Memory Lane

So, once again it has been a couple of days. This time I have a valid reason though. My computer broke down. We've been able to fix it temporarily though. Then the next program showed up. As it turns out, the router that we use for our internet connection uses has a static ip-adress and the modem to which it's linked uses a dynamic ip-adress. I'm sure it's not completely right what I'm saying, but it comes down that we have to reset everything every two days. If we don't do that we'll lose connection. The only problem is that the modem is at the apartment of our landlord. So when he's not at home, we can't reset the modem. That can lead to, like in this case, the fact that we sometimes can't use the internet for a couple of days.

Also I've been writing for myself. The ship, that I posted earlier was one of those. I'm sorry to say that that's the only one you're going to see. The rest is mine (how do you type an evil laugh? Mwuahaha? something like that?)

It's strange to be honest. While I'm writing this I'm listening to a couple of musicals that I did in high-school. This was one of the few good things in the school. But anyway, it makes that I'm taking a small trip down memory lane. The rehearsal days that took way to long, christmas concerts, the shows of the musicals and as one of the coolest things, the project-day concert. Days that sometimes took 12 hours of rehearsing, but that were verry verry nice to do.

The people that have me known recently might need some extra explanation for these things. One of the teachers in my high-school started a musical group at the school exactly 10 years ago. Since then the group developped to circa 100 persons every production. I joined the fifth year, this was the first year that we performed in the city theater. The rehearsals that edition took the entire year with a couple of days that we had to practice between 10 am and 10 pm. Those are the rehearsal days that took way to long. Eventually the shows would come. Three shows with about 350 people showing up to check us perform Cats. That's really amazing.

In the third year that I joined we started an extra project, a christmas concert in one of the most beautiful churches of Amersfoort. We had one concert, and the church was packed! The acoustics were amazing and the Young Messiah was a great show to perform. This got turned into a new tradition at the school. Now they're performing in de biggest church in the city, just to try to fit everybody in.

My fourth year was the musical Chess. A musical that requested the best of our abilities as an orchestra, but also of the singers. The themes that were there were so complicated, and the rhythm would change so often in the most impossible times. I think we can still be really proud that we managed to pull that off. Maybe you can look up 'End game' at youtube. If I would have had an internet connection I probably would have sent you a link.

The same year we also had one day in which we sat down and rehearsed eight songs. We would have a concert in the evening. People could contribute to us and the benefits would go to a good cause. This day was one of the benefit days that the school does every year. For me it was an ultimate way to spend those days.

Why do I pay so much attention to the musicals? I got to know a lot of friends playing in the orchestra. We alway pulled it off. And we were named the best school orchestra of Amersfoort. So I got to know great people, and my self esteam got a boost now and then.

It strange how fast you forget how you disliked the school if you did things like this. The general feeling that remains of school is a good thing.

I realize I often feel like that. Something that I would hate on a daily base turns into something lovely as soon as I leave it behind. I think that's remarkable. Appearantly, when I look back I always look back at the good things. I forget the boring economy lessons, forget the fact that they assumed that I falsified an autograph of a teacher, with the consequence that I almost wasn't allowed to do my exams at school.

The things that remain are the musicals, the concerts, the christmas brunch where teachers make a fool out of themselves in their play. I remember saying to a friend last year, while we were watching het Bergfestival (annual talent show). 'That girl from the first year can sing, I think Esther should get her hands on her.'

Things like that almost want me to go back, though I know that I hated that place.

Anyway, I'll stop annoying you with this boring story. When I come up with something new you'll see it immediately (as long as I've got internet).

That's it for now.

Laszlo

P.S. Did you know that often get ideas to write while I am trying to fall asleep? Thursday I wrote two of the things that are ment for me at about 2 at night.

