New Blog

Yesterday evening I finally did what I meant to do for ages, I put my blog on my webpage. I didn't succeed in backupping this blog to the new location, probably because blogger recently got upgraded, but as of now I won't update this blog anymore, instead change your bookmarks and RSS feeds for merpel's blog to point to http://www.merpel.nl/wordpress to read my silly stories there.

See you at merpel.nl!

Weekend!

Finally a nice and quiet weekends without any appointments. Well, I was sort of looking after my brother and sister while my parents were out, but they're very good at keeping themselves busy so it really wasn't that big of a deal. On Friday night I watched the Dalziel and Pascoe episode in which they are in Amsterdam. It was intriguing, though not in a good way. For one, all the Dutch actors were also speaking English to each other, very bad English. And their acting skills are so bad, especially when you see the English actors alongside them. Maybe this was because they had to express themselves in a language not their own or something, but it was still awful! That's why I don't really watch Dutch TV I guess.

So on Saturday mum was out shopping (buying books) with a friend, and dad was working, Sara was very tired because she had worked in the morning, so she was spent most of the afternoon at the computer or in her room, and Hans took a long bath. After that Hans and I made chocolate mousse (mmmmmm!) and after that I told my bf via iChat about the delicious chocolate mousse (there's still some in the fridge :) )

Today mum and I spent two hours selecting photos to order prints of. We ended up with 540 (we should have done this earlier, I know) and because uploading this is really too much I've put them on CD and I'll take them to a shop tomorrow. Now I still need to sort out and order my photos (basically from the past two years!), but not today. Because right now I'm also working on putting my blog on my webpage (merpel.nl), so perhaps this is the last post you'll read here..

As soon as that's working I'll post a link though, don't worry.

Happy Days

The start of this week has been busy in a nice way :)

On Monday Steve came over for dinner, without laundry this time :) He did break one of my wine glasses though, so there are only two left now. The delicious dessert he made made up for that though.

On Tuesday Arthur came to view my room/apartment/studio. I lived in his place for two months when I still didn't have a place of my own in Leiden and when he was away to Canada, but we never got to talk (apart from briefly in the corridors at Naturalis) until last night. Perhaps we should have talked earlier, so I would have known he does in fact own kitchen utensils (which I never found in his place when I lived there as they were logically located underneath the TV). Apart from telling me that, and a lot about other things such as bear attacks, he also brought some homemade chocolate cake, so he's cool ;)

Today I had to go to Tilburg for the last part of my presentation course. As the previous two times it was a lot of fun, and again I learnt a lot. If I am capable of doing the two things at the same time i.e., content and form I'll rock. In the course we of course focused on form, and I can do the two things separately, it's just too hard to get both done at the same time yet, so I guess I'll just have to practice a lot. And I got a certificate.

Right now I'm in the green room (a lovely lounge) at my ballet school, waiting for my jazzdance class to start. My train was delayed so I didn't have enough time to go home first, but I as know how the Dutch trains work I was smart enough to take my gear with me :)

Part II
On my way to bed now, after a nice and well deserved shower. Even though the lightbulb in my bathroom decided to die (not surprising as it's been on nearly 24/7 the past few weeks because the light in the corridor was broken and I decided yesterday to fix it myself instead of wait for the landlord to do it). But with a flashlight even my bathroom looks remotely cosy.

Regarding travelling

Just a little update here :)

December 28 - January 4: Ireland (visiting my bf and his fam.)
January 4 - January 7: London! (visiting my bf's brother with my bf)
March 7 - March 14: Surfing in Fuerteventura with Veronique (also known as Steve's girlfriend ;))

I love my life :)

New Battery

Jippy! Apple has sent me my new MacBook battery, which has had -1 charge-cycles :) I haven't drained it far enough yet to see if the shutting down problem is solved, but it probably has, as with the old battery when it shut down the little battery indicator lights wouldn't work anymore either...

Hi again

It's been nearly two weeks again since my last post and this post isn't the best written or longest post ever, but I've just been so busy!! There are of course the usual things (work, jazzdance, yoga, singing, tidying up my apartment etc) but also some very nice extras. Last week Steve's family came to visit Holland, which was very very nice. I wish they'd come more often. On Sunday they left, and right after they left I had to catch a train to Tilburg for Niels' double birthday/graduation/new job/housewarming party. Niels actually lives in Eindhoven, but for some odd reason he doesn't want people to see his apartment, so he took us to the Efteling. It was the last day of the season, but it wasn't too busy, so we had a great day, even though unfortunately some people couldn't make it. (Here are some pics)

At work I've also been busy with a presentation masterclass, to improve on my presentation skills. It's a theatrical course so it's really great fun, but quite exhausting. Another thing I've been working on is figuring out a thesis topic, well I have been working on that for a while now, but I've almost figured it out :)

I'm also very happy that my MacBook is repaired again (even though I'm getting a new battery as mine seems to have gotten fucked up) because I've been iChatting a lot with my boyfriend over in San Francisco. Even though it's not the same thing as seeing each other IRL, videochat is a nice way to communicate over such long distances. Very nice even sometimes ;)

Eventful weeks...

The past three weeks have been quite exciting...mostly for the good things happening, such as surfing and holiday-ing, but also a cremation. Anyway, just a short overview of my adventures. The past three weekends I surfed in Newquay (another surfgirl weekend, very, very, very cool), France (OK on Monday and Friday, but that's nearly weekend) and today in Scheveningen. The surfgirl weekend was splendid again, this time I didn't rent a car but even more decadently, flew from Amsterdam to Bristol and then from Bristol to Plymouth where Jilly picked me up and we went to the Newquay together (past the Jamaica Inn :)) In France I was with my family (- Frank who went to Belgium to windsurf with his friends). Veules-les-Roses is a gorgeous little village (check out some impressions on my flickr page). Unfortunately it was flat for most of the week, but we went to Etretat (fantastic cliffs where Hans and I explored a tunnel) and to Dieppe. In what little waves there were I tried to teach Sara the basics of at least paddling, and I pushed her onto a few waves so she could get the feel of getting taken up by a wave. And she loved it, another surfgirl is born :). The colour of the sea was amazing btw.

Today I went surfing in Scheveningen, and it was the best session I've ever had in Holland. Not that I surf here much, but still...It's a shame The Hague was one big mess because of roadworks so it took me ages to get there, but it was well worth it. Nice and clean, warm, and the best thing about surfing in Holland is that there are so many girls, honest, at least as many as boys!

When I got back to Leiden this evening I couldn't get into my house anymore because there was something wrong with the lock, but the corporation sent someone right over to put a new cylinder in the lock and all it well now again and not too long from now I'm going to sleep in my own bed again :)