Visit to Copenhagen and Lund for NordiCHI conference

And it’s time for another conference! Last Friday I left for the NordiCHI conference in Lund with my colleagues Alex, Dries and Jeroen. Because the most efficient way to travel to Lund is to fly to Copenhagen and take the train from there to Lund, we decided to leave earlier and to stay in Copenhagen for a day. Dries booked us a comfortable room in the Danhostel (which felt like a night train that isn’t moving), which was very cosy.
We arrived quite late on Friday evening, so we had a quick dinner (which was good actually, with a home-made veggie burger and eight different sauces – not kidding) and some cocktails. Saturday we wandered around the city centre of Copenhagen, visited the Danish Design Centre (which was not too big and had rather strange stuff)and did some white Lego building. Later in the afternoon we took the train to Lund, where we had an all-Swedish dinner (Ikea meat balls and Chocolate Moose - nice movie for fans of the Swedish Chef).

Sunday was the first day of the conference, on which we had workshops. Dries and I went to a workshop on lo-fi haptic prototyping, which was a good workshop. We started with presentations and demonstrations of (supposedly) lo-fi prototypes, though most of the prototypes were quite hi-fi (especially compared to Eise’s home made MDF mobile phone I brought). I especially liked the physical (lego) avatar, the Wizard of Oz haptic feedback by sending a sound file to a mobile phone in silent mode, Nokia’s universal gesture alphabet, the concept of “body storming” and the Philips “shiver down my spine” vest.
In the afternoon we had a lo-fi prototyping session, in which we were divided into four groups and had to make a (you guessed it) lo-fi haptic prototype. There was some really nice stuff to make the prototypes of (balloons, magnets, lego, modelling clay, foam, etc.) and we did quite a few interesting discoveries (when you put a magnet into a balloon, inflate the ballon and stick another magnet to the magnet inside the balloon, the balloon pops!).

Today was the first day of a keynote and paper sessions of the conference. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the quality and the content of the presentations. Also, I’m afraid that the keynote (of a Firefox t-shirt wearing speaker) was a bit too geeky for a large part of the audience, although I liked his concept of Evil Design. Interesting exceptions were a presentation about measuring bodily movements with a desk chair (although I’m not quite convinced of the validity of such movements as a measure of emotions) and a presentation about designing for participation in public knowledge institutions (which included the virtual peepholes into the ocean which I reported on at the Participatory Design Conference).
After the conference we had a short tour of the Museum of Sketches for Public Art and a Microsoft reception (apparently, Microsoft is fond of BiFi sausages and soepstengels). Fortuately, Jeroen and I spotted a sushi bar earlier in the afternoon, and we had quite some fun with different styles of eating sushi (fingers and wobbly chopsticks).

Conference venue (Lund University).

More quests and more art in Chicago

I started my day with a nice breakfast at Chicago's largest Whole Foods Market (I'm a devoted fan), after which I took the subway to yet another outdoor store (I know, it is getting boring). The good news is that this shop had the Icebreaker stuff I was looking for, and (even better), they had 20% off of the whole collection today! Nice...

After lunch, I took a subway to the Gold Coast area (sounds good, doesn't it?) and wandered around there. At about two o'clock, it started raining (and I mean serious rain, pouring rain which hasn't stopped since), so I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art , which turned out to be free on Tuesdays. The museum wasn't really big, but there were quite some interesting items. I liked the work of Kara Walker, showing black paper cut silhouettes representing "Negro scenes".

The remainder of the afternoon, the weather was so bad, I bought a magazine and went to The Cheese Cake Factory (!), to eat some delicious Godiva Chocolate Cheese cake. On my way back to the hostel (via sushi shop), I got so wet, I put my clothes in the dryer. Now I'm watching the Presidential Debate on tv (which was roughly disturbed by a fire alarm in the hostel, on which we had to go outside and were only let back inside after the fire department thoroughly searched the building and decided the alarm was false). It is quite boring, to be honest.

