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I’m home most of the day, reading Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, a collection of short stories I read yearly. Today I read “The Merchant and the Alchemist”s Gate” by Ted Chiang, amongst others, which won both the Hugo for Best Novelette this year, and last year’s Nebula’s . I have to agree with the juries here, a great tale.

Tonight, if I can get tickets, I’m going to the Manhattan Short Film Festival.

Theme of the day: short fiction.

It sucks that BBC-HD is not being broadcast by UPC. And that the iPlayer doesn’t work here. Please, please, let me pay for a television license and give me access!

Guess I’m stuck with watching the Tudors in inferior resolution. Alas, poor, poor me.

Unless I get satellite and catch a stray signal of course. But then I’d need a DVR that can record the signal as well. I almost never watch TV as they broadcast it.

The world’s gonna end today (in one hour!), so I’m not sure if I should go to work.

If, by some amazing piece of luck, the world doesn’t end, I’ll watch the new The Restaurant series that supposedly starts this evening.

I’m having a day alone in San Francisco today. My mates are visiting Alcatraz. I’ve never been, but I felt like wandering the city on my own more than seeing an old prison. Just bought a bunch of new books at Borders (they’re cheaper over here). Later I might check out a movie, to give my legs a rest (new shoes, my old ones were wrecked in the walk up Half Dome).

Tonight, around 3AM, we’re heading back home. We haven’t got a hotel booked, so it’s gonna be a loooong day. Tonight we’re meeting up for dinner with Zack, June and some of the other rollersoccer players from SF.

Yesterday we drove up from Santa Cruz, along a scenic highway, through some beautiful Redwood forest. We drove through the hills above Palo Alto, from where I could see Stanford, where I spent three months about fifteen years ago. Brought back some memories!

We’re staying at Travelodge Central here in SF. The staff has a real attitude problem there. Man, they’re so unfriendly! I should be careful what I say though, our luggage is still there, waiting for us to pick it up at 3AM tonight.

In the evening we saw Man on Wire. Didn’t live up to the hype, but still: pretty incredible story!

SF is a real city of contrasts. You see so many dubious characters here, wandering amidst high-street shops. Beggars and what can only be junkies everywhere.

I’m not unhappy about going home. My work-situation will have changed considerably when I get back (new office, about 200 new colleagues) and my house will be emptied of most of Marine’s stuff, so that will be a change too. I’ll kind of miss moving house everyday though.

Linda, Marc & Daan came over for a visit yesterday. The plan was to go to Artis, but we never made it. Never mind, Daan was more than happy with all the things he could see while we were strolling in town. We took a bike-taxi back to the Jordaan, like real tourists! It was pretty convenient though, so I might do it again if I have visitors. 10 euros for two people.

In the evening, I went to see Tropa de Elite with A, who’s been in Brasil a number of times, and to favelas in particular, which is why she was interested in this movie. Extremely violent though, and a glorification of the violence meted out by the BOPE, but still a good movie. How accurate a representation it was of what’s going on there? Hard to say for me.

Am I watching too much TV? Perhaps. Yesterday it was Fransesco’s Mediterranean, season 2 of The Tudors and QI. Plus I’m really looking forward to tonight’s Comics Britannia (starring Alan Moore and many other 2000AD heroes) and Monday’s Panorama: Notes on a Dirty Island, featuring Bill Bryson.

I was invited to do the Friday Night Skate last night. I was ready to go, but in the end didn’t feel like it. Instead I went to have a cup of tea at Jan’s, to deliver a present I bought him a while ago already. Today my sister Linda’s visiting, with her little family. I have some ideas about what to do. Maybe Artis, perhaps a cruise on the Ij. The weather looks promising.

I had a quiet evening at home yesterday. Watched Prof. Regan’s supermarket secrets, a Horizon episode about medicinal claims about foods, and part 2 of the Saddam Hussein drama on BBC: House of Saddam. Finished my Jeffrey Sachs book. Read the paper. Tried to get up to date with Giuseppe’s melancholy blog. In the process of the latter I watched some nice music videos and thought about relative happiness: why am I not more happy if I’m surrounded by sick people? What’s wrong with me? And called my mom about meeting up before I head off to the New World. Busy, in the end :-)

Again, no rollerbasketball yesterday: not enough players and bad weather. Instead, the four would-be players ended up going to see WALL-E at Tuschinski. “A masterpiece” (Matteo). I couldn’t agree more. I laughed loads and that’s healthy. Afterwards we had some icecream at the American place on the Rembrandt Plein.

A neighbour of mine was watching TV with the windows open when I came home. I dragged my bed to the hallway and slept there. I could use some more sleep though. But work is calling! Directive!

On Sunday, when rollerbasketball fell in the water, I visited G & his little family. Poor G broke his collarbone on a bad fall during rollerbasketball last week. He’s in quite a bit of pain. We watched a movie together. I was up for something serious, like The Diving Bell and The Butterfly or The Mist, but horror or serious stuff was out of the question, so we went for a kids movie, The Golden Compass. Pretty boring (especially on small TV), although the anti-religious theme should resonate with me.

I fed G’s son and amazed his parents by feeding him loads of vegetables. He seems to like me: must be my cold and distant demeanour.

Yesterday I watched another amazing episode of The Long Way Round and had some icecream at Haagen-Daz’s with the departing Mario. Tanya said she had an amazing time, but Mario lamented the fact that he did not have enough time. Time… it is a problem.

Oh, and our website familii.nl is finally out of invite-only: anybody can register now.

Amsterdam is such a small town. Yesterday, on the way to rollersoccer I bumped into Annemieke and on the way back I bumped into Jochem, a colleague.

Don’t play rollersoccer just after having had dinner, especially when you’re still recovering from a flu. Pfff, my poor stomach! Still, I’m an idiot, so I’m gonna play rollerbasketball this afternoon. Lunch afterwards!

Afterwards, my mom and I watched the relatively new Zhang Yimou flick Curse of the Golden Flower. Good enough, but wouldn’t really recommend it.