Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Did you know you can reboot and reinstall a car? That's what happened to ours today, when I took our trusty A6 Avant down to the Audi dealer to have its MMI (user interface to you and me) updated.

The car emerged two hours and a few CD downloads later, sporting version C6-HU 34.6.0 0647 of the MMI software (hitherto C6-HU 21.2.0 0534, in case you wondered). As if by magic, the car now also speaks Dutch (and a few other new languages, such as Portuguese and Russian) when instructing me how to get from A to B.

The navigation system now offers a 3D view, with the camera angle slightly tilted to give the impression of being somewhat elevated above the ground. Perhaps the software update has added other useful new features, but I didn't encounter them on the short drive home.

The new 3D view is nice, because the viewing angle compacts the field of view, which means one can see more of the surrounding area than when in 2D, even when the zoom is set identically, say at 400m.

It also works well with 'junction zoom', whereby the system zooms in ever closer as one approaches a junction at which a new manoeuvre is required, such as turning left or right.

The only thing I don't like about the 3D view is that most streets don't have their name displayed along them, which is the case at the same zoom level in the 2D view. It also seems impossible to obtain north orientation for the map (even though you can configure it for same), probably to avoid confusion or perhaps impractically sharp viewing angles when travelling east or west. Who knows?

Since Audi had a special offer going, I took the opportunity to avail myself of the latest Western Europe DVD for the sat-nav system, too, so perhaps the woman with the dulcet tones will now be less determined to send me via the perpetually languid Overtoom when I ask for directions to pretty much any destination inside the ring (A10).

Poland and Hungary have been added to the list of countries for which there are maps and guidance data, which could prove handy. Hungary would have been good to have a year ago, but at least we're now covered if we choose to return.

It's strange to witness a car being rebooted and reprogrammed, as I tend to still think of them as predominantly mechanical machines, but they've really been powerful computers on wheels for quite a long time now. Nevertheless, it still amuses me to think that a car can be improved and have features added by installing a new version of the software.

Similarly, it can have new bugs introduced in the same way, so I hope not too many of those have crept in.

My one day photography course planned for last Saturday ended abruptly before it had even begun when I had to rush to the aid of a sick friend. Happily, the Volksuniversiteit has agreed to allow me to move my enrolment to the next instance of the course on 1st June.

I'll be starting a separate three-part digital photography course this coming Friday and am looking forward to getting stuck into that.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to attend Lisa Gerrard's concert at the World Forum in The Hague. It was a fabulous concert, but I was slightly preoccupied during the show, on account of the fact that just a few minutes before the concert had been due to start, another car had collided with mine in the venue's underground car park.

In his enthusiasm to secure a parking space being vacated by a car on his left, the driver of the errant car slammed into reverse and shot backwards without looking and before I could sound my horn. A couple of seconds later, he rammed my stationary vehicle with the towing hook of his vehicle, thereby knackering my number plate, its holding frame and the grille behind.

The car is due to be fixed next Wednesday and shouldn't cost more than €300 or so, which -- barring any anomalies -- the other party's insurance will be paying. The other driver immediately admitted culpability and hopefully won't have a memory lapse later on.

Speaking of the car, its ECU (Electronic Control Unit) was flashed with new software a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to fix a problem with the keyless starter mechanism. It seems funny to have one's car flashed, but cars contain an amazing amount of computing technology these days, so it makes sense. I suppose it's just because I still tend to think of them as being more hardware than software, but these days, they pretty much contain equal measures of both.

Geoff has been here for the last few days, which has been fun. He headed back to Dublin for a few days on Monday afternoon, but will be back at the weekend in time for Koninginnedag. That's going to be a good laugh.

What else? Well, we've finally joined the ranks of the responsible refuse disposers and purchased a paper shredder as a precaution against identity theft. Yes, yes, we should have done this ages ago, but at least we've finally done it now.

I saw an Aston Martin DB9 in the P.C. Hooftstraat yesterday afternoon. If my immediate family contained fewer members than the number of seats in that car (or even an equal number), that's a vehicle I might have to consider. What a nice car; and so subtle, too. I could drive around in that without feeling like a complete wanker.

