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Exploring Holland. Hoge Velue en witte fietsen, windsurfing with Siebe, the odd kite-flying attempt. Visits to Amsterdam a bit, to cinema in Hilversum/further to Utrecht. Visits by Fionnuala's family, my parents, my little sisters.
Weekend in Terschelling and Cathy and Joanne take a trip up there after us and further test our new tent.
One weekend when Fionnuala visiting home I'm off to Den Hague, walk in park area quite nice - deer and rabbits ... camping on dunes not possible :( and all camping sites are EXTREMELY crowded. Sand sculptures on the beach at 3am. Drive back to Baarn for bed.
Groningen with Siobhan and Paul and Sally and Matthew later in the year.
Teeny bundle of joy tends to get quite boisterous! You can see little kiddy arms and legs poking at Fionnuala.
busyish Philip visiting here and went carting and to zwangerschaps courses . etc. ...... ...
Fionn is great - but regarding her enlarging tummy with interested dubiousness sometimes :). We're still minding her :) and having fun too! She was almost tempted to go karting with us yesterday but it was organised allinarush and she made it to see us vrooming around but didn't get a go at making her back, shoulders, thighs, etc... sore.
Blue jumper with nice greyish/greenish and small purple stripe. All jumpers need a decent stripe really, (ask Robbie). Light coloured shirt, Calvin T-shirt. Boring greyish hair thingy. Black jeans, black shoes - does this count for halloween? Pinkish socks definately does! I won't go any further :-O I've also got my coat, gloves, red scarfy thing cos it's COLD out but they're not on me right now 'cos I'm in.
My Mom&Dad are coming out here. So we'll get to see more touristy things - might take them back up to the Zannse Schanns (windmills!) actually, there's a scheepvart and geologish museum in Amsterdam too that we've not investigated yet. Besides that there's some commercial flower-growers "Horti-" shows starting up before they go home near Aalsmeer so they'll get to visit them too.
It's really nice over here with the autumn colours and in morning and evening we have really nice orangish/soft but bright light. Same in Ireland yet? Night before last it hit -5 outside so we must go looking for some de-icer maybe - or some cover for the windscreen. Drove along motorway with a few windows ofpen - and it was Quite refreshing! (to say the least!)
About a month ago baby _really_ started to grow, so I think (now 6th month) we're now into 1st month of what should be 3ish months rapid growth. So you could probably tell now Fionnuala has a baby! Kicks and/or head-butts or whatever baby uses to bash with are pretty common. You can feel them noo problem and sometimes you can see them too! wow! If you listen lots of interesting gurgling noises are going on and every so often ear will be bashed from inside. Cool, huh?
We're pretty busy in work - and at the moment I took a break for a few days to "improve" our CEIP homepage and I've started adding utilities now so we've JavaScript pretty much cracked, html doddle of course, perl is actually wonderful! (another convert) fun! I hadn't written _anything_ for ages :- last few days I've a few thousand lines of JavaScript html and perl fun! What I'm _meant_ to be doing (as of course I really AM) is reviewing lots of American documents and phone and email them and give out to them etc etc... phuuugh! But anyhoo, enuf with work!
I've just about figured out G, C, E, A, D, Em, Am on the guitar. This is sufficient for things like Amazing Grace :-$, Scarborough Fair :-), and a few others. F I don't like yet and Am7 just sounds wrong!
We saw Dinosaurs in the cinema. Rewaaarrrggghghhhhhrrrrr! Actually I quite enjoyed it. And they even managed to make the story a little better. Then again, I _always_ enjoy ReaggHHRrrr movies, don't I?
Went windsurfing in decent amount of wind :- still haven't figured out harness but I'm getting the hang of it _finally_! :) Muscles very stretched afterwards. But a good wind does make for very nice velocity (after managing to haul sail up!) I've really got to figure out dry and wet starts sometime.
While windsurfing with lots of wind when I actually managed to get on the board and haul the sail up then I experienced some lovely SPEED until I unbabanced and was splunked into the coldish wet stuff blub! Repeated this lots of times - fun!
Colm, Maureen and RUth are visiting us so I'm off to try and find them in Amsterdam right now. They're over here testing our bed/couch and visiting Amsterdam en environs (and cycling a tandem dangerously!)
