiemus 5 I know nothing about, and I don't even have Palladio yet. Sigh.

But let's not ignore popular music and giving some complete unknowns a leg up in life. I've been doing a website for Jonathan Carr , who is a writer, songwriter and singer and creatively very exciting. I think the three songs that would put him in the limelight are his For Sex, Homosexual Boy and Primitive Bitch. He hasn't had the wherewithall to take these beyond demo stage, so with my newfound millions I would get those recorded and onto a CD along with some of my other favourites. I particularly like Listen and Get your Fame Dirty.

Then I'd like to give myself some peace of mind. Knowing I have money to live on, and retire on, I would settle down and write my Redemption heptology without worrying about anything.

And finally I'd have to speak to Club Med about this new Retirement Village concept they don't know about yet. I'm sure I'd have to put up some kind of financing for that, even if just to secure my own unit at this early stage.

I will be one of those quiet millionaire next door types. Maybe I'll splash out on a couple of new clothes; I do need some. I might even do up the kitchen and buy some new pots.

But you won't notice anything. Except for a really nice Christmas oratorio with shades of Adiemus, Mass for the Armed Man, Palladio and Crossing the Stone in the harmonies. Some new vibes on your local pop station. And Club Med advertisements for their new retirement villages in the sun.

Ha!

So how will you spend your win?

2005-07-20T08:48:00.000+02:00

I got this email today:

"A letter from Zim......
Sent in by John Winter:
I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF.
The darkest hour is always before dawn.
We are all terrified at what they are going to destroy next........I
mean they are actually plowing down brick and mortar houses and one
white family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything
when 100 riot police came in with AK's and bulldozers and demolished
their beautiful house - 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings - because it was
"too close to the airport"..so we are feeling extremely insecure right
now. You know - I am aware that this does not help you sleep at night,
but if you do not know - how can you help?
Even if you put us in your own mental ring of light and send your
guardian angels to be with us - that is a help - but I feel so cut off
from you all knowing I cannot tell you what's going on here simply
because you will feel uncomfortable. There is no ways we can leave so
that is not an option. I just ask that you all pray for us in the way
that you know how, and let me know that you are thinking of us and
sending out positive vibes... that's all.
You can't just be in denial and pretend its not going on. To be frank
with you, its genocide in the making and if you do not believe me, read
the Genocide Report by Amnesty International which says we are IN level
seven (level 8 is after its happened and everyone is in denial). If you
don't want me to tell you these things then it means you have not dealt
with your own fear, but it does not help me to think you are turning
your back on our situation.
We need you to get the news OUT that we are all in a fearfully dangerous
situation here. Too many people turn their backs and say - oh well,
that's what happens in Africa. This government has GONE MAD and you need
to publicize our plight or how can we be rescued?
You can't just say "oh you attract your own reality". The petrol queues
are a reality, the pall of smoke all around our city is a reality, the
thousands of homeless people sleeping outside in 0 Celsius with no food
water, shelter and bedding are a reality.
Today a family approached me, brother of the gardener's wife with two
small children. Their home was trashed and they will have to sleep
outside. We already support 8 people and a child on this property and
electricity is going up next month by 250% as is water. How can I take
another family of 4
-
and yet how can I turn them away to sleep out in the open?
I am not asking you for money, or a ticket out of here - I am asking you
to FACE the fact that we are in deep and terrible danger and I want you
to pass on our news and pictures and don't just press the delete button
for God's sake. Help in the way that you know how. Face the reality of
what is going on here and SEND OUT THE WORD. The more people that know
about it, the more chance we have of United Nations coming to our aid.
Please stop ignoring and denying what's happening. Would you like to be
protected from the truth and then if we are eliminated how would you
feel? Surely you would say "if only we knew how bad it really was we
could have helped in some way". I know we chose to stay here and so we
"deserve" what's coming to us. For now we ourselves, have food, shelter,
a little fuel and a bit of money for the next meal - but what is going
to happen next? Will they start on our houses? All property is going to
belong to the State now. I want to send out my Title Deeds to one of you
because if they get a hold of those I can't fight for my rights.
We no longer have SW radio which told us everything that was happening
because the government jammed it out of existence - we don't have any
reporters, and no one is allowed to photograph. If we had reporters here
they would have an absolute field day. Even the pro government Herald
has written that people are shocked, stunned, bewildered and blown
mindless by the wanton destruction of everyone's homes which are
supposed to be "illegal but which a huge percentage of them actually do
have licenses for. Please my children - have some compassion and HELP by
sending out the articles and personal reports so that something can be
DONE. "

When I was in Turkey, a number of people asked me, when they found out I was South African, "What is Mbeki doing about Zimbabwe?"

Go and look in the shelters for the homeless and dispossessed in South Africa, and count how many blacks there are versus how many whites. I think that will give you your answer.

Will the UN aid the people of Zimbabwe? Count how many barrels of oil the country produces a year. That will give you your answer too.

2005-07-19T13:46:00.000+02:00

Is there anyone around who HASN'T had a major computer problem in the past month or so? The most popular seems to be the infamous hard drive crash, which affected me twice in a week.

When I got back from South Africa, my computer was dead. Hard drive kaput. It was hot as anything too. I took it out - exit 20 GB of hard drive - and put in a new one - enter 180 GB of hard drive. It was too big to install all at once, so I had to add a second logical drive and began putting my backup data onto that.

Humph. Next day, that logical drive wouldn't open. I tried reformatting. No luck. Looks like a worm ate it. So I had to reformat the entire drive and start from scratch.

Get back from Turkey and Paul's computer won't start up. Power supply dead. Sigh.

But we are not alone. Everyone I have spoken to has apologised for not being in touch, but their computers have all been in hospital.

