Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

It's been all hustle and bustle here lately.

Brian and Victoria came over from California for the annual Google Sysops hamburger. Amsterdam's Hard Rock Café was the somewhat unlikely setting for the meet-up, which featured not only ex-Google employees, but also a healthy smattering of sysadmins from ISC. In fact, they were in the majority, as Geoff didn't turn up.

The Hard Rock Café gets points for being non-smoking upstairs and providing free refills on soft drinks. The burger itself was surprisingly tasty, too, even if it wasn't a Clarke's smokey cheddarburger. All in all, the experience was nostalgically Californian, which, it seems, is as it should be.

The next day, Roman, Carine, Elina and newborn Rachel arrived on the night train from Zürich. They were here for about five days and we all had a lot of fun together.

A second lunch had been planned for the day that Roman arrived, but it ended up being just afternoon coffee, because I had to stay in and deal with an electrician. Said electrician hung up a light for us in the downstairs hallway and fixed a couple of non-functional wall sockets, all of which had been long-standing thorns in our side, so it was well worth the delay. Geoff missed this tryst, too.

Geoff did come alone for dinner Friday evening, but missed a breakfast appointment on Sunday, so we still haven't met his mysterious new wife.

The Marxers left again on Monday evening, rendering the house relatively quiet once more. Geoff's currently in Rome with his new bride, but will be back again at the end of the week. Some time next week, Frank and Kathy turn up for a few days. I daresay we'll all go out for another Google Sysops burger in their honour.

Eloïse has joined the Amsterdam branch of The Little Gym. We went along to the open day on Saturday and liked what we saw, so, after a free lesson today, we enrolled her.

She gets to clamber up and about on padded obstacles, take part in fun group activities and generally have a whale of a time with the other children. Since she doesn't attend a creche, the gym also serves the important purpose of providing her with some opportunity for socialisation.

The gym also affords me the opportunity of some nice, exclusive papa/daughter time, as Sarah was off doing the second part of a three-day inburgering evaluation.

Similarly, yesterday, Eloïse and I went to Artis for the morning. She had a really nice time and has clearly developed a much greater interest in animals since we were last there. In particular, she enjoyed the elephants and found the giraffes hysterically funny. The whole experience wore her out and she quickly fell asleep in the bakfiets on the way home.

Yesterday evening, it was time for Eloïse 's first ever Halloween party. It also happened to be my first, too. It was nice to meet some of the people that Sarah has got to know at her American Women's Club meetings, even if Eloïse was too tired for trick-or-treating in the rain.

There's still not a peep out of her on the speech front, although she understands much of what we say to her in both Dutch and English and has no problem making herself understood. When she does finally decide to say something to us in formal language, we have no doubt it will be worth hearing.

Autumn has arrived in earnest now. It's scarely 10°C outside and we've had variously sunshine, rain and hail throughout the day. The cellar is stocked with logs for the fire and we're looking forward to cosy months ahead.

Sarah was busy again at inburgering today, so Eloïse and I took the bakfiets and headed for the first time over to TunFun, near the Waterlooplein. TunFun is an underground playpark with padded climbing areas, slides, obstacles, toys, soft chairs, etc. It's huge and decked out in a really exciting and fun way. It makes you want to be a toddler again, as it's a kids' paradise.

Eloïse variously climbed up and slid down the slides, frolicked in the ball pits, clambered over obstacles (some of which were other children) and giggled her way through the entire experience. Sarah joined us after her class finished and we both agreed that this place is well worth visiting on a regular basis. We'll also suggest to any of our visitors with children that they come here and try it out.

Incidentally, because the playpark is situated underground, in what used to be a tunnel for traffic passing under the Mr. Visserplein, it has a unique layout and look. Not only does it contain a disused road with the white lines still running down it, original features such as road signs and traffic lights are still intact, giving the whole place a surreally themed atmosphere.

The slope leading up to what used to be the Valkenburgerstraat side exit of the tunnel is now used for racing skate carts down to the bottom of the park. That same slope is used by pedestrians to get to some of the play areas, so even now, several decades since cars were bannished from the tunnel, it's still possible to get run over down there!

With a café serving snacks and drinks and plenty of places for the fat, old people to sit, I can see myself whiling away many an hour in this place in the future.

Sarah received a letter from the Dienst Persoonsgegevens (basically, the local council) yesterday, informing her that she can come in and pick up the extension to her residence permit in a couple of weeks. It referred to a prior letter from the IND (the Dutch immigration service), in which Sarah was supposedly informed of the IND's decision to extend her resident permit. Oddly, we never received that letter. Perhaps it will yet come and someone somewhere is simply behind on his paperwork.

Nevertheless, the important thing is that the IND has apparently decided to grant Sarah a five year residence permit, so she doesn't have to deal with them again until August 2011. By that time, she'll be able to obtain a permanent residence permit or even citizenship, if she so desires. This is fabulous news, not least for me, as I'm the one who has been filling in the forms, collating the supporting data, writing explanatory letters, etc. That's one less thing to worry about.

