Thousandapologies

Yes I know, I’ve been lagging a bit behind with post again…just because I’ve holidays now and am mostly busy doing other things. I took my summer holidays knowing I wouldn’t go anywhere, mainly because I do not like going somewhere in the tourist season. Also, most of the Mediterrenean countries are just too warm during this season. But I felt I really needed a big break from paper writing and sheer OUNL madness. Already now I’m enjoying one week of holidays and I must say not thinking of work at all, is just great

Up till now, I’m using my holidays mostly too catch up on some reading…a big pile of National Geographic, zoom.nl (photography) and Kijk (popular scientific) magazines was waiting me, and I also wanted to use this vacation to learn a bit more on photography, especially testing my new lense. Luckily, the last days the weather in the Netherlands has been great and I’ve been lazing around, really reading a lot. Also, I already made a couple of trips and more trips are to come.

My first trip was to Belgium’s and more importantly our EU capital city Brussel. I went there already the first day of my holidays, first a bit hesitantly, because I had to get up so early, and frankly I was dead tired. However, Brussel turned out to be well worth it. It took us (my father, brother, uncle and his boyfriend) about two and a half hours to get there, at which moment my uncle turned into a Mr. Guide at once. Soon we already got to see most of the interesting sites in Brussel, most notably the old marketplace. The old buildings there were just amazingly beautiful and a remnance of the time Belgium and the Netherlands were still united, in what is know here as the “Golden Century” (all buildings were dated somewhere between 1600-1700)…Wandering around Brussel’s marketplace really gives you an idea of the wealth of the Netherlands during this time period, which was the age of the famous and maybe even illustrious VOC (East Indie Company) . Here’s a nice picture for your enjoyment.

Next to its history Brussel also has to offer a lot of nice shops, boutiques and restaurants (which are highly overpriced by the way). My uncle for example took me to one little shop that still sold those old records, just amazing Another reason for going to Brussel is, of course, Belgium beers, of which we had plenty, see the “about me” page for a photograph After having not enough food for the amount of money paid at a Greek restaurant we finally, after I think six or seven hours of wandering, decided to head back home; the trip which luckily was quite uneventful.

Last Thursday, I made another trip with my “vikingbrother” Stephan to Aachen. Some couple of years ago we had the crazy idea of riding our bike to Aachen (about 20km), which turned out to be a quite nice trip, of course unless it’s raining. I remember this one time (yeah, yeah…at bandcamp…) that we spend the way back riding through the pouring rain, singing Irish traditionals in the mean time, and ending up being soaked on to the bone; even my shoes contained enough water to house a goldfish, or a couple of them. Anyway, now finally the time of the reprise was there; not being able to ride my old bike because the breaks do not work no more and not willing to take my new bike (being almost sure it will be stolen), we decided to go to Aachen by train.

Arriving at Aachen West, I took Stephan for the more scenic route through Aachen’s little Delhi and we ended up looking at old records in the first store we encountered. We continued our most illogical path through Aachen, trying to get there by the longest route possible; i.e. being longer outside in Aachen means meeting more beautiful German blonde girls…try to explain that to TomTom Anyway, we soon ended up in GlasKubus enjoying our “Latté Macchiato mit Haselnussgeschmack und frissgepfirschte Orangensaft”, but not after getting Stephan a bratwurst and he showing me a comic shop, he said I should definitely point out to the Namesake, and not because of the comics… Then, on the way to Hofgarten, Stephan introduced me to yet another shop that makes Aachen just plain awesome; a five story bookshop Of course, we ended up with beer (1 L, see picture) and were trying our new beer goggles all the time, sometimes they help…but still we found the number of German beauties we saw dissappointing, wondering what had happened to Aachen. In a last attempt I took Stephan to Mölkerei, where, I assumed, they were all hiding, but alas… anyway suffice it to say we had still a great time in “our hometown” and are already planning another trip there.

