Guus Bosman

Princess Juliana, former Queen of the Netherlands died today at the age of 94.

Juliana is the mother of our current monarch, Queen Beatrix. The national holiday on April 30th, which was the birthday of Princess Juliana, will feel different this year.

I had a nice working day today. There were a lot of different things going on and I like that.

After work I went for a walk and took some pictures of a building; Joost needed them. The weather was surprisingly mild, and it was light outside till late.

It was quite strange this morning to enter my work. The last year I've built up a certain routine: take the elevator to the second floor, get a cup of coffee there, and then the stairs to the third floor. Somehow I could never force myself in the mornings to take the stairs to the second floor -- that's bad, I know.

Since yesterday we're at the first floor, so I have to get used to a new routine. I got my coffee from the second floor again, even though there's a machine here as well. I like the coffee from the 2nd better.

In the morning I saw the Dutch news twice on the horrible bombings in Madrid. They made it sound like there was undeniable proof that Al-Queda is behind the attacks. CNN however, was much more careful drawing this conclusion. From their website:

A group saying it speaks for al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings in an e-mail to an Arabic-language newspaper in London.

However, intelligence officials have said the group does not speak for al Qaeda and has been unreliable in the past.

I was a bit annoyed that the Dutch news didn't make this distinction. A bomb attack is terrible, no matter who is behind it. Still it's important to know who did it, and to be careful in reporting about this.

Well, I don't feel extremely healthy yet, but the worst is over. At least my stomach doesn't hurt anymore, so I'll try and go to Chess today.

I'm a bit paranoid about my breakfast now -- I kind of suspect yesterday's morning-sandwich to be the cause of all this. I'm quite hungry, yesterday after lunch I didn't eat anything. As I don't have a lot of food in house, I'll go to the supermarket and pick up a sandwich there before I go to work.

This morning around 10.00 o'clock all of a sudden I felt dizzy, and my stomach started to be upset. The feeling wasn't very strong, so I went for lunch and had a few slices bread. But, at 15:30 o'clock I had to go home because I felt really bad.

It's really annoying, also because I don't know what caused it. I still feel crappy now, hopefully I'll be beter tomorrow because there is a sort of deadline.

Today my uncle Peter celebrated his graduation; he now has a Master of Business Administration degree.

It was a cosy afternoon, and I saw a lot of family. There were a lot of nice things to eat. I was home around 19:00 o'clock.

See also these pictures.

My parents were here tonight and we had dinner together. It was very pleasant; we hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks. They have a holiday now, the spring-holiday.

I heard a wonderful new song on the radio: "Vondeling van Ameland" by Boudewijn de Groot, perhaps the greatest Dutch singer ever.

It has been a while since I've spent the whole weekend in Haarlem. Last week I was in New York, the weeks before that Leeuwarden, Frankfurt, Broekhuizen, Center Parcs... quite some traveling!

This weekend there is time to do some of the small things that I wanted to do for a while. I spent the afternoon in the city, buying smaller stuff like new soil for the plants in the house.

I also bought three books! One for my work: Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen, an expert in website usability and design. I hope that I can apply some of the knowledge to my new website design. I bought the book second-hand, which I'm quite satisfied with. It's the original (English) edition, and it was € 25,00. Later I saw the Dutch translation in a bookshop for over € 55,00.

The two other books that I bought are related to the German language course that starts Monday. The first is a book to train German vocabulary that I've used in high school, "Duits examenidioom voor 4, 5, 6 vwo". The second German book is a novel: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, one of the German writers I liked the best.

When I came home the computers were off (including this website's server), there must have been a short power outage.

It has been cold the last week here in Haarlem, even snowing.

Still, it was a surprise to see that river Spaarne was frozen this morning.