Lying Eyes

Sometimes, very occasionally, something comes along which is just so amazing. I was sent this by a friend who picked it up from http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091004.html and I have copied the picture below. Can you believe that squares A and B are actually the same shade and colour as each other. I didn't until I actually opened it in GIMP and used the colour picker to confirm that they are indeed the same colour.

Out and about in Mpumalanga

A most disappointing day! We were to start in Graskop but, again, the mist was too thick so we drive through to Sabie where it was marginally better. We holed up in a restaurant while we waited for the mist to lift and the rain to stop but eventually I just thought, "Oh what the hell" lets just do it.

The reality of "Long Tom's Pass" is that it is friggin steep for a very long period of time and this was starting from half way up; thank goodness we didn't start from Hazyview. I think that that would have just a bit much. As it was we only did about 7km before "she who must be obeyed" said that enough is enough and that it was far too dangerous. The photo below was taken when I was only about 20m away from the camera so the cars that were doing 60km/hr would only see us at the very last second.

And that, was pretty much the weekend. We spent some time having a really good lunch at Dullstroom but other than that it was a pretty uneventful drive home.

Notwithstanding today I think that we got some really good training in an I have a suspicion that Carl, in particular, is going to be quite enamoured with long distance riding.

Out and about in Mpumalanga

The next morning we were up bright and early for the "easy" day starting in Graskop and heading north to Bourkes Luck potholes and back; a relatively civilised 70km of medium grade riding.

Arriving in Graskop it was covered in heavy mist and Harries Pancakes kindly let us in to have a cup of coffee even though they weren't actually open which was greatly appreciated. It was clearly(?) not going to be a good day to ride from Graskop but luckily for us the proprietor(ess!) happened to ride and recommended a "very" nice ride which has a profile as below!

She was correct about one thing; the ride out was awesome. It was just the return trip which was a bit of a bugger. Carl and Jason forged on ahead while Hennie and I consoled each other at the back. It's a fantastic ride in between the pine trees with the occasional views through the mist and the rain. Really nice to ride on a really good road with wide verges; just made for riding on.

This was on the way back, we had to make it look like we were in less pain that we actually were!

Back at the silk farm we relaxed for the afternoon before a really nice braai for supper. As the token vegetarian it always amazes me that I seem to end up doing the meat incinerating thingy; I mean it is not like I actually have any real interest in whether or not I incinerate the dead cow!

The kids had such a ball in the jacuzzi even though it wasn't heated that they all looked quite prune by the time they got out.

After supper we had long "solve the problems of the world" conversations before people slowly started dropping out as their eyelids got too heavy. Eventually it was just Jason, myself and Dierdre left until 11:30 when I called it a night. Jason finally succumbed at 12:30 and I am really happy that the "R" word only really turned up after I had departed for bed.

Out and about in Mpumalanga

I have been alternately looking forward to and dreading this weekend. Looking forward to it because I think it will be a great weekend but very worried about how my knee which has been misbehaving quite a bit lately will stand up to the multi-day abuse.

Thursday rushed by as it always does when one has far too much to do and way too little time to do it in but I finally managed to get around to buying a bike rack which can tilt which means that I will be able to open the back door of the fortuner without taking the bikes off - a major plus! I don't know what I was thinking but for some reason I thought that it would be assembled so it was a bit of surprise when the first thing that fell out of the box was the instructions on how to put it together sooooo ... we were a bit late to pick Carl up and very late to pick Jason up.

As it turned out it didn't really matter and we have a very smooth and uneventfule drive out to Mashishing which, for all you old south africans, is Lydenburg although it was promptly renamed by Hennie to "ama fishing" in honour of the traditional sport practiced in these parts.

We stayed at Malapo Country Lodge which purports to be a 4 star lodge and while it was very nice and comfortable and I really have no complaints at all; 4 stars seems an awful lot for what is essentially self-catering accommodation.

The next morning we were up bright and early to tackle the route shown below; note the altitude climbs and you're just going to have to believe me on this, they're tougher than the graph looks!


Of course we had to have the obligatory group photo while we all looked fresh and cheerful.


It wasn't long before we had our first "incident" of the weekend, the road directly outside of Mashishing isn't great and some moron in an oncoming two ton truck decided to overtake and gave us the choice of becoming roadkill or coward. Jason hung onto the last two inches of tarmac but myself, carl and, I think, hennie took the coward option and bailed off the road and onto the dirt shoulder. Road bikes don't work so well offroad it turns out! Caron, who was following us in the fortuner, was half on and half off the road and although the truck missed her altogether, it was close enough to smash the right hand mirror just from the wind as it went past. I have never seen this before in my life!

