I left Ettie & Gerben's place around 9:00 o'clock this morning. I didn't have to wait for the bus long. At the train station I realized that I would be a bit early for my appointment with my grandmother, so I skipped a train and had a nice coffee in the station. I bought two Dutch magazines with specials on the American elections: De Groene and Vrij Nederland.

I arrived at my grandmother's place around 10:15 o'clock, and it was very nice to see her. We spent hours drinking coffee and talking. It's wonderful sitting at the table and drinking coffee with somebody you love.

On the way back to Haarlem, a trip of more than two hours, I read the magazines about the upcoming US elections. In both magazines there were references to a journey that Geert Mak, one of my favorite history authors, made through the US in the last months. His impression of the US was rather negative -- an opinion I obviously strongly disagree with. Still I'm looking forward to the book that he will write about his journey as he writes great and is a brilliant observer.

Tuesday my grandmother Bosman celebrated her 80th birthday!

I visited her in the evening. Ria, Maarten and Eveline were there as well, and we had dinner together which was very cozy. Later Christianne, Harm and Marijke also came; it was a pleasant evening. My grandmother is also giving a big party next weekend.

The next morning I had to get up early. I went with two colleagues from Chess to a potential customer. We gave presentations on our company and products, and we discussed our proposition. It was a very interesting morning; I learned a lot and my (short) presentation went well.

I had lunch at Chess, and then I left to Leeuwarden. I had the direct train, and around 17:15 o'clock I was at Ettie & Gerben's place. We had dinner together, and we talked and watched a movie. It was a cozy evening and I enjoyed it a lot.

Ettie has a test now, and Gerben left for work, so we got up early.

Tomorrow morning I'll give a presentation on a project I've been working on for a potential customer.

Today I prepared a notebook with the latest version of the software and test-data, to make sure that everything will work fine tomorrow. It's nice to be busy doing something while waiting.

Thursday, after the movie shooting, I visited Manuel who was celebrating his birthday. It was a nice evening, with a group of great people.

Friday evening I went out with my colleagues from Chess. This time we were joined by ex-colleagues from Net.Footworks, in a small reunion: Pleun was there, Henrik was there, and of course Edo, Manuel, Petra and me. It was nice to see them again. We had a lot of fun; of course the best part of the evening was when I came home and read my e-mail!

It's been quite a busy weekend. Saturday I spent the whole day packing and arranging things. Steven helped me out on Sunday, so everything worked out great (thank you so much, Steven!).

Below are a few pictures of Friday evening. Like on many Fridays we had a few drinks in Café Paris and then we went for dinner. We visited "Babbels", a nice restaurant.

Today I participated in the making of an educational movie for students in (health) care. My father is the producer of a set of instruction movies and photographs for a large Dutch publisher, and today was the first day of a new recording series.

Today we filmed parts of a movie that depicts an internship of a health care student in a home for people with (mental) handicaps. The goal was not to create a long movie, but to describe various aspects of the daily live in such a home in short movie fragments of about one minute length. I played one of the people living there, a role in which I played a person with very bad vision. Next to the movie fragments a lot of photographs were also made.

It was a very interesting day. I met a lot of different people, and it was really fun to work together to create a movie.

My parents and my grandmother Groen spent a few days in Maastricht and they came home today.

I went to Middenmeer after dinner, because I will work on an interesting project of my father tomorrow.

Yesterday and today I've been working on the conversion of a large Word document to Latex. Using Latex the layout of a paper look much more professional, and my goal is to create a good looking PDF file. It's fun to do and it's going well.

I had espresso yesterday from my new machine: great coffee, thanks guys!

This weekend I was in Middenmeer, and I had my fifth driving lesson today. We went to our usual location to practice parking, driving backwards, the hill-start etc.

My skills are improving, and I feel more confident driving now. My father also pointed me out the various parts of the inside of the car, which was not as complicated as I thought it would be. It had been raining this weekend and the road I was practising on was quite muddy.

We also played three games Steden & Ridders: I won the first two and Mieke the last one. We had couscous for dinner and I was home around 22:00 o'clock.

Yesterday evening my parents and I saw
Fahrenheit 9/11.

We went to Cinema7Skoop, a movie theater in Den Helder. It's a cute little cinema with 60 seats which is ran by volunteers.

The movie itself was interesting. Some of the footage was really gruesome; a proof that war is always horrible, and it makes you feel sorry for everyone who is in it.

The central theme of the movie is the claim that President Bush is a villain, who puts the country into disarray and who went to war for the wrong reasons.

Personally, I certainly don't agree with Moore's thesis, and his movie didn't change my opinion. He tries to convince the audience, not by giving a detailed explanation of his views, but by using copy & pasted video material that has been ingeniously mixed and edited to convey his insinuations.

But even though it failed to convince me on an political level, it was a well-made documentary. The movie is often quite funny and the music that accompanies it was well-chosen. It's great to know that in a democracy like the U.S. it's possible for such a movie to be such a success.

Together with my father I went shopping and we made a short visit to the historical museum of the Wieringermeer.

The museum is located in the central street of Middenmeer. It is not very large but they have a nice collection of documents, pictures and objects from the history of the polder.

Among them a pair of boots that were used to walk in the polder when it was just created and still very muddy. Working in the new polder (digging the canals etc) must have been really tough.