what happened?

Right, so all of you are wondering what I'm always blabbing about on the index page in the first paragraph? Well have I got the solution for you both! Here, I will keep a little archive of what I've written in exactly that paragraph. For your reading pleasure, I will try to put everyhthing on here one month at a time. The oldest post of the month will be at the top. When you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back a few days and everything should become clear. Whenever I think it's worth it, I'll add a link to the more interesting things I mention. Try to expect not too many links.

May 2003

2 - Friday - 01:04
I'm now watching an episode of Ken Burns' marvellous Jazz film. Not only is it one of the best documentations on jazz ever made, it is also a very good way to see how life was back in those days. A lot of excitement in the world back then, and a lot of grief and bad things too. But it makes me realize again the wonderfulness of american jazz. It's so cool to think that I actually met one of the protagonists of that story, Mr Dave Brubeck.

2 - Friday - 13:45
I just spent a couple of hours working on the site, and the best thing is that you probably won't even notice it! Still though, I've applied a root structure to the site now, which keeps it easier for me to maintain and keep a good overview. Temporarily, there will be two counters on the site, one for the amount of visits and one for the amount of hits. This will be fixed soon enough. Now I'll head for the shower. After that, I'll have some spare time on my hands, so I don't know what I'm going to do yet...

3 - Saturday - 01:07
A lot of stuff was done on the site today, but I think the only noticeable things were the new counter and the new location of the live webcam stream. It's now directly hosted from my site, so now more going to the Camarades site to see live video from my webcam. I spent the evening with Mr. Niels Bierman. We played on the good ol' Super NES, fantastic games like Mario Kart, Street Fighter II, Puyo Puyo and Seiken Densetsu 3. After that we went to van der Werff and had beer, which was also very good.

3 - Saturday - 17:40
Wow. I started to play this game in the morning, and the next thing I know, it's evening already! Now I have to be quick and prepare for tonight, since Rachelle is having her birthday party at her house. The weather's really great, and at this moment Ad and Domi are sitting on a terrace drinking beer, so I guess I'll join them, and we can go to Rachelle's place together. Still, it's fascinating how fast you can lose track of time when you're playing on the SNES. I'm an addict.

4 - Sunday - 01:07
Turned out the party at Rachelle's was very nice indeed! There was a varied bunch of people there, including such stars as Domi, Ad, Takuro and of course Rachelle herself. Takuro and I started mesmerizing about Tokyo at the end, and then most of us went home. Rachelle told me there was still a lot of beer and other stuff left, so we're gonna have to have another one of these evenings to finish that. Tomorrow evening I'll be at Tim's, see you then Tom!

4 - Sunday - 12:35
On the program for today is watching X-Men 2 in the cinema. I liked part one more than I expected, and I've heard several good things about this new one, so let's just hope they didn't screw it up. I'll go watch it with Tim in Haarlem, and I'll be there the remainder of the evening too, probably hanging at his house and doing nothing much. Sounds pretty good to me actually! So I'll get moving, and don't forget to check out the forum and participate!

5 - Monday - 16:23
I was happily surprised with X-Men 2, because it was really nice. I liked the story, the special effects were all very well taken care of, and of course Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier and Ian McKellen as Magneto were both very classy. Maybe even better than that though, is the wonderful PS2 game, Love Story by Enix. This is the ideal game to play in the middle of the night. Low on maintenance and a lot of fun and laughs. Highly recommended!

5 - Monday - 21:53
How difficult can it be to put no pickles on a hamburger? I was at Burger King's this evening to get me some food because I didn't feel like cooking at all. I asked for no pickles on my otherwise fine grill burger, basically a Whopper with some onion rings on it. When I got home and opened up the recycled bag, I found out that there were indeed pickles on the inside of my burger. I had to pick them out, which is disgusting. Argh. Oh well, now it's time to read.

6 - Tuesday - 10:20
Good morning. Today is going to be busy, but that's not even remotely interesting. The interesting thing is that my secret plan for this friday is coming along nicely. It's not even that secret when you see me, but in any case, this friday's party is going to be wrong. Really. In order to right Burger King's wrong from yesterday, I'll cook my dinner myself tonight. The only problem is that I have no idea what to make. I'll think of something.