We carried on, my knee aching quite a bit, and I kept on aiming for the next 10km to re-assess whether to carry on but it was never quite sore enough to actually give up. Possibly due to the schedule 3 anti-inflamatories that I managed to get hold of. Robbers pass was great but we soon split into two groups, the eager beavers up front (Jason and Carl) and the "I will survive" group of Hennie and myself at the back; far away at the back.

The four of us back together with the pass way down in the distance. The photo lies, it is far down!


Over the top of Robbers pass we went and then we had the exhilarating (73km/hr top speed) downhill all the way into Pilgrims Rest which has so far escaped the fetish for renaming places. We had a brief break at a "creperie" in pilgrims with Carl looking particularly grim although one wouldn't have thought so from his performance on the next hill which was the one out of pilgrims. The start of the hill is really, really steep, so steep that it is difficult to keep the pedals turning even when standing and all I had to say was "only another 10km's of this" to elicit groans of resignation from the congregation. Although the climb out of Pilgrims is steeper it is, mercifully, much shorter and was over quite quickly and then all we had was another great downhill all the way, pretty much, into Graskop where we stopped for the day.

Kirsten was driving out from Johannesburg on her own and only arrived in Graskop after dark so Carl and I went to fetch her from there because finding the silk farm at night wasn't such an easy task. We had supper and retired quite early pretty knackered from the day.

I am surrounded by heathens!

First I receive several less than complimentary comments on my last blog while I was taking a break after 3 months of solid daily blogging ... then my neighbour opens fire on us!

On would think that living in S.A. one would be rather immune to being shot at but this is not the case!

Caron and I were sitting peacefully on our newly completed and painted patio when we heard a loud crack from somewhere nearby and it took us a while to figure out what it actually was. It was only after about the 10th shot and having pellets rattling around the patio that we finally figured out that it was our neighbour playing around with his bb air rifle. What a moron not to mention a truly lousy shot!

We thought it was children which had been left alone so I drove around to the house and rang the door bell several times but they weren't coming out. Arriving back home he was still at it so I climbed up into the corner where I could see and it wasn't a comfortable feeling looking over the target to where our, very drunk, neighbour was sitting on his patio drinking and taking shots. One feels like one has a big bulls-eye between the eyes.

I shouted at him that the next shot would have the cops coming over and that started the altercation which eventually he conceded that maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't be using his rifle and definitely not when he was drunk.

What we have to put up with.

So this is what they're for ...

Being a proud owner of a brand new 4x4 I just had to try it out on a 4x4 course so we ventured out with Carl and Kirsten in their Prado along with my brother and assorted children; lots and lots of them.

We went out quite early to miss the rush and it seems that the 4x4 crowd are not particularly early risers so we had the track to ourselves for most of the morning. The track was dry and dusty for the most part and the order of the day is as follows

• Arrive at an obstacle and think to oneself "Oh S***" the track really does go over there. For the record we both chickened out on doing this particular obstacle; we couldn't do all the obstacles because then there wouldn't be anything to come back for!

• Everyone jumps out of the car and walks the obstacle trying to weave an imaginary path through it that will keep most of the wheels on the ground most of the time. Sometimes living in a less than PC environment is very funny.

• ... so that is what we did. Jordynne, for the record, volunteered!

• Everyone bar the driver stays out of the car to be able to record the impending spectacular accident.

• Driver gingerly enters the obstacle and carefully navigates through it by memory because it is completely impossible to see anything less than about 5m ahead of the car due to the bonnet and all the interesting stuff that one must avoid is just within the 5m blackout zone.

• Very relieved driver completes obstacle and everyone gets back in; the photo opportunity having been missed.

Although the track isn't actually that long it takes quite a bit of time because one is constantly jumping in an out of the car but I find it quite amazing what the cars can accomplish. The video below was done without diff lock which is why I stopped on the hill but it gives quite a good idea what the terrain is like. It's quite a lot of fun.

About two thirds of the way around there is a picnic spot with boma's and braai facilities which I think that we are going to make use of in future. At the picnic area is a sign to beware of the donkeys which aren't really donkeys; I think that they're called zonkey's or debras because they're a cross between a donkey and a zebra.


The whole outing turned out to be a great experience and I think that it is safe to say that everyone is keen to do it again in a couple of months time.

SocketListener

What does it do?
SocketListener listens on an IP address and Port for inbound connections. If a connection is received any data received on the connection will be written to a binary logfile called "SocketListener.data" and a record of the connection is written to a text file called "SocketListener.log". In addition to recording inbound data without interpreting it at all; SocketListener can be configured to respond to connections with either an echo of inbound data or a binary data stream taken from a binary file on disk.