The only problem I could see was that literally about 30 - 40% of all the people who walked past it in the street stopped to admire it and peek inside. You'd attract a similar number of glances parking it and getting out, as well as getting back in. I suppose that's precisely the reason some people would want a car like that, but I personally can't stand being the focus of attention and the resulting loss of casual anonymity. I'd end up waiting on the other side of the street for people to walk away from my car, then quickly scuttling across the road to get back in before the next admirer happened along.

Ah well, that's another advantage to our Audi A6 Avant. It's a fantastic car, but not very glamourous.

I drove the car down to the Audi garage yesterday to find out how much the repair of the back bumper is going to cost us. It's not cheap, as the entire bumper has to be replaced. Not only that, but the side panels have to be resprayed, too, to ensure the proper matching of the pearl-effect paint.

That was a costly manoeuvre, reversing into that tree like that. I'll have to pay for it out of my own pocket, of course, so as not to adversely affect my no-claims bonus. Since it was entirely my fault, I don't feel too bad about it. After all, any accident whereby all the car's occupants emerge unscathed is a good accident in my book. Anyway, the car is booked in for 14th August.

Speaking of the car, I used the driving opportunity to try out the new FM transmitter and charger that I had Mike, my father-in-law, send over from the US. It's for use in combination with my recently purchased iAudio X5, and I have to say that it's beyond me why Cowon don't sell this product in The Netherlands. Perhaps it has something to do with radio broadcasting regulations.

Anyway, it's great. I now have Rockbox in the car, and a single cord both charges the X5 and powers the FM transmitter. I set the transmitter to broadcast its signal on 107.3 Mhz, tuned to that frequency on the car's radio, and then saved a voice tag in the car's voice control system. Now, all I have to do when I get into the car and want to listen to the jukebox is turn it on, hit the voice control button on the steering wheel and say, "Radio", followed by, "Play iAudio". The wonders of modern technology.

If only the voice control system could be patched into the X5, allowing me to vocally select the artist and album. Now, that would be cool!

The sound quality's not bad, but you can certainly tell that it's FM, not anything close to CD quality. One has to be careful with the X5's volume level, too, as the FM transmitter is optimised for a certain sound level and distortion can be heard if one overdrives it.

Thanks, Mike, for resending that unit. I just wish we'd had it for our two month tour of Central Europe. As it was, we had to make do with a pile of CDs (many of which we never actually loaded into the changer) and local radio stations. Actually, that was absolutely fine, as most of the time, the CD playing was Eloïse 's baby songs by Karin Bloemen. It has an amazing ability to pacify tiny tearaways (ours, anyway).

On a different subject, some furniture arrived yesterday afternoon, namely a new couch, two cushions and a side-table. The sitting-room is looking nicer now. Our old $50 Palo Alto couch has moved up to the guest-room, so that Peter and Chantal will have somewhere to sit (apart from the bed) when they visit us in ten days' time. We're both eagerly anticipating that visit.

Our silver cutlery was delivered after dinner yesterday and it looks beautiful. As with any such item, it's hard to bring oneself to actually start using it and inflict the first scratches upon it. Our first family heirloom is now a reality. Now I have to remember to get the stuff insured. We also have to figure out where to place the chest of drawers that accommodate it.

This morning, the two armchairs for the sitting-room were delivered. The main work is now done in that room, although we still need a sideboard of some kind, plus glass-topped table for the centre of the room. We also need to make it look lived-in by hanging up art and other decorations. At the moment, things still look rather sterile in there. Unfortunately, one of the of the armchairs has some minor damage, which doubtless occurred during transit, so that will have to be replaced.

We had a sun protection shop come around this morning, too. They are going to fit some pull-down and pull-across net blinds on our kitchen and living-room doors, so that we can leave them open all day without fear that Eloïse will wander outside and fall down the steps. We should have those a couple of weeks from now.

After that, a handyman came around to look at doing some odd jobs for us, including an element of baby-proofing the house. One wonders if a house can even be Eloïse -proofed. We shall see.

And lastly, our cleaner is here, helping us (which means, of course, doing it instead of us) clean our house, which is rather dusty after a two month absence. By the end of the afternoon, the place is going to be ship-shape and Bristol-fashion once again.

Taking a break? From what? you may ask. From our usual routine, I retort. No matter how you fill your days, deviation from the norm is the essential spice of life that keeps you feeling invigorated and alive.

