...is a beautiful day here. It's been sunny all day, and the right temperature for wearing a T-shirt and sandals. So that's what I'm wearing.
It feels a bit like autumn already, though; even though the temperature is almost summer-like, the air is starting to feel different. I love this Indian summer we're having.

I went into the city by bike, left the bike near the city centre and continued on foot. That allowed me to release some BookCrossing books, of course, and to see things that I might otherwise have missed.
Like this bunch of mushrooms in the city park. There were many more of them.

Pretty, aren't they. You can also eat them. But I figured that it would be best to leave them where many more people could enjoy them.


Click makes big

No matter how much we like to complain about today's society, people are still doing fun and creative things. Some of my favourites (see BookCrossing) use one of the 'old' activities and combine it with teh internets somehow. Nice new ideas sprout from that union all the time.
One you may or may not have heard of is yarnbombing. That's a kind of knitted graffity: people knit (or crotchet, I suppose) something to display in the public space. Like a colourful, cosy pyjama for a tree or traffic sign.
Sounds funny, I hear you say. Do people actually do that? Well, it appears they do and here's proof: a yarnbomb that I spotted in my city.

Don't you love it when people just get out there and do something to make their own environment more friendly? I sure do.

Today was Queen's Day. If we have a national holiday, this is it: it's a celebration of our Queen's birthday, only it's not her birthday, because that's in February and we'd have awful weather. So we celebrate it on her mother's birthday instead.

Today was a fine day and Friday is market day. So we grabbed some BookCrossing books to release on the way, and walked into town.
Here's what we got:
- fresh shrimps and fish for a fish soup
- some fried fish to eat on the spot, one of my favourite street foods
- a pineapple (which was very ripe, and delicious, we just had it for dessert)
- spring onions, red peppers and soy bean sprouts for Nasi Goreng
- two kinds of mushrooms, and fresh spinach, for filled pancakes
- chestnuts of the edible kind, for roasting in the oven
- some useful stuff in cheap spray cans: wax spray to prevent rust on vehicles, an oily spray to prevent bread from sticking to the baking tin, carburettor cleaner, and a kind of copper grease for greasing things that get hot
- two pairs of jeans for me, at just 10 euros each, and you know what? They both fit!

The man in the vegetables stall was looking for a knife to cut something with, so Stoneshop lent him his Leatherman, which made a great impression all around. One of his workers wanted to see it, so I handed him mine (which is almost identical) so he could take a look. It took a while before Stoneshop got his knife back, but when he did, it came with a free pear as payment for 'renting' the knife.
Friendly people,  nice weather, happy day.

At the Chinese store, we also bought
- a block of tempeh, which was also for the Nasi Goreng
- and a bag of deep frozen shrimps.

I took pictures of the pretty flowering plants that were being sold. They happened to catch my eye. You'd probably prefer me to show you a Real Dutch Cheese Seller's Market Stall, wouldn't you? Well, I'll do that some other time.

Today is Valentine's day, a day which doesn't mean dick to me by itself; however, any excuse for releasing a bunch of BookCrossing books will do. I had about 50 books prepared; all of them with words like 'love' or 'heart' in the title, or hearts or Cupids on the cover. I'd made them look nice and sappy with some glittery heart shaped stickers, and each of them had a pink heart shaped sticky note with the words 'Voor Jou' (for you) on it, and a bit of shiny ribbon.
Luckily, it was a dry day, so no bags were needed. I loaded the books into a suitable release vehicle and we headed into town. The first journal entry was made before we even got home!


Added on february 18: The catches so far. Most of them are, of course, in Dutch.

one
two
three
four
five

We just had a very nice BookCrossing meeting in my city yesterday.
I was the organiser, and since we have two OBCZs here, I thought it would be nice if we could visit both of them. They're within walking distance from each other, so that shouldn't be a problem. But couldn't we make that short walk a bit more interesting by releasing books along the way?
This is what we ended up doing:

First of all, some BookCrossers came to my house to pick up some boxes of books for registering and releasing. They had a jolly good time digging around in the Book Room, and it wasn't easy to get them out by the time we had to leave in order to meet the others. I practically had to grab their feet and pull!

We all met at two o'clock at OBCZ Manu.

We were welcomed by the two owners, who are very BookCrossing-friendly, and who had started their OBCZ themselves.
Even though it was quite crowded, we somehow managed to fit in (there were about 15 or 20 of us). Each of us had something nice to drink and chatted for a while. I handed out some small maps of the city center so no one would get lost, and I had marked my favourite release spots on them.
People formed small groups and started their walk through the city centre, most of them were carrying books to release.
It was great fun thinking of good release spots, and then finding some of them already taken by other people's books! Over a hundred books were released all in all.
We all met again in OBCZ Bazoeka around four o'clock.


