January 2005

Sunday a week ago we spent the afternoon in Georgetown. On the way to there we took a bus, but in the evening we decided to walk home. Georgetown is the first neighbourhood of DC across the river from Virginia. It was fun to walk over the Key Bridge. While walking we were at the phone with Irena about something.

Below are two pictures of the Key Bridge at night.

The bright spot in the right-upper corner of the picture is a plane that is preparing for landing. Reagan National Airport is nearby the bridge, and there's a plane passing by every few minutes.

On the left is the building where the Christmas party of my work was.

What do Dutch people bring when travelling from and to the US?

Read about in in a nice discussion on AllesAmerika.com.

On the list to the U.S. are pindakaas (peanut butter) and borrelnootjes (coated nuts). Favorites to bring to Holland from the U.S. are clothes and BBQ sauce. No one mentioned volkorenbrood yet.

Today was Inauguration Day, the day of the installation of President Bush. It was more quiet than usual on the streets when I walked to work; all federal buildings were closed.

Yesterday it was snowing, and today I wore the special winter boots that I bought before going to Bulgaria last year. The road to work was still covered with snow and ice and pretty slippery. The winter shoes are wonderful: nice, warm and with a solid grip so you don't slip.

At work there's a lot to do, and a deadline is approaching, so it's quite busy now.

A lot of colleagues came in later today because the metros were so crowded due to the festivities downtown. We watched the official celebrations on TV in the evening. After the swearing-in ceremony there were many balls and parties in the city; President Bush visited nine of them in one day.

Today it was snowing for the first time since I've been here. It's been pretty cold the last few days, and in the morning it started snowing.

Both Sasha and I are over our colds; it took us about a week.

Tomorrow it's Inauguration Day. President Bush will get officially installed, and it's a holiday in the U.S. for federal employees. Sasha's office is closed tomorrow but I'll go to work.

Kill Bill is a movie by Quentin Tarantino that comes in two parts, on two separate DVDs. We saw the first part on a Sunday evening, the next part on Monday (last week). Two nights of great enjoyment -- this movie is really good.

The story is rather violent and has a large amount of fighting scenes but it comes with a nice plot, a lot of humor and very good performance by the actors. The acting by Uma Thurman was excellent, and so were the visual effects in the movie.

Like the other Tarantino many things were over the top, such as the acting and macho dialogues. The "deleted scene" that was a bonus track on the second DVD was very nice, too.

The ingredients and food of the American kitchen are not that different of those you'll find in Holland, so most things I'm used to cook with are available. You can even get boerenkool (kale) in some supermarkets.

The other day we found a specialty store with a lot of imported things from Europe. Truffels and vinegar from Italy, special wines, things like that. They also had a few Dutch items, such as drop and Droste chocolate. We bought a package of caramel wafers: stroopwafels!

It's easy to find Dutch beer and cheese, although they're expensive. There's also quite a collection of Belgium beers available here, but I haven't found my personal favorite Grimbergen triple yet.

The only thing that I really miss so far is real Dutch bread: a freshly baked volkorenbrood would be very nice. The bread in Wholefoods comes close, but is not quite the same.

Drop, imported from Holland, next to English licorice. Of course, you can also order drop online.

Today was Marten Luther King Day. It's a federal holiday, so Sasha had a day off. Many companies in the private sector don't have a free day though, and it was a working day for me.

It's very cold outside, now it's -8 degrees Celcius. I still enjoyed walking to and from work -- I was well prepared this time.

Saturday evening we saw "Taking Lives", recommended to us by a good friend. To be honest -- I didn't really like it very much.

Taking Lives is a thriller about a serial-killer who "copies" other peoples lives, but the movie was never very scary or even convincing.

The acting by the main character, Angelina Jolie, a FBI agent was in my opinion pretty bad. Ethan Hawke, who played the serial killer, was performing well but that couldn't compensate for the other deficiencies of the movie, such as the weakness of the plot.

We saw the trailer (a short preview) of this movie a few weeks ago, when our cable TV was just installed. One of the features that Comcast offers, is something called On Demand. Using that, you can order a movie anytime you want, and you pay the movie on your TV bill, which is about four dollar per movie. Interesting enough it is cheaper to rent the DVD, which is about three dollar; I guess you pay for convenience. Anyway -- we browsed the existing collection of movies available and saw the preview of Taking Lives.

Comcast, our cable internet provider, has announced that it will increase the speed of its internet broadband connections.

Currently we have 3Mb/s downstream, and 256 Kb/s upstream, and this will increase to 4Mb/s down and 384Kb/s up. The article didn't mention when exactly they'll switch, but it said "this quarter".

Nice they're upgrading the speeds here too.

Thursday President Bush will be inaugurated for his second term in office. This Inauguration Day will be a large event, with a parade and a huge amount of visitors, and the preparations started long ago.

Yesterday I went for a walk on the Mall, the strip between the Capitol and the Washington monument, where all the museums are. Many tents and barriers for the festivities were already in place, and they were installing a stage in front of the Capitol with thousands of chairs.

Security will be extremely tight this year and many streets and office buildings downtown will be closed from Wednesday morning on.

A few pictures.

Barriers near the Capitol.

Power generators, forklifts and other machinery on the Mall.

Outdoor sound-system.

The Washington Monument with large party tents.

Stage in front of the Capitol.