Where can I get it?
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/293834/SocketListener.zip

What is it for?
1. A very simple TCP/IP server which can be very useful when testing the
configuration of firewalls and other network components because you know
that there is something listing on a specific IP and port.
2. Diagnosis of data received when developing interfaces. E.g people in france
say that they sent data in a particular format but your server didn't get it
in the same format and threw it out.
3. Testing of exception handling where the client receives ill formatted or
illegal data that the working server would never normally send back.
4. Any other case where one wants to very quickly have a look at the binary
data received or test the response handling in a client.

Why not use a sniffer? Because of the segmented nature of the networks nowadays one ends up installing sniffers all over the network to monitor what is mostly very simple traffic issues so although it *sort of* sniffs it is not meant to
replace a proper sniffer.

Compiling.
Assuming that you have a jdk installed, run the following in the src directory.
javac SocketListener.java
which will create a SocketListener.class in the same directory.

Running.
If you have compiled it yourself run it on any machine with a jre installed by:
java SocketListener [-p port] [-a IPAddress] [-o filename | -e]

If you are using the precompiled SocketListener.jar:
java -jar SocketListener.jar [-p port] [-a IPAddress] [-o filename | -e]

where parameters are:
[-p port] to listen on a port different from the default of 9021
[-a IPAddress] to listen on an IP address different from "0.0.0.0" i.e. all NIC's
[-o filename | -e] Respond to inbound connections with the contents of "filename" or respond by echoing the inbound data. Default is not to respond at all.

To employ or not to employ; that is the question!

Not being an economist I could be completely off the mark ... but I don't think so.

I think that the time is coming when economists as well as politicians are going to have to come to terms with the unfortunate specter of high and permanent unemployment of segments of their populations. Unfortunately it also seems that high unemployment in the midst of wealth is a sure way to a rise in crime and that isn't something that anyone wants; other than the criminals that is and even then, they don't really want too much competition and not enough prey.

It seems to me that as technology has improved and globalisation has taken place fewer and fewer people are required to make, manage and run what is required for each person in the world to live but as long as consumption keeps on going up it keeps on creating more and more jobs and everyone is happy; sort of.

There are two issues which I think are going to break this cycle, the first is consumption and the second is our "potential skills ability" for lack of a better phrase.
Consumption
I think that is a limit to consumption, one can only eat so much, be entertained so much, learn so much, spend so much. Consumption is not an ever increasing appetite that can be satiated, there is a point where enough is enough even if more is available. The major way that consumption increases is through people that weren't satiated, consuming more or, failing that, there are simply more people consuming. As everyone is finding out, resources to sustain this consumption are not unlimited and whether one likes it or not consumption is going to plateau, either because people simply can't or don't want to consume anymore than they already do or there simply aren't enough resources to make what people would consume if it were available.
Skills potential
Each and every person in this world has the potential to perform many different jobs but, obviously, can only do one thing at a time. Some people may aspire to being a scientist but are just plain incapable of becoming one even given the opportunity while scientists mostly don't aspire to being road crew even though it should be well within their potential to be one. What I am driving at is that there is an asymmetry, some people have the potential to perform many jobs while others have fewer potential jobs from which to choose; all other things being equal. This is important because, before the industrial revolution, there was relatively little mechanisation and most jobs required a large amount of raw physical labour - something just about everyone was capable of. With the introduction of mechanisation some of the jobs requiring the raw manual labour disappeared and those that were previously employed in them had to 'skill up' to take advantage of the jobs that were available to those with higher skills. This has more or less worked, at least in the first world, but at some time, I'm not sure if it has happened or is happening or is about to happen, we are going to go past a turning point. This turning point is the point at which there are going to be jobs available but the majority of people will not have the potential to perform them, all other things being equal of course.

So what to do?
Going back a bit in history, during the age of the british empire the first child would inherit the estate of the parents, the second would go to the army and the third would enter the church. Inequitable as these practices were they did do an interesting thing; The second and third children and particularly the third would be employed in a industry in which there is no visible output. Yes, they were occupied full-time in their career and yes, they received a salary and yes, they believed and sometimes actually were doing some good but at the end of the day; what did they actually produce - an ephemeral product. So, in some ways entering the church acted as a sponge, a labour sponge as it were, and occupied and employed people and we need something similar, something which will have some benefit to society but it doesn't necessarily produce anything or if it does it may not be anything that people would normally willingly pay for.

A Month!

I can't believe that it has actually been a whole month since we returned. It has gone by so fast; getting back into work, seeing friends and family and of course endless trips to the shopping malls. Since pretty much every electronic item we had was stolen from us just before we left life seems to be one long shopping spree which, under normal circumstance, would be pretty cool.

My words of advice to anyone out there contemplating an extended trip like the one we just did and are worried about what it does to one's job. Well the answer is pretty much nothing as far as I can tell so far. What is nice is that people around one at work mature and take on more responsibility which is a really good thing especially in a small company.

