A while back we saw the movie Hotel Rwanda at home.

It was a very gripping film, about the horrible period in Rwanda in 1994. It's based on a true story about a hotel manager who uses his influence and skills to safe the lives of many people around him.

The story was double as gripping because of the superb action by Don Cheadle, who is very convincing as a hotel manager whose life dramatically changed as the horrific events unrolled in Rwanda.

Friday night stayed at Jonathan and Irena's place (thanks a lot guys!), which was fun. We had a couple of beers in the evening. Irena just came back from Charlotte, NC, where she had been a week for a week for a her work.

Slept in Saturday morning, and Jonathan later gave me a ride to the busstop in Secaucus. The bus I took to Times Square got stuck in traffic (again!) and I made it just on time. Another long, bus trip, but no work this time, I read "the Secret Life of Bees" instead (marvellous story).

We spent our weekend nice and quiet. It's nice and sunny and I spent some time on the balcony on Sunday, but it's really getting a bit chilly.

Due to the traffic I arrived in New York at 7.00 pm -- an hour late. The meeting I went to New York for was scheduled to start at 7.00 so I wanted to get there quickly.

Friday night is not a good night to be in a hurry on Times Square: it is crowded with people and virtually impossible to get a cab. I had to go 51st Street and to make sure I wouldn't start running in the wrong direction I called the only person I know who in two seconds can accurately tell you what direction to go to in Manhattan. Jonathan told me to go to 6th Avenue, and I made it right on time for the annual meeting of the PvdA that was held in the Netherlands Club.

Last week I found the site of the PvdA New York, a Chapter of the PvdA, a national political party in the Netherlands.

There were three guest speakers. The first one was Ruud Koole, chairman of the national organization, followed by Ad Melkert and Bernard Mucci. It was very nice to see these familar faces in the U.S. I especially liked the speech by Ad Melkert. He is an executive director of the World Bank now, and was the parliamentary leader of the PvdA a few years ago.

The chair of the local PvdA chapter started the evening with a good speech, followed by Ad Melkert. Mr. Melkert referred to a proposed immigration bill by McCain-Kennedy.

All speakers mentioned Van der Louw and Adelmund, two prominent members of the PvdA who passed away last last week.

The third guest speaker was Bernard Mucci, an ex-Tyco executive who described the work of the charity he is now working for, the United Negro College Fund. It was an interesting evening, and certainly worth the bus-ride (English summary). At the end of the evening I bought the book that was presented.

I was starving -- it was almost 22:00 o'clock and I hadn't had dinner yet, nor a very good lunch. It was a Friday night so I allowed myself a burger-with-fries meal in T.G.I. Friday's.

Friday I left the office very early, and took a bus to New York at 1.00 o'clock. I had bought a sandwich in the morning from my favorite place near work, Tivoli. When I wanted to eat it in the bus I saw that the cheese had gone bad! A big disappointment.

I had a great seat in the bus, right behind the bus driver. I enjoy that spot because it gives you a great view of the road and there's no seat in front of you so there's more space for a laptop. There weren't a lot of people travelling and I had two seats for myself. I spent the afternoon working. It was a good opportunity to clean up my mailbox: I had about 2000 messages that needed to be filed, deleted or dealt with. The only thing missing in the bus is an internet connection -- perhaps in a year or two, three. I reviewed some documents and spent a lot of time on the phone, it was quite a productive ride.

Unfortunately Friday afternoon is probably the worst time of the week to travel to New York. We left D.C. at 1.30, but didn't arrive in New York until 7.00 o'clock, an hour later than the schedule had said. It took more than an hour just to get from the turnpike to the Lincoln tunnel... Apparently it was the first time for our busdriver to travel at this hour, he was not very pleased with the traffic either and got rather cranky at his colleague who kept on calling him to see where he was.

I listened to the same CD about four times, and I had a few MP3s on my computer that I listened to as long as I could take. I really want to get a noise-cancelling headphone one of these days.

We made a stop in Delaware at a gas station and we took a ten minute break.

When we arrived at Times Square there were a lot of people waiting for the bus -- much more than would fit in a single bus. I was glad that I was at my destination. The driver told his colleague that he was not planning to return to D.C. right away, but first needed to get some rest and a dinner. Can't blame him after a 6 hour drive, but I felt sorry for all the people that were waiting.