By the time I got there (about ten past four) some BookCrossers were huddling on the doorstep because the place opened a bit late, but as soon as we were inside that was forgotten. We settled to exchange release stories and leftover books, one of our most appreciated members (nrrdgrrl) showed up from South-Africa and a good time was had by all.
Finally we decided to go for a meal together. Some of us had gone home, but there were twelve BookCrossers left, including Stoneshop who met us at the restaurant.
After a very pleasant meal, everyone went their separate ways again.

You'll find some pictures of this meeting here, on BookCrosser LuieLezer's website.

Kind of a rant, I guess.

This is a spin-off from a Chit Chat thread. I don't want to harp on about it there, because it might make the person I replied to uncomfortable, but harping on about something that bugs you is part of what LiveJournal is about, right?
Right. So, what I posted there was this:

> the resident grammar/spelling nazi

Sorry to interrupt, but I wish people would not use this expression.
I understand that its meaning feels differently to different people, but to me and many other Europeans (and, I suspect, many people in other parts of the world too) the word nazi can't be used casually. It basically means GENOCIDE to me. That is quite a different concept from 'someone who's fanatical about certain rules'. And it distracts me from what you're saying, to say the very least.

Can we please try not to use the word nazi in a casual way?

Now I know I'm not alone in this, but at the same time I know there are people out there who don't have the foggiest what I'm on about, or think I'm making a big deal out of nothing.
Except to me it isn't nothing.

The war happened, the Holocaust happened, National-Sozialismus happened. And it was (and is) a big deal. It's a deal that literally cost millions and millions their lives. (We tend to know about the over six million Jews, but we don't always realise there were probably over 26 millions of Russians who died as a direct result of this war).
See, this war I'm talking about wasn't really all that long ago. Lots of people are alive today that remember it. Even my own parents (and I'm blessed to still have parents) remember it. And it happened right here. The results can be seen in many places all over my town and my country.
(For those not in the know, I live within crawling distance from the bridge that was made famous by the book and film 'A Bridge Too Far'.)


Picture: what the center of my city looked like, just after the war, after most of the rubble had been cleared away. This is where I go to the market nowadays.

In any case, it's much too close in many ways (in time, in location, in the collective memory of my people and many others) to make light of it. And the word 'nazi' will never be just another word for me.
So if you want to describe someone who's a stickler for rules, in a humourous way, please think of another word, or make up a new one. Let's please not use this one anymore. There are too many memories (even though they're not mine). It's just too hurtful.

No, I didn't enjoy the 'soup nazi' Seinfeld episode much either.

Today is market day, so Stoneshop and I went into town (by bicycle, as usual) to get some nice fresh veggies.

I just love markets. The fresh fruits and vegetables look so damn tasty, the way they're laid out, forming a colourful painting. And they smell so good! I think people who eat too much junk food and produced foods should be encouraged to shop at local markets, the smells and sight of all that tasty goodness would seduce anyone.
Well, maybe not.
But it certainly works for me. I always end up buying more than we need. Especially fruits.
Not that some extra fresh fruit ever hurt anyone... except maybe if you were hit over the head with one of the pineapples I bought.
What can I say, they were two for a euro.
By the time we left the market our bikes were well loaded. It's a good thing we have bags on them.
We rewarded ourselves by getting Vietnamese spring rolls at the Vietnamese spring roll stand. With hot sauce. Lovely.

I couldn't simply start eating all of the lovely stuff we bought without taking a picture first. I even went so far as to arrange it on an old curtain and make a proper still life. As always, click for a bigger version. Eet smakelijk!



I remember going to markets in Africa, and seeing how people had the habit of stacking things like tomatoes and bell peppers into neat little pyramid-shaped heaps. You were supposed to pick a heap that you liked, and buy all of it. Often, if you'd buy a certain amount or if the stall holder felt like it, you'd get a little extra as a bonus: a pepper, a handful of peanuts or a tomato.
Even the potatoes they sold there were stacked, which made them look very neat. They were all the same size, too. I wonder what they did with different-sized potatoes?
From all the time people spent on making their merchandise look nice, it was clear to see that time and manpower are readily available in Africa, and therefore cheap. You could even buy your garlic peeled, if you wanted.
I have some African market pictures. I might post them here, too.