Sheer happiness

Food makes me happy. Fish and chips in Newquay while looking out over Towan Beach make me very happy. More pics of Newquay are to be found on my Flickr Newquay set.

Heaven

Newquay is surfer's heaven. Surfshops and surfers everywhere, and I got to go there!!! So I took the Friday and Monday off to indulge myself in a little surftrip. I caught a plane from Amsterdam to Bournemouth, rented a car at Bournemouth airport and took off to see a bit of countryside before I would reach the sweet waves. The Ford Focus was pretty good, quite a surprisingly low car actually. I found it a bit annoying that there are no signs indicating the speed limits, but it still took me about 4.5 hours to drive the 170 miles to Newquay, so I guess I didn't really speed. The first bit was a bit difficult, but that was because I didn't have a decent map, as soon as I got onto the main road it was very easy to find.

I arrived in at the Surf lodge around 4pm, doubleparked my car (there wasn't much space in the private parking, but no-one could fine me) and checked my stuff in. As it was very quiet they set me up in an 8 person bedroom, so I chose the bunk bed with the best view on Fistral Beach :) Then I headed off into town to explore and for some fish and chips. On the way back to the lodge I saw a fish monger "milkman style" (with a van driving around and you could just buy stuff in front of your house). I went to Fistral for the first time, which was crowded with people surfing and people watching the surfers and when it got dark went back to the lodge and drank tea with Dan and Ralph (staff and former staff, now regular customer at the lodge).

On Saturday the party really started. Around 10.30 we were at the beach, ready to surf. I immediately caught a nice wave, so my day had been made. I caught some more, and at 12:30 it was time for lunch. I went into town with Jilly, Lucy and Ash for a delicious powerboosting smoothie and scrambled eggs on toast. And at 2pm we were on our boards again. This time we stayed in the white water really close to the beach to practice our popup and balance, which was also filmed so it could be analysed later. Later was after a lovely relaxing yoga session. At 7.30 pm we had a nice dinnerbuffet at the Chy bar, lots of salads, spare ribs and spring rolls, and after that I decided to go to bed.

After a good night's sleep with the sound of the sea in the background I woke up pretty much aching over my whole body the next morning, but as soon as my muscles started to warm up again it went away. This time one of the instructors took the ones who wanted to the outside, and of course I was one of the ones who wanted that :) We were going to surf some green waves!!
The instructor got us into the right position and so I caught my first big green wave. And it was fantastic!!! I had a lovely clean long ride almost onto the beach and I've been yelling and laughing and cheering the whole ride, I don't think I've ever felt more on top of the world than when I was standing on that board. I've been smiling from ear to ear for the rest of the day, and I'm still in a very happy mood. I managed to catch a few other ones, but the rides were shorter, and my last ride of that session was a lovely long one again. After some bacon, lettuce and tomato wraps and tea it was time for our last session. There were only 17 girls left, because others had to get back home to work or go to school again on Monday, but the lucky few still had a few more waves to catch. Unfortunately everyone was tired so it wasn't the best session, but still, making your way through the surf, seeing rainbows in the sprays from the waves, getting taken up by a wave again...for everyone who has never surfed before, trust me, it's a great experience! After that we went for a soothing Indian head massage, after which everyone nearly fell asleep. After saying goodbye to everyone I went into town for a pizza and a walk back to Fistral where I saw a surfer cooking a meal next to his van. Back at the lodge I watched the last bit of Sin City with Chris and Ralph and I got into bed at 9.30pm, exhausted but happy.

On Monday I bought a board bag, so I can travel with my own board, and I got a yellow miniature beetle with a surfboard on the roof. Around 12.30 I left Newquay with a smile, a tan (though only in my face and on my hands and feet), good memories and a promise to come back soon.

Short post

Just a short post, as I should be in bed right now. Tomorrow I'm leaving for Newquay very early, as my flight to Bournemouth is at 09:30. The past few days were bit hectic, getting slides for our MITCH Digital Heritage lecture ready, doing a dry run (with Steve as audience) and finally doing the lecture today at 17:45 (though I did go out to a little ice-cream break with the other PhD students from my department, I just couldn't resist the sun :)).