The departure point in Washington D.C. for Eastern Travel is in Chinatown.

Yesterday we rented The Interpreter on DVD, and we had an enjoyable evening watching it.

It's a good movie -- pleasantly tense, not too predictable and with a good story.

Most of the story is situated around the United Nations building in New York, where Nicole Kidman is an interpreter who overhears a secret conversation. It turns out that she also has quite a history herself.

The language spoke in the movie is Ku, of which I had never heard before. One of the extra's on the DVD was an interview with the director, Sydney Pollack, who mentioned it was a fake language.

The summer signs on our building have been replaced by a fall theme, the outside swimming pool has been closed for a while... getting ready for the fall.

Today I went to work with my coat -- I hadn't used it for a long time, but it's that time of the year again.

A few days ago a colleague showed me Sage, an extension to Firefox to read RSS feeds in your browser.

RSS is a technical protocol that allows users to read a website's latest articles in different applications, for example a stand-alone reader. Extremely useful or not, my father's website has it so I had to have it as well.

For those who are interested, a RSS 2.0 compatible feed is now available here.

Friday evening we finally bought a desk for the computer in the bedroom. It's really so much nicer, a real desk. We got it from Crate & Barrel, a shop a few blocks down the road.

We have been living in this apartment for almost a year now, so we need to think about the lease for next year. We received a letter from the leasing company with the rates, and they propose to increase the rent, quite a bit. Unlike in the Netherlands there is typically no maximum on the rent-increase: you don't like it, you leave. We'll see if we can negotiate the price. The price per month is different depending on the length of the lease you sign. Generally, the longer you stay, the lower the montly rent.

Yesterday evening we made pancakes, for the first time since we're living here. They came out really well. The first ones were a bit thick, but once we got the hang of it they became nice and thin. I made one with raisins, my favorite, and we had blueberry jam and feta cheese for the others.

Saturday morning we woke up late. It had been a busy week and an intensive evening, so we slept in which felt excellent. Check-out was at noon so we left our luggage at the counter when we went for breakfast.

We found an amazing place nearby -- Crestanello . The sandwiches were outstanding... great juice and of course Italian coffee, an excellent breakfast.

In the afternoon we went shopping. We went to Macy's, "the world's largest store", where we spent quite some time. I bought two pair of jeans.

In the late afternoon we took a bus from Port Authority to Secaucus and we visited Jonathan and Irena. They have been remodelling a part of their living room and it became really nice (of course -- Jonathan is an architect). They basically took out a stone wall and replaced it with a semi-transparant one; it's nice and bright.

We spent a very nice evening there -- long talks and great food. Sunday morning we slept it again, and after a lazy day we took the bus back home. The bus didn't stop for dinner (it often makes a break at Burger King) but we were prepared and had a late lunch. We were home around 23:00 o'clock.

We were at the Madison Square Garden around 19:00 o'clock -- a bit early but we didn't want to miss anything!

We had electronic tickets that we bought back in March, so we used a printed piece of paper to get in the theater. Our seats were on the second ring, looking at the stage from the back side.

It was very nice to enter the main theater of the Madison Square Garden. We took some drinks and at 20:00 the support act started: Keane, a British band. They played a number of their hit-singles, including Somewhere Only We Know and gave a very nice performance. Their piano player was extremely energetic.

The lead singer, Tom Chaplin mentioned a number of times how happy they were to be the support-act for U2, and everytime he mentioned the name "U2" the audience started cheering.

After Keane left the stage, a large crew came on stage and moved everything around. About 10 people climbed upstairs, to the lights and cameras, and after a while they left the stage and the lights went off.

U2 came on stage! The show started with City of Blinding Lights, a song from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, U2's latest album. It's a very powerful song and a great way to start the concert.

There were so many great songs... a lot of songs from the latest album, but also many "oldies" such as Elevation and Where The Streets Have No Name.

There were two songs that I thought stood out: Stuck In A Moment, in a beautiful acoustic performance, and Fast Cars, at the end of the concert.

Suffice it to say that it was an incredible experience and we had a great time. We were singing and dancing pretty much throughout the entire concert (so was the entire audience). The concert was over around 23:30 o'clock.

The podium.

Where the streets have no name.

Bono.

The Edge.