Normally one would blame this mass computer suicide - or is it genocide? - on sunspots. Strange things happen to electronics during sunspot peaks. But according to SIDC -RWC Belgium World Data Center for the Sunspot Index, activity is low at the moment.

Maybe the computers need a certain amount of sunspots to stay healthy.

I once planned to write a book about the creatures that inhabit the insides of our computers and create havoc in their constant war against the humans. I called them chipmnks. I had a great opening too:

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was DOS. And DOS said, Format C.

Trouble is, I had no plot to go with the opening line. I did think about constructing a battle between the creatures in Windows machines and those in Macs. And then I had to think about genre. If you're going to be a best-selling author, you have to stick with just one. Do people really want to read about strange internal computer wars from the person who wrote that amazing Redemption heptology?

So I set it aside. Along with my Valentine e-book with its multiple plots accessed by clicking on the decision the reader makes for the heroine. And my amazing underwater science fiction story which starts with a wonderful quote by George Bush "I believe that man and fish can coexist peacefully", said in Saginaw, MI, on 29 Spetember 2000.

Of course, the only flaw in this theory is that I haven't actually finished even the first Redemption story, never mind found a publisher who wants to buy an entire heptology!

Which brings me back to the failed hard drive. Luckily I have a backup of Redemption, which I have restored. And I've just reinstalled my word processor too.

That should frustrate whatever plans those chipmnks in this box had. Wonder how they'll react to that. I'll let you know. Maybe even write a book about it.

2005-07-16T13:06:00.000+02:00

The Dutch have the right attitutude about a lot of things, I think. For example, chocolate. Here, in the Netherlands, chocolate is something you eat on your sandwich. It is a basic food group, after all, and the Dutch embrace that concept wholeheartedly.

I know we used to get chocolate spread back in South Africa. But this was not a regular thing, and certainly didn't occupy an entire section of the supermarket, maybe just a small section on one shelf along with the jam.

Here, chocolate sandwiches are a major industry. There are chocolate curls, and chocolate sprinkles. You can have dark, milk, white, or mixed. You have a selection of brands. The variety in spreads is even larger, as besides your favourite kind of chocolate, you also get to choose to include your favourite nuts.

I will admit to buying both chocolate curls and chocolate sprinkles, though I've used them mainly as decorations on desserts. I haven't yet tried the famous Dutch Chocolate Sandwich. Firstly I don't do a lot of bread. And secondly, there are no instructions on the packets on how to make the perfect sandwich.

Do you butter the bread? Do you use the chocolate or chocolate/nut mix as a solitary ingredient?
Is a chocolate mayonnaise sandwich an option? Or chicken and chocolate on rye? Speaking of which, does white chocolate go better with white bread or pumpernickel?

I may have to dedicate my meagre bread ration to experimenting, rather than wasting it on toast for my egg at breakfast.

Hang on. Maybe I can start a new trend and sprinkle chocolate on my oats.

2005-07-14T10:21:00.000+02:00

Well, I have no idea how many miles it is, but here's a quick view from around 37 degrees North and almost 28 degrees East. Bodrum, Turkey.

The view is quite wonderful, as you can see.

Two weeks at Club Med has done me the world of good. The sun has bronzed my skin and blonded my hair. I didn't realise just how much I was relying on the good old adrenaline to keep me goinng from day to day until I got to the beach and it all fizzled out.

The club is set on a hill leading down to the sea, which means lots of steps and lots of exercise just getting to the beach. I made a point of having lunch in the main dining area - the one with this glorious view - just to make sure I didn't get fat and lazy. I didn't either, the bikini I bought at the beginning of the holiday was too large for me at the end.

I slept in the shade and swam in the sea. I went snorkelling, though there wasn't much to see. We did rescue some lost keys, though, we saw them fine. I went to the hammam and let off steam. We went into Bodrum for three hours and had a beer in the Old Harbour. I did body sculpting classes every second morning. I swam in the pool and sat in the sun. I spoke French and forgot my Dutch.

Ah well.

I think I'd like to retire to Club Med. I wonder if I can persuade them to consider retirement villages.

2005-06-09T09:56:00.000+02:00

This post should really be called the view from 0 miles.

Yup, I had a little trip back to South Africa. A family emergency brought me back.
So what's changed?

Prices have skyrocketed. In fact, I would say the price of food has doubled since I left in October 2001. I bought a belt and paid more for it than I would do in Europe. Silly, huh? South Africa can no longer call itself a cheap destination.

My blood has become thicker. I wore my Dutch summer clothes at 11pm in Johannesburg in the middle of winter and was fine. I was not cold. The South Africans were complaining.

Otherwise, not much has changed at all. News of the day is a corruption scandal. Schabir Shaik has been found guilty of having a corrupt relationship with the deputy prime minister. Ho hum.
What is different is that Shaik is going to jail. Zuma is not going to resign, he's going to stick it out. The youth are holding protests in the street to support him. The newspapers are calling for his rapid departure from politics.

I don't know the story behind the headlines. Bribery is part of it. I always wonder why they arrest the people who offer bribes, when the guilty parties are those that accept them. In some parts of Africa you can't do business without first paying a little incentive. I know one person who did work for Kwazulu-Natal and could not be paid until he presented himself in person, with his invoice and ten per cent of the sum due, in cash. You're going to arrest him for doing what the Kwazulu local government expects?

There are still ants in the kettle. I had forgotten what a nuisance ants are. They are everywhere. I haven't seen an ant in either England or the Netherlands, certainly not in the house. Here, my sugar is ant-free and stale kettle water contains only bits of floating buildup.

It was nice to see old friends and family again, new babies, new pets. The kids have grown so much I wouldn't recognise them in the street. Montaigne never made it though he said he would and is now in my list of has-beens.

But I regret to say I had no regrets. Rien de rien, as Piaf would put it. I wonder if I'll ever find a country I can truly call home.

