Wednesday October 7, Zaandam/Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Wednesday October 7

Zaandam/Amsterdam, The Netherlands

14 C Clouded and drizzle

Last things we pack and drive to my brother, who brings us to the airport. Within 15 mins we checked in our luggage and passed customs and have plenty of time to have some lunch. The boarding is delayed and some stressed Japanese guy keeps saying something is wrong and something terrible is going to happen to this flight. His “proof” is that he cleaned his whole house and he has never done that before. I joke with the question if he has never cleaned his house before or never before a flight. Too bad for him he does not catch the joke.

In the plane we negotiate and “sell” my window seat for an ail seat, so we still are able to sit next to each other, rather than at different places in the plane. Next to us sits a very friendly Scotsman who is part of the Scottish rugby team, playing for a week in Japan. We had the best dinner ever in a plane, with excellent Japanese food. Eaten with chopsticks, of course.

Besides that you did not have your own tv and media selection system the flight is OK, until the end. The last 5 minutes are bumpy as hell, due to the cyclone nearing east of Tokyo. We go up and down, left and right and people yell in the plane. Its almost the same “roller-coaster experience”as the landing in Washington last year with the big Hurricane. Lucky us, this time the visibility is clear, even sunny, so you can see the wings bend like crazy and know you will drop and prepare for the “funny stomach feeling”. The pilot puts the plane on the ground. In the meantime we jumped from Wednesday night to Thursday morning due to the 8 hours time difference.

Greetings, Marcel mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com

Ready 4 Japan!

Bought some new gear for the holiday.... the ASUS eee PC, 1005HA Black to be precise. I read that most people in Japan, had difficulty connecting with WiFi on their iPhone, as... well... Japan does not have that much WiFi.

Due to small rooms, people are all together for computing and the Edge / 3G technology is widely spread, so Japan did not need so much WiFi in cafe's and/hotels etc. With that, it would mean we would not be able to book our next hotels, so I thought I buy a small eee PC that can connect with a cable in the Hotel when needed.

Next to that, I have than also a backup device for all my photos I take and a easy device to blog for the family. In addition, we can use Skype when connected, to call or even webcam to home. Last but not least, its also just plain fun and a cool gadget :-) eg... DIVX are copied and ready to view in the plane or where ever we go. :-) with a battery lasting 8 hours, its easy to kill some time. We did check in today via the internet, but found ourselves spread over the plane. :-( There were no seats next to each other any more, so for next time we need to make reservations sooner. For the plane back, we just now did.... I did not know you were able to tell what seats you want, 90 days before the flight?!? Nobody told us, we always thought 30 hours before departure you can check in, and that's it.

Anyway, in the plane we need to see if we can negotiate with someone else to swap places. And otherwise we just have to accept it, the next month we are together anyway ;-) Now we first need to pack our backbags to a max of 10kilo to be really ready. cu Marcel ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Marcel de Koningh Photo KingH LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/ Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/ email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weight is going down!

Hi,

Weight is going down, since I bought my bike and sport more.

I wanted to reach 80, so my new goal is to go below the 80 and hit the 70 target... but lets take it 1 kilo at a time and in a slow pace. As the kilos gained were also not added in a few weeks, I want to take it slow and have a balance.

Greetings, Marcel mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com

Snow Leopard, the highly anticipated new operating system for the Mac, will be released ahead of schedule Friday, Apple announced Monday.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/24/snow.leopard/index.html

Marcel mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com

Bianchi Bike

Hi, I have my bike for 4 weeks now, travelled a lot with it and enjoy the free rides. The bike was bought for sports, health and having fun. My good friend Diego also bought a bike and we travelled some km's already and for sure will have much more km's to make!! So enjoy the pictures! Greetings, Marcel mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com

De appel valt niet ver van de boom... eh huis.

Inmiddels heb ik mijn nieuwe Mac een week in huis en hij is nog niet vaak ver van mij vandaan geweest hier in huis :-) Hij bevalt tot nu toe uitstekend. Ik heb al veel tips en tricks geleerd, uit forums, tutorials en gewoon zelf uitproberen. De toetsen die leken te ontbreken (qua NL/UK layout verschillen), zijn aan te roepen doormiddel van shortcuts (FN+backspace is hetzelfde als delete bijvoorbeeld, etc). Dus da's geen probleem. De upgrade van het OS, is er nog sneller gekomen dan ik dacht... vanavond om precies te zijn. Het is een soort fixpack en niet eens een totale new OS versie. Het is de 10.5.6 (tov de 10.5.5 die ik nu heb). Hij is gewoon te downloaden door een sw update te draaien, dus ook daarvoor is het goed geweest niet gewacht te hebben :-)))) Het scherm, gebruiksgemak en de super looks zijn elke dag weer een feest. helaas zie ik toch ook wel enkele nadelen van deze machine....

• ik moet nog steeds slapen, werken, douchen etc... gaat ten koste van de tijd aan de Mac...
• elke maandag moet ik toch weer een Windows XP machine opstarten en aan het werk die week..
• soms moet ik iets van mijn Windows PC opzoeken en dan valt de 6 minuten wachten voor XP gestart is wel erg tegen... ook de 3 minuten voor hij afsluit vallen nog meer op dan vroeger

;-) kortom, ik ben erg blij met de nieuwe Mac!! ;-)

De schuur is af!!!

Ja ja, daar istie dan... het schuurtje... hij is eindelijk af!!! Vandaag waren we eindelijk weer eens thuis, was het toevallig goed weer en hadden we toevallig geen andere ToDo meer staan.... dus we konden eindelijk het dak erop gaan zetten. Om ruimte te hebben achter de schuur, voor het boren en schroeven, hebben we de schuur in zn gehaal verschoven. Met hulp van Ton hebben we de houten constructie voor het dak en de dakplaten er samen opgezet. Daarna afkitten en een balletje op de nok en klaar waren we. Schuur weer op zijn plek schuiven en vullen met de stoelen, BBQ etc uit de tuin. Veel mooier gezicht en een handige ruimte erbij in de tuin. Nu alleen nog planken, ophang systeem etc bedenken, maar dat kan later wel, we zijn voorlopig ff klaar met klussen aan de schuur ;-) Marcel.

Downtown Manhattan

iMax super movie

This was super cool! Big big iMax screen, sound you could feel! Next to that, super thrilling movie.

Central Park New York