Alef Arendsen

I did a little tour of Europe last week. Well, actually, it was just Italy and London, but it felt like I traveled all of Europe in just 6 days. Peter and I had a conference in Rome on Saturday. We left on Friday for Rome and had a little bit of dinner in place close by. In the university building of Rome, I met up with a lot of people the day after that I had only met before online, on some of the Italian Spring mailing lists for example.

Peter on his skis in the backyard

At the conference I did a talk, which I thank was quite well received. We had some great Italian lunch after the conference and in the night, we had a simple dinner and went to bed early. The following day, we took a taxi to the airport to fly to Torino. We arrived at about 9.30 after which we took a car up to Gressoney, for my second skiing trip this season. The conditions during my trip in December already were excellent, this time around they were even better. Right before we arrived, there was a big pack of fresh snow and we had some great fun on the first day.

The walk up to the house, proved to be even more tricky than last time. It took about an hour (instead of 35 minutes, which it was last December) to finally arrive at the house. With at least 40cm more snow on the road as in December, it was quite rough.

Me getting water near Casa Pura Vida

The following days we skied (well, I did snowboarding, Peter had his telemark skies with him) in the Gressoney, Champoluc and Alagna regions. Every night we did the dreaded walk up to the house, but the second night, Peter got this amazing idea. He added some steigvellen (I have no clue what the word for this in English is, they’re things to put under your skies when going up hill) to his telemark skies and skied right up to the house instead of walking. so the next morning, he was able to ski downhill, right through our backyard, whereas I still had to walk down.

We had some amazing dinner on Tuesday night in restaurant Nordkapp in Gressoney, to which I’ll definitely go back. Surprisingly, after a bottle of wine, the walk up went even smoother than the nights before. That’s probably also because we had walked the road up a few times already and had trampled the snow a bit.

Me and my snowboard on the slopes

Sunday and Wednesday were days with clear skies. Monday and Tuesday were a bit more cloudy, but still with great sight.

I flew to London Wednesday night after quite a bit of delay (during de-icing, one of the windshield of the plane broke, at least, that’s what I heard the pilot say) and a plane change.

In London, I attended and spoke at the Spring Exchange about Spring 3.0, met up with lots of colleagues and had some nice beers. I missed my flight back home, because of a screw up in my schedule, so finally I only flew back on Friday morning…

I might go one last time to the valley this season for skiing, just for a short weekend. After that, it’s waiting for the road to be clear of snow, before we can drive up again.

I just had a great week this week. Last Monday I travelled to London. I had to be there for a training session with SkillsMatter, our partner in the UK. SkillsMatter’s office is in the Islington area (I think that’s what you call it), right in between Exmouth Market and Farringdon tube station.

I did the training together with Ben Corrie, our newly joined UK consultant. UK joined us from IBM where he did some fairly advanced stuff on their J9 JVM.

On Tuesday evening, I went to the theatre. Every time I am in London, I try to at least go to the theatre once. This time I didn’t want something too heavy or intensive, so I went to Avenue Q which was simply the best! I had a great laugh for about 2 hours! Every time I go to the theatre in London, I wish we had such an abundance of theatres in Holland, it’s nice to be able to go out and just pick a show you’d like to see…

On Wednesday we went out for drinks with the SkillsMatter people and had some food in the Easton, which was nice.

On Thursday, Ben and I went to see some live bands in the Camden area. Camden I had never been before… It’s a great area. Very vibrant and lots of great bars and restaurants. We went to see Chrome Hoof, which was surprisingly enough very very cool! Before we went to Camden, we first had dinner in Pho, where (duh), they serve Pho. I recommend it, although it’s not the best Vietnamese I’ve ever had…

All in all a great week!

Then on Friday, I was looking at the weather prediction for the weekend and I saw we have some great winds coming this Sunday. 25 knots or so, simply great. The problem is that I’m still suffering from my injury in the groin area so that means no kiting for me this weekend…

Hans Teeuwen, a big-time comedian in Holland, quit Dutch comedy several years ago and now makes his appearance in London. The reviews so far seem to be really good. It’s too bad I won’t be in London any time soon, otherwise I would definitely go and see his performance.

Beware though, Hans frequents offensive language (as the Times fittingly says). Other reviews are features on The Independent on Sunday and on BBC News, but these will no doubt not be the last reviews or interviews on Hans.

Go and experience the Dutch humor, you’ll be amazed…

By the way, I just found out Hans is playing in the same theatre I visited last September.

p.s. the image is copied from the BBC News website.
p.p.s. as a disclaimer, I would like to add that in no way I’m promoting smoking with this image. ou know, before you know it, you’re accused of promoting smoking and you have to start making excuses and all and I just hate that…

Last September I stayed in London for a few days when I was on a business trip. My fine English colleagues had booked me a room near the training center where I was teaching class. The hotel was just fine. The WiFi wasn’t free, but there were free open access points available in the vicinity, so no worries about that.

The beds were very good (although a bit short) and I wouldn’t have a clue if breakfast was any good as I had my shot of Starbucks and a muffin every morning instead.

All-in-all a hotel where I wouldn’t make a detour for, but definitely wouldn’t hate staying in again, although it is on a somewhat busy street–Pentonville Rd.

I visited the opening of a gallery in London (The Carpenters Workshop) last week with a friend of mine. I’m not that much into design, so this was a bit new to me. Okay, I like unique furniture, but what Maarten Baas was exposing at the gallery, was simply amazing.

First of all his Smoked line is simply fantastic. Using a gas burner, he burns old (or new, whatever) furniture, until it’s completely black. Then, using some kind of epoxy finishing he makes sure it doesn’t give any stains when you actually use it. I guess that also makes it a little more durable. icon magazine had a piece on it back in 2005, by former editor Marcus Fairs (whom I happened to run into on the opening of the gallery).

Apart from Smoke, Maarten also did Sculpt and some other great stuff, which you can see on his website.

After having left icon by the way, Marcus Fairs started a design blog on dezeen.com. With daily updates on what happens in design land this blog is highly recommended.

I’m in London for a few days and I decided to go to SOHO tonight. I had a quick bite at Subway and after that walked around town a bit and finally decided to go to the theatre down at Dean Street. I should have spent the night preparing slides for one of the conferences I have to present at in the next coming months, but I really didn’t feel like that. The theatre is called SOHO Theatre and I went to Sophie Woolley her show called ‘When to run’. It was a really fast-paced and great show. It’s about four women runners all running for their own and different reasons and they are connected through this guy that looks a lot like Tony Soprano.

Sophie is really good at creating different characters and using only a very minimalist setup (a little bench is all she uses) all she uses is her voice and her face to create a great comedy story.

Oh, it’s just Sophie on her own by the way and there’s five characters. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination, or to find out when you’re in town and feel like seeing her show.