2005-05-29T10:07:00.000+02:00

If there is one picture I would like to have for this particular blog, it would be a photo of the violin section of Het Residentie Orkest strumming their violins like guitars. I didn't have a camera with me, though, and even then I doubt I would have been quick enough off the mark.

It's not often you see a classical music audience stomping and clapping in the aisles like a revivalist congregation, but that's what happened last night in Den Haag. What fun it was too. Suddenly I understand about Mozart popularizing music in his day, and just how avant garde he must have seemed.

The truth is, there will be no audience for The Hague's residential orchestra in ten years' time unless they start broadening their appeal, and I suspect this is true of most of the orchestras in Europe as well. The current audiences are old. Last night I looked around and well... suddenly I was in the older category rather than the youngest person there.

So what was this fabulous concert? Let me tell you about it. Firstly, it was a concert I chose rather than Paul, probably because I thought it would be guitar music. Anyway the program featured Villa Lobos and some Brazilian stuff I had never heard of.

Secondly, it was not what I was expecting.

We arrived at the Dr Anton Philipszaal to the sound of a drum band causing mayhem at the entrance. I thought it was a group of buskers trying to raise some cash from the concertgoers.
Ahem. It was the opening act. They followed us into the concert hall, whistles blaring and drums at deafening volumes. A fifteen-strong percussion band called Absurdo thumping out Samba rhythms that had the greybeards waggling their Zimmer frames enthusiastically.

The Villa-Lobos followed this unusual introduction. The first, Dança Frenética, held no suprises and was quite soothing after the rumbunctuous start to the evening's performace. The second, the Dança dos mosquitos, was very witty, with violins humming the mosquito whine and the rest of the orchestra creating a strong jungle feeling. Though the final swat with the percussion, ending the mosquito hum once and for all, evoked a roar of laughter from the audience.

The final piece as Bachiana Brasileira nor.5, a gorgeous piece for 8 cellos and a soprano.

Interval was livened up by the reappearance of Absurdo, providing a lively interactive show that demanded - and got - wholehearted audience participation.

The highlight of the evening was the second half though. We came back into the hall, and along with the orchestra on stage were two electric guitars, a drumkit... and the drumkit was being very active throughout the tuning up process, almost drowning it out.

Interesting.

Then the conductor came on stage with a lounge jazz/soul singer. A Brazilian woman. The drumkit didn't stop at all. There was no silence at all, the conductor just turned around and slowly pulled in the orchestra.

Wow. The big bands of the 'Sixties had nothing on this. What a sound, what an experience. Symphony orchestra meets lounge rock band. The impact Mozart's Magic Flute had on popular audiences way back when suddenly takes on meaning.

I'll go again. And I'll buy the CD if they ever release it.

2005-05-09T09:17:00.000+02:00

It's happening again. I'm going to bed at midnight.

For night owls, this may not seem unusual. But I've always been a morning person. Come 9.15 or 9.30 at night, I'm asleep.

But now the light has come again. The spring equinox is long over, and here at 52 degrees north with french summer time it's only getting dark after 10 pm or so. This catches me unawares. I find I haven't even cooked dinner yet, and bedtime is way overdue.

I suppose I will just have to get used to summer regime of less sleep. That's why naps were invented.

2005-04-20T15:06:00.000+02:00

.
Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!

It's the biggest whinge at the Internet Scrabble Club. If you're going to believe the majority of finger notes and public denouncements, there isn't a single player (except, one infers, the writer of the finger notes) who is giving you an honest game.

Well, I'm kinda sick of the whole thing. I now routinely noplay anyone who whinges about cheaters and cheating, whether I've played them or not. And people who are rude to the helpers, but that's another matter altogether. Because really, I don't believe anyone actually is cheating. I think they're just a bunch of bad losers.

Why don't I believe anyone is cheating? Firstly, it's going to be hard. A lot of people sign the Fairplay agreement, in which you agree not to use an anagramming program or website during play. When you sign this, ISC puts a detective on your computer, and if you use such a program or website, then it cancels the agreement.

Let me rephrase that. If you have such a program open on your computer, whether you are using it or not, it cancels the agreement. And it writes it up in your finger notes, so that everyone who looks can see that it was cancelled. And, it stays there for two weeks. This has happened to a lot of people, judging by the ongoing Q&A, and many were quite genuinely not using the anagrammer to help their play.

Secondly, you have the option of only playing people who have signed the Fairplay agreement. If you're really that hung up on people using anagrammers, you have only yourself to blame if you don't check that box.

Thirdly, I don't there is any way to manipulate what tiles you get to play with. They are issued automatically without any interference on your part.

And finally, let's come down to the anagramming programs. How much do these help you, bearing in mind that there's more to scrabble than just knowing lots of words? Oh yes there is. You have to analyse the board, analyse your rack and look ahead in the game, not just at this move. Chess players will understand.

I am an average player. I know some techniques, but not all. I know some stems (these are six letter basic words, which combined with any letter of the alphabet is likely to give you a word that scores a bonus 50 points.) Can I win using an anagrammer? I decided to test the theory.

So I signed onto the backup server, which is not used much. I only go there to practice quietly, so I don't have to sign the Fairplay agreement to gain credibility there. The computer players are all usually available, unlike the main server where they in demand all the time. I set my game time to 40 minutes, I set the challenge mode to void so that I wouldn't lose points for playing an invalid word, I marked the game unrated so that I would not benefit from winning, I got myself an anagramming program and I challenged Nefertiti, one of the high ranking computers aimed at the expert players.

I input every rack I had into the anagrammer looking for a bonus play. Boy, did I find some weird words, but I played them nevertheless. Every possible bingo I had, found its way onto the board.

Did I win? No, of course not. Because there really is more to scrabble than just knowing all the long words. I post a picture of the final board for your interest and edification. My words are in red. Nefertiti thrashed me most horribly, anagrammer and all. 535-379 points, to be exact.