I have finally taken delivery of my new car which is a 4x4, I never thought I would ever own a 4x4 but here I am, a proud owner of a Fortuner. Seeing as the garage offered a free 4x4 course I *just* had to take them up. For some reason I thought that the Fortuner was 4x4 'lite' i.e. it could go off road but would struggle a bit when it came to any real off-road action. Being a newcomer my standards may be a bit wierd but what we did on the course was pretty amazing and the car really just drove itself. I can't quite see where the skill comes in; it was just like driving a car albeit up and down 40deg hills. Pretty amazing stuff. I'll take a picture of the car on the weekend and post it complete with real african dust!

Home

The sleeping pill finally started wearing off at about 06:00 just in time for breakfast and the landing at 07:00. When we got to immigration there was a queue of at least 200 people waiting patiently to be processed which doesn't go down well after a night of broken sleep. I thought that either the computers were off-line or there weren't enough staff on duty but this time I can't fault the airports company or the immigration authorities; it was the passengers themselves that were causing the queues. Instead of looking at all the available immigration agents they would wait for one of the 5 or 6 that were directly in front of them to become available leaving the remaining 10 totally under-utilised and it wasn't as if there wasn't electronic indicators to indicate when the next passenger could come forward; it was plain stupidity on behalf of the passengers.

We moved on through to the baggage claim area and waited and waited until the bags eventually came through after about 30 minutes. When the one arrived the others all arrived at the same time and then it was simply a walk out the entrance of the airport and Kim picked us up from there. The end of a holiday and the start of normal life again. I can't believe that it has gone so quickly.

I know that there have been a number of people who have been following our travels around Europe so I hope that you have enjoyed the trip with us and some of the experiences that we have had. I also need to thank my editor, Caron, and refer any complaints about punctuation, grammar and anything else people would like to complain about to her. After managing to write up our experiences I think I may be taking a short break of a week or two before starting blogging again.

We have lift off

Caron had arranged to have lunch with one of her customers in the UK so we thought that we had the morning free but before we knew it, it was time to go so we did a final sweep of the house to make sure that we hadn't left anything behind and jumped in the ice-cream van for the last journey and completely forgot to check that the back doors of the van were closed. They weren't and it was only after we had done about 30km that a car pulled up next to us on the motorway and told us that the doors were open. We were on the M25 which is akin to saying that one is in a parking lot which moves occasionally so Caron jumped out and closed them noting that our two suit cases were missing. There wasn't anything of great value in them but we couldn't believe that we had been stupid enough to leave the doors open. 3 months of camping and 14500 kilometres of driving (@6.5l/100km and a cost of about 900EUR) and we lose our first items on the way to the airport on the way home. Anyway there wasn't anything we could do about it other than feel like complete idiots; we didn't have time to go back and look and even if we did, the chances of actually finding them were minimal so we just wrote it off to stupidity.

Lunch was very enjoyable and passed far too quickly. Neil and Cathy could barely hide their amusement at what we had managed to do with our baggage. Come to think of it, once we had got over that 'how could I have been so stupid' feeling there is a definitely a lot of humour in the situation.

We moved back onto the M25 parking lot and took 2 hours to get to Heathrow and had just parked when John phoned to politely inquire if we were perhaps missing two pieces of maroon luggage. The bags had fallen out in front of his neighbours house so now we have the luggage located but we have to work out a way of getting them back to South Africa.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow has a bit of a jinxed existence because there always seems to be something going wrong but we checked in and went through the security, which is getting just a tad ridiculous, and went to wait in the duty free without a problem. I left Caron in front of a TV and went looking for some kind of a toy because, thus far, Caron has been the happy recipient of all the souvenirs. Not that there are a lot of them but it would be nice to have at least one. This trip just isn't mine for souvenirs and I found a another great one for Caron but nothing for me. She is now the proud owner of a Sony eBook reader; something I have been trying for ages to get her mostly because of enlightened self interest. Each eBook that she reads means one less dead tree cluttering up our house and no pressure to build yet more bookcases. To get to our boarding ramp we had to go via tube to section B, they have two tubes in case one breaks down. They should have had three because both of them had broken down so we ended up walking all the way to section B. The jinx continues!

The flight back was completely full and Caron and I ended up sitting behind each other so i asked the person next to me if he would mind swapping with Caron. Grumble, grumble, 'this always happens to me!', long face but he kindly did the swap.

