Monday 26 April 2010

Back from London

Our card playing group of friends is together for 25 years (actually, we don't know how many years exactly, but we decided it was 25 years) so we went to London for a long weekend to celebrate. We rented a Landmark Trust apartment which was wonderful. Very traditional English furniture, and we had a kitchen so we made sure to prepare full English breakfasts every morning. We also went to Tate Modern, "Jersey Boys", the musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons which was OK, and "The gala of St George" in Royal Albert Hall where we sang along to The White Cliffs of Dover, Rule Britania and Land of Hope and Glory. It was shamelessly nationalistic but for some reason the English make fun about it and our neighbours in the theatre actually apologised about the whole thing...
Add good food for dinner (French, Indian (always eat Indian food in London!), and pub grub), good weather and of course playing cards and chatting with good friends, and the weekend was perfect!

Sunday 18 April 2010

Ungrateful boss

One of my bosses is stuck in, of all places, Singapore since Thursday as a result of the Icelandic revenge. He is quite unhappy about it. Ungrateful man! I would not hesitate to swap places, if at all possible. ;-)
In the mean time I enjoyed the brilliant weather this Saturday on DA's boat with the good company of some of his and my friends and wine, beer and ice cream. Just too bad I had to leave early as I had promised to pick up my mum from a dinner party she went to. Today I was gardening at her place a large part of the day. Soon I will be very dark after all this sunshine - first in China and now here.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

A new bike

I got my new bike today, and am happy like a small child. My old, Taiwanese made, bike did prove to be not so reliable during last winter so I decided to make use of a gift from the company, who may give employees a bike tax-free every three years. Only in the Netherlands, I am sure. My new bike is a Dutch Gazelle which I hope and trust will be more durable than the Taiwanese Giant I had.
I still wake up every morning at 4 or 5 am - probably I am still in the Asian time zone after my trip there. It was one of my best trips ever also because it was long (3 weeks) and I could really switch off from work. Should take such longer trips more often.
Back at work it is the same old sh!te and the financial situation was even worse than expected, until today we got very good news that one of our customers will pay a huge performance fee. So the survival of the company is guaranteed for another 6 months or so.
Tomorrow morning the dentist will be waiting for me for the bi-annual check-up. WI had his teeth bleached and is very happy with the result, I will ask my dentist if he can do it for me, too.