(Originally posted on MySpace)
Here it is: my Christmas tree. Mostly the same ornaments as last year, just added a few. Which is fine, because it's a bigger and much fuller tree.
Well, it should be... I paid twice as much for it!

It looks so much nicer if you take the photograph in a darker room. But then you can't see the ornaments, just the lights. I tried taking a pic with the flash on, but it looked horrible.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Tomorrow is Christmas eve and we're having guests for dinner. My parents (sort of), his parents (sort of), his sister and her husband and two kids. Yes, that makes ten!
So for the first time in my life I've started cooking a day early. We just made the soup and dessert so we won't have to do it all tomorrow.
The menu is as follows:

- lassi (mango yoghurt shake), three kinds of pappadums, three chutneys.
- dahl (lentil soup), naan bread.
- yellow rice.
- a sweet curry with sweet potatoes, carrots, coconut milk, almonds.
- a spicy curry with cauliflower, zucchini, egg plant, onions.
- fried okras as a side dish.
- raita (yoghurt based salad) with tomato, cucumber, radishes and mint.
- kheer (rice pudding). See recipe in earlier blog posting.
- coffee and tea with tiny chocolates.

Sounds classy, no? As you see, it's all Indian. I love Indian food. I hope our guests do, too. We're including a sweet curry for those who don't do spicy, so we should be allright.
Now let's see if I can find another plate tomorrow, because we're one short and I really want to have matched plates, just this once!

And we have a lovely Christmas tree. I'll try to take a picture of it. Tomorrow. If I have the time...

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Here's my card for all of you lovely MySpace folks! Enjoy.
(Click makes bigger)

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Walt Disney did.
Disney is a company that wrecks any classic it gets its claws into.
Let me elaborate.
Take, for instance, the 'classic' Disney film Alice in Wonderland.
I don't care that Tweedlydum and Tweedlydee appear in it, when technically they should not be in this film, because they are in Through the Mirror. I do care that the entire feel of the film is dumbed-down and sickly sweet. All the confusing and slightly scary stuff was taken out. The original book is full of things that children will probably not understand, but that makes it more interesting, even to children. If you understand all of it, what's left to wonder about?

And then there's Winnie the Pooh. Another childhood favourite of mine; in the original version (translated, though) of course.
Disney took out the poetry and replaced it by cheezy sentimentality. And the drawings are just ugly.
It's awful that a lot of people now think those drawings 'are' Winnie the Pooh, because they've never seen the real thing.
Look what they did to poor Christopher Robin! The way they changed his hair alone is enough to make him a totally different kid. They probably thought he looked too much like a girl.

Anything in which Pooh wears a red sweater is suspect! I will never, ever buy any Disneyfied Pooh stuff, because I like the original too much.

Let's face it: Disney slaughtered Pooh. Disney violated Alice. And no, the Lion King is NOT making up for it.

For a classic, to be Disneyfied generally means to be FUBAR. All girls look the same, as do all the handsome princes. All of the voices sound the same, too. And if the reality just isn't pretty enough, they pretty it up. Just one word: Pocahontas. 'Nuff said.

Disney is killing off the classics, one by one. Don't let them get away with it! Don't buy anything that depicts Pooh with a red sweater!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Today I was informed that a certain assignment I was going to do next week was postponed.
The guy who was supposed to make the wall nice and even before I would be able to paint a marble effect on it, has a badly infected joint and can't work, so I can't either. There goes my income for December!

So I decided to try something I haven't done in years: go out and find some shop and café owners willing to have a temporary decoration painted on their windows for Christmas. Sint Nicolas would be nice too, but it's a bit late for that now.
I found the designs of frolicing Christmas trees I made at least five years ago, and even the HTML to advertise my temporary activities on my business' website. So now that the page is back up, the next step is to dress in nice white-with-paint stains and hit the street. I'll take prints of the designs (or if I can find them I might even laminate the original drawings and take those), some flyers to leave if I can't talk to the person in charge, and business cards.

I haven't done this in years, but it's probably a good idea. I might even come home with some new assignments for 'real' work. Wish me luck.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
One of the books I've left in Bremen has been 'caught'!
Do check out the journal entry, it's here.
BookCrossing is such fun!


Added a day later:
Another one!
*does the Happy Dance*

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Yesterday we met a fellow BookCrosser from the States!
I know her as Antof9 but over here she's Margeaux. She told me she was in Bremen for a few days, and of course I decided to go and see her!
We've 'known' each other for years and never met, or even talked on the phone. She has, however, heard my voice once, when I made her a recording of a Dutch children's song because she wanted to know what 'Klap 'es in je handjes' should sound like.

