Well, has anybody been watching Idols?


I think Marieke did a pretty good job with "Walking on Sunshine" -- too bad she was so nervous. It's not new that I'm not a big fan of Jim, but I thought he did quite well this week. But then I heard Hind and it's just uncomparable... she's the best!

David has a great voice but I think he should have choosen a quicker song; his dancing would have shown then. The only performance I didn't like was Dewi's... a bit off-tune and boring if you ask me. Jamai is really a showman and he danced the best of all the candidates.

My ranking for today:

1. Hind
2. Jamai
3. Jim (!)
4. David
5. Marieke
6. Dewi

The other day we went to see "About Schmidt", a movie with Jack Nicholson.

A fantastic movie! Nicholson is just the perfect actor for this type of character-movies.

The movie swung between sadness, melancholy and absolute hilarious moments (the waterbed-scene is just terrific). It had been a long time since I laughed so hard at a movie.

Mieke arranged us a nice deal where we got the 2nd ticket for free. Thanks! Without this we probably wouldn't have gone to see it. And I can definately recommend it, just like many critics. The movie won two Golden Globe awards.

This reviewer wrote:

"About Schmidt" is an unaffected, quietly ingenious, wonderfully melodious, melancholy comedy starring Jack Nicholson in what may be the most tactile, nuanced and natural performance of his exalted career.

The trailer of the movie is online too.

Tonight is an easy night; I bought some Guinness. Obviously we're not gonna watch Idols, just like last week.

The Vleeshal closed 10 minutes too early... too bad and then Dekamarkt closed at 17:00 instead of 20:00 because they're renovating it...

To the Vomar instead now.

The latest version of my internship paper has 5 (!) pictures and 42 pages.

Tomorrow I'll meet my supervisors again in Haarlem, I'll give a short presentation of the results I found untill now.

America's secretary of state Collin Powell will today give a much anticipated speech to the Security Council.

It will start at 16:30 and it's supposed to be a 'multi-media presentation'.

I'm happy to see that the NOS will have a life-stream of the speech online. It's an important event, that's why I was so surprised yesterday.

Yesterday I went to the other branch of Chess. It's in Best, a small place near Eindhoven -- a journey of 2,5 hours.

We planned to go long ago, to discuss my internship with a collegue there. We had a very interesting discussion. They are planning to do an investigation in the same area as mine. Their focus is on creating a workable (commercial) solution in a few years. My research is more academic, and --in a sense-- less useful :) We could share a lot of ideas; it was very interesting.

When I came home Ettie was there too so we watched yesterday's interviews the three of us with tea and cookies.

It had been a long time since I spent a whole day without internet... I was curious who had won the elections to be our parliament's Speaker. It would have been nice when De Graaf had won but I like Weisglas too.

Somehow I had got the days all mixed up so I was really surprised there was so little attention to Powell's speech for the Security Council on internet, teletext and the news. Then this morning I realized his speech would be today.

There were two interviews on TV tonight; one with Saddam Hussein and one with Michael Jackson.

The one with Hussein was so boring that we changed the channel after 10 minutes.

We went for a drink in Café Triple. Every Sunday evening there's life music.

It was a jam-session, with a lot of different artists. One of the songs they played was Up a Lazy River.

I had a lot of enthousiastic reactions on the link to Tetris 3D, although not every webbrowser seemed to able to deal with its heavy use of Flash.

I hope this game will work for everybody; it's very nice.

Two friends announced today (officially) that they'll get married.

Today 13:37:

"Wij hebben nu alles geregeld en gaan dus trouwen. Uitnodiging volgt nog maar zet 29 maart maar vast in je agenda :-)"

Today 13:58:

"Wir freuen uns, Euch mitteilen zu dürfen: wir heiraten! Und zwar am 13.09.03- Agenda schon gezückt? Nähere Informationen folgen später." (Joeri Mulder.com).

What to say with such happy notifications? Pozdravlialioo perhaps, or Herzlichen Glückwunsch!