Saturday evening we saw "Taking Lives", recommended to us by a good friend. To be honest -- I didn't really like it very much.

Taking Lives is a thriller about a serial-killer who "copies" other peoples lives, but the movie was never very scary or even convincing.

The acting by the main character, Angelina Jolie, a FBI agent was in my opinion pretty bad. Ethan Hawke, who played the serial killer, was performing well but that couldn't compensate for the other deficiencies of the movie, such as the weakness of the plot.

We saw the trailer (a short preview) of this movie a few weeks ago, when our cable TV was just installed. One of the features that Comcast offers, is something called On Demand. Using that, you can order a movie anytime you want, and you pay the movie on your TV bill, which is about four dollar per movie. Interesting enough it is cheaper to rent the DVD, which is about three dollar; I guess you pay for convenience. Anyway -- we browsed the existing collection of movies available and saw the preview of Taking Lives.

Comcast, our cable internet provider, has announced that it will increase the speed of its internet broadband connections.

Currently we have 3Mb/s downstream, and 256 Kb/s upstream, and this will increase to 4Mb/s down and 384Kb/s up. The article didn't mention when exactly they'll switch, but it said "this quarter".

Nice they're upgrading the speeds here too.

Thursday President Bush will be inaugurated for his second term in office. This Inauguration Day will be a large event, with a parade and a huge amount of visitors, and the preparations started long ago.

Yesterday I went for a walk on the Mall, the strip between the Capitol and the Washington monument, where all the museums are. Many tents and barriers for the festivities were already in place, and they were installing a stage in front of the Capitol with thousands of chairs.

Security will be extremely tight this year and many streets and office buildings downtown will be closed from Wednesday morning on.

A few pictures.

Barriers near the Capitol.

Power generators, forklifts and other machinery on the Mall.

Outdoor sound-system.

The Washington Monument with large party tents.

Stage in front of the Capitol.

I really love to start the weekend this way. Sleeping in, having breakfast together, and slowly drinking coffee all morning.


We're still using the package with coffee that I brought from the airport more than two months ago. During the week there is fresh coffee from the apartment downstairs so we never make our own coffee. The coffee from the package ("breakfast blend") still tastes great.

I've been arranging some paperwork this morning. It feels like there are two sets of paperwork that need attention: the American one and the Dutch one. Jaap and Mieke help us a lot with the Dutch paperwork, which is wonderful.

Yesterday I went to my bank in the lunchbreak, to see what's going on with my debit/credit card. Currently I have a card that I can only use to get cash money from the ATM, but when I opened my account five weeks ago the lady said I would receive my real card within two weeks.

The bank representative found out yesterday that the lady forgot to request this card for me, so I'll get one within two weeks from now. I think it was one of the first times that this lady opened a new account for a customer. No big deal of course, but to have a real credit card would be very convenient. I still have a Dutch credit card also, but I prefer not to use it.

Making coffee on Saturday morning.

It's raining today, and everytime that happens there's a traffic jam on the road that we can see from far from our window.

Someone joked that the traffic in Washington immediately slows to a crawl as soon as it rains, snows or is too windy. A bit like the Dutch railways, I guess.

At work we're almost done with development of the new functionality and next week the first testers will try the programs. An interesting difference between the way things work here and at Chess is that in Haarlem we had a lot of automated testing, and only very little manual testing. Here is the other way around.

My cold is almost over, but I'm afraid it looks like it's Sasha's turn now.

Near the building where I work there are two old office buildings that are being demolished.

The last weeks people from the firebrigade were there everyday with at least two trucks, to take out glass, doors and other materials.

Everyday I walk by that building, from and to work, and like many colleagues I was hoping for a spectacular demolishing in the end. However, the demolishing company didn't choose to use a big explosion or something, but a crane with a swinging ball. Interesting anyway. Here are two pictures.

The night before we left San Antonios we went out, so we woke up late in the morning. When we went to the Riverwalk after breakfast, there was a surprise: the waterlevel of the river was extremely low.