First we weren't sure if we would have a beamer in time, as the person who was going to take care of it was ill, but after running up and down some stairs and bugging some people I found someone with a key to the room where the beamers are kept, and so I could rush down to get the beamer in the lecture room just in time for the lecture. At least I got to do some exercise.

I got home at about 21:15, thanks to a delayed train (no news there), had some food, packed some stuff, banged my head against my wardrobe, so I sat through ER with a bag of frozen peas against my cheek (don't worry mum, it's OK again!) and now I'm going off to bed.

Surf's up, see you next week!

Another day at work

And today we had a fire drill!! So the first thing everyone does when the alarm goes off is check their mailboxes if they've missed a notification of the drill. No, ok, so then we very relaxedly we finish our phonecalls and then we're off downstairs. The good thing is that we bumped into the head of collection management and the idea is that we're going to have regular meetings with the database people from Naturalis. Ah well, back to work now.

By the way, Steve and I booked tickets for a Frames concert in Amsterdam on November 21st :-)

Ups 'n Downs

Today was a day with ups and downs. The big up was my first lecture in Tilburg. I really liked doing it, though I still have a lot of things to improve on, such as interacting with the audience. But still, it was definitely not bad for a first time.
Immediately after that I took the train to Etten-Leur to bring my macbook to the Apple dealer there to get it repaired. I already noticed some stains coming up when I was in Spain, but since Tuesday my dear macbook was also shutting itself down all the time. I managed to backup my data (by copying stuff to my iPod, and even burn some stuff on DVD, with an ice-pack underneath it). Best case scenario is that it's fixed next Tuesday, otherwise it's waiting for the parts until ?

After I dropped off my mac I went back to the train station to get to Leiden in time for my singing lesson. A journey which would normally take an hour and a half, so I would still have time to go into Naturalis to do some work, but it took me 3.5 hours because of a derailed freight train near Dordrecht. So I had to travel via Den Bosch and Utrecht, missed my connection in Utrecht etc...

Anyway, I got home, and cycling through Leiden slightly improved my mood. I just love the canals :)

Busy, busy, busy

The past few days have been quite busy again. On Friday evening Steve and Veronique, Caroline and I went out to dinner and to catch a movie in Leiden. We ended up in an African restaurant where cutlery was not an option. You had to dip Eritrean pancakes in your food to eat it, but dipping bits of meat isn't easy. So Steve and I decided to eat with our hands :-) (Caroline and Veronique had veggies that were more or less dip-able). After that we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (finally!) in my favourite cinema in Leiden (there aren't too many cinemas, but this one is nice and old fashioned, and drinks are cheap :-)). As expected the plot was rather straightforward, but nonetheless it was a very entertaining film.

On Saturday morning I left for Etten-Leur, to spend a few hours with my parents, and to cycle to my grandparents in the evening to stay there for the flower float parade in their village. At home I lent Sara some clothes for a party and I did her hair, sometimes she's just like a big doll :-). In the evening we visited the building site of one of the floats and then had a good quiet evening with some wine. The parade on Sunday was absolutely fabulous (as always) although I really don't agree with the judges, but perhaps the winner was too arty for ordinary souls. I still need to upload the photos, they should appear on flickr tonight.

The past few days I've been working in Leiden (Monday) and Tilburg (Tuesday), I watched some Prison Break episodes on my laptop, played a game on my playstation (it had been ages since I had done that!) and made the final arrangements for my little surftrip to Newquay (I booked my flight, hotel and car, a nice big Ford Focus).

Rowan also returned from his retreat in the desert so we can text, email and chat again :-). From what I've seen from the pics the burning man festival was quite an event, definitely something to put on my to-do-at-least-once-in-a-lifetime-list.

Tonight my jazzdance class starts again, and tomorrow my singing lesson. The summer holidays are definitely over!