Alef Arendsen

I’m fortunate enough to live in Holland. When you like kitebaording, Holland is a great place to be. There is lots of wind, we have a lot of coast line, but there are also a lot of lakes so you do not only get the surf, but also flat water. Simply great. There is one drawback though: the water is awfully cold. On an average basis, I think you can probably go out on the water without putting a wetsuit on maybe 10 days a year.

Today I had my first session (although it was a really short one, but I’ll tell you about that a little later) in kiteboarding paradise. Now you might say: hmm, that’s must be the Dominican Republic (Cabarete) or maybe Cumbuco. All wrong: I’m on Mauritius at the moment. I’m here to train a group of software engineers on Spring. We had to reschedule things a bit today which meant I could go back to my hotel a bit earlier in the afternoon, just enough to be able to get a small session I hoped.

When I arrived at my hotel, I asked around a bit. The wind was blowing a constant 25 knots, I heard! Wow, that’s probably the best wind I ever had. I think I also had some really good winds at IJmuiden, but the thing there is, the surf is really difficult to get through, and I’m not that good yet.

I took out my kite (8sqm Gaastra Jekyll, which seemed enough) and board and geared up on the beach. Somebody helped me launch but it seemed I had made a little mistake with my lines, so I had to redo them and then go off to the water. In the water (the bluest I’ve ever seen with coral reef shining through it at some places) I set off and seriously, that was just one of the best experiences ever. I’ve done my fair share of wave surfing, but honestly, this is just so much more fun! Not having to ware a spring suit or full body wet suit is just fabulous , let alone the combination with palm trees on the shore, a constant 25 knot wind, coral reef, big waves of over 6 meters out near the end of the lagoon, hardly any chop because of this lagoon effect and just a few kites out there. No some say Caberete is great, but seriously, it’s just great to be out there with only 10 or 20 people and a huge stretch of ocean / lagoon all for yourself.

Next week, I have 6 days of kite surfing ahead of me (originally I had planned one whole week, but I’ve schedule some more meeting with clients, while I’m here anyway).

More later… hopefully including some pictures…

By the way, the beach right out front (I’m looking at it while writing this) is Le Morne, if you’re a kiteboarder, you might know this. I’m not staying in the same hotel for the rest of my stay, because I’ve booked a different hotel for the second week. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, with the amazing beaches out front here…

I got a comment from Ardddjjeennn a few weeks ago that every time he saw an entry on my blog that had something to do with books it was about a book that I picked up from the Schiphol Top 10. The Schiphol Top 10 of books are the most popular books sold at the airport’s book shops (psssst, such a list actually doesn’t exist, it’s just a figure of speech). You can always find the latest Dan Brown book there, the latest Nikki French and a selection of books that talk about the new techniques for effective negotiations, getting things done or making ideas stick (in other words, business-type books).

This time however I’m writing about a book that you won’t find in the Schiphol Top 10. I don’t think you’ll find this book on any airport actually. It’s a book about a boy who lost his dad in the 9/11 attacks on World Trade Center in New York. The author, Jonathan Safran Foer has managed to turn this book, about a depressed boy that lost his father into an incredibly funny, engaging page turner that makes you want to stay up all night to finish it. Unfortunately I couldn’t do that as I’m currently in the middle of a training session i Stockholm, Sweden, but I did manage to finish it while here.

After the boy has lost of father he finds a key. Then, he begins to search for the lock that the key will open and the whole thing turns into a big adventure. It’s funny and sad at the same time and combined with the fact that Jonathan is incredibly creative with words, make this book a great one to read.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Last week, two ex-colleagues of mine made the exact same mistake as I made almost two years ago: leave their laptops in the trunk of the car. Both laptops were stolen and one of the guys lost a lot of pictures I heard.

That made me realize: I do have a backup script that copies all the important stuff from my laptop to a NAS drive, sitting in the basement somewhere, but I didn’t manage to get my pictures backed up yet in a nice way.