With our tax paperwork all but finished (I'm still awaiting a form from Google in the US), tomorrow seems as good a time as any to head out for a few days. Sarah has Dutch lessons every Monday afternoon, so we can't really go for longer than a week. If we wait any longer, we'll hardly be able to get away at all, because we have guests coming at the end of this month, plus a family visit at the end of the next.

Picking a destination has been a little tricky, because many places lie in directions we want to go later this year for a longer period, so it would be foolish to travel a long way in one direction only to retrace our steps a few months from now.

Bearing that in mind, we're going to start by driving east to Köln (or Cologne, as it's oddly known in English), where we'll more than likely spend the night.

That's about as far as we've planned so far. Düsseldorf and Bonn are options, but I don't yet know much about them. Our Lonely Planet guide to Germany should help with that.

More than likely, though, I expect we'll head down to Luxembourg and then come back through Belgium, probably returning next Sunday.

The family took its first day-trip in the new car today. We drove across the country to Nijmegen to pay Jules and Bloem a visit. Linda was at work, so we didn't get to see her.

There were fewer than 100 km on the clock when we left, but there are now more than 300. Not a bad maiden voyage, in other words.

With all that motorway driving, I got to try out the adaptive cruise control. Normal cruise control sets a constant speed and requires driver intervention when deviation from this speed is required. The adaptive variant, on the other hand, senses the distance between your car and the one in front and, if necessary, slows down. Similarly, when circumstances permit, the car will automatically accelerate towards the preset speed.

I was sceptical about how well this feature would work in practice, but it turns out to be astonishingly intelligent. If someone overtakes you, for example, and then merges back into your lane, but continues to steam ahead, the adaptive cruise control doesn't suddenly take 'its foot' off the accelerator when it senses the sudden appearance of a vehicle at a short distance in front of you. If that car merges back in without continuing to pull ahead, however, the adaptive cruise control immediately adapts to keep your distance from that vehicle.

Thanks to this feature, there were long stretches on the way to Nijmegen and back that I didn't have to do a single thing except occasionally nudge the steering wheel to the left or right. The car accelerated and slowed at all the right moments. All I needed to do was keep a watchful eye on things with my foot hovering over the brake pedal.

I really enjoy driving this car. I can't wait to take it on a longer trip.

I went down to the Audi dealer today and was relieved to discover that the new steering-column has fixed the fault I found last week. The steering wheel position can now happily be adjusted vertically, not just horizontally.

The arrival of our new car meant that I was finally able to properly fit our Maxi-Cosi PrioriFix car-seat that we purchased in January. The PrioriFix seat is fitted using the ISOFIX system, so that it is anchored to the actual chassis of the car. Because there's no need to use seat belts any more, the seat is more firmly held in place and becomes virtually impossible to fit incorrectly. This latter point is important, when you consider that something like 60% of child car-seats are fitted incorrectly in some way or other, rendering them anything from less effective to downright useless. Eloïse should be able to use this seat for the next few years.

Anyway, apart from the ISOFIX system (which is still non-standard on Audis and so has to be ordered as an extra), some of the other features I've played around with so far are:

• the satellite navigation system, of course. The DVD is dated September 2005, so it should be up-to-date with all of the one-way systems and other nonsense that sometimes confused the navigator in our borrowed car. I noticed that this version also has an altimeter. That'll be handy in a country under sea level!
• the DAB radio tuner. Unfortunately, there are relatively few radio stations in The Netherlands broadcasting in DAB, but the publieke omroep (public broadcasting company) does. Coverage isn't national yet, though, I believe.
• the analogue/digital TV tuner. I had this fitted in case I want to get a paid DVB-T subscription later on. Right now, all I can get in this country are Nederland 2, Nederland 3 and a few local news channels, but it'll still be handy for when I'm parked somewhere, waiting for Sarah to return to the car. Nederland 2 is available as a free-to-air DVB-T channel, so the quality is consistently good. The tuner even includes teletext capability, which makes me feel really spoilt.
• the car phone. Rather than arse around with car-kits and cigarette lighter adapters, I opted for the built-in phone. I can dial numbers from my steering wheel and even read SMS messages. Yeah, I know; not exactly safe whilst driving. At least you need to pull over and pick up the handset to actually send an SMS. I have a DuoSim card, so I can share the same number between my mobile phone and the car phone.
• advanced key. This is Audi's name for not requiring that the key be inserted in the door to unlock it, nor be in the ignition in order to start the car. One need only have the key in one's pocket to gain entry to the vehicle and start it. It sounds like a gimmick, but one gets used to this convenience very quickly.
• voice recognition. I can talk to my car and tell it where I want to go and who I want to call on the telephone. It then obliges me by programming that destination into the navigation system or by calling that person. Next year's model will drive there on autopilot and hold the conversation for me, too.

