How time flies ! 12 moons ago we left Oosterhout and now and we were back in our little house.
Prince gave me a whole box of African beer ! Mongozo. Really nice to drink. Franny loves the coconut and banana flavours, I like the Quinua and Palm nut varieties. Some of the ingredients are Fair Trade imported (the beers are brewed in Belgium). Read some about the history here.
Fran has a job ! She will start the BBL course (combined working and learning) at the ROC (regional education centre) and work at Korein. That's great news. The course will start really soon (next week maybe already). So there are a lot of things to do: enrolment in the school, daycare for Hannah etc etc.
The first week (well, 3 days) were quite ok at MI-Partners. It will take a few days more before I can get involved in projects ... the company just started. But I got my new laptop up and running ...
Today was my first day at MI-Partners. Got to the office a bit late: first dropped Hannah to school. She started with school again after her long 6 weeks holiday on Monday. She enjoys her new class and there is now fussing when I leave her in the classroom.
The office at MI-Partners is still quite empty: just Leo and me right now. Didn't get really started yet: first I got my new 'n shiny laptop up and running with all the specific adjustments and applications I prefer (VIM, Irfanview, Firefox etc). We have now Office 2007 ... my goodness ! I was hoping for a option to get back to the old style menu/buttons UI but no ... aarrghh !
Well, anyway, the office is small, but modern. And more important: the coffee is drinkable (although not as good as at Mapper 
). The first days will be more getting things to work etc and starting Monday I'll get involved in some project, which is not known yet.
Fran is going to a Korein day care centre to 'see if she will like the work'. Last week at her interview there was a bit of doubt if Fran was really motivated to work in day care. A bit understandable: we don't have any experience with day care centres. I hope she likes the atmosphere and will be able to show what she is worth. I know she can do it.
Last Monday in Delft. Made a whole set of photo's with my mobile this morning from the train station to Mapper. Some taken standing still the rest on the go "from the loose wrist" as we Dutch say it. The results are good enough for me, funny to see the distortions in the images. Quite a few are just the bike path itself (the delay between pressing the 'shutter' button and the image capture is long ...) but that doesn't bother me. The sun was out this morning so I'm a happy camper.
This weekend will be nice weather for a change. Tomorrow is Tayo and Tola's birthday. Franny is already preparing a cheesecake. Not much else is planned for the weekend. We'll do something nice Sunday. Don't know what yet, but we'll see.
Yesterday in the news: Harry Patch, 109 years old visits the area he fought in during the Great War. Find out about Harry by searching the BBC site ! There is a video fragment and I instantly recognised his voice. Very moving. A few years ago there was a documentary on the BBC of the last surviving veterans of the First World War. One of the veterans told the story how he lost his friend. He never told anybody before and would not repeat it either. He and his friend survived many attacks. They had a plan: when the whistle blows, wait a little bit before going over the top (out of the trench and into enemy fire). But one day his friend got hit and died. He recited a poem which he wrote himself. That was so powerful and emotional that I vividly remember this particular documentary.
My XR2206 based function generator is still not working. I got my symmetric power supply up and running (thanks to a Velleman kit) which was a milestone itself. But something is not right with the breadboard schematic of the function generator. The XR2206 got really hot yesterday, so I guess I already blew it 
In the news (nu.nl): spambot software bypasses captcha filter. Hmm, this means that I've to find something new for this site soon. I'm not a prime target of course (50-80 real page visits per day) so I don't think this site will be flooded quickly.
Coming week will be my last week at Mapper Lithography, so including today there are 9 work days left. Have to muster all my motivation to finish my project and transfer it as good as I can.
Going to work after 2 days staying home ... Last Monday I felt really terrible: tired and not in the mood for anything. Tuesday it got worse: aches and pains all over. Yesterday it got a bit better so today I'm still a bit sweaty and when I cough it feels like my head explodes. Franny has one of her terrible coughs again. My goodness, the noise of her coughs is just unbearable at times. I really hope it doesn't take too long to get rid of her cold because it is so taxing on her body.
The thin layer of morning fog and the sun low above it make a powerful sight. Yesterday Mahindra came to Eindhoven, thanks to GPS he found his way easily. It still took him a bit less than 2 hours from Brussels.
The day before I checked the cable on my bike that changes the gears and I noticed it was almost broken. I noticed the last days that the 4th gear would slip now and then. So when I tried to adjust the cable tension I saw that the cable only had a few strands still intact. Well, bought a new cable (2.25 euro) and together with Mahindra installed in on my bike. Wasn't too difficult and it's changing gears like ever before.
What's worrying me sometimes is the difficulty Hannah has with speaking English. Understanding it is not the problem. Franny, Mahindra and many others tell me not to worry ... but still. I tried to look up "passive vocabulary" at WikiPedia but didn't come up with a result. If I remember correctly your passive vocabulary are the words you don't have to think about before using them. Your passive vocabulary are the words you know but have to 'fetch by hand' from memory. So I guess Hannah has a huge English passive vocabulary
