This afternoon Sasha and I watched the Dutch soccer game against Côte d'Ivoire. In my lunch break I went to Sasha's work where a large group of her colleagues, from the Netherlands, Côte d'Ivoire and many other countries had settled in front of a large TV in the cafetaria.

It was a very exciting game, and even though no goals were scored in the second half, there were many attacks from both sides that made for a great game to watch. Obviously we were very happy with a 2-1 end score, but I'm afraid the game against Argentina is going to be very difficult.

In the evening we saw the replay of the surprising Angola - Mexico game. It will be interesting to see who will go to the next round in that group.

So, as I noticed a week ago, one of the most frequently used search terms that brings new visitors to my site is "How do you pronounce Guus?"

The problem with my first name is that it has 2 sounds that are difficult to pronounce for most American speakers. First of all, the first letter G is the [x] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This is a velar continuant similar to the ch in Swiss German that doesn't exist in most languages, and American English doesn't have an equivalent for it.

My experience is that after some practice most Americans are able to pronounce this sound in a fairly authentic manner. A short-cut I usually recommend is to use the IPA [g], which is the first sound of the word goal.

It's surprising to most Dutch speakers, including myself, that the second sound (the uu) is usually harder than the g. The Dutch uu is the [y] in the IPA, and is similar to the French u as in vu or the German ü sound. There is nothing close in American English, nor in Spanish which many people speak here. Often, the sound [ʏ] or [u] is used instead, neither of which really comes close to the long [y] sound.

Want to hear an example? Here is a native Dutch speaker pronouncing the name Guus.

We saw Brasil - Croatia on TV tonight. It's great that Telemundo, a Spanish broadcaster, is repeating all games in the evening. Just too bad that it's impossible not to know the result before we get a chance to watch the replay (the games are during the day in the U.S.). Even though we knew the result in advance, Brasil - Croatia was a awesome game to watch with many goal attempts and great soccer from both teams. Kaka's goal, just before half-time, was really nice.

Monday I had lunch with three new colleagues to welcome them to our company, and in the restaurant there was a large screen with the match between the Czech Republic and the United States. We couldn't see the game from our table, but when in the 28' minute Claudio Reyna hit the post there was a disappointed "ohhh" sound going through the restaurant.

I was not surprised that the Czech won -- they have a very strong team.

This morning we watched the first game for the Netherlands at the 2006 soccer World Cup. I woke up exactly at 9.00 am, and immediately switched the TV on to watch the match.

I was a bit disappointed that there was no second goal after Robben's goal in the 18th minute, but it was a nice game to watch. The Netherlands is one of the few teams at the World Cup to play in a 4-3-3 formation, which typically makes for attractive soccer. Apparently it was very warm in Leizpig, where the game was played, and according to coach Van Basten that was the reason there were no other goals after the first. The final score was 1-0 for the Netherlands.

It's been a long time since the Netherlands participated at a World Cup -- four years ago the Oranje team didn't qualify. Sasha and I watched some of the games of that tournament in Frankfurt, Germany, right after David & Milena's wedding. Turkey did surprisingly well, and so did South Korea, beating Italy and Spain.

Four years earlier, in 1998, Sasha and I were in the United States in Tannersville and I would take long lunch breaks to see the Dutch team playing. The Netherlands lost from Brasil on penalties in the semi-finals.

We are with Jonathan and Irena to celebrate Ilana's birthday (congratulations!). She turned 7 last Thursday and today she has a party for her friends and their parents.

There will be two very surprising guests at the party: David and Milena! They are in New York for a vacation, and we're looking forward to see each other again... it's been more than two years.

Last night, when we were traveling from Washington to New York we made a stop at the Woodrow Wilson truck stop, and I saw a very familiar name on a sign... Gus Busman! My name is of course Guus Bosman, an amazing coincidence. The pronunciation of Guss is different than my name's, but the difference Bosman and Busman isn't very large.

"Hop on the bus with Gus and sign up today!"

I am very excited that the World Cup 2006 has started. The Netherlands and the United States are both participating, and so is Togo, a small African country with a population of 6 million.

We saw the first half of tournament's first game during lunch. I went with my colleagues to a sports bar nearby and we saw Germany vs. Costa Rica.

I'm playing in a pool with some of my friends also. I was the only person in our 23-person pool to correctly predict the 2-1 score at half time, and because no one predicted the final score correctly I was (at 2 pm today) the number one in our pool.

Sunday morning is the first game for the Dutch team, against Serbia. It's at 9.00 am EST.

This weekend we saw another Oscar winning movie: Capote.

The movie describe an episode in the life of Truman Capote, an American author. Like Walk The Line this is a documentary, without the singing of course.

The role of Capote is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who really deserves the Oscar he got for best actor in a lead role. The movie describes the events of Capote's book In Cold Blood and the process of interview the murderers and writing the book.

A week ago I received an invitation to use a free version of Google Analytics, a visitor tracking website.

I installed it and have been using it for a week, and I really like it. It has a lot more features than most other visitor counting tools, such as the Onestat counter that I also have.

For example, it is possible to define "conversion goals" -- a custom goal that will be tracked by Google Analytics. I added "Posted Comments" as a goal, so now I will have a nice graphic overview of the amount of Comments posted over time.

An interesting piece of information I found is that the most commonly used search-phrase to reach my site was (last week) "how+do+you+pronounce+guus".

Monday morning I saw Karen and Annemieke in downtown D.C. They are on vacation in the U.S. and are staying with Karen's brother Ruud in Maryland.

We had coffee together in Starbucks near the Mall, where Annemieke and Karen had just seen the Memorial Day Parade. We had a nice chat and then we went to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, where we saw a collection of Asian Art.

The Postbank, my Dutch bank, is introducing a new centralized phone number. It's a 0900 number though, which I can't dial from the United States. Neither Skype, calling cards nor my new phone support dialing these special numbers.

Fortunately, the Postbank is a really cool bank and has an experimental Skype number. I called it the other day, and it works great.

The skype name is postbank_jongeren. In addition to that, they also have a regular phone number that can be used when calling from abroad.