Out and about in the UK

By the time we had woken up both Rhys and John had gone to work. Rhys leaves at 05:00 and John at 06:30 so it wasn't any surprise that we missed both of them. The only thing that we really had to do was to put the remaining money from our trip, not a whole lot as one can imagine, into an account. Doesn't sound too difficult but then I hadn't counted on the British way of banking which is especially difficult at the moment. The first bank we approached had effectively bought the actual bank into whose accounts we wanted to deposit but they couldn't help us but they were very helpful and pointed us across the way to the 'bought bank'. After waiting for some time in the queue we were eventually helped but the teller didn't know what to do because the account numbers, although correct, weren't compatible with his system. He phoned up his call desk for some help and they answered the call but refused to speak to him; 3 times in a row. Eventually we were holding up other customers so we were palmed off to a supervisor who also tried only to find out that in order to do a deposit we would have to make a deposit into a competing banks account and then it would arrive at the correct bank and into the correct account. This sounds very backwards to me but when we went to the competitor they didn't blink and promptly performed the transaction. I'm curious as to whether the money will actually arrive!

Having completed the only thing we had to do during the morning we went for coffee and I was halfway through coffee when I realised that we were a few minutes over the hour for the 'pay and display' parking so I rushed back to feed the meter only to find that the meter maid had beaten me to it. A 60GBP fine for 10 minutes saw an instantaneous rise in the blood pressure so I went back finished my coffee and then drove out thinking of how I could exact revenge. While we were driving out Caron happened to notice that the fine had been issued during the validity period of the pay and display ticket so the meter maid hadn't actually even looked at it, he had just issued a fine. On the way out we collared another meter maid who explained what we needed to do to get it rescinded which we proceeded to do. Phew, that was 60GBP close!

During the afternoon we drove around to Epsom Downs where Lane, Williams daughter, lives and had afternoon tea with her and her two children, anneke and william. We thoroughly enjoyed the visit and before we knew it, we had to rush back to John and Julies for supper. We were going to go out but everyone was quite knackered so we ended up just having some take-aways at home which turned out to be much better than expected. The TV happened to be on when the first reports started coming through that MJ had died which was really bad news for Julie because there were 50 concerts coming up in which she was involved that now wouldn't be taking place.

London, here we come!

Eish! Our holiday is all but dead, it feels like there is little left but to get on the plane and fly back home. Both Caron and I were a little quiet and introspective during the drive up to London.

The day started off a bit awkwardly because the reception was still closed at 8:30 and we were told that it would only open at 10:30 which was far too late to make it to the chunnel on time. Fortunately they didn't give us too much trouble and opened up especially for us and with that done, it was only a couple of hours before we found ourselves at Calais. We checked in, bought some coffee and tried to spend our last few remaining euros before driving onto the train. We had just a little bit of excitement when we went through passport control because as of 1 July all South Africans have to have visas in order to enter the UK. Even though we should have been fine, there is always a chance that they have changed the rules or we were told an incorrect date which would have been a real problem. As it turned out we needn't have worried. An hour later we emerged into the English sunshine and having to remember that one has to drive on the left. It took some getting used to, much more than I would have expected.

We arrived at John and Julies at about midday and spent the afternoon unpacking and repacking everything ready to go into the plane on Friday. Not a whole lot else to write about.

Brugges

Although it sounds fancy to prononounce Brugges as 'brooge' it should actually be pronounced as 'brug' as in Afrikaans for bridge with an extra 'ge' tacked on the end. We have been told by absolutely everyone that Brugge is awesome so we went into the day with high expectations and expecting to be disappointed but our expectations were vindicated; it really is a very photogenic town. A sort of Venice without the decay!

Brugge has been sensible about parking and there are several large multi-storey car parks to choose from so that was our first destination and from there we walked to the town square which looks like below.

We walked over to the information centre and then had coffee at a small cafe off the main thoroughfare where the waiter was a spitting image of my ex brother-in-law. Thereafter we took a canal boat trip which we thoroughly enjoyed in technicolour language. First Flemish then English followed by French, we could pretty much get the gist of it from the Flemish and then get a confirmation in English.

The town planners have sensibly refrained from the temptation to build high-rise buildings which means that the town itself has kept it's quaintness intact so it was a little bit of a surprise to find a permanent exhibition of Salvador Dali's paintings, drawings and scupture housed in the town hall. We missed seeing the bulk of Dali's work at the Dali Museum in Spain because we were a little pressed for time (can one believe it in a 3 month journey) at that particular point so I was really please to be able to take in some here. To say that Dali flirted with the boundary between art and pornography would not be true; he obliterated it entirely. There is something quite peculiar psychologically about purposefully drawing, in great detail, one's wife's genitals for public consumption. Not only that but Gala, his wife, willingly went along with it so I choose to conclude that they, both of them, were simply trying to shock the public. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel that there is somehow a difference between the nameless pornography available in every fuel station shop and what Dali and Gala did. One lacks, due to its anonymity, a persona whereas Dali and Gala, specifically because it is not anonymous, somehow has persona.

