Guus Bosman

A nice benefit from traveling to our headquarters in Somerset is that it's easier to see Jonathan and Irena and the kids. Secaucus is not far from the Newark airport and about 45 minutes from Somerset.

Sasha was in New York for (successful) meetings Thursday and Friday so we're spending the weekend together. This afternoon we made a trip to Somerset.

I saved a deer's life tonight by not hitting it with my car.

After a fun dinner I was driving home and all of a sudden I saw a deer in my headlights. I was doing 40 miles per hour but could stop just in time.

It jumped out of the way into the bushes.

I'm in Somerset this week. I took an early flight this morning (woke up at 5.45 am) and I parked the rental car in Secaucus at 10.00 am. Pretty smooth connections every where.

I took the train from Secaucus to downtown Manhattan, where I had a nice lunch and visited an exhibition in the New York Public Library. I arrived in Somerset around 5.00 pm.

I had a great 'Durham morning'. After spending some time on my new hobby I went for a run over the Duke campuses, East and West. Then I went for a haircut in 9th Street, had coffee at Francesca's and shopping at Whole Foods.

I visited the library and was pleasantly surprises to see they had their book sale. I constraint myself and bought only 1 book, a beautiful version of Rip Van Winkle for $3. Then I visited the Durham Scrap Exchange because I was curious about it. A nice store.

I cooked a couple of dishes tonight, and froze a lot of it for the week. When cooking Indonesian it's much more efficient to cook a couple of different recipes at the same time since there is so much cutting, chopping and preparing involved and often ingredients are similar.

I got a nice piece of chuck roast from the butcher and made two meat stews: rawon daging or zwarte rundvleesstoof and daging smoor. In addition I prepared a home-made satay sauce which was fun to do and marinated a number of chicken satay skewers.

Yesterday we spent the day on the road; we went to the new Ikea there and picked up a book case.

Yesterday I attended the Rensselaerswijck Seminar in Albany, NY. That was so much fun!

A very friendly crowd and interesting topics. I met a number of people I've been wanting to chat with for a while.

During the day there were presentations around the topic of New Netherland, the Dutch colonies in the 17th century in New York State. In the evening there was a reception and an Indonesian dinner. Later I went to a bar with three fun researchers (French, Dutch American and American) and we stayed till late.

Today I plan to visit the 1609 exhibition in the museum here, perhaps the Old Church and then travel back to New York LaGuardia where my flight departs at 7:45 pm. It's been a fun week but I'm looking forward to be together again.

The last time I was in Albany, NY was 11 years ago, the summer that Sasha and I first met. Tonight I arrived here alone for a short stay in between work and travel back home on Sunday.

There's a seminar of the New Netherlands Institute in Albany tomorrow so tomorrow I'll be listening to a number of presentations on the history of New Netherland, the area of New York City and Albany in the mid-1600's.

On the way to here I drove past Kingston and Tannersville, two places we have fond memories of.

It's funny to see so many Dutch names and half-Dutch names in the names of villages and streets. One of the exits of the toll road is called Amsterdam.

Friday night I took cab in New York.

After a few minutes I heard someone: "hey! hey you! yeah, you in the backseat of that cab!"

It turned out to be a TV commercial on the small TV in front of me.

You know when you're at a Southern dentist if they ask you:

"Do you smoke? Drink coffee? Drink sweetened tea?"