McKenna-Macdonald Acres has seen a lot of comings and goings recently. After Geoff's return from Rome for a few days, we then played host to Frank, who rolled in on the train from Germany, where he had been attending a mutual friend's wedding. It was fun to hang out with him for a few days, as we hadn't seen him in more than a year. Surprisingly, we ended up spending most of our time trawling the antique shops in the Spiegelkwartier.

The gap left by Frank has now been filled by Jules and Linda (and, not to forget, Bloem), who are staying with us this weekend. Once they return to Nijmegen, we'll have no more visitors until next month. As much fun as our visitors are, it will be nice to have our space to ourselves for a while again.

This evening, we all enjoyed our first Sint Maarten in the Vondelpark. Sint Maarten is a little like Halloween, in that children go from door to door, singing songs in the hope of receiving confectionery and fruit. They carry a lantern to light their way.

In the Vondelpark, it's an annual tradition for hundreds of children to march through the park with their parents, accompanied by a brass band. It's a nice sight, with all of the illuminated lanterns strung out along the length of the park.

I noticed only today that the article I wrote about Ruby/Amazon for Dr. Dobbs Journal is on-line, and probably has been for a year or more. That's nice to see.

That's one thing I do lament about my career as a system administrator/programmer thus far: I haven't done much writing for professional publications and I've never held a presentation at a conference. I have no RFC to my name and, if you scan the shelves of your local computer bookshop, you won't find any volumes bearing my name.

The lack of conference presentations is largely a result of my own choice, as I have never even submitted a proposal, allergic as I am to the idea of speaking in public. That's something I have yet to overcome. It's a shame, because when I worked for Google, you only had to put your e-mail address to a proposal to gain an invitation to speak, because a Google speaker at a conference works like a magnet. Everyone is eager to hear how things work behind the scenes at that company. Unfortunately, I was too shy to take advantage of this.

It would have been nice, however, to have done more professional writing. I still could, of course, but I'm no longer active in the field, in the thick of it, drilling deep into a particular area of the job. As such, no particular subject seems obvious now to write about. Being in semi-retirement, it's going to take a large effort on my part to change that.

Good things in the last week (in no particular order):

• Eloïse likes to hold our hand and lift her feet off the ground when crossing the road. She has a great sense of fun and is always making us smile with her antics.
• The new series of Keyzer & De Boer Advocaten has started. The quality of the first episode was high, and It's even more fun to watch now, given that we live in the neighbourhood in which it's filmed.
• We finally got around to assembling our Lundia shelving for the cellar, so it's looking a lot tidier down there now. I assembled the shelves, but Sarah did all of the tidying.
• We've finally ordered a sideboard for the sitting room. It won't arrive until next year now, but it will definitely improve the feeling of the room when it does come.
• We've booked our Christmas flights, including a five day stay in Iceland on the way back. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to stop off in Iceland for a few days on the way back than to fly to America and back in any other way. Direct flights to Boston were absurdly priced, but even the airlines with indirect flights couldn't compete with the Icelandair fare. Well, it suits me. We love Iceland, so we're happy to make what is essentially a free stop in the land of ice and fire. We're already looking forward to lounging around in Bláa Lónið (The Blue Lagoon) and hoping that the northern lights will be swirling overhead.
• We picked up Sarah's 5 year residence permit today. She will now have no more immigration hassles until 2011, by which time she can apply for a permanent residence card or even go for naturalisation.

It's national election day here. I sauntered down to the polling station this afternoon to pencil in my red dot next to GroenLinks (The Green Left). I was a zwevende kiezer for a while, not sure if I shouldn't give my vote to the Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party), but in the end I stuck with GroenLinks.

The polling stations close at 21:00. After that, it will slowly become clear whether we're going to get rid of the current bunch of fuckers. Don't get me wrong; Jan-Peter Balkenende seems like an honest enough kind of bloke, scrupulous and convinced his cabinet is doing the right thing for this country, but there's just no forgiving the way he limply followed Bush straight into an unjustified and illegal war. And then there's that loose cannon Verdonk, who should have been sacked on multiple occasions for the way she bungled the Schiphol fire, the Hirsi-Ali affair, etc.

No, it's time to install a government that will stand up to playground bullies like the US and pay some attention to the environment, while there's still one to get upset about.

We can dream, anyway.

It's been a long time coming, but we biked over to Duikelman in the Ferdinand Bol this afternoon and purchased the only other kitchen appliance I really care about (the first one being a decent coffee machine).

What we splashed out on was a Dualit Vario Combi 2x2 toaster, something of a Rolls Royce amongst toasters.

Dinner consisted of toasties (what else?), with several rounds of delicious, golden toast providing a TV snack later in the evening.

The new Vario has pride of place next to my beloved Z5. Breakfasts will never be the same again.