It turned out to be the annual river-cleaning period. In the week after New Year's weekend the river is emptied, and necessary work and cleaning is performed. The river was not entirely empty yet, see some pictures below.

This is the final part of a series of pictures of San Antonios, see also part one, two and three.

Several people have asked me if the tsunami disaster is still on the news here, or why I didn't write about it on this website.

To answer the latter question -- I guess there was just not much to say, except for describing an emotion of great sadness.

Until last week the major TV stations were full-time covering the tsunami and its aftermath. We've seen a lot of interviews with survivors on CNN, very personal and very gripping. Now the coverage is not full-time anymore, but it's still very prominent. I usually get my news from newspapers and magazines, and everyday the newspapers open with news about the disaster and the relief efforts.

The flags here were flown at half-staff last week. It's good to see that there is so much money being donated world-wide. Everywhere you go there are fund raising activities -- in restaurants, bars, on the street. In the U.S., where a lot of charity is privately funded, individuals can get a 2004 taxbreak for money they donate this month, January 2005.

I work together with a group of people in one of the areas where the tsunami struck. They were far from the coast, and luckily nobody got hurt.

http://www.unicefusa.org

http://www.unicef.nl

Yesterday Sasha and I went to the New Year celebration organized by the Washington D.C. Dutch Society. The party started at 16:00 o'clock in the Dutch embassy. I was curious to see the embassy, and it was interesting to see it, but it was not a very Dutch building, except for a picture of Queen Beatrix and a large photograph of Dutch tulip fields.

The Dutch society had decorated the embassy with Dutch and orange flags. There was life classical music, and a bar with drinks including Grolsch and Heineken beer.

We didn't know anybody when we arrived at the party, which was a bit scary, but we talked with quite a few people and we had a really nice afternoon. Some people have been living in the U.S. for many years and they were more comfortable speaking English than Dutch, others were just temporary in the States. It was nice meeting other Dutch people and I signed up to become member of this Dutch club.

The Washington D.C. reporter for the Dutch NOS news agency was also at the party. Of course there were Dutch snacks: young cheese with mustard, and freshly baked oliebollen. Those are a traditional Dutch New Year snack, usually around this time of the year everybody eats a lot of them. For us these were the first and only oliebollen this year, and they were very good.

After the party we went for dinner in Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. Food in D.C. is generally speaking better than what we ate in San Antonios, if you ask me. To stay in style I had apple pie for desert (a Dutch favorite). Because the New Year party ended early, we were done with dinner early and were home around 21:30 o'clock.

New Year's Eve we spent in a restaurant at the Riverwalk. From around 20:30 o'clock till 01:00 we had dinner and drinks.

At 16:00 o'clock our time it was New Year in Bulgaria, so we called Nadia and Milan, and an hour later we called Middenmeer and Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. Then at 23:00 o'clock it was New Year for Irena and Jonathan, so we called them from the restaurant.

At midnight we went outside and celebrated the New Year on a bridge over the river with fireworks and champagne -- just like a New Year's Eve is supposed to be; we really enjoyed that.

Here are some more pictures of our four days in San Antonios. This is part 3 in a serie of 4 articles (see part one and part two).

Sasha and Guus at the riverwalk.

There is a marketplace in San Antonios that is being promoted as "authentic Mexican marketplace, the largest outside Mexico". Well, that might be true, but it was not extremely interesting, nor authentic. We spent only a short time there.

Of course, being so nearby Mexico, we ate Mexican style food (Tex-Mex) and drank margarita's.

We have seen three movies about the siege of the Alamo so far: the movie at home, a History Channel documentary in the Alamo museum, and an IMAX movie. IMAX is a special type of theater, with a huge screen. Even though the acting in the IMAX production was very amateuristic, it was great to see the story on such a large screen (the movie used the set of yet another movie about the Alamo, that we haven't seen).

Sasha enjoying the sun.

Having drinks and tortilla chips at the riverside.

The house of O. Henry, an American journalist and author. It's a really tiny house, that has been preserved in its original form but was lifted and moved to a new location.

Picture of the Christmas tree in front of The Alamo, and in the background our hotel on the last night of our stay.