The ship

A human is like a ship: They build you, and when you're done they'll certificate you. This certificate is in most cases your high-school diploma. The certificate says that you know the basics of navigating. Using them, however is something you'll have to find out while you are on your way. Then we set of. We set of on a journey. We encounter all kinds of stuff and locations. Our first docking is usually in university. In university they'll test our basics, you learn how to use some of them and they will expand your knowledge. After you've loaded the things you'll need for the rest of your journey, the engines start running again. This is the sign to start the rest of the journey called 'Life'.

During the journey we'll encounter great weather, unknown islands and undiscovered continents. These are locations where you can start something new, they are points where you might have to use some experience that you've gained, to gain some extra. They are points where you can rule, locations that you can create. They are your locations.

Sometimes you'll encounter rough weather. The engines will have to work a bit harder, and a lot of things won't be as easy as they used to be. You might be using some extra energy, but it will pay of in knowledge. At least you know one thing for sure, the storm can't last forever.

At a certain point you'll return to your main-port. There they'll bring you bad news, despite all your experience and knowledge you turn out to be too old. They are cutting you. Your journey has ended.

They'll get you out of the water, and start destructing you. Parts are leaving you, they are recycling you.

This is the sad ending of a beautiful, experienced ship.

I'm crazy...

So 26, there you are. You've been following subject 25693 right? Are you sure that he didn't notice you? It's our first priority to discover as much about him as possible without him knowing. So, let's see what your summary of the last few days is.

Name: 26
Written by: User 99
Date of creation: 10-11-2011
Date of report: 14-11-2011
Amount of words (excluding list of concepts): 553
Amount of words (including list of concepts): 1061
Amount of words (including monologue of researcher): 1160
Content: Life of L.C. Raats (subject 25693) and friends

Friday November 11th:
After waking up and going to school subject 25693, (from now on Mr. Raats) was invited to one of the must see museums of *Firenze* The Natural Historic Museum owned by *unifi*. The content of the museum has a big variety, starting with corals, followed by *stuffed animals* and concludes with wax versions of the human body. It's mainly interesting for *biology* and *med-students*, persons who know less about these subjects may be fascinated by the stuffed animals, but are probably confused when they arrive at the human body. Overall this museum is fairly interesting, it's not a must see though.
On the way back to home Mr. Raats decided to head for a store called *l'Olandese Volante*. This store sells several Dutch products and delicacy's. Our subject entered and came out with a *Stamper*. When Mr. Raats arrived home he decided that he wanted to treat his friends on a Dutch dish called *hutspot*. After peeling a lot of potatoes and carrots and unions, dinner was almost ready. Dinner was served at 9:05pm thanks to help of his roommates. After a night with just enough sleep, Saturday arrived.

Saturday November 12th:
The house was calm during morning. Everybody slept relatively late while a part of the house went out on Friday evening. Another part spent the night listening to the rehearsal of a newly formed band. This band is supposed to have its first performance on Tuesday November 15th on the Spanish night of one of the *Erasmus organizations*. Due to the fact that Mr. Raats is not an *Erasmus student* he chose not to join the band even though he had the opportunity. Despite this he's ninety percent sure to attend the event on Tuesday evening.
But as I was saying, the house was calm on Saturday morning. Though, around noon the house began to live. Everybody was awake, and at home. At that time on a Saturday that doesn't happen that often. This probably had to do with the invitation of their *landlord* to take them out for *lunch*. Indeed, at 12:45pm everybody was ready to leave the house, but they waited until their landlord showed up. He had the intention to take them to *Mario's*. The landlord however didn't reserve a table and their access was denied. After walking around they ended up at *Yellow Bar* where they had a great lunch.

The rest of the weekend was spent in a rather calm way, just like his Monday on which he went to school, and after school he used his laptop to write something. I'm ashamed I've to say I don't yet know what he was writing.

I also overheard a conversation of Mr. Raats with his parents. In this conversation he said that he was planning on writing about *over promoting certain holidays*. To be honest, I didn't exactly knew what he was on about, but I did some research. The meaning of this concept can be found in the *list of concepts with a particular meaning*.

