Guus Bosman

A note on the coffee machine:

This office is full of 'he' men.

1. We don't wear perfume.
2. We don't drink "flavored" coffee.

I agree with the author -- flavored coffee is a horrible (American?) idea.

Grande hazelnut vanilla skim latte, anyone?

This weekend I had time for a cooking experiment, and today I baked two loafs of white bread.


I've made bread before but that was always from a bread-mix package. This was the real deal -- flour, yeast, salt, a little bit of butter and honey (we were out of sugar).

I made a crust with egg yoke, and I made sure to let the bread dry on an (improvised) rack for a few minutes so the bottom crust stayed crispy.


We just had it for lunch and it was delicious. I'm rather proud.

When I was in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago I bought a reproduction of an old map of Haarlem.

In the Haarlem History Museum I found the Kaart van Nautz. The map by Mr. Nautz dates from 1829 and shows the city as it was in 1822.

We had the poster dry mounted by a shop in Durham's Main Street and the result is great. The map is free of wrinkles and very easy to place on the wall.

The first elections results of the elections for the Dutch parliament have been coming in from 3 pm EST today.

1. A sad day for the PvdA: they were unable to leverage the failure of the VVD/CDA government to gain more seats and lost some 9 seats. Should Wouter Bos resign?
2. The biggest surprise is the very strong result for the Socialist Party. I disagree with their ideology but they are a true grass-roots party and have worked hard for their success.
3. The SP now probably has more seats that Lijst Pim Fortuyn ever had.
4. Balkenende will get a 4th chance to come up with a stable government. He will likely continue to represent the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
5. There is now a party in Dutch parliament that has animal rights as its main priority.
6. It is now a good time for Mr. Marijnissen to start thinking about his successor, to prevent the SP from becoming a one-man party and prove that they are a strong organization
7. Mark Rutte has failed as the first man for the VVD. His party lost significantly, and only 36% of the VVD voters voted for Mr. Rutte. He should resign his partijleider position or will otherwise be moved aside by his party anyway.
8. It's sad that Mr. Wilders did quite well with a projected 6 to 9 seats. Unfortunately it shows that there is a consistent base of anti-immigrant voters.
9. The LPF likely no longer has any seats in parliament, nor does Mr. Nawijn get a seat.
10. "EenNL", a LPF follow-up party, did get a seat. Comment of its first man: "I would feel horrible sitting in parliament alone".
11. D'66 virtually disappeared (finally) from national politics after withdrawing support for Balkenende III.
12. The election results of Dutch citizens abroad will be published on Friday.