After last week of lazing around, this week will be a little more busy. Tomorrow, I will visit Aachen again hopefully in company of a Dutch beauty and Friday I will meet a friend from University, whom I haven’t seen in quite a while. Most probably I will spend the weekend in Utrecht, visiting Rob and next week I will visit my cousin in the lovely town of Eindhoven. So lots of lovely things still to do, I will keep you posted!

Nou het heeft weer ff geduurd, ik heb nog zat ideeën voor blogposts, maar de afgelopen weken hebben niet echt meegeholpen met het schrijven ervan. Vooral deze week was erg druk, ik moest mijn geaccepteerd journal paper herschrijven en opnieuw indienen voor publicatie en tevens een artikel voor de ePortfolio conferentie te Maastricht schrijven. Dit resulteerde in een erg drukke week en het schijnt dat het één en ander toch zijn tol geëist heeft: ik ben nu flink verkouden

Gisteravond was ik zo moe, dat ik, toen ik thuiskwam, eigenlijk direct mijn bed wilde opzoeken. Helaas ging dit niet, want ik moest nog naar de verjaardag van Bart en naar de housewarming van Olivia en Stephan; eerst na Bart en rond 22:00 uur was ik bij Olivia en Stephan…ik was zo kapot dat ik bijna in slaap viel op de housewarming maar ik vond het toch erg leuk: gaandeweg de avond werden we steeds meliger en hebben we onder andere uitgevonden dat Deborah erg goed in het wegjagen van mensen is, Geert zijn voorliefde voor dikke tieten absoluut niet onder stoelen en banken steekt, Olivia naar horen zeggen behoorlijk goede cocktails mixt, wij goed in staat zijn om mensen het balkon op te jagen en last but not least, Michiel de meest waardeloze dj ooit is; elk nummer speelt hij maar gemiddeld 30 seconden alvorens naar een ander nummer over te schakelen… Rond 1:00 uur wilde ik richting huis, maar Stephan wist me toch nog over te halen om nog een biertje te drinken…uiteindelijk belandde ik dus rond een uur of twee in bed.

Ik ga het dit weekend dus voor de rest erg rustig houden, lekker de tour volgen en wat achterstallig leesvoer inhalen: Elisa en ik zijn elkaar helemaal gek aan het maken wat fotografie betreft en naarmate ik enthousiaster word, wil ik er ook meer over weten en meer over lezen. Ook ben ik al hier en daar wat rond aan het kijken voor nieuwe lenzen voor mijn Canon, omdat de kitlens me toch flink begint te irriteren…Daarover later meer!

Jah mensen, ik beken…ik ben gisteren meer dan een halve avond in de Kroniek geweest, en ik vond het nog leuk ook :S. Ik had afgesproken met Olief om een Guinness te gaan pakken bij de pub en van te voren had ze me al verteld dat ze graag wilde gaan dansen (voor degenen die Olief nog niet zo goed kennen, dat betekend dat je hoogstwaarschijnlijk in de Kroniek eindigt). Ik voelde daar echter niet zoveel voor dus spraken we af dat ik eerst naar Oliefs en Stephans nieuwe “humble aboad” zou komen en we daarna nog ff naar de pub te gaan om het vooral niet te laat te maken… op de één of andere manier loopt zo’n avond, waarvan we afspreken dat het niet te laat gaat worden, altijd uit de hand. Na bij Olief eerst het optreden van Metallica op Live Earth afgewacht te hebben, gingen we richting pub waar we werden verwelkomd door Siobhan en Anke. Ik weet niet of het de alcohol was, maar op de één of andere manier heeft Olivia me toch zo ver gekregen om toe te stemmen om naar de Kroniek te gaan…onder de belofte dat we, als er niks loos was, terug zouden gaan naar de pub. Dat eindigde dus in een avond met veel te veel bier, zeer mooie vrouwen (waar ik niet in het minst van genoten heb ) en een dansende Tim op Peter Schillings “Major Tom”, maar vooral in een zeer verbaasde Olivia, die zich maar afvroeg waarom ik me zo enorm vermaakte .

