The Power Potion

Only the great sports tournaments can bring people together in bars and clubs, which is really the second best place you can be, bar actually being in the stadium, no matter what Philips and Samsung say about their television sets. There's nothing like being slap bang in the middle of a racuous crowd, drinking pints and pints of beer, and riding the waves of reactions like a true-born surfer.

Case in point, last night's Rugby World Cup quarter final between France and New Zealand. The tournament hosts versus the tournament favorites and number one ranked team in the world. Picture a bar where the sides are evenly split across the room. Imagine hearing Allez les Bleus, and the Haka all at the same time. For every try, score, penalty and tackle the crowd cheers ferociously.

The biggest pop of the night came when Sebastien Chabal came on for France, which changed the momentum of the match fully in French favour. Now, even if you've never watched a game of rugby before in your whole life, you will recognize Chabal. The guy is huge, scary, intimidating. The commentators herald his coming as unleashing the monster on a hapless New Zealand team. Chabal carries a big black beard and long dark manes, which make him look like Asterix and Obelix. And he is just as strong as them. As soon as he came on, three All Blacks went off with injuries. I can see why France doesn't put him in from the start, it just wouldn't be fair.

France thus went on to upset the All Blacks, and move on to the semi finals of the World Cup, where they face the English. Last night, the French got decent support from the English crowd, who probably didn't want to face New Zealand... I'm pretty sure that will change next Saturday.

Transformers: How Rude!

An Oldie but Goodie...


"Who the f*ck is this Autobot?" ROTFLMAO

It's funny because it's true...

Can I try this out first?

Every once in a while someone will promote a product that supposedly changes your life completely. You see these things on infomercials, tellsell videos and the like: a duster that spins on its own; a magnetic pendant; an abdominal cruncher...

What I would like to know, is how did some cheap-ass infomercial become the bringer of the Messiah? What do these guys know that big money grabbing corporations don't already know? Why don't cleaning services around the world use this duster-on-an-electric-toothbrush?

And then there's the Wake Up Light... supposedly this is supposed to help people wake up better and more naturally... then why hasn't the civilized world collectively chucked away their old alarm clocks? I wanna try it out first I think.

Times sure have changed

Contemporary WMDs are quite hard to find apparently. Maybe they're too small to be seen. Back in the day WMDs were deadly, terrifying, large, yet completely portable. Just look at films like 300, or Gladiator to see the pain one soldier could inflict on another. Or alternatively, check out Discovery Channel's Ten Most Deadliest Martial Arts Weapons.

Natural Tendency

People sometimes have the greatest ideas and the noblest of intentions. Then you run into trouble, lack of money, or people with conflicting interests, killing the idea.

The natural tendency for people is to think that uttering a great idea and making it public is enough to make it work. People with great ideas know full well how to start an idea, but lack the effort, commitment, knowledge and overview to see it through and implement it successfully. Environmental issues for example. Generally improving the environment is a good thing, but apart from Al Gore telling us all about it in his Keynote slide show, he doesn't give a bloody clue how to go about actually improving it. Millions of managers rely on their "team" to go out and about, winging it and get the job done, all under the guise of pragmatism.

Pragmatism is too often used as an excuse to forget about important things, to defer responsibility, and to place a lot of stress on the boys and girls actually making it happen.

I'm all for flexibility and being able to cope with problems, expected or not. Those are good traits to have. But not if people heading the group actually have no idea what they're doing. The people with the ideas must also have a plan, or grab an able person to work it out.
Relying on the effort and responsibility of others, is naive.

Nine typical themes in language courses

With Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Italian, French and German audio language courses under my belt, I get an appreciation for people who devise and script these courses. I also noticed some odd similarities that keep popping up in each course, no matter the language.

1. A man and a woman book a room in a hotel, but they have different last names. Considering they meet and greet each other just one or two lessons earlier, and that they do not have any big conversations in between, you'll have to assume that they are not boyfriend and girlfriend. Could they be committing adultery? Or are they just enjoying a nooner?
2. When going out to dinner, the woman always eats a mixed salad as an appetizer. Why doesn't she get a nice chorizo? She's not anorexic is she? The man always has a soup, which is always too cold. When they "complain" about this, the people speak slowly, rationally and do not shout. (Yes, I always complain in this way...) Also everybody drinks a red wine. Nobody drinks bitter lemon, or Sprite.
   
3. People in language courses always go to a bar. No matter how many drinks you order, it always costs under ten euros. Probably because at this point you haven't learned any numbers over ten yet.
   
4. People always shop for fruit, souvenirs, a short sleeve shirt, and a packet of aspirin. People in language courses never buy stuff like CDs, a newspaper, sun glasses, tanning oil, box of tissues, condoms, KY jelly... you know... stuff you'd actually buy on vacation.
5. There are no children in language courses. Everybody you speak to is an adult. In fact, people over 65 do not exist in language courses. Everyone sounds like they're 24.
   
6. In any course, whatever location you are asking for, you're always only ten minutes away, and it's only down the street and to the right.
7. No language course has people dealing with the police, justice... or any kind of authority for that matter.
8. Except for one instance in the Japanese course, everybody has a job in an office setting. No one is a farmer. No one is a construction worker. Yes, there are desk clerks, waiters, shop assistants, but that's about as unambitious as it gets.
9. Every language course tells you four different ways to greet someone and three more to say your name, but none of them give you any clue how to tell someone to sod off.

Me, Jealous; You, Jane?

It has to be a great feeling for parents to see their children succeed and prosper. Even more when they receive high praise and are lauded for their performance in whatever field they accomplish. In sports a coach is more than happy when one of his players achieves something great. A teacher too should be over the moon when one of his pupils becomes a star.

But for some reason this doesn't really work in business, especially if the environment is competitive. Suddenly the guy you brought in, trained and groomed as your replacement, becomes bigger than you could ever imagine, and surpasses you.

I hope I can be as virtuous as Aeschylus put it: "It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered."

Five fundamental differences between US and European Sports

Sports in the United States is big, brash, loud and above all extremely rich. Contrast this with sports on the European continent and you'll notice a truckload of differences, so much so that it's easy to understand why European sports will not take off in the States, while American sports will never be accepted fully here. Here are five reasons why:

1. Americans cannot handle viewing a sport, unless it's divided in byte-sized chunks. That's why NBA games are divided in quarters, Indycar races are interrupted by yellow flags, NFL moves along play by play, and baseball goes from out to out. Sports with longer, uninterrupted flows of play, like soccer and rugby don't appeal as much to the average American viewer. Likewise a European sportsfan can't stand the continuous breaks, which he would always chalk up to unnecessary commercials...
   