6 - Tuesday - 20:20
Hmmm. I had Chicken Tonight. I also went to get my hair cut today, and the result is somewhat very good. My hair's short again, and it feels great. I had a shower right after I got home to get rid of the little hairs that are everywhere when you've visited the barber. Now I'm going to the 'Grote Beer', the Big Bear, a bar here in Leiden where Marije, Wouter, Robert, Niels and Neil are having a drink. That's going to be nice!

7 - Wednesday - 00:58
Well that certainly was fun! As I was going to the Big Bear, I ran into Neil, Robert and Niels, who were heading for another bar. Wouter and Marije would follow soon. After having one drink at 'de Bijlen', we went to Lemmy's beer cafe, where we spent most part of the night. Wouter and I played some darts (he won) and Robert was having a lot of fun all over, and I escorted him to the station, and from that I went home. Now, I'll try to get a good night's rest.

7 - Wednesday - 11:46
Tonight we're going to have a Schaamteloos Kroegentocht. Basically, we'll be travelling from bar to bar, having one or two beers at every bar we go to. That's going to be a lot of fun, but before that a lot of work has to be done. In the meantime, check out Takuro's website, which just moved to Ad's computer, so it's a lot faster now. Takuro's a Japanese guy in Leiden who speaks all kinds of languages and who's a cool guy all over. He likes Dave Brubeck, too!

7 - Wednesday - 21:00
I'm always in for a surprise, and this afernoon Marije had one in store for me. She called me if I wanted to have dinner at her place. This is of course always good, so I said yes. We had chinese tomato soup as starters, and the main course was chicken siam, which was... well, interesting maybe. It didn't have anything special to it. It was a bit bland even. Other than that, I had a great time! Now, I'll head for vd Werff, for the Schaamteloos Kroegentocht!

8 - Thursday - 02:21
I'm an ugly Bulgair chick. From Bulgary. What a pig! I just love fat, ugly chicks. That's me. Shall we take the train to Nieuw Vennep? No. ... Just some quotes from our Schaamteloos Kroegentocht, which prove that it's been a success. I shouldn't be updating right now though. Ad and I just had some late night Burger King food outside of the faculty for social sciences. We both agreed on going to sleep really soon and worry about the consequences of our drinking tomorrow.

8 - Thursday - 12:25
Nice morning, too bad I'm a little bit zonked. But anyway, if you want to have a good laugh, check out this link, and this link too. It's Japanese, but even if you don't speak the language, it'll be funny! The first flash presentation is very well done, and the second one is just so funny. Have a look at them! Ad has updated his homepage again! Noone ever thought that it would happen but it sure did! He only did the Japanese part though, so sorry to all non-Japanese out there.

8 - Thursday - 11:58
It was a pretty quiet day. We had lunch at the Big Bear, and after that, Ad, Wouter and I went to the Arsenaal, where we totally zoned out. Especially Wouter had it really bad. He couldn't move his arms to reach for his coffee, and Ad and I were having equal trouble with getting our bodies to do something. In the evening I taught Dutch and English, and now I'm at home. I have to do some work for the OLC, and then I'll go to sleep. That's the plan.

9 - Friday - 11:11
Last night I started the picture albums on this site. Keep watching that space, I'll be posting new pictures every day, and at this rate I have enough pictures to last me a couple of years. Today I have an OLC meeting at the Arsenaal, and after that I'll be picking up new pictures again, including one where my nephew Mart hits Lance Armstrong in the face! Let's hope that's going to turn out well. If you have any cool pictures, mail them to me and I'll post them too!

9 - Friday - 17:20
I've achieved the ultimate wrong look now. I'll take pictures and post them on the site whenever I can. The wrongest mustache, combined with the wrong white suit with ultra- wrong pink shirt, ugly tie, and of course the silver wrist band which spells my name. Apart from the wrong look, I'd like to remember that one year ago today, I met Dave Brubeck. That still counts as one of the best nights in my life. Thank you so much for that, Christina.

10 - Saturday - 13:40
Last night I ran into Ruud, which was a nice encounter. We went for a drink in the evening and talked about all kinds of things. Today I'll be working on a paper for school and on the homepage. I'm trying to make the picture pages a bit easier to navigate, but this takes some time. I'll be scanning new pictures too, so if you're interested, please have a look there. The updates will be frequent if I have any saying in it. Next up are probably US pictures!

