You can guess what he’s famous for…

Wednesday night we went out to Lone Star as a flat and consumed much good food. I had the “Big John” Sirloin, which weighed in at approximately 350g. Then home again for a few quiet drinks.

Last night I went and saw Star Wars again with Merodie, Mark and Anna. Scarily I nodded off through some of it, which I don’t think I’ve done at the movies before. I think it only happens to me in movies I’ve seen before. The only time I can remember it happening with a movie I haven’t seen before was the time we watched Once upon a time in China at Baz’s old place after some social club thing one time. I don’t think it was as good as IMDB makes out…

Anyway, I digress. This morning I woke to the incessant sound of Emily’s alarm at the other end of the hallway, and lay there annoyed at it for ages, wondering why she wasn’t waking up and turning it off, before realising that she’s in Oamaru…

On the getting ready to go front, I’m not making much progress, but as I got paid today, I will go pay my car registration and get some Euros from the bank. Planning to go hard tomorrow and sort everything out - I don’t really have any other time to do it… Work midwinter Christmas tonight, and our flat’s going out for breakfast on Sunday.

It’s slowly starting to sink in that I don’t have to go to work for the next 6 and a half weeks… Actually that’s not true, it really isn’t sinking in at all. But, I still don’t have to go to work for the next 6.5 weeks. W00t!

See y’all in 6.5 weeks! Spent most of yesterday packing and tidying my room for the new occupant moving in on Monday. He moves out again just before I get back, which is all very good. Ran out to buy a few necessities during the day as well. Then picked up an extra 6kg of textbooks from Gordon for Baz. All about economics and accounting and stuff… There I was thinking he was a Software Engineer. Then I went to the Beavon’s for tea, which was Yum with a capital Y. Then to Mark’s place to watch the rugby. Dan is currently the man. Then we went and watched War of the Worlds. Possibly not the best movie to watch before flying… Saw Yan and Carrie afterwards as well. Yan’s first comment was “You’ve put on weight Again???” Got home just after 11:30.

We’re going out for breakfast this morning and then to the airport. When I get to Singapore, my current plan is to go for a swim in the pool on the roof.

Well, I’ve made it as far as Singapore… The flight has been good thus far. I almost watched 4 movies, with my headphones being collected 2 minutes before the end of the last one. I hadn’t seen any of them before. On demand movies is awesome. I watched Sahara, Miss Congeniality 2, Hitch and almost all of Caddyshack. If I could open multiple tabs or windows I would include IMDB links, but I can’t, so I won’t. One thing I feel that I should mention is that it is really annoying if you are my height and the person in front of you reclines and you want to use the screen, because you have to recline your seat and slouch right down to get a clear picture :
When I got here I went for a swim in the pool on the roof and sat in the Jacuzzi for a while (total time nearly 2 hours) It’s actually not a bad deal. Swim, jacuzzi, shower, towel, shampoo etc and a free drink (non-alcoholic) for $13.65SGD which is pretty good for airport prices. Only another hour and a half to kill now… I should manage ok. Also got a Sunday Star Times on the plane which had some fantastic articles on the rugby. I really should show them to some of the Lions supporters around the place… Also, this computer has a mini mouse.

Tilburg is where I am now, at my Uncle’s house. The second half of the flight went a bit slower than the first half. I watched another couple of movies - 2 weeks notice, which I thought I hadn’t seen before, but I had, and Million Dollar Baby, which I had seen before but wanted to see again. However, my on demand video died just before the end and I couldn’t watch anything after that. I had a window seat and the guy next to the aisle was sleeping, so it was also kind of hard to get out and walk around. I could still play games though, so I thought I’d try playing some chess. Normally the computer always beats me at chess, but I won 3 games in a row on the medium setting and then changed it to hard and won the next 2 games as well, so either I have improved at chess, or the computer really sucks.