*End of summary*

*List of concepts with a particular meaning*

- Firenze => City located in Italy, Capiluogo of Tuscany and main city of the province Firenze.
- Unifi => Shorter name for the Università di Firenze, website www.unifi.it
- Stuffed animals => Dead animals preserved by taking out organs and filling excess space with stuffing.
- Biology => a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.
- Med-students => Students of medicine, also known as lunatics.
- l'Olandese Volante => Store in Firenze that sells typical Dutch delicacy's and some other articles.
- Stamper => Machinery used in Dutch kitchen to make mashed potatoes or to mix several kinds of typical Dutch food.
- Hutspot => Typical Dutch main dish made from potatoes, onions and carrots, often served with meat. Stamper REQUIRED!
- Erasmus Organizations => Organizations that organize parties and excursions for Erasmus Students
- Erasmus Student => Student that joined the world wide exchange program of university's across the world.
- Landlord => In this case a 61 year old man that rents apartments to people who are in need of a space to live.
- Lunch => Meal eaten around circa 1:00pm, though during weekend a meal eaten at this time by students is often breakfast
- Mario's => Renounced restaurant known for its Tuscan cuisine and always overbooked.
- Yellow Bar => Nice restaurant known for good food but also for their fast service and an enormous touristic clientele.
- List of concepts with a particular meaning => This.
- Over promoting certain holidays => I'm going to need extra space for this, so see next file.

*Additional file: Over promoting certain holidays*

According to my research over promoting of certain holidays is basically the fact that stores are behaving like a certain holiday is due in a week even though the real date is at least 2 months away. The behaving like a certain holiday is due in a week contains dressing the windows of the store with typical decorations for this holiday. We also have to consider pushing food that's typical for that holiday. Stores in Firenze are at this moment ready for Christmas, and every present you buy can be delivered with a Christmas decoration. Also supermarkets in Firenze are selling Christmas cakes for two weeks by now.
Some of our researchers in the Netherlands said it's even worse over there. Dutch stores have been selling food for a strange holiday called Sinterklaas since medium September. This is remarkable because of the fact that the wind up to the holiday started just last Saturday with the arrival of Sinterklaas. The true holiday will be on December 5th. When you go into a store at December 6th you will find just Christmas decorations. This effectively means that since medium September, until January 1st stores are using holiday themes to boost their sales.
For me this is a very strange thing to notice. Are they all nuts?

*End additional file*

Nice work number 26. You've provided enough information. Great research also on the holiday stuff. And yes, they are nuts, but we can use all this information once we're going to invade earth. Please tell User 99 to prepare number 27 for departure. I expect a new report in a few days.

25

25, a pretty special number for me. I was born on the 25th of June, the address of the first house in which I lived in had 25 in it, and for years, 25 has been my lucky number. Now however, am I writing story number 25. To be honest, this are 24 more story's than I expected to write. However, just before I started writing I decided to try to write at least 99 stories before the end of the (academic) year. So that's my objective, and the people on the mailing list are going to receive quite a lot of extra mails in which they see that I've written a new story.

First I want to add something to my Queen vs. Pink Floyd story. I spoke to my father, and basically what he said was: 'I like the story, but isn't Pink Floyd older than Queen?' Of course this is correct, Pink Floyd was founded in 1965, so they had their jubilee in 2005. Queen was founded in 1971, so their anniversary is this year. But still the fact remains that Pink Floyd lost three of its original members before 1985. (It was, when founded, a four man band with an additional member joining in 1967.) So I think we can ask ourselves a question: Were they celebrating the anniversary of the band, or of the bRand Pink Floyd? If they were celebrating the band, I would say they wouldn't have the right to do that. If they were celebrating the bRand, I would say they had all the right to do that.

So, that's dealt with.