We got couch, well, couch-bed-thingy in IKEA and CRAMmed it into the car. It's not a usual couch bed, Fionnuala had a similar one in Nurenberg, it consists of two single matresses - which go into a cover so that they are attached together with a hinge of material, AND two pillowy things shaped like big "L"s. It sits happily in a corner looking like a couch - and you can throw the pillows off so it looks like a single bed - and you can open the matresses apart and it looks like a low double bed - lovely!
We stuffed the matresses in the back of the car and pulled it through the back seats, then we added the pillows and covers. And 2Vm+2Vp+Vc+Vf+Vj didn't leave too much room for air to breathe or space to steer but there was enough! (Vm=Volume of matress, Vp=Volume of pillow Vc=Volume of covers, Vf=Volume of Fionnuala and baby, Vj=Volume of James)
We went for the ultrasound the week before last and yes! there really is a baby wriggling around and moving! You can feel the baby from the outside sometimes now too. The heartbeat is really fast only we haven't heard it except with the midwife. The "photo"s are a bit dull - as the doctor was measuring the head and abdomen, so you can see interesting ovals and things but it's difficult to imagine they are a baby!
Fionnuala is even more active than me these days, she was off to a flea-market in Baarn yesterday and carried home a little wickerwork cupboard on her bike yesterday. You can see that she is a little pregnant now and she's beginning to steal my jeans! Well, the waist would fit but I think girls are made a bit differently to boys so I'm not really in too much danger of running short of trousers.
We've been thinking of names but it's REALLY difficult! For the moment Pierre (another person on our CEIP team) has decided it will be CEIPtje? (for the moment)
Siebe (one of the people on our team) was in Texel (an island at the top of Holland) this weekend and their cooking tent got ripped apart by the wind. They came back and had to run after seagulls who decided bags of parmesian cheese would be good for dinner!
Earlier Sep: We watched videos and we went for small walks and bicycle trips in Baarn. It was open-monument weekend so we saw some .... YES! monuments.
| (after Aug 12) Mad week back in Ireland telling friends and family about baby. Not brave enough to capture expressions on film. S3 BBQ mad and soon EVERYONE knows. Dave M really nice - gets some champagne. |
Lucia decides for Samantha (Sam for friends) for her car. "I brought home my car last night. My first driving in Ireland. WOW!! And I didn't crash any other car. Double WOW!! It isn't that difficult drive here, but I have to be VERY concentrate. It isn't easy to find the gear stick immediately... I have also to be careful at parked cars on the side of the road. I tent to drive very near to it."
It's VERY HOT about 30 degrees and we're baking. Yesterday we were in a demonstration and standing up in a VERY hot room and Fionnuala almost fainted!! :-O But she's OK (and got the rest of the day off!) I was playing squash (for the third time in my life) last night with the others on our CEIP team and got soundly beaten! But it was fun. And then we all went to our house and had a BBQ. We finished off the evening watching tulip candles, shooting-stars, satellites, etc..... leuk!
We went to see a Japanese/English film (subtitled in Dutch!) called "The Pillow Book" - it was very interesting - not normal at all, I really liked it but I'm not too sure whether or not to recommend it as there are a few (a few?) shocking bits in it. A Japanese girl grows up and likes painting on peoples bodies ..... and, well, :), you can imagine?
Last week I had soooo much fish! (sorry for completely digressing) And I hope you don't sympathise too much with the fish :( Fionnuala and I cooked trout one evening, we were shopping in Hilversum on Thursday and we went to a REAL Dutch restaurant and had paling (a type of eel) - VERY sticky, and I even ate some raw haring (herring) for breakfast on Friday :-P
Pant! It's hot over here today, and it was hotter on the weekend. We cycled and swam and in general did lots of tiring things - but I don't feel too bad - just a little scraped by trees and bitten by insects and stiff after lots of excercise.
Lucia: Study English pronunciation. and did a parachute jump. eek!
Subject: Gebak en kleine katjes Author: jamesc@s3dub.ie at Internet Date: 6/25/97 4:52 PM Ciao Lucia, Ik heb jouw cartje fur mij vandaag nu. Veel mooi! Grote bedankt. Ik proberen mij Nederlands elke dag en ik hoop dat het is niet zo erg fur je te begript. Maar serieus, ik denk dat ik wil sprek in Engels in de toekomst, goed? We hebben gebak nu maar Maandag was de verjaardag van Pierre, Roland en mij! En maandag was ik veel in de vas met geen ruist. Ik was in Boston met werk. Leuk ne? Well, come stai? I sto bene? (and I will write to you in English soon) ciao ciao, James.