2. In Europe debating the referee's calls is a given, but to an American it's outrageous, and always exciting. In Europe referees control the contest in the calmest way possible; in the USA referees can get mad, make wild, excessive gestures and send the coach off the field.
3. Unless it's an international contest, very few European sports events open with the national anthems. In the States every sports event starts with the Star Spangled Banner... even your backyard touch football game.
4. A commentator in the United States is always supported by a sidekick, the color man, who keeps the viewers, listeners, fans entertained with useless facts, side stories, rumours and general mockery of the best paid player on the team. Nowadays washed-up has-been athletes provide in-game real-time analysis on the events. That's three people employed by the network. In Europe sports commentators during the game are practically always alone, and frankly - apart from Jack van Gelder - extremely bland and boring. Analysis is something you do during half-time or after the game. The network only employs one guy to do the talking, and he often doesn't even get to go to the game at all.
   
5. Aah, statistics. The American loves them, because it allows otherwise menial athletes to achieve feats of epic proportions, thanks to a mathmetical coincidence. For a country that's only been around for slightly over two centuries, it's a quick way to fill up a person's history and trivia sections in wikipedia. Stats also improve viewership when a record is broken or a milestone is reached, so statistics have commercial benefits as well.
   Fans in Europe... are less enthused about mindless numbers.
   

Addendum to P990 review

A while back I had something to say about the Sony Ericsson P990, but I didn't mention that my WLAN went missing for about six months. So I was forced to drain my account with a GPRS, or I could not use the mobile internet at all...

Until I came across this gem... "turn off the power safe feature of the WLAN".

And now my WLAN is back?! I can internet at no extra cost again!

This officially drowns the P990 in my book. If you build a feature with an economy mode that negates the feature DON'T BUILD THE DAMN ECONOMY MODE.

Change of venue

Getting bored is as much a choice as it is a condition, but there are ways to stimulate boredom easily. Going out to the same location or bar or café each and every week is the one that does it for me. I like a change of venue every once in a while.

Coming back to places I've been to - also a change of venue - can sometimes surprise you in a good way. Back in the college days me and my friends have been going to this live music bar on a fairly regular basis. It was quite good for a while, but it got boring (not too mention too expensive for a student budget).

So I have not gone there for a number of years, until recently. It was a nice change of pace, and it was good. To tell you the truth, I might actually fit better there now, than a couple of years ago...

So all in all, change is good. Even if you're changing back.

We just can't get a break

Ok, so car manufacturers are finally getting the hang of making engines that run on bio-engineered fuel, home electricity and so on. And now we find out that actually growing the damned stuff is costing us farmland, and burns acres worth of trees. This is just unfortunate: we trade one terrible thing (CO2) for another (no more Amazon).

I completely agree

This site is supposed to be a light-hearted humour website, but once in a while they post an article that hits truer than anything that I can come up with. And believe me, I tried.

It's quite a long article (as in you have to spend about five minutes reading it), but I'll just give you the Cliff Notes:

• thanks to our electronic tools, airplanes and interweb people in current society are less able to effectively communicate face-to-face. There are less opportunities to meet new people in person, because everything is so damned conveniently near your home.
• not being able to meet in person, reduces the communication channels to e-mail, text messaging and so on. That's stuff that one could easily misinterpret.
• the people we meet in our MSN, Hyves etc. share common interests. In retrospect this means these people are already alike, and you won't find out anything new. That doesn't breed opportunities for conversation. (here is also where you'll find the showstealing lines of the night:

"I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. (...) Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing. Tragically, there are now a whole lot of people who never have those conversations. The interventions, the brutal honesty, the, "you know, everybody's pissed off because of what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they're afraid of you," sort of conversations. Those horrible, awkward, wrenchingly uncomfortable sessions that you can only have with someone who sees right to the center of you.")

• the very notion that we have MORE control over what we do, when we do it, and whom we do it with, is killing for the social capacity of man. Mankind's social skills are grown through unpredictability, through dealing with people who are unlike you, and you do it face to face, with total fear of repercussions.
  

... ah, just read the article.

Moving the speed trap forward

I've noticed that once highway speed traps get reported in on the radio, their location seems to backward opposed to the flow of traffic. Now I've been told this is to discourage people from speeding all the way to the speed trap, then slow down and then get up to high speed again.

Why is it not the other way around? If those traps were to go forward, a driver would never be able to tell if he was about to approach the trap or not. And in practice this behaviour is not any different from the current situation.

Square Pegs In Round Holes

Trying to uproot something completely local, and move it overseas trying to make it popular over there is not that straightforward. Phenomena like Formula One, Madonna concerts, McDonalds are blissfully similar and recognizable wherever you go, and they each become that way seamlessly. Considering these you take for granted the effort that it takes to become a globally accepted occurance. Doing something truly global in a manner that appeals to people of every nation, is very, very hard.

ChampCar for example is a very Americanized version of the open-wheel formulas we've grown accustomed to in Europe. Now if one would try to bring this back to the old world, you'll encounter some peculiar things:

• In the US you have to be thankful to your sponsors... every single one of them. "So thanks to the Sony Ericsson Toys 'R' Us Swatch EA Sports Shell Peugeot British Airways Nintendo SKW Racing Team I'm finally able to buy that engine upgrade."
• In another country you can sing the national anthem like you want it, even if it's so off-key, the Naked Gun series would be ashamed to air it.
• Europeans need their sports flowing and long-running, with a few highlights in between. Americans need their sport in short, manageable pieces, and they want to cram in as many meaningless high spots as possible. That's why the American ChampCars have the yellow flag rule, which serves to bring fields back together, if the leaders moved too far away from the field; to have ample opportunity for commercials; and for no other discernible reason than a pebble near the entrance of the pit area.
• Preceding every race with a Christian sermon is kind of presumptuous in a non-US country.

Luckily some things remain universal, whichever side of the Atlantic you're on:

• Bad commentators will still rattle over their mistakes, pretending they never made them.
• Women in tight, skin-hugging clothing are good.
• The roar of a V8 engine still rules.

All about the girls

It's sad to see the end of a good thing. The Admirals were for all intents and purposes a small team in a sport that's hardly followed in the Netherlands, apart from a small, rabid fanbase. And it's for this group of people, the team decided to bid farewell one last time.