Then yesterday, during class, we tried to find a definition of art. We spent about an hour redefining it and discussing the definition our classmates just gave. I think you might be surprised (or maybe not) that we couldn't define it after an hour of discussing. We basically started with a simple definition as: Art is something that makes you feel good if you're contacted with it. So in this case, also a butterfly has to be art. We thought this was a pretty wide conception of what art is, and went on discussing. We ended up with less or more the next definition: 'Art is something that exists because of a creative mind, it can be reproduced BUT, the people that reproduce it have to give their own interpretation to it. If they don't this will be considered as copying and copying is according to us not an art.'

But then there was a paradox. In our opinion, the people that make chalk drawings on the road of famous paintings are copying. In that case, it would mean that they don't make art. Though, the first thing that we agreed on was that the men, who create this are definitely artists. So we still didn't really find a correct definition.

I think this creates an additional question: 'What makes an artist an artist?' I would also like your opinion in this. According to the definition of art that we established in class, an artist is somebody who creates, or re-interpretates a creative process. Though I wouldn't really agree on this, because this would mean that I would be an artist. Why would I be an artist according to this definition? Basically because of the fact that what I write is partially creative, and the musical productions in which I cooperated are re-interpretations of existing productions. So there has to be added something to the definition. Is this the fact that the person that creates is able to live of his creations? Again, I think that isn't it. Because there are quite a lot of artists who produce art but are not selling it. So, again I think I can't answer this question. I hope some of you have a couple of additional suggestions on how to define an artist.

On this I conclude story number 25,

See you soon.

Bo Rhap or Wish you were here, which band deserves its 40th anniversary?

I want to talk to you about two anniversary's. Two anniversary's of two bands of who I love the music, and of who I've merchandise.

As some of you know, I'm a huge Queen fan. Queen celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. The other band is Pink Floyd. At this point a poster in my room says 'Pink Floyd, 40th anniversary, still first in space.' As you can see, these are both bands from the past who have celebrated their 40th anniversary. To be honest, I've got some question marks due to these anniversary's. (I apologize for the fact that I use 'anniversary' so much, but right now I can't find a synonymous word)

You see, both bands have been struck by a couple similar, sad events. Both bands have lost a member due to death. And in both bands a member decided to leave the band. That both bands have been struck by death is tragic, but in my opinion there's a difference in the role that the leaving member plays. You see, Roger Waters left Pink Floyd due to creative disagreements. John Deacon left Queen due to the fact that he preferred to live a more silent life. Roger Waters decided to sue the three remaining members of Pink Floyd and wanted them to drop the name of the band, where John Deacon still is involved in decisions about new Queen productions and often approves them. I mean, Brian May en Roger Taylor are asking Deacon's opinion every time they want to make a new production with the name Queen. This production can be a recent documentary (Day's of our lives) or the musical 'We will rock you'.

So in my opinion you can still speak of an united front if you talk about Queen, where what once was Pink Floyd is as far apart as the former eastern- and western-front. Once in a while these two fronts will meet, see live8 and the concert of Roger Waters in Hamburg this year, but this will only happen after tough negotiations and the promise to pay each other back. So they are still not really doing each other a favor, Roger Waters and David Gilmore I mean.

Another big difference between the bands is that Queen, as earlier said, kept on producing. Even with different singers. I want to point you to their last album 'the Cosmos Rocks' (2008) It's different, not the Queen sound of the eighties, but there are still some things that remind you of them. The sound of Brian is still there, and the intro of the opening track 'Cosmos Rockin'' reminds me of the intro of 'One vision', and at the end of 'Still burning' you can hear the typical 'pam-pam-tap' of 'We will rock you'. All over you need some time to get used to it, but it's a great CD.

So if I put everything together, I think that the 40th anniversary of Queen is more justified than the same anniversary of Pink Floyd. This because the two remaining members of Queen are more active, and more united, also with the third non active member. Pink Floyd collapsed, the two former leading members are fighting a war, and will probably never play together again. They are not producing anymore, and basically their story is finished.

