I managed to activate our fire alarm when I was cooking. I was cooking a hamburger on the small grill and it caused a lot of smoke. In that sense it's quite fortunate that we don't have an automatic sprinkler installation.

Mark, a colleague, borrowed me a very interesting book: "The PhotoShop Book for Digital Photographers"; I'm reading it now.

Yesterday Marjolein and Jerry came for dinner. They brought home-made Guacamole, so we had beer with chips, Guacamole and Bulgarian lukanka (dried sausage).

We had a really fun evening, with a lot of talking, food and drinks. For the first time since a long time I cooked Bulgarian: mlechna salad and gyuveche. I think next time I'll use a different yoghurt for the mlecha; I didn't like the taste of this one too much. The gyuveche was pretty good, if I may say so.

Tonight I went to a Bulgarian movie: "Letter to America", or Pismo do Amerika in Bulgarian. My parents had seen it a little while ago and they told me about it.

I liked it a lot to see Bulgaria, and to hear Bulgarian again. It's been exactly a week now (almost to the hour, as I left Sofia Airport around 23:00 o'clock), and I miss it! The movie was playing partly in Sofia, but mostly on the road to a small village in the Pirin Mountains. At one point I saw the signs on the highway leaving Sofia, pointing to Plovdiv.

It was a good movie, with interesting characters and beautiful music. But, to be honest, I think I would have liked it less if it had been in another country.

The movie was playing in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam; I had never been there before. It's located in the middle of a public park, and it's a beautiful old-style building.

It's a girl!

Fiona Strausz was born today... wonderful news!

My good friend Tibor told me in the morning that "he was not going to work today", and he just sent me a message to tell me Fiona was born; it's their first child. Mother Janneke and daughter are fine. Fiona's website will be online soon on Fiona.strausz.nl.

Many, many congratulations from both of us!

My mother came to Haarlem this afternoon, and we had tea together. I showed her the pictures of our trip to Bulgaria; we hadn't seen each other yet since I came back.

My father came a bit later, from an appointment in Amsterdam, and we went out for dinner the three of us. Very nice.

I'm reading a graduation paper of a friend now. She studies Public Administration, and she's researching conflicts that occur when companies merge.

It's quite interesting to read, because it deals with subjects I normally don't read about. She took a case study and analyzed what went wrong in that particular merger, using a process model.

Yesterday evening I went to meet Daniël, a friend who lives in Hungary. Every two months or so he returns to the Netherlands, and it's always a pleasure to see him again.

There were a lot of people yesterday; it was a nice evening. I was home around midnight.

It was the first train trip on which I used my new train discountcard. I used to have a student-card that allows free traveling, so it's a bit of an adjustment to pay for each train journey.

I'm going to Amsterdam now, Daniël arrived there a few hours ago from Hungary.

We'll eat and drink in a pub called "Molly Malone".

Slowly I'm getting used again to working. Besides the work itself, that I like, and the colleagues, who are nice, there are some additional factors that make me like working here: internet and coffee.

One of the (very few) things that I missed while I was in Bulgaria was full-time internet access. Here in Holland I'm never more than a few hours without internet. I'm so used to being online all the time -- to have Google available, to be able to send emails, checking the news etc.

Both today and yesterday I had some great espresso. I agreed with myself not to go there too often, but for these first days I allow myself an exemption.

Our dear friends Svetla and Radoslav got a baby yesterday! It's a boy and his name is Hristian.

Mother and child are doing well; the baby weights 3.2 kg and is 51 cm.

Only a week ago we went out for dinner together, and now this great news -- chestito mnogo!