I was shocked today when I got an SMS very early this morning from Sally. The crocodile hunter had died. I couldn’t believe it. Surfed to nu.nl (a Dutch news website), nothing yet… phef… abc.net.au (an Australian news website)… Headline: Steve Irvine died. Silence. It’s not that I didn’t trust Sally’s SMS, I just didn’t wanne believe it. How could the crocodile hunter be dead?

But he was. Sad, ever so sad. And it’s very weird to think that just 2 months ago we were snorkeling quite close to where he died. Very strange. Especially because that place is such a special memory for me. Strange that something like this could happen in such a wonderful and special place… Sad… so sad…

As I read on one of the Australian websites, he died doing what he loved best. I loved his show. Not always because what he was doing, but mainly because of the great enthusiasm and passion he showed in what he was doing. It’s a great thing to see in people, and he sure showed it around.

What stay are the memories… The funny shows, how he inspired me to catch a goat and all the fun we had in Stockholm making Ozzie Kim talk like the crocodile hunter.

Shocked…

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I am Dutch, according to my passport, but I just failed miserably at the National Habituation Test. Scoring a 4.7 out of the possible 10… and you need at least a 5.5 to pass the test. The test is made for foreign people who want to become Dutch citizens. They are required to have some basic knowledge of Dutch language, people, customs, history and culture. Good thing, as I think it’s important to have this basic knowledge to integrate in our society and so to have some idea about the country they are about to go live in.

But then, seeing and doing the test… it proves to be quite stupid. If I am not able to successfully pass the test, how in heavens name will any foreigner pass the test?! Well, I have been away a lot the last couple of years, but that shouldn’t be a valid reason. Because why should I know in what week a pregnant woman needs to go to the doctor? Or that I can’t ask gay people who are bothering me with their behaviour that they go do their thing somewhere else? Or how long it takes to travel from Amsterdam to the east of Holland by train??? Strange stuff…

My test result

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Discover the best of TV on your mobile. That’s how Vodafone tries to market their new phone service that allows you to watch TV on it. Of course there is the question of how addicted to watching TV you have to be before someone in his right mind would actually get a phone which can do that… And pay for this service!

But the weirdest thing they advertise with, is the following:

“Now. Discover the best of TV on your mobile. Exclusive: Big Brother live show.”

Seriously. The best of TV?!? And they advertise with Big Brother?!?! I am willing to understand that people wanne watch TV on their phone. Ok, I fail to see why anyone would want that, but hey, I am not the worst, so if that’s really what people want… Fine. But watching TV on your mobile and then tuning in to the Big Brother live show… Who in his right mind does that?!? Is this phone service just made for the mentally challenged?!?

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A sad story. Two weeks ago, a fire in an airport prison killed 11 people. Mostly not criminals, but refugees who were not allowed to stay in our country, and were held in the prison before being send home again. Very tragic.

A couple of days ago they arrested one of the inmates, who they think started the fire. Interesting that you can actually arrest an inmate, as it feels that somebody should not already be in prison before the arrest happens… but well, guess they don’t have a special word for that… Anyways, the lawyer of the arrested person has made the following statement today:
“He didn’t start the fire deliberately.”
Straight away I can’t help but thinking: Weird statement… because it doesn’t deny the fact he started the fire… and the only way to start a fire not “deliberately” must be “accidentally”… but how do you start a fire by accident?!? In the normal world there must be many, many options, but in a prison cell?

My first thoughts go to rubbing wood together… he was in a cell, and the cell looked kinda basic, so probably he was a bit bored, let’s see if I can be like Crocodile Dundee… but still, you need to rub hard to start a fire! And where would you get the wood? And even if you do get it started, it ain’t an inferno straight away, let alone an accident. If I think a bit longer also the obvious things come to mind: matches or a lighter. But those also need handling of some kind to start a fire. I have never seen a match nor a lighter go off by accident… There are other options (see: National Geographic Survival Basics: How to Start a Fire), but like the rubbing, they seem a bit out of place…

The more obvious answer would be that he lighted something, forgot about it and that caused problems. Like people who light up a cigarette and fall asleep on the couch. That kind of thing. But as I can’t believe inmates are allowed to smoke in there cells, what could he have been lighting… Or in other words, what could be in a prison cell that needs lighting?! It’s not that he was in a medieval dungeon where they light the place up with candles and cook on an open fire… and it wasn’t to light tea-lights for a romantic evening…