(Well... the team... just one of the popular star players and the head coach made the trip overseas, so you can't really speak of the team at all.)

When it all comes down to it, it's truly all about the girls. By far the most popular sights at the scene were the members of the Admirals Dance Team, who performed one last time at the venue. And by far the biggest pop of the night was for the popular cheerleaders' manager. And at times it was a pretty emotional experience.

The night also displayed who the Admirals as an organization were most grateful to. The party was not just for the team and front office people (yes don't forget about them),
and not just for the fans. The organization paid tribute to a group of young women, who quite rightly took center stage, and danced the night away.

The Near End Of Wikipedia

It wasn't so long ago that Wikipedia was actually a nice source of information. You could find out about particular sciences, countries, history, companies, organizations, even people and you could reasonably trust what was written about each. Why? A number of subject matter experts (SME) would discuss what the text of a particular subject should convey, and come to a conclusion, being the final text available on the interweb.

However lately Wikipedia vandalism is actually making headlines:

• companies changing their corporate histories to hide their failures, or scandals
• people changing their own biographies to tell the story they want to tell, or change biographies of other's to insult them
• pictures and pages getting added, deleted, changed, just because people don't like the layout of the set
  

I guess by now the number of pages on Wikipedia has already passed critical mass, so that SMEs cannot feasibly keep track of everything, and prevent people from intentionally changing the information on the site for their own gain, instead of for the greater good: a wider, deeper distribution of knowledge, for free. The longer this keeps up, people will be less inclined to share information in the first place, undermining the very basis of Wikipedia.

Google Maps: Absolutely brilliant

Careful now, I'm going to sing the praises of Google Maps, so if you're a G-Hater you might want to turn away now, and come back another day.

Since this summer Google Maps is really becoming a fantastic tool to use, to the point where I don't actually need to have Google Earth anymore. I've learned to use several important skills that help me immensely find my way around town, even when I'm not a native.

• Of course the Google Maps find function has always been there, but I've learned to use it to find great places to eat, shop for gadgets, music, clothes and going out. Just zoom in on the area where you expect to be, search on e.g. "restaurant", and you'll find all the good stuff in the general vicinity. Furthermore, you get all the reviews and homepage links you want. And that's just the start.
  
• You can also immediately click to determine the best way to get there, simply by inserting your point of departure. Maps will google the best route for you... and if you don't like the route you can drag waypoints inbetween!

Sometimes people can be happy with so little...

How language shapes cultures, personalities

After getting introduced to a bunch of different language audiobooks, it's far easier to recognise why people in certain countries act in a certain way and how these differ between countries. A language organizes the collective mindset of a society, emphasizes particular aspects while deemphasizing others.

For example:

• the Chinese/Japanese languages stress the subjects, placing more importance on the topics and the content. Generally people speaking these languages do not have to bother with conjugation, or word gender. Why would you change a word if it already expresses what you want to say? This is quite unlike the Mediterranean (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French) and Germanic languages (Dutch, German) which stress the flow of a sentence more, and utilize conjugations and genders in order to do so.
• in fact, for Asian cultures the subject is the most important, in such a way that the action (verb) that the subject does, is implied. It's not what you do, it's who you're talking about that is easiest to mention.
• For English, Dutch and German it's seemingly more important to speak about conditions and states of a subject. The adjective comes before the noun or subject.

What this means is that the nature of your conversations, the basis for humor, and thus the foundation of relating to a particular culture, change drastically from tongue to tongue. It means that in some languages small-talk is feasible, while in others it will not be, thus impacting the manner of creating relationships. It means that some languages are better suited to describe certain abstract topics, theories.

I am only able to order a beer in ten different languages.

Freakin' spies

Having neighbours comes with the territory. There's only a limited amount of space left that's actually appealing and affordable to live in, which more or less forces people to go to places with similar interests and life expectancies.

However neighbours also have a natural ability to be nosy. Precisely because of the similar interests and expectancies, going against the grain immediately brings your actions to attention. Try getting a shiny new car for example. Or hang a satellite dish. Or start wearing designer clothes. Or bring a different woman home every single night.

Anything different from the grain is notable, and is something to take advantage of, or something that threatens you. I would like people to be more subtle and positive about this, but I guess even I will lash out when some guy is bringing his goats onto my balcony.

The requirements mindset

Requirements are a means to an end; a way to instill confidence in the user that you've understood him, his concerns, and what to do to resolve them. These become concrete triggers and handle bars to manage in a business IT environment.

A professional should be able to clearly communicate what to do, either for himself or towards others. Requirements are helpful in doing so, by providing a mindset of prioritization and categorization. Whether you're a functional analyst, a technical architect, a consultant, a manager, or a programmer, being able to do requirements well allows you to understand what you do. A particular role, a particular person might be better suited to establish a set of requirements (e.g. a business consultant and business requirements; an architect and system requirements) than another, but the understanding is necessary to identify gaps, and to be able to get requirements as a whole to a proper level of detail.

Requirements will change. The further along you get, the tougher and the more expensive those changes become. This is no excuse to have bad requirements or not pay attention to them. Having good requirements change allows you to mitigate risks, have a clear view of impact, and establish confidence, control and a framework for change to the user.

Requirements are never written in isolation. They must be agreed upon/signed-off, and better still, be co-authored with the user and the stakeholders. Also requirements can be well-written on their own, but still be bad when regarding all the requirements.

Brasserie Park

Brasserie Park is a restaurant and party hall housed in a refurbished farm building on the edge of Park de Houtkamp near Leiden, and... a residential block. From the outside it looks quite vintage (as in old-fashioned), but once inside the hip and happening come flying toward you in a nice tight young blonde package. The furnishing's nice and post modern, which doesn't really fit the surroundings, but who's counting? There are large tables for big groups, a lounge area if you just feel like tapas and vino, and proper tables for small parties. The menu's great, and contains various exclusive dishes, which go above and beyond the standard grand cafe deals you would usually expect. A fine wine card accompanies the proceedings. Add to this timely service, and a very surprisingly decent price line, and I wholeheartedly recommend Brasserie Park in Leiderdorp for another visit.

Consultancies should learn from the NFL

Here are two quotes from people in the NFL, that also ring true in my neck of the woods...