Anyway, enough about the in-flight entertainment. Coming in to land in Amsterdam was surprisingly similar to landing in Hamilton (apart from the lightning I saw) We came in across green paddocks and it was grey and rainy. however once we landed we taxied for ages - probably close to 20 minutes, so the airport is somewhat bigger than Hamilton… At the airport I bought a new sim card for my phone on the Orange network, which as it turns out only works intermittently in my phone, so now I am borrowing my Uncle’s. I had to catch the train to Tilburg, so bought a ticket and waited at the platform. One guy holding a beer came up to me and asked if I had a cigarette, which I didn’t, but that was quite interesting considering it was about 8:30 in the morning. There were so many new things to see from the train, but I didn’t take any photos. - Canals and a marina with hundreds of boats tied up, windmills etc. Probably the funniest thing was reading one of the small newspapers on the train and seeing a classic NZ photo of dog trials with a farmer holding a gate, a few sheep and a border collie, but it was talking about the Dutch competition. So they do it here to… Something for Craig This was all before Den Haag, where I was supposed to change trains to Tilburg. However, when I got there, there was a problem with lightning hitting somewhere, so I had to go to Rotterdam and change trains to Tilburg there. All worked out eventually though and I was met at the train station by my Uncle and Auntie. My uncle sells rare bike parts on Ebay for a living, so lots of interesting stuff to see. If you want to have a look, try this link. Not sure if it will work though. If it doesn’t, you should be able to figure out his username from the link address. We went for a walk after that and went out for tea. We had some drinks before that, and I was almost absolutely gone after just 2 beers. A “dubbele trappist” and a “La chufee”. They are both reasonably strong beers, but I think it was mainly because I was tired. We had a massive platter of seafood for tea. We also had some “bitterballen” before tea with our drinks. We’re going to go pick up my parents from the airport today.

There are so many old buildings around too. For example, this house was built in 1928. I’m sleeping up in the attic. I will put up some photos at some point (probably). That’s probably enough for now.

Oh, my new mobile phone number is +31638167568. I think you may only be able to send and receive texts from me if you are on Vodafone though (not Telecom).

One thing I forgot to mention the other day… Cracked me up at the time. My uncle asked me if I wanted some strawberry pie and I said yes, followed by “I never say no to food” to which he responded “My surname is Paulussen, why do you even bother asking.” Now you all know. It’s completely genetic!

Yesterday me and my uncle - enough with the uncle - Oom Frans went to pick up my parents from the airport. We spent a few hours in Den Bosch - I think that’s what it was anyway, and had a look through the cathedral there - massive, and saw lots of old houses, which really don’t stand up straight. Once again, probably will post photos. We went to bakker bart for lunch. It’s a bakery, and they make a roll for you on the spot. Oom Frans has an “old car” It was made in 1991. He also has some actual old cars, but his car is considered old here. I saw my auntie (Tante Maria) at the airport as well.

I’m still speaking a lot of English, but I’m going to try to move more and more to Dutch. Taking the plunge. I’ll just have to think more about what I say… Today we’re going to visit Opa.

Well, it’s been a few days, but now I have access to the internet again. On Wednesday we went to my Opa’s place (in Germany) and stayed there a couple of nights. He is currently between internet providers as he is just having his ISDN replaced with ADSL. Good times! A bit of Nostalgia from my Dad in Sittard during the day. (Twas where he grew up.)

Then we went to Jagerhof for my Opa’s 80th birthday and Oom Bert’s 50th too. Summer finally arrived, and my Mum got very sunburnt. We played soccer, consumed lots of yummy food, went for a ride in a horse cart, played poker, sat in the sun and drank lots of various beverages. The Dutch I had is coming back, although I still struggle a little. Lots of fun. I also have hundreds of photos, which I may have to censor a little if I value my life… It was great to catch up with family too, some of whom I haven’t seen since I was 5.

Now I'’m at Oom Bert’s house. I may even get around to putting up some pictures later…

The whole language thing is quite interesting. I speak Dutch, but I can understand the Southern dialect, which is quite different to actual Dutch a lot better than I can understand Dutch. I think it’s because my parents always speak dialect at home, but we lived in an area that didn’t speak it just before we left Holland, so I didn’t actually speak it. It was actually quite weird hearing my youngest cousins speaking it, because i’ve only heard adults using it. Anyway, enough.

I’ve put up some photos of the weekend here. No descriptions yet, although I will probably add them at some point.

Haven´t really done much the last couple of days. Monday we went to the supermarket (Albert Heyn), which took a long time because Mum and Dad seemed to have forgotten how to shop. It was actually quite different though, mainly in the little things.

Yesterday Richard and me biked into Veldhoven (no helmets required, much more civilised. I bought the dutch version (can also play in English) of Beyond Good & Evil for 7 Euros. However, I´m going back today because it doesn´t work. You may have to learn to read Dutch to read the thread though.

It´s been hot and sunny. We did spend some time playing computer games though.