My cake was very nice - I arrived at the cake-shop a little late so I got some unusual ones (strawberry mousse with apple/rasin) and I got some _very_ nice small fruity cakes in a different shop. There were only two slices left yesterday as everyone on the corridor payed a visit - you should have seen the floor of our room! Sticky!
Cold? It's quite a shock for me to be here after Boston. When I left the Netherlands it was a little rainy but the weather was still hot. And in Boston it was REALLY hot - even when it thundered rain in Boston on Sunday the water that fell was pretty warm - and I dried out pretty quickly once the rain stopped. Before I never really knew why air-conditioning was necessary - NOW I do! I also have a bit of a tan - and on my legs? Scratches and bites where insects had lunch :) When I went hiking on Saturday I encountered alot of interesting American wildlife I'd never seen before. The skin on my hands has also been doing strange things since I started windsurfing, there's lots of ropes to pull and they're wearing away.
I found a nice weather site
fourmilab and am busy making an animated gif of the
weather for a day by setting up the following to repeat about every
half-hour and finally combining all the gifs into one - cool!
Well, call me strange, but I'm still happy :)
# use: at -k -f getworldgifs *00 Jun 26
# at -k -f 'whirlgif -o Jun26.gif -loop `ls -x tempw*.gif`' 0000 Jun 27
# Load up map html (and starts putting gif together)
Netscape -remote 'openURL(http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth?imgsize=320&opt=-l&lat=54&ns=North&lon=10&ew=West&alt=2000&img=wx-cmap.bmp)'
# NEED Wait
sleep 50
# Save html file (with gif name inside)
rm /home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.html
Netscape -remote 'saveAs(/home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.html)'
# NEED Wait
sleep 10
# hack name out of html e.g. /earthview/cache/1209.gif
# could add check here - somethimes $WOLLY is nil so gif saved is http://www.fourmilab.ch/
# if [WOLLY = ""] exit; or retry?
export WOLLY=`grep "usemap" /home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.html | sed 's/" ismap.*$//1;s/^<.*"//1'`
echo Loading $WOLLY
Netscape -remote "openURL(http://www.fourmilab.ch/$WOLLY)"
# NEED Wait until full gif loads
sleep 120
rm /home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.gif
Netscape -remote 'saveAs(/home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.gif)'
# this wait for saving
sleep 10
export TIME=`date '+%y%d%m%H%M'`
mv /home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic.gif /home/jcoleman/util/tempwpic$TIME.gif
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Slightly more weirdness day, Fionnuala is pregnant, wow. mad. Feel strangely happy about it, is it strange? A little worried but not much really. She seemed quiet and worried and she told me on the couch in Baarn. I was worried she might be wanting to back off from us! Well, I'd love to help her through with this and she's less worried after our talk.
Over the next while she gets in touch with Vrouw Elferink our kraamzorg (midwife) and we visit every month or more frequently nearing the end. Faints in work once while standing hot at a demo of something. :-/ |
Birthday card from Lucia in mailbox, Fionnuala has a birthday card and a present for me in house - I was REALLY happy that evening - even though I was REALLY tired too (up from Sunday morning in Boston ).
The traffic over here is BIG - the roads are huge (as are the cars) and it's kindof fun to drive (I don't know what type my car is, but it's BIG)
Adele: uhhh ...
James: Shhhhh. Stay asleep. :-D
oop :-o OW! No thwapping with mouse-mats allowed!
Adele: I've missed something here, haven't I?
James: I dunno, nothing much more than the others didn't miss too?
Adele: What are u going on about?
James: Several unrelated Kwatch-kopfh things.
Adele: What plant?
James: Lots of plants.
Beurenclau (or something like that) (magic/giant rhubarb) to us
Irish folk is a plant.
So are the rhodedendrons I'm unsuccessfully converting to pink in
vinegar (they tend to die of overdoses).
And of course there's lots of other interesting shrubbery round here.
But I think I was talking about a factory-type plant for making beer,
special beer, with Hydrogen!
Adele: and who's this Fionn type girl?
James: Oh .... O :-)
Adele: The weather here is actually nifty, it's been sunny for the
last week and while I haven't got a tan ... I'm not quite blue either.
James: Not blue? Me too.