You can be your own person, treat people with respect, be very demanding but demanding in a way that doesn't trample on people. And you don't have to give up your faith to win in the NFL.
-- Cam Cameron, sharing his opinions about Tony Dungy's book Quiet Strength

"If we don't do something about rookie salaries pretty soon, the salary cap will be meaningless. [Indianapolis defensive end] Dwight Freeney got $30 million in guarantees after leading the league in sacks over the past five years. [Cleveland rookie tackle] Joe Thomas got $23 million in guarantees for breathing.''
-- Anonymous, but wise, NFL general manager.

re: Peter King, SI.com

Sleepy tired

You could have sleepless nights about a lot of things. Someone you just met, but can't get out of your head. A contract you desperately want signed. A test result. A promotion you want. You sleep badly, and then you feel tired all day.

So here are some tips to stay energetic as much as possible.

Good luck!

Too bad I'm into Pumas now

Marketing is a tough business nowadays. You have to be really subtle and not lay it on too thick. The intention is to convince people to give their hard earned money to you, not tell people that they should.

One of the masters in marketing is Nike. Here is a link that showed exactly why.

(Of course, now that I'm not wearing Nike's anymore, my argument is a bit skewed... but still.)

Catfight! Catfight!

Relationships between women tend to be friendly, indifferent or downright hostile... Forget indifferent... Women are either a girl's best friend, or they are devil incarnate. Every so often you will hear a woman say that she gets along better with guys.

So for all women who can't stand the majority of females around her, there's this game.

Cutting loose

Sometimes you need space, and just want to clear out, get away. There are many ways you can do so. Going on vacation to a far away country. Stay in house. Turn off your phone. Change your identity. Block your relationships.

Each way has a motive behind it. It depends if you need space temporarily, or long term. If you want to go back to your old life when you come back, or if you want a desperate change. If you are disruptive and fickle in nature, or if you're harmonious and just don't want to trouble anyone else.

What is your motive to take a leave of absence?

More Personal Investments

I generally stick to the idea that - like stocks - every relationship requires personal investment. You spend time, effort, attention, perhaps a little bit of money, and that allows the relationship to blossom.

It hurts when an investment doesn't pan out, especially a significantly big investment. Even more so if the payoff you expected was important to you. And yet even more when that same payoff was almost reached and then cruelly taken away at the last possible moment.

Of course you will try to protect your investment, reduce risk, provide more incentives. Sometimes it helps, but like the DOW, there really are no guarantees. Results in the past, do not in any way predict anything about the future.

Comparing friendships and relationships to stock symbols is far fetched, but the comparison rings true. Does it help? Does it make you feel better? Unlikely. It helps to deal with human emotion by taking the emotion out of the equation, and being all business-like. Question is, would you want to?

Being Pretty Sells Games

Looks and attractiveness go a long way today. It's sad to see, but more true than you might admit. Actually, I will admit that when given the choice, all basic conditions have been met and all other factors being the same, I will choose superficial beauty and image over actual depth and longetivity.

Case in point: Assassin's Creed, a video game coming out on all the major gaming platforms, but also a game that by its very setting (medieval times, during the crusades) won't appeal to me, despite looking great and being free-form, and having all these subtle cues and immersive atmosphere... until I find out who the game's producer is...



Definitely, I would not even have considered giving this game a second thought, if it weren't for this pretty face. I'm not saying Jade's actually convinced me upfront to fork over my cash in November when Assassin's Creed is released, but she's got a far better shot than say Grand Theft Auto IV, Crysis or Rock Band.

Quiet For The Storm

Ever get the feeling that something's coming up real soon, a potentially big moment, milestone or event that could change your course in life quickly and severely, but in the mean time there's nothing to do? You're just waiting, keeping yourself busy, without really being very productive.

That time is here now.

Probably the best thing to do is take a long trip far away, and doing something else. At least when you come back, regardless of the outcome, you're doing your thing. Otherwise you leave after, and have to deal with the results then and there.

The anticipation is killing. The tension makes people do moves, that are at best ill-advised.

It truly is the quiet before the storm.

Observations from a self-learner course

I've got this Spanish-English course here, a set of audio CDs that basically keeps repeating the same conversations over and over again until you get the hang of it. For me repetition is a good way of learning stuff, especially if I'm doing other things at the side (like in this case, driving). Focus is a funny thing. I focus better when I'm not focusing at all.

Anyway, I just realized the absurd background of my course. It's about two business people going to a seminar in Spain, and asking for their rental car, their flight, their itinerary etc. The guy person asks for all the transport stuff, but the woman colleague is all over the sleeping arrangements. She wants one room for the both of them, a kingsize double bed, for several nights. In fact she corrects the poor hotel desk clerk for messing up the original reservation. The man and the woman have different surnames, so I guess they are not related.

Which leads me to believe:

• these two colleagues are bumping uglies at the seminar
• they made reservations separately not to draw any suspicion, and then changed the reservations afterwards

It's either that, or I truly don't understand a word of Spanish, and I'm imagining things.

Can you name 'em all?

I got to Kung Fu (obviously), Mario, SMB3, Digdug, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha (I think), Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Donkey Kong, Gradius, Karateka, Pacman, Urban Champion, Dragonball Z, Track & Field... and then I got stumped... Which are the others?

I told you so... sort of

The following is one of Nostradamus' Quatrains in his work The Prophecies (Century III, Quatrain 70)

La Grande Bretagne comprise l'Angleterre
Viendra par eaux si fort inondre
La ligue neufue d'Ausonne fera guerre
Que contre eux il se viendront bander

The great Britain including England
Will come to be flooded very high by waters
The new League of Ausonia will make war,
So that they will come to strive against them.

Yes, Britain is flooded nowadays, and they are somewhat involved in a war... coincidence?

How To Mess Up a Perfectly Good Car

A Volkswagen Golf is quite a milestone in automotive history. Especially the GTI has become one of the most deceptively quick cars on the road, ever. They made the Golf nice with each new generation, tacking on more and more expensive stuff, while keeping the main characteristic alive... a solid, well-driving car with decent speed and maneuverability.

And then Volkswagen messed it up.

The Golf Plus is the biggest atrocity in the entire line. Driven by misguided market demand, the people at VW decided they needed a people carrier in the series. Probably to cater the boring market segment. As such, they made the Plus higher than a normal Golf, squished the front, and then afterwards gave it a good coat of dull to finish it off.

The drive is terrible. You can't make a bloody left turn without nearly tipping over. The car is so high, the center of gravity has moved up to your neck. And the Plus has all the aerodynamism of a brick wall.

It does seat four to five adults comfortably, so that's a plus. But then again, I wouldn't splash out for one if it were my own money.

