Alef Arendsen

I finished reading This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes today in the breaks that I had while in class. The book is about a guy who’s stuck in his house and because of some strange pain he all of a sudden has, has to the doctor. After this event, a series of strange things happen to him that doesn’t fit him at all, but do pull him out of his normal context.

A very funny read and in the meantime, giving a very good perspective at what’s going on in Los Angeles. Other than that it also it a bit of eye opener on the important things in life.

I had a fun two days with it (yes, I finished reading it that quick).

p.s. Arddjjen, if your reading this, I’m not sure you can find this on in the Schiphol Top 10. I bought it at Selexyz a few months ago…

This morning I left at about 8am for Schiphol airport to fly to Malta, via Milano Malpensa. I had to stay in Milan for about 3 hours, but I didn’t really mind. Getting a good Italian lunch is never a punishment. At the check-in desk in Amsterdam I only got my ticket for the first leg and didn’t think about asking my ticket for the second leg.

On the way, we heard that there was major trouble at Milan Malpensa, because of fog. Arriving at Milan, I immediately proceeded to the transfer, to find about 100 people, not in such a good mood. Apparently, the whole airport had been closed down for about 2 hours because of the fog. I queued up for about 10 minutes during which, nothing really happened. I figured I was going to be smart, by simply exiting the airpot all together (at least, passing passport control), and proceeding to the check-in (ordinary check-in, not the transfer desk).

That was a bit of a mistake. Whereas at the transfer desk, I found about 100 people, in the main hall of terminal 1, there was at least a thousand all standing in line. I tried to sneak my way into the queue in middle, but people didn’t really like that.

Now we have a saying in Dutch that says: ‘Tom Poes verzin een list’. Tom Poes is a creation of Dutch comic artist Marten Toonder (Tom is a Dutch first name, Poes means cat, or pussy). ‘Tom Poes vezin een list’ can be translated as ‘Quickly, think of a ruse’, at least, according to Wikipedia.

I regularly think to myself: Tom Poes verzin een list! That always helps. This time as well. I proceeded to the gates and had to go through passport control. A lady stopped me and told me I had to go back to get my boarding pass. I did have an e-ticket receipt though and that’s what I used to brag my way in. I told her I exited security because I needed to go outside (now, I didn’t need to go outside, oh well…) and I forgot to pick up my boarding pass at the transfer desk. This (fortunately) did the trick. Otherwise I would never have made it to my flight again.

Again, I arrived at the transfer desk, which was now manned by only one service employee (you gotta love ‘em, those Italians ). Things went relatively quickly though and after say 20 minutes, I walked out of there with my boarding pass.

It fortunately wasn’t too late to get a bit of espresso and a slice of pizza (I had figured I should get some decent lunch, but well, this wasn’t too bad after all) and at 2.40pm my flight to Malta left. I’m here now in a hotel by the sea, with the waves crashing into the shores… So far so good

UPDATE: please don’t think I didn’t have a fun time at Malpensa and also don’t think I hate Italy . I love Italy in fact, it’s just a little disorganized at times, as Andrea says in the comments. But well, if the weather is always nice, if there’s plenty of food and if people get old without being organized, why bother huh . Sure enough, a little more organization would be great of course…

Phew, finally this cupboard I had made by Wout is finished. I came home yesterday from Stockholm, where I had a great week (although the cold I had remained a little and made things a little less pleasant sometimes). I only got a very small glance of the cupboard, because I immediately took off again to do a short bit of kiting. We had strong (but a little gusty) winds yesterday, but it was.

This morning I got to filling the cupboard with some of my books and I’m quite happy with it. No more littering of books throughout my entire apartment. Now next week, I’ll organize this thing a little more. Tomorrow I have to go to Malta and I’ve got a ton (too many) other things to do today (need to get a haircut, gotta drop some stuff off at my brother’s place, there’s always the laundering and then my parents are dropping by tonight).

By the way, as you can see, I made another small miscalculation. The light only just fits underneath the cupboard. Now, I’m not sure this is working in (esthetically speaking), so I’ll probably have to find another solution for it.

p.s. And yes, Emerson, that’s a set of poker chips

Hopefully my cupboard is finished by now. Last Sunday, when I left for Stockholm, I was actually glad I didn’t stay at home any longer. My whole house smelled like paint and this is a terrible smell, that’s almost making me sick (like having a aching throat). Anyway, I was presenting at the Spring User Group (we had a really nice meeting again) and apparently, they had just painted one of the walls. So there I was again, in the middle of that smell again . I immediately had that feeling of the aching throat again… I think I’ll be coughing again tomorrow…

There’s nothing like home they say, even if it smells like paint

I’m looking forward to seeing what the cupboard looks like!

Marc, a kiteboarding friend of mine is in New Zealand for a six weeks (!). They took a camper van covered with comic figures and are driving their way through the Southern Island right now. You can follow them and see the amazing pictures Marc is making on their web log.

In the meantime, Maurice and Corine are in New Zealand, not using a camper van but bicycles. It seems like they’re also having plenty of fun and are also setting some speed records. So far, Maurice has set a daunting record speed of more than 91 km/h. Nice to follow them too, on his, respectively her blog. They’re actually also on the South Island, so I’m wondering whether they’ll meet (they don’t know eachother at all).

