Alef Arendsen

Via The Apathist: three very cool ads for Icelandic Vodka brand Reyka. I should ping Arjen (Iceland fan) and see when he’s in town so we can try this out.

I’m subscribed to this service called Dopplr. The idea is that you keep an online record of your trips that you share with friends and others. Since I travel quite a bit it’s nice that through this service I can keep a record of my travels myself and that others will be able to see where I’m heading as well.

Now more or less a week ago there was this Finnish guy that shared his trips with me. I don’t know the guy, he just shared his trips with me. Now, the profile looked legit and I also shared my profile with them. You know, you’ve got types who are picky about allowing people seeing what they do, which places they travel to and so on and you’ve got types that don’t care that much about privacy. Well, I’m one of the latter types, so I shared my trips with the guy.

Now, in the past few days, this Finnish guy showed an amazing amount of activity on Dopplr, which I noted just now.

In the next few months he’s traveling to Göteborg, Copenhagen, Cannes, Antwerp, Helsinki, Perloz (Italy, that’s where I spend a big amount of my time), Kostomuksha (wherever that is), Brussels, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Zamoanga. The last place is a city in the South-West of the Philippines. I’m curious to know what the guy is going to do there. Generally, it’s a no-go area, because the South-West of the Philippines is quite active as far as kidnappings and anti-Western people are concerned (read: rebels, terrorist-like figures).

Now I can tell you, it’s quite a coincidence too that Matti is traveling to Antwerp, Perloz (of all places) too. Even better, he’ll be in all those places at the same time I’ll be there! On top of this: he’s in Manila… right now…!! I’m there too… right now…! It looks like I’ve got a new friend!! Hurray!

Friend, stalker, I don’t know which one it is. Now I don’t care all too much about this, as it’s only a Finnish guy that has a pretty intensive travel schedule (and apparently he hasn’t decided on some of his trips either, as he’s bound to be in both Prague and Zamboanga on July 3rd). His profile checks out, the guy is real and he seems to be in marketing, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. But this did lead me to think that with all these social networks, we’re going to have a lot more online stalkers running about and I’m curious to see when the first hectic stories about online stalkers are going to be in the news. Let’s just wait and see.

In the meantime, Matti (that’s the guys first name), if I run into you in one of these places, I’ll make sure to buy you a drink!

By the way, feel free to share your trips with me on Dopplr.com/traveller/alefarendsen

I recently got my road bike fixed up again and hope to be starting some serious exercise again from this weekend on. That is, when the wind is not going to be any good–so far it looks like it’s going to be only 5 or 6 knots, not even remotely enough for the 14sqm kite.

I came across Ben’s blog entry on his new road bike and one of the comments was just hilarious. It mentioned this blog with advice on what to do if you’re falling down from/with your bike in public. A few tips:

• Stay down. Make it look as though, while you certainly didn’t mean to wind up on the pavement, you’re kind of happy you did. Go into your bag, make a few phone calls, maybe eat something. Or else just fold your hands behind your head, relax, and gaze wistfully at the sky. People respect people who take life as it comes.
• Make it count. Once you realize you’re going down, maximize the shock value. Send the bike sliding for a few yards. If you can, take a few other riders with you. Then get up and finish your bike off like Pete Townshend laying waste to his guitar at the end of a concert. Maybe even take out a car windshield too. Clumbsiness is embarrassing–carnage is awesome.
• Jump right up and shout incredulously. “Holy crap! Did you see that?!?”
• Accost and blame a diminutive, non-English speaking tourist.
• Breakdance!

Now I’m pretty familiar to airlines. I’m traveling frequently, but there are also a few airlines out there that are customers of ours. And apart from that, I’ve visited one or two GDSs as well in the last few years. So I think I can say I’m familiar a little bit to the way airlines work, at least when it comes to ticketing. Everytime I come acros one of those strange reasonings of either one of the GDCs or the airline itself, again, I’m amazed.

This time it’s a ticket to Milan Malpensa. I need a ticket to Milan on the 21st of June and I’m probably using different means to getting back. This measn I only need a single ticket. At first I was searching for a return ticket as well, because I hadn’t thought of taking the car back.

Now the single ticket from Amterdam (AMS) to Milan Malpensa (MXP) with KLM is (through the KLM website) only available as a business class ticket, which would cost me around €1200,=.

