Guus Bosman

This afternoon the I sold beer with the Jaycees in the Durham Bulls Stadium. It's Father's Day and the weather was great so it was a busy afternoon. One of the six types of beer we sold was "Pabst Blue Ribbon", a beer I had never heard of.

I went shopping after the game I saw cans of 'PBR' in Whole Foods. When I told the cashier I bought it because I was curious she said hesitantly: "well, eh, it's a very light beer. It's the cheapest beer we have. It's the indy-rock beverage of choice". She asked me where I was from and when I answered "Holland, the Netherlands" she said "well, at least it will be a cultural experience for you".

She was right -- the beer was very watery and I switched to drinking water after a few sips. Still, it was nice to try it out. Last night I went out with friends from Argentina and we had a very nice Micro Brew beer in On Top Of The Hill. It's called Swim Test Saison, "A French Belgian style beer flavored with spices and East Kent Golden hops". It really tasted good, unlike "Belgium style" beers in the supermarket, and we enjoyed it in the outside seating area of the restaurant, overlooking the main street of Chapel Hill.

Sasha is now traveling to Finland where she'll give a presentation on Saturday.

Sasha was invited to a conference in Helsinki to present a paper she wrote last year. In the morning I worked from home (PowerPoint, mainly) and we went to the airport together.

The journey to Europe didn't go as smoothly as planned due to a thunderstorm in Raleigh, but she's now boarding a flight to London and she'll will travel from London to Kopenhagen, and from there to Helsinki.

Tonight I went out with the Jaycees to a sushi restaurant.

The Jaycees is a civic (volunteer) organization that I recently discovered. I've been to a fund raiser and a volunteer event and it's been fun so I'll become a member.

Tonight was "Random Sushi Night" and this evening's pick was the Peony Asian Bistro in Durham. It was a good choice: the sushi was delicious and the restaurant has a nice atmosphere. I had the 'sushi basic', 10 different pieces of sushi.

It was a fun evening with nice company that we ended with an ice cream in a creamery next door.

It was really warm today, around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 in Celcius). I went running late at night to evade the heat, but even at 10.30 pm it was still 85 degrees and it's very humid.

Tomorrow is the Race for the Cure in which Petra will participate. Let's hope that it won't be too hot and humid. Good luck Petra!

I spent the morning of Memorial Day at the pool with gorgeous weather, a cup of Starbucks coffee, and a good book.

And a with lot of sun, as I realized somewhat too late, so I got burned.

Listening to two Bulgarian Economics PhD students:

"Защото consumption level ... е равно на investment ... ръсте growth ...".

"Това е когато price level ... плюс q без i-w ... когато имаш current level".

A few weeks ago I bought a present online, a Dutch book to be delivered in the Netherlands. Since bol.com, the largest Dutch online book retailer, canceled a similar order without notice last year I tried Bruna.nl.

I won't bore you with the details but online shopping is definitely new for Bruna and I was disappointed with how slow and unresponsive they were.

Anyway, today I received a paper receipt (factuur) for that order. It's pretty cool that it arrived because it was addressed to "Durham, NC, Engeland".

Somebody in the Dutch post service must have understood that this shouldn't go to the U.K. but to North Carolina instead.

I've never really enjoyed gambling but when you're in Vegas you have to at least try it once. Before I left, someone close told me: if you're playing roulette, make sure to put a bet on number 25.

When we came back from dinner, we walked through the casino in the hotel. I was getting ready to go home but I wanted to place at least that one bet. I asked my colleague how it would work and I put a $10 bill on number 25. The lady changed it into a chip and I thought "why is the minimum $10? So much money to lose...".

Well -- the ball fell on number 25 and I won $360! A guy next to me said "who the $%#! are you?!" and I received a handful of coins. I left the table and cashed it at the cashier, and left for the airport.

This weekend was graduation weekend for Duke university, and when I came home Friday evening the parking lots near our apartment were full with cars of parents and families visiting students.

Over the weekend a lot of undergraduate students started moving out of their apartments so there were a lot of rent-a-trucks, helping parents and goodbye parties.

I played with Antlr, a parser generating tool this weekend. It may sound nerdy, but writing parsers is a lot of fun.

I'm staying in New Jersey for a few days this week for work.

I flew in this morning and while I was rather worried, I made it well on time to check in. Curb-side checkin is great -- there's never a line. Not that the lines in RDU are long at all, compared to the D.C. airports.

The rental company gave me a huge Suzuki, with a broken tire pressure monitoring system so my warning light is flashing all the time. I discovered that on the NJ Turnpike and stopped at a gas station, but the technical service I called said that it was a malfunction of the sensor, not of the actual tires so I shouldn't worry about it.