I’m in Stockholm at the moment, visiting my friend the Swiss chef again. He’s the cook in the conference center where we’re hosting a training this week. The conference center is called Münchenbryggeriet and is overlooking the Riddarfjärden (or Knight’s Fjord) in Stockholm. I has a very nice feel to it. The thing that makes it very pleasant though is my friend the Swiss chef. No, seriously, I’m not mistaking him for the Swedish Chef, although the guy does look a bit weird . Today we had chicken with mozzarella and bacon and potato gratin… Good stuff…

Anyway, Thursday a friend of mine from is dropping by. He’s living in Åmål. Well, actually, I can never remember if he really is living in Åmål or if it’s the town where Fucking Åmål was shot but which actually wasn’t the town called Åmål. Well, anyway, this is getting complicated, so I think I’ll just leave it. He’s dropping by and last few times I spent time with him in Scandinavia I really had fun (see Timber rafting in Sweden and Food and Drinks in Oslo). Well, we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m also looking forward to going back home again, because it seems like we’ll have wind next Friday and Saturday!!!! And now I don’t think you have to guess what I’ll be doing when there’s wind

Wout will ill yesterday, so he wasn’t able to finish the cupboard unfortunately. He did do the first paint though. Things will be finish by Monday hopefully. I’ll be in Stockholm then actually, so won’t be able to clean up the house before I get back next week. Actually by then, the cleaning lady will have dropped by, so I guess she has to deal with all the dust Wout left behind, gna gna gna…

By the way, I’ve added a geo mashup page to my blog, so you can see from where I am posting. This is to make it even more easy for thieves to break into my house

Yesterday was the second day of the cupboard project. Things are going quite well and hopefully tomorrow, the cupboard will almost done. I guess by then, the only thing left to do will be a bunch of painting. This is what the whole thing looks like right now:

Wout solved the problem with the power socket by simply cutting out a part of the vertical right there. You can see below what that looks like. Now, other than all the dust in my home right now, I’m pretty happy with all of it.

After Wout got his materials yesterday and we talked the whole thing throuhg, he went on to put together a large part of the frame for the cupboard that will finally keep all my books and other stuff. I had drawn the cupboard myself and it was pretty well-done, other than the fact that it was 30cm too wide . I posted about the cupboard a few weeks ago when I was in my Dutch period.

We corrected that yesterday morning, but… forgot to think about the power socket on the left. So (as you can see now), the power socket is straight behind one of the verticals… I think Wout tha found a way to solve this already. Well, we’ll see. Ah, and it’s going to be white! And the whole thing should be done by Friday, hopefully. It pretty fortunate to be installed this week, because I’m mainly working from home this week.

A while ago, I was kiting with Marc and some others and the winds were not good enough for the 8sqm. That was when I had to get the 12sqm again and I hate that kite. It’s slow, it’s got pulleys and it’s got all kinds of other stuff I don’t like (airlock valves and more things that can break). That day I lend my 8sqm Gaastra Jekyll to a little kid (well, I guess he was 14 or so. that’s less than half my age, so that qualifies as little…) who wanted to try it out and he was very much (and positively) surprised by the kite. Earlier that weekend I spoke to a guy that had the 14sqm Jekyll and he told me that that kite was obviously less speedy than the 8sqm, but that he positively surprised by its turning speed; he’d never had a speedier 14sqm before.

That made me decide to buy the 14sqm as well and to get rid the 12sqm, or at least, use the 14sqm Jekyll instead. I haven’t been able to test it yet and had the flue for four days last week, I also couldn’t go this weekend (well, there wasn’t enough wind even for a 14sqm this weekend anyway). So now hopefully, my spending spree related to kite boarding is finished for a while… This sport has cost me way too much money in the last year. But I think I’ve nailed it, although I’m still not quite sure if an 8sqm and a 14sqm will cut it. There is quite a big gap between the two kites. So if it’s blowing 18 knots for example, I should still be able to take the 14sqm, but then again, 18 knots is the minimum for the 8sqm and that kite is way faster and much easier to use. So a bigger overlap would have been good. Sure, I stil have the 12sqm, but like I said, I’d rather not use that kite anymore to be honest .

So I’ve played a few games of poker yesterday, seen a few movies and listened to some music instead. The movies were Into the Wild (okay movie), No Country for Old Men (great movie, the best of the five I’ve seen in the past few days), Juno (nice, but overrated if you ask me), In the Valley of Elah (great movie, great performance by Tommy Lee Jones) and We Own the Night (good movie, if the last 10 minutes would’ve been better, it would have been comparable to The Departed if you ask me).

Music-wise, I’ve bought 23 Seconds from Cobblestone Jazz, a Jazz compilation album called The Jazz Influence (vol. 3), compiled by Kevin Yost, Booka Shade’s DJ KiCKS release and the soundtrack for Into the Wild, by Eddie Vedder (nice, Bruce Springsteen-style music, by Eddie Vedder, great stuff).

Oh, and the pictures… those are pictures from earlier kite sessions (click for larger versions). They’re all courtesy of Marc van Vliet.