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.”

Last Tuesday I had to go Antwerp. According to Google Maps (normally very accurate), my trip would take me approximately 75 minutes. Now I had to be on time; at 9 o’clock sharp, I had to kick off a public Core Spring training that lasts for 4 days.

I left at a quarter to seven (yes, that’s 6.45am), so I had two hours and fifteen minutes, almost twice the time it would take me to get there in normal circumstances. The first 80 kilometers or so were just going very smooth, I was doing about 130 kph on the highway and encountered almost nobody on the highway. Right before the border I figured out I hadn’t had breakfast yet, so I stopped at a gas station to get something to eat. I had my breakfast, a little tea and about 20 minutes later I was on my way again.

I was driving towards Antwerp, switching radio stations (from the Dutch 3FM to the Belgian Donna), confident of reaching my destination on time, when all of a sudden traffic came to a grinding halt. And then the trouble began. We simply sat there for more than 15 minutes, without moving an inch. Then we moved, let’s say 500 meters and then again, traffic halted. This continued until I saw the first sign with directions: Antwerp was still 30 kilometers away and I had just maneuvered myself into one of the heaviest traffic jams I have ever encountered. People around me were sitting there like it was their every job, having cigarettes, listening to the radio, drinking bottles of water. In the end, I opened up my window, got somebody’s attention and asked if this was normal. The women in the Toyota Corolla answered positively, this was everyday’s business, and it wouldn’t get better anytime soon.

So, I realized, at about 8.00am, this can’t be really bad, I still have about an hour to reach my destination… I started to get a little worried about 8.30, when I heard the bi-hourly news bulletin, updating me about the latest things that had happened in Belgium. The traffic information notified me of the jam that was ahead of me. It would still last for 10 kilometers…

I though back of the days I first started to work in Amsterdam, while living in Utrecht. As soon as I got a car, I started driving back and forth to Amsterdam. It took me little over an hour to get there everyday, while normally it would only take about 40 minutes. I complained so badly, that my roommates (I was still living in a student home) were getting sick and tired of me in no time… A year later, travel time had increased to 75 minutes, and when I’m driving from my place (I moved to Amsterdam several years ago, but I’m back in Utrecht now, so to the distance nothing has changed really) to Amsterdam right now, during rush hour, it would definitely take me 90 minutes. And there I was, in Belgium, sitting in a jam that wasn’t even caused by an accident and nobody complained!!!! It all became clear to me: we Dutch people are just a bunch of wheenies. We can’t even deal with 30 minutes delay, we just complain, complain and complain…

Back to the Belgian highways… About an hour later later, I finally managed to leave the highway. Now I still had to find my destination, which actually didn’t prove to be really difficult. I finally arrived at a few minutes past ten, more than an hour late! Now, all of this wouldn’t have been so terrible, if not for the fact that 12 people were waiting! Finally, things were quite okay, we managed to compensate the extra hour later that day and everybody was sort of okay with it, at least, except for myself, because I hated it…

One thing I did learn. The Belgians, they do not complain! And that’s something we Dutch people can definitely learn from them

I just arrived back home and am going for a little drink in a minute. Fortunately the pub we are meeting up is only 200 meters from my places, so I can’t get stuck in traffic. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking the train to Schiphol Airport and a plane to Athens, Greece, that should also prove to be a lot easier than the road to Antwerp I was on last Tuesday…

According to the following news item in 2005, the local government in Utrecht (the city I live in) has managed to put in effect something we call a green wave on the Northern ring road. This means that all traffic lights work in a coordinated fashion to minimize the need for cars to stop. If the first traffic light hits green, the second traffic a bit further ahead hits green just enough time later for the car to have reached it.

Apparently, the local government is so proud of what they achieved 2 years ago that they are still celebrating the completion of the project and not flooding the city with more of those green waves. Last week I had to drive from my home to a client in South Utrecht. I passed 9 traffic lights of which I was so lucky to pass 3 without having to stop at all. The other 6 caused a delay of 14 minutes in total, that means almost 2.5 minutes per traffic light.