I'm glad I'm getting rid of this one.

Road Rules when I'm driving

As I'll be getting new wheels in the very near future, let me reiterate the basic rules for anyone hitching a ride when we're going out...

• If you puke in the car, you're cleaning it immediately... by licking it up. This also goes if you pee or shit your pants.
  
• Only the driver decides who gets added to the ride if need be.
  
• Only the driver decides what that person must do in exchange for the ride.
• Nobody touches the windscreen, the climate control, the radio unless you're the driver or instructed to by the same.
• In case of discussion the driver is always correct. If you still disagree, you can find your own transportation.
• Any of these rules can be strongly adhered to or bypassed at the driver's discretion.
  

Toxicology reports

• I think it's absolutely fantastic that German tv stations ARD and ZDF quit the Tour de France as soon as one single cyclist got caught with doping. It takes quite some balls to walk away from obviously a lot of commercial income to stand up for ethics, and sportsmanship.
  
• Another tox-report eagerly awaited... Benoit did have some kind of steroids in him, but apparently our friendly neighbourhood CSI couldn't determine if these were present at the killings of his wife and son. Thus we'll never know what happened that faithful weekend. Of course everybody's going to spin it in their favour, so WWE will do a hatchet job on Benoit, FOX will turn it back yet again to steroids and the evils of pro wrestling, ex-workers of the industry will spout their personal grievances, company men will sing their praises, and the fans... well... will move on.

I knew I'm stupid, but I am dumb as well

Nope, I am not the smartest guy around, but I could more or less hide that fact behind a facade quite well. Now however even computer games are rubbing it in, that frankly my IQ is not as high as I would like it to be...

We cannot win

I am (along with my colleagues) trying to get a survey running for some time, because we should try to find out what our co-workers think about their jobs. Problem is, so are a lot of other intra-company teams, like HR, the internal telephone service, the lease car service, the management, the facilities department, the finance department, the tea lady and the guys writing marketing articles in the local news flash magazine.

We found ourselves in a position, that we didn't know when it's a good time to ask someone about his job? Right now is no good, since everybody is on vacation, two months ago was no good because everyone was getting three surveys a week, and two months from now everybody will be revving up for the new fiscal year...

Maybe we'll just wing it...

Eighties Denied

The eighties and nineties were the time of my youth. It was all A-Team, Knight Rider, Michael Jackson, Ruud Gullit, Top Gun, Berlin Wall, teen angst, toys and cartoons. Most of what we had back then was crap, but it was what we had, and it is what we nostalgically come back to. How else can you explain the scores of people going to Transformers The Movie, or going to Eighties parties etc.

Some of the things that were cool when you were a kid, are quite embarrassing to admit right now. Some of those actually are best left in the past (certain hairstyles, tube socks). Other things are actually worth quite a lot of money (He-Man action figures, mint condition). Some of those things you might be even proud to say you're still a fan of.

And that's what's been bugging me. Let's say you like Hulk Hogan, or gabber music, but everybody around you found that to be an insipid pastime, and basically ridiculed you for it. Or even worse, they dismissed it as a fad or a phase, and you would grow out of it in time. What would they say if you still like now, what you did back then? (HA!) And have you been fighting for your "right to like", or did you stay quiet until the movie comes out and it suddenly became hip and happening again?

I would say to today's youth that there's enough things in the world people will try to discourage you from. But it's not you who has to stop. The detractors must sell the alternative, or otherwise leave the fad be. You are the only one who can determine what you're supposed to like. Nostalgia will hide the deficiencies of the past anyway, so you might as well work with it, as the years go by.

That's why I don't do jumpstyle, but will let others go right ahead.

Personal Investment

Sometimes things just end. Shows get pulled, companies go bankrupt, wars are lost, people get dead. We are forced to deal with each instance in the best way possible. Often this is directly linked to how much we've invested in someone or something.

For example, I invested a lot of time into pro wrestling. I know and follow the characters, the storylines and am quite up to date with what's going on at each show. These people are real people with their own set of problems and demons. Sometimes one of them just doesn't make it and dies. Sometimes it's unfortunate, other times is downright tragic. It is always however a point of note. Bear in mind, other than being a fan, I have little to no interaction with any wrestler.

Now the other day a message arrived in my inbox, informing me one of my old colleagues from several years ago died. I know the name, probably spoke to him once or twice, and I've likely seen him at a reunion a couple of weeks ago. But I've never worked with him before, and come to think of it, it's rather hard for me to picture his face. So my most immediate reaction was... a shrug.

The difference here is personal investment. I have very little invested in a relationship with this guy, even though objectively he is closer to me than any athlete across the Atlantic. If I invest little, the loss is limited. If I think I can weather the loss of investment, I don't feel bad or worse.

It's a real shitty attitude I realize. But unfortunately it's one that hits closer to home than most people will admit.

Transform And Roll Out (Spoiler)

It's a very Zen-like moment when you hear the voice of Optimus Prime utter the opening monologue. Instantly you're taken back to a time when the world was a clear place. When Autobots were good, Decepticons were evil, every sentient being had a right to exist, and Sky Channel carried the single best cartoon of the eighties.

You hope the live action movie doesn't impact that romantic idea, and still you want it to be upgraded to 2007 standards. With all the CGI, professional soundtrack, Hollywood summer blockbuster production values, vast media exposure and multi-thread merchandise (toys, comics, video game) you can shake a stick at. And thankfully Transformers The Movie does exactly that.

I'm not going to reiterate the movie's plot, and instead we'll just focus on what made the movie great in the theater: the first encounter with Optimus, the interaction between Sam, Mikaela (and Bumblebee), actually the first encounter with Mikaela, the Camaro 2008, the Deceps Blackout, Barricade, and Starscream, Prime kicking ass and taking Bonecrusher's head, Megatron ripping Jazz in two.

You have to appreciate the humour in the movie, which is solid gold. Anthony Anderson doing the Matrix brings the funny. Bumblebee being better at picking up Megan Fox than Shia Leboeuf is just too much. And the Witwicky mother trying to be the understanding parent for an insecure teenager, simply hilarious.

There are some flaws though. The action scenes are MTV-style, as in much too fast to actually see what's going on. The movie moves intermittently from day to night even within the same scene, making it seem like either the scene in real-time would take really, really long, or the director couldn't get the actors to finish their grimaces in time. And like most cult franchises to movie adaptations, the hook of the original had to be Hollywood-ized to make it more tenable to the average movie-goer. Yes, Transformers is definitely a good movie to go to, even for someone who doesn't know TF from the past, but the Autobots and Decepticons don't get nearly enough screentime or dialogue to flesh out their characters, which is the point of the franchise anyway.