Oi! Interesting stuff! While writing this, I just passed the TV on my way to a cup of coffee and apparently the lawyer has made another statement:
“He asked for a lighter, but didn’t use it to start the fire.”
Strange… my believe that inmates are not allowed to smoke or create a romantic setting in there cell seem to be wrong… Then they might go with my “falling asleep with the cigarette” story! So if they are, you read it here first! ;-) And if they are not… well, I will probably be amazed about what they can come up with…

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Football tonight. Holland beat Andorra with 4-0 in a world cup qualifying match. Quite the expected victory. There is more people in my hometown that play football, then in the whole of Andorra, so nothing else could be expected. We know this, but the Andorrian people know this as well, so the way they play football matches their sense of reality. In other words: they defend. And to be more specific, they defend with the whole team (in a lovely 5-5-0) and while doing that they try to do everything god forbid but the referee will allow. Tackling, holding, pushing, rolling, faking injuries and delaying the game where possible are just some simple examples of that.

So knowing this, it wasn’t to be expected to be the most excited football night ever, but what made a poor match so much worse was the TV commentator: Leo Oldenburger. Normally the TV commentator doesn’t bother me that much, but today his comments got very annoying, very quickly. He thought it was necessary to constantly keep mentioning how bad the Andorrian players were and how much they were frustrating the game with fouls and other annoying behavior. And yes, that was very obviously the case, and we could see that. But “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP MENTIONING THAT!?!”… what is the point? The Andorrian players did nothing wrong according to the referee and just played to the best of their abilities. And their goal in these qualifying games is to keep the score down as low as possible! And the way to achieve that is not how we play… But just except that! The fact that the commentator didn’t, I could still live with… but please stay respectful! And the constant arrogant undertone in his comments clearly didn’t show any respect.

I am not a big fan of football like that either, but I totally understand it. Can even admire it at some points, as it’s part of the game that not always the better team wins. But talking down and patronizing other people in front of millions of viewers, only because they act different from us, is just wrong and stupid. So Leo, next game they pick you to be the commentator, I will turn you off and listen to the match on the radio! I am tired of your whining!

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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!

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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… :-(

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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! :-)

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Train tickets are getting more expensive again. I almost never travel with the train, but still this news caught my attention. The main reason for that is the way the national railway (NS) wants to raise the prices. They wanne do that according to the principal: “The user pays”… In real life that means that the people who use the busy train lines, pay more… They call this “fair” I think it’s insane! And then I am expressing myself politely…

I just can’t believe it… In what other business would you make your best customers pay more?!?! Can you imagine that in a bar the regular customers pay more for the beer because they use the furniture the most and make more glasses dirty?!?! HELL NO!!! Of course not! You treasure your best customers, give them discounts, the best seats in the house and put their names in gold on the wall!! Ok, that might be a bit to much, but still… unbelievable… and they wonder why people don’t like taking the train… well…

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Amazing documentary on TV tonight. A sports documentary about the cycling life of Lance Armstrong. Who is on the doorstep of winning his 7th consecutive Tour de France. An amazing story. I read the book about his story, so seeing the pictures with the story was quite impressive. But what was even more impressive was something Hein Verbruggen, the International Cycling Union (UCI) chairman, had to say… Apparently Armstrong has been donating money to the UCI for many years, to support their quest to end the use of doping in the cycling sport. Just recently Armstrong even bought a new blood testing machine for the UCI. Using his own money…

What makes this even more amazing is the fact that Armstrong is seen as one of the cyclists most likely to be using doping, as he survived cancer, and how can a cancer-survivor win the Tour de France without using doping? Well it can. Armstrong is the living proof for that. But even though he is by far the most tested cyclist for doping, many people, especially the French, still regard to him as a person who does use it. I am a bit skeptical, but I am that with all cyclist. Not just Lance Armstrong. And as long as they answer questions about doping with “I have never been caught“, I will stay that little bit skeptical. But when a cyclist is funding doping research, what can you say?