I know this is pointless, but I needed to fill up some spare time. So let me know what you think about it, could be interesting: Queen VS Pink Floyd. ;-)

By the way, did you know that the hardest part of writing a blog for me is to think of a title?

Bohemian Rhapsody- Hyde park 2005

Wish you were here - Live 8 2005

Say it's not true - The Cosmos Rocks 2008

Money - The dark side of the moon 1973

20 Years

You should know, the day after I wrote my story about chaos, I decided to buy a small notebook. Not for the use of organizing myself, no, I bought it because I think too many ideas escape from my mind. When I'm walking on the streets I sometimes think of stuff that I want to write about. Despite the fact that I try to remember the subjects, I usually forget them after 5 minutes. Then, when I start writing, I sometimes get frustrated because I know I had this great idea, but I just can't remember it anymore. So, now I've bought my notebook I can write them down and tell you all about what I think of themes that ran through my mind.

At this point there are just two things in there: 'How do we look back on ourselves in twenty years?' and 'How would it be to be back in Holland?' Two questions of which I do not know the answer. But I'll find the answer to one of them pretty fast. I'm saying here that I'll be in Holland between December 21st and January 6th.

But how would it be to be back in Holland? I have to be honest, at this point I can't imagine going anywhere outside of Italy. Not even going back to Holland. Of course, I'm missing a lot of Dutch things around here. I miss the cheese, the diverse variations of stamppot, the fact that I'm going to miss the sinterklaas madness that will start next Saturday. But I have to be honest, I think it will be quite strange to see my friends again. Friends that I've met in high-school and that helped me get through some stuff. It will be strange to see them for two weeks, and then say goodbye again. But it will be a lot of fun as well. So I'm basically looking forward to get to Holland for a short holiday.

I sometimes wonder how I'll remember these months outside of Holland in twenty years. I think I'll remember them as amazing. So far it's been a period in which I met amazing people, people who dare to dream and want to follow them. People who, just as I do, are developing themselves and who are open to new things in life. But I'll also remember it as a period in which I learned a lot about myself, and in which I started to appreciate doing some writing.

I think I learned a lot about myself because I've met so many people around here. Every time you meet somebody with who you'll spend a lot of time, you are introducing yourself in a slightly different way than usual. People want to know things about you and you want to know things about them. That makes that you start asking different questions. As an example: What did you do in your life of which you're proud of? My answer is often that I'm proud of the fact that I helped make the 'didjeridus' to what it is right now. It's nice to start building on a project with a couple of people and give it a (new) life. Because when I started doing 'didjeridus' nobody really read it, and there was no redaction team. By now there is a vibrant team working on it and a lot of people are reading it. Another thing of which I'm proud of is that I was part of developing the school baseball tournament in Leusden. It started off as an idea of a father in the club and group of volunteers of which I was part made it possible to realize the idea. This made that the popularity of baseball in Leusden has slightly risen, because last year (the second year) the club was already working at a 90% capacity because of all the kids that signed in for the tournament.
I think I'm most proud of projects that I started or contributed in when they were small, that now have become projects that are working on their own.

But how will I look back at myself in twenty years? It's a hard question to answer actually. I think I'll see a boy that was ambitious, but that didn't always pull the trigger at the moment he should have. I'll see a curious boy that wants to travel the world, a boy that is stubborn, but willing to learn. I'm sure that, when I'll see the photo's I'll think: 'Damn, what kind of clothes did we wear back then?'

Talking about how you think you'll look back at this period in twenty years leads also to the opposite question: How do I see myself in twenty years? I hope I've seen a lot of the world by then. I hope I found a nice girlfriend with who I'll have a couple of kids. But where do I see me in twenty years? To be honest, I have no clue. Could be in Holland or somewhere else in the world, though the 'States' don't appeal to much to me.

I think we'll see in twenty years.

I know you guys aren't going to answer this question on the blog; but how would you answer these two questions? It might be interesting to think about them because it can make you realize, that you might want to step up a bit sometimes.