I’m using Aperture, which has its own internal backup mechanism using what they Vaults. Vaults however cannot be stored in a network drive–at least, that’s what the error message said when I last tried a couple of months ago. Today I found an article buy a guy that did manage to get his vault stored on a networked drive. Thanks!

p.s. I have a MacBook and like it for its size. The only time I actually hate it is when using Aperture. The graphics card is just too slow, so any real digital post processing is kind of a nightmare.
p.p.s. Just as Pages files, Keynote presentations and many other file types on a Mac, the Aperture Vault is a bundle. In other words, it’s just another directory which MacOS shows as if it were a single file. Very nice…

I just got back from a nice game of soccer. Of course we lost, but then again, we did have fun and the weather was great. It’s mid-October and I have been waiting for weeks for the winds to pick up, but so far, no luck. This means no kiteboarding for now. I have to leave tomorrow for Stockholm and won’t be home (or at least, not for longer than a day) for the next four or five weeks, so I guess I’ll have to get my shot of kiteboarding somewhere else… Oh by the way, of course when I’m gone, the winds always pick up…

Last June I visited a client of ours in Helsinki, Finland. I stayed in Helsinki for a week and had quite a good time. Earlier that year, I also visited Helsinki for a while with several sort of colleagues of mine but this time was definitely a different experience with temperatures 25 to 30 degrees hotter than in February .

I stayed in the Radission Sas Seaside hotel next to the harbor. There are two Radisson Sas hotels in Helsinki as far I know and this one is a little further out of town than the other. But that’s not a big deal, as even from this one to the Kampii shopping mall (right in the heart of the city) is only a 5-minute walk.

The hotel is okay. The italian restaurant next to it is quite good too. As far as I can remember, Internet in the hotel is free of charge, which is a rather rare experience (and I think that’s stupid, but well, that’s just me I guess).

Update: hey, I just saw this one doesn’t have pictures yet. I guess I’ll have to do that a little later… can’t find them right now.

Jelmer has just installed the latest version of Wordpress on JTeam’s production machine. I still host my blog there and I think they were installing a new web server including the latest and greatest of all the software. Thanks Jelmer.

So now that Wordpress has this tagging stuff built in, I guess I have to go along with the whole Web two dot oooh and rounded corners thing. I’ve just started tagging my posts, in addition to adding categories to them. I’ve also added a cloud of tags, sometimes also called a tag cloud. I’m wondering when that word will make it into the Oxford English Dictionary. And also what the Dutch translation will be: ‘label wolk’ I though at first, but I guess ‘label’ is already an English word.

I’ve also started using Dopplr a while ago. Dopplr is this service with which burglars can see if you’re at home or abroad and can then safely break into your house to steal anything but your laptop (because you’ll have that with you I would say). It’s still nice though to be able to see where some of your friends are heading in near future.

Okay, I admit, I just finished The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. I guess I don’t have to elaborate about the story this little books tells.

Second confession: last summer, I actually also read her other novel: Everyone Worth Knowing.

You know, as a guy, I now of course have to say that I just read the books because I wanted to know what they were about and why girls like them soooo much. So here I go: you know, I just read them to figure out why girls like these novels so much, that’s it…

I didn’t see the movie of The Devil Wears Prada, so I can’t comment on that. I can comment on the two books though.

They’re remarkably similar in the sense that they’re easy to read, fast-paced stories about a girl in a glamorous industry with happy endings, after they almost lost their entire group of friends because of becoming too involved in this industry where they have a job in.

I personally liked the first one I read a little better, probably because I didn’t know the theme yet or so.

Anyway, both books were definitely entertaining, especially when traveling, or spending time on a plane or so…

Last Tuesday I had to go Antwerp. According to Google Maps (normally very accurate), my trip would take me approximately 75 minutes. Now I had to be on time; at 9 o’clock sharp, I had to kick off a public Core Spring training that lasts for 4 days.

I left at a quarter to seven (yes, that’s 6.45am), so I had two hours and fifteen minutes, almost twice the time it would take me to get there in normal circumstances. The first 80 kilometers or so were just going very smooth, I was doing about 130 kph on the highway and encountered almost nobody on the highway. Right before the border I figured out I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so I stopped at a gas station to get something to eat. I had my breakfast, a little tea and about 20 minutes later I was on my way again.