We had to have some lunch to get over Dali's paintings before we decided to finish the day by going to the Groeninge Museum which was a great disappointment. They have a special exhibition on about 'Charles the Bold' so we missed almost all the paintings by the Flemish masters which, we were assured, were still on display. All one of them!

So it was a little bit of a sour taste in the mouth that we bid our farewell to Brugge and have to agree with everyone who recommended it that it really is worthwhile making the effort to go and see it.

Farewell to Eindhoven, hello Zeebrugge

We had a leisurely start to the morning because we actually didn't have too far to travel and said our fond farewells to the Whitwards and we hope to see them the next time that they're in South Africa which isn't too far in the future. I forgot to get a photograph of the whole Whitward clan so I think that I'm going to be in trouble when I get back. The drive was very uneventful other than mabel getting us lost in Ghent for about 20 minutes. We were actually wanting to camp in Brugge but there are no campsites in Brugge and the one's that used to exist have closed down so we ended up in a campsite south of Zeebrugge which proved to be a very viable alternative.

The afternoon was spent lounging around and reading, I've become hooked by a novel and I have to finish it before I can continue with life. Nevertheless, at about 18:00 Caron dragged me out of my cave to go and have a look at the seaside; it looks just like Brighton according to Caron.

There are hundreds of wooden huts on the beach which look like changeing rooms but since they have names on them I suspect that some people block book them and then rent them out piecemeal; how else would a 'beach' attract the name of 'Jerome'?

Back at the campsite we had pasta and pesto for supper before a nice long hot shower and then lights out. Of course the sun only actually goes down after 22:00 and even Caron is starting to complain that this is just too much daylight; the days ought to get shorter. Well, in a few days time her wish will become reality when we land in Johannesburg in the middle of winter when they have the shortest of their days.

We are starting to get into "last time we'll do this more" and the larder is starting to look a bit bare as we run everything down for when we arrive in the UK. It does lead to some unusual meals but so far we have avoided having anything like sardines and condensed milk.

To Heusden and back

While Nita was watching Sabine doing ballet, Bill, Caron and myself headed out to Heusden which is a fortified village; one of 13 in Holland. Heusden is besides the Maas river and the fortifications take the form of several alternating rings of canal and earthen walls set in the same pattern as that of the castle in Cape Town. On the way there we took several detours due to roadworks, it seems that the cold weather in winter really plays havoc with the road system here and they need to effect repairs every summer depending on how severe the previous winter was. Last winter was very cold so there are road works going on all over the place.

Arriving at Heusden we happened to get really lucky and hit it on the one weekend that, every 18 months, the whole town dresses up and puts on a medieval pageant. Bill was totally taken by surprise, he's been here at least 20 times with various visitors and never seen it so it turned out to be a bit of a novelty for Bill as well.

The town had it's militia doing exercises which, if this had been real life, would have meant that the town was doomed. It was more like organised rabble rather than an actual militia. We also had the canon being fired as well as volleys of musket fire. I have to admit that it was quite difficult to remember to click the shutter while being attacked by the pressure wave generated by the gun. I wonder if they actually hit whatever they were aiming for, there's probably some rabbit out there thinking that using a canon just isn't fair!

On our way to the harbour we walked past the foot of one of the the windmills and had to go around the front where the blades were moving. It was perfectly safe but it really didn't look that safe and it wasn't so easy to nonchalantly walk though the dodgy bit, that is to say we all bent double and gapped it as quickly as we could. It took a bit of time for Caron to join us on the other side.

The medieval harbour was tiny but it had what would have been fishing boats moored in it as well as some larger freight carriers. We had some lunch at the restaurant looking over the harbour and in spite of our agreement, Bill tried several times to pay the bill but fortunately Caron was wide awake and neatly intercepted it. It wasn't that much as lunches go but it seemed to break the ice a bit and Bill was far more willing to let us pay for little things afterwards.

While we were busy with lunch there was a mock trial conducted and the two villains thrown into the water which can only be described as freezing. It may be summer here but the water is still very cold.

From lunch we wandered around looking at all the townspeople who had been commandeered into acting as urchins or women of easy virtue or blacksmiths or some other occupation that would have been relevant.

There were even a couple of ensembles, Bills impression was that there were more children in Heusden that could play the violin (sort of) than in the whole of Eindhoven. Methinks that he was joking!

Walking past a herring merchant Bill and I couldn't resist some more haring eaten in the traditional way. The fishmonger was preparing the fish right in front of us and it literally takes him about 30 seconds to gut, behead, skin and debone the fish ready for eating; it was quite amazing to watch.
I really enjoyed getting to know Bill because, strange as it may seem, this is the first time that I have ever actually spent any real time with him. The similarities between him and me are quite remarkable, even our handwriting looks vaguely similar; I feel a bit like a quieter more reserved version of him in a lot of ways.