Did I have fun? No. It was, in fact, a most boring and tiresome way of playing the game. More than half the fun is challenging your own abilities.

But I did prove my point. If you whinge about cheaters, and publicly accuse your opponent while you're playing (yes this has happened!) of cheating just because they were lucky enough to play five bonus words in one game, then actually, you're just a bad loser. If you always play VOID and moan about cheating, you're doubly a bad loser. And if you haven't challenged any of the bingo words your opponent played, ummm.... how come you know the words but think your opponent shouldn't?

So, that is my whinge.

I hope it is more literate than most I have read on ISC.

2005-04-19T08:45:00.000+02:00

Christmas last year was ruined for me by the Politicially Correct League.

The argument was that Christmas excludes the people who aren't Christian, and in a secular society, that is not good. So they insisted on wishing me Happy Holidays. Except being in the Netherlands, we didn't have holidays like they do in the US. We has Christmas and Boxing day, being Saturday and Sunday, and NO holidays on Monday and Tuesday.

Why not just wish me Happy Christmas? That is, after all, what it is called on the calendar. And if you're not happy about Christmas, you don't have to celebrate it. In South Africa, which has a reputation for racism, intolerance and a whole lot of other nasty words, the Jews and the Muslims step in over Christmas and keep public services running. And the Christians do likewise during their important holidays to give them the time off.

In the so-called "free" and "democratic" societies that complain about Christmas excluding the Jews and the Muslims, the place shuts down. It's a religious holiday that everyone takes, no matter what their religion. Try taking public transport on Christmas day in London if you don't understand what I'm on about.

If there truly is a problem with allowing a Christian holiday on a public calendar, then take it off. Remove the holiday. Why should the Politically Correct League get to celebrate Christmas holidays anyway if they find them so offensive. If they're Christian, they can take leave just like everyone else has to do.

You want a holiday in the depths of winter to relieve the gloom and lack of light? Why does it have to be December 25th? That's purely a symbolic date anyway. Everyone knows Jesus was actually born in September. Pick a date, any date, and call it Politically Correct Day.

It's not a holiday I would choose to celebrate. The politically correct are emasculating society and opening it to invasion by those who have real causes that will never be politically correct in a million years. Extremists of any kind have no truck with political correctness and will use the very openness it is supposed to offer in order to close society down and make life miserable for everyone.

A thief is a thief no matter what their sex, colour, religion or motive. Likewise a murderer. These are facts we can ignore on Politically Correct Day and hand the world over to the forces of evil. At least then we'll all know where we stand.

2005-04-14T10:53:00.000+02:00

I blinked and that was March gone. Half of April too.

In the meantime I have discovered that were I a greek goddess, I would be Hestia.

Maybe it's time to rediscover the hearth in me. Not too sure about my inner virgin though. Hestia is the Greek for Vesta, or was it the other way around?

Also in the meantime I played in a scrabble competition in Amstelveen. It was exactly as I expected: horrible. Scoring and tile tracking really do get in the way of play. Mostly my opponent had played another word before I had the score added and drawn new tiles. In one case, my opponent actually drew new tiles before I did. No, I didn't complain. I wasn't in the competition to win it, just to make up the residence numbers.

Probably worse because I was tired after three sleepless nights and had horrible racks. Even with a blank among my tiles for about ten moves, there was no seven letter word at all. I checked with Lexpert afterwards.

Anyway, see if you can do better. What words can YOU make with racks like these:
ILNNRR? AIIOOU? ANNRTW? (game 2. Remember to keep the blank for a seven letter word.)
MNNPRU,CLLNOVV, ABDFNTV (game 3)
FLNTVW? CDINRTS, CNORUUS (game 4)

I will curl up on my inner hearth while you figure it out. Quite frankly, I'll do better playing in Rumanian.

2005-02-28T13:30:00.000+01:00

What sort of book should I be writing?

This is kinda fun. I did this quiz.

Here's my result:

GOTHICS! - Deep, dark, mysterious and melodramatic.
You are drawn to write tales of the shadows and
what might lurk there. Could it be Love? Or
Madness? Anne Rice and Brahm Stoker are your
guides.

What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
brought to you by Quizilla

2005-02-24T10:05:00.000+01:00

"Now that I'm retired" wrote Caroline to me, "I wonder where I ever found the time to work."

I understand completely. I often wonder the same thing myself. So I've thought about it. And there are two issues.

Firstly, running a home is actually a full time job in itself. It's not just the housework. It's the bills, the shopping, the meal planning, the dry-cleaning, and making arrangements to go out in the evenings and weekends.

Doesn't sound like much, but when I was working, these things never got done. OK, we had someone in to do housework twice a week. Meals were unplanned. Shopping was chaotic. We paid approximate amounts to the electricity company, council, phone company, etc, hardly ever reconciling the bills to the amounts paid. And we never went out. Sometimes we would visit friends over the weekends, and sometimes they would pop around to us.

The second issue is routines. When you're working, you have routines to carry you through the day. You have to be up by x time in order to get to work. You learn to drop the drycleaning off on the way. This is all functioning on automatic.

Now that I'm not working, I'm not wondering what to do with the time. I'm wondering where to find more of it. I'm developing non-work interests again. In short, I'm getting a life. I think.

The main issue is, no routines. Flylady would not be proud of me.

Now that I have ice-skating lessons on a Friday, something is changing. I get up before Paul to shower, as I would never make it on time were I to wait for him. So while he's still snoring, I get a bunch of things done. Shower. Dress. Check email. Make tea. Take bread out of breadmaker. Feed cats. And then it means the bed is made and the dishwasher is loaded by 8.30 am. Normally all this takes until 10.

I just gained an hour and a half. Hmmm. Maybe this should be a daily routine. Get up before Paul. I used to do that in South Africa, why did it change?