On Thursday, we went for a walk in a nature reserve somewhere. Can’t really describe it more specifically. One thing I noticed is that even when the sky is blue, the horizon is still a bit grey… I noticed some Gallagher electric fences, and a few other things that reminded me of home. - Have a look at the photos for more details. We stopped off at a cafe in a small village on the way back.

In the afternoon I biked to the supermarket all by myself to get some pizzas. I did it with directions too, no map or anything. Twas to get some pizzas for tea, which I then proceeded to cook while Oom Bert and Richard and Shirley got ready to go on holiday. They got away about 8.30 at which point we sat down and watched The Mosquito Coast which wasn’t amazing. All seemed to end rather suddenly.

Today (Friday) We’re going to Oom Stef’s house, then tomorrow is the Perry family reunion (My mum’s side).

**NB** The first 24 photos in my last lot were quite massive (700kB each or so). They have now been reduced to a slightly more dialup manageable size.

Well, I’ve been fairly lax about updating my blog lately. Athough, if you’ve been paying attention, you would have noticed that the photos have been updating. I probably won’t write too much now either because we are going out again. On Friday we went to Oom Stef and Tante Yvonne’s place. They live just next to the Dyke in the country near Nijmegen. Twas awesome. We went for a walk in a nearby nature reserve as well and saw wild horses and cattle. Have a look at the photos. (One photo on that page and the rest on the following page.) I also saw a few other things that reminded me of home… Then we had a fantastic dinner and then we sang for a while… (8MB unedited, badly recorded MP3 - go X drive.) After/During that Marieke and Richard arrived and we stopped singing.
We sat outside and talked for quite a while with a bit of a fire going as well. Summer is fantastic

The next day we went to Pietersheim in Belgium for the Perry family reunion. Lots of sitting in the sun and eating and drinking and playing cards and talking. I possibly should mention that I won both games of cards that we played. (The second time I was partnered with Eric so it wasn’t entirely under my own steam. We played Chinese bridge first, which is a bit of a family tradition and then Hearts. After dinner and some more talking we went back to Oom Bert’s house. It was good to see everyone again and see how they’d changed and catch up on things.

Yesterday morning I got up early and chatted to my flat on MSN for a while, with webcam which was very cool. It’s quite funny seeing the keyboard war from the other end.

After that we went to Maastricht. We also visited my Oma’s grave in Echt. Mum and Dad dropped me off in Maastricht and then went to visit Mum’s friend Denise. It was going to be my first day of actual touristing. I then quickly realised that a number of options were going to be closed to me because it was Sunday… I went and looked through the St. Servaas Basiliek Church, but not St. Jan’s next door, because it was shut. Then I went and sat down for a while at a cafe in the Vrijthof. Sitting “Op en Terrasje” (on a terrace - outside a cafe) is a very common pastime in the Netherlands. I had a white beer, a Hawaii burger and a ginger ale. Then I went for a boat tour (photos) on the Maas and visited the tunnels at St. Pietersberg (in the middle of the boat trip). There are 220km of tunnels with 24,000 different hallways. They were created through mining for Stone and have been used for many purposes since. There are also lots of inscriptions/artwork/carvings/graffiti on the walls. Even Napoleon Bonaparte has his mark on the wall. The tunnels have been used for growing mushrooms, vegetables, sheltering from the German’s in WWII and various other purposes. There was a plan in place in WWII to be able to house 50,000 people in the tunnels. There was a bakery with 5 ovens and a chapel amongst other things. In the end about 8000-10000 people lived down there for about a month or two just before the Americans liberated Maastricht.

Anyway, after the boat tour, I got picked up at the railway station and Denise, Rens, Mum, Dad and me went out for dinner to a wok restaurant. The way it works is that you select your food (raw) and you take it up to the counter and they cook it for you, with your choice of source. You could go as many times as you liked, so needless to say, I ate quite a lot… It was all very yummy though. Then we went back to Denise’s place and we watched some videos of when they came to visit NZ. It was very funny seeing our family and their family on film 5.5 years ago and seeing how much everyone had changed. I then proceeded to sleep in the back of the car all the way home.

Well, since I last posted I’ve actually done quite a lot.

On Monday we went to visit Oom Han and tante Annie. We went for a bit of a walk and saw some funny things like an animal cemetery. Also lots of horses, because it’s a bit of a horse area. I will post photos soon for all you horse people. We also went and sat in a few cafes and then went back to Veldhoven reasonably late. A fun day all round.