On the way to Bremen the exhaust pipe of my car broke. We stopped at a gas station, bought steel wire and a can of beer, emptied the can into the gutter and used it to fix the exhaust, sort of. Our arrival in Bremen was rather late and quite noisy. But we got there.

It was so great to see her! And she had her husband with her. What a cutie he is... Actually, what a cute couple they are! And they had brought us some really wonderful gifts. I had asked her to bring me a Sharpie, or maybe two, but she brought me a whole rainbow of them, and put them in a real BookCrossing shoulder bag! I hardly had the nerve to accept all of it. I wanted to say 'Oh no, you shouldn't have!' but my mother taught me not to lie. I did blush, though.

We went into town for a lunch (those Germans know how to bake bread and serve it fresh) and we walked around and planted BookCrossing books all over the city center for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, we found one that someone else had left. It was such fun.
Antof9's hubby bravely put up with all of this, although he sometimes had a look on his face that seemed to say: 'I always knew my wife was crazy, and now I know there are people all around the world who are just as crazy as she is! And I can't decide whether this makes it better or worse.'
We strolled around for hours and saw most of the Old City, and had tea in a Konditorei full of old ladies.
Here is a pic of three of us on one of the spots where we left books. Click to enlarge...


If you'd like to see more pics and read about the books and where we left them, here's the link to each of the books.

one <== a 'catch'! two three <== a 'catch'! four five six seven <== a 'catch'! eight

(Originally posted on MySpace)
My mother wrote a book. It's about growing older. Not the fysical aspects, but the spiritual ones: Is this how I wanted to be, have I lived the life I wanted to live? What are my goals for the remaining part of my life? Are there people or events that I need to come to terms with? Things like that.
The cover looks like this:


Nice, isn't it? The book is available from bookstores all over the Netherlands. If they don't have it they can order it for you.
If you're interested in the subject, you can check out the website we made for her. She did the content, I did the rest. The site is in Dutch, as is the book.

Boy, am I proud of her.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Clean the sprouts, and microwave on high power for four to five minutes.
Peel one onion and cut into rings.
Cut 1/2 red bell pepper into stripes.
Heat two or three spoonfuls of oil in a wok or wadjan.
Fry onions and add:
-ginger powder
-kurkuma powder
-cumin powder (djintan)
-laos
-one or two cloves of fresh garlic, pressed
Add pepper stripes and sprouts and stir-fry for a while.
Add one small can of coconut milk, a spoonful of sambal (to taste, of course), a dash of ketjap (soy sauce). Stir well.
If it stays too moist, use some corn starch or potato starch to make it thicker. Sprinkle with seroendeng, or if not available, with dried coconut.

Serve with rice, peanut sauce (satay sauce), and satay of choice (in my case, marinated and fried tofu) and/or slices of hard boiled egg.
Selamat makan!

This is a typical Moem recipe. No amounts or measures of any kind. You'll just have to figure out how much of each you'll need.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Those of you who can read Dutch, and enjoy the few Africa tidbits I have posted here, might like to visit my Travel Scrapbook. It has lots of stories.
Information of a more factual kind about this trip can be found here.


The pic shows me riding through a banana plantation in Ghana.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Here's the best recipe I ever found for Kheer, a sweet rice dessert from India.


Bring the milk and the rice to a boil.
Boil for a while, like five or ten minutes, stirring all the time. Stir well, and keep scraping the bottom of the pot so it doesn't stick.
Add cardamom, saffron, nuts, raisins, coconut and condensed milk. Allow the mixture to boil until it sets, but remember that it will get thicker as it cools down.
Finally, add a tiny splash of rose water, according to taste. Sweeten with some honey if desired.

Serve hot or cold, garnished with some coconut and a few nuts, or some sugar flowers or similar. Enjoy!

If you make too much (it's quite filling...) you can freeze it for another time.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
I met a writer once
His name was Belcampo, most of you won't have heard of him. I don't think much of his work has been translated. He's dead now, lived to a ripe old age too. I met him when I was 18 and he was well over 80. He mainly wrote stories of a genre that's hard to describe. They deal with the impossible or the very unlikely, but written in such a way that it all appears normal. Some of them could be described as what-if stories. If I have to compare him to someone you would know about, I'd say he was the Dutch Roald Dahl.

He was my favourite writer at the time (in fact he still is), and I did a school assignment about his work. I wrote to tell him that, and he kindly sent me a book so I could read it (it wasn't for sale anywhere), I paid him of course, and sent him a copy of the assignment when it was finished. He then sent me a very friendly letter complimenting me on my work. I was over the moon.