11 - Sunday - 01:39
Well, today was kind of miserable. But the reason for that had mostly to do with me, so I can't blame anyone or anything for it. The weather was really beautiful, and I had a lot of time to do things, but I just didn't get around to doing them. Apart from that, I was hungry all day long. Mainly because of the lack of food, but even after I ate I would still feel hungry. I guess we all have these days, so I'll go sleep and trust that tomorrow will be just a fine fine day!

11 - Sunday - 12:35
To prevent a day like yesterday, where I did right next to nothing, I've set myself a list of things I have to do, or else the world will explode. So now I'm not doing those things only for myself, but for you too. Certainly everything's helping. The weather's great, I'm not hungry and I feel like doing stuff. So without much further Ado, I'll get busy. First up is sending a bill to my boss so that I'll get paid. After that, it's a long list still, but I'll get it done!

12 - Monday - 01:09
I did more than yesterday. A lot more actually, but I didn't do quite as much as I planned on. I did get the things on my list done though, and judging from the fact that the world is still looking normal, I'd say I must at least have done something! Tomorrow I'll be going to a student's house, to watch my appearance on Japanese tv. I've never seen it before, so that's going to be good. I hope. I'll try to ignore the part where you can see me naked in the Japanese hot spring.

13 - Tuesday - 02:01
That was functional nudity if there ever was anything like that! I was quite relieved that my ass wasn't being showed for three minutes straight, as some people would have me believe. The program turned out really well I have to say. The part where I meet Mr Jirou Sakagami was really funny, and they did a very good job on the editing. Thank you Ms Naruke! Still, it's strange to see yourself on tv, knowing that a couple of million people watched the whole thing!

13 - Tuesday - 11:28
Currently, there is a discussion going on about Japanese and Dutch tv on my forum. It's all in dutch. After reading all the opinions on it, I started to think about my own appearances on Japanese tv. Were they really so dumb, mindless, and only to further strengthen the image of the stupid gaijin (foreigner) in Japan? Well, the first one maybe was, but in the second one, I can't help but notice they took me a but more serious. I made more fun of them this time around!

14 - Wednesday - 00:21
Gasp. I was preparing a speech I had to do this friday, or so I thought. After checking my agenda again, I realized that I actually have to do it today! I'm gonna have to ask Frans if I can postpone it until friday, because I'm not prepared yet. Geez, the shock of that made my life another three years shorter, I'm sure of it. Ever have that feeling that sometimes you realize you're way too late for something really important? I've had too much of that lately...

14 - Wednesday - 09:40
Sometimes I'm amazed at myself about what I can do, the only thing I need is pressure. A whoooole lot of it. Last night I still felt unsure about the speech for today, and I was thinking about delaying it, but I worked on it all night, and I think that I have something now which I could make a speech out of. It's only 20 minutes of course, but everything you say has to be true and triple-checked, so it's quite a lot of work actually. Let's hope it works out.

14 - Wednesday - 21:29
The speech went well. So thank heavens for that! I uploaded 25 more pictures on the albums page, so if you're intereseted, don't hesitate to check it out! Now, it's on to the next big thing for school, which is going to be a test and a lot of papers. And after that, more tests. Good for me! I'll learn a lot from all that though, and this is almost the final stage of my time studying Japanese in Leiden, so there's nothing to do but to go for it.

15 - Thursday - 10:45
Today, Rob is going to come by and teach me something about Dreamweaver. Up until now, I've been making this website using only the good old notepad in Windows, but Rob showed me some interesting stuff yesterday, some modifications of my index page, and it looked very cool, so I might start experimenting with that. Nothing much will change as of yet, seeing it took me a lot of trouble to get things the way they are right now. But first, work!

16 - Friday - 00:00
Rob taught me a lot of things about Dreamweaver, and with some luck, you'll see some results of that soon. I also discovered today that the world is still a good place to be. I forgot an umbrella, which wasn't even mine, outside of Leiden Station as I was putting an enormous lock on my bike. I noticed that I'd lost the umbrella when I was at my work, but as I got back in the evening, it was still hanging there, right where I left it. Just wonderful!

