Een gezellige rondleiding door een zwevend buitenaards complex, zo groot als een voetbalveld, waar alles op z’n plek wordt gehouden met klittenband en Duct-tape en waar rozijntjes uit de lucht worden gehapt.

This Sunday, it’ll be three weeks ago this happened right in front of my, and a lot of other lucky people’s, eyes. Up on the mountain, in the cold snow, with nearly no clouds in the sky. The sun low over the horizon gave it a special bonus; moon illusion made it appear as if the eclipsed sun was huge. Larger than life.

Bovenstaand filmpje is ongeveer wat ik zag, bijna drie weken geleden, hoog op de berg. Een haast onbewolkte lucht en de verduisterde zon, laag boven de horizon veroorzaakten de maan-illusie. Hierdoor leek alles enorm groot. Best een mooi gezicht.

Some things never fail to amaze. Not even 5 years after they happened.
Exactly 5 years ago, my brother and I conveniently strolled the streets of Panama City, where we noticed a cheerful crowd of people leaving a church named Santuario Nacional. Yet, the people outside the church didn’t look Panamanian. Their tone of skin was lighter, and there were even raid haired people amongst the crowd.
This reminded us that only a few days before we spoke to an Irish girl whose name was pronounced as Mary (possibly spelled Mairi?) who was in Panama to be able to attend her brother’s marriage. Would this be… that person’s wedding?

This indeed turned out to be the case. As we held our pace on the sidewalk to watch the newly weds leave the church, a man smiled wide and said ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this’… as it turned out, on our way to Panama, we enjoyed a cold beer at the same pub during the stopover on Newark, were aboard the same plane to Panama, waited in the same queue to pass the border, spent some days in the same beach resort, and then, fate brings the same people to a sidewalk outside a church. Coincidences can be fun…

All this happened exactly 5 years ago, today. If fate didn’t pull any nasty tricks, an Irish man and a Panamanian girl have got something worth celebrating today. Congrats.

Middels dit berichtje wil ik iedereen een goede laatste week van het jaar toewensen. In Plaats van het omhakken van een boom voor in m’n woonkamer, heb ik dankzij Oxfam Novib juist bomen aan laten planten in Mozambique. Een vakantiehuisje, daar, is voorlopig nog boven m’n budget

Een goed, vruchtbaar en liefdevol 2010 toegewenst.

By means of this message I would like to wish everybody all the best for the last week of the year 2009. Rather than pulling down a tree to put in my living room, or process into postcards, I decided to let others plant a number of fruit bearing, shade giving trees in Mozambique on my behalf. As much as I hope these trees will grow strong and fruitful, so I hope 2010 will bring to you what you need most.

Since it’s alomst 3 years ago since the last update on my life, written in this lingua franca, I will once again sum things up.
Let’s see.. to continue where the last update ended; everything came to a good end. I did get to see the annular solar eclipse in French Guiana. The possibility to combine a trip there with both viewing the sun partially getting obscured by the moon shortly after sunrise from a beach overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and the planned launch of an Ariane rocket made it really, really worthwhile to undertake that trip. Eventually, it turned out to be too good to be true – the rocket launch was postponed till after my flight back home, but, wow, I did have a lovely holiday. I spent a night in a hammock on an open boat in the middle of piraña infested waters, in the middle of one of the most breathtaking natural reserves you can imagine, where I woke up to the call of birds while the fog crept up the hillslopes in the distance. Drove all the way from Cayenne to de border with Suriname, and crossed the Maroni to visit places like Albina and Bigiston.
Needless to say, I took numerous photos during that trip.
Also, obtaining a new job turned out to be no problem at all. A secondment agency offered me a job, starting right after I returned back home from my trip to French Guiana, and I still work for them. I moved to another place, too. In may 2008, I moved to a small commuter town named Weesp.
Also in that year, yet again, I got to see a solar eclipse. A total one, which I observed from the banks of the river Ob in the city Nizhnevartovsk. Of course this was combined with a nice trip through Russia with stops in Yekaterinburg, Moscow and Golden Ring cities like Vladimir, Suzdal and Sergiev Posad. Both the Diamond Ring and the Golden Ring, combined in a single trip… not bad!
Speaking of rings… this year, too, I managed to see the total solar eclipse. Since it would be the longest one of the century, it sounded like a good plan to go for maximum duration. Which happened to happen at sea, where, luckily, a cruise ship would be present. Passengers and staff of this ship got to see a whopping six minutes, forty two seconds and three tenth of a second of totality. A period of darkened skies long enough to gaze upon that big hole in the sky in total awe, look around to see the twilight colors on the horizon, all around you on this big, big, almost ripple free ocean, see planets and bright stars appear in the sky, and for Peter Rogina and Kirsten Conant it was even long enough to pop a question, and a bottle of champagne afterward, since they decided that for them it would be a good thing to get engaged.