So let's start the new routine with that first small change. I'll report back.

2005-02-04T16:42:00.000+01:00

Holiday on Ice it is not. Not even a holiday, probably, but I won't know until I wake up tomorrow and find out just how stiff I'm going to be. But ice? Yes.

What I'm getting around to saying, is I had my first ice skating lesson today. Paul came too, with the attitude a cat has when faced with the prospect of swimming lessons.

Let me admit I have skated before. They had an ice rink in Bloemfontein. Once. And I did go and skate. Probably also once. And it was nearly forty years ago. But, it counts for something, surely?

Anyway, we arrive and hire our skates. They almost certainly didn't realise we are complete novice skaters. Most middle-aged couples in the Netherlands have probably being doing it all their lives. So they gave us grown-up skates, not the training skates young kids use. (Training skates are to skates what tricycles are to bicycles. They have little extra skating blades on the sides ...)

The neighbours think our skating lesson is hilarious. This was even before they saw us on the ice. I suppose you don't expect people our age to take swimming lessons either, which must be the South African equivalent. I see their point.

Our teacher took us more seriously. He took one look at us and went off to get some rollators. Well, that's what he called them. Essentially, these are like the walkers you see the infirm elderly use to keep their balance. And here I was hoping it would be a long time before I need one of those.

Nothing daunted, we grab our walkers, I mean skaters, or rollators, or whatever and start off with our little training steps. Ice is damned slippery! The instructor, (with a name that sounds like Phew!) comes over and shows me how to move my feet. Oh, and look up! I obey, and go skating off around the beginners's corner with gusto, armed with my rollator, trying hard to look forward and not at my feet.

I'm just starting to get the hang of it when Phew! calls me over. "Ok," he says, and pushes my rollator away from me. "Go after it. Push, and chase."

I glance over at Paul. He's allowed to keep his rollator with him, why not me? Oh well. I push the thing away and skate after it. Push. Chase. Push. Chase. OK. I can do that.

Next thing Phew! has grabbed my rollator and taken it away! No more support system! "You don't need it," he says. "Just go." Aaargh. I go.

This apparently is not good enough either. Now Phew! wants me to skate on one foot, lifting the other off the ground, not high, about 1 cm. One foot at a time. OK, I nearly come a cropper, but manage to stay standing. I try and follow his example of pushing out to the side. Eeek. But it's OK. I'm managing.

By now, we're ten minutes into the lesson. Phew! decides it's time I try the main track, a 400m oval where all the experts are skating away. Oh well. Off I go. The kids are pretty boisterous, but I manage to avoid collisions. I try the one foot thing and nearly fall over a couple of times. But I do see some people with a lovely skating rhythm, and get the idea of what Phew! means by this strange one legged skating thing. It also conserves energy, so once you get into the swing of staying on one foot for longer, you could probably go for miles without getting tired.

Have I mentioned long distance skating is the national sport of the Netherlands? If I'm going to learn this, I'm probably in the best place in the world to do so.

Yeah so I go around. And again. This could be addictive.

"Very good" says Phew! "Most beginners need about two hours with the rollator. And here you are skating already." OK. So it seems exposure at an early age does count for something. Mothers, get your children onto skates. (Yes, I mean you!)

"So," I say to Paul afterwards, "I suppose skating is a healthier addiction than Scrabble®?"

"Hmmm." He thinks about this for a split second. "I can see it now, Janet, star of Scrabble® on Ice".

Yes, I like that idea.

2005-01-19T09:24:00.000+01:00

You could say it all started with montaigne at the Internet Scrabble® Club, and so I suppose I can dedicate this blog to him.

"These board games, you play", he asked, "are they Adult board games?" There was a particular emphasis on the word Adult.

"If you're talking about Strip Scrabble®, the answer is no!" was my smartass reply.

But actually, why not? I am an adult, after all. And it could be a good way to persuade my husband to play Scrabble®, a game he normally detests. Especially if winner takes all...

So, how can you play a tantalising game of strip, and still get an enjoyable game of Scrabble®? And, if you play your tiles right, some après-Scrabble® too?

Let's start with the object of the game: to make words that score a lot of points. Clearly, if you're not scoring well, the clothes have to go.

I thought a target word score would be good. Decide your own target before play starts. Currently, mine is 20, and I keep looking for a better-scoring word until I start running out of time. If you play a word that scores less than your target, remove an item of clothing. Every time I now play a word scoring under 20, I think about this. (Good thing my opponents can't see me chortling naughtily.)

Montaigne says No. The lower scoring player in a round forfeits an item of clothing. I can see how his mind is working. There are about sixteen rounds in a game. Few people wear sixteen items of clothing at any one time, especially in the summer. And he's a very good player. So if you're planning to play Montaigne, be warned. Wear everything you have. Borrow clothes if you have to.

Now, two letters that are worth far more than their face values are the S (score 1) and the Blank (score 0). This too is something that Montaigne brought to my attention. (You see, he really does deserve a blog all to himself.)

For those trying desperately to hang onto their clothes, it works like this. Most words take an S as a plural. If you can make a word with an S, you can stick it onto almost any word on the board, and score the points for the word you just made, plus the word you added to, because you a made a new word which is plural.

The Blank can be any letter you like, and if you have one, your chances of using up all seven playing tiles in one word and getting a 50 point bonus shoot through the roof.

So, if you play a word containing one of these letters, it really should exceed the target word score. Shall we say 10 for an S and 15 for a blank? Fail to meet this bonus, and you forfeit TWO items of clothing. THREE if you scored the lowest in the round too.

The most important words, of course, are those that use all seven of your tiles. This is called a Bingo in Scrabble® jargon, and earns you a bonus 50 points as well as the value of the word score. In family scrabble, these are a fluke. However, if you watch good players, they play one or two or more in every game. This tells me that the words are always there in the racks, you just have to find them.

