Just a quick update: Ania’s party was (as far as I am concerned) a resounding succes! Many friends came from Twente and Amsterdam, making it a very special evening. There was good food, better drinks, nice dancing. I especially enjoyed Konrad’s discussions.
Party party!
June 17th, 2007Mate, mate!
June 17th, 2007Ghi ghi, I just beat Rogier at chess! :)
For the record, that means that IF he screws up severely in the beginning of the game (sacrificing his queen for a pawn), I manage to just beat him — otherwise he wins.
Still, chess is fun, and a lot more fun if you win :D
Recently: – played: Mario Kart: Double Dash; – watched: Shrek 1, Heroes season 1 end; – read: The Belgariad book 1&2 and The Fionavar Tapestry book 1
YodelaHeidi!
June 11th, 2007
I just had a totally wonderful weekend — many thanks to Yohan, Cas & Yen-Ha and Sasa for that! I finally went on a long overdue visit to Zürich to visit Yohan and Cas & Yen-Ha. What I did not know in advance: Zürich is cool! The city feels alive, especially around the lake area and in the old center. Friday evening I had the personal tour of Zürich by Yohan, which cemented my impression (and convinced me to return here once). After a short sleep, Yohan departed and I walked around for myself a bit to find the recommended chocolate store Teuscher.
Now, you may now Lindt, you may have heard of Sprüngli, but if you’ve seen Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (the one with Gene Wilder in the role of Willy Wonka), you already know the feeling you’ll get upon entering the Teuscher Konditorei. “Who can take a rainbow” indeed!This store is cool! I seriously recommend it to you :) It’s tiny, and they do not have the widest selection in the world, but you do really feel like you would in the candy store in Willy Wonka.
After taking way too long and managing to curb my inital enthusiasm (i.e. I did not buy the whole store, and I did manage to walk out with less than a kilo of chocolate) it was time to visit Cas and a very pregnant Yen-Ha. They are doing wonderful, and it was very, very nice to see the two of them and catch up again. In the evening we explored Zürich-by-night and inevitably this led to some foosball. Cas’ skills haven’t diminished in the slightest, while I learned some new stuff there. We were good enough to provoke a local team into playing us in their real setup (instead of reversing their traditional roles of keeper and forward player). And then we got our asses handed to us, giftwrapped and all.
Well, again a short night later, I met Sasa’s dad downstairs to receive Sasa’s new bike. A decent mountainbike, and I sort of expect that now that the majority of the SaToSS group is bike-mobile, we will inevitably go on some bike tour. (It helps that taking your bike in the train is free in the Luxembourgian trains (CFL) — but remember, there are plenty of trains in Luxembourg by other companies.) I returned to my bed (humongous bed btw) for a bit more sleep, and then Cas & me went out for Zürich in broad daylight, and spending of final Swiss francs. We walked by the lake, saw the Alpes in the distance (cool view!) and walked back to the station. Luckily (considering my surplus of Swiss francs) the Sprüngli Konditorei at the station was open. Nowhere near as nice a store as the Teuscher (I doubt they have truffles that will be categorised by some as “life-altering experiences”, for instance ;-). Bought a magazine to have a bit to read in the train, stressed with getting on the train (they decoupled the first third of the train, where the obvious bike carriage was…). In the end, it all worked out, and then I had a nice, short (5hrs) train ride back home and happened to see the Ardennes on the way.
(yes, I enjoyed the view of the Alpes and the Ardennes on one and the same day. Sometimes I envy my life ;-)
Biking out of the station, towards home, I hit a Portuguese festival at Place Guillaume. Looked like fun, but I wanted to get the bike to Sasa and grab a bit to eat and then catch up on sleep. Getting the bike to Sasa was easy. Turned out he hadn’t eaten as well, so we took our bikes and went into town to find a nice place to eat. First we looked close to the station (did about 45 km/hr getting there :), but just about all places were closed. So we then looked in the center, again many places closed. In the end we ended up at a place called L’entracte. It looked a bit stylish on the outside, and turned out to be even more so on the inside. The food tasted wonderful, and the desserts were a treat to behold (and taste too). This place is going on my ‘OK’-list of restaurants (on the top position in fact). The perfect conclusion to a very, very enjoyable weekend.
Recently played: Mario Kart DS. Recently listened to “From Paris To Berlin” (of course)
Bro’s visit
June 5th, 2007As you may have read in a previous post, I moved. It’s just in the same building, so no biggie. Managed to move with some help from Sasa and later from Rogier. Luckily packing all the stuff didn’t take that much effort. Of course, unpacking is still ongoing…
Anyway, to begin at the start: I was moving, Rogier had the weekend off and I asked if he’d mind helping me out. I managed to get the key a bit early, so most of the hauling of stuff was done by the time Rogier came around. However, like last time he visited, my room is that much better for it. We moved some stuff around, put some stuff in it’s place and hung up some stuff. Only shame is that I am still missing a cupboard in my kitchen. They promised that I’d get one, and it would be brilliant not to have all of my kitchen supplies lying about in the rest of the room. Nevertheless, it’s already very nice, with a big thanks to my bro!