When I will be watching the Tour on Saturday there is no room for doping in my little world. Just 189 hero’s. One a bit more hero then others, but initially all hero’s. And after 3 weeks, Armstrong will be the biggest hero of them all again. It will be interesting to see how fans and press react to this news. Hopefully like me, and become a little bit bigger fan of Armstrong! :-)

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Panic. There is a puma running loose in Holland! The puma has been seen yesterday and now police and hunters are hunting it down. It has to die. As a police official said:
“No, we won’t shoot it with a tranquilizer arrow. We are afraid it [the puma] will run away when we hit it. [???] We don’t want to take any chances.”

I am amazed… They make it seem like this puma is a serious thread to us! But the big pussy-cat has only one confirmed kill on his name so far, and that was a deer… And that seems quite a natural animal for a puma to kill… He or she needs to eat, and as all cats, the puma also seems to like meat. But the fact that a puma eats meat, doesn’t automatically say it will eat humans… As all wild animals, the first reaction for the puma will most likely to run away when people enter the forest and come to near.

I do understand that there is a small, tiny, little chance the puma will actually hurt someone, so let’s catch it. Catch it. Don’t kill it. Luckily the Dutch Animal Protection has now told the authorities to not kill the animal, just approach it quietly, use the tranquilizer gun and catch it. Not hunt it down like a runaway criminal with helicopters and trigger happy cops! As that makes it more scared and more likely to actually do something bad… Let’s hope they get smart and don’t just kill the poor animal…

Oh, if like me you wonder what a puma looks like, besides the sporting brand symbol on shirt or shoes, click on the picture below!

Puma

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I was quite stunned when I read the Saturday newspaper this morning. Prison guards had mishandled copies of the Koran some time ago and now the investigation results were published. First off, the investigation was done by the US military themselves… Very questionable if you ask me, but I guess they don’t like independent people to do the investigations at Guantanamo Bay…
The report they made “confirmed that five of these alleged mishandling incidents by US guards did take place”. The most insane one was described as follows:

It can’t be just me that doesn’t believe this right?!?! There is just so many things that doesn’t make sense… Of course the most logic explanation would be that the guard just urinated over the Koran, but I guess they are just to afraid to say that. But well, we will work a bit with the given story. “The guard urinated near an air vent”… Ok, if nature calls… it could happen. Apparently in Guantanamo air vents are build just above the ground. That sounds weird, as escaping through the air vent sounds quite doable when the air vent is just above the floor and not just below the roof… but that could easily be seen as a construction error…

But then “the wind blew his urine through the vent”… Ok, simple lesson one: don’t pee against the wind. So I understand the wind must have been either from the left or right, as the guard wasn’t standing in front of the air vent, but near by. Strange. Also because he must have been close to the wall… No man stands more then a meter away from the wall he is peeing against. Well… a meter… that already sounds quite far… but anyway, close to the wall and “near a air vent”… well, let’s just speak of a talented guard…

But we are not there yet!!! Because the pee ends up on “one detainee and his Koran”… strange, as the detainee must have been lying on the floor in front of the air vent for that to happen… then it’s only logic he tried to block the incoming urine with his Koran… I think I would have done the same… Still doesn’t make sense though. Why would a detainee lie on the floor with his Koran close to the air vent… They got me curious now! :-) So I did a little research and found a picture of a Guantanamo Bay prison cell. It has to look something like this:

“A detainee sleeps inside his cell at Camp 5, a maximum-security detention and interrogation facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. His prosthetic leg lies on the floor.” - AP

I guess not all cells are the same…

Of course prison shouldn’t be a lovely place to be at (like most prisons in Holland, but that’s different story), but some basic respect should be in place and it’s just crazy they get away with it like this… one stupid little “own” investigation… Madness…

Well, I am going to pee on a picture of George Bush now. If anyone has a problem with that, I will have my own little investigation which will show that the wind allegedly and accidentally blew the picture of George Bush in the toilet while I was taking a pee… What are the odds! :-)

