Alef Arendsen

Questa sera i olandesi hanno dato una grande schiaffone agli italiani. Okay, that’s enough Italian for now. I won’t repeat the other stuff I learnt tonight. After I asked an Italian friend of mine (by text message): ‘come stai? ’, he responded by saying ‘come con tre dita nel ….’. I think Italians will probably be able to fill in the rest of the sentence .

Anyway, for those not in the know, the Dutch soccer team beat the Italian team tonight with 3 to 0. This is a great victory, as first of all, the Italian are the ruling world champion and second, it was 30 years ago since the Dutch soccer last won from the Italian. Now, of course (as always) we keep our feet on the ground in Holland and are all saying that we still have another two matches to go before we have survived the ‘group of death’ (with France and Romania being the other two teams).

I have a few workers dropping by at my house next week (a tubista, a muratore and an elettricista). If any Italian are listening in. What should I bring to ease the pain and to convince them they should still work for me (they have do do a lot of stuff next week, such as finishing the installation of the electricity, installing hot water and so on)? Anything slightly more original than a bottle of limoncello will do. It’s in the North of Italy (Valle d’Aosta).

Update: wow, the amount of press is amazing, and not just that, the headlines are great:

• Dutch thrash aging Italians (International Herald Tribune)
• Italy humbled in Euro shocker (Melbourne Herald Sun)
• Orange crush Italy in Group of Death opener (London Free Press)
• Rampant Netherlands crush sorry Italy (CNN International)
• Italy peeled like Oranges (Goal.com)
• First blood to Dutch in Group of Death (The Herald)
• Dutch masterclass sinks Italy as France only draw (Earthtimes)

Ah, and about that off side thing, let’s quote from the source:

“If a defending player steps behind his own goal line in order to place an opponent in an offside position, the referee shall allow play to continue and caution the defender for deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee’s permission when the ball is next out of play.”

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…

Yesterday I posted about my day on Strand Horst, which was great.

I also had my nephew and niece over last night. I slept on the couch, which wasn’t that comfortable, but all-in-all not too bad also. I told them to only wake me up when the 8 was on the clock. My brother had told me that if I succeeded in doing this, it would be the first time ever (normally they wake up at 6.30 or 7′ish). At 8.03, they were standing next to me…

Later this morning I dropped them off at my brother’s place where I had a coffee and we chatted a little. Then Mark called and he told me he was heading to Stichtse Brug to start kiting. The wind wasn’t as good as yesterday he said, but still good enough for a good session.

After being laughed at by my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, niece and the other members of the family present (what, it’s 8 degrees Celcius out there and the water is close to freezing, you’re crazy), I went drove off and got to de Stichtse Brug at about 1.30pm. Mark was just changing his 12sqm for a 17sqm (wow). After I launched him, I got my own kite, soon to found out that I had forgotten this %*&$#(*%$$#( airlock valve. Cabrinha has pulleys and Cabrinha has valves… Arggh… I already thought: well, that’s it for today.

I tried my 8sqm for a little while, but that turned out to be nothing and then… Jack turned up!! Jack also has Cabrinha kite, and he has an airlock valve. Also, he was not planning on going out n the water, so I got take his valve for a little while.

That was just great… I immediately geared up and it was simply another great day. The 12sqm really is a lot slower than the 8sqm (I’m thinking of buying a 14sqm of the same brand as the 8sqm, because I simply think it rocks), but it was still *a lot* of fun.

Jack by the way made a little movie of today’s session. Other people that joined were Mark and Constantin. Notice the Jekyll 8sqm flying as well by the way: a little kid (well, he was 14 or so I think, but only 50kg) used my Jekyll for a little while and had some great fun

Man, this session was useless. I went to IJmuiden for the first time. The winds were okay in the forecast, about 20 knots. When I arrived, it looks like it was a lot less. So I took my 12sqm Switchblade. After someone helped me launch I already noticed I didn’t exactly have a lot of depower left anymore, but still I got in the water. After 10 minutes, I got out again, because the winds were picking up and 12sqm was simply way too much. After I got out my 8sqm Jekyll, things went a lot better, although I still sucked quite a bit. The breaking waves are sometimes simply too big to get through for me, and jumping over them is not an option yet…

No wonder though those waves are so big with a strong SW wind blowing at IJmuiden, especially when you look the coast line with the pier and all. I was glad I didn’t stay in the water with my 12sqm, because the winds peaked at 25 – 28 knots in the afternoon. I would surely have been in trouble.

Because I was constantly loosing my board, I was body dragging a lot and got cold quite quickly, so it was the longest of all sessions… Still good though, to have been in the water for a while at 8 degrees Celcius with water about 6 or 7 degrees Celcius.

Oh, and my latest 5k time (today) was 24m38. 19 seconds faster than last time…

Yesterday, me and two others enjoyed our last kite boarding session of the year at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. The water was cold, but just as earlier this month, we dressed up like Ninjas and off we went. Also, we went to the sea this time, as the lakes in Holland are exceptionally cold right now, after a little cold spell earlier two weeks ago. The surface water is probably not more than 2 or 3 degrees right now in the lakes, whereas the sea still is about 8 or 9 degrees I believe.