I was driving towards Antwerp, switching radio stations (from the Dutch 3FM to the Belgian Donna), confident of reaching my destination on time, when all of a sudden traffic came to a grinding halt. And then the trouble began. We simply sat there for more than 15 minutes, without moving an inch. Then we moved, let’s say 500 meters and then again, traffic halted. This continued until I saw the first sign with directions: Antwerp was still 30 kilometers away and I had just maneuvered myself into one of the heaviest traffic jams I have ever encountered. People around me were sitting there like it was their every job, having cigarettes, listening to the radio, drinking bottles of water. In the end, I opened up my window, got somebody’s attention and asked if this was normal. The women in the Toyota Corolla answered positively, this was everyday’s business, and it wouldn’t get better anytime soon.

So, I realized, at about 8.00am, this can’t be really bad, I still have about an hour to reach my destination… I started to get a little worried about 8.30, when I heard the bi-hourly news bulletin, updating me about the latest things that had happened in Belgium. The traffic information notified me of the jam that was ahead of me. It would still last for 10 kilometers…

I though back of the days I first started to work in Amsterdam, while living in Utrecht. As soon as I got a car, I started driving back and forth to Amsterdam. It took me little over an hour to get there everyday, while normally it would only take about 40 minutes. I complained so badly, that my roommates (I was still living in a student home) were getting sick and tired of me in no time… A year later, travel time had increased to 75 minutes, and when I’m driving from my place (I moved to Amsterdam several years ago, but I’m back in Utrecht now, so to the distance nothing has changed really) to Amsterdam right now, during rush hour, it would definitely take me 90 minutes. And there I was, in Belgium, sitting in a jam that wasn’t even caused by an accident and nobody complained!!!! It all became clear to me: we Dutch people are just a bunch of wheenies. We can’t even deal with 30 minutes delay, we just complain, complain and complain…

Back to the Belgian highways… About an hour later later, I finally managed to leave the highway. Now I still had to find my destination, which actually didn’t prove to be really difficult. I finally arrived at a few minutes past ten, more than an hour late! Now, all of this wouldn’t have been so terrible, if not for the fact that 12 people were waiting! Finally, things were quite okay, we managed to compensate the extra hour later that day and everybody was sort of okay with it, at least, except for myself, because I hated it…

One thing I did learn. The Belgians, they do not complain! And that’s something we Dutch people can definitely learn from them

I just arrived back home and am going for a little drink in a minute. Fortunately the pub we are meeting up is only 200 meters from my places, so I can’t get stuck in traffic. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking the train to Schiphol Airport and a plane to Athens, Greece, that should also prove to be a lot easier than the road to Antwerp I was on last Tuesday…

Last July, I visited a client in Athens and decided to stay a few days near the sea in advance of my visit. I looked for a hotel but couldn’t really find anything that I liked. I wasn’t able to book a room at Aegeon Beach Hotel, but unfortunately that was fully booked already. Finally I got a good deal at the Divani Apollon hotel in Voliagmeni, a good neighborhood, just a little South-East of Athens (technically still part of Athens I believe).

The overall experience wasn’t that good I must say. I booked a room with an view over the sea. Although I got, I thought it wasn’t really satisfactory. The overall quality of the facilities offered by the hotel were definitely good, but that’s not what I’m visiting a hotel for usually. I’d like to feel at home and that’s something this hotel definitely did not do. I can’t really put my finger on what it is that didn’t make me feel at home, but it’s definitely not a hotel I’m going back to anymore.

Later on me and a friend of mine were discussing some of the criteria that a good hotel should have but that are not so obvious from reviews oftentimes. Those included:

• Owner occupied. It’s best if the hotel is still occupied and ran by the owner. The owner usually started the hotel with a specific idea of hospitality in mind and he (or she) is probably the best to enforce that idea
• Not part of a chain. I recognize that hotel chains are an important experience for some in the sense that they offer consistent quality where ever you are, but usually it takes away all the authenticity a hotel has