Tomorrow is my last day here. My plane leaves around four thirty, so I'll probably have to leave around one o'clock. Still have to go to Wired NextFest, so I'm going to pack my bags in a minute.

Ferris wheels, art and blisters

To start with a few pictures from the hostel (common room and bedroom). I'm in a six-bed bedroom which is pretty big. One of my room mates likes to go to bed really early (seven or so, not kidding), so I try to avoid the bedroom as much as possible at night. I slept quite well, given the fact that the bed is very soft and my back has been in better shapes.

Today I had (free!) breakfast at the hostel and because breakfast is between seven and nine pm, I was ready to go quite early. I left the hostel with the intention to visit the Chicago Cultural Center (because this was about the only attraction opening that early), but I ended up making a long walk. I took the BP Bridge (designed by Frank Gehry, which wouldn't look bad next to the Bilbao Guggenheim) to walk to Lake Michigan. I followed the lake shore until Navy Pier, where I made a ride in a big Ferris wheel (sponsored by McDonalds). Great views, and together with two other early birds I was the only passenger!

From Navy Pier I walked back to The Loop area to visit the Art Institute of Chicago, which was very nice. Unfortunately, the museum was in the middle of major construction, so many pieces of art were not on display and some wings were closed altogether. But, enough remained to be seen and I really enjoyed walking through the museum at my own pace (no offence Eise!). I particularly liked the design pieces and contemporary American paintings. One exposition was especially impressive. It was an exposition of photomontages by Martha Rosler, who combined images of the Vietnam war with images from American home interiors of the 50's and 60's. Quite surprising and shocking (see one of the pictures in the photo below,). The museum had a great museum shop, with interesting goodies (no crap) and lots of books. I bought a book about the use of patterns in design.


After dropping of the book in the hostel, I went on an Icebreaker quest. I took the subway to Lincoln Park, to an outdoor shop selling Icebreaker (according to the Icebreaker website). Conveniently, the shop was located next to a huge Whole Foods, a (mostly) organic supermarket (think Gimsel, but then 50 times bigger). Lovely. I composed a good lunch which I ate at the terrace (see photo).Sadly, no Icebreaker stuff in the outdoor store, so I continued my quest in other outdoor stores which I looked up before- hand. No luck yet, so I'll have to keep on searching.

In the end, I spent most of my afternoon in Lincoln Park, which turned out to be a really nice area of Chicago. I loved being out of busy downtown in a more residential part of the city, with little shops, choice to drink coffee at another place than Starbucks, and so on). Later in the afternoon I quickly walked down Magnificient Mile, the main shopping street in Chicago where all big chain stores are located (apart from the Apple Store, nothing special). I had dinner in a typical American (?) pizza place. Having dinner on your own here in the US is not very bad actually. Mostly, they seat you at the bar, with all the other lonely soles, which easily results in funny conversations (either with the bar tenders or with other guests - today I set next to a guy from working in the business of surgical technologies ).

Now it's time to bother my (probably vast asleep) room mate. I'll be back tomorrow!

Sweet home Chicago

This morning I left Bloomington and took off to Chicago. I will be staying here for a couple of days (I'm leaving Wednesday afternoon). I arrived in Chicago around noon and I'm staying in the HI hostel right in the old city centre. I did not really do a lot today, just some wondering around and some shopping (the pad lock I brought for the safe in my room did not fit, I finished my book, etc.).

The weather was not really great, which made the city look a bit gloomy. Later in the afternoon the rain stopped, fortunately. Right now I am considering what to do in the two and a half days that I have left here. A few things that are definitely on my to do list are Wired NextFest, the Art Institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Of course I will do more shopping (Icebreaker retailers, Apple store, here I come!) and any other suggestions for activities in Chicago are more than welcome!

Final day @ PDC08

Today was the closing day of the Participatory Design Conference. It wasn't a full day, a plenary session of research papers this morning, and a closing keynote after lunch. A few things I'd like to mention from the presentations I saw today...

