Alef Arendsen

I just had my worst travel day ever. I was travelling back from Perloz (Italy) to Utrecht. Everything went fine until I entered the A5 to Milano. Due to the fog there was a big traffic jam and I ended up at Milano Malpensa airport an hour later than expected, at about 7pm instead of 6pm. I had expected some heavy traffic, so fortunately had anticipated this already and my flight was only leaving at 9pm anyway, so it was all cool.

Then I entered Malpensa airport. Everytime I get there I seem to have forgotten how bad the food is at this airport. It’s weird that in the country of nice pizze, great antipasti, the best coffee and their utmost focus on food, at the airport you can’t get anything else than what seems like American-style pizza slices and other warmed-up pieces of bread. Granted, the coffee is still great, but that’s not surprising, given the fact that even the coffee in the gas stations is better than anything you can get in Holland, or anywhere else for that matter.

Since I’ve been travelling like crazy lately, I’ve been awarded the dubious status of being allowed in lounges of airport a while ago, so at least I could spend the two-hour wait in a cozy atmosphere instead of amongst screaming kids.

On to the flight… The fog didn’t only bother the cars on the highway, but apparently our plane had arrived late from Amsterdam and we could only start boarding at about 9.20pm which was about 20 minutes after our schedules departure time. The plane finally left more than an hour late. We gained some time on the way, but then the pilot announced we would be landing at the Polderbaan, which is the runway furthest from the terminals at Schiphol airport. I’ve even heard a pilot once make a joke about it: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just landed in Brussels and are now on our way taxiing to Amsterdam Schiphol airport.’ It’s about 20 minutes taxiing, which made us end up at the gate at about midnight (about an hour later than expected).

On to the baggage claim. Normally I travel light, so don’t bother with it at all, but this time around, I had my skiing gear with me and a bunch of other things (laundry from the house in Italy, et cetera), so I had to pick up two suitcases. Baggage claim used to be quick in Amsterdam, but lately it seems to be quick a challenge to get the bags in the claim area within 20 minutes. At about 0.25am I had my two bags. The priority tags (that’s another one of those ‘benefits’ you get when you travel frequently) did work this time, so my bags where among the first to arrive.

Next, the train. I had to use the night service, which is not so bad. Normally the train from Amsterdam Schiphol airport to Utrecht takes 33 minutes, the night service uses an extra 19 minutes, nothing to worry about. This went all smooth. Then I walked home and figured I should find the keys to my house in my suitcase. I have no clue what happened to them, but after having searched for 15 minutes everywhere, I simply couldn’t find them. So, at about 2.15am (the train left at 1am and arrived at 1.50am, walking from the train station takes 10 minutes) I finally concluded that I wouldn’t be able to get into my house and had to wake my neighbor. Fortunately he was at home and he was kind enough to let me in (note to self: buy him a bottle of wine) an there I am about 2.5 hours later than expected, writing a little blog entry to clear my mind up.

The trip itself was great. I’ll write more about that later on, but the conditions were awesome, spending time in the house in some quite extreme conditions was cool too (to give you an idea: I just came home and looked at the heating control: it was 15.5 degrees Celcius, about 2 degrees warmer than the warmest I’ve been able to get it in the house in Italy) and capodanno (New Year’s) was way cool too with some friends from Milan.

Okay, that’s it for now, tomorrow I’m off to the (quite) early start (giving the time of the day right now). The pictures are all from the house, from various locations (not modified for white balance and such yet, have to work on that later). As always, click on them for a higher resolution version.

p.s. just read Jo her comment about my posting plane-travel experiences… Well, here you go

Last year I wrote a piece on the amount travel I did and whether or not CO2 compensation for this is something that’s worthwhile. This year, we implemented a CO2 compensation policy at SpringSource, so I can now expense the compensation I do for all business-related travel.

This year, I’ve been on the road for about a total of 160 days to locations ranging from places such as Miami, Manila, Tel Aviv and Cairo, to places closer to home including Luxembourg and Antwerp.

I mostly travel by plane, but also do the occasional travel by car. Dopplr (dopplr.com) keeps track of my travel quite neatly, so I don’t have to do the manual calculation anymore. In total it’s about 14,000 kg of CO2 this year, which amounts of a few hundred euros of compensation I need to do. The question now is: where to do it. Last year, I entered all my stuff manually into the calculator GreenSeat.nl offers and then compensated, but I don’t feel like doing this again. So: does anybody know a service where I can simply compensate for a set amount without having to enter all my travels first?

There is a discrepancy by the way between what I have to compensate according to our Dopplr and what GreenSeat.nl calculated for me last year. Don’t know why…

I just realized that when you travel that much, your own house also turns into a hotel. You’re hardly ever there, when the cleaning lady still refreshes the sheets every time, it’s just like a hotel bed…

The bad thing though is, that although my house is a bit more spacious than a hotel room (nope, no Presidential Marriott rooms at SpringSource), the service is terrible. There is no minibar (my fridge is empty), if you dial zero on the phone, there’s one to answer your questions such as ‘could you bring me some shaving creem, I forgot mine’, and above all, there’s no room service!

