On the beach

Today was the last day of the meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere. We had a disappointing summer with many grey and/or rainy days. However, this weekend the weather was brilliant and I spent most of it outside. Yesterday I biked to and from town three times for shopping, a hair cut and for a night out with the gang. And today I went to get a sun tan at the beach for the first time this year. I texted everybody in the gang, but in the end only OS, WI and GO joined. We went to Zandvoort early to beat the traffic jam and spent most of the day getting a tan, eating, drinking, reading and chit-chatting. We always go to the nudist beach which gets a nice mix of naturists and gays. Early in the morning you mostly get the older straight people whereas late in the afternoon the gays have woken up from a night of partying and will show their gym bodies.
RE and SO called if we wanted to join them for a BBQ at SO's family estate on the banks of the river Amstel (picture) which was an excellent way to finish a weekend full of sun and fun.

Restaurant De Ondeugd - not

I have a few principles in life and one of them is that I will never queue for more than 10 or 15 minutes to get a table in a restaurant. And certainly not when I have reserved a table and am still made to wait. Yesterday GO had reserved Restaurant De Ondeugd for our gang (group of 10) for a late 9pm dinner. We arrived, the place was packed, hot, it all looked chaotic, people were standing all over the place between the diners, and nobody came to us to give us information. Most of us walked out immediately while GO was trying to find out how long we'd have to wait. "Ten minutes", was the news and of course 10 minutes became 20 became 30. JE had already left as he needed to wake up at 4am to go to work, and when 35 minutes after our reserved time we still didn't have our table, I left too.
I was tired anyway as I had spent the afternoon with KE smoking some joints and drinking beer, followed by more pre-dinner drinks with the gang. The left-over pasta at home tasted wonderful and I am sure that I enjoyed my food more than those gang-members who decided to stay in the restaurant.

Flirting with friends

It is restaurant week again (special cheap menus at good restaurants) here in Amsterdam and GO has been arranging our gang's meals. Yesterday we went to Restaurant Envy which was very very good. Our only complaint was that the portions were a bit small and we were actually a bit hungry when we left. It might have been the many bottles of Italian wine, but GO was quite a flirt during the meal. I felt honoured as GO is such a cutie and fun guy. After we were done we decided to go to Prik, a relatively new gay bar, for some drinks. GO bought a fancy scooter recently and he asked me to ride with him. On our way he suggested we leave the rest of the gang and go to Cuckoo's Nest. I thought a bit about it but decided no. Flirting with friends is OK, but it is better to remain friends than to spoil it all in 5 minutes.

Who won the Olympics?

So it is a few days after the closing ceremony and the important question must be asked: who won the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games?
According to the official website of the Beijing Olympics, China clearly is the winner. 51 gold, 21 silver and 28 bronze. I believe this ranking is the most common that is used all over the world: ranking by number of gold medals, with silver / bronze medals only of importance if number of gold medals is the same.
Of course the Americans weren't happy with their second place, so most (all?) American websites ranked according to total medal count. A creative way to make sure you win!
Not to be outdone, some guy calculated the medals for the entire European Union. The EU now clearly wins by a very large margin. Hoorah!
In the mean time, the Dutch medalists (7 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze with a 12th place overall according to the official ranking) were received by Queen Beatrix in The Hague today. Picture below is of the Queen touching Maarten van der Weijden who is a real winner. Read his story!
So what trics did your country use to come out on top?

Blogger's block

I am suffering a little bit from what might be called "blogger's block". Blogger's block is a phenomenon involving temporary (?) loss of ability to begin or continue blogging, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity.
I was just thinking why anyone would be interested to hear about my illness during the last few days (started with food poisoning, followed by diarrhea, followed by constipation after I took too many charcoal pills. Looking around Wikipedia I even discovered that there is a kind of periodic system for poop: the Bristol Stool Chart.
The Bristol Stool Scale or Bristol Stool Chart is a medical aid designed to classify the form of human feces into seven categories. It was developed by Heaton and Lewis at the University of Bristol and was first published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology in 1997. The form of the stool depends on the time it spends in the colon.
The seven types of stool are:
* Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)
* Type 2: Sausage-shaped, but lumpy
* Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface
* Type 4: Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft
* Type 5: Soft blobs with clear cut edges (passed easily)
* Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool
* Type 7: Watery, no solid pieces (entirely liquid)

Well, during the last 4 days I went all the way from Type 7 via 6 and 5 to nothing at all.
Anyway, I will keep the more interesting topics such as the Australian gay gold medalist, the best example of motherly love, and the reasons why John McCain will be the next US president, for another time.

Imagine the smell

By now most of us will have heard about the fake fireworks and the chubby girl with uneven teeth who wasn't allowed on-stage during the Olympics Opening ceremony. What was news for me today and what we couldn't smell on our TVs was the stench in the stadium. Read this:
BEIJING - Soldiers operating the huge scroll that formed the centrepiece of last week's Olympic opening ceremony had to stay hidden under the structure for up to seven hours, wearing nappies because they were not allowed toilet breaks, state media reported on Friday. Nearly 900 soldiers were hidden underneath the scroll, many of them moving giant printing blocks with Chinese characters, the Beijing News reported.
"The performers for Chinese character parts went into the models underground at 2 pm, and after getting in there they could not come out," the newspaper quoted choreographer Han Lixun as saying. "The underground area was so hot, there were 897 people there, and they had to wait until they finished their performance," Han said. "So altogether they had to stay there for six to seven hours, and they could not even go to the toilet, so they all wore nappies," Han said.
897 soldiers in nappies. This must have been watersports-lovers paradise.

Foreign talent

Sport is quite racist: guys who run fast are often black, guys who swim fast are almost always white, and girls who can play ping-pong well are likely to be Chinese. So I wasn't surprised that our all-Dutch girl Li Jie (top picture) beat typical Spanish chica Zhu Fang (middle picture) today and will face Austrian Mädchen Liu Jia (bottom picture) tomorrow.