The Joy of Baking

Today something is on at the church, but I was mentally so tired that I needed to rest, be alone to de-stress. It has been a busy week, with recruitment, a Gallia project and also my Dutch lesson in the evenings.

My best way to relax is actually baking cakes or cooking. While Johannes is at the church, I looked up the internet and found this rather tempting and delicious Maple cake recipe. With some light background music playing, I mixed all ingredients and Ta…Da… 40 minutes later, here is the result. The dark brown consists of dark chocolate and Nutella spread while the lighter side consists of peanut butter.

!!What a Joy of Baking!!

A Walk to Remember

Yesterday (25th October 2008) we enjoyed the beautiful color of the forest in Spa, splendid colors of tangerine, red, maroon, brown, yellow, orange and many others form the marvelous scenery of autumn . It is a beautiful and gracious stroll from Thermes de Spa down to the city center of Spa. The walk is full of colors and it is indeed a feast to our eyes. 6^th years, not too long but certainly not short either. It is the journey that we chose to walk together since 2002, the stroll down the hill also represent our wonderful journey together that filled with many amazing colors and phases that we been through together. I could only count the blessings since the day we started this journey together. May the Lord bless our marriage more and more!

SPA for SPA

We will depart for Spa, Belgium shortly.

To celebrate our 6th Wedding Anniversary today (25th October 2008), we are going to Spa for a Spa weekend.

Creative Ballet

To celebrate the evening before our 6th Wedding Anniversary tomorrow, we started with watching a Ballet performance, Strawinski Swingt by Introdans at Den Haag. This is a rather creative and innovative ballet performance with fashion to emphasise the beauty of the male body, not to disguise it. Tonight is indeed a rather special evening.

Dutch Integration Fuss Part I

I just came back from the (in)famous Dutch integration practical exam. What the fuss? Even the examiners wondered why I have to do it. I don't even know why myself apart from summoned by the Dutch government to do it. But I have the first part today, I have to do 6 practical exam (1) Naturalization (2) applying a driving license (3)Looking for a job in CWI (4) In a work meeting, taking minutes (5) help a client in a shop (6) help a client to order an item

In reality, I will do none of these. (1) I will not take up Dutch citizenship (2) I applied my driving license via the 30 percent ruling i.e. expatriate way (3) Even the examiner told me the type of job that I am looking (eventually) for will not come from CWI (4) It was perhaps 10 years ago I last taken a meeting minutes (5) and (6) I don't think I will ended up as a sales assistant in a shop ever.

My conclusion: Dutch practical exam is NOT practical after all. Waste of my time and energy.

Breakfast with Acropolis

This is how I enjoyed my breakfast for the past 2 days, at the club lounge of the hotel, sitting at the balcony with a marvelous view of Acropolis from a distance. What can I ask for more???

Greetings from Athens

 

I didn't expect to make this trip but I am here already in Athens, the capital city of Greece. It was still summer here with about 26C in the day and slightly cooler in the evening.

This morning, or rather yesterday morning I made it to the Acropolis before I go to work.

It was impressive, and there are already a lot of people even though it is just about 8am in the morning.

Greece is indeed an ancient town, I though Rome already is a city full of history, but Athens is filled with more ancient history every step you take.

Test Drive Part II

Today I went to test drive a Volvo V50 automatic Benzine.

Compare to BMW Series 3 Touring, Volvo V50 is indeed more spacious, less sporty which means more of me and MY car type. The seats were more comfortable, also more interior room, the car itself is quite age but it doens't affect the performance on the road.

Also volvo has a very subtle luxury, not boast of itself but providing the understatement comfort to its driver and passenger. I can definitely associate myself more with Volvo than BMW.

The only downside is I didn't try the diesel one and wonder if the experience would be very different. Anyway, I probably will try on a diesel one once I made up my mind.

Now one more to go, Volk Wagen Passat Station Wagon.

I Can Fly

Don't get me wrong, what I mean is I can fly a kite . Again, taking advantage of the Indian summer and the late start of the Sunday service today, we went to Scheveningen beach to kite. It’s a lovely morning; the beach was rather busy when we arrived.

Many people taking a relax stroll on the sandy beach, together with some people like us kiting and a few dogs and kids running around.

There isn’t much wind today but we still manage to fly the kite at the beach. It was a very relaxing morning with some running, picking up kite and setting it in position to fly. I also feel refreshed by the cool breeze from the sea.

We ended with simple Haring lunch before we return home and get ready to go to church.

An Indian Summer

The Lord has been blessing us with the extended summer. We called this Indian summer, which is usually a name given to a period of sunny, warm weather in autumn, not long before winter. We went to Roemond yesterday. On our way home in the evening, we saw this beautiful skyline at Eindhoven junction. I couldn't help but took my camera and capture the moment.

Golf Clinic@Dorhout Mees

Today we have an almost full day team offsite meeting at Dorhout Mees, Biddinghuizen. We had been to this place for outing last year. We finished the formality of the meeting in the early afternoon, and at 3pm we started with the golf clinic. It was a pleasant afternoon, 19C, no wind and sunny. What a lovely afternoon for golf driving range. This is my first golfing experience, I struggled a bit from a start but then when I started to love it after awhile.