A presentation I really liked because of the combination of theory on methods and examples from practice was about new ways of engaging with exhibition spaces. I was especially charmed by one of the products designed in this project, which was a movable hydroscope (looking a bit like a car tyre with a computer screen in the middle) which visitors of an aquarium could move over the floor (which represented a virtual ocean), see photo (source: http://www.ijdesign.org). Interesting about the theoretical part of this presen- tation was the discovery that methods that I already know and have used myself, turn out to have beautiful names, such as aesthetic and fictitional inquiry (sounds nice, doesn't it?).

Furthermore, the keynote presentation of today, although a tad too long, included some interesting projects. The speaker was Natalie Jeremijenko of Environmental Health Clinic, which is a really cool initiative of New York University. I quote their website: "The clinic works like this: you make an appointment, just like you would at a traditional health clinic, to talk about your particular environmental health concerns. What differs is that you walk out with a prescription not for pharmaceuticals but for actions: local data collection and urban interventions directed at understanding and improving your environmental health; plus referrals, not to medical specialists but to specific art, design and participatory projects, local environmental organizations and local government or civil society groups: organizations that can use the data and actions prescribed as legitimate forms of participation to promote social change." Just take a look at the site, though it has some usability issues, the projects are worthwhile.

So, that was that for the conference. In retrospect, I quite liked this conference. It was my first time to attend and I had a good time. I especially liked the parallel exploratory sessions, because they hosted the very concrete, practical examples which provided lots of inspiration for my own work. I also liked most of the more theoretical presentations in the plenary research paper sessions (which actually had pretty few research presentations for that matter), although in my opinion these sessions had a bit too many overview presentations of the current position of participatory design. I would have liked to hear more ideas for the future. Another thing that I liked was the community of PDC visitors, of which most people were regulars and knew each other well. It was a small group of people, but very nice and open minded. Finally, the organization of the conference was really very good (and I don't say that often!). There was lots of time reserved for questions and discussion in each session, and not a single one of the sessions that I visited ran late. Quite an accomplishment. In summary, the conference was very much worthwhile and I will definitely submit a paper for the next edition in 2010 (especially since this edition will be held in Australia!).

One last thing to mention was that we went on a hike in Brown County State Park with a small group of conference visitors (most left immediately after the conference), which I enjoyed a lot. It was nice to see a bit of the surroundings of Bloomington, it is quite beautiful out here (unfortunately, we were a few weeks too early for the typical autumn colours).

So, I'm all packed and ready to leave for Chicago tomorrow morning! I could not reserve a shared taxi to the airport, so I will have to get up early tomorrow morning to catch the Shuttle bus to Indianapolis.

Thursday at PDC08

Apart from a neat goodie I got today (it was a Replublican chapstick, almost as cool as the Pim Fortuyn supermarket cart coin we have), here are some highlights from Thursday at the conference. I attended two sessions of plenary research papers and one session of exploratory papers (the exploratory paper sessions being the six parallel sessions). As on Wednesday, the papers in the exploratory session provided me with quite some food for thought. One presentation was about "Participatory Sensing", an interesting concept where mobile phones are used as environmental sensors for nearly anything. So people can use their mobile phones to capture, share, access, analyse and store information on the go. Since everyone has different mobile phones with different features, many different things can be captured (e.g. photos of the environment, bumpiness of the road (by using accelerometers), locations and routes (GPS), personal experiences (e.g. text), sound recordings). When adding all of this captured context information together, interesting applications for sharing and collaboration emerge. An example that was used in the presentation was a project called CycleSens, where cyclists collect and share information about their routes to work.

Another idea that I liked was the use of a scale model for participatory redesign. In this case the scale model was of a particular piece of a road which was prone to many accidents. In participatory design sessions end users and road engineers were invited to redesign that stretch of road (with all kinds of tools, like trees, thicker striping, colours, etc.). I am usually working on quite small products I'd like to design together with users, but this is a nice solution to design on a larger scale (could also be used for buildings, for example).