We went home and changed to go out to a favourite restaurant of Bill and Nita's which just happens to have a Michelin star, I'm not 100% sure exactly what that means but it seems to be a big thing and the restaurant was certainly a cut above anything I've ever been to and I've been to some pretty good restaurants. The meal consisted of seven or eight courses but each course isn't more than a snack so by the end of the evening one hasn't got the "Oh No! I've overeaten again" feeling, just pleasantly full. Not all the courses were fantastic but some of them were just amazing; if the wok last night and this one are representative of the average quality of restaurants, South African restaurants are in the dark ages. I suspect that these are probably above average though, even for here. The topics of discussion ranged from business to politics to culture, religion and technology and even periodically touched on family life and I loved it. I think that of everything that I miss, this is what I missed most during our 3 months away; the interaction with people and discussion of ideas. It's like we have been living in a little cocoon for 3 months and I've suddenly been let out to the real world again. Pumpkin hour came and went which, for us, is a bit of novelty these days and we finally went to sleep at about 00:30 or 01:00. I don't know what the final bill was but I am sure it was VERY expensive, think several hundreds of euros; needless to say I didn't fight Bill on this one and just graciously accepted his generosity!

Eindhoven and the back of the beyond

I met Jeroen at 09:30 and we left for what turned out be a 50km real ride. Holland, since it doesn't have any real mountains, makes up for this by having no downhills and therefore no places where one can get a bit of a rest before the next spurt of energy. This makes for a really hard ride, not because of the terrain, but simply because there just isn't a break, any break. The ride itself was great fun in and around the forests because it is slightly technical but not so much so that one really needs to take it very slowly. We passed many people out rowing, riding or running and I was surprised at how quickly one could get out of the city and into the countryside.

On the way back we climbed the one and only mountain around, an old rubbish dump which has been covered with soil and grass and vegetation encouraged to grow on it so it doesn't look unsightly. We made it back to Bill and Nitas in time for lunch and before we knew it, it was time for the first test between the Lions and the Springboks which we have been looking forward to since it was our first taste of rugby for over 3 months. Although the Boks won, it was the Lions that looked the more dangerous and it had Bill on the edge of his seat because he has an English son-in-law who, he knew, would *have* to phone to rub some salt in if the Lions won. Not that Bill refrained from doing likewise! Nothing like a little family niggle to keep relationships going. We had a bottle of real champagne to celebrate which went down a treat!

To celebrate the win we all went out to a local chinese restaurant which was fantastic; we could really do with a couple of these back in South Africa. It wasn't only the food that was great, the service was good, relaxed and friendly - a restaurant I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. Duelling Bill about paying for the meal is like duelling Barry because they're both very generous and both very forceful so we made an accommodation that he would pay for the wok and I would pay for lunch tomorrow.

I was glad to get to bed because the the ride, although only a few hours long, had drained me but it's a great feeling to go to bed really tired and having had a great meal.

Driving down to Eindhoven

We had some time on our hands so we decided to drive a little way up the eastern edge of Ijslmeer just to see what there is and had a really enjoyable detour. There isn't a whole lot there but we got to drive on top of the dyke and look at the yachts sailing on Ijslmeer, the wind was pumping so Caron was very happy to be on dry land.

Windmills have been synonymous with Holland for a long time but during our trip a new kind of windmill has made it's presence felt and are a common feature on the skyline.

Driving past a lock through the dyke I had to take a photograph to try and show what a substantial drop there was between Ijslmeer and the canals; we found out later that it was 2.6m below sea level. That is quite a bit of water waiting to flow into Holland. Apparently, water is continuously being pumped out because if it isn't, it will just seep back in even though a dyke hasn't been breached. A power failure here would be a real national disaster.

Once we had turned off we set course for Eindhoven but only after we had fortified ourselves with an 'Uitsmuiter' at a very nice roadside restaurant. The road down to Eindhoven lived up to it's reputation, we found out later, of having traffic jams pretty much the whole way. It was only the second time that we have actually been in a real traffic jam, the first having been in Naples.

Thanks to mabel finding Bill and Nita's place was dead easy and we received a warm welcome from Bill and Nita and it wasn't too long before we were up and off to go out for supper to Sally-Anne and Jeroen and their two children, Sabine and Max. This was where I was introduced to a great dutch tradition of eating raw fish, 'haring'. The dutch word for herring, it was delicious but I couldn't get Caron to have any, much to my disappointment. The way one eats it is to grab it by it's slimy tail and to lower it into one's mouth head first and bite off a mouthful, although this sounds a bit odd it really is delicious. It has thankfully been beheaded, gutted and skinnned just in case you were thinking that one ate the head first.
We had a great meal before retiring fat and happy to real beds after a real bath. Not like the one in the campground in Amsterdam which turned off after 5 minutes. It turns out that Jeroen also rides so we have agreed to go for a bit of a ride tomorrow which I am really looking forward to.

