A regular reader sent me a great photo series in the Volkskrant. The text is in Dutch but the pictures speak for themselves.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Dutch Secretary General, saves the NATO group picture when he realizes that 1 person is missing from the group...

A note on the coffee machine:

This office is full of 'he' men.

1. We don't wear perfume.
2. We don't drink "flavored" coffee.

I agree with the author -- flavored coffee is a horrible (American?) idea.

Grande hazelnut vanilla skim latte, anyone?

The holiday season has started.

Last Friday was "Black Friday", the start of the frantic shopping preparations for Christmas, and this is the time that Christmas tree are being sold.

According to the Bulgarian and Dutch traditions it is too early to put a tree. The Dutch Christmas season doesn't start until Sinterklaas is over, on December 5th, and in Bulgaria it is customary to put up the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.

But when in Rome, do as the Romans, so today we got our tree and the website is in Holiday style.

This weekend I had time for a cooking experiment, and today I baked two loafs of white bread.


I've made bread before but that was always from a bread-mix package. This was the real deal -- flour, yeast, salt, a little bit of butter and honey (we were out of sugar).

I made a crust with egg yoke, and I made sure to let the bread dry on an (improvised) rack for a few minutes so the bottom crust stayed crispy.


We just had it for lunch and it was delicious. I'm rather proud.

I made two breads, a small one and a large one. Because we don't have the bread pans I used a round lasagna pan. It makes the bread look like a mushroom.

A slice of the bread. Airy, with a great crust.

Today is the meetup in the Netherlands of AllesAmerika.com, a forum I frequently read.

Although I couldn't attend the meet up somebody brought a webcam.

I've created a YouTube video (my first) of the MSN stream -- the quality of the connection wasn't very good but it was nice to get an impression.

When I was in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago I bought a reproduction of an old map of Haarlem.

In the Haarlem History Museum I found the Kaart van Nautz. The map by Mr. Nautz dates from 1829 and shows the city as it was in 1822.

We had the poster dry mounted by a shop in Durham's Main Street and the result is great. The map is free of wrinkles and very easy to place on the wall.

The map is dry mounted against a hard surface, which makes it virtually wrinkle free and very easy to hang nicely on the wall.

On its place, near the dining table. I want to replace the wall mount with something invisible, I don't like the plastic and nail just above the map too much.

Today was the last working day for this week, tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

We did some shopping, and we prepared for a good long weekend. It's nice that Jonathan and Irena will be in North Carolina also; we haven't seen them for quite a while.

The first elections results of the elections for the Dutch parliament have been coming in from 3 pm EST today.

1. A sad day for the PvdA: they were unable to leverage the failure of the VVD/CDA government to gain more seats and lost some 9 seats. Should Wouter Bos resign?
2. The biggest surprise is the very strong result for the Socialist Party. I disagree with their ideology but they are a true grass-roots party and have worked hard for their success.
3. The SP now probably has more seats that Lijst Pim Fortuyn ever had.
4. Balkenende will get a 4th chance to come up with a stable government. He will likely continue to represent the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
5. There is now a party in Dutch parliament that has animal rights as its main priority.
6. It is now a good time for Mr. Marijnissen to start thinking about his successor, to prevent the SP from becoming a one-man party and prove that they are a strong organization
7. Mark Rutte has failed as the first man for the VVD. His party lost significantly, and only 36% of the VVD voters voted for Mr. Rutte. He should resign his partijleider position or will otherwise be moved aside by his party anyway.
8. It's sad that Mr. Wilders did quite well with a projected 6 to 9 seats. Unfortunately it shows that there is a consistent base of anti-immigrant voters.
9. The LPF likely no longer has any seats in parliament, nor does Mr. Nawijn get a seat.
10. "EenNL", a LPF follow-up party, did get a seat. Comment of its first man: "I would feel horrible sitting in parliament alone".
11. D'66 virtually disappeared (finally) from national politics after withdrawing support for Balkenende III.
12. The election results of Dutch citizens abroad will be published on Friday.

Tuesday evening I went to the Fred Anderson Toyota dealership, the dealership where we bought our car 3 months ago.

We were invited for a 'New Owner Meeting', and it was also time for the first scheduled service appointment. The service appointment was at 5.30 pm, the New Owner Meeting at 6.00 pm.

Just when I left the parking lot to drive to the dealership I saw an interesting new light come up on the dashboard. I pulled over and looked in the manual: "Low tire pressure warning", it meant. I wasn't sure if it would cause any immediate problems so I decided to drive (carefully) to the dealership. It was somewhat exciting to drive with tires that apparently didn't have enough pressure, but I didn't notice any strange behavior in the car.

Once in the dealership things went went smoothly, and they said they would take care of the tire pressure.

The New Owner Meeting was interesting. There was a simple dinner followed by a presentation on warranty, service etc and a lot of room for questions. I learned some interesting things and it was useful to attend. There is a software update available for the Camry 2007 4 cylinder now that will adjust the behavior when accelerating from low speed. Perhaps I'll have that installed a next time.

Around 7.00 pm the car was ready and I got my keys back, and the meeting was over around 7.15 pm after which we went downstairs to look around in the service department. It's very large, they can work on many cars at the same time.

Our experience with Fred Anderson has been very good so far these first 3 months (4900 miles) -- great customer service.

Wednesday are the elections for the Lower Chamber in the Netherlands.

Mieke sent me my voter's card a few weeks ago which I signed and returned. This way she can vote for me tomorrow.

Let's see if Mr. Balkenende (CDA) will get a 4th chance to come up with a strong and stable government. He has had plenty of time to practice.

The VVD left Minister Verdonk on the candidate list and even placed her on number 2. This is the minister who tried to strip Hirsi Ali of her Dutch passport and thereby made a fool of Dutch politics worldwide.

I've never really trusted the VVD too well and I guess this reinforces my thoughts. Given Ms. Verdonk's bad judgment calls in the past and her incompentent behavior in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali she should never have been placed on the candidate list.

It will be no surprise to regular readers that my vote won't go to VVD or CDA.