Guus Bosman

This weekend we'll be in Center Parcs, a holiday parc where I and a number of friends go every year.

It's in Zandvoort, a sea-side village close to Haarlem.

Daniël and I agreed last night that it's really inconvenient that the shops in the Netherlands close so early. In the States, Hungary, Bulgaria... everywhere the shops are open till after 18:00 o'clock, so people who work during the week are also able to go shopping.

Alas... not in Holland. The only exception is Thursday evening (in Haarlem) when many shops stay open till 21:00 o'clock. So it's always more lively in the city and I like Thursday evenings. Tonight I had to do the things I didn't have time for during the week. Somehow there's a lot of paperwork to arrange this week and I went to the municipality to get some official paper. That went pretty quick; the people at the civil service there are very friendly.

On of the things I have to arrange is my own fault. When I came back from Washington in October I forgot to turn in my "I94-W" form, a small sheet that had been stapled in my passport when I entered the States. Now I have to send it to an office in the States, along with proofs that I did return to the Netherlands. So I'll send my boarding pass from the return flight, a copy of my passport with the stamps that prove I was in Bulgaria, and some papers of my work.

Quite a difference with yesterday, when I woke up nice and late: today the alarm went at 7:00 o'clock.

Today I'm going to Jerry's, where we'll play "Diplomacy", a game. I've never played it before, it's supposed to be really good.

When I came into our livingroom it smelly really nice of the hyacinth my mam gave me a week ago.

I managed to activate our fire alarm when I was cooking. I was cooking a hamburger on the small grill and it caused a lot of smoke. In that sense it's quite fortunate that we don't have an automatic sprinkler installation.

Mark, a colleague, borrowed me a very interesting book: "The PhotoShop Book for Digital Photographers"; I'm reading it now.

Yesterday Marjolein and Jerry came for dinner. They brought home-made Guacamole, so we had beer with chips, Guacamole and Bulgarian lukanka (dried sausage).

We had a really fun evening, with a lot of talking, food and drinks. For the first time since a long time I cooked Bulgarian: mlechna salad and gyuveche. I think next time I'll use a different yoghurt for the mlecha; I didn't like the taste of this one too much. The gyuveche was pretty good, if I may say so.

It's a girl!

Fiona Strausz was born today... wonderful news!

My good friend Tibor told me in the morning that "he was not going to work today", and he just sent me a message to tell me Fiona was born; it's their first child. Mother Janneke and daughter are fine. Fiona's website will be online soon on Fiona.strausz.nl.

Many, many congratulations from both of us!

My mother came to Haarlem this afternoon, and we had tea together. I showed her the pictures of our trip to Bulgaria; we hadn't seen each other yet since I came back.

My father came a bit later, from an appointment in Amsterdam, and we went out for dinner the three of us. Very nice.

I'm reading a graduation paper of a friend now. She studies Public Administration, and she's researching conflicts that occur when companies merge.

It's quite interesting to read, because it deals with subjects I normally don't read about. She took a case study and analyzed what went wrong in that particular merger, using a process model.

Yesterday evening I went to meet Daniël, a friend who lives in Hungary. Every two months or so he returns to the Netherlands, and it's always a pleasure to see him again.

There were a lot of people yesterday; it was a nice evening. I was home around midnight.

It was the first train trip on which I used my new train discountcard. I used to have a student-card that allows free traveling, so it's a bit of an adjustment to pay for each train journey.