Exposure

Meteorologists state that the first of March is the first day of spring. YAHOO! And I'd seen the first flower last monday. So... I thought the time was right to take my sunglasses, swimsuit and goggles out of the closet. How wrong could I be! When I took the train back to Zwolle today, I arrived in a complete chaos. The busstation was overcrowded with buses that didn't go anywhere, the street was jammed with cars... And loads of desperate people trying to get home. What a bit snow can do! I decided to try to walk home.

Yeah, you scandinavians, you all wil laugh about this situation. The whole system is jammed because of three (3!) centimeters of snow...

But Hey.... HELLOOOOO!

It is spring!! The season where everything should be freshly green, not white!!!


Anyhow...

Now it's time for something else... Choices.
Now the Netherlands is going the (neo?)liberal direction, things have changed (and still are changing any further). Last year we were for the first time ever allowed to buy our energy from another provider. (Before that, it were state-companies). Several months later the public health sytem has got changed. What meant that I had until er... today (!) to choose a insurance-company to cover my health. It appeared to be a tough job: make a selection of tons and tons of proposals, sometimes even different proposals from one and the same company. And since those contracts are on a year-basis, I wanted to make a wise decision. It took me four full days to make up my mind. I must say: it took some lots of time, but I'm satisfied with my decision.

So I've made enough choices for now??? Didn't think so.

Next week (7th of March), there are municipality elections. And to be honest: I havn't any clue what to vote. Will it be some local party? Or the local department of a national party? That it will be something on the left wing, thát is for sure. I guess I'll make up my mind next weekend.
Television-polls say only 57% of the Dutch will give their vote. That's a big, big shame. I guess a lot of those non-voters are just tired of choosing. Choosing abstract things as politics, insurance and so on about four times a year is a little too much, I think.
But in my opinion, when you HAVE voting-rights, you have to vote, or be silent for the next four years (until the next election). Right... I cannot be silent in Politics that long. Nobody can!

Career...
Next friday I'm going to a career-event. Never been there though. I'm curious: don't know what to expect. Loads of people in suit (including me), that's for sure. But what wil happen...? I'll try to go there for a chat with some recruiters. Especially I'll try to talk to some people outside the advocacy, to figure out what just 'ordinary companies' can mean to me whan I've got my LLM-degree somewhere between september and december.

Music
I've figured out some new artist. At least, He's new in The Netherlands. I'm talking about Gabriel Rios, A Puerto Rican guy from Gent, Belgium. He writes very nice songs, with a little bit fragile but positive sound. His breaktrough in Holland was his awesome song 'Broad day light' that was used for a Dutch orangejuice-commercial...

Maybe it is a bit soft, (probably a bit gay-ish as well), but I really like his music.

I've tried Opera 9. Very, very very very very VERY nice browser... I've got used to it. And that was... well.. a stupid action of me...

Since 'they' have changed many key-combinations (and prefer keys above a mouse), I can't get used to opera 8.5 any more. There are little bugs in opera 9 (copy-paste malfunction in forms... not so nice when I want to copy some text from one form-field (gmail-spellcheck!!!) to another (new blog post): it just doesn't work.

Anyhow, for the time beïng, until opera 9 gets released, it will be Camino for me...

I'm in the train right now: getting back from Arnhem, where I picked up my new suit. I should read some Spinoza philosophy stuff right now. That won't work: Difficult text in a noisy train with a boggled mind isn't a good idea.

Meanwhile, my mind is making me crazy today. Don't know why, though. I think I have an off-day or something. The rest of today, I'll hide and duck.

After a few days off (celebrating my very-very-very late X-mas vacation...) I read Alex' blog and figured out it's my turn right now... Let's see what I can do:zip:


Four jobs I've had:
1. Waiter in a restaurant
2. Waiter on a golf-course
3. Phone-agent for a bank's helpdesk
4. Waiter in another restaurant

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. Amélie
2. Kill Bill
3. Un long dimance de fiançailles (with the extraordinary boring title-translation: A very long agreement)
4. City of Angels

Four places I have lived:
1. Nieuwkoop (NL, close to Amsterdam)
2. Leeuwarden (Ljouwert) (NL, in the North)
3. Groningen (NL, in the North as well, a bit closer to Germany)
4. Zwolle (NL, in the (geographically) center-area of the country)

Four television shows I love to watch:
1. the 4400
2. 24
3. (in general) all BBC's wining & dining programs
4. Cinema op 3 (Cinema on 3, every saterday-evening on the 'Nederland 3'-channel there is a 'culty' Cinema movie.

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Conçepcion, Chile
2. Hardanger, Norway
3. Malexander, Sweden
4. Bonaire, NA

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. My mothers' applepie
2. Original pasta bolognese (defenately not with the supermarket Bolognese in a jar)
3. stuffed green coal-leaves with meat (choux farcis)
4. homemade bread with my homemade garlic & herbs-butter.

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Macosx.nl, a Dutch Apple user community
2. Volkskrant, a Dutch more or less left-wing newspaper.
3. google
4. Opera Community (how cheesy to say here, but it's true...)

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Sailing the Volvo Ocean Race(not that realistic, but really cool indeed!!)
2. Hardangerfjord
3. In a swimmingpool (tropical beach & sea will do as well, thank you:yes: )
4. Bonaire's underwater world

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Words
2. Allan
3. Helmers
4. Ytsmabeer

What I'm listening???

[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/tracksAuto/tracks/hayke.gif

This

In the meanwhile I'm preparing for the next test... On our queen's birthdag (january 31). The last one... for now!