Since I came to .nl this time around, I got a quick round of updates — to be expected of course, especially if there’s a wedding (see previous post). I finally got to see Denis’ fancy new hotrod (and yes, it’s a nice car). Visited the IPA dinner+social event on a special invitation — originally I couldn’t make the IPA days due to appointments, but when I apologised the organisation was friendly enough to invite me to partake in the social event. This time, the game (it’s always an adaption of a game) consisted of teams shouting letters and placing the shouted letters in a square in order to make as many long words as possible. Hard game, but we had the coolest word – “ij” was allowed as a typical dutch letter (not to be confused with “y”), so our team made the 5 letter word “ijstijd”! :) And in the end, most other teams hadn’t found a use for the two “ij”‘s, gna gna. Biked back in the middle of the night, thanks to Chris accompanying me — the offer of a bed in Heeze sounded very tempting…

The day after I missed out on the ouwelullenborrel of GEWIS because we at FM had a borrel at the same time – I know, I should plan the FM borrels at different times (yes, I am still the main initiator for these borrels :). By this time, the plans for my return journey had been rearranged again. It seems like every time I come to .nl, there is something rearranging my plans for returning to Lux ;-)

Anyway, afterwards enjoyed a very nice dinner Chez Ania, with the fancy new steamer (which had a broken button, so it was exchanged the next day). Ania had told me there was a surprise planned, turned out to be karaoke. I never mind that, but I always feel a bit of pity for the crowd ;-)

Somewhere along the lines I discovered that Stijn is the proud owner of a Wii nowadays – news that was followed the next day by Nintendo announcing a higher expected profit over 2006. Coincidence? I think not :)

To finish off: just dropped Ania off at Schiphol – nice of the car to hold out for once past Utrecht ;-)
And: I just ran a bit again. The 6-3 schedule (6 mins run, 3 mins walking) seems to be pushing my joints to the edge, but not beyond. And that is really good news! (If you’re me at least :) Anyway, off for a shower, meeting Johan and partying with Tijntje.
Last gamed: WarioWare, Megagame$ — unlocked the damn Pyory game, I consider the game finished now

So, that was a short look back, but kind of in reverse… so a bit longer, and in a better order:
I travelled back by train from Lux on Wednesday the 25th, and had a nice pause in Maastricht to meet Jennifer and cook for her once. She has some nice housemates, we enjoyed a nice dinner (dessert: strawberry, freshly stirred cream and ice) and then it was onwards again for me. (Could say a lot about how nice the evening was, but I won’t :P)

Thursday, after meeting Sjouke at CWI, me, Ania and Marek had a very nice dinner and afterwards Marek and me got our asses hand-fed to us in a game of Carcasonne. Friday was the big day of the wedding, so I dressed up nicely, went for a swim and half a day of work, and then onwards to the officialities. Gotta say one thing about Nout: he is, inevitably, Nout. :) Wisecracking during his own ceremony :) :) Aukje looked lovely, and somehow I couldn’t notice the nerves on Arnout — though I am sure he had plenty of them. Well, he deals with nerves by making jokes, and in that regard… he was definitely nervous ;-)

As said, met a lot of people I hadn’t spoken in quite a while at the party, so there was some nice catching up. (To give you an idea of how long it had been in some cases: people coming up to me and noticing I have lost a lot of weight). Saturday Marek, Ania and me teamed up for lunch, serious shopping and a game of squash — really cool, I should play more often. Marek hadn’t played before, but he quickly started returning the ball. Ania, of course, had played before, but it had been quite a while… so at first I had the upper hand. And, of course, then she realised how to improve her stance… second time that week I got hand-fed my own ass ;-)

The rest of the weekend consisted of pizza, Heroes & Naruto (with Steven); Boboti & catching up with my brother, and shopping on Sunday in the sun. Ran into Ania during shopping, and we shopped together a bit. We were just dropping of the shopping, when the doorbell to OUR place (the unofficial name of the house where Ania, Petr and Amandine live) rang. Turned out to be Yohan’s parents, so with Yohan not being there yet, I got to practice my French a bit. 20 minutes later, Yohan came in with a whole bunch of French friends and family, and I got to practice my French even more :) Luckily Baptiste has been helping me out a lot with French.

Well, skipping the defense, that sort of concludes it (skipping over SAFE-NL too). À la prochaine!
Now gaming: not gamed since last update

• Ania & me found Ania’s bike.
  That was sort of amazing, it has disappeared from (the closed alley next to) OUR place, and we found it back in the city center – locked with the original lock. Weird, but nice.
• Nout & Naukje can both play piano scarily good.
  Old news to those who know, but I’m still impressed if someone can sit down and just start to play a song from paper…
• Movie-thon summary
• Sucky SF with decent special effects is bearable
• Sucky SF with ancient special effects and ancient acting (think ST:TOS style, but worse) is not bearable
• Shaolin Soccer is a cool movie
• Highlander I is a very cool movie
• Jan-jaap van der Wal is pretty funny.
  Erik had unfortunately gotten sick, and was unable to attend, so Rogier & me suddenly found ourselves in the (newly renovated) theatre. The show is called BSUR. It didn’t drive the socially engaged points home as much as the title implied :)
• Tv series updates
• Heroes: somehow after a break in watching, the impact seems to have lessened on me. Still, cool show
• Naruto: filler time is OVER!!! *dance of joy*. Still, only had one (double) episode to enjoy, which was “enriched” with various “use your secret Naruto decoder ring!! This is a keyword” scenes :S. But on the whole: can’t really wait for the updates :)
• Dashti’s talk on Nuovo went nice (imho).
  It did cover a lot of things in little detail, so in that respect it will probably differ from the presentation at FSEN07.
• Meeting the Kiesraad proved interesting.

That’s it for now, write to you later!