An interesting point that was mentioned in a number of presentations already is the communication between end users and professionals in sessions (e.g. engineers, architects, etc.). A common problem seems to be that the language used by the professionals is totally incomprehensible to the end users, something to keep in mind when doing participatory design sessions. In one study presented, two sessions were organised, one with and one without the professionals, to really make sure that the end user needs were addressed properly, without focusing too much on the professionals' ideas.

Finally, I'd like to mention one plenary presentation, which interestingly enough was a literature review on participatory design. What I liked about this presentation though, was that the presenter (Andy Dearden) was very critical and for me really pointed out some interesting issues. Some quotes (might not be exactly litteraly): "Is participatory design for IT an oxymoron?" "How participatory is participatory design when users can participate in a project when the researchers tell them to and in the way the researchers want them to?" This last quote remembered me of a discussion we had in the MobileHCI workshop last month, where we considered the idea of asking users not only to participate in co-design sessions, but also to participate in deciding on the methods to use in the co-design session.

So, these I guess were the highlights of Thursday for me. Since the weather is very nice here (lots of sun and quite high temperatures), we took some time to relax in the late afternoon. Thursday was also the day of the conference banquet, which had great deserts and also a great group of female singers. Later at night we went into the city centre to drink cocktails and to go to the Lotus Festival, where we sneaked into a big tent to see a really cool band, Funkadesi playing a wild mixture of world music styles (reggae, Indian music, African, Latin, nearly everything).

So now I'm up to the final day of the conference (which is not a full day anymore). And tomorrow, it's Chicago time!!

Highlight of the day(s) @ PDC08

So I've just returned to my hotel room after the first real day of the Participatory Design Conference (first day was workshops & tutorials) to give a quick overview of the highlights of the day here in Bloomington. In general, I like the atmosphere here. Although many people seem to know each other quite well from earlier editions of the conference, most of them seem very open and interested.

The best presentation of today for me was Carl DiSalvo's talk about a really cool project called Neighbourhood Networks. In this project, people from a specific neighbourhood were invited to participate in a series of 8 workshops in which they would design a robotics and sensor-based prototype. What really got me thinking was the way in which the participants were introduced to the technologies of robotics and sensors in a totally hands-on fashion. Usually, introduction to technology is a difficult thing in participatory design, but in this project participants were just told to use the technology as they pleased in their own neighbourhood, which seemed to work just fine! Also, what I'd really like to try out once is to organize a series of workshops in stead of just one (or a few). Here, participants had one workshop per week, which allowed them during the week to think over their prototypes, collect materials, test their prototype, etc.

I also took some good topics to think about from the Exploratory Papers session (of which there were six parallel sessions, which is way too much at such a small conference, we were with about ten people in the audience only). One of the presentations was about using cultural probes with participants who are visually impaired, which poses quite a challenge in designing the probes. Since I am about to start working on a project involving users with disabilities (in hearing, vision, cognition), I was quite interested to see how the authors of this paper dealt with their target group. I saw quite some interesting stuff (i.e. using clay to "illustrate" one's context, "photography by proxy"), and I also noted some interesting considerations to spend some time thinking and discussing about ("How to make probing and designing materials attractive to people with visual impairments since you cannot use visuals as you would normally do?", Doing observations to learn about user driven innovation at home in stead of using cultural probes, etc.).

So, enough stuff to use in some way in my own work! We ended the day (after a reception - Belgian style almost, except for the fact that we got one drink ticket only, which seems more the Dutch style) watching the vice presidential debate in a lecture room full of IU students, a true American experience! Not a really spectacular debate though (no blood or any physical encounters, but highly polite smiles only - I suspect Palin and Biden have the same dentist), no clear winner and nothing new. But quite fun anyway.

Arrived in Bloomington (IN)

This week I am in the well known and lively town of Bloomington (Indiana, US), near Indianapolis. I am here for a conference about Participatory Design (it's about methods to involve end users in the design of new products and to use their experience and ideas to collaboratively create new products). Bloomington is a rather small town (a little less than 70.000 inhabitants), and since it is home to Indiana University, probably more than half of the people living here are students.

