Sjroeplog

What happens when Merijn calls and he listens to the newest carnaval song? He’s so happy.

When you online all day and skype is on people from all over the world are able to reach you. So far I’ve talked to Joanna (AYAD-volunteer when I was in Papua New Guinea and now lives in Melbourne), André (Physiotherapist/IT specialist (there are more physio’s with this combi) who came over to the Netherlands in 2001 on the same exchange programme I used to go to Cape Town with and now lives in Pretoria), Miko (I lived with Miko in the same dormitory from 1997 to 2000 in Nijmegen and he lives in Oxford now) and last but not least

my sister who lives in Christchurch, New Zeeland.

It has become a tradition of some sort to have a mid winter garden party. There are several things you need to have. First you need a nice fire to heat up the chilly bones and to barbecue the meat on. Second you need friends that take wine with them, because during the party only wine is being drunk.
And this year there was a special guest by the name of Sjoerd (with shawl around his neck).

In July 2009 we had his wedding and he has been living in Bangladesh ever since. So you see everybody returns to Nijmegen eventually.

I sometimes sleep over at Merijn’s place when I’m to lazy to drive back home or if I had a drink. Yesterday he pulled out the “enormous crocodile” by Roald Dahl and started reading it to me. Just when I pulled out my camera he decided to stop reading it to me.

How about that? I was invited to a PNG meeting with all my friends of that particular time in my life. It’s just great to reminisce about stuff you did together and you saw together. Marcel left together with me back in 2005 and he is still going strong. He has just decided to take up another two year contract. He’s going to live in Banz and work within the field of CBR.

Banz is about an hour’s drive from Mount Hagen where I lived.

When I was in Papua New Guinea I saw Watna in the only bar in Mount Hagen called the Waipa zone. She told me she had been reading my blog and recognised me from pictures. In march she told me she was going to do an internship in The Hague at the International Criminal Court. That of course meant she had to come over to Nijmegen so I could show her the place.
That she did with a friend of her.

So yeah, my life is rather fast paced at the moment. I’ll inform on my last two exquisite weekends and my first two days at work.
Not the last weekend, but the weekend before (26th and 17th of September) I joined 23 of my friends in a trip to a holiday park. Two days of hiking, eating, drinking, laughing, cooking, talking and doing back flips in a fairly sized swimming pool. For those of you that think you need an oven to bake pizza’s; you’re wrong. Put two bricks in a fireplace, fire it up with some wood, put the homemade pizza on a lid and presto; perfectly charred pizza.

The week after I started at my new job at Physique. Man, it’s just perfect. The vibe is great. There is a lot of experience in the field of physiotherapy and fitness. The re-integration part had been neglected for some time now and so I’m now responsible to restart that part of physique. Again fantastic colleagues with huge amounts of experience. Everybody is energetic and full of ideas. I’m only working 32 hours so that means I’m off on Fridays. Yahhh! On Tuesdays some colleagues get together to do some team workout and I decided to join them.

Last weekend I drove with three fellow acrobats to Munich for a acrobatics convention. The drive is supposed to take a little less than 7 hours. We drove more than 10 hours because of the road works. We were in a traffic jam for over one and a half hour. But the convention was worth the pain. A lot of enthousiastic people, 20 hours of rigorous training, 12 new tricks, a shitload of food, no sleep worth mentioning and heaps of muscle pain.

Not a really big update, but I need to go. Next acrobatics class coming up

Wednesdays are my role-playing game evenings. We have 5 people in our group and we play fairly consistent. When more than two persons aren’t available we do something else. Jolien lives in Kekerdom.

A beautiful little hamlet just outside of Nijmegen. And as you can see there’s a lot of water around it. So what does one do with a day’s worth of toiling at work? One goes night swimming.

And now for something completely different. This morning I drove to work when just before turning onto the highway a car overtook me.

The sticker you can’t read says: “Ik rem niet voor een arnhemmer”. Translated it says: “I do not brake for people living in Arnhem”. The city north of Nijmegen is Arnhem and there is a time old feud going on between those two cities. Mostly seen in soccer. I’m not from Nijmegen (not born and raised anyway), but I still love the pun.

I installed skype a few months ago and what do you know? A friend from South Africa made contact with me today. Back in 2001 André Kleynhans was an exchange student from UWC (University of the Western Cape) who did an internship in Nijmegen. He lives in the Gauteng Province in Pretoria now.

I’m pretty much beat. Friday a group of friends with me among them drove to France attending a wedding of a mutual friend. Today I came back and in 5 minutes I’m going to hit the sack. Enjoy!
The wedding was from Sjoerd and Rathana. The pictures are in chronological order; from the upper left corner down. If you click on the first the picture will be enlarged and you’ll be able to read my comment. The upper right corner shows you the next picture.