March 2003 Archives

After we had some visitors from Barcelona last weekend, this weekend we had visit from Switzerland. Karin and her boyfriend are having a holiday in Catalunya, and decided to visit us last weekend.
I know Karin since my first Euroforum and have met her and her friends several times in different countries in Europe. Two years long I went to Switzerland in summer, to help them with their summercamp, and every time I crossed Switzerland I tried to make some time for a stop in Luzern. The last years however I didn't have a lot of contact with her, so it was a pleasure to see her again.
They arrived on Friday evening, while I was still at work, so they had to wait a little bit at home. They didn't mind after walking two days through Barcelona.

After my work we went for a beer in O'Sullivans, after which we would meet Maria José and go to a restaurant. However, when we wanted to leave the place, I noticed that my jacket was gone. I knew 100% sure that I had put it on the chair right behind us (and we were almost in the corner!), but it just wasn't there anymore. After searching around a little bit, we knew for sure that the jacket had been stolen. I informed a waitress, who told me that the day before had happened the same thing. Without jacket (including cellphone, Palm III agenda, passport and drivers licence) we walked to the restaurant, where Maria José tried to phone to my phone. It was still ringing, but nobody answered (as expected). We enjoyed a nice mail at Pastificio (pasta of course), brought our guests home for a beer and went to the police.

On Saturday I showed our guests aroung in Lleida. We visited the usual things like the Seu Vella, Carrer Major, Seu Nova, ... We also taught them wat a siësta is.

On Sunday, after enjoying our breakfast, we prepared some sandwiches and drove to Ulldemolins. There, we took a drink and started walking into the mountains. After almost two hours we were up on the mountain, almost 500 meters higher than where we started. We ate our sandwiches, and said goodbye to our guests. They were going to walk some hours more until they arrive in Montsant on the other side of the mountain, where they would have to find a place to stay. We walked back to our car and drive back home. Notice that this is not the normal way we leave our guests!!!

Now that the war on Iraq unfortunately has started, we have to find a way to independent news sources, since most material will be provided by American government censored stations as CNN and Fox News. I always trust the BBC a lot more, but truely independent are the bloggers.
There is one guy living in Baghdad writing about his life there, but I wonder how long he will be able to update his page...

The Catalan government broadcasts a commercial on television urging immigrants to learn Catalan. If you live in a country, you have to learn the language of that country, isn't it? I completely agree with this point of view, but then why don't I speak Catalan myself????
When I decided to move to Catalunya, of course I decided to learn the local language. Over here, there are two languages spoken: Spanish, which is the official language, and Catalan, which the people living here all speak in daily life. I decided to opt for Spanish for a number of reasons. First of all, Catalunya is not so big, and Lleida is close to the border of Catalunya; if I drive 25 kilometers I am in a Spanish speaking area. Furthermore, Spanish is a language spoken all over the world, at least more than Catalan, and all people here speak Spanish besides Catalan. The only drawback of my decision is that I have to learn to understand Catalan anyway, since this is what all people speak over here, but that has happened just by listening to the people and living with them.
So after almost one and a half year living here I speak Spanish really well, don't I? Well, not... The fact is that I hardly have studied since I lived here. I wanted to follow a language course, but all courses I could find started at hours on which I usually still am working. So I depend on self-study. I have some books and CD's, and with a little bit of self-discipline it should work. Right! So the problem is my famous (lack of) self discipline.
Seeing the advertisement of the Catalan Government made me realise my miserable level of Spanish. I think I am going to look around for a Spanish course again, because this has to change!

You might have been wondering why I haven't written about our house lately. Well, that's mainly because we haven't done a lot the last weeks.
But, things are going to change (at least a little but). I hope that when I come home for lunch this afternoon I will find some nice packages containing a desk for our working room and the remaining parts for our library. And once I have put them into place, I can finally unpack my old computer, and play a little bit again.
Furthermore we are going to select some curtains for our living room tonight. Once that is done only some things have to be done:

• Put the doorframe of the bathroom and paint it.
• Buy lamps
• Put a sidetable in the corridor
• Make something to hang our jackets
• Have somebody make a closet in the bathroom

Not a lot, isn't it?

After a little more than a year, my site has changed again. Completely in line to the amount of work spent designing the site (30 minutes), this change was also a quick and dirty job. On the left site you can see a new 'tool': the blogroll. This is a list with blogs and other journal-like sites I visit regulary.

For those people thinking that it would be a good think if Jeroen would for once spend a little bit more time to create a decent site: you are absolutely right, this site sucks big time. But at the moment it works. I do have some plans to host it on my own server, for first I need to finish our working room and get a decent internet connection.

Today I was going to write about the wonderful weather we have here in Lleida. But something happened this morning that took away this desire to write about the weather.
When I went to work, I noticed that our car wasn't closed. I must have forgotten to close it yesterday. I thought to myself that I have been really stupid, en went inside. On the chair next to me was a package of paper handkerchiefs, of which I didn't remember it being there yesterday evening. This made me a little bit nervous. I looked around, and indeed somebody had searched our car; the papers in the gloves compartment were in a slightly different place than usual. I couldn't find anything else, so I started the engine and put the radio to go to work. The weather was beautiful and sunny.... dammit! They took my sunglasses!!!!!

Last week Russell Beattie, an American living and working in Madrid, wrote an analysis of the Spanish job market. Although I don't agree completely, since he is leaving out the cheap costs of living, it is interesting to read the opinion of a fellow IT immigrant.

Because I am working on Fridays untill 20:00 hours, it is not possible for me to fly to Holland on Friday evening. So this Saturday we woke up at 4:30 to be able to catch the first plane to Holland, which is not funny if you have a birthday supper the evening before.

We arrived in Harmelen at the beginning of the afternoon, and watched how my father and the neighbours were busy with the enlargement of their houses. The last weeks they haven't been able to work a lot, due to the freezing cold in Holland (there are some things that I defenately don't miss...). Work is making steady progress, and in a few months my parents will have 2 meters more living room (which they need urgently now that Sven is visiting them once in a while).
After this we went with my mother to the center of Harmelen city, to see the carnival wagons. After being a participant for many years and missing the carnival last year, it was a pleasure to see it from the side. Of course half of the vilage was on the streets (with the other half standing on one of the 20+ wagons), and I met a lot of old friends. After seeing all, we went for a quick shopping round, to buy the things we miss most (cheese, peppermint, brylcream,...), quickly brought everything home and went to the carnival party to have a chat with my friends.

That evening Esther, Terry and Sven came for supper. Sven has changed a lot since I last saw him two months ago. He has grown a lot, is smiling and even trying to talk. It was great to see him again.

At night it was carnival time again. I dug up the old box with clothes and took out the farao suit. Maria José chose my old clown suit; since it was already too big for me, it looked great on her. You can find a photo of us on my image gallery.

At twelve o'clock the music stopped and I heard Berry's voice through the microphone. This is what I already feared! I had to come to the front, and Berry explained in public that I came from Spain to celebrate carnival and my birthday in Harmelen. He gave me the present on behalf of the 'brothers': some Belgian beers, 'dropjes' and nuts (glad we didn't buy those that afternoon).

After waking up on Sunday and receiving the congratulations of my parents, we still had some time left, so we went to Montfoort to see the carnival over there...