The problem is that for all the good things in the movie, it didn't need to be a Transformers movie. Apart from the names, the premise and some of the leitmotifs, anything in the movie could easily have been Go-Bots, or G.I. Joe. Or even the Ghostbusters.

• Will go to the movie again: no, probably not. Can't get the same reaction from the crowd on a post-premiere viewing.
• Will buy the DVD: absolutely. Day it comes out.
• Would go see a sequel: depends if they're gonna focus more on the Transformers themselves next time.

Sore Losers

Apparently Sebastien Bourdais, he of three-time Champ Car World Series champion fame, wasn't too happy how Dutchman Robert Doornbos earned his first victory in ChampCars this past weekend.

Little bit scared of competition are you now Sebastien?

Of course, I would be too, if some upstart rookie from Formula One's nether regions jumped the Atlantic and then proceeded to kick my butt. Especially if I had an inkling of hope I could actually make it Formula One...

But our French friend is not the sore loser here... it's the other Dutch Formula One racers, Jos Verstappen and Christian Albers. They were too proud to race in the States, they'd rather stay at home nursing the kids (Verstappen) or race for 20th place on the grid (Albers). Maybe just as well that the Spyker experiment is not gonna last too much longer.

More Brain Training

Dr. Kawashima must be doing well for Nintendo: the game he inspired and gave his name to, Brain Age, was the killer app for the Nintendo DS, sold millions worldwide, and helped create a new gaming genre from the ground up.

Brain Age 2, or More Brain Training is the sequel to this title, and serves to cash in on the success of the DS and the edutainment/training game genre. It is delightfully similar to the original, making you feel instantly at home. All the controls are still there, the styling hasn't changed, and the sound is what you'd expect. And then of course you throw yourself into the training proper:

• you start off with a rock, paper, scissors game that takes quite a while to get used to. Especially if you've all been growing up to win rock, paper, scissors, it's strange to have to lose when Kawashima asks you to; it takes so much time, I was 68 when the game ended.
  
• then you can start doing some small exercises. Now after one day only three exercises are open to you: a maths exercise requiring you to fill in the missing operator, a spelling exercise where you have to form words from jumbled up letters, and a musical exercise, that asks you to tap the right chords to a song in time to the music. Another opens very soon, another maths exercise that requires you to give back correct change at a cash register, and one where you have to identify words spoken to you from the DS. I've not opened up any more exercises yet, but these are already challenging.

Compared to the original the exercises seem a little harder. It was terrible to see that I couldn't really do the jumbled letters test well, but maybe that's just a matter of recognition. The listening exercise is really, really hard, but that may be a technical limitation. The DS speakers are simply not that good.

Then again the original's exercises (the house occupants' one for example) proved to be no challenge at all after a while, were stale or boring (100 maths formulae, or the memory game) or were seriously flawed (the reading aloud one). So these are somewhat of an improvement.

Of course, we have to hold off on the final verdict until I've gone through the entire game, but for now, let's call it a 30 Euro luxury, instead of a necessity.

World Crashing Down Around You

So you're a world champion, idolized by many, regarded as the very best of your kind. You are a hero figure, a fighter, a warrior, a well-respected fan favorite.

And then one day you don't show up for work. Actually you call-in with a family emergency, and you go home. Next thing we know, you're found dead in your home, along with wife and son. The investigation is treated as double murder/suicide, which is confirmed by all the authoritative sources. And then the world comes crashing down on you...

Only you know what happened this past weekend. It doesn't stop everyone else to try to cope with your death. Speculation if rife, drawing conclusions is done plenty. How did you come this far? Some see it as an opportunity to mock pro wrestling, or to point out the character flaws, the lifestyle and the addictions that many personalities have in that industry. Others don't want to accept this harsh reality as a given, and either wallow in tears for the loss of a dear idol, or murder the person after the fact, just to make sense of it all.

Details and conclusive facts won't be available for some time. Could be days, could be months. In the meantime people will do everything mentioned above just to make sense - mainly to themselves - of what is obviously a tragic, unexpected and disastrous turn of events. People won't wait for the truth. They can't. They'd go crazy.

As a colleague of mine displayed recently: the truth is how people see themselves, not what the truth actually is.

- Chris Benoit 1967-2007

Two Months Later This Still Deserves A Mention

Geeky? Maybe. Looks like this guy has too much time on his hands? I guess so. But it is the best homage to the Matrix, John Woo, video games, feminism seen so far.

The Nintendo Generation

Slowly approaching 30 and already I'm berating younger, more junior colleagues. I could say stuff like "Kids today...", or "In my day...", and I would be right. I could ridicule them for jumping, and I would still be right.

It's not just an age thing though, the entire mentality of my generation opposed to the one coming out of school the past two years is completely wack. These guys want everything, from their cars and their pay, to their career choices, houses, sports and television to be fed to them on a silver platter. And they want it now. As if they're pushing buttons and stuff is supposed to happen to them, just like that.

Thing is, with the internet, MSN, hyves, youtube and the like people hear about the latest information and the greatest success stories faster than ever before. And people tell you exactly how to emulate it. Next, people get frustrated because the trick only worked once, and it did not work for them. And then they up and leave.

People are much too used to experiencing immediate cause and effect, with a remote controller or a gamepad, and they expect everything else in life to work the same.

Welcome to the Nintendo Generation.

Crash and burn

What's with these guys lately? NBA baller J.R. Smith gets thrown out of his vehicle in a wicked car crash, that actually killed his passenger. Baseball pitcher Josh Hancock gets himself killed in a motorcycle accident. Last year Pittsburgh Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was involved in a motorcycle accident as well. And now fellow NFL player Lavar Arrington suffered the same fate.

What's with these guys? Even if you are a big superstar on the road, in traffic you are just the same as everyone else. Okay... maybe you got the bigger cars or the faster ones, but they wreck totally just the same.

Then again since when did their off-game activities become national news? Normal accidents, with just as much impact are not even a sidenote in the local newspaper, but when one of these guys gets himself wrapped around a telephone pole, they get frontpage billing.

Learning from past mistakes

When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, careful analysis after the fact showed that part of the shielding was damaged during takeoff. This was not picked up upon until it was too late. Now with the current mission the bright guys and girls at NASA are more alert to damage sustained during takeoff.