Anyway, some pointless but funny remarks on my old room, as a sort of farewell-post:
- Funny story 1: when I moved in, two guys were smoking in my room!
Turned out to be my neighbor and a friend of his — the previous occupant of my new room. Since I moved in on the 1st, which was a Thursday, I took them by surprise. They figured that the new occupant would be moving in over the weekend. - Funny story 2: Once I came home late from The Netherlands. Tiredly, I opened the door, only to find my bed occupied! :)
Curious? Well, I won’t put the details up for public scrutiny, but the whole situation was resolved within a minute. So no big surprises here ;-) - Visitors:
- Big Mark — first weekend in Lux, first visitor in Lux! That was really cool!
(still haven’t finished LotR 3rd age btw ;-) - Rogier — my room was a lot more like home afterwards
- Mom & Dad — short visit, but good that they could see the place once
- Ania & Marek — surprise visit, wonderful they stopped by, sucky my phone kept on crashing
- Ania, Marek & Klaus — chocolate od, 2:18:10, party, casematten, … phew
This is of course excepting all those with a base in Luxembourg (so SaToSS members and those related to them are not mentioned)
- Big Mark — first weekend in Lux, first visitor in Lux! That was really cool!
- And that’s just scratching the surface ;-)
Hope that in three months time, you’ll help me to have at least as much to say about my new room.
Current mood: good!! fine music to match: Praise Cats – Shined on me
Doing good, feeling better
June 5th, 2007What did you think about BNN‘s hoax?
I absolutely loved it! Beforehand I talked with some people about it, and although I shared their negative view of such a show, I remembered that BNN had an outstanding track-record when it comes to television in such sensitive areas (well, at least that’s what I perceived).
And, in my view, the upheaval they caused was A Good Thing(tm). Mind you, BNN’s founder Bart de Graaff did die from kidney failure after a protracted, year-long struggle, so BNN has a special link to organ donation.
Well anyway, I decided it was time to (once again*) register myself as a donor, and also immediately become a member of BNN. Any tv channel capable of producing such a hoax, and have all in all a wayward way of shouting a message that needs to be heard should be supported. But that’s just my view.
* I received a letter from the government when I turned 18, requesting my preferences with respect to organ donation. I dutifully filled it in and sent it back, but I never had the impression that this was a good way to store my preferences.
Moved!
May 24th, 2007
As some of you may know (especially those that visited my room), room 210 at Avenue Pasteur, 102a was not really that big. It was a place to stay, and I did have a nice neighbor, but space-wise less then optimal. Hence, I asked for a bigger room.
I got one.
:) :)
Now I have some space for guests. So, who’s going to be the second non-luxembourgian resident to check out my new room?
PS: new address:
Hugo Jonker
Chambre 113
102a, Avenue Pasteur
L-2311 Luxembourg
Luxembourg
2:18:10
May 19th, 2007
’nuff said.
Oh dear, you’re dead.
May 19th, 2007
The plan was to have some visitors over for the Ascencion Day holidays. Since I was in the Netherlands before that anyway, the plan was to all travel to .lu together. Well, there was a slight problem with getting the car we had rented, which through some convoluted but amazingly funny reasoning we managed to turn into a “let’s visit Walibi Flevo today”. So we did, and it was fun — as you can see on the picture :) (top to bottom: Marek (slightly relaxed), Ania (enjoying herself), me (pondering), Klaus (having a blast))
The reason for visiting Walibi was that they had a special discount and extended opening hours. Even though we left at 4 (pm), we managed to do all the roller coasters in the park and even check out the fireworks! Of course, by the time we got back to Eindhoven, it was a bit late to pack everything and continue to Luxembourg, so we went for a short sleep instead. (Incidentally, turns out that I was not the only one who didn’t sleep brilliantly that night. Can’t win ’em all :)
Next morning, redo from start. I.e. start with a nice meal — breakfast this time, not lunch — and then pack and go. Well, I was up early anyway, so I went to get some bread for breakfast. Got back, and then realised that we didn’t have all that much breakfasty stuff. So went back to the store again, and got some more supplies. Came back, we had a nice breakfast (the fresh bread was brilliant!) and then got round to packing. Realised I was missing batteries, which were sorely needed for use with the mp3-player.
