Hello sunshine!

This morning I got up early to go surfing, or rather to go paddling and balancing as there wasn't any swell predicted. But I couldn't open my container at the surfclub because my key is bent, so thank god it was flat as a mirror. It was good to walk along the nearly deserted beach though and I'm getting a new key tomorrow.

Start of the Summer

Wednesday I had my last dance class before the summer holidays and yesterday my last singing lesson. Both went really well and I'm really going to miss it, but it's something to look forward to again in September. After my singing lesson yesterday I had dinner with Steve at Jill's to celebrate his new job and his moving to the Netherlands. As always the steak was perfect and it was very nice to eat outside for a change. It's going to be a good summer!

The MacBook population is growing

Yet another convert to Mac OS X: my boyfriend!! Welcome to beauty, stability and plain coolness! And thank you Steve Jobs for adding the iSight to the MacBook so whenever we're awake at the same time (which can be tricky when you're 9 timezones apart) we can have a videochat!!!

A Day with the Family

Today we had a big family gathering, organised by my grandmother and her brother. This means 34 people, who don't all know each other that well, but it was good. Our grandmother had fooled us into bringing our bikes when actually she and her brother had rented a big horse and carriage which took us to a restaurant and playground nearby. After that we had a guided walk with an extremely enthusiastic guide through the wood (where we got seriously harrassed by mosquitos, although they fortunately don't seem to like me) and some good food. We were really lucky that the weather cooperated (this is the Netherlands after all), and let's see if good weather can become a tradition on family gatherings.

Oh and thanks to the organisers for this wonderful day!

Ice-cream in Leiden

On Thursday evening Sander, a PhD student from Maastricht came to Leiden to have some ice-cream with me, and we discovered a very nice Italian style ice-cream shop near the train station MMMMMMMMMMMMMM

(oh and we also played with the iSight on my macbook)

Pfff....

Today I had my first power yoga lesson. It was very demanding (I always thought my shoulders were stronger and I turn out to be even stiffer than I thought) but also very rewarding and relaxing. Not just relaxing, it's been three hours ago now and I can still feel it (and tomorrow the muscular ache I think). It's a great experience. Everyone should do yoga!!

Cultural Weekend

Last weekend I had a very interesting and varied weekend. On Friday night it started with a barbecue and the arrival of Steve, friend from England and new programmer on the MITCH project. He wanted to arrange some things before he starts next month (such as his contract on which they misspelt his name). On Saturday I had a nice relaxed day, Steve and Hans went to the Strawberry Carnival in Zundert, and I relaxed in the garden with a Pratchett (and I took a little nap as well, because that's what weekends are for).


The really cultural stuff came on Sunday. First mum and I went to the yearly market, which was crowded with pikeys and there were fewer books than we'd been promised, hmpf! Then we went to the local music school's ballet show. My sister Sara danced three pieces, and she is so good! Steve also came to the sauna/theatre, but probably not for Sara but for his gf Veronique who starred in two pieces.
After the show I rushed off to Belgium to go to the exhibition of my neighbour's and grandmother's art school, who do a photography and a general art course respectively. Why in Belgium? Because it's cheaper, and more intense, not just a 1-hour-a-week-course but an afternoon and an evening every week. I'm very happy that I have seen what my grandmother's been up to, because seeing is so much different than hearing about paintings or sculptures. From our neighbour I knew what he'd been working on for school, because I'm featuring in one of his photos ;)

New Room

Another surprise when I got back from Formentera: my office moved. Apart from it being a general mess because obviously I hadn't moved my stuff myself (such as my organised, separate piles for "current papers to read", "archive papers", "reference papers", "own writings" (though not labelled) being turned into one big pile) my tea mug was missing (I found it back in our old room) and our paintings. Well, not really our paintings, we got them from the "Art depot" at Naturalis, namely a big reproduction of Breughel and Rubens' Garden of Eden and a portrait of our queen. In a quiet and abandoned corner of the corridor I found the queen back, put her back on the wall and then after a few days she fell off (magically keeping the glass of the frame in one piece). So we'll have to think of something else to put on the wall. Worse is that our desks are too big for the slightly smaller room. The desk I had in our old room was smaller, but someone seems to have found it necessary to make sure we only have 2 inches left between our chairs and the wall, but we might get new desks...

Luckily we still have the nice view from our window :)

Post-holiday happiness

As you have read from my previous post, Formentera was great! Unfortunately holidays don't last forever, and then it's good to come home to some nice surprises. The first one wasn't a real surprise, since I ordered it myself: my MacBook had arrived :). I can certainly recommend it, apart from the fact that I've fallen for Apple's design, Tiger is even better than Panther (widgets!!!) and the built-in iSight is just fantastic (everyone loves photobooth). I'm also quite happy with the weight, as my previous laptop wasn't so much a portable as a "nice big screen to watch films on in bed". Oh and did I mention that the screen is fantastic? My holiday pics look even better on it than on towel (my 800MHz iMac). Yes, I'm very happy with my new toy.

Another great surprise was to be found in my mailbox. The first paper I've written on my own got accepted to a conference. So now I'm processing the reviewers' comments and trying to improve the language etc. Note to self: reread your work after a good night's sleep before you submit it :)

Holiday!

I know....I didn't blog for a while...