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Yesterday Dutch cyclist Marc Lotz had to come clean and let the world know he was taking doping (blood doping EPO) to improve his cycling… I was both surprised and stunned… Surprised because I would never have thought Lotz would use doping and stunned because I can’t believe he used EPO… How stupid must he be?!?! EPO has been strongly connected to cycling since the Tour de France of ‘98. And ever since there has been so many blood tests… and the one thing they seem to check for the most is EPO… so what was he thinking?!?! Besides that there was something I didn’t think about until I watched the sportnews later that evening… In my naive mind I thought or hoped it was just Lotz that did something stupid… Until old Dutch cyclist Maarten Ducrot gave his view in the sportnews… He simply stated the team Lotz was riding for had a team doctor, who monitors the riders very closely, so if Lotz was messing around with his blood, at least the team doctor must have known!
Bad… really bad… it feels like this could lead to yet another big doping thing… and the longer Lotz is quiet (he wants to be left alone now, and not talk to the press), the more speculation there will be… Are there more in the Quick-Step team that take something? Did he just started using it, or was he already using it when he was at the Rabobank team? What about the guys he trains with? They should have known…

Today the doping story continued when some stories from a new book from retired cyclist Philippe Gaumont were published. Gaumont, who was banned from the sport after admitting to using doping some years ago, now writes about all the doping stories in his former Cofidis team… Some were already known, like the classic story about Frank Vandenbroucke (who was caught using grow-hormones and EPO, but declared that the doping was not for him, but for his dog…), but it probably also contains new stories about the use of doping in the cycling sport.

Sad, because it really looked like the professional cycling was getting cleaner and cleaner the last couple of years… now it takes another big blow… What doesn’t help much is the default answer almost all cyclists give when they are asked if they use doping. It always is something like: “Well, I have never been caught.”

…

Well, at least I can finish the story on a high! I have been “clean” for almost 2 months now! Haven’t used any doping lately! :-) *hahaha* still don’t know for sure if my asthma medicine from my inhaler contains something illegal that is on any doping list, but apparently my increased level of fitness by all the cycling I have done makes me breath more easily! Now I just have to make sure I keep this level of fitness so I won’t ever have to speak those horrible words: “I have never been caught”… :-)

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Big day in our small country yesterday. Without any doubt the country rejected the European constitution. 62% of the population said no. I was one of them. Not because I am against the European Union, but simply because I didn’t agree with some of the things in the constitution. And if I can’t back it up for 100%, I vote no. Because why would I support something I don’t fully believe in? It seems to be the thought of most people. People has last trust in our own government after the introduction of the Euro and quick expansion of the EU the last couple of years. The gap between the politic and the population has only grew bigger the last couple of years. Now they finally ask the population what they want and the big NO vote was the logic response. 85% of the parlement was in favour of the constitution… while 62% of the country is against it… apparently the people we have chosen to represent us in the government clearly don’t have a clue what the people want… A sad situation… And as there won’t be new elections because of this, probably a situation that won’t change any time soon… Time will tell what this no-vote will mean for our country. I can’t be to worried about it. It seems England is calling of the referendum and all my money is on a Danish no-vote in September! The Danes won’t let us stand alone with France! ;-)

Maybe also a small reason the no-vote won… the no-camp showed some humor, like on this postcard :-)

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I was puzzled by a message on the news today. Our queen Beatrix has to go to the hospital for surgery on her worn out knee. That didn’t make much sense. How can a queen have a worn out knee? I would expect worn out knees with people who do work that is hard on the knees, or maybe athletes that demand a lot from their knees, but a queen? What would she do that could ever hurt her knees? I don’t think she would sit on her knees all day to clean up the royal gardens, or try to get that nasty stain out of the royal carpet! :-)
Puzzled I went to google to find some answers. And I did. Apparently it comes with age. That worries me a bit, as my own knees are not the best in the world… thanks to long time friend Osgood-Schlatter. But well, back to the queen. Apparently age wears out knees, some quicker then others, and as queens don’t do have to do heavy work nor are found to be great athletes, time seems to be all she can fall back on. But there is another interesting thing. She had a meniscus (or “cartilage”) removed a couple of years ago. And that seems to have a bad effect on the health of the knee. Or with other words, it wears out much quicker! Interesting stuff. Still this leads to even more questions, as how could it be that her meniscus had to be removed? Because loosing a meniscus seems like something for professional football players, not for queens… that makes me wonder what kind of hobbies our queen has? :-)

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