On Tuesday we went to Amsterdam to get my brothers’ Ajax shirts printed with names at the Ajax fan shop at the stadium. We then caught the metro from there into the centre and had something to eat at an Argintinean steak house. From there we went to the Van Gogh museum and left there when it closed at 6 and had some drinks, some ice cream and some bitterballen at a bruin (brown) cafe. Then back to the stadium on the metro again and then back to Veldhoven.

On Wednesday my parents went to visit Opa and I went into Eindhoven by bike. My mission for the day was to get Tony’s KNVB shirt printed (Dutch national soccer team), but on arrival in Eindhoven I found that I had left it behind and had to bike back and then back to Eindhoven again - probably 20-30 minutes each way, I wasn’t really timing. I got the shirt printed and then went and sat in an Italian cafe for a while, with a coffee and a slice of pizza, followed by an awesome ice cream sundae. While I was in the cafe I also managed to organise most of the next few weeks of my holiday. A few texts back and forth to Ayley and Paul (my cousin) and I now have some actual dates. Then I biked back again and when my parents got back we drove to Oom Frans’ place in Tilburg where we had lots of good food for dinner.

On Thursday we went to Amsterdam again to drop my parents off at the airport. We went and visited Tante Maria first, and then dropped them off at Schiphol at 4pm and drove back, luckily just without any traffic jams. Then we had another yum tea - Oom Frans is a fantastic cook. He also had another visitor (Ton) over for tea. After that the three of us biked into town to a cafe and sat there and talked with a few other people too over a few (8-9) beers, and then eventually biked (a little wobblilly) back home again. A great evening.

I really haven’t been posting much recently. This week has been full of fun and excitement though. On Friday we went to the “Tilburgse Kermis” which is the biggest funfair in all of Europe. We went round, won played a few games, won a few prizes, had a drink and then went and swapped some of our prizes at the “ruilpost”. This procedure involved filling out a convoluted form and putting the prize to be swapped on a set of scales to measure up against the article being swapped for. We also went out for dinner (Greek) beforehand, which was excellent!

On Saturday I went to Meppel to visit Paul and go sailing. The more astute amongst you will have noticed that there have already been photos up for a few days. Sailing was fun, we had a few showers, but the slightly rough weather provided some excellent wind. Saturday night we went clubbing. We had an excellent vantage point from the balcony of a fight down on the dance floor between a couple of rival villages. Doesn’t happen very often apparently, but it got out of hand enough that they closed early. I also tried a few new drinks at the second club. Sunday morning we crawled out of bed around 11am. In the afternoon we went to Giethoorn, which is a small village that isn’t accessible by car. Lots of little canals and walkways. I have photos, but I’ll probably post them later. We had an icecream and went to a shell museum and a rock museum… I’ll leave some of the story till I’ve posted the photos. Then I caught the last train back to Tilburg. On Monday I went tent shopping with Oom Frans and Tante Rita and came back with a new pair of rollerblades…

On Tuesday Oom Frans and me went for a bike ride on the tandem, which was a bit of a new experience, and lots of fun. Also some much needed exercise. We covered quite a lot of ground, stopping at a couple of cafes and a brewery along the way. At the first cafe we had lunch (It was already about 2pm). Lunch consisted of 5 eggs on toast with ham and cheese and some salad. It came on a huge plate and was very yum. The brewery we stopped at is also a monastry. The monks brew the beer to earn a living - a noble calling!

On Wednesday Oom Frans dropped me off at the airport at 7 in the morning for my flight to London. At the airport they had a couple of computer terminals. I went over and had a look, figured out you had to pay to use the internet and then went and sat down again. Then a kid walked up to them, had a bit of a play, started cranking out some hip-hop tunes someone had previously downloaded and started playing pinball. - I must be losing my touch… I did go play some pinball after he’d finished though.

I haven’t been blown up on the underground yet, although I did feel somewhat dodgy with my huge backpack and dark hoody with white writing… Baz had a dentist appointment, so I went and had some breakfast at Canary Wharf mall and when he’d finished we went and dropped my stuff off at his place and then Baz, Cat and Me went out again. We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant (Wagamama) and then saw Fantastic Four at the movies. It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t call it fantastic. Then we had pizza for tea.

On Thursday Baz and me went and saw some of the sights in Westminster. We got a “free” t-shirt each at the Saatchi gallery, and had some pretty awesome waffles. There were lots of police everywhere too.

Yesterday I took it pretty easy. Played a lot of Halo 2… and went and shot some hoops with Cat.

Today we went to the Burroughs market and spent a lot of money on food. Now, the first game of the tri-nations. Currently at 13 all…