Just awesome! Some time ago, Chrissass, the Drachslaaaaaa and I subscribed for a dataming course at the University of Maastricht, that I knew already, would bring me back to my old faculty and some old teachers. This morning the first day started and it really felt so familiar: the train ride to Maastricht, the same I rode during about five years, and the classes of the teachers I already knew. Some of the teachers improved, some of them did not… It was nice to meet my old supervisor again and have a talk to Evgueni Schmirnov also one of my old lecturers. It really struck me that Open University is quite famous also at other Universities and also the tone of voice Evgueni talked to me about OUNL. Apparently, he was quite impressed I ended up there. And although I first planned to do a PhD in Maastricht University, which I unfortunately did not get, I’m happy I ended up in OUNL. I think till now I enjoy working at the OU a lot and today I realised, that while I was happy to be back at Maastricht University, this is a time that has passed and probably I ended up in the right place. Now I have amazing colleagues at OUNL, the apecage people I would not like to miss, and working in a European project like MACE gives you a lot of new experiences and opportunities. Also the sheer amount of nice people I met since I started working at OUNL, through winterschools, summerschools and projectmeetings is amazing and it happened a lot faster than I would have met people in all day life. Then again, I might have got this opportunities at Maastricht University but I’m not too sure about it. Well life is truly like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get, you never know what comes along the way, but you have to make the best of it, and right now I feel satisfied about where the road has taken me upto this moment…

Sometimes I really feel like old Bilbo Baggins, going on a quest to some far away land to slay the dragon Smaug (in my case the beast called MACE), really enjoying it, but still happy to arrive home again in your warm cosy hobbit hole eating the familiar kinds of pastry and drinking tea. Even more so this was the case for my travel to Italy. I really loved the time we had in Ancona, meeting all those beautiful people and enjoying the beautiful country. However, to every travel there’s an end and when the end is approaching I usually cannot wait to arrive back home to my beautiful province and the lovely hills of Limburg, where my hobbit house is located and where most of my friends and family are located. Although I must say that I really feel I made or are making some new friendships with the people of MACE. Especially the last day was a blast!

The third day in Ancona started with us technical people being forced to go to the coding dungeon deep down in the Universitá building. The architects somehow figured out, maybe through clever espionage, that if you keep us programmers from all the delicious Italian coffeebreaks, we might even start to work. Best avantage of it, when being an architect, you get more food and coffee for yourself and can enjoy the beautiful surroundings of Ancona, seen from the 8th floor, better, without being bothered by some technical bladiebla. Not being able to resist so much résistance (oui?), with even some of our own side switching to the dark side of architecturism, we fled, tail between our legs, to that safe haven of the dungeon. More importantly, the cunningness of the architects led actually to some good work to be done on our side. Developers from different locations, Potsdam, Bonn, Leuven and Heerlen, started talking to each other and coding together; we immediately found out some problems that were caused by lack of communication. However, nothing beats sitting down in a room and running into problems together; no videoconference can lead to problems being solved so fast. At the end of the day I spent so many hours coding intensively away that I was a wee bit dizzy. Being allowed back into the architect’s room, getting a coffee break as a payment for our hard work, I tried out some white wine which immediately rose to my head. I had to drink a number of strong espressos to get me on my feet again. I spend that break having a nice chat with Alba about our travels; I though I was travelling a lot, turns out that she even does more. Her boss Miguel said he was even surprised whenever he saw her in the office

After the second meeting day came to its end, Rosanna suggested to go back to Porto Novo again, most of the people thought that to be a grand idea. So Tally and I needed a ride to go there… Luckily, Massimo of Nautes was so kind to bring us there. Unfortunately, he could not join us himself because he had to take care of his little daughter. Also he arranged for a ride back with Miguel and Alba. A small ride further, in which Massimo told us of his time in Rome and lots of other stuff, we arrived in Porto Novo. Thanking Massimo for his great hospitality we parted and headed for the beach and the small pub where we had spent some time the day before. Tally and I had a beer there, enjoyed the beach and about an hour later we decided to head back for the pizzeria the next social event was held.