Peter and Kirsten. Best wished to them for the future.

For the rest, this cruise was a wonderful opportunity to see some more of the word, with port calls in South Korea, Japan and arrival in China. Finally, I can say that I climbed the Chinese Wall and walked in the Forbidden City.
Unfortunately, the high temperatures and the draft of air conditioners left their marks. At the moment, I’m feverish and sneezy.

Vorig jaar verdween de papieren uitgave van DAG al uit het straatbeeld, nu verdwijnt ook website dag.nl

Even my parkingtickets prove how 1337 I am

Tha doorbell’s mine

N.B. Deze post is van het oude systeem, ik sta vanwege die reden niet garant voor het kloppen van werkende en goed gevormde plaatjes, links (intern en extern) en andere van dat soort zaken

N.B. Deze post is van het oude systeem, ik sta vanwege die reden niet garant voor het kloppen van werkende en goed gevormde plaatjes, links (intern en extern) en andere van dat soort zaken

to feed my inner child…

N.B. Deze post is van het oude systeem, ik sta vanwege die reden niet garant voor het kloppen van werkende en goed gevormde plaatjes, links (intern en extern) en andere van dat soort zaken

This commecial makes me happy… and I really, really like Firefox.
So, if you haven’t tried it yet… Wheeeeee!

N.B. Deze post is van het oude systeem, ik sta vanwege die reden niet garant voor het kloppen van werkende en goed gevormde plaatjes, links (intern en extern) en andere van dat soort zaken

It’s been ages and ages (almost ten months, actually) since the last time I gave a brief resume of the things happening in my life. Well, here it goes.
2006 started okay. Near the end of the first quarter of the year, I went to Libya, to see the total eclipse, and returned safely (although my flight back home got delayed badly!)
I’ve made tons of pictures. A small selection of em can be seen over here. Comments are in dutch, though the pics speak for themselves.
I kinda stopped making monochloroacetic acid. I still work at tha factory, for over a year now, but they stopped extracting chlorine from salt roughly a month ago, and we quit adding chlorine to acetic acid about a week ago. It’s planned that by the end of this month, we’ll stop producing sodium monochloroacetate as well (read; shut down entirely) so right now, I’m quite busy trying to find a new employer.
Hey, this is not so bad… I’ve had a great and interesting job for over a year, and I knew the factory would close the moment I started working there… I’ll live.

Beside my hunt for a job, there’s something else haunting my mind, and it’s been haunting my mind for months. I’d really, really like to go to French Guiana to see the forthcoming annular, and, of course, the spaceport in Kourou and Île du Diable (the former penal-colony where Papillon was set)
What’s keeping me back is both the money (800 euro’s for the flight alone.. it’s like emptying a bucket!) and the moment. I’ll be out of work in a week or two. Taking a holiday some 2 weeks after losing your job is kinda awkward, and, I guess, makes it harder to find a new job. Especially since I figured out that, in order to find fitting employment, I’ll have to move to the western part of The Netherlands.
Finding a job, a home, moving and taking a holiday at the same time… hrm.. I’m capable of a lot, but I figure that might just be a too large stack of hay to pile upon my fork all at once.