About a week ago there was this newsbite that basically said the shuttle was damaged. Then later on the news said the damage sustained was minor. Just a little thermal blanket. Still considering the cost of one shuttle, and the fact they won't make any more, it's better to be safe then sorry.

Do you think astronauts applaud when they land safely?

Unwanted attention

Humility is a great virtue, one that saves you a lot of trouble, and can still bring you a lot of good things if you're really, really good. (Unfortunately, if you show great humility, but aren't good at all, then you - rightfully - don't get anything.) Coupled with a well-developed skill like social awareness humility can become a strong weapon to build your career on.

Here's a real-life example. You could try to do a group picture shoot, and keep to the side and let others take the front. Suddenly Mr. Photographer might just switch the point of view around and shoot the group from the side... where you just happen to be front and center.

Of course, your positive attitude brings out the best in the picture. How's that for exposure?

Where was Don McMillan when I needed him?

Nuff said.

How Many Bad Gambles Can You Have

Dutch television agents are probably the worst gamblers in the world. These are the guys who buy television shows (usually American) to fill their programming with. You would think that they would be able to discern good shows from bad ones, but unfortunately they keep missing the mark.

It gets worse: when they start advertising shows heavily as the big hit series from the U.S.A. and then find out the show was cancelled even before the show hits the Dutch airwaves, how stupid would you feel? It happened to:

• The Nine
• Daybreak
• The Class
• Summerland
• Out Of Practice

Now apparently good shows the Dutch can't pay for. So much that they get dumb and start programming it at around 23:55 on a Thursday or Friday night. This happened to:

• The Sopranos
• The West Wing
• The Agency
• My Name Is Earl

And of course you keep rerunning the same old shows over and over again, like:

• Friends (ENOUGH ALREADY)
• The A-Team
• Will & Grace
• ER
  

If you know a series is gonna cost a lot of money, why would you spend it so unwisely? And if you wanna gamble, why do it this way? Why do you programme a television evening like a novice poker player plays a hand?

The Heart, The Head, The Gut: NBA Finals 2007

One more final to go before we head into the summer, and it's a doozy... Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs versus LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Heart says: Cavs win. Simply because the Spurs are rather bland, not really colourful (literally). Okay I give them Eva Longoria, but other than that there's nothing really fun about the Spurs. They're decent but boring, opposed to Cleveland's new found pizzazz in LeBron James. It's good to see if the NBA finally has its new superstar, after Michael Jordan, and winning the NBA title this year will definitely usher in that era. James has certainly brought the franchise back from their weak period starting in the mid-nineties, when the Cavs themselves were a boring team.

The Head says: Spurs win. On the grand stage of world basketball the Spurs have a collection of players that's simply impressive. Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Bruce Bowen, Michael Finley, and of course the indomitable Tim Duncan. The Spurs have experience on their side, having been to the NBA Finals three times already since 1998 and winning each trip. The Cavaliers have nothing to show, except for some regular season wins over San Antonio, and the rush of having beaten the Detroit Pistons for four straight in the Eastern Conference finals.

The Gut says: Spurs win. Two years ago I simmed a couple of NBA seasons in EA Sports NBA 06 (playing the Lakers mind you), and for the 2006/2007 season I couldn't beat the Spurs in the West playoffs. I was blown out. The Spurs would go on to reach the NBA Finals... against the Cleveland Cavaliers. That means a computer game called this match-up two years before it actually happened! Mind you the Spurs won that simulated series as well, 4-2.

Wink

It's getting really scary now... I don't even have to say anything, just a wink and a nod, and I'm in.

It would be really useful if it was for a club, or a fancy restaurant, or a championship game final, or even a bloody plane ride. But NOOO... just your regular neighbourhood hospital...

The Heart, the Head, the Gut: NHL Stanley Cup Finals 2007

The Stanley Cup final is coming Monday, and this time it sees the Anaheim Ducks face the Ottawa Senators. Either one could win their first Stanley Cup. Supposedly its going to be an exciting series. And like the last couple of finals, it pits a Canadian team against a southern US, non-traditional-hockey territory team.

The Head says: on the one side you've got a Ducks team, that - while powerful - is not very effective in front of goal. Teemu Selanne has always been a feared scorer, and in fact many different Ducks managed to score, but it's not exactly a tale of riches to say the least. On the other side you've got the Senators, who've got Jason Spezza, Dan Alfredsson, Dany Heatley who pretty much make up half Ottawa's entire goals production these playoffs on their own. If the Ducks defense, Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, can stop this line, and the Ducks can get production from all of their offensive lines, they will win. It would suit the last two finals as well, when the Southern U.S. team (Carolina, Tampa Bay) would beat the Canadian team (Edmonton, Calgary). Purely from an observer point of view, the Ducks have the better and more experienced goalie (Giguere over Ottawa's Emery), although the difference isn't all that great. Even so... Ducks win.

The Heart says: I've been playing EA Sports NHL for a while now, and two players that always got roster spots in my teams, were Mike Fisher and Mike Comrie. Lo and behold, both play for Ottawa this season.
In addition I found it a travesty to see the Stanley Cup in the hands of regions where hockey is not really appreciated. After all these years it's about time that a Canadian team brought the Cup back north of the border. Senators win.

The Gut says: Difficult, difficult... which one has the better story? Either one would win their first Cup, so that can't be it. Media has been calling attention to Daniel Alfredsson being the first European-born captain in the Stanley Cup finals, so maybe I'll swing that way. Ducks have home-ice advantage though, and there's still that losing streak that Canadian teams have at the moment... it would be nice if the Senators would bring back the Cup to Canada, after two previous failed attempts.
Senators in seven.

Relationship momentum

After you've been around for a while all the people you've met, - worked with, had fun with, played sports with, drank with, ate with, slept with, went on vacation with, - are going to be running around the world and sometimes you won't speak to each other in years. And then all of a sudden you get into contact again, either through pure coincidence, similar interests, MySpace, class reunions and... you always get the same couple of questions:

• what are you doing now, where do you work
• have you seen or do you still speak some mutual random person tm
• ... and that's basically it...

When people enter into any kind of relationship, be it friendly, business, sports, romantic, or adversarial, the roles, personalities and events that play around them decide how things go. Sometimes a relationship is established quickly, others take years or even generations to develop. All that is a matter of momentum. Some people have a lot of it with some, and nearly nothing with others.

