This is going to a post that contains a list, because I like lists, and I have no time to write an actual blog entry.
So, today was a good day, because:

• The weather was AWESOME. A nice breeze, lots of sun and it was warm.
• I got to stay in this morning because one of my lectures was cancelled. I spent my morning in bed
• When I explained something with a German sentence to my German friend I got complimented on my accent.
• Our lecturer who didn’t show up on Friday and made us wait for 20 minutes, did show up today and told us loads of interesting things about glomerular filtration.
• I bought new shoes They were cheap too!
• I bought a kickass birthday present for my mum, because it was from a good brand and at half the price. Still wasn’t exactly cheap, but not expensive either.

So those are all the reasons today was awesome Hopefully tomorrow will also be awesome

Over the course of the last weekend I have had two mildly amusing things happening to me.

1. Whilst I was going home on Friday afternoon I experienced something I had never experienced before. Namely my bus driver taking a wrong turn. He was supposed to take the third exit on the round about, but the took the second. This was quickly solved by him doing three right turns, but it was rather funny.

2. I was passed out on my bed on Saturday morning, when my mother let the cat into my room. She said as she always does: ,,A visitor” and then waited for me to respond as I was somewhat awake. My cat obviously wasn’t so sure, because she jumped on my bed, walked all the way to where my head was buried in the pillow and nudged my face with her nose, as if to check if I was still alive. When I lifted my head and grunted, she was seemingly satisfied and left for my top bunk. My mum was satisfied as well and left me to sleep till eleven-thirty.

So yeah, mildly amusing stuff. I hope you’ll get a smile out of it

This is goodbye, but don’t worry, not for long. I’m only leaving for three weeks of summer holidays! We’re going to Germany, which believe me, sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. I do live in the Netherlands and about 80 kilometres from the border. We sometimes go just to buy groceries.

Anyway, whilst I’m having a great time in Germany with my family, I’ll leave you with this.
Have a great summer!

I love the house I live in. My parents have lived here for around 20 years if I remember correctly, and I have lived here all my life. It shows in the house, for it has gotten a rather lived in feel, with all our books and non-matched furniture about the place.

It also shows in the way my parents interact with the people on our block. Most of them have been here for as long as I can remember, and only recently did some houses come on the market, and were sold to new owners.

Whilst new blood may very well be interesting, I have come to find these new families to be slightly irritating. They are easy to get along with for the most part, but they have some annoying habits.

One of the habits they all seem to share, is DIY. Which is great, I’m all for home improvement, adding value and all that jazz… It’s just that after having to listen to constant hammering and drilling and sawing (some of which can go on till 10.00 in the evening) you become rather infuriated with it. Since I live in a terraced house that is rather susceptible to noise coming from the other houses (it’s the way the houses were built), it’s almost as if all the hammering and drilling and sawing is taking place in your own house.

Another habit that gets on my nerves is the fires they start. Apparently it is a lot more fun the bun garden waste instead of driving it to a composting facility. The problem is that this burning can only occur in dry weather, and dry weather is usually only available when the wind comes from the east, and is therefore aimed directly at my window, causing the smell of burning wood to linger in my room. >.<

I’m not entirely sure I can chalk the next annoyance up to the new  neighbours, but since it has only started recently I will mention it anyway: one of the families living in one of the houses closest to me has purchased what I believe to be a bread maker. It’s great that people are making their own bread, but it seems that they turn it on in the middle of the night, and since for some strange reason my hearing has become much more sensitive lately, I can actually hear it kneading the dough. This is an annoyance mainly because I’m not sure it’s a bread maker, and I don’t like unidentified noises. Especially not ones that keep me awake.

For the time being I’ll learn to deal with all of these things though. I take comfort in the knowledge that there’s only so much that can be improved with these houses, and that the DIY will soon stop hopefully, in the knowledge that there is only so much garden waste to burn before there’s nothing left of your garden, and in the knowledge that in a few weeks I’ll be on holiday in Germany, and I won’t have to deal with that particular unidentified sound any more!

A couple of weeks ago I promised my physics teacher I would help her promote the Project Modern Physics on a physics event. I thought I would be a lot of fun, and it turned out it was!

The day started of  a bit weird thoug. My sister had a German exchange student over, and my sister  used my bike to cycle to the city, the German exchange student used my sister’s bike. They wanted to go out last night, and my parents let them. At 2.00 they were picked up by the mother of one of my sister’s friends, she was supposed to take both bikes as well.
At 2.00 my parents get a call from my distraught sister: my bike didn’t fit on the bicycle rack. They talked about the options and decided it would be best to leave my bike in the city.

