I visited the local vet yesterday to let her take a look at my birdy. It had been picking the feathers in his neck again and I was somewhat worried as he has done that before, but it was never this bad… So first I went to the vet without the birdy, as I didn’t like the idea of putting it in a small dark box to transport it there… but she had to see it, so I had to return with the birdy an hour later.

And that visit was a lot of things, but not what I expected from it… Her first reaction when seeing my birdies little neck was rather hysteric… she almost started screaming that she needed stitches! His neck was one big open wound… I got very scared and confused… what is she talking about?!?! Yes, there are two places in his neck where no feathers are, just smooth skin. But that has been like that for as long as we had him… and that was when we got the egg he got out 3 weeks before he was born… So, if that was already a problem, he has lived already 15 years with it without a problem… but the vet woman claimed it was not normal and he had bitten himself to end up like that… Well, that got me a bit mad, as I would know for sure if he had done anything like that! How could I not… he would be bleeding like hell if that would happen!! Finally she calmed down again and I was able to make clear that she could do a lot of things with my birdy, but stitching was not going to one of them! Then she also figured it might not be a good idea, as he would probably go bite the stitches…

Well, this set the tone for the rest of my consult… Next she got some magazine articles and internet printouts from a binder and started calling out things that were mentioned in them as solutions to the picking problem. I gave my comments on each point along the way and in the end I got a little note with the following “recipe”:
- Daily showers; I told her we already did that. She still wrote it down.
- Not with the heating, no sudden temperature changes; Well… his cage is not at the heating, plus it’s summer… the heating is not on, and unfortunately I still don’t have control over the weather outside, so don’t know where she is aiming at with this one…
- Egg food, boiled chicken, boiled egg; Well, here we got something to work with. Egg food he has, but doesn’t really like, but it’s available, chicken he sometimes eats when we eat chicken, but then it’s never boiled… Boiled egg… we will give it a shot!
- Let bird fly loose; Ok… didn’t you just hear me? The birdy is always loose! His cage never closes… So he can fly all he want!
- Green food; Yes. But what is green food? He gets lettuce and green beans, as well as apple and pear… but ok, we can figure out some more green stuff for him to eat.
- Boiled corn; Ok…
- Dried pine cone (without fungus); Will try to find one in the forrest…
- Small seeds; Sorry? Small seeds. Yes, I heard you, but why?!?! It’s a small birdy… he already eats small seeds… he is to small for the big seeds…
- 3 times a day, 15 minutes attention/play with the bird; … ?!?! Are you kidding me?!?! He gets attention all the time when there is someone at home! And play with it?!?! It’s not a dog or a cat!!!

Conclusion… € 18,- lighter and much more worried then when I came… And not only worried, also quite upset. Upset with the woman for telling me more or less that I am not threading my birdy in a good way… and that really started to annoy and upset me later when I got home, because we give the birdy truely the best life possible… He can do anything he wants and gets attention all the time!

Finally I realized I shouldn’t put so much value to the words of the vet. What does she know? She ain’t with us, so how can she judge just by looking at my birdy? As a result we will change his diet slightly and keep most things as they were. I might go to a different vet later this week for a second opinion that makes more sense!

Posted in Animals | No Comments »

Yesterday was the “Ride“, and the ride went well! For us, but even more important for the cancer foundation. As all together “we” collected € 718.990, an amazing amount!

Even though the money is the most important thing, you tend to forget that during the ride… well, at least I did… Because we were riding in a peloton with 6000 people, at almost every place the road got smaller (for example every roundabout… and Holland has WAY TO MANY roundabouts, I know now! :), the whole pack bunched up together which often meant a complete stop. We even did almost 10 minutes over 1 km at one time…. And that got kinda annoying after a while… again, I should have known that from last year, as it was more or less the same, but I couldn’t help the frustration coming back every now and then when you were just riding in a nice pace and we had to stop again…

But that was more or less the only little “negative” thing about the day. It was great fun riding in the big pack again, closing gaps with 48km/h between groups, seeing the most amazing bikes (even with banana’s taped to the frame!), the cycling over blocked main roads straight through the city, the applause from the people on the side of the road and the great feeling when realizing everybody is there for the same reason.

The rest of the family did the 50km and seemed to have enjoyed it a lot as well! Good thing! :-) I guess they were not so happy when they had finished their ride and had to wait one and a half hour before me and Bastiaan finished the 120km ride… I didn’t realize at all they were waiting that long… that had never crossed my mind, making me feel very guilty when my mamma told me on the way home. Guess we have to plan things a bit better for next year! For now just my humble apologies…

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »

No, no story about cycling this time… it’s about the new commercial TV station (Talpa) that is broadcasting the football summaries on Sunday evening. They bought the TV rights for the football summaries earlier this year, outbidding the public TV station (NOS) which used to have the TV rights for as long as there has been football on TV. Nothing bad about that, we would just turn on a different channel when watching the football summaries on Sunday evening.

Well… changing the channel worked… but it will definitely take time to get used to the new show. They still show all the summaries, so that didn’t change, but as it’s a commercial TV station now, there were a couple of 7 minutes (!!!) commercial breaks… Totally killing the pace of the show… They always used to show all football summaries right after eachother, but now with the big waits me and my dad were kinda lost… What to do now? Well, get another cup of coffee… but that doesn’t take 7 minutes… Finally we ended up talking about some other things, which had nothing to do with football… weirdness!!! Normally we would only comment on flying tackles, beautiful goals, bad referees and annoying players for the hour the football summaries show took… So this was weird… Also because they mixed up the Sunday games, with the games played earlier that weekend, so stuff we had already seen. Annoying, as we just wanted see the “new” Sunday matches first…

But again, I think it’s just all about getting used to the new format… For more then 20 years I have been used to a certain format of watching the football summaries on Sunday evening, so it has to take time to change that feeling… I just hope they will cut back the commercial breaks a little bit… to get at least some of the pace back into the show… because like this it will take a hell of a long time to get used to it!