The car contains much more cool gadgetry than just the above, but I've only driven a handful of kilometres so far, so I have a lot more to try out and become acquainted with in the coming weeks.

On the way home from the dealer, I stopped off briefly at PCH to transfer the parking permit from the borrowed car to the new one. Then, I headed home to show off the car to Sarah, who seems to like it. She'll like it a lot more, of course, when I pull my finger out and take her on a road trip in it.

It's a real luxury to have your own car, especially one that you ordered brand new from the factory after picking out all the specific features you wanted, then waited more than three months for it to be manufactured and delivered. Hopefully, it will provide us with many years of reliable service.

The Audi dealer called today. Apparently, our new car has had its steering column replaced and is now ready for us to pick up. Since the salesman I like to deal with has a day off tomorrow, I'll be heading down there Friday afternoon to pick it up.

Hopefully, when I start trying out arbitrary features this time, some of them will actually work. Vorsprung durch Technik.

The car is still poorly. After having had its regelapparaat (which, after a little bit of googling, is apparently an ECU or electronic control unit in English) replaced, the Audi people were apparently still concerned enough about a failure somewhere down the road (no joke intended) that they've decided to replace the entire steering-column.

So now the question is how soon a steering column can be sent from Germany and put into the car. No family road trips in the new car for us just yet, I'm afraid.

What a fiasco.

I drove down to the Audi dealer today to pick up our brand spanking new A6 Avant.

At first, all appeared well. The car was gleaming away in the showroom with just 29 km on the clock. The colour and the upholstery looked great. A quick glance around the cabin seemed to indicate that all of the obvious features I had ordered had been built in. In summary, everything looked ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

Then we took it outside, the dealer and I, and got inside to run through some of the less obvious features. And then it started.

First of all, I found I couldn't adjust the left wing mirror properly. It didn't seem to be seated properly and manually tampering with it didn't seem to help, either. The salesman offered to let the annexed garage have a look at it.

Picking another feature at random, I thought I'd adjust the steering column for my driving position. I pushed the switch towards me and out slid the steering column. Then I pushed the switch downwards to lower the column and... nothing happened. Was it already lowered all the way? I pushed the switch up to raise the column. Still nothing. Bollocks!

Who knows whether the car has other problems, because at this point, the salesman took the car around to the garage to have them look at it. With 2 out of 2 features demonstrating faults and it already being the middle of the afternoon, there was no time to waste.

The mirror issue was corrected very quickly. It just needed some manual adjustment. The uncooperative steering column, however, pissed on everyone's fireworks.

After hooking the car up to the computer diagnostic apparatus, the car was given the once-over. Nothing obvious leapt out and even the switch that controls the steering column passed its individual test, so the thought now is that the motor that moves the column through the vertical plane is buggered.

It being late in the day, all hopes of driving the car away today were dashed. The car will be more heavily investigated tomorrow. Hopefully, it will turn out to be a very minor fault and they will be able to correct it on the spot.

Electronic problems like this are the main reason I went for an Audi over a Mercedes or a BMW. Humph. This is not an auspicious start.

Meanwhile, the registration paperwork is now in my name and the car is insured. That means I'll get a road tax bill before very long, so the sooner the car actually gets on the road, the better.

Hopefully, this will just take a day or two to sort out and then I'll be the proud owner of a brand new car for the first time ever. What a disappointment. Even with something this expensive, quality still isn't guaranteed.

They just don't make things like they used to.

Yesterday, we took receipt of our new couch and dining-room table . In fact, if I had been alone in the house at the time of the delivery, I would have accepted the wrong couch, as they brought a much bigger one than the one we ordered, and it was in a different colour. Of course, I didn't remember any of the details, so it was Sarah who piped up and announced, "Er, that's not our couch." After an extra trip back to the shop, they were back with the right article.

