It felt a bit weird to go and vote this morning. I was quite sleepy as I've worked till past midnight on my homework assignment... I almost forgot that there were elections today and only when I read "Tuesday March 11" on the voting card I assumed I could go and vote.

What made it made even more strange was that I know only one of the candidates of my party, so there wasn't exactly a lot of choice ;) It's just that these elections have been so little on TV and everything, unlike the previous time.

I've been programming from 12:00 till 23:00 o'clock yesterday, and today from 9:00 till 22:00 again... The assignments are nice but it's not exactly a weekend feeling.

At the end of the afternoon the computers of the VU stopped functioning, one after another. Nobody seems to be able to login anymore. Luckily enough I still have 1 SSH terminal open. Because FTP connections can not be made either I have to 'upload' my files with a cat > file.c command and copy & paste from the editor to my terminal window.

After a (very nice) week of programming there is now a weekend with... programming. I'm working on the 2nd assignment of Internet Programming.

I expect to be working on it all weekend, last time it also took a lot of time. It's quite interesting; the assignment is the make a few small webservers to experiment with various techniques. The deadline is Tuesday.

Yesterday we went to the Frans Hals Museum, together with Wouter. Parts of the museum had been renovated, so from 19:30 till 22:00 there was free entrance. They had guides giving short explanations at various paintings, and there was life-music too (Mozart).

It's a very nice museum. Personally I like paintings with cities and buildings the best. Seeing your own city is even more special. There were many paintings of the Grote Markt, various hofjes and the Adriaan. One I like very much showed the Spaarne flowing towards Haarlem, from the same angle as we see it from our window. Instead of buildings and a road there were cows on green field next to the river: the city was much smaller then.


A remarkable thing is that we didn't see any paintings of Frans Hals! We saw paintings from his brother Dirck and from other famous Haarlem painters, but no Frans Hals.

We saw 'Aan het eind van de aspergetijd' on TV; a movie made from a play. It was excellent, especially the acting.

A very interesting site is Arts & Letters Daily. It's motto is 'Veritas odit moras' which means 'Truth hates delay'. It contains links to many interesting articles, often about politics.


You can also find such beauties as Why Computers Should be Kept Out of the Classroom or this article of George Orwell on English language and politics.

Although I didn't get my first salary yet we still felt we had something to celebrate. My first working day!

We went to Delphi, a Greek restaurant in Haarlem. We had a really nice evening; there was life-music and the food was very delicious. I think the main reason I like the Greek kitchen so much is that it is so similar to the Bulgarian one.

Introduction to my first project.

Well.


What can I say?


Just listen to this.

Chestita Baba Marta!

Today is a special day in Bulgaria. On March 1st Marteniza (see the picture) are given to friends and family to wish them health and happiness. The red and white colors symbolize the end of winter and the coming of spring.

These decorations are worn until you see a sign of spring, such as birds migrating or trees blooming.

Read more about it here or here.