So this morning started with me and my mother ‘chasing’ a bus. It was rather stressful. I was cycling to the bus stop with my mum on the bike too, and we saw two buses pass in the distance. Fortunately they weren’t the one I wanted to take. In the end I did end up on my bus, even though it was completely full. (I hate, hate, hate public transport).

I made it to the event in once piece, and I had a blast. It wasn’t so much the physics, there wasn’t very much of it, but it was the people. They were so interesting. So passionate about what they were doing, and the research they’d done. I had very interesting conversations today, as well as a bit of flirting.
There was a stand with all kinds of experiments with liquid nitrogen and ferrofluid amongst other things, and there were three cute second year students. So I flirted a bit whilst they explained them all to me.

The best thing about the whole thing though, was the fact that all the people there thought I was either a student looking for a masters degree or a teacher. I guess I look really mature xD.

We’ve had completely amazing weather for the past week or so. Everybody loves it.

I really like the change as well, we haven’t had rain in a while, and it’s been warm for a change . The weather does mean that my room gets really, really warm in the morning, making it unable for me to sleep in .

My cat is also not particularly keen on the weather. She usually gains a lot of weight in winter, and she hasn’t completely lost all of it yet. So the first day we had nice weather and it went from 10 degrees C to 22 degrees C over night, my cat pretty much relaxed in the shade all day.

Lately I can’t seem to find stuff anywhere. I suppose this is a detriment to my organisational skills: I put stuff away so logically when I clean that when I’m not thinking logically I can’t find it. My pessimistic side concludes that I can’t find stuff because I don’t organise well.

Regardless of which of the two might be right, it’s still extremely annoying. Not being able to find stuff results either in having to buy new, or making a mess of your room in the process of locating whatever is missing.

Sometimes it would be extremely handy if life had a search function.

Occasionally, whilst sitting in one of my classes, odd/weird/smart ideas will pop into my head, as if out of nowhere. In my Greek lesson on Monday, I suddenly realised why there is no such things as world peace.

Lets imagine two fighting groups of people, as two people in an argument. Imagine you are one of those people. What are you feeling? Most likely anger, and possibly fury. Betrayal perhaps, depending on what the other party did to you, and you are probably not interested at all in how the other party is feeling. So you feud for days, weeks even, until someone has decided it has been enough, and starts to mediate.

When you talk to this mediator, perhaps part of your anger, and betrayal will go away, and you will realise how the other party feels. So the smart part of your brain, the well adjusted, reasonable part, the part that doesn’t hold grudges, will decide that it’s probably better to forgive the other party, and end your feud. However, a part of your brain will still be annoyed at the other party, and perhaps hold a grudge. It is not in human nature to forgive completely.

Now take this mind image back to the group of people fighting with eachother, and imagine that the majority is the well adjusted, nice part of your brain, the part that doesn’t hold grudges. The other part will be a minority, and will be silenced enough by the masses, until it has decided that it is fed up with not being listened to, and decided to take matters in to its own hands.
This is what I would call a terrorist group. Both these terrorist groups will escalate the previously peaceful coexistence, and thus ending the peace.

This is why world peace can never be achieved. (Of course my example does not apply to veery conflict in the world, and this was written keeping Israel/Palestina in mind.)

Sometimes when I get thirsty I’ll buy a soft drink in a bottle, and because I’m not a littering person, I tend to keep these bottles lying around. You never know when they can come in handy!

Of course, when you have had some of them lying around for weeks, you have to clean them before you decided to use them again. My mother once had the brilliant idea of putting them in the dishwasher, but that rather backfired on her. They came out all misshapen.

So here’s what I do:

1. Boil water. After it has boiled let it cool down for about 5-10 minutes. You still want it hot, but not boiling.
2. Take a bottle and unscrew the cap, pour some water in.
3. Screw cap back on bottle, and shake it about. Sometimes it’s more effective to hold it sideways, and then make the water go round, that way you know every part of the bottle has been in touch with the water.
4. Unscrew cap again, and pour the water out. Rinse out with cold water, just to make sure the bottle doesn’t change shape.

Eh, Voila! A clean water/soda bottle, ready for you to use.

So, what has been going in in my life lately?

• Remember when I had my physics resit? Yeah… I felt really comfortable about it, and my grade went up 0.2 points. from 5.3/10 to 5.5/10. Great improvement, huh?
• Maths really, really, really sucks. I hate integrals, and I had to do a lot of them on this test. I hated them, and it’ll definitely be a resit. Chem will also be a resit, because finding out what’s important out of eight chapters is REALLY hard.
• That guy I asked out via e-mail rejected me. The wording was a bit weird, and it was the one line, but it was still a rejection
• The chocolate mousse cake was delicious! Though I don’t really think I’ll buy it again.