I arrived yesterday after quite a long and hasty trip. I had to get up quite early to go to Liege to take a train to the airport in Brussels, but in the end I was a little bit too early. Because I was one of the first passengers to check in, and since I was traveling alone, the guy at the check in desk refused to give me a seat number (so families and people traveling together could be seated next to each other). I would get assigned a seat at the gate. Which was true, but the problem was I only got a seat number after ALL the other passengers already entered the plane. Which means that all the overhead luggage cabins are taken. Not so convenient when you've decided to take cabin luggage only....

Apart from the cabin storage problems, the decision not to check in any luggage probably was the reason I made my connecting flight at Chicago O'Hare airport... The aiport website said that 90 minutes would be plenty of time for transferring. Yeah right. I don't know which part they forgot to include in their calculations, but a 10 minute walk to customs, a more than 60 minute line before passing customs, an 8 minute procedure at customs (including taking 10 fingerprints), 5 minutes waiting time for the train to another terminal, and a (very short) 15 minute line at security caused me a run which almost got me into cardiac arrest... But, fortunately, the plane was delayed, so I made it after all.

So, after a 19 hour trip I arrived in Bloomington, in Indiana Memorial Union Hotel, right at the Indiana University Campus. The campus here is beautifull, lots and lots of green, trees, parks, water, etc. Some of the buildings are also quite nice, most of them are rather large and ugly (neoclassical) though. The building that hosts my hotel is the worst of all, it's hugely colossal, featuring it's own Starbucks and Pizza Hut!

Today, I had had an extra day before the conference starts, to get rid of my jet lag, and I spent the day wandering through Bloomington and visiting the IU Art Museum. Bloomington is quite a friendly town, but also, as I said, rather small, so half a day was more than enough to explore the city center. I did some shopping (bought a gallon of drinking water because the tap water is even more disgusting than 'normal' American water: it not only tastes like a swimming pool, it also smells like a mouldy cave). The museum was quite nice, displaying world art (both old & new).

For more photos please go to my flickr stream!

Don't go!!! Please....?

Don't go!!! Please....?, originally uploaded by Karin Slegers.

Our grapevine tried to prevent us from going on holiday... It wrapped itself around Eise's bike!

Cats and dogs

While Babet is still hissing and growling every time she sees (or remembers the mere existance of) Haroen, Lotte is friendlier and trying to persuade Haroen to play with her. Haroen in his turn is also highly interested in Lotte and learning that we reprimand Lotte when she is too obtrusive (and abusing this fact). So these two are slowly getting friends...

Holiday preps

We really need to get prepared for our holiday... Exactly four weeks from now, we've rolled out of the Cycle Tours bus and will probably be putting up our tent on the first camping. Problem is that we took our bikes out of the garage only last week (with accompanying dust, spider webs and dry cycle chains). We made a very short ride to get an ice cream last weekend to test what had to be repaired or replaced, and as I'm writing Eise is working on his bike to re-grease his derailleur.

Today we went out to do some holiday shopping as well. Last time we went on a cycling holiday, we used canoe bags and home-made carriers, which was not always very successful. So this time we decided to buy some proper bags and because we couldn't choose between two sets, we bought one of each. One set are two good old Ortlieb bike packer classics (combined with a drybag) and the other is a neat combo of two side bags and one top bag from Vaude (Karakorum). So, expect some testresults after our trip! Both sets have less room than the large bags we used last time, so packing wil be quite a challenge. At least it will force us to take only the highly necessary stuff, something we're not really good at. We can put the tent, mats and sleeping bag on top of everything, but still... I've made a list uf "must haves" and "nice to haves".

Next to the bags I've also invested in a nice and light rain jacket (160 grams, seems impossible!) and a new pair of SPD shoes. I'm hoping these will save me some sleeping toes... So, I think we should have most of the stuff we need... We borrowed a really neat sheet sleeping bag which will fit two sleeping mats in special compartments and on which one sleeping bag can be zipped. So this little thingy saves us from bringing a second sleeping bag! Love accessories like that!