Then when I was in his city for something unrelated, I found myself on his doorstep. I was too timid to ring the doorbell. But luckily his wife came home and found me there and I explained why I was loitering on her doorstep. She immediately invited me in, saying 'Herman will be pleased to hear he has a visitor!'
And he was. He had been cutting out pictures of paintings and pasting them in a scrapbook. His eyes lit up when I told him who I was.
We had a lively conversation that lasted all afternoon and most of the evening. He was a very fast and original thinker, always seeing sides of an issue that no one else would even think of. He was witty and funny, too. And he treated me like an equal.

I was invited to stay for dinner, and helped with cooking. I can honestly say I have fried tofu in Belcampo's kitchen. None of you will find this impressing, except for a small selection of Dutch people.
I can't remember the conversation itself but I remember that afternoon as one of the most special in my life so far. It felt like a historical moment, a very long one.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
This is where I live:
click!

It's the building in the very centre of the picture. Yes, it's an old office building. And see that group of cars parked behind it? The white one parked closest to the building is mine. Shiny, isn't it? I think I just washed it when the picture was taken, a few months ago. My cat is probably sitting underneath the car, but you can't see him.

So where do you live?

(Originally posted on MySpace.)
Lake Chad, as many people know, is disappearing. I've seen fishermen now living over a day's walk from the lake shore. Not many people know how strange and beautiful a place it is. Let me illustrate this by telling you one of the things that touched my heart there.
My travel companion and me were crossing the former Lake Chad. This is a very varied piste of two to three days. Most of it is not very hard. When we were there, there had been some rain already, and a thin, wiry variety of grass had started to sprout, making the dunes much easier to cross. It was not very hot (35 degrees celsius at most).
We were resting, drinking luke-warm water from our jerrycan, in a field of small white lilies, that looked slender and delicate. There were a few birds to be heard, and the ever present desert wind, but not much else.
Suddenly we felt a slight trembling in the sand and the next moment we found ourselves eye to eye with two men on camels. The camels were adorned with copper bells and colorful rugs. The men were dressed in deep blue gowns and wore white turbans wrapped around their heads.
They were every bit as surprised as we were. Nothing about their appearance gave away in which age they were living. They looked exactly like people there must have looked hundreds of years ago. And they were traveling. Just like us. We admired their camels while they did the same with our bikes. There was no language that we shared, so we could not speak to them; but we greeted one another courteously. After that, we all just stared for a while and smiled.

A few moments passed; my companion asked (using gestures) wether he could take a picture. They seemed to feel it was OK. So he did.

By the time we got to see that picture (15.000 kilometers from there) it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The magic of the moment was not caught on film. It hardly ever is.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
...during my motorcycle trip in 2000, among others:

- various monkeys, mainly in Mali
- 1 elephant (not in a park) in Burkina Faso
- a wolf-like animal that was running along with us for a while, in Mauretania
- a bright green snake that was crossing the road
- flamingoes and pelicans and other birds in Mauretania
- a desert fox, very pretty, in Sudan
- giraffes in Niger
- small white herons of the kind that keep the parasites off the cattle
- an ant-eater in Chad (very briefly)
- a tiny little cameleon, bright green, in Chad
- a very big scorpion without a tail, looks like a spider, inside our mosquito net... the scorpion didn't survive this encounter
- a LOT of frogs in a toilet/bathroom in Senegal, which was good because they kept the cockroaches away
- wonderful vultures in Chad Lake!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
One of the most unusual places I have been to lies in Sudan. Near the city of Dongola, which is on the banks of the Nile, there is a stretch of desert which is entirely covered in flat, pinkish pebbles.
The area is not flat, it consists of small, rounded hills, all roughly the same size. The pebbles look very neat, as if someone laid them out one by one and then used fine sand to fill in the spaces between. So they're embedded in the sand without being covered by it.
There are some tracks but they are hardly visible because the surface looks the same wherever you go. You don't need them either, because the terrain is very easy to ride through. It's almost like riding on tarmac.
The hills (pebble dunes, you could call them) just go on and on, and you just ride up and down all the time. Pinkish pebbles as far as you can see.

 The scenery looks almost artificial because it's so uniform.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Apart from motorcycle riding, playing pinball and lots of other stuff, I like Bookcrossing. It's a worldwide movement of readers, who share the aim of making the whole world a free library. I'm rather active myself: at the time I'm posting this I have sent over 1900 books out into the world. Released, we call that.
Apart from reading, registering and releasing books, we do other fun things, too. We chat on the Forums, and we have meetings.

If you like books, and if you like the idea of sharing them with the rest of the world, why don't you check out the site?



See my personal virtual bookshelf here .

(Originally posted on MySpace)
This is my page on MySpace. I don't think I'll update it much. But welcome anyway.