So, if you play a Bingo, you get to put all your clothes back on again. Ha ha for your opponent! If your Bingo scores over 100, hmmm... shall we make the opponent strip entirely? I'll leave this up to you. Montaigne would like to choose the piece of clothing you forfeit. Same thing, I suppose.

Hmmm. My opponent yesterday scored 176 for UNHEROIC. Played it across two triple word scores, as I recall. Hmm. I guess that leaves me... well, I'll leave that to your imagination.

If you score over 50 in a word play, without a bingo, this probably deserves recognition as good play. Put on one item of clothing.

The main object here is to score, and score well. Reward good play and strip the trappings away from the imposters who cannot spell.

Ah, imposters. Let's add some challenge rules. Sometimes an opponent puts down a word that is just plain wrong. It doesn't exist. It's spelt badly. Or whatever. You challenge this word, and if your suspicions are correct, your opponent takes back that word and loses his or her turn.

In this version ... Hah! Well done! You get my drift exactly. In this version of Scrabble®, if your suspicions are correct, an item of clothing goes too. And if you're wrong, and it's a real word, start unbuttoning something yourself, baby...

I think that about sums it up. With all this great internet Scrabble® around, you may as well make live games more ...attractive, shall we say? All I have to do now is buy some decent Scrabble® equipment, maybe one of those Deluxe sets with the rotating board, some sexy underwear, and hmmm ... how many words can I make using all the letters AEINRST...?

(SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A. by Hasbro Inc., in Canada by Hasbro Canada Inc. and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Ltd. of Maidenhead SL6 4UB, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro or Hasbro Canada.)

2005-01-08T09:40:00.000+01:00

OK, let's get onto some lighter subject matter. Gastroporn. Foreplay on the tablecloth. Except that some food can be too good to share, so it may be better to be single and have double helpings.

I made this dish two nights ago, and I'm still recovering. Wow. Talk about a taste orgasm. I think it is quite the best meal I have made in my entire life, bar none, including Jamie Oliver's restaurant, The Square and East West.

But don't believe me, don't cook it, you may be better off not knowing it even exists.

What you need for two servings, is:

1 cup chicken stock
1 cup coconut milk
1 inch of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce

There is supposed to be a stalk of lemon grass and a couple of tablespoons of nam pla but I didn't have any so I left it out and DON'T CARE. Though when I make this again next week I will get those ingredients in too just for comparison. Can it really get any better?

OK, mix that together in a deepish pot, bring to the boil and let simmer for about 30-40 minutes. DO NOT TASTE THE BROTH! You will not have enough broth left by the time you finish tasting, making it impossible to complete the dish.

Remove the ginger. I used a slotted spoon, but you can strain it and pour the broth back into the pot. Add two pieces of salmon. Mine were around 5 ounces/150 grams each, Poach for 5 to 7 minutes depending on how done you like your fish.

In the meantime, chop up some veggies of choice. I used one leek, a couple of mushrooms, half a yellow pepper, 4 string beans, 1 small chili, ummm...I can't think there was anything else. The recipe actually called for bean sprouts, julienned carrot, and shiitake, but do you own thing. IT WON'T MATTER, BELIEVE ME. OK I would skip corn, I think.

When the fish is done, remove from the broth and toss the veggies in. Poach for about 2 minutes. The fish will not get cold while you do this, especially if you put it onto warmed plates which I did not. I used shallow soup bowls to serve. Dish the veggies on or around the fish and drizzle with a couple of tablespoons of broth.

The original recipe wants you to use glass noodles, which you soak first and then put into the broth to absorb the flavours. You serve the fish on the noodles, topped with the veggies. I didn't have any, so I left them out. IT DOESN'T MATTER!

Lock the doors, light the candles, put on soft music. Eat slowly, savour every mouthful. The earth will move for you, yes it will.

2004-12-07T04:30:00.000+01:00

Today I was going to write about how dark it is here. Because it is really, really dark. The Hague runs on Paris time but is closer to London than Paris in terms of longitude. That means at 6.30 am when the alarm goes off it is pitch dark. At 7.30 am it is still pitch dark. Round about 8.15 it starts getting light. In England this would be happening at 7.15. Over here it's just so dark that everything only opens at 10.

However, since I bitched about the weather yesterday, I thought I would sound like a real Moaning Minnie if today I bitched about how dark it is. So I'm going to write about my two current addictions instead, both arising out of National Novel Writing Month.

Yes, November I wrote most of a novel, about 55,000 words. The only way I could do this was by using procrastination as a tool, and the guys at theToronto forum introduced me to Kingdom of Loathing.

This is a role playing game you play online. Except that your characters have classes such as Pastamancer, Sauceror, Seal Clubber, Turtle Tamer, Accordian Thief, and Disco Bandit. You have to prove yourself literate before you can enter the chat room. The graphics are stick figure cartoons. The currency of the game is meat.

And yet it is enormous fun. You have little control over your adventures, you basically go somewhere and get the result, reaping rewards of meat and items such as filthy trousers, hemp bangles, leather masks and suchlike. You can also find things like tomato, olives, bottles of whiskey.

You only get forty adventures a day, but you can eat and drink to get more adventures. Unfortunately, eating makes you full, and drinking makes you drunk. And then you have to sign off and wait for next day's rollover to play again. You can create a second account, with a second email address, if you're a hard core addict. The rules say your characters must never meet online, but it is kinda cheating. However, even those adventures run out quickly enough.

So that brought me back to Scrabble. In July I found out about Internet Scrabble, but I only managed about three games before the move and then forgot about it. Now that KoL has bitten, what do I do when I run out of adventures? I've turned to the Scrabble board.