Sun is shining but I'm not gonna start rhyming.
'cos.
Adele: Oh yeah (completely distracted by shitty weekend!) both Colm
and I got offered the job in Barbados. We are currently waiting on a
contract to determine what incentives they're offering to make us
travel halfway across the globe.
James: Barbados is in Carribean right? - nice hot place far faaar away.
So if you've both been offered does that mean only one of you gets to
go or both of you together?
Is it the same sort of work or is it more banking or internety or
businessy or something?
Adele: Oh yeah ... your subject line bears NO relevance to the
contents of the mail ... should I be surprised??
James: I object! It's unusual appearance and connotations set the
tone for a perfectly slightly confusing message.
James: bye bye.
Ow! - My fingers are all sore cos I was having such fun attempting to windsurf with lotsof wind and waves yesterday. (near a dike of course) and Fionnualas toe's a bit sore from bashing it off some concrete :( Leuk though.
Pieter (our ~boss) is back from his wife having a baby and we've cutsey photos to admire and cuddly Paddingtons that tinkle tunes to listen to all morning.
But anyway apparentely Waiders parents and mine encountered each other :-O At some flowery convention or other, and the tulips are almost ready for digging up.
(o)
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^^^^^^^
Fionnuala got a cow-bell!!!! We bought an old camera too - with big lenses and thousands of twiddly levers and buttons - fun!
Out in Amsterdam, back to Joanne's apartment with everyone for Chinese food. Visiting tulips/flowers on Sunday.
"And I'll set Felix the bear on you if you're slow in replying :-E (don't worry - he's a wuss and his claws are very tickly)"
We had pancakes the night before last - so I've discovered how to make something new in the kitchen......well.... discovered how to make the mixture. So we stuffed them with ice-cream and apples cooked with cinnamon and cloves :- Mmmmmmmm.
Last night we went for a cycle - and didN'T get lost! wow! We saw one windmill and lots of dogs/ducks/geese and cows. Hmmmm.... ...and some deer and one sheep and a few horses.
The weather is much improved here, nice and warm - outside! :(
Went to Burgher zoo in Arnhem - not like other nasty zoos at all! Well :-7 the tigers & elephants and some others did seem to still have a bit of a raw deal. Burgher zoo has pretty cool domes - one tropical bush, other desert environment. Most of the reasonably not too dangerous animals are free to roam around and zoom across the track in front of you and peck your toes or chew your ankles! The poor crocodiles are behind bars though. They must've been bold.
_and_ they'd HUGE owls. Who just cooly kindof looked at you. They weren't in a huge cage :( - hopefully they are planning to upgrade them? THe snowy ones and the massive eagle ones. They just cooly kindof looked at you. and STAREd and STAREd... only it got comical when he shut one eye :-D
Went on the playground before leaving, I haven't been on swings for AGES! And we went on the mad tilted roundabouts too which always seem just to get faster no matter what you do! WahhhhhH!!!!!!
Willy en leren en beetje Nederlands every week for a while. After we put an add for two Irish to learn some Dutch in the paper.
I know words for barber knapper, gate gatje, gap gat, nose neusje, eyes oosje, howl huilje, yell gilen, sit zit, sat sat, scissors schaar, ........ (from Jip & Janneke)
Got lost again when I just went for a looong cycle for fun. There's soooo many roads around it can really be fun! And of course if I really didn't want to get lost .... er ... I might have anyway? Cathy got a bike this weekend ---- and on Saturday ---- guess what she did? -- YES - she got LOST!!! It took her 2 hours to cycle to the town where we work - but this morning it took only 1 hour - so we're learning :).
We are a half hour from Amsterdam by train (after a 5 minute cycle). All these towns around here are quite nice even though there is really a lot of people. THere are lakes and countryside (even if it _IS_ flat) all around.
Things still haven't quite come back to life yet over here - I think I like the way the Irish winter is so warm that the grass still grows and all the silly plants think it's really not that bad.
I'm afraid it was a bit cold and wet here this weekend although not too bad - We cleaned the house and fixed bikes and went to Amsterdam and walked around and learned some Dutch too but did nothing _too_ energetic.
We have some books and tapes but on Friday (this was Fionnuala's idea). I went into the library - and down the stairs into the babies section :). I must've looked a bit lost because a nice Dutch lady came and reccomended Jip & Janneke to me. So Fionnuala has been reading stories about Jip & Janneke playing together (spelen samen) to me - and I'm even learning some Dutch from it! It is nice.
said scissors
Knip knap zegt de schaar.
