Milan and Nadia, Sasha's parents, visited us for a month and we had a great time. We speak Bulgarian with each other, so this was a great opportunity to improve my vocabulary. It's easier learning vocabulary from conversations, since there is more context to remember words by.

For example, I learned the word блато (swamp, marsh) while we were on our way to Wilmington with Irena and we drove through the swamps. лепя and кантар came up when making bread with Nadia, знак and спирачка when talking about driving with Milan. I tend to specialize in my vocabulary... I'm really good in talking about recipes and cooking now.

For my French studies I started using a tool called Anki to maintain my vocabulary. It's spaced learning system that keeps track of which cards you find easy or hard, and repeats them appropriately. It also provides various charts and metrics. A couple of months ago I converted the words from my home-made Bulgarian vocabulary program into an Anki deck. I've added 210 new words to the system while Milan and Nadia were visiting us, so an average of 7 new words per day.

Here are some statistics:

Deck created: 5.5 months ago
Total number of cards: 2471
Total number of facts: 1240

Card Maturity
Mature cards: 2188 (88.5%)
Young cards: 249 (10.1%)
Unseen cards: 34 (1.4%)
Average interval: 77.4 days

Correct Answers
Mature cards: 98.7% (858 of 869)
Young cards: 76.8% (6611 of 8603)
First-seen cards: 73.3% (1791 of 2445)

How many cards will due in the next 6 months. Younger cards will be due much sooner than 'mature' cards.

Amount of repetitions in the previous 90 days. Indicates how often I've studied my words.

The other day I read an interesting article by researchers from my old Computer Science department in Amsterdam: "We crashed, now what?"

The paper is a short description of an experiment they did with real-time recovery of operating system crashes on the Minix operating system. Minix, of course, is message-driven, with most of the kernel's components running in user space. With some smart book keeping they were able to put simple checkpoints in place that allow for successful recovery of crashes of kernel components, caused for example by memory errors. Pretty cool stuff:

"Preliminary results showed that our approach is able to restart even the most critical OS components flawlessly during normal system operation, keeping the system fully functional and without exposing the failure to user processes. For instance, our approach can successfully restart the process manager (PM), which stores and manages the most critical information about all the running processes—both regular and OS-related—in the system. Our preliminary experiments showed that the global state of PM was always correctly restored upon restart and no information was ever lost."

One of the co-authors of the article is Andrew Tanenbaum, professor at the Vrije Universiteit and creator of the Minix operating system.

From our correspondent Yolanda Gerritsen in New York City.

Herring lovers in and around New York can rejoice! Happy days are here again with the much-anticipated arrival of the 2011 First Catch Herring -- straight from Scheveningen. The 2011 Holland Herring Festival is now in full swing at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, the historic and classic establishment for fresh seafood aficionados in New York. In its cavernous rooms a special area has been reserved for herring enthusiasts right at the entrance. You can’t miss it: posters and a traditional Dutch ‘haring kar’ (herring cart) mark the area where you can indulge in the tasty morsels that most Dutchmen and other nationals eagerly look forward to every spring.

The 2011 Holland Herring Festival was officially opened by Dutch Consul General Gajus Scheltema, the Oyster Bar’s executive chef Sandy Ingber and General Manager Jonathan Young.

Mr. Scheltema, who will leave New York for a diplomatic post in Islamabad, performed one of his last official duties -- spreading Dutch Culture in New York -- with aplomb. He showed those present the proper, traditional Dutch way to eat a herring: holding it by its tail, tilting the head back and slowly letting it slide into the mouth, thus savoring its delicate, slight saltiness that recalls the waters of the North Sea where the fish was caught. Mr. Ingber, Mr. Young, and Consul General Scheltema, repeated this ritual and then declared the Holland Herring Festival officially open to the public.

For the past thirty years the Holland Herring Festival at the Oyster Bar has become a much-loved tradition every spring. When the first catch of ‘nieuwe haring’ is welcomed at the fishing-port of Scheveningen, the freshly caught delicacy is air-expressed directly to the Oyster Bar in New York. The quality of the first catch can vary from year to year, but this 2011 season the new herring is really delicious and executive chef Sandy Ingber called it “a top quality herring catch, perhaps the best in the history of the festival."

The Festival will last until Friday June 24. Herring filets, served at the Oyster Bar with chopped hard-boiled egg, chopped sweet onions and chives, are $ 7.00 a piece. In addition, the menu features “Dutch Martinis", made with Ketel One Vodka ($11.75) or with Bols Genever ($10.50).

Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal
Herring Festival through June 24
http://www.oysterbarny.com/

Oyster Bar’s executive chef Sandy Ingber, Dutch Consul General Gajus Scheltema, and General Manager Jonathan Young.

We visited the North Carolina Zoo today.

The zoo is in Asheboro, about 90 minutes from Durham. We drove on country roads and made it a really nice road trip. North Carolina's country side is beautiful.

The zoo was great. There is a lot of green and plenty of space to roam for the animals. It wasn't very busy, probably because of the heat, which made it even better.

There's a big area for the elephants.

A white alligator.

Dutch film Bride Flight opens in select U.S. cities today and will expand to theaters across the country throughout July.

The film is a romantic drama inspired by the true story of the 1953 KLM flight that entered the “Last Great Air Race” from London to Christchurch, New Zealand. The flight was dubbed “Bride Flight” by the international press, because of its special passengers -- young women with wedding dresses in their suitcases, traveling to join their fiancés who had already emigrated to New Zealand. Leaving behind the gloom and scarcity of post-WWII Holland, shy but sensual farm girl Ada, dogmatic Marjorie, and Jewish fashion designer Esther are filled with hope for a future of love and freedom.

Each takes a very different journey in their strange new land, but together with handsome bachelor Frank, they form a bond on the flight that continues to link them for decades to come. Honored with Audience Awards at film festivals across the U.S., the movie evokes a time of slim choices and desperate optimism, with sweeping views of the New Zealand countryside, stunning period dresses, and the faint smell of Pinot Noir from the thriving vineyard Frank establishes in New Zealand.

In Dutch and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.
http://www.brideflightmovie.com/