ANWB Traffic Free Day

Yesterday 9^th October 2008 is the Dutch ANWB Filevrijedag (Traffic Free Day). It is also a day where the traffic jam should be reduced on the roads.

I had an appointment at 8am, and therefore I left home at 6.55am (that was very early and unusual start) and caught in a stand still traffic as around 7.15am.

In the evening, I left the office at 7.00pm and still I encountered a standstill traffic congestion.

Final verdict: An unsuccessful traffic free day. Try harder next year.

Test Drive Part I

Finally, it is about time for a new lease car again. I work from home today so that I could use the lunch hour to test drive BMW.

My lease car will be expiring in January 2009, so it is time to start test drive and select another car. Today we test drive BMW series 318 diesel automatic.

My criteria are quite simple

1. Station Wagon
2. Automatic
3. Built-in Navigator system.
4. Preferably Emission Type label A
5. Fit within my monthly lease amount

One down, need to make time to try Volvo and VW Passat.

A Visit to the Ark of Noah

Yesterday (4^th October 2008) six of us in two cars visited the ark of Noah in Kampen. Kampen is a small little town located at the North East of the country.

The story begins with a Dutchman by the name o f Johan who had a dream about half of Holland was covered by the water. He then shared this dream with his wife and children and eventually following the path of Noah in building an ark. This ark that we visited is already very huge but it is just half a size of the ark built by Noah.

As we walked into the ark, I could see lots of animal replicas of the actual size. There are giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, pigs, bears and many others of the actual size. Each of these are displayed in an individual cell.

There are also a lot of sections that tell the bible stories such as the Jacob’s well, Abraham’s tent, the tomb of Jesus and etc. There are also a few mini cineplex’s that showing cartoon such as Joseph – the prince of Egypt etc. Frankly speaking apart from the ark itself, the entire setting wasn’t really appeal to me as it is more interesting for little kids to explore and learn about the animals and the bible stories. However, the architecture of the ark itself is quite an interesting experience.

Sorbet Classique

Last night, I performed the “People’s Advocate” role on two of my “unhappy” female colleges over dinner at Seoul Korea Restaurant at Den Haag. After the dinner, we went to Dudok to sample the desserts. I conducted 3 annual reviews this week and with this ‘people’s advocate’ session, I am completed tired mentally and emotionally. That is why I absolutely deserved this glass of Sorbet Classique even after a chocolate truffle tart. What a way to celebrate weekends.

Terrific Autumn Traffic

1st October 2008 - AM - 18 km traffic congestion at A4. Result - 3 hours from door to door, extremely late for an appointment.

2nd October 2008 - PM - raining very heavily, leaves office at 7pm, 9 km traffic jam,. Result - 1 1/2 hour from door to door, even in the evening after the rush hour. Can you imagine that!!!!

Thank God that I am working from Den Haag tomorrow.

World Financial Crisis

Although the world financial Crisis has been going on for awhile, but near home, after ABN AMRO there is another crisis happening since last week. It seems that the entire financial eco-system is at risk, when one part is fixed, the other part is broken.

I was not really alarmed until Johannes suggested that I should open another account at the "R" bank to lower my risk as Fortis is at the brink of collapse and if that happens, my bank account at ABN will also be affected. The central bank will only compensate one not more than 20K Euro.

However, much to my surprise, opening a new bank account is equally difficult in this country. I couldn’t even secure an appointment to open bank account in the coming weeks.

Düsseldorf

This weekend is definitely the last summer weekend of the year. On Saturday (27th September 2008) we made a day trip excursion to Düsseldorf, Germany which is about 2 ½ hours drive from our home.

It was very hot and sunny, almost no cloud in the sky as you can see from the photos.

We arrived at Köningsallee (King's Alley in English), which is the famous shopping street of Düsseldorf that is comparable to New York Fifth Avenue. All the luxury fashion brands have a store here. Since I wasn’t in the mood of shopping, the stroll along Köningsallee wasn’t that interesting to me especially strolling among/against the crowds.

I was in search for the Rhine River bank and also some historical site, but Düsseldord appears to be a very new and modern city, not much of the historical architecture left.

The late afternoon by the Rhine River bank was great. Lots of crowds gathered at the bar, beer halls, terrace mostly drinking beers and watching football.

We also enjoyed our tea break at a Turkish like Cafe close by the river bank.

It was a pleasant day trip, the sunny weather basically sprinkled an additional atmosphere and excitement in the air.

Kiting

Our new kite

Johannes winding up

Me in action

Last Friday (26^th September 2008) late afternoon, we try kiting at Noord Aa again. This time instead of a simple one string kite, we got ourselves a two strings kite. It is indeed quite hard to fly a two strings kite especially when there isn’t enough wind. It was not until many attempts, I finally got a feel of it to maneuver a 2 strings kite with both hands and able to steering it to fly left or right. However, due to lack of wind, the kite didn’t stay up high long. It is a very refreshing hobby. We wanted to do it again this weekend, but can you imagine that there is almost no wind at all this weekend???