I timed one of them and was waiting for over 4 minutes!!!!

Lately I haven’t had to do a lot of commuting (well, that is, if you don’t consider taking a plane commuting) and with experience like these, I’m very happy with that.

I promised some pictures from my kite boarding session from last Sunday. Marc just zipped them up for me today, so I can finally put them online! As I told earlier, Sunday we had a really good session at Wijk aan Zee, which is a little North-West of Amsterdam.

The direction of the wind was perfect. With SSW it was almost completely sideshore (a little onshore even). The wind was about 25 knots (which is about 6 Beaufort I guess). This is good enough for my 8sqm Gaastra Jekyll. I was quite happy to be able to use my smaller kite, not only because it’s a lot more fun to fly, but also because the bigger one I have currently is out of order a little bit. In a little accident I had at Workum beach (Friesland) the weekend before, I lost my chicken loop. This is the part (see below) that you use to connect your kite (or the bar and its steering lines) to your harness so that you don’t loose your kite. Loosing it is a little stupid, because that normally shouldn’t happen. I guess I just pulled safety and unhooked my chicken loop or so. Anyway, I can’t use the Cabrinha until I have a new chicken loop, so that’s another reason I was really happy that it was blowing about 25 knots.

I had also never really been in such heavy surf. Especially near the end of the day there were waves of about 1.5 meter (I think they were even bigger, but hey, let’s not exaggerate huh). Getting out to more quiet waters was hard, but riding back in, towards the beach is great fun, overtaking the waves, putting the kite in the air and while depowering it a little bit, simply enjoying the power of the waves for a while.

I almost got to enjoy a very short session today but there was a heavy traffic jam in between me and the kite boarding spot I wanted to go, so that was a bit of a pity. I’m hoping for some good winds this weekend, but so far I guess I’m out of luck. The predictions so far are not so good–just about no wind at all on Saturday and about 10 to 13 knots on Sunday. When things get a little better, I might be able to do a small session on Sunday, but then I really have to have my 12sqm fixed and I have to leave for Denmark around 5′ish, so it won’t be a long one.

I’ll keep you up-to-date.

I couldn’t be any more perfect. I got back from London last Friday evening and had a few beers with a couple of friends of mine. I hadn’t seen them for quite a long time, because of my crazy schedule the last few weeks.

Today, I had a wedding anniversary of my grandparents yesterday (they have been married for 65 years now, what an achievement). Normally wedding anniversaries aren’t all that exciting, but this was actually pretty good, as I hadn’t seen most of my family for quite a while. So it was good catching up with them.

After getting back from that party (it was in the afternoon), I drove from Elburg to Amsterdam to go to the Tuschinski cinema to watch the Bourne Ultimatum, which was a great movie. The newspaper apparently had some raving reviews. I didn’t think it was that good, but all-in-all it was entertaining. I like watching movies in the theatre (I kind of have to do that anyway, because I don’t have a television anymore). It always has this great atmosphere, especially in a nice theatre such as the 85-year old Tuschinski in Amsterdam.

The weather forecast showed some excellent winds (up to 25 knots or 6bft, and good temperatures, around 20 degrees).

I first had a soccer match early in the morning, which we unfortunately lost (it was the first match of the season and we haven’t had a lot of practice since we started two or three weeks ago). I won’t be able to to join the soccer team all that much do, which is a pity. I’m going to be abroad a lot in the next few months and frequently have to fly on Sundays, which means: no soccer for me anymore.

After the game I went to Wijk aan Zee to meet with Lars, Pyke, Marc and several others. The wind was great and the waves were very big. It was only my second time out on the sea with lots of waves (I’ve ben out of the sea a lot already with my kite, but the places I went usually were bays that protected us from getting pounded).

I just love my 8sqm Jekyll (from Gaastra). I have two kites, the 8sqm and a 12sqm Cabrinha, but the Jekyll is so much more flexible and quick to steer, but yet very stable.

I should have some pictures soon by the way as Marc’s girlfriend took some. I’ll see if I can post them up here or so…