16 - Friday - 09:36
Today will be the last day of the evaluation. Or at least, the collecting of all the evaluation forms will hopefully end today. But anyway. I received a Dave Brubeck cd which has a registration of a concert on it which his quartet gave on april 14, 1964, at the White House. It's great to hear how some pieces had evolved since a couple of years before that. It's very short, true, just shy of 25 minutes, but it's very good. And rare, with only 27 of them existing!

17 - Saturday - 01:23
Well, I saw The Matrix Reloaded today, and I must say that I was impressed with it. The story took a turn in totally the right direction if you ask me, the 'coolness' of the first one was back again, and the two trucks hitting eachother in bullet time scene is the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. And I scared the shit out of some little kids behind us, who were very noisy. I told them, in a loud voice, to shut up, and they didn't utter a single sound after that!

17 - Saturday - 15:33
I added more pictures again to the picture albums, so don't forget to take a look there! It's a grey day here in Leiden. The sun ain't shining, it's raining on and off, and there's basically not very much to do. So I worked on my homepage, and I'll be studying too. My poster of a detail from the Sistine Chapel fell off the wall, so I'm going to have to put that up again. If I have some time left, I'll fire up the ol' SNES, and I'll game away!

18 - Sunday - 01:12
Bleh bleh, Wouter bleh bleh bleh bleeeh bleh! Bleeeh, bleah blah bleeh ble bleeah blah. Blee bla blow, bleah bleah bleh bleah bleh bleaah bleeeeh! Bleah bleah, bleh balcony bleh pleah pleh bleh bleah. Bleah bleh bleah bleah blehbleahblehbleeeh, laundry bleh bleah bleh bleah bleh! Bleah, stupid bleah bleh english bleh bleah movie, bleah bleh beer bleh bleah blah. Blah blah blah, laundry blah bleah blee-blah! Bleah, blehbleh bleah bleah, bleh bleh laundry.

18 - Sunday - 11:09
Wouter dropped by last evening, and we watched a pretty stupid british movie about two guys who go to Ibiza, basically to get laid. Wouter brought some beer with him, and it was a pretty relaxing evening. When he was going home, he started throwing around laundry all over the place, which somehow was really really funny to me. Maybe it was the beer. Now I'm goin to make breakfast, and do a whole lot of work after that. Yay.

19 - Monday - 00:24
A busy day in which a lot of things happened. And you know it's serious when you're tired a couple of hours before you normally would get tired. I started to convert a recording I did with my friends to the mp3 format. A lot of it will probably end up on the site here, although it's not much more than just plain making fun of me and calling me names. But hey! That's what people do, and if I can do them that pleasure and fulfill my duty, I'm happy!

19 - Monday - 13:55
Okay, I'm a bit confused about the Matrix Reloaded. On my Forum, I started a thread about it, hoping that people will go there and explain me the workings of that movie. I know it's ficticious and that it's useless to speculate about it, but it is also fun to do, so why not? If you know anything more than I do, please have a look at the Matrix thread on my Forum. It's in dutch, but you can type anything in english too. Help me out. ;)

20 - Tuesday - 02:22
I've got so many new ideas for a new layout of my homepage, I really need to start thinking how to get all of them to work. The next thing I want to learn is how to use stylesheets. Not only do they make your page look good, it's also very convenient, because you only have to change one file to change the layout on every page. I've been toying around with Dreamweaver today, and you can check the first results right here.

20 - Tuesday - 23:16
I've got a new addiction. It's White Chocolate. Yes, White Chocolate. I was never a big chocolate fan, but I always did like the white version of it. It's only since the last couple of days that I started eating it full-time. The 'Super' brand, from a famous dutch supermarket chain, is especially good. It's cheap, good, and frankly, irresistable. I don't know what it is, but I'm eating bar after bar of the Good Stuff (tm).

21 - Wednesday - 11:51
The most people I fight with and against in the wonderful game of Counter Strike seem to be only kids. It's pretty frustrating to get shot time and again by a 15 year-old! Anyway, the game is still very impressive, even though it's already very old. I just finished another session, where most of the kids were talking about their final exams of their high school. That seems so long ago already...