Getting the same ticket going to MXP on the 21st of June, but flying back on the 28th (actually, I’ll not be flying back, but let’s just assume I do, to get a return ticket). is available for €200,=. In other words: a return ticket is way cheaper than a single ticket!

I guess I have to go through my travel agent again, to get me a ticket or so…

Yesterday I arrived in Manila in the Philippines. I’m here for a week for a training session for a client of ours. Now, there’s a six-hour time difference between the Netherlands and the Philippines. It’s only six hours, but it’s the wrong way; at least for me… Six hours to the West is okay, the only thing you have to do then is postpone sleeping a little bit.

Six hours to the East is terrible. It’s like having to get to bed at 6pm in the afternoon, or (if you haven’t managed to get sleep on the flight), skipping one night of sleep all together If I do manage to get some sleep on the plane it’s only a few hours, just like this time. And then I always make the same mistake: I go to my hotel, promise myself to only get two hours of sleep, to find myself in bed 7 hours later.

So there I was, yesterday afternoon at about 5pm, completely awake .

I was browsing the interweb the other day and came across this article on www.nu.nl about not eating 16 hours pre-flight and only starting eating again upon arrival, somehow helping to prevent jet lag. The original research was done at Harvard and I’m definitely going to try this out next time…

A while ago, I blogged about raw herring and it being a Dutch tradition.

Joost recently sent me a link to a video on MSNBC.com where two reporters tour Holland. The video ends with the two reporters eating raw herring, being totally disgusting about it, except for the pickles

Now, I’m not going to complain about this, or Delft being pictured with its Delft’s Blue ceramic pottery, Leiden with Vermeer, the Keukenhof (pronounced the Kuukenhoof), Gouda (pronounced Houda) with its cheese and last but not the always (in)famous clogs, because you know… that’s just the way foreigners see the Netherlands I guess.

I do have to give them one compliment though: they ended up in the Wijnand and Fockink, truely the best place to hang out at in Amsterdam if you want see both Dutch tradition and meet great people. Also watch it (especially the part around 3m30) if you haven’t been there yet, are planning on going and if you don’t know how to sip a gin. You’re never going to believe it: Joost is showing you how to do it!

‘Proost’ they would say in the Netherlands.

p.s. I’m not quick on the tips about nice secret hideouts usually, but as I know, most tourists won’t like this place anyway, and will only stop for a quick drink and then leave. Since it’s like that already anyway, I might as well spread the word a little further. More info on the Wijnand and Fockink, can be found here and here.

JTeam, that other company I still occasionally do some work for, although this has dropped to very-close-to-zero in the last 18 months, has recently hired somebody from Australia or New Zealand (now I’m not sure which one of those it is, but he surely is from somewhere down under ). Anyway, Tim (the Toolman) recently blogged about the 30% ruling and I just have link to his blog entry, because I still think the 30% ruling is one of the examples that the Dutch government is (despite what many people think) capable after all of designing laws that help.

The basic idea is that if you are an internationally sourced employee (as Tim also explains) in certain cases (for example if your skill is hard to come by), you are eligible for a tax cut of about 30% (well, this is not exactly how it works I can remember, but in any case, it’s a decent tax cut). Back in the dot-com days, with SmartHaven we hired numerous expats that could apply for this rule. Obviously Amsterdam was, and still is a attractive place to work so this was a way for SmartHaven to attract some good personnel, despite the difficult market back then.

I Amsterdam.com has a good article on the 30% ruling that should get you started.

In the meantime, I just heard I’m presenting at the JTeam Tech Meeting next June 5 at around dinner time. If you’re up for a good portion of Spring 2.5, don’t hesitate to join! I think pizza and beer are provided!

Next Friday it’s that time of the quarter again. It’s the Q2 Amsterdam Java Meetup! Last quarter we unfortunately had to miss out on this wonderful event. My travel schedule didn’t really allow me to organize it this winter.

More information can be found on a separate blog entry on our corporate blog.

Today I had a fantastic session at IJmuiden. I went to the beach with Lars at about 1pm and we had fun until around 6.30pm when (totally exhausted) we left the beach. Last Friday night, I modified one of my bars a little bit and this was the first time I tried it out and it worked perfectly.

