I had a very pleasant flight. After an hour flying or so the person next to me asked me: "excuse me, are you perhaps a programmer?" He saw me reading the book Cryptonomicon, which is a big hit among computer people. He was a programmer too, so we talked quite a bit. He and his girlfriend were flying back from a holiday in Europe, in Paris they actually got engaged. Cute.

The plane landed on schedule in Newark Airport. There was a big line before Immigrations so that took some time. I didn't have any problems with my passport.

When I went past the customs the first thing I saw was a Starbucks shop. This was too tempting to resist, so I had a double espresso to compensate for the six hours time difference. Then I called Sasha on her mobile, she was in the bus from Washington to New York.

The airport in Newark consists of a couple of terminals that are connected through a monorail. I have very nice memories of both the airport and the monorail. In 1998 Sasha and I stayed in a motel near the airport, and we always transferred at the airport when we were going to and from New York.

The traintrip to Secaucus went smoothly, except for the fact that at first I pronounced the name of the place completely wrong so nobody knew where I wanted to go.

It was great to see everybody again, that needs no explaining.

We had dinner together which was very cosy. Jonathan and Irena have a barbecue (being Americans :)) and that made for a great dinner, with the rakia and red wine. Went to bed quite late.

So it's "se-CAU-cus", not "SE-Cau-cus".

Oh yes -- this time I want to be on time, so I'm leaving now. My plane is at 13:30, so plenty of time to wait in lines, get coffee, a magazine perhaps...

I'm trying something rather revolutionary: I'll travel light.

Because I'm going back on Monday, I would have felt quite silly to bring my large backpack or the huge huge suitcase I used in Bulgaria. So, I'm bringing only hand luggage.

Tomorrow I'm flying to the States! I'm very happy I can be there for Sasha's birthday. We'll stay with Irena and Jonathan, in Secaucus, NJ.

This time I don't have a lot of things to pack, so I hope I can go to bed earlier than the previous time I was preparing for a long trip.

I'll go into the city now for some small things.

Tonight I went to Jean-Paul and Inger. They live in Aalsmeer with Arjen, their two-year old son.

We had dinner together. Jean-Paul made some kind of lasagna that was called "lasagnette" -- very nice. Arjen ate with us, he was a bit shy with me the first minutes but then he got used to me and called me "Huus".

I hadn't seen their house before; it's quite large. They will have a second baby soon so they're working on a second children's room.

I'll start a course German language next week!

This afternoon I received a phone-call from the educational institute that there is a place in the course that starts next week. I won't be able to go to attend the first class, next Monday, but the homework assignment will be sent to me.

The course is given by the Goethe Institut, an organization active in the promotion of the German language and culture. When I was traveling to Frankfurt a fellow-passenger told me about this course and that it would start soon.

I'm looking forward to start the course and revise my German. There will be a lesson once a week and the course goes on till June.

Yesterday I spent the night in Ettie & Gerben's place, and after breakfast I went to visit my grandmother, who had a birthday last week.

My parents were there too. It was a very nice day, in the afternoon we went for a trip to some small villages near Heerenveen.

I took the train around 20:00 o'clock, and I came home about 30 minutes ago.

I'm in Leeuwarden now, visiting Ettie and Gerben. We had dinner together, and we did some homework later. Now we're watching "There's something about Mary", a movie I really like.

On the picture here is Boris Hammie the 2nd, the hamster of Ettie and Gerben. Cute little animal, isn't afraid of the camera.

For a long time there has been an issue with displaying this website correctly in Internet Explorer.

The problem is that sometimes text on the frontpage disappears. This happens when there is an article with a picture; the picture would be visible but the corresponding text not. Reloading the page sometimes fixes the problem, also selecting the invisible text with the mouse would make the text readable.

I never knew how to fix this, but today I found a detailed description of the problem, and a number of possible solutions.

I have applied one the easier solutions, and on my Internet Explorer the problem disappeared! I hope this doesn't cause problems on other browsers though, so please let me know if the website doesn't look correctly in your browser anymore.

For the CSS insiders: I've added a line-height: 1.2em; to the div that contains the article content.

In the screenshot below you can see Guus Bosman.nl in Internet Explorer 6 before applying the fix.

A reader, who had perhaps had worked a bit too long with computers today, pointed me out to this nice one: Computer Aggression.

Specifically recommended after working hard on a Friday morning.