In the process, the ground floor of the house has been transformed. Our old couch, bought for about $50 from our landlord in Palo Alto back in 2002, has now moved to the front of the house, in what we have chosen to designate the sitting-room. So, not only do we now have a comfortable place to sit in the living-room, but the front of the house no longer looks so bare. Nevertheless, there's still a lot of work to be done before the sitting-room looks anything like finished. We want to get a Persian carpet for that room, plus another couch and one or two comfortable armchairs. That means spending a lot of time in shops, testing couchs and looking at carpet designs.

We had an interior designer come over in the morning, too, so hopefully we'll soon get some new ideas from her. We especially need help with the lighting, as we still have a number of bare light fittings around the house. A hindrance here is that Sarah and I have quite different taste when it comes to illuminating our living environment.

The other major news yesterday was that the car dealer called to let us know that our new Audi A6 Avant has arrived from the German factory. They'll be taking care of the registration paperwork early next week, so I've made an appointment to pick up the car up next Thursday afternoon, by which time it will be registered in my name, polished and ready to go. Exciting!

Audi Centrum Amsterdam have been kind enough to arrange a loan car for us whilst we await the manufacture and administration of our own. I took two trams and the metro down to station Bijlmer today to pick it up. Ernst, the salesman I've been dealing with, came and picked me up from the station, served me coffee, then handed me the key to a very nice 4.2 litre 2005 A6 Avant in Mauritius blue. We'll basically get to keep this until the delivery of our own car, which should take place somewhere around the end of February.

What a nice car it is, too. It has a number of options on board, such as satellite navigation, rear-parking assistance, left and right climate control, hands-free car telephone and who knows what else?

It's a fast car, that's for sure, but I've driven only a few kilometres in it so far. I drove straight over to PCH, the company to whom my part of Amsterdam has tendered out its issuing and administration of parking permits. Audi Centrum Amsterdam had written me a letter to hand over to PCH, explaining that this car, whose paperwork was obviously not in my name, was a loan car in advance of my own.

It was surprisingly easy to get the permit. Thankfully, there's no waiting list in this part of Amsterdam, so I was in and out of PCH's office within a few minutes.

Interestingly, I met a Surinamese woman working at PCH, whose surname is Macdonald. You don't meet many Macdonalds in this country, much less black Surinamese ones.

Anyway, I came straight home after that. The satellite navigation was fun to use on the two legs of my trip. When I got home, I was able to park the car right in front of the door, something that's easy to do around here. Parking in Amsterdam is so much grief, it's nice to know we'll be able to easily park in front of the house.

Later in the day, I went to Primafoon to obtain a SIM DuoCard for my mobile phone. This will enable me to have the same telephone number in my normal mobile phone as in the car phone. Unfortunately, you have to turn one phone off before turning the other one on (otherwise things can behave unpredictably), which gives you the issue of receiving SMS messages on one phone that you then try to recall in vain on the other, but that's as far as the technology goes at present.

Interestingly once again, the girl who helped me in Primafoon turned out to have the same birthday as me. Another strange coincidence. Two in one day. Life is exciting.

Now I have to dream up some excuses to take this car out for a spin. I like it so much already, however, that I'm almost tempted to change our order for the 3.2 litre engine to the 4.2, but I can temper my boyish inclination with the knowledge that the 4.2 is expensive to run and environmentally harsher. In addition, it would almost certainly incur higher road tax and insurance costs. You see? I've talked myself out of it already.

Sarah and I had booked a second test-drive for today, down at the Audi dealer in Zuid-Oost. It's a bit arse-over-tit, of course, to have a test-drive after having already ordered the car, but we were offered the chance to keep it for a few hours and really get a strong impression of how it will be to own one, so we felt we couldn't really pass up the opportunity. Besides, this time we were able to drive a 3.2 FSI petrol engine with an automatic gearbox, which is the same specification as the vehicle that we've ordered.

Thanks to the on-board navigation system, we never got lost. With my sense of direction, that's a big deal.

We headed out west on the motorway towards Haarlem, but passed it by in favour of Zandvoort, where we spent a moment looking at the waves coming in on the beach. This was the site of our first date (if you can really call it that), back in January 2000. Eloïse went to sleep in her car-seat on the way there, which left us free to enjoy the car and experiment with some of its many features. In fact, the CD player was responsible for sending Wiesje to sleep, as we had brought along her favourite CD for this very purpose, a collection of nursery rhymes sung by Karin Bloemen.