I guess I'll leave you with that thought,

See ya.

Opportunity's (I think)

So, as you might have noticed, the blog has changed its looks. I'm not really sure yet if I'm going to keep it like this, but it's a bit less cliché. The picture at the top basically says: 'Chaos can sometimes have positive consequences'. And chaos is one of the things I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about chaos, courage and Halloween (even though I expected Ilse to write about this).

Why talk about chaos? Basically, because of the fact that chaos can have positive consequences. According to me, chaos is a point of too many things. Too many choices, opportunities or things to do. The beauty of chaos is that it forces you to stop for a moment, look into the mirror, and reorganize the chaos. If you do this the right way, you'll might end up with something beautiful. If you don't filter the right way, you'll basically end up in deep shit.

To keep from getting into deep shit, we humans thought about something: 'Planning'. True, it's useful and gives you a lot less stress than a moment of chaos. Downside is that we don't tend to follow our thoughts. If you're living according to a planning, you get locked in, the bad thing of getting locked in is that you're not prepared to deviate anymore. So if we are walking the streets, heading to a record store because we had fifteen minutes to spare, and we're crossing a beautiful garden that we've never seen before, we usually think: 'Wow!'. And we walk on, because we decided for ourselves that we have to go to the record store. We are not walking into the garden, look around for five minutes, smell the flowers in there and enjoying the opportunity we just got to find some peace around us.

I think chaos is beautiful. It keeps us flexible. The moment I started writing this, I had an overload of possibility's of subjects to write about. I chose three to eliminate the overload, or to avoid chaos. Even when I decided to just use three subjects, I still could head in every possible direction. What I'm trying to say is that every story that I write is written in a certain degree of chaos, and I think that the blog has quite a couple of things of which I can be proud of. For an example: this is my 23rd story. That makes the blog a diary combined with various other subjects.

In my opinion it sometimes takes a lot of courage to make decisions in a moment of chaos. But what, according to you is courage? Is courage doing what you feel is right at that moment? Is that facing your fears, and being prepared to leave certain things behind? Is that to be willing to learn new things, even if you don't know what it is? Is it to follow your own ideas, no matter what others think about them? Or is it doing something of which you thought that you'll never be able to do it, and to cross a mental barrier?

According to me, there are a lot of kinds of courage. And every question above, requires some kind of courage. You need indeed courage to cross a mental barrier, or to do something frightening. But in the meantime I think it also needs a lot of courage to stand by your own opinion if the rest of the world disagrees with you. So, if you look at it that way, everybody is immensely courageous. Because making your own decisions, makes you who you are. And everybody needs to make at least once in his life a very difficult decision, or needs to top himself.

But let's get back to the question 'What is courage?'. When they asked me I answered: 'According to me courage is to follow your own ideas, no matter what the others think of them.'

But let me ask you guys once again: 'WHAT IS COURAGE ACCORDING TO YOU?' I have to say that I'm really curious to your reactions. SO PLEASE REACT!!!!

Finally: Halloween!

Halloween is as we all know mainly an American holiday. Here in Italy they used to don't pay any attention to it. But last Monday I witnessed the contrary. Halloween here in Florence is huge. The entire city went out on Monday evening to party. At least half of the people were dressed up and wearing some kind of disguise. When you see that you're really wondering how comes that such a crazy thing is so big.

According to me there are a couple of reasons for it. First of all, the 1st of November is a holiday over here. So offices, schools, stores, everything is closed. That means that the nobody has to wake up early that day. This creates an extra day to go to bars and party an entire night: the 31st of October. Since there are a lot of students here in Florence who always like to party, this opportunity is used to the max. Then half of the foreign students around here are Americans, who have a rich tradition of celebrating Halloween.

So we have a couple of things here that make Halloween a real party. Opportunity, a theme, party animals, and people who are supporting the holiday.