I like Scrabble, but nobody ever plays with me. This is mainly because there's nobody here most of the time. However, the Internet provides all these days! Of course, on an international scale I am pathetically useless at the game. This is good. I hate games that I win all the time, so I can see I'll be playing Scrabble for a long, long time!

And even without a novel to write in 30 days, I need something like KoL and Scrabble. You won't believe how long and dark the winter evenings are here.

2004-12-06T10:59:00.000+01:00

The weather here is horrible.

If you like grey, cold, windy days, this is the right place to get them. You can make yourself thoroughly miserable by taking a walk out. And if you're seriously masochist, take a walk out at Schevening Harbour. I'm not surprised the Expat store couldn't make it there; location! That wind! Urk.

The Hague is consistently colder than London. And wetter. In fact, here you get the weather you think you're going to get in London. In London, you get nice weather. Moderate temperatures. Blue skies. Surprised?

I'm sure there must be some decent weather here in The Hague, but I haven't met it yet. And it is definitely wet. Soggy. I had to vote in an election for the local water board. Without exception, the candidates all offered "dry feet" as an election promise.

The first time I've ever lived in a country where they had to manage too much water, not too little. I think they have five different words for canal. The one behind our house is a sloot, and that's to drain excess water I think. There is a steep slope leading down to it.

And it has broken its banks once already in the three months we've been here.

Coming to visit? Bring a good coat. Rainproof and windproof.

2004-11-19T10:27:00.000+01:00

Today, I am not going to write something just for the sake of adding to my blog.
November has been a difficult month for blogging.

The main reason is a thing called NaNoWriMo, the popular name for National Novel Writing Month. Except that it's international now.

What you have to do is write 50,000 words of novel between 1 and 30 November.

So that's what I've been doing.

If you want to know more about what I've been writing, you can find out here.

2004-11-02T20:52:00.000+01:00

If you don't read Dutch newspapers, here's something you're unlikely to know about.

Today, a Dutch film director named Theo van Gogh, was shot dead in Amsterdam.

In the rest of the world, people get shot dead every day. This shooting has a particular significance.

Firstly, you must understand that the Dutch have an international reputation for tolerance. The drugs, the gays, all the stuff the tourists love about the country, stem from the inherent tolerance of the Dutch.

Today's shooting was an intolerant killing.

Theo van Gogh has just recently directed a movie about the bad things of Islam. How the word of God is distorted by the thoughts of men.

The person they arrested seems to be a dual nationality Dutch-Moroccan citizen. Eye witnesses say he was dressed as a Muslim.

It would seem once again we have religious fanatics discrediting the beliefs of the people they supposedly represent.

The Mayor of Amsterdam has organised a protest against the killing. A call to freedom of expression. I agree with him.

When you start killing people for your faith you have lost God. You have become a servant of Satan.

2004-10-26T04:21:00.000+02:00

I went to Rotterdam for a drink.

This is less glamourous than it sounds. It's only 20 minutes by train.

The bar I went to is just under the famous cube houses. Well, I don't know how famous they are, because I've never heard of them until now.

They're kinda funky. I think I'd like to buy one and rent it out to holiday visitors. Though I certainly felt more than a little seasick inside. Strange perspective. And I don't know how you'd open the windows without falling out.

They do look weirder from the road than up high, though.

2004-09-23T10:36:00.000+02:00

"You sure shop a lot !!" Christina wrote me. "Is this a new thing? I can't recall you ever mentioning shopping in England...or South Africa...Got a new habit, or are
you two just eating more than usual?"

This is true. I am suddenly doing a lot shopping. Not that I particularly enjoy it, but new places, new customs, I suppose.

In England, I could shop by internet. Just log onto the grocery store, choose what I need, and hey presto, it arrived more or less in the appointed delivery slot. Milk arrived on the doorstep every other morning. There was really not much need to go out in order to stock up.

In South Africa, we used to do a big weekly shop. Also, I had a car then, so it was relatively easy to drive down and load up the boot.

Here, I more or less have to shop every day. I can lug home only what I can carry, or fit into my red shopping trolley. Besides, I live right near a huge shopping centre called In de Bogaard. So close, in fact, that I could almost be in the car park. Except that my shopping trolley is nowhere near the size of the supermarket trolleys.

Even closer, almost a car park stall, is a small supermarket that is good for catching up on basics. It's about a minute away.

Then there is the question of what am I shopping for? What, when it comes down to it, is an ossenhaas? Assuming I could do an internet shop, I would be flummoxed. Internet shopping is usually remarkably short on information. But when I'm at the meat counter, I can look at the ossenhaas and decide it can only be some cut of beef. Which cut, I need a dictionary for later, but at least I can see it's beef. And even with the dictionary, I'm not so sure either. What exactly is undercut tenderloin anyway?

And finally, there is the issue of the size of Dutch kitchens and Dutch fridges. Now that I've turned the bar fridge into a secondary kitchen repository, I can just about manage fresh food for three days. This is important at weekends, as the shops are shut on Sunday and Monday. OK, they open Monday afternoon, but if you can buy a loaf of bread, frozen to last the weekend, you are lucky.

So yup, I'm shopping a lot. At the moment it's just grocery shopping. But who knows. The habit may wear off and you may actually find me in a clothes shop one of these years!

2004-09-09T18:39:00.000+02:00

I surrender. I give up. I resign.

Today, I join the ranks of the square-eyed. After all this time, I have bought a television set. It is parked on the end of my dining room table.

I grew up without television, you see, so I never caught the habit young. It was only introduced into South Africa in 1975. Until then, the Honourable Member for Orange Grove would raise the issue every year in Parliament, and every year it would get thrown out. Television, as I recall, would destroy the moral fibre of the country.

What I think the real problem was, the Government was terrified that exposure to world views would reveal to its citizens that there wasn't much moral fibre in apartheid anyway.

Anyway, then someone probably worked out that you could make a lot more money selling television licences than radio licences. And so South Africa joined the real world.