Hopefully the weather is ok tomorrow, so we can make a trip again. Would be nice to have at least a little bit of training before we leave!

Swurl timeline - I like it!

Yet another social network slash web 2.0 aggregator, but I like the timeline feature of Swurl. It gives a nice overview of stuff that's apparently keeping me busy over time. It's adding a bit of meta cognition to my life! No need to keep a diary anymore as long as you're an active updater on the web.

Another movie of Haroen

Haroen has arrived

Yesterday I picked up Haroen at Clio's and he's doing great! The journey to our house in a travel basket was of course not appreciated too much, but he survived. First thing mr. H did after getting out of the basket was blessing the cat's litter box (and not the carpet, thank God).

Last night he was a bit shy and spent most of the time behind the couch, but now he seems to be completely relaxed and at ease. After a heavy session of playing, chasing mice, attacking balls, climbing couches and exploring the attick (which is Haroen's main domain the first few days), he's sleeping now. Completely exhausted.

Weekend without plans, loads of free time! Yeah, right.

So, after having worked really hard to prepare for our party last weekend, we thought to have a well-deserved duty and DIY-free weekend. Not. Since our house still needed some cleening-up from the party, Saturday morning was over before we knew it. Then Eise went over to Percy's to help him prepare for his birthday/cd presentation party later that day and I went to buy a grappa for Karlo (which is quite a challenge if you don't know a thing about grappa). Made a quick stop at Karlo's birthday party to congratulate him (on his 38th and his personally designed & crafted roof terrace lounge couch) to be picked up by Menw to rush to Percy's party as well. Quite a fun party, lots of music (two bands, two more singers, Percy and his partner presenting their new cd) and an exited horse.



Today we decided to go hiking, which finally enabled me to test my new backpack (which I bought quite a while ago already but never tried). We drove to Mechelen and made a 14 km. hike along the river Geul and through the woods of Epen. Nice area, lots of people walking along the Geul though. And great ice cream with fresh strawberries and raspberries!


And then a sad message when we got home. The little kitten Menw was supposed to take home in a few weeks (the sister of our kitten) died this afternoon. Apparently, she was hit by a car and her injuries were too bad to survive... We will pick up Haroen next Tuesday already, which means we will have to take some precautions to carefully guide the first encouter between Haroen and Babet...

Party post

Pfiew, we've survived our houswarming / birthdays party! Last Sunday, we had about 55 people (plus a load of kids) in our house. Fortunately, we had great weather, so we could sit in the garden all day. I'm not sure how we would have fitted all those people in our house, to be honest. Usually, we never really celebrate our birthdays so I think all of our friends and family took advantage of this opportunity to come down south. It might have helped that lots of them hadn't actually seen our house as well.

Nothing to tell really, except for the fact that we had a great time and as I understood our guests did so too. We were loaded with gifts (some highlights include a Solar Buddha, an olive tree and a feng shui home decorating guide :-s), thanks for that! And last but not least some experience-based tips for throwing a party with slightly too many people at your home: 1) invite batches of guests at different starting times, 2) buy at least 6 vlaaien for 50 guests and 3) if you want to keep your cake wax-free, don't blow 70 candles at once.

Our new housemate

Meet Haroen, who will be our new housemate in a few weeks. A friend of Diana found a cat with two kittens in the forest. And after nine months we don't really believe that our old cat Max will return anymore. So we decided to take one of the kittens for Babet (who will be thrilled, I'm sure. Yeah right.). So here he is, Haroen, a little red & white cat. We think he is about 5 or 6 weeks old and he will stay with his mother (and his sister, who will go to Menw!) for a while before we will get him.

Commuting life

Cute by ugliness

We have something cute in our garden... A song thrush (zanglijster) has built a nest on a couple of iron supports in our garden shed. After she sat on some stunning bright blue eggs for a while, a couple of very ugly little birds came out. And they don't seem to get any prettier... Hopefully, our cat won't find out!

