Whoops, there's a 'stop train' in front of the intercity I'm sitting in. Ah well, I'm between Tilburg and Breda, so we'll catch up.

The new stainless steel thermos is working really well ! decent coffee for a small price compared to the 'brew' you can buy at the station for 1.50 euro. I can almost buy 2 weeks of coffee for that amount. Ok, that sounds stingy, but I'm still Dutch ;-) and 4*5*1.50=30 euro's a month, that's what I pay for my phone !

Anyways, the bike shelter was closed this morning ... a few more paying customers put their bikes in front of the closed doors, hoping the staff would put them inside. They are supposed to open at 04:45 and I arrived on 05:25 ... I really hope I'll see my bike again when I get back in Eindhoven in the afternoon.

do what whatever I want to do. I can carry my guitar to play like them old days in the train. I can browse the net with laptop/phone combi. I can sleep, drink coffee, have breakfast, blog.

Talking about blogging... The last post was 3 years ago, so I've some catching up to do. Yesterday I was leafing to some old diaries of 1998 etc. Nice to read my scribbles and remembering the things that were so important then.

Much has changed, much has remained the same.

Anyways, good to start this up again.

It's Tuesday evening in my second week. I'm sitting in my favourite cafe, with free wireless internet !

I've got my credit card sorted out last week, picked up my rental car from the airport and things are generally ok. The food at the Indian restaurant was excellent, made me feel like eating at home. No burgers/fries/ketchup tonight.

At work things haven't been going as smoothly as I hoped. Yesterday I found out that the measurement equipment was not working properly. Luckily with the help of the German service desk and people at the office here we got it working again. It was a bit scary to open very expensive measurement equipment and to adjust screws to get the optics aligned again ... but anyway, after that I just had to disassemble another piece of equipment that wasn't working either. Next time I've to ship anything I'll make sure it's packed in a triple set of boxes minimum ! A double set is just not enough to survive the trip.

It's now Tuesday evening 18:00 local time. The past few days were a new experience for me. Had I listened to my dear Franny a bit I would have avoided a lot of trouble.

After a long time (too long according to Fran) I picked DIYing again. Took Thursday and Friday off, brought Fran and Hannah to my inlaws because it's difficult to do anything with the little inquisitive lady running around the place.

Wow, it's now almost midnight after the first day, I'm dog tired but pleased I tackled some rather difficult and awkard tasks. I will put some photo's online tomorrow. The two outlets on the 'long side' of the kitchen are in place (one of prerequisites to start the tiling !). The old worktop on the 'short side' is gone, the steel supports cut with an 'angle grinder' (funny name for such a dangerous power tool, the sparks are beautiful, but when you get them full in the face the appeal lessens ... (yes, I wear safety glasses, ear protection, gloves the works, I'm not that stupid. I just look stupid when I've got all these things on, but that's something else), we (the dutch) call them: 'haakse slijpmachine', and now if I think about it again, the English name doesn't sound so bad after all.)

Happy holidays everyone !'

We spend the most of xmas at my parents in law. They decorated the house a bit more intense than ours (we have just the tree).

Henny is very busy in the kitchen, smells very good indeed.

I'm off to the food, want to get stuffed like a turkey ;-)

Yesterday a presentation was held by the management 'explaining' the headcount reduction. Today another will be held. Hmmm, interesting ... It's getting a bit ugly. The relations between the several management layers are under quite some strain (to put it politely ;-) ).

I don't think I'm under any threat (yet), but some of my collegues are getting a bit nervous. The new organisation structure is still pretty vague, we don't know who will be our groupleader (if there is a function like that anymore) in 2004.

Anyway, the meeting starts just now, so we'll see.