Zaanse Schans

We couldn't really say that we had been to Holland without actually seeing a windmill and at least some dykes and canals. The canals in Amsterdam don't count; they're more like Venice comes to northern europe. Thus we found ourselves at Zaanse Schans which turned out to be a fascinating day. They have restored to working order a half dozen windmills so we were able to go in and atctually see one in action.

The one we chose to go in to see happened to be a manufacturer of pigments for oil paints but there were others that produced oil or lumber. I found it fascinating to see how they actually worked because most of the windmill is made of wood including the gears and actually seeing it operating one got a feeling of just how much power was actually derived from the wind. At one stage there were 1000 windmills in Zaanse Schans and it was considered to be a major industrial centre.

We wandered around a bit and had a bite to eat at real tourist prices. 9EUR for a pancake was just a little over the top so we contented ourselves with a cup of coffee and some excellent apple pie. I have been putting off having Dutch cheese for some unknown reason and they had a cheese factory where I could taste a whole variety and I have to say that my reluctance was misplaced; they were quite delicious. Caron came down with a headache about an hour later so we suspect that there is some food die used in their manufacture but other than this, they really tasted great.

The road bridge over from the main road was undergoing repairs so we had to use a ferry and in boarding it Caron accidentally stepped in front of a woman on her bicycle. Realising this, she turned around and apologised to which the response was "You should be!". Caron was so taken aback by the rudeness that she was speechless; the Dutch, it seems, are not renown for their politeness.

The tiny shed on the right is the outhouse and it discharges straight into the canal. Methinks that Holland must have hummed a fair deal when these were common and in use. Not the sort of water one would like to fall into.

We moved on north to see the afsluitdijk between north holland and friesland. It is about 30km long and keeps the north sea from flooding holland and was built pretty much by hand during the 1930's. During the last two years of it's construction there were 5000 labourers working on it every day and seeing the size of it, one can understand why. It's a huge amount of earthworks and it looks like the water level inland is at least a metre below that of the north sea.

This is actually the sea wall near Den Helder but it looks about the same size and to finish the day off I caught the Dutch showing everyone else how one ought to climb hills. Close your eyes and get someone else to push!

Asterdam Day 2

We rose slowly, me trying time reading 'Anathem' which started out quite slow but is building up a good head of steam. The campsite has it's own flock of ducks which go about begging from campers; these are the two youngest of the beggars.

They get quite precosious and one has to be careful to keep the tent door closed otherwise they would be inside having a gander at our food.

We caught the graffiti train into Amsterdam and then the same tram as yesterday but got off at the next stop because I wanted to go and have a look at the Van Gogh museum. Caron wasn't particularly keen so she went and found a coffee shop while I ambled around. I loved it, there is something about his work which I really like. I think that it is the simplicity and the colours because it certainly isn't his ability with perspective. Anyway, whatever it is or was I really enjoyed seeing so many and seeing his development over the 10 years or so that he painted.

The other gallery that I wanted to see was the FOAM gallery where, the advertising said, I could see examples of great phtographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson but the advertising was misleading (isn't it always; it must be the aim of advertisers that they get it right so often; else they're just incompetent) and I ended up seeing an exhibition of a South African artist. All the way to Amsterdam to see pictures taken not 20km from where I live. 7.50EUR of not funny! Once again, Caron waited patiently outside the gallery but this time not for so long.

We managed to find a coffee company which had free internet as long as you bought some coffee; we didn't need any second invitation and spent a good hour and a half posting and catching up with email. This is the kind of place I could get used to, we sat at a window and watched the boats going up and down the canal while we each downloaded email and sorted our internet lives out.

Our final outing for the day was to go on a cruise around the canals which takes about an hour and although it is totally canned, touristy and the driver wasn't so hot at getting around some corners, it was definitely worthwhile.

We also got to see Heerengracht street from the water instead of on the land. At the end of the tour the canned announcement made a plea for a tip for the captain for treating us all so well but the plea was nullified by the captain driving into a dock about 30 seconds later so, no tip. Anyway, what is the captain doing with a British accent.

Back home I dived back into Anathem in between supper and coffee and watching three teenage english girls setting up camp a little way off complete with two cases of beer. People seem to drink quite a bit here.

Didn't finish Anathem but I'm hopeful for tomorrow.