Mic and Mickey.

(Photo stolen from Nicole)
Early afternoon I went to the market with Nicole and we met an ex-colleague of mine and his boyfriend. It was very nice to run in to them except that I didn't recognise Joost (oops!) due to excess hair ;-)

We bought breakfast at a bakery but it was a bit crap. They were selling APPELflap with pieces of APPEL in it. Wow! I'd love appelflap with banana in it!

Somewhere else they were selling Lebanese cucumbers. A cucumber is "komkommer" in Dutch but they spelled "komkom". I think if you pretend to be a green grocer you should at least get your spelling right...

(Click to enlarge)
In the evening I went to my mate Mic's place where I had dinner with him and his lovely wife Mickey.

(Click to enlarge)
Mickey is a little bit pregnant ;-) (6 more weeks)

Later I played Settlers of Catan with Mic and a colleague. It was a very fun evening :-)

The Psycho Cowboy.

Setting off on my big journey to work.

Amsterdam Central Station in the distance. See ya later!

The Psycho Cowboy awaits me in the cold. I found an interesting article in Dutch about this old Sovjet sub.

Now that one side of the old City-box storage facility has collapsed, we can see that a few people are lucky! All the way at the back, a few rooms were magically untouched by the fire.

I had a few quick games of Magic: The gathering after work with colleagues. My deck was killed by this guys' deck three times in a row. Stiff shit...

To forget my defeat I went to the pub ;-)

After which I walked home around 23:30. It was a nice walk.

More Gado Gado.

My latest dr00d l00t on my iPhone. Good stuff.

Car wrecks from the burned down City Box. They're keeping them separate for some reason.

I got a few more magic cards at work.

My Gado Gado lunch was very nice. Tomorrow again :-)

After work I went to the Game keeper games shop to buy a few more cards.

Somebody is going to be upset...

The dinner

I watched a boat race while waiting for my ferry this morning.

My desk at work. I still need plants!

In the evening I took the train to Haarlem to visit Marjolein for dinner.

Close to the station is this house. With the birds above it it looked kinda spooky.

They like bicycles in Haarlem a lot as well!

Marjolein cooking the Thai soup. It was very nice! I should make this myself some day.

And the main dish was salmon. It was very nice and so was the evening.

Gado gado a la Vincent.

Someone in my neighbourhood likes little dogs a lot. I'm not a fan of little dogs myself. I'd rather have a cat instead. I like bigger dogs a lot though.

Yesterday somehow they managed to quietly take down half the burned out building. I'm glad they did.

Two little boats in our neighbours yard.

Evening exercise.

I cooked something that could be called "Gado gado". All it is is carrot, chinese cabbage, green beans and bean sprouts covered in peanut sauce with a lot of crunched peanuts added and chicken. I managed to squeeze my dinner out of it and two lunch portions. It tastes very nice and it has a lot of fresh veg. I like.

The dodgy house

It has bloody snowed again during the night! And I was so happy it was gone...

Amsterdam has a lot of leaning houses. But it's not always bad. There are houses built like this one on purpose. This way, the higher floors have a bigger surface without paying more for the ground.

A new ship has docked with our neighbours.

After work I went to see a small apartment. It's 1/3 under ground. The description was nice and from the outside it looked good. I was excited. But then... I went in and it felt smaller than 40 square meters. I took my tape measure and after measuring it seems to only be 34 square meters tops. The garden is s'posed to be 20. But I reckon it's about 10. I don't fit in the shower. The door is 60cm wide and that big front windows does NOT open. The broker said it was very safe. Yeah, how the fuck is anybody supposed to move in?... I touched all the walls to feel if they were wet and to hear how solid they were (or not). There was a dodgy spot. The garden was a mess. Cotton buds and empty shampoo bottles. The ceiling had no electricity points for lamps. In the bathroom, the wall was opened, tiles gone because the owner who is now in Turkey apparently tried to fix a leak himself.

To top it all off. When walking to the tram stop I noticed wet paint on my fingers that I used to touch the walls. They had been touching shit up before I came.

All in all I felt bad energy in there and it looked dodgy as hell. And they are selling 60 square meters but really it's 44. And that for 175,000 euros.

Needless to say, it's not gonna happen.

My big, fat, tax-form.

To start off the day, I filled in my tax form. Because it is the first one since my return from Australia, it was the M-form which contains 96 questions. Luckily I only had to fill in about 6.

In the afternoon I went over to Nic to hang up a cabinet for her. I put on my groovy shoes.

Stephen offered me a nice cold beer which I gratefully accepted, of course :-)

Due to the first rays of sunshine, people flocked the terraces. This was empty 2 days ago.

Nic baked a bread for lunch. I need to be well fed before I start working you see ;-)

Steve was checking photos.

I drilled two beautiful holes.

And then I hung up the cabinet. Rock solid. Job well done I think. Very pleased.