According to me, these ingredients are all the ingredients needed to have a successful holiday. I actually think we could compare it to Queens-night in Holland.

Reading what I just wrote, I think I can say that all the subjects that I chose to write about, contain one ingredient. An important one: Opportunity. So, if there is a great opportunity for you, if it's a reason to party, to overcome a fear, or maybe you'll find it in a moment of chaos, please use it. Grab the opportunity and make the most of it. That's what I'm trying to do here as well.

On this I want to end, because I still have other things to do, like having dinner at somebody else's place. I wish you all a nice evening, and a lot of beautiful opportunities.

See you soon.

Laszlo :-)

It's been a while

Shit, it's been over a week since I last wrote you guys. Why? I don't know actually, I guess because of the fact that I sometimes did some writing for my own.

So, what's happening around here? Well, almost everybody is traveling. This weekend only Hugo was at home. In the next couple of days everybody will slowly arrive at home though.
It would be nice to have the house complete again. Mainly because I miss the different characters that usually fill this entire house. Right now there are just a couple of them. The people that are here are great of course, but I miss some of the energy that we usually have in here.

As I said, Hugo was the only one at home this weekend. So where was I? I was in Reggio Emilia staying at my uncles because last Thursday was the birthday of Sebastiano. I realized a couple of days before I went there that it was the first time that I am in Italy with his birthday. And it was actually the second time in our lives that we saw each other within a week of his birthday. So it was pretty special to go there.

The great part of going to Reggio once in a while is that I get to see my family. The part of my family that I usually see just once or twice a year. Since I've been here I've seen them four times already. Another great thing is that I can measure the results of my language classes. Before I tried doing some stuff with Seb and Carol but the language was always a mixture of English and Italian. The consequence of that is that there are actually a lot of misunderstandings and that you don't really get to know each other. This last weekend was the first time that I was able to manage to speak about 90% of the time I was there in Italian. It's more or less a new chapter in our relation as a family. Because we now finally are able to really talk to each other, and to swap opinions about certain subjects. So I think I can proudly say that my Italian is really improving.

Maybe some of you have seen the pictures that I posted on facebook one week ago. That Monday was a day without school because there were placement tests for new students. So that day I decided take a walk in the city. I'm ashamed of the reason why I did that. I did that because I had to recapture the beauty of the city for myself, I almost couldn't see the huge amount of magic that the city has anymore. But then, when you walk listening to some great music, staring at the buildings with the blue sky above them, taking your time to sit down or get an ice cream at your favorite gelateria, you start to see the beauty again. I'm happy to say that after this little walk I still think that I live in one of the most beautiful city's that I've ever been in.

I almost forgot to tell you this, it's going to be the final part of today because writing isn't really going that well.

As you all know, last weekend we changed times. Time went one hour backwards. Thanks to modern technology, every single electronic device that I have, automatically resets the time. So when you set your alarm in the morning, you know you'll wake up at the correct time, also with the 'new' time settings. So because of the fact that every single device changes the hour automatically I set my alarm yesterday evening at the usual time. You should know that I use my Dutch cell as my daily alarm. This morning, at exactly 7:45 my alarm went off, I pressed snooze two times, and at 8:05 I got out of bed. As usual, I took a shower, had breakfast, and looked at the clock. Ok, I was still in time, just had to leave in about 5 minutes. Because it was so cold this morning I checked if we adjusted the time of the heater already. Conclusion, no. The heater said it was 8:37 at that time, so I looked at the clock and saw it was 7:37. I programmed the right time, and then, when I saw the time in digits, I realized that it was one hour earlier than it should be. Just to check, I looked at my cell, and it confirmed what I feared at that moment. I woke up one hour early. As it turns out, my Dutch cell is the only device that doesn't change times automatically. So I actually had time to get myself a cup of coffee in the morning.

So on that enormous mistake, I would like to end this terrible string of words.

See you soon, and hopefully I've got some better story to tell you.