21 - Wednesday - 21:54
Wouter, Ad and I designed a bit more of the Schaamteloos homepage today. After that, we had dinner at the faculty for social sciences. Now, Ad and I will go to Einstein, where Domi and Micky will be waiting for us. It's wednesday night, and we all know what that means for Einstein! So without further ado, I'll get my things ready, and be off. To that wonderful Einstein!

22 - Thursday - 16:10
This morning, Ad was showing me a lot of pictures from his various trips to Japan. Then I realized again just how important pictures are. Not only can one picture tell a whole story, they're also great when it comes to remembering various situations. When I go through my own pictures, I sometimes notice that I had almost forgotten about a few of the incidents that happened on the pictures.

23 - Friday - 18:14
Dominique is in Ad's room now, and the plan is that we're going to grab some food in a bit. This weekend, I'll be cleaning my room, because I need to get rid of a lot of stuff. Niels just came in, and we're probably going to eat with him, if all goes well. Further up is some gaming, some drinking, we'll see what happens. So there you have it. Please have a look at the picture albums, there's a lot to see there now!

24 - Saturday - 11:25
Allright. Just as Ad and I got home yesterday night, Ruud called me, saying that he hadn't consumed enough beer yet. Well, I couldn't offer him any beer, but Ad and I did have the idea to drink some wine that was still left from a previous party. Ruud came over and we had wine. Frankly, we had too much of the stuff, so Ad and I are now really really slow. And, I might add, we don't feel too good either.

25 - Sunday - 23:10
Up until now, everytime I went out with Ad's little sister, I barely came home. And the next day, I was barely able to wake up. Last night was no exception! Ad's sis honored us with a visit to the Flanorpad, and we went out in Leiden, which turned out to be a great time. Today was a bit slow as a consequence, but if that's what it takes, count me in! Can't wait to go out with them again!

26 - Monday - 09:29
Today I'll meet up with Ray, a guy who is going to study Japanese as of next year. He's coming to Leiden to buy some books about the Japanese language to get him started. I guess I'll show him around a bit, telling him where the good book stores are, etc. It looks like it's a good day out there, which makes the early getting up a bit more tolerable. I'll get moving then.

26 - Monday - 23:45
I had quite some fun showing Ray around the Arsenal and Leiden. The weather was just beautiful. And the best thing is, we're going to have this wonderful weather for at least another week! Too bad I have to study a lot too, but there'll be some free time. I think I'll use that to go the beach, and maybe visit my brother in Kerkrade. That'll be fun.

27 - Tuesday - 11:01
Neil called me this morning, to see if I were interested in an interpreting job next week. It's been a while since I've done that, but it sure is a great opportunity to practice my business Japanese, and the money ain't bad either of course. Now let's hope that I'll be able to go to the beach a lot this week, so that I can show up at work with a nice tan!

27 - Tuesday - 14:23
The company for which the interpreting job was just called me, saying they had found someone else first, so they'd like to ask for my assistance next time. That's of course fine with me, but it wasn't Neil's smoothest action until now. Here I was looking forward to that. Ah well, I have a lot more stuff to look forward too, for instance this weekend!

27 - Tuesday - 23:58
I installed Final Fantasy VIII on my computer, and we all know that can't be a good idea! I'm going to have a hard time keeping myself away from that game, even though it isn't the best in the series. It's the first time I'm playing it on the PC, and it's working really well. Hopefully the weather will be really good, that'll distract me.

29 - Thursday - 23:48
Well, it seems that the season has started! Not many updates on this site, but that's mainly because I've been to the beach, which is so good. We had all the right ingredients; hot beach, cool sea, frisbee, beach bats, ball, beer and food, nice girls to look at, and great friends to share the fun with. And it's long before the end of summer!

30 - Friday - 10:13
A couple of months ago, I met Mr Jerry Armstrong online, and we had a short conversation about the Netherlands. I've always enjoyed reading his homepage, which is a weblog, because he writes very eloquently and funny. I was more than happy to see that he hadn't forgotten about me, since he mentions me in his latest blog!

30 - Friday - 23:10
Gee, how much meat can a person eat? This little post won't please our vegetarian- orientated friends too much, but we went to a Greek restaurant today with Erik, my senior who is in Holland for a short while. I probably had two cows worth of meat. Hey, overdoin' it has never been a distant concept for me. Now I have to sleep!