I just came back from Copenhagen. I spent the week there and had a lot of fun. I took the 6.10pm flight out, just as last week, when I spent almost all the week in Malmø. Next Sunday I’m flying to Miami to meet up with a group of colleagues from SpringSource to treat our attendees at SpringOne with a great show. I’m returning Monday morning, the week thereafter and then I’ll spend one night at home again. Then it’s off to Antwerp where I’ll stay until Friday. Then Wednesday thereafter, I’m flying out to Tel Aviv, to travel back some time the week thereafter…

Then it’s time for Christmas and I’ll be able to restock my fridge again and turn this place into a real house for some time. January is looking quite on the travel, so it should be great spending some time at home.

Some interesting places I went to in Copenhagen this week:

• Nørrebro Bryghus – restaurant and brewery. I didn’t know CPH had such a great beer tradition
• Famo 51 – great Italian restaurant… Probably one of the better ones I’ve ever eaten, outside of Italy
• House of Souls – (great) Cajun food and good atmosphere in the centre of town

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

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…

I’m at home for two weeks and this has been a while. In the past six weeks, I’ve had trips to Malta, Malmo, Israel, Stockholm, Milan and Cairo, so I’m glad to spend a little bit of time in Utrecht.

Yesterday I spent some time working / hanging out in Rotterdam with Arjen. We went by the bookstore and I bought Ed Burns’ Rock Star Programmer book. I ran into Ed in Cairo and he showed me his book. I like the idea and I think a lot of other people will too. It’s a book in which Ed Burns interviews a bunch of the most influential and famous software engineering gurus / programmers to see what they have in common. I also bought Kent Beck’s Implementation Patterns, a book about communicating through code. On my way back to Utrecht from Rotterdam, I ran into a .NET developer that was looking at the books I was reading. I ended up giving him the titles and although the Rock Star Programmer book does have a lot of Java guys in it, it sure is interesting for .NET programmers as well I think.

I also bought a few other books, which I’ll probably post about when I’m done reading them. I first have to finish One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding.

Arjen and I had dinner by the way in restaurant Stockholm in the Oude Haven, which was very good!

Today, I did some shopping for clothes. I ran into a ex-classmate of mine a few weeks ago and we decided back then that we were going to do some shopping together, so that’s what we did today. I bought some very cool-looking jeans by Kato, a pretty exclusive Japanese brand. I also bought a jeans by Blue Blood, a little more mainstream Dutch brand. A pair of sneakers from Maison Martin Margiela, whom I still think has one of the coolest websites ever. I also bought a few dress shirts, because one can never have enough of those . My shopping partner didn’t buy anything, she is going to the US pretty soon, so she’s saving up some money to do shopping-galore in NYC.

We had lunch in Broodnodig, a nice place on the Mariaplaats.

Well, with all that, and some stuff I already have, that should certainly get me through some of the parties that I’ll be having in two weeks, when I’m heading to the Salone del Mobile, the international furniture design exhibition in Milan with a few friends.

In the meantime, I’ve started looking for a new house. I’ve always wanted a house where walls where (almost) non-existing and ever since I bought Taschen’s Big Book of Lofts when I was in NYC last December, I’ve been thinking about really getting myself a slightly bigger place and tear down all the walls. If I’m moving, I’ll probably keep my old house and rent that out. I need to figure out how that’s going to work out financially. I’ve created a few Excel spreadsheets that should get me a bit of insight.

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.

Ik moet naar Arjen vanmiddag en die woont bij Blaak in de buurt (Rotterdam). Ik kijk net op de NS en zie dat als ik niet wil overstappen ik er maar 2 uur en 40 minuten over doe. Als ik wel wil overstappen, doe ik er slechts 47 minuten over. Die langere optie mag weg als je het mij vraagt…

Last Friday I ran into a girl in a bar and instead of having useless discussions about the beer they served or speculating whether or not Peter R. de Vries was really going to prove that Joran killed Natalee Holloway, we ended up having conversations about climate change. The next day, a major newspaper in Holland featured a story about an organisation that compensates the CO2 emissions you cause (because of plane travel for example) by planting trees. There is a lot of criticism about these initiatives but this specific initiative had incorrectly informed its customers by pretending they had planted trees in a forest that already existed since 1988. They later admitted their mistake and publicly told that this forest accounted for only 1% of their total number of forest initiatives. Also they mentioned the others were totally legit. They only used this forest to give an example of how such a climate change forest will look like (my thought was: does that really matter?? A forest is a forest, isn’t it).

I did a small calculation yesterday for all the travel I in 2007. That was a lot and mostly for business, but also partly leisure (about 1/5th was leisure, the other part was for business). Sometimes I combine leisure and business, I counted those at business.

All-in-all, according to this site called GreenSeat.nl I generated about 25.620 kg of CO2 during the ~112.000 km of (international) plane travel I did. Compensating this would only cost me € 256 ,= (excl. 19% VAT). That’s not a lot I reckon.

Now Friday night I was convinced by this girl that I should start compensating my flight travel. Surely enough, this is not solving the problem. In the end the only way to solve things is not travel that much anymore, but it at least helps a bit, while I do the travel that I need to do for work. Now the question still is: which organisation?? Any advice ?

Oh and other than that: I haven’t found a way yet to calculate the CO2 emissions I’ve caused by driving my car…