Recumbent trip to France - holiday plans

Made an official start planning our summer holiday of this year today. We had some cautious plans to go to Japan again, but because of my new job I had to buy a car which seriously cut our holiday budget. But, no worries, we have other plans! Eise's parents have a holiday home in the south-western part of France (roughly 100 km. north of the French-Spanish border a few hundred meters from the Atlantic coast) and they are staying there in August together with Eise's sister (plus boyfriend and two kids) and Eise's brother (plus wife and three kids). Initially, our plan was to take our recumbent bikes and cycle to Moliets (where the house is located). Nice detail is that Moliets is about 30 km. from the cycling variant of the Camino de Santiago, leading from Haarlem (NL) to Santiago de Compostella (ES). Unfortunately, I don't have enough days off to cycle this route all the way from home to Moliets (at holiday speed, that is), so we decided to cycle the second part of the three-part route only (see picture). This second part runs from Tours to the French Pyrenees, which gives us about 600 km to cycle (we will leave the official route a little north of Dax). The plan now is to take a cycle bus from Amsterdam to Tours on August 15th and to cover the distance to Moliets in one to one-and-a-half week. There we will spend another couple of days and take a plane back from Pau to Amsterdam. We will leave our bikes behind so we can bring those back when we go to Moliets by car a next time, or perhaps we'll cycle the third part of the route next year, we'll see. But anyway, the bus is booked, we have the route maps and we still have all the cycling stuff from our trip four years ago. Looking forward already!

Darwin2.0

Cool, spotted this movie on the core77 website, showing a great example of modern, urban evolution:

Intuitive design

Here's some nice proof of the intuitive interaction design of the iPhone:

One of the joys of working at home...

Long warm sunny days with campfires

And yet another weekend with absolutely lovely weather, sooo nice! Saturday we had a birthday party of Eise's sister Mel and her boyfriend Mark, who live with Eise's parents in the old farmhouse they grew up in. It's a really charming, big, old house (with a "bedstee"!) with lots of space around it. This time we set a campfire in the meadow behind the house, which was much appreciated by the pony living there (and apparently feeling lonely). The couple of geese were not as much amused though... Lotte, as always, was very nervous all day because 3 out of 4 times we leave her behind when we visit Eise's parents (she always stays with them when we're on holiday), but not this time.

Today, on Sunday we enjoyed the sun in our garden with books, magazines, Saturday newspapers, cappuccino, chocolate cake and lots of sun screen. We've just returned from dinner & rose at Cafe Zuid, not bad altogether.

Sunny Sunday

Finally... Sun! Spring! Garden! No winter coat! Sunscreen (I burn easily)! In short, great weather today... Here's a visual impression of our Sunday, mostly consisting of breakfast and some reading in the garden (have reached part 4 of "Het Bureau", which I really recommend - mind the resemblance between our cat and the one on the book cover!), and a long walk through a lovely South Limburg landscape (lots of blossoms at the moment).

Another topic: my new job... Lots of people have asked me whether I like it, which is quite hard to answer after only a few weeks. But let's give it a try! So far, I like it. I like the projects we're working on (both applied and more fundamental stuff, cool project partners including cultural and arts centres, a senior home, other research institutions, etc., and nice techy topics), my colleagues are friendly and the city of Leuven is really charming. Driving back and forth is not too bad (it's about an hour and hardly any traffic jams), but in rainy weather traffic is lots heavier and because of road work I have to drive through lots of small villages (including traffic lights) before I can hit the highway on my way back. One slightly negative point is the fact that our office is located in the basement of a building and that our view consists of a concrete wall about one meter from the windows... One plus of this: weather-wise it's great, you don't have to watch depressing grey and rainy skies all day, while bright, sunny weather can't nag you while sitting inside!

Go see this movie!!