I modified the Gaastra Jekyll bar to giveme an easier depower setup. The out-of-the-box setup kind of confuses me as it hard to depower the kite in a over-powered situation. The picture below should give you a little bit of an impression. The blue plastic strap is the depower strap. The red one powers the kite more. This means that in over-powered situations you will want to pull the blue plastic strap easily and quickly in order to depower the kite.

Doing this is going to be hard in the current setup (as shown in the picture–click on it for a bigger version). The blue strap is fixed to the depower chord (using the metal square-like ring). The black triangle below the metal ring is the stopper ball. and the pink and white lines are running to the chicken loop. Essentially this setup forces the stopper ball down if you’re depowering the kite using the depower strap. If you’re over-powered there is absolutely no room for this–the bar will be fully extended upwards, right up to the stopper ball.

The solution for me was simple: get rid of the ring that fixes the blue depower strap to the depower chord (or whatever you call the lines that are leading down the chicken loop). This makes it possible to pull the blue strap without forcing the stopper ball down. I tested it a few time today and now, the bar setup if the best I’ve ever had on a bar.

The only disadvantage is that if you’ve depowered the kite a little, the blue strap dangles a little, whereas previously it would have been attached to the lines running down to the chicken loop. I’ll fix this later on and keep you posted. I’m seriously not sure why Gaastra designed the bar like this. The depower function is (if left unmodified) simply unusable IMO.

p.s. if you need more detailed pictures, let me know, then I’ll unwind the lines if it’s light out and take some better ones…
p.p.s. Ah, did I mention that other than this, the bar and kite are GREAT!?

It’s been a while… I’ve been enjoying some fine holidays… Things all started when we finally got word about the elettricista being able to start installing electricity in our house in Italy around Queensday. Normally, I’d be at home for Queensday, ‘coz my house is located right in the district where the best (outdoor) partying is going on. Normally, I’d have arranged a few turntables, invited a few DJ friends of mine and started a party, but not this year.

Saturday, I was off to Milan. That night, we had a nice party in Plastic in Milan. Sunday, I traveled to Perloz, to start working with the electrician on Monday on the electricity. Things went quite smooth, as I had a friend over, speaking fluently Italian. This helped a lot of course.

This picture by the way shows the spring where we get our water from. The little metal tube you can see gets us water and the little whole next to it, has some shutters in it. From the spring, currently, there is no tubing to the house (well, partially, but it’s not connected). Later in the week, we also met with the tubista (plumber) to start investigating how to install hot water and to fix the tubing issue.

Margriet, this friend of mine, was invited by the Dutch consulate to join for a pre-Queensday party on Tuesday night. So Tuesday afternoon, we drove back to Milan to attend to this (quite formal) event. That was nice too… Thursday morning I drove back to Perloz, to meet with Lars and Pyke, for two more days of working at the house.

When I was there earlier in the week, the weather wasn’t very nice. This time round, it was 22 degrees, even at an altitude of 1150m (that’s where the house is). The cherry blossom was very nice…

Friday, I flew back to Amsterdam, to finish off the day at Margriet and Giorgio’s, where we had a few bottles of wine and some nasty Sicilian drink called Mirto or Nirto (I can’t exactly remember).

Saturday, I left for Greece. Only having left the airport 10 hours before, I was back at about noon, to join my sister-in-law, brother and two kids to fly to Lefkada. That’s where we met up with up with my parents, other brother and family and two friends of mine. We had rented two boats to take out on the Ionian Sea for a week.

The week flew by, unfortunately. We took the boats to Ithaka, Meganisi, Kalamos and lots of deserted nice litle bays, where the anchor settled the boat and allowed us to swim and relax. At one point, my dad (one ‘the other boat’) threw the anchor out in a place where it was very rocky. Now, if you know anything about anchoring, you shouldn’t do it in rocky places. The anchor got stuck and I had to release it at a depth of about 10 meters… Worked out fortunately, but because I forgot to clear, my ears hurt a bit after that… Traveling back, I had my little niece take my suitcase, which got me some nice pictures

Now I’m back home. I came back Saturday night, after which I had a BBQ at Margriet and Giorgio’s. Yesterday I had another BBQ at Martijn and Nicole’s so I’ve even seen some of my friends again. Tonight I’m off to Denmark for two days and today is all about preparing for that gig… Too bad, because I already got two phone calls from friends inviting me for a kite surfing session…