Au! zegt Jip!
(Jip was mit de knapper).
barber
NOT barbarian! but the pictures looked scary - he's probably descended
from barbarians.
The work is much more interesting and I'm busier. I'm attempting to absorb lots of new stuff - squishing weird telecommunications things into my poor brain. The Dutch guys who we're working with are nice too though.
I got a PurPle bike and got a Green sack for it on the weekend and then I cycled - and got lost! I got lost on Friday on home from the bike shop, on Saturday when I went exploring the way to/from work and I got lost again on Sunday when I just went for a looong cycle for fun.
I saw a windmill! It was nice and big - I'd like to have one you could play with - but I think the farmer might get upset if someone tried to hold his windmill :)
/\ /\
\ \ / /
\ \_/ /
\ V /
/ O \
/ / \ \
/ / o \ \
\/| |\/ Quack!
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~~~~TTTTT q'
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lots of farms have a few geese, or ducks, or
chickens, or goats, etc ... in the yards - very cute. The
daffodils/tulips are only just starting but in maybe a week everything
might suddenly become yellow/red/bright!
The weather is kindof like Irish weather - a bit sunny today, cold tomorrow and completely changed again the next day.
Lucent show us apartments in Hilversum and we see various apartments from Maakelardij in Bussum, Hilversum and then one in Baarn which Fionnuala loves. Cathy in Hilversum and DaveM in Amsterdam. Joanne & Dave French already in Naarden.
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Fly to Schipol, get really SMALL hired car and get lost in Huizen trying to find the HUGE Lucent place. Nobody told US to look for the flag! We drove past the back of the building and ended up in a shopping center, ... ate some onion bread and drank coffee as twas dinner time. We eventually find it after spotting a Lucent truck out the back.
So we arrive late after Philip had promised Walfried we'd be there at 11!!! 11?? the plane arrived in at 11! And he didn't tell us either. But we won't worry about that :). The Dutch guys we're working with seem fine, the hotel is alright, Dave M arrives out later - we're very lucky we dumped our bags at the hotel earlier! Daffodils and fun in hotel rooms :) |
Excellent fun had. A lot more tame than Andorra though as I'm a bit more enclined not to drink and go to bed at reasonable ridiculous hours. Bucking bronco one night - did Fergus pull his horn off? Fionnuala in room with ...? Bronagh? Rachel? both? Me in room with ? Robbie??
First day Bronagh and Linda go up high on the main chair lift and get stuck for a few hours waiting to be rescued when they can't ski down. Eventually we used poles to make them go slowly ... myself and ... Tony?Keith? taking Linda and ... we were so much concentrating on Linda I dunno who helped Bronagh. Then eventually ski-patrol came and this small Italian guy hoisted Linda+skis on his back and ZOOMed down. I followed MUCH more slowly with his bag.
One day we head off on a longish trip to Montgenevre (in France) with Fergus, Donal, others and ??. Nice day ... on the way back did ?we/I? fall off a big button lift ... down black tired but fun falling over.
Some other day we were off skiing on the West?Left of the piste and got caught in Sauze itself when the lifts closed. Trudge down with skis to bar and taxi to hotel after waiting a bit and having nice hot drinks.
Instructor - big guy - summers in spain? Anyway I fell whack on my nose and bled at one point when I was "THROWing" myself into corners a bit too enthusiastically and thinking about it too much.
Race - Fionnuala won! Yayyy :) Good fun speeding down as fast as we could. I didn't do too badly at all now ... for me :)
Second last day myself and Fionnuala are skiing quite late and the ski lifts start to close on us. We're very far West?Left on the piste - luckily with good height. So we ski down towards the hotel piste and go through the woods for a while (excellent fun) until we emerge out on piste again. We meet Rachel, Fergus, Keith, more ? on the way down I think? It was very peaceful off piste ... and quite a bit fun.
Last day - Snowboarding! ... Anyway on baby piste in morning falling over LOTS and failing to manage button lift. In afternoon on big pistes disconnected from others mostly as I was still falling a good bit. My last run down was very late and I was VERY sore doing it. Back and hips side were aching from the bruising. Boarding off into soft snow gave some relief but the energy needed to get up and moving again was difficut to summon. Now we know why snowboarders sit alot!