Yesterday I went to a theater show in the Toneelschuur. We saw The Revisor, a comedy by Nikolai Gogol. It was played by the Paardenkathedraal, a Dutch theater group that won several awards in the past.

I went there with Arjan, Karen, Jelly and Max. We first had dinner together in our place, which was nice.

I really enjoyed the show, it was funny and very professional. I had expected a more 'difficult' performance, but The Revisor is a plain comedy -- although a very good one. I loved the mayor and his wife, two main characters, and the fights that they had, especially in the second half.

The language used was really beautiful -- the texts were great. The mayor had a magnificent way of talking: screaming, whispering, all mixed with a continuous trembling of his body because of nervousness and general dissatisfaction with the world.

A smaller role that I liked was the maid of the mayor; she was really funny in her own, quiet way.

General conclusion: I liked it a lot. It wasn't highbrow theater, but very amusing.

Last weekend we celebrated the birthday of my aunt Ria and I took some pictures, which are online now.

If you would like a bigger version (better quality) of any of the pictures please let me know.

This is so much fun! I've made a panorama picture of the Hooimarkt.

Jaap borrowed me his tripod, and yesterday afternoon I took pictures of the street in front of our house. Tonight I 'stitched' them together using a special program. There are 12 pictures glued together, to create a complete 360 degree view.

The result is two-fold: first a large picture of the Hooimarkt in Haarlem, but the most pretty thing is a so-called Quicktime panorama file. It's huge, almost 10Mb, but very nice to see. For those of you with a quick connection (or a lot of patience): a Quicktime Panorama of the Hooimarkt!

Ettie and Gerben stayed in Haarlem last night; my parents went to Middenmeer.

In the morning we had an "American breakfast": bagels, cream-cheese and grapefruit juice. And coffee, of course.

Ettie and I worked on some homework in the morning, physics. She and Gerben left to Leeuwarden around 15:00 o'clock. I went for a long walk in the city. The shops were open today, which makes the city alive. In the evening I spent some time configuring my (desktop-) computer.

Around 12:00 o'clock yesterday I took a train to Amsterdam Sloterdijk. There Ettie picked me up by car and together with my parents and Gerben we travelled to Limburg. My aunt Ria was celebrating her 50th birthday -- a big event.

Her whole family and many friends were there; it was very useful that they live in such a large house. There was of course a lot of drinks and food (Limburgse vlaai), and later that day songs were sung and music was played. I enjoyed the party a lot and I talked to many people. Some of them I hadn't seen in many years.

I took some pictures; they'll be online later. A strong storm was raging when we went back home. We measured the distance, it was around 200 kilometers from Broekhuizen to Haarlem.

Yesterday I went to Steven to celebrate his birthday. It was a very nice evening, and the cake he baked was excellent. Later at night he showed me the Yahoo chat program, which was really fun -- there was also a Bulgarian chat room.

This morning I installed a new version of my (desktop) operating system, that's always fun. Everything still seems to work, and the computer didn't get a lot slower.

A week ago I placed an article about a game with a penguin. It was a great success: many visitors had a lot of fun trying to hit the poor bird as hard as possible.

The article is truly a record for this website. It has been read more than 1700 times already, and attracted a huge number of visitors (through Google and Altavista). And so many comments! Today I've decided to "close" comments for that article for anonymous users.

If you would like to see some information about the visitors that were attracted by this game you can see a NedStat counter I've put online for a few days.

Next weekend I'll be going to Frankfurt, to Milena's birthday. Today I (finally) bought a train-ticket. I'm looking forward to it a lot, and I love the fact that I can go by train.

I did some more useful things today: I took some pictures and applied for a new passport.

In the evening I was chatting with Daniël, who now has a webcam in Hungary, which is really great. Daniël forwarded me an e-mail. Sometimes you have to laugh about something, even though in reality it's sad.

It has been raining and snowing today.

Just when I came back from Jelly, where I had dinner, the snow came back and I made some pictures.

When I came back in Haarlem Janneke and Fiona were at Chess -- the first time I saw Fiona in real-life. I saw her before, on a webcam, but that's not the same.

There was beschuit met muisjes. It's a Dutch tradition to serve aniseed sprinkles on a buttered rusk when a child is born. Blue aniseed sprinkles for a boy and pink aniseed sprinkles for a girl.