Alef Arendsen

Another one of those Schiphol Top-10 books. Well, actually, I bought this one at Malta Airport right after I noticed my flight was delayed for two hours.

I didn’t get a chance to read a lot though as I met a Dutch guy at the airport that was a pilot for the Libyan oil company. Quite interesting chap it was.

Anyway, in Malmo, I finished reading The Good Guy by Dean Koontz. It’s a nice thriller of a guy (Tim) that is mistaken for a hit man. When the hit man finds out, he starts to chase Tim.

Nothing too spectacular. It’ll get you through a flight though…

The title really says it all: home sweet home… I never knew it would feel that true once in my life (pffff, this really sounds like I’m getting old ).

Anyway, after three weeks travel in a row, I finally get to spend a little bit of time in Holland. I was in Stockholm first, in Malta after that where I had a fabulous time with the guys (and girls) I trained at a client of ours. Last week I was in Malmo, which was also great.

I’m at home now, spending the week in Holland. Unfortunately it’s not an easy week though. This week, I’ve got a class as well and on Friday I’m speaking at the Profict Wintercamp to which I’m really looking forward. Straight after that event I’m heading over to Cairo, where I’m speaking at the 2008 Java Developer Conference organized by JUG leader Ahmed Hashim. I’m also really looking forward to being there (not to the travel though ).

After that I’m going to be at home for a week. End of March will get to me Israel after which there’s going to be 10 days of Italy spread over 3 weeks.

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…