Guus Bosman

software engineering director

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dailylife

To Puerto Rico

Sun, 06/12/2005 - 3:48pm

We are leaving Jonathan & Irena's place now, and going towards Penn Station. Sasha will go back to D.C., I'll travel to JFK airport to take a 7:30 flight to San Juan.

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dailylife

In New York

Fri, 06/10/2005 - 11:39pm

We arrived about an hour ago at Jonathan & Irena's, in New Jersey.

The busride was about 4,5 hours, there was quite some traffic.

I worked in the bus -- no wireless internet of course, but a lot of e-mails to go through, and I was working on a document.

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dutchusa

Joke on Dutch tipping

Tue, 06/07/2005 - 8:30pm

What's the difference between a canoe and a Dutchman?

A canoe tips sometimes.

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travelling

El Yunque

Sat, 06/04/2005 - 11:37am

El Yunque.Monday morning we woke up early, and at 9 am a small van came to pick us up for a tour to the rainforest in Puerto Rico. It's the only real rainforest in the US National Forest System, and neither Sasha or I had ever been in a rainforest. The name of the forest is El Yunque, and it's located at the east side of the island. Rain coming from the Atlantic Ocean first hits the island's mountain rim so there the most rain falls, forming the conditions for a tropical rainforest.

There are no large mammals in the rainforest. Puerto Rico started as a vulcanic island, so it never had any physical connection with the main land. There are some interesting exotic elements in the forest: humans brought over bamboo trees from Asia (to reduce erosing near the roads in the forest), and there are a lot of small pink flowers that are originally from Africa.

A national symbol of Puerto Rico is the coqui, a little frog that makes a very characteristic sound, more like a bird than a frag.

We spent about three hours in the rainforest and a visitors center, a very interesting morning. Later the tour guide brought us to a local shop in the forest, where they served "authentic Puerto Rican food". When we looked at the menu and how the place looked liked and smelled, we decided that it would probably be better to try authentic Puerto Rican found in a less "authentic" restaurant.

Pictures from our tour in El Yunque.

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dailylife

Red wine

Sat, 06/04/2005 - 11:25am

Saturday night we went for a drink in lobby of the El San Juan hotel, a few minutes walking from our place. Because we had a heavy lunch, excellent hamburgers in the Holiday Inn's restaurant, we wanted just a small bite so we had a salad and soup, with a glass of red wine.

The wine was very delicious, and we were having a really good time looking at the people in the lobby. There is a large nightclub in the El San Juan, so we were watching the dressed up people going out for dancing. White clothes are all the rage in San Juan, it seems.

Went the waitress served me my soup, she accidentily hit my wine glass and I got the full contents over my clothes. A rather dramatic incident, and I was afraid I might not be able to wash it out of my clothes at all. The supervisor told me I could borrow a shirt from them and they would immediately dry clean my stuff. Because our hotel was so close, I choose to go back to our room and changed clothes and had a very quick shower. When I came back the waitress had brought me a new glass of wine, and a warm onion soup.



I was very nicely surprised that when I picked up my clothes the next day, they were completely clean.

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travelling

Waterclub

Thu, 06/02/2005 - 8:00am

Inside the escalator in the Waterclub.Saturday night Sasha and I visited "the Waterclub", a bar on top of a hotel at the beach here in Isla Verde.

The style of the hotel is very futuristic, with blue lights and a lot of water decorations everywhere. The elevator doesn't have a roof so you can see the internal working of the machines; pretty neat I found.

We stayed out in the city till late and we had a really nice evening.

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guusbosmannl

Server fan

Wed, 06/01/2005 - 11:05pm

New CPU fan.Just after I wrote and saved a long article yesterday, the computer with this website crashed.

I couldn't reach it at all, so that meant that either my parents' internet connection went down, or the computer itself crashed.

My father went to check on the server, and found out that the CPU fan was broken. The main board had detected that, and shut down the computer to prevent damage to the CPU. Jaap immediately installed a new fan so when I woke up it was up and running again.

Thanks a lot paps!

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politicsnews

European Constitution? No...

Wed, 06/01/2005 - 6:08pm

I can't say I am very surprised by today's result, but it still came as a shock to see the European Constitution being rejected by such a strong majority.

Time for a new constitution? I think that might not be such a bad idea. It would be pretty bad to push the current document through, against the will of the French and Dutch people. That is regrettable, but at least now there is a chance to produce a readable document, that might be worth the name Constitution. Or better yet: don't try to be so ambitious -- next time, just call it a "revised treaty" or an "updated partnership" and the whole thing won't be such a big deal. Was there ever a vote on the Treaty of Maastricht? Or Amsterdam? Or Nice?

On a side note, in Utrecht the people rejected a proposal to allow shops to be open on more Sundays throughout the year. This is one of things I truly do not miss: the fact that if you want to do shopping in Holland you always have to plan around the closing times of the shops. That might work well with people who work regular hours, but it just doesn't fit my life style at all.

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