I saw a really lovely movie yesterday: Lars and the Real Girl (IMDB). Really, go and see it! It's about a guy, Lars, who is, let's call it socially challenged, and has difficulty finding a girlfriend. One day, he finally brings home a girl, to the great relief of his family and friends. Shockingly to them, the girl appears to be a life size doll Lars bought on the Internet! Still he is having a serious relationship with her and Bianca is getting a very popular character in the village. Hilariously funny, very sweet movie. The website is also worth visiting! Script is written by the one of the writers of Six Feet Under. Here's the trailer:

Cool advertising

Wow, not too much to add to this one. Great bus ad! Btw, it's for a Dutch insurance company quite famous for their controversial commercials and ads ("Even Apeldoorn bellen").

Plates plates plates

Wow, I never got so many plates in one week! Everyone seems to know that I'm assembling an eclectic set of tableware consisting of mismatching plates, bowls, etc. (I simply see too many nice sets while I need only one... by buying one piece of each set I can collect them anyway). The plated week started on Wednesday when I got a beautiful Iitala plate for my birthday (a Taika one) of Anita and Ellen, which I had been drooling about fo ages). On Thursday I had my farewell drink, and all of my colleagues bought me a plate as well! Loveley, my collection is almost complete at once! To top it off, I got four nice chocolaty plates from Martine yesterday, also for my birthday. So nice when people know you well! Thanks you all!

Another picture, especially for my colleagues: it does help to put your tea mug in the dish washer every once in a while...

Painting white Easter weekend

So, this picture more or less summarizes my Easter weekend! I planned to paint both of our stairs (they are new and need three layers of paint), but that turned out to be way too ambitious for three days. I always seem to forget that preparing a painting job is actually much more work than painting itself! So, during the weekend I shifted the focus of painting two stairs towards painting one of them, and I didn't even make that... But seriously, why do people want to become a painter? I really don't understand. Painting sucks! It takes ages before you can start to paint, you keep sanding, degreasing, filling holes, etc., your back starts hurting after only two steps, and I could go like this on for a while... But, on the bright side, the stairs leading ("nowhere just for fun", quoting Tevje in Anatevka) to the attick now have two layers and look quite stunning already. A final layer should do the trick. Unfortunately, I'm a bit low on available time the coming few weeks.

Another picture worth posting, although not too original I'm affraid, is one of our view into the back yard when we woke up this morning. It was predicted, this snowy morning surprise, but it is still nice to open the curtains and see the world in white. The weather for Sunday was very poorly predicted, by the way. Bad weather with lots of rain and 'wintery showers' was announced, but in stead, we ended up having a clear blue sky the whole day! Decided to have a good long walk through the woods with the dog, which was appreciated all too well.

Sleepless by coffee

Yesterday evening we had a coffee workshop at Kaldi, a little coffee store in Maastricht. The idea was to learn a little bit about coffee, to taste coffee and to learn making a good cuppa and (most importantly!) a good cappuccino foam.The workshop itself was really nice, very good value for money and really fun. Had a bit too much coffee though, not being used to drinking five espressos after dinner... But anyway.The best part of the evening was the fact that they had exactly the same espresso machine as we have at home (see picture), so we could practice making coffee and foam as we should do it at home too. Pictures below showing Anita (with a very fancy and even more expensive coffee machine) and Pascal learning to make the perfect cappuccino. And now we have to
practice to keep our barista skills up! So I actually have an excuse for making cappuccino every morning, it's all a matter of personal competencies! For the true fans, I've added a movie of how to make latte art (Dutch Championships coming up soon!), which is less easy than they make it seem, I'm affraid...

Home makeover

For all of you who haven't been in our house recently, or ever for that matter, here some pictures of what we've been doing lately. The first two are of our 'study' (like the intellectual sound of that). In the yellow part of this room, the floor has been replaced (and I'm not talking about
the floor covering only, heavy wooden beams have actually been replaced - which was quite a stunning view, when entering the house you could see the roof of the house two floors up -), walls have been replaced and plastered and lots of painting has been done. In the "booked" part, we have covered lots of pink painting. The other picture is of our hunting style attick slash guest room (there is a sofa bed out of the picture focus). In short: we're getting there, but enough remains to be done!