Incidentally, if you have a TuneCast or iCast or whatever thingy that converts your mp3 player into a short distance radio station: from Eindhoven until a bit past Luik/Liege, FM 91.8 is available (with incidental hickups, but nothing substantial). After Liege you enter the range of some Luxembourgian station, I have yet to find out which channel works then, although I think somewhere near 107 FM there is something which lasts the rest of the way.
But to continue, I went back to the store for the third time that morning, got my batteries and we got going. Sjouke graciously lended us his apartment, which is very much appreciated since 4 people would be quite a squeeze in mine :)
We installed ourselves there, had a slight miscommunication then which led to us having pasta there (with fruit and boiled in milk, tastes quite different from your regular pasta, but nice), and then went for the dreaded registration and pasta party. Afterwards Ania felt like checking the route — an activity which had a profound distressing effect on my mood. Luckily, as Petr’s tile says,
There is no problem so big that chocolate cannot cure it.
So afterwards I o.d.’ed on chocolate, which lifted my spirits to a new height. So now I am looking forward to this thing again. Will let you know afterwards (eventually) how it went… For now, cross your fingers!
Uni.lu events
May 7th, 2007A lot of stuff has happened since my last update. In this post, a focus on the official side of things — the rest is pending pictures :)
As you may know, the Université du Luxembourg is a very young university. As happens with young and dynamic universities, stuff gets done, and then the results are celebrated. First up was the opening of my apartment building (which gives me a good reason to show off once again what a nice building it is!). The Minister of Education dropped by (to put it nicely, he and his secretary of statecame to my house just to shake my hand ;-). There were some talks in Luxembourgian. Turns out that I can follow Luxembourgian only if I sort of know what they are saying — so I understood all the pleasantries, but all the extrapolations for future projects went by. Then we had a tour of the building, and it had quite a bit of surprises for me! We even have an altar hidden in there, and a lecture hall. And of course a nice place for a drink, where they had the drinks.
The next uni.lu event was the first doctorate defense within the CSC research unit (roughly speaking: the CS subgroup of the department of technical sciences here). It was the second or third defense of the university, so there is no set way of how to arrange this. Of course, I am used to those defenses I have seen in the Netherlands, which are quite formal. So you can imagine that a much more informal approach was already quite strange to me. That coupled with the attempt to find a form for such an event really ment that my previous expectations of how a defense is conducted, and what happened here, are quite far apart :) Still, good to see how these things are evolving here.
Third uni.lu event was the opening of our office building, here on an old picture. There was some planning in advance, since a lot of journalists would be invited and this was the ideal chance for CSC to showcase itself to the Luxembourgian world. So, the various subparts of the CSC all prepared nice presentations and what-have-you-not. We participated, I patched up an old poster and took it from .nl with me to hang up. The event was kicked off by official talks by the dean of the department, who was followed by the rector. The rector had quite a long speech in French, talking about short-term work contracts and how it is better for academics to move on. He then wanted to recapture that in English, but somehow missed the mark at times. There were some funny remarks made, but the overall message was quite clear: fixed-term contracts will not be extended — if it is up to the rector. And it seems to be. This has of course been playing a bit longer, and there are varying views on the subject.
After the speeches, there was a round of drinks and a sighting of the building, after which we got back to work. The poster presentation was planned as the final part of the program, and of course the invitees were by then overflowing with information and looking to get home, so that part was skipped.
The final event was the first inaugural speech within CSC, by Leon van der Torre. He gave a nice overview of his planned research. The form was once again different from what I was used to, but by now I was slowly adjusting and expecting differences :)
Enough for now, more updates later!
Recent gaming: acquired a GBA Micro2Micro connection cable, trying it out with Sasa! Mario Kart Advance is the winner until now.
Recent cooking: couscous variants :)
Short update
April 19th, 2007
Been kind of busy lately. After the bike tour on Saturday, Sjouke, Baptiste and me went for a hiking tour in Little Swiss (photos, route description+map+elevation chart). Baptiste had found this site detailing nice walks. We walked for about 6 hours :) Well, it was quite a challenging road at times. But it was a very nice day for a walk, and we did have a very nice picnic after a third of the way. Still, perhaps wine is not the best option if you’re still going to be marching some distance…
Tuesday, Baptiste & me went to attend Die Dreigroschenoper — hadn’t heard of it before myself either. Following a musical in a foreign language (German) is hard. It’s even harder if they switch sometimes to another foreign language (French) — in mid-dialog. Yes they do. They will be talking with four people, and three of them are German speakers, but if they talk to the fourth, out comes the French. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem attached to a specific role or person on stage — characters who were addressed in French previously, were suddenly speaking German…
But anyway, nice to see once, but not brilliant.
That’s it for now, talk to you all later.
Running: today: ouch. Gaming: not at all. Cooking: y’day: tomato soup; today: hutspot(?). Music: Clannad – I will find you.