From Zandvoort, we headed over to Noordwijk, where we stopped for some food in a downmarket restaurant that was absolutely bloody freezing. Why Noordwijk? Sarah suggested it and I didn't have a better suggestion at the time. It was as dead as a doornail, but we got to say that we dipped into another province (Zuid Holland).

Back in the car, we programmed the address of our new house into the navigation system and headed back to Amsterdam. On the way, I tried to put the car through its paces, but the speed limit got in the way. Having received a speeding fine yesterday for a minor violation in our Greenwheels car back in early October. I was in no mood for another one.

Finally, we made our way back to the Audi dealer. Wiesje was asleep again by this point, so we made a quick detour around Ouderkerk prior to concluding our round-trip at the dealer's premises. We reluctantly returned the car and then headed home, but not before modifying our car order to include sport seats. I had been very impressed with the ones in our test vehicle -- in particular, the extendable groin support (I don't know what it's really called) -- and decided I just had to have them.

In conclusion, I'm very happy with our decision to purchase an Audi A6 Avant. It's spacious, comfortable, designed with safety in mind, drives like a dream, has a well thought out interface to its multitude of features, and is powerful (even with an automatic gearbox). I think we're going to enjoy cruising around Europe in this car!

"Vorsprung durch Technik, as they say in Germany." With those words, spoken in a smug English accent by a famous British actor (who is nevertheless not famous enough for me to remember his name), the Audi TV adverts from my youth in the early eighties would end.

I always wondered what Vorsprung durch Technik meant, and the fact that I still remember those TV ads from more than twenty years ago, must say something about their effectiveness at imprinting the brand in one's mind (or mine, at least).

To get to the point, Sarah and I decided to make our first family car purchase the 2006 Audi A6 Avant, a practical and nippy estate in the 3.2 FSI petrol engine version.

We'd previously looked at the Mercedes E class estate, as well as the Volvo V70 and XC70. BMW was briefly considered, too, until it became apparent that they didn't have an estate in their fleet that would really appeal to us.

The Mercedes was nice, but overpriced. The marketing materials were rather revolting, too, in their attempt to make one feel like a virulent, omnipotent man-beast, who will be the envy of all past whom he races, as they turn their heads in awe of the sound of the roaring engine and noisy exhaust. Of course, what they don't tell you that all those turning heads are actually thinking, "What a prick!"

The discrepancy between how Mercedes would like you to think of yourself (once again, a man admired and respected by men, whilst desired by women for sex and marriage) and the harsh, unforgiving reality (aggressive, unhealthy, low-browed, knuckle-dragging, chain-smoking, beer-swilling Amsterdam taxi-drivers) is quite comical.

Like I said, the car itself was nice -- very cool, even -- but the car has an image and attracts people who want to be associated with it. Similarly, many people who don't own one view people who do in a particular light. Now, I don't particularly care about this aspect of the car (after all, I don't feel the need to excuse myself to everyone), but I do think their cars are consequently overpriced.

The Volvo was next. (You see? I told you I didn't care about the image). I was almost sold on the XC70, even though it was a far cry in luxury terms from the Mercedes E Class, but I ultimately balked at the user interface of the controls. The navigation system's LCD screen pops up out of the dashboard, giving poor contrast when driving in bright light. Its buttons for entering a destination address are to be found only on the steering wheel, which I'm sure the car's designers considered very safe, as the driver doesn't have to take his hands off the wheel. However, what about the passenger? It's even safer to allow the passenger to do the data entry. With enough little details like that, you ultimately start to lose interest. The car rode very well, but an irritating user interface would ruin the experience.

We were going to look at the Subaru Outback, but we never made it that far. After a trip to the Audi dealer last week that involved test-driving the A6, we were pretty sure we'd found our car. I've spent the last week reading Audi's own brochures, as well as independent reviews and crash test results (both the American and European). People are universally impressed with the A6's physical performance, as well as its MMI interface to the on-board computer. Everything is simple to use and -- that favourite word in software -- intuitive. The crash tests rate it an exceptionally safe car in the event of a major impact, safer even than Volvo's latest cars (and Volvo is the company with the lasting reputation for safety in cars).