Millions were made by greedy retailers as the television-starved population (and not just in Orange Grove either!) emptied their wallets in preparation for the big day.
Hours were spent staring at the test pattern, waiting for the moment when it would burst into moving pictures.

I was at the age when I didn't want to stay home and watch television. I wanted to go out to discos (which were more or less banned in my home town) and do the things that young people that age do. So this new craze passed me by.

My dad was distraught. How could anyone live a rich and full life without without Rich Man Poor Man? Or Dallas? Eventually he couldn't stand it in any more, and when I moved into my first flat, he bought me a COLOUR television. Wow.

I watched and enjoyed Cosmos. I watched and enjoyed Heidi. I may even have watched an episode of Dallas to find out what the fuss was about. But it never became a part of my life.

Then my TV set was stolen. On the day breakfast TV was introduced. The insurance company, in their wisdom, replaced it rather than pay me out. I used to watch the news but stopped when they showed pictures of a woman being necklaced. For those who don't know what this means, a burning tyre was put around her neck.

My mother came to stay and we discovered the TV was broken. We sent it in to the Extended Guarantee people, but they never fixed it. And I haven't had TV since.

Oh the TV licence people harassed me. Why is it so hard to believe that someone doesn't own and doesn't want to own a TV set?

We moved to England. The TV licence people harassed me. This is a country, if you believe the BNP, that gives TV sets to asylum seekers so they won't feel deprived of home comforts. So of course they can't believe that a normal person doesn't own and doesn't want a TV set.

One month in The Netherlands, and I have a TV set. Why? Do I have a sudden urge to see burning people again? Schoolchildren attached to explosives in Russia? Mutilated bodies in Iraq?

Actually, no.

The Netherlands have scrapped their TV licencing program. They are not trying to add insult to injury. They are not harassing me.

So I can listen to arguments about TV being a good way to learn the Dutch language and the Dutch Culture. I can accept that having a TV set with BBC2 and BBC3 on cable is going to give me something familiar in a country where everything is change. And it is the only way to get anything halfway decent in a radio station.

Interestingly enough, it seems that Dutch television is not a 24-7 affair. On weekend mornings, it seems, there is no television at all.

Come Saturday morning, I think I'll watch the test pattern.

Maybe I'll find out what the Honourable MP for Orange Grove saw in it nearly thirty years ago.

2004-08-26T17:08:00.000+02:00

.
Am I Pandora?
What hells will I unleash
with every opened box?
What knocks
inside those cardboard towers?
Mere things? Just stuff?
Enough.
They are voices from the past.
Echoes. They leave their touch.
Forlorn hopes wrapped
in protective paper.
Do I need reminding?
Or am I the alchemist,
the exorcist,
who sets them free?
No,
I am Pandora.

2004-08-03T14:27:00.000+02:00

Let's name them and shame them. Callum-Lee IT Solutions of South Africa. This is NOT a company you want to be doing business with. In fact, they ought to be the laughing stock of the entire world.

Let's start at the beginning. "Dear Janet", they say to me in an email. "We have this fabulous mailing list software for only R350". Or words to that effect. I presume the email is supposed to show me just how fabulous it is.

Hah. Would it not be more fabulous if this stupid company knew anything at all about sending out bulk unsolicited email. In the rest of the world, it's called Spam. And it's right up there with the Viagra, Penis Enlargements, and See Pussies up a Pole.

These finks just add email addresses to a mailing list and think they have a perfect right to plaster the world with the ads as long as they have an unsubscribe button.

Hah.

I click the unsubscribe button. This is after sending them rude email replies calling them Spamming Bastards. Which they are. They can't find my email address to unsubscribe me. Will I please send them a full list of my alternative email addresses ...

I clearly have the word STUPID written in large letters across my forehead. I get enough spam from arrogant South African companies who think they have email, will send out advertising that the recipient has to pay for. And no matter how many times you report them to the ISP, nobody shuts them down.

It's reached the stage where I'd like to blacklist the whole of South Africa, and just whitelist particular email addresses.

Mind you, I think this Spammer DeLuxe company was selling internet and email lessons a while back. I recall getting spam about that too. And South African companies are paying good money to gain the contempt of the first world.

I've told them how to do it, but they don't want to know. If you want to find out how to run a decent mailing list, read on.

If you don't want to be accused of spamming - and YOU WILL BE especially if you email Europe and the US - the only way to build a mailing list is opt-in. OPT OUT IS NOT AN OPTION. And when you get an opt-in, you must verify that the person who opted in actually did do that. This is called double opt-in. You don't want people subscribing other people to spam. And about 50% of people who enter email addresses do so incorrectly, so you have to verify they have sent you the correct email address.

I, in London, do not need special offers from companies in South Africa who couldn't be bothered to check where their email is going. It's very unprofessional, for a start. And remember that most people have to pay to download this email marketing, ie you're making the customer pay to get the information, so be prepared for them to get VERY ANGRY when it's not stuff they want.

Target markets in email marketing are probably more important than in traditional marketing because of the way email has been abused. You have to be sure you are reaching the people you want.

Heaven forbid your spam lands in my email box now. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

2004-07-31T23:04:00.000+02:00

Hey! It's a blue moon tonight! I went out and checked, and sure enough, it was bright blue.

Just kidding. I know as well as you do that it's not about the colour, it just means it is the second full moon in a month.

Though I'm told there have been occasions when the moon did turn blue.

Once in a blue moon, I suppose. Blue moons don't happen all that often, whether the colour changes or whether you get two full moons in a month.

So what sort of things do you do once in a blue moon?

Well, the last blue moon was in November 2001, just after I moved to the UK. And now we have one tonight, a week before I move to the Netherlands.

Hmmm.

The next one's in June 2007.

Let me know where I'm going, will you?