Guus Bosman

It had been a while since I was at the VU. Quite nice to see that the computerrooms have improved a lot -- there are now flatscreens in most of the rooms.

First I spoke with Mr. Van Wouwe, my study advisor. After all, I'm almost done with my internship.Before I can graduate officially I still have to do 1 more course. However, I really want to start working at Chess per March 1st.

Therefore I'm really happy that Mr. Van Wouwe told me about a course that I can still join. It is basically a practical assignment: Internet Programming. It's about the technologies I've been using at Net.Footworks for two years, and of course in Guus Bosman.nl; I don't expect it to be very hard.

After this I went to see Ralf; he had a lot of valuable remarks. Looks like I'll be able to finish the very biggest part of my paper before March 1st, so that's nice to hear. I also saw an old classmate again, Michiel. He's now working for the VU at a project.

Now I'll see Jennie, then in a hurry back to Haarlem to have lunch.

Mr. Chirac is very unhappy about the pro-American stands of many East-European countries. Yesterday evening at the EU emergency meeting he called Bulgaria's behavior "childish":

"They missed a great opportunity to shut up," he chided the candidates, and their pro-US stance could feed public hostility to EU expansion. Their position is already very delicate, he said, and if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU they could not have chosen a better way. "When you are in the family ... you have more rights than when you are asking to join and knocking on the door," he said.

Article in Trouw today: "Nawijn should resign":

"Minister Nawijn heeft jammerlijk gefaald. Hij wist wat de moeilijkheden waren. Desondanks heeft hij verwachtingen gewekt bij een kwestbare groep. Bij die mensen kan hij nu niet meer aankomen met de boodschap: jammer dan, maar het feest gaat niet door. Nawijn dient daarom terstond op te stappen."
"Minister Nawijn failed miserably. He knew what the problems are. Still, he gave vulnerable people false hope. He can't go back to them now and saying: too bad, there's nothing I can do for you. Nawijn should therefore immediately resign."

Politicians are by nature a bit opportunistic, and I believe that's okay. But as a minister from a party that 'promised' to be 'tough on foreigners' Nawijn made himself utterly ridiculous by promising to have a look into the faith of thousands of asylumseekers and then being stopped by the cabinet. But hey, what's new.

I'm at the CWI Library; I had to bring back some books. It's a strange idea -- I was here the end of November 2002 also to find literature for my internship.

I basically had no idea where to look or what to look for. Now I hope to be ready with my internship in two or three weeks.