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Category Archives: The Netherlands
Chilly
-17 degrees last night. Had to help a housemate getting her car started. Brrrrr.
But weather like this makes for beautiful pictures. Ooijpolder yesterday.
Climbing
Merijn had decided to do a climbing course for beginners starting in February 2012. After climbing with Patrick and Maaike in NZ (and having lot’s of fun doing it) it was only logical to join him in the course.
So tomorrow at 7.00pm I will start the course. By 10.00pm my arms will be so tired I wont be able to open a jar of marmalade.
Cleaning up for the big move
So I’m going to live together for the first time in my life. I’m 36 years of age, about time to take the big step. An exciting prospect I must say. Just hope Heleen’s up for it.
So now I’m cleaning up, throwing away, giving away and packing. I’ve had to pack before when going on big adventures and I love this cleaning up. The stuff that stays somehow seems to matter.
Oh yeah and if you want some of this, give me a shout.
Running at mum and dad’s place
I took Merijn down south to my parents. After preparing a lovely dish yesterday we decided to get the blood pumping by running a 10 km run. We used afstandmeten.nl to see how far we’d run.
10.75 km.
A dash through nature
A dash through nature is an national initiative set up to ridicule state secretary Bleker’s plan to severely minimize support for nature conservation.
The plan is simple. Find a street sign with an animal, tree, plant (nature) in it’s name and put sticky across the name. I’ve sighted a tag in Nijmegen. Cool initiative!
Protected: Skyping with Australia
Going out with a bang
Funny. When a huge holiday is coming you try to finish everything up. Work I handed over to a collegae, yesterday I finished my third semester at school and today our living community had a chores day. It was my turn to coordinate it. I was worried that the chores would be to technical, but everybody chipped in like crazy and it all worked out in the end. I especially loved the part where I could walk around with a walkie talkie.
I could even hear a motor driver school instructor talk to his student. I almost wanted to shout: “watch out, a car!!!” into the mic, but decided against it. I could hear the wailing sirens already.
Anyhoooo, time to leave for New Zealand tomorrow. Excited to meet up with my little sister and Patrick. I finished the last task just now and I’m relax and ready to go…NZ, see ya soon!
Sport symposium; the hip
The Sint Maartenskliniek (Saint Martin clinic) had a symposium today for physiotherapists regarding the hip. First of all, a befriended sport physician explained the anatomy and diagnostic part of groin and hip problems. Then a orthopedic surgeon talked us through a presentation on a relatively new procedure; arthroscopy of the hip. Then we had a physio explaining to us the rehab treatment he uses. He told us that this wasn’t really evidence based, but then again, the surgeon don’t waste time collecting evidence for their treatments either 
Then we had another orthopedic surgeon talking to us about the sport hip.
A sport hip can be used by young people if they want to return to their sport in a serious way. Not advisable though, since even these high tech thingies still aren’t able to replace a natural hip.
Oersoep brouwerij
Sander has started his own brewery. It is called the Oersoep brouwerij (primeval soup brewery). I have been tasting his beer ever since he started. Over a few years time the tastes of his beer have been evolving to a point where they can compete and come out victorious over any commercial beer around. Think of a taste and Sander has made a beer out of it; coffee, pepper, chanterelle or mattee (Argentinian tea). Next to this he explorers beers like porters, IPA’s and stout’s to find things he can include into his beer.
Check out his website to see his four lines of beer.