Again the food was great and we started the evening already nice exchanging some language mixups with the Germans. Tally’s “schmecklich” always sparks that same discussion again . Suddenly Till was drawing my attention by pointing somewhere into the back of the terrace. To my great delight, the restaurant had a foosball table and Till and I having talked about that the eve before, immediately decided to play some good old table football. Soon we were joined by Marius, Massimiliano, Elisa, Mo and Rosanna’s son. Depending on the team we got our ass kicked or were kicking some ass; some combinations better than others. Netherland plus Germany for example, no good, Italy and Netherlands lot better, but the best combination was Limburg(me) and Bavaria(Mo). Thinking out some cunning tactics and some interesting strategies we really kicked some ass One thing I noticed during our games though is that Italian women, that start to lose, try to seduce you and in that way win from you, saying something like “Tim you a beautiful man, what are you doing this evening?”. Unfortunately for the woman to whom it concerns, it did not work. Here’s an action picture of us playing some “kicker”, taken by Elisa.

At some time we decided to go back to the table and some 20 minutes later we left the restaurant. Tally and I saying goodbye to some people because we would not be in the meeting the day after because we would leave then. Together with Miguel, Alba and Elena we drove back to Ancona where they safely dropped us off at our hotel. I really would have liked to stay a little bit longer enjoying their company and of the other MACE people a bit more.

Yesterday started of with some meetings at 9:00 and carried on from coffee break to coffee break. Luckily coffee breaks in Italy last a lot longer than back in the Netherlands and although there’s no “vlaai” also come with very nice food and snacks of various kinds. Halfway through the day, the groups was split up into a technical and a conceptual group; for us not bother the architectural people with geek speech and for the architectural people not to bore us with conceptual stuff. I expected do some coding during the technical meeting but it turned out to be deciding to use several standards we already decided on before.

After the first day of the meeting we went to a neighbouring village of Ancona called Porto Novo; according to our Italian friends literally meaning “take an egg”. In Porto Novo the MACE meeting’s social event was held. Porto Novo itself is very small, for Limburg people, about the size of “Rimburg”. One very long street laying below a big mountain, with some very nice houses for the local rich and famous. Beautiful beaches, full of bathing people and surfers inspired some of us to take a dive. We were taken by Massimo to see a very old church from around 1000A.D. Somewhat after we went to the beach and sat down at the terrace there, drinking some Italian alholic speciality called ” Negroni”, very strong indeed. We very much enjoyed the view and gazed across the adriatic sea and were later joined by more and more people from the MACE project.

Later in the evening we went about 300 metres down the beach and sat down outside a nice restaurant called “Da Giacchetti” for a candelight dinner under a starry starry night, enjoying the calming sound of the sea and the excellent Italian food. Especially, I, as a major fan of Italian food enjoyed the meal and company of the awesome MACE people a lot: it made me even question why I was not born in Italy. Unfortunately, there came a time when we had to drive back to the hotel; Lorenzo offered to drop us off there and after half an hour, with a wee tour of Ancona included, we came back to our hotel for a very needed good nights rest.

The general not-so-nice time at work now; the constant struggle with software for geeks only, random paper deadlines, boring videoconferences which everyone else seems to enjoy, and just general stress, makes me long to those old days of secondary school. As the week progresses I start feeling more nostalgic than ever, thinking of the times when we only used to complain about homework. Working people seemed to have it so easy back then, never to make any homework, just coming home, eating dinner and watching telly. How different is reality….

However, nostalgia mostly also brings back some nice memories. Coming home, needing a desperate burst of energy, I browsed through my cds and found one of SetaSurf; a band of some friends of mine which was quite popular in our school days. We almost never missed a gig and just plainly enjoyed every note. Playing their cd right now brings back so many memories; listening to their lyrics and their surf-punky music even more. I know for sure I’ll bring some of their music with me on my next work-related trip, this weekend, that will bring me to Ancona, Italy. Damn it would be nice to see these guys united, even if it was only once, to play some decent music in the “Nieuwe Nor”. I think lots of people agree with me and would come to their gig, reliving old times and enjoying new ones. Ah well, I know I start sounding like an old hippy…