But I had a good reason, I was on holiday :)
So here's a short account of my adventures in Formentera, a beautiful island near Ibiza. First of all, it's a very quiet island, there are no high buildings, and if you want to go to places after it's dark that's fine but you have to bring a flashlight because it's really dark then. My uncles, who invited me, know the island very well, they have been going on holiday there for some 15 years now, so they were excellent tourguides and made sure I got a good impression of the different sides of the island. My adventure started on Saturday May 27 when I set out to Schiphol airport to explore their holiday dream island. I was pretty tired so I slept most of the flight, which made me miss the food, but I had plenty with me anyway. I had to wait for about two hours at Mallorca airport for my flight to Ibiza, so plenty of time to change from my jeans into something more summer-y. It turned out I even had more time because my (20 minute) flight to Ibiza was delayed for about an hour, and an hour is a long time to wait at the bus-stop like airport that Mallorca airport truly is. There is just nothing there, just a lot of people waiting for their flight. Anyway, around half five I arrived at Ibiza, retrieved my luggage and took a cab to the harbour, where I could just catch the 6 o'clock boat to Formentera, yay!!!
The boat was great, it was a rather small one so you could really feel it catching waves (mostly created by other boats ;) ). My uncles were waiting for me in the harbour, they had already been there for a week and they were very tanned already. I hoped to get a tan like that too, but alas, I did get a slight tan, and a lot of red, despite my factor 20 sunscreen...

Anyway, after my first little adventure on a rented bike over one of the official "cycle paths" on Formentera (in the Netherlands they would close such a road because of the holes and bumps), I dumped my stuff in the little apartment and we were off to dinner in a little restaurant on the beach. On day 2 we had a long walk (with swimming breaks) to see the best parts of the island in the best way possible. The island provides some gorgeous scenes. It has lovely bounty-island beaches, wild rocks and even cliffs, a lot of flowers, picturesque houses and water sources, and it's so quiet, most of the time you only hear the sea and some birds and crickets. There is also a lot of rosemary growing on the island, which gives a strong and typical smell, that will probably always remind me of Formentera from now on.

On Monday it was extremely hot so we went to the beach. This particular beach (Playa Illetas) is a long strip of sand (and the occasional rock) that stretches out into the sea. It has little bays on both sides and if there are waves (and with waves jellyfish often come) on the one side, then the other side is calm and vice versa. The colour of the Mediterranean is so amazingly deep blue that you just have to to there and see it for yourself to believe it (just don't all go to Formentera, one of the great things about the island is that it isn't crowded!). I took a lot of pictures but in reality the colour is much more magnificent.

On Tuesday morning I cycled to Cap de Barbaria with my uncle Leo. The last kilometer or so looks like a moon landscape: there are no trees anymore, just rocks and low bushes. After a 7 km climb or so (not very steep, but still, it's different from cycling in my own flat country) you're rewarded with a fast descent towards the lighthouse and the cave. Going back was only a little climb in the beginning, and further more or less a descent all the way to San Francesc. There Peter joined us and we lunched and I bought some souvenirs, I even go a lucky bracelet from the guy I bought two necklaces off :)

Coincidentally my supervisor at Tilburg University had also booked a holiday in the same week on the very same (not so well-known) island, so in the afternoon we had drinks with him, his wife and his two kids, and in the evening we had dinner at the little restaurant on the beach where I had been on Saturday.

On Wednesday the weather didn't look too good, so I put on my jumper and we decided to go for a little walk down from El Pilar. There is an old Roman road on that side of the island which used to be the only way up. We took a bus in San Ferran, and got off just before El Pilar to start our descent. Luckily it just stopped raining when we got off the bus. The road is made of really big rocks, and you really have to be careful where to put your feet, just imagine that this was the only way to get up, thus taking your carriage and horse, mule, whatever with you! When we got down it started to rain again, so we had lunch at a lovely fish restaurant with great views on the sea called Rafalet. They have some great paella, although not my uncle Peter's favourite dessert (pineapple with cointreau) but I guess you can't have it all.


After the not so beach-like weather of Wednesday I was a bit scared that it would be too cold to go to the beach on my last day. But fortunately it was hot (but not too hot) so we got on our bikes and went to Playa Illetas again :) At the end of the day the jellyfish on the wave side of the beach were gone too so I had a little swim there too, it's a bit surreal to swim in a sea without waves all the time, and the waves really made me feel the strength of the sea again for a bit. In the evening we returned out bikes to the bike rental and had dinner at Chez Fred, they have great pizzas but also good fish, and t-shirts :)


On Friday we took an early boat to Ibiza, after saying goodbye to our little casa. I dumped my stuff at Leo and Peter's hotel (the lucky b*st*rds were staying another week in Ibiza) and explored Ibiza town. I was actually surprised that it's such a nice old town. Many extremely nice little alleys, great views, a lovely cathedral, and also beautiful beaches. But it lacked the calm and laid-back atmosphere of Formentera (although that is probably different in the countryside). Around 16:30 it was time to say goodbye to my uncles at Ibiza airport. The airport was very quiet so I could look around in the (few) shops, and I found a magazine of Formentera, obviously one big advert, but with nice pics and a few stories. After a short stop at Mallorca I was on my way to the cold Netherlands again. Although it is getting warmer, maybe my lucky bracelet made the sun come :)

By the way, you can find more Formentera photos on my Flickr.com page.