After working my way down the list of options, I went in to the dealer on Tuesday and obtained a price estimate for an A6 Avant. Sarah and I went back today to ask some final questions and place the order.

The car will be manufactured in week 51 of this year, but won't be registered in The Netherlands until 2006. In this country, it's the registration paperwork -- not the build date -- that people look at when determining the age of the car. Crazy, but true.

Anyway, we should be able to pick the car up some time in the second half of January, which suits us very well. We even took home a set of car manuals so we can start to figure out how all the features work. I'll be lucky if I've finished reading it all by the end of January.

Oh, Vorsprung durch Technik means 'advantage by technology', by the way. It's very similar in Dutch: voorsprong door techniek.

Sarah and I biked through the Vondelpark Sunday afternoon with Wiesje in the bakfiets, of course. It was an incredibly nice day, with a temperature much too mild for the time of year. The sun was shining, too, so we simply had to get out and do something.

After lunch, we headed down to the Amsterdamse Bos (or Amsterdam Woodlands, if you prefer) for the first time since moving back here. It seemed to be quite an effort to make it down there with the heavy bakfiets; am I getting old?

Because of the soft weather and the fact it was the weekend, the woods were very busy and it was something of a slalom to to navigate around all of the people. Eventually, we reached the children's farm, where we introduced our little one to some goats. She didn't quite seem to know what to make of them, but was attentive and interested, at least.

We had lunch there, after which we bought some goat cheese and eggs, all of which is locally produced by the animals on the farm, so one can ascertain for oneself that they have a decent life. The children love these animals and literally fall over each other to feed the goats from little milk bottles that can be purchased on-site. The farm must do a roaring trade with these bottles, as it's sometimes hard to find a goat with any thirst! The chickens are similarly well kept and can roam very freely. It's a shame this place isn't just around the corner, as it's a little too far to go to replace the local supermarket when one needs dairy produce.

We ended up at the Volvo dealer yesterday. I must admit, I'm very fond of the XC70. It's rather like a V70, but then somewhat raised and with high quality four-wheel drive, which makes it a large estate (a.k.a. station wagon). It's not large enough to qualify as an SUV (whatever the precise definition of that may be), but it does offer you a couple of the advantages, albeit in slightly diluted form. You wouldn't really go off-road in it, but you might drive across a muddy field or drive along some hardened muddy tractor tracks.

SUVs are politically incorrect over here. Whilst this is a capitalist society, SUVs (or terreinwagens, asobakken or PC Hooft-tractors, depending on whether you want to be neutral or offensive) are seen by the majority of people not so much as a symbol and celebration of prosperity and pride, but more as a symbol of tasteless excess, contempt for the environment, and disregard for pedestrians and other road users. The left wing is even keen to start refusing to issue parking permits for these beasts, to punish the people who have bought them.

Owners of SUVs are understandably a bit miffed by all of this. After all, they've paid a shitload of tax in the form of BTW and BPM. They eagerly point out that the tax on their vehicle would easily pay for a couple of mothers to live on welfare for a year, so they make the argument that their vehicles are, in fact, amongst the most social on the road. It's a simplistic and warped argument, but there's a core of truth there, too.

For my part, I do appreciate the experience of driving (or being driven in) an SUV. In America, where just about the only car that is regarded as shameful is the Hummer, lots of people drive around guiltlessly and without feeling self-conscious in one of these things. If it weren't for the environmental and safety concerns, you'd have to envy them that.

That goes some of the way to explain why, in spite of the appeal of some of these vehicles, we can't seriously consider one. For one thing, there are only three of us, so by the time we're able to fill the remaining seats, we'll be buying our next car, not this one.

Secondly, Dutch streets and parking facilities weren't meant for these. To park an SUV on the street without blocking traffic, it's necessary to park with two wheels on the pavement, something that is illegal. So, either you stick out into traffic or you make it the problem of the cyclists and the pedestrians, a major reason the drivers of these vehicles are seen as seriously anti-social.

Add to that the poor fuel economy, the disastrous levels of pollutant emissions, and the damage these things cause to other people in collisions, and there's no way we can justify storming around the lowlands in a demilitarised tank.

Today, we went looking for couches and other furniture again. I think we've found a likely source for a couch, but they have a three month delivery period, so we won't be seeing it any time soon, even if we order it now. Oh well. We have a few more sources to check out before we make a decision.