Posted in News & media | 1 Comment »

Fascinating. That would be the best word to use when talking about the world athletic championships in Helsinki. Not just because the Dutch team won a first gold medal ever, with Rens Blom on the pole vault, but just in general. Just watched the finish of the 50km speedwalking… Amazing event! What kid that joins an athletic club does that with the intention to become a 50km speedwalker champion?! Non right? You would think they would blindly go for the decathlon! That must be by far the most fun, as you get to do all things… mmmmm… except speedwalking though… I always thought that as a kid, everybody starts with the decathlon and if it turns out you are doing really well at one of the events, you specialize. And now I understand it! If you suck at all events, you go speedwalking! :-) Probably not… And this is for sure not the place to talk badly about speedwalkers! Especially not as the world champion (Kirdyapkin Sergey from Russia for who missed it) did the 50km in an amazing 3:38:08… That deserves only one word… Respect! Although he still looked rather funny, wiggling like a drunken duck for 50km! :-)

There seem to be fascinating stories at almost every event. It’s just sad we hardly get to hear about those… I read on a Belgium TV-text page an amazing story about a shot put contester from Samoa, Shaka Sola. He missed his flight to Helsinki, got there to late for the shot put qualification, so decided to enter in another event, the javelin throw! Why not! Else he made the whole trip for nothing! Lovely story. The good man finishes last on the javelin throw qualification, with more then 40 meters less then the number one, but who cares! The crowed loved him! :-)

I don’t understand why there is not more coverage on stories like that! It’s briljant stuff! Very entertaining and there must be so many stories like that… It’s just sad no one wants to tell them… :-(

Posted in News & media, Sport | No Comments »

21st of August, The Ride for the Roses. Or “The ride” as we like to call it. It’s a 100km charity cycling ride to collect money for the cancer foundation. This year we (Bastiaan and I) will participate for the 2nd time and my parents and brother will participate for the first time this year. They will do the 50km. Last year “we” collected over € 400.000,- for the cancer foundation, so quite a lot of money! So joining again this year, was somewhat of a logical thing to do. It’s a little contribution and kind of fascinating to cycle together with over 8000 people.

The most rememberable thing from last year, except the riding in a peloton and Bastiaan breaking away from it with 45km/hour after 95km!, were the people cycling with signs on their back, saying things like: “I survived cancer” or “Thank you for your support”. Kinda makes you think and be quiet for a moment…

Also quite fascinating, but in a rather bad way, were some of the “officials” last year. People from the organization who were standing along the track, guiding everybody in the right direction. Almost all were just doing a great job, so no bad words about them, but there were some that were smoking while doing their job… Maybe not the best thing to do on a charity ride for the cancer foundation… But well, I guess as with most habits, we don’t always are aware of them, I just hope they are this year!

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »

Bring it down! For crying out loud!!! Sorry… but all this overreacted attention for the Space Shuttle is getting a bit to me at the moment. It’s just to much. But I expect a conspiracy theory for this! I think it’s just a cry for attention… or cry… I think NASA just likes all the attention they are getting at the moment. The longer it takes, the more attention. And attention is good. People are aware again of space travel and they will need that attention and a lot of money as we have to go to Mars soon! Only god knows why we have to waste time and money on that as, as far as we know, there is nothing out there… except a dusty rock and maybe some ice… so why spend so much money to go walk on a planet… Strange… There must be much better things they could use that money for… Maybe to help out some hungry people in Africa?

The best example I heard was by a comedian whose name I can’t remember… he said: “They go into space to test how lettuce grows there. But I can see from here that no lettuce will ever grow on the moon!” :-) Ah well, it must be good for something one would think…

I personally fail to see what the big news is for things like the Space Shuttle successfully detaching from the International Space Station… Ok, I do understand the exciting moments when it comes back through the atmosphere and hopefully it won’t go as wrong as last time, but why do we have to keep postponing this return to earth?! They say because of the bad weather at Cape Canaveral… it’s a bit cloudy… that isn’t a real vote of confidence in the pilot of the Space shuttle if you ask me… He can’t land it with a bit cloudy sky?!?! I thought you had to be quite talented to be an astronaut… He should be able to land it in a thunderstorm with one arm and poor vision in both eyes! But now I expect they get the pilots the normal airlines don’t want! “Sorry you ain’t good enough for us, but try with NASA, they only land when it’s sunny!”… And they seriously think some loose material on the heat shield is their biggest problem! :-)

Posted in News & media | No Comments »

Oh my… 0815 now, and I have already been up for almost 2 hours… My dad needed a lift to the train station this morning and I, good son as I am, volunteered yesterday to drive him there… but I was a bit shocked when my alarm rang this morning… oh my… this was early! Turned around twice in my bed, but was to afraid I would fall asleep again, so I dragged myself out and got ready to go out. Amazing to see how my body has adjusted to the unemployment/holiday life…

Getting up at 0630 was very normal for at least the last 3 years. Even getting up at 0600 wasn’t that weird… but now… pfffff… this was rough! But as always, I figure I will get used to it again as soon as the serious working starts again. It always does.

And there are of course also a lot of good things about getting up early! Like letting the sweet (still nameless…) bunny out of her cage. She gets really excited when she can go out in the morning (so my dad told me), not that her cage is to small, but I guess running around on the grass brings lots of joy to any bunny. And seeing all that sweet little joy jumping around can only make you smile! Then there is of course “more of the day” to enjoy… or should I say: a great excuse to take a nap in the afternoon? Maybe both! :-)

Posted in Personal | No Comments »