In Haarlem I had a subscription to The Economist, a magazine that I really enjoy. When I moved the U.S., I asked The Economist to transfer my subscription to the new address, but I never received the magazine there. I kind of neglected it for a couple of months, but a week ago I decided to ask them about it.

This morning:

"Dear Mr. Bosman,

We received your complaint that you have not received all of your issues.

We have checked into the delivery problem for you. It appears the account was placed on a postal hold. The post office notified us your issues were undeliverable as addressed.

We have corrected your address to include your full apartment number. Your account has been extended for any issues not sent. Your subscription is being restarted with the July 09 issue. The new expiration date on your account is now November 12, 2005.

Thank you for alerting us to this problem."

Very happy!

A few hours ago a new princess was born, a new daugther to the Dutch heir to the trone. We were having breakfast, and enjoyed a quiet morning after a hectic Saturday. I worked a couple of hours yesterday, even went into the office in the evening.

It's still very warm here (86 Fahrenheit, or 30 Celcius), but not as hot as yesterday.

Tomorrow morning I'll travel to Puerto Rico with the 7am flight, to stay a week in San Juan.

Today were the elections in Bulgaria for a new parliament. It looks like the BSP, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, has won with about 32% of the votes.

The result of the election was known around 16.00 o'clock our time, so when we left to the embassy we already knew the result.

The Bulgarian Embassy is located in downtown D.C., near Dupont Circle. It was nice to see the Bulgarian flag, and in front of the embassy there was a statue of Vasil Levski.

Sasha went inside to vote, and as it was the end of the day there weren't many people anymore so she was done fairly quickly. Four years ago we went to the Bulgarian Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands, to vote.

Today was a very long day at work. A major part of the project that I am working on will be going "into production" this weekend.

The final tests are now being executed, and that means we are having long phone conversations until late at night. I wouldn't want to do this very often, but it's fun every now and then: everybody eating together in the office and working to get the application ready for prime-time.

It's been enough though, and I'm packing up. Another long day tomorrow.

Yesterday we saw Sideways, a movie that won a few Oscars. It was one of those movies that we had wanted to see for a long time, but we never found time for it.

It was an excellent choice. It's a beautiful story about two guys going on a vacation trip for a week. Their relationship, and their personal problems and character traits made for a very pleasant movie.

In the course of the movie they are drinking a lot of different wines, and their trip is to 'wine-land' in California.

I still like Merlot, though.

It is great to be in Virginia again. I was home late yesterday; the plane landed around 21:45 o'clock and it took a long time to get my luggage and to get home. I traveled together with Mike, a colleague, and although we checked in fairly on time, we kind of forgot the time when we had lunch.

Even though it was late I wanted to get some coffee from the Starbucks at the other end of the terminal, and he left for the gate. Just when I was ordering he told me that they announced my name for "immediate boarding please". I made it on time but spilled quite some coffee on the airport floor.

This afternoon Sasha and I went for a walk. We went to Rosslyn, where my work is, and visited the Freedom Park. This is a small outdoor exhibition with items of freedom related events, such as a replica of the cell door of Marten Luther King, and a statue of Tianamen square in Beijing. An impressive element in the park is a part of the Berlin Wall that they brought over from Germany.

The weather is great here -- it's very warm and sunny, sometimes even too much! But, no compliants, I like it a lot. I'm typing this article on the balcony while having a Heineken. The Grolsch I found a few weeks ago in Wholefoods is over and they don't have it anymore, unfortunately. The next time I find Grolsch somewhere I will get us a large supply. More critical is the lack of Grimbergen... haven't had a Grimbergen Triple in more than half year.

Today I'll be traveling home, the documents I came here for are ready and the customer likes them, so my work is done.

On the way to here last Sunday I studied Spanish words in the plane, and that worked very well. Yesterday night I downloaded a few free educational programs that I will try out in the plane.

I looked for tools that contain the pronounciation of the words, and one tool I like a lot is Words Galore.

There was a long article in the Washington Post last week about the World Bank and people that work there.

Developmental economics, it's called, and hundreds of World Bankers have PhDs in it. The idea is simple and noble: The world is very rich and very poor, and this disparity is both morally wrong and, in practical terms, dangerously destabilizing. But how to lift up 1.2 billion people living on a dollar a day?

This is what World Bankers think about. In a city obsessed with political maneuvering, real estate values, traffic congestion, baseball, summer humidity, maybe all in the same hour, the World Bankers are a tribe apart.

At work somebody pointed me to Skype. I had seen it before, and experimented a bit with it in the past but never really used it.

However, being in Puerto Rico and all, it is very easy to make calls to the Netherlands. Good phone cards are hard to find here, and it's difficult to coordinate for someone to call me (sorry paps & mams!).

I just installed in on my laptop and spoke for a little while with a colleague in Virginia. That worked pretty nice, so I'll keep it installed and experiment a bit more with it over the next days.

So, for the technically inclined: my Skype name is guusbosman.

I am back in Puerto Rico. The requirements document for my project was signed off on time, something I was rather proud of, but there are additional things to do, and we're also starting with the design of the program.

I arrived around midnight at the airport yesterday. One of the passengers on the plane was Cynthia Olavarria, the Puerto Rican candidate at the Miss Universe competition in Thailand a few weeks ago. She did quite well, a second place I believe.

I left from JFK, which was interesting because Sunday there was a Puerto Rican parade in New York. There were a lot of people in the plane who were traveling back home after the party.

I've stayed in the Holiday Inn quite a few nights now, and that made checking in very simple. They gave me a nice room on the 5th floor, 501.