It wasn’t much of a session, as the winds quickly dropped to levels where I could not get decent enough speed anymore with my 12sqm. I forgot to bring my 16.5sqm (stupid!!!). The other two guys did bring their bigger kites, but then again, jumping and decently going up-wind was pretty much impossible for them too…

At least I got to shoot some soul-session like pictures…

Now for a quick bite and off to my friends to celebrate New Year’s.

When I was a kid, we used to play a board game called Wildlife, created by the World Nature Fund. The game was meant to create an understanding with young kids for endangered species. It was one of the many board games we played (we also played Monopoly a lot, and Risk and many other board games). Wildlife had a map of the world that you had to travel across and on the way, you had to save all kinds of endangered species. One of the species I believe was the Dodo on the island of Mauritius, that went extinct in the 17th century.

Mauritius is a small volcanic island next to Madagascar and only because of the game, I knew where it was. I can’t remember exactly why, but the game caused me to always have a kind of weird idea about Mauritius–the island used to intrigue me when I was young.

Last October I got the chance to actually visit Mauritius. One of our clients has an office on the island and there was of a group of people that needed training. I decided that a week of holidays in addition to spending a week working on the island would be nice, so that’s how I ended up on Mauritius from the 21st of October until the 2nd of November.

I left for Schiphol on the 21st and took my kiteboarding gear with me. I had heard and read that Mauritius has strong and very consistent winds (due to the SE trade winds) between 15 and 25 knots. Because 15 knots isn’t enough for my 8sqm and 25 is a little bit too much for my 12sqm kite, I brought both, in addition to my board (a Naish Haze, 133cm). I also brought my shorty, which you really don’t have to do if you’re going to Mauritius at any time other than in the middle of their winter (the water was 23 degrees, warm enough for just a rashguard and board shorts).

I had quickly taken a look at the luggage limitations for KLM, Air France and Air Mauritius and I learnt that they still allow 1 piece of 32 kilos (that’s exactly the weight of the kite board bag I borrowed from a friend). On Schiphol I had to pay 40 euros to get it shipped to Mauritius. On my way back the woman at the check-in desk mistakenly held my bag for golf equipment which apparently is free. A German guy told me to look at the Prolimit kite/golf bag that supposedly looks like a golf bag so is allowed on the plane without paying.

The first week I had to work and unfortunately only did some kiteboarding on Wednesday when I was done early. That already proved to be very nice!

The week after I was done with work I actually had more time to do some serious kite boarding. I was staying at the Indian Resort (which is located right at the best kite boarding spot on Mauritius: Le Morne beach), so the beach was just minutes away from my hotel room!

About the hotel: it’s a resort with all kinds of people staying there on an all-inclusive basis. I usually don’t like this a lot, because I’m more into the boutique hotels (smaller, owner-occupied, et cetera), but for this time, it was actually very nice, because of it being so close to the kite spot.

Kiting on Mauritius was great. I was used to doing water sports in warm countries with warm water already because I had visited Costa Rica three times in the past to get some serious wave surfing done, but this was even better. Having a kite to propel you, clear blue waters below you with a big lagoon with flat waters, but a bit further out big waves to play in is just awesome! Seriously, although Wijk aan Zee is great too, this beats everything.

I hope to be posting some pictures soon. I did make some, but didn’t get them off of my camera yet.

That was the recipe for the Life of Pi a book written by Yann Martel.

I’ve just finished reading it and if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it. All in all a definite page turner that keeps your attention until the very last page. Using a highly unusual scenario (a 16 y/o boy gets trapped on a life vessel with a Bengal tiger, a Chimpansee, a Zebra and a Hyena), the author does a very good job at building up the tension until the end of the book, although the outcome is already known (the boy survives).

Interestingly, I came across a guy last week that had lived in Pondicherry. He could not confirm if there had ever been a zoo there.

[update - november 28] The more I think about this book, the better I like it. It has stuck all this time (well, it’s only been a month anyway, but that’s enough). I think this is going to be my 2007 favorite.

I travel a lot on planes. When on the airport or in the plane, working on the laptop is not always my favorite activity, so for times when I get fed up with Eclipse, Mail.App or any other computer’ish something, I always have a stack of magazines with me. Titles that are always in my handbag are Esquire and Economist.

I have a subscription to the Dutch Esquire and also to the Economist. I value the Economist highly as it brings me up-to-date on all major issues happening everywhere. I basically serves as replacement for my television set (I don’t have one) and my newspaper (don’t have one either). Even I had ones of those, I probably wouldn’t be able to use / read it much, because I’m hardly ever at home.

Anyway, when traveling to Holland last weekend, at Paris CDG airport I came across Monocle. It was new to me, and as a regular visitor to the book shops on the airport, that’s quite something. I bought a copy (the November issue) and was pleasantly surprised by the content. Sometimes I find the Economist a little too heavy a read (too much on the business, too little lifestyle) and from the Esquire, it’s a little bit the other way around: too much lifestyle and no ‘useful’ information .

Until now, I find Monocle to be a good cross-over between Economist and Esquire. Gents@Monocle: I you don’t like this comparison, let me know if you have something better

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 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…