Now when erstwhile friends meet up who haven't spoken to each other for quite a while, the relationship has to be rekindled. The longer you haven't spoken to each other, and the farther the distance, the more a previous relationship's momentum (if any) has died down. In this context people must regain momentum to move the relationship again to any significant level.

Of course some people gain momentum extremely quickly, no matter if it has been fifty years since they last met, or if they've never met before. There are also other factors that influence the speed that people can re-establish relationships with: similar interests or shared experiences, family bonds, institutions (marriage, birthdays, funerals, graduations, traditions) a degree of personal friendliness and being accepting to others, willingness to reset the relationship at all. A relationship with high momentum is more likely to get sustained and is more likely to get revived after an idle period, than one that has none.

So when it comes to relationships, momentum is key. If you are inclined to keep as many relationships alive as possible, then keep triggering those positive momentum changers.

Silver Linings

Busy is in the eye of the beholder. It can't really be called busy if the majority of your activities are self-inflicted, self-served or self-chosen. Nonetheless everybody can fill up all hours of his or her day extremely quickly with all kinds of tasks. It could be a sport, a job, even a person.

You can complain all you want about not having enough time, but it's all a choice. You can be as busy or not as you want... as long as you realize that there are consequences and if you want to carry them.

Sometimes you get less busy involuntarily... you might get a signal from your body (getting sick or getting stressed), or something else happens: You get locked in your elevator, or you crash your car, or you get stopped by police. Anyways, when that happens it's best to look at the silver linings: at least you got to fill up your time with something new and exciting. And that is the source of great stories...

The Head, the Heart, the Gut: Champions League 2007

The rematch is here: tonight Liverpool will take on AC Milan in the final of the UEFA Champions League. Two years ago (that long already) Liverpool shocked the world by coming back from 3-0 down to beat the heavily favoured Italians after a penalty shoot-out. Of course this time, Milan won't be so blase. They will be cautious and careful to hopefully not trip over themselves. The teams playing will be roughly the same, even though Milan has seen some turnover opposed to 2005 (no more Shevchenko, Crespo, Stam), and the Reds added Kuyt, and Crouch.

The Heart says: Liverpool wins, because you cannot hear You'll Never Walk Alone too many times.

The Head says: Milan wins; Liverpool simply hasn't been consistent enough this past season, which is why they had little to play for in the Premiership. Milan has been impressive against Man United, and I do see them attain the same level of play. Milan in Kaka and Seedorf have more elite players than Liverpool (Gerrard).

The Gut says: Milan wins; I'm going out on a limb here, but the Italians will be more careful this time around. Despite the true cupfighter mentality of the Reds, I don't see them upsetting Milan twice in the same decade.

I do hope for a penalty shootout though. In which case, I think Milan should not put all their eggs in Dida's basket...

It's just a game

I know it's just a game, and I know Korea is a bit weird (especially about this particular game)... But just look at this video (which is actually pretty good), and listen to the crowd, when the title comes on.



Truly I haven't heard a whole crowd go nuts like this for a video game ever.

My Company's Favorite Jokes

For some reason people who've been with the company for longer than two years generate a form of humour that's kind of subtle, and oh so very typical. It is also very shallow, and is repeated far too often the higher you get up the pyramid.
Jokes include:

• if you happen to leave at about 17:00, people will quip "you got the afternoon off boy?" or "working half days now are we?"
• when you've been around, you're bound to have left behind a lot of projects, teams and old friends. If you did good, you probably meet up again at a banquet, company drink, or dinner. Managers always like to joke about "hey, did you hear already? you're coming back to the team next week!"
• somebody in another team messes up, that person becomes a running joke throughout the week. If someone in your own team messes up, you ignore it.
  

Somehow this has to be a sign that the company culture is not heading in the right direction. I just can't tell which sign.

When the stars are aligned

...you could break your locks, have water leak through the ceiling, get rubbish smeared all over your walls, get chewn out, receive speeding tickets, get picked up, get shot down, laugh your ass off, cry like a baby, forget where you are, find your way, meet old friends, lose new friends, get promoted, get booted...

...and at the end it just feels like you didn't spend a worthwhile weekend, and you just feel tired. You didn't do anything physical, but it feels like you ran a marathon three times over.

When the world seems to throw you sliders, do you duck or back away? No, you face everything head on... and it's this mentality that tires us out. Sometimes it may be better to get struck out, and try again later.

More work observations

• I know I've been talking about the differences between consultants and programmers a while back, but maybe the differences between managers and the rest are more funny. For example managers are good at patting their people on the backs. In fact they're so good at it, they they pride themselves on it, even to the point where they get competitive with other managers who can get the best compliments down, who can do it the fastest, who can do it with the most fervour, etc...
• Consultants and managers look down on their computers. That's why they never (take the time to) use a separate screen for their laptops. A computer is a tool, something to be used as a means to an end. This also means they look down as a natural posture. If they're tall from the outset, that's fine, but it looks rather funny if they are smallish.
• Programmers look up to their computers. Programmers take the time to put laptops on a pedestal (or in this case, a desk riser), or to use a proper, bigger separate screen. They always look up or straight. Of course, seeing they spend a huge amount of time behind their computers, they have to do all this, lest they get all kinds of physical complaints. To them the computer is their friend, a pal. Some even give computers first names.
  

This is why consultants look down on programmers.

All Alone

In NFL you win together, and you lose together. Every pass, every run, every block, everything is a joint effort.

In baseball a pitcher is completely on his own on the mound, but he's never alone on defense and he has fielders around him to get his ass out of the fire.

I guess in basketball you could conceivably get the last shot of the game (the infamous buzzer beater), but while definitely dramatic, it has to be a team-on-team exercise.

But the penalty shootout in soccer is where you can truly be alone. Nothing is more dramatic than failing to convert a penalty. Much like Ryan Donk did today against Ajax in the final of the Dutch Cup. All the weight of the team, the club, the fans, maybe even the nation, rests on the shooter's shoulders. And if you miss, it is you that has missed. It's just you against the keeper. No one else. No team mates to blame. No one there to pass back on.

Ironically in the shootout the shooter is in the firing line, not the other way around.

N.B.: showing just what a class roster AZ has, at the end of the game the entire group gathered round Donk, who was crying his eyes out. In a great show of support, they shared his grief with him.

Wet

It's been bone dry for quite a while now, over forty days I believe. Ironically my downstairs neighbours have been in trouble dealing with a leak coming from upstairs... which is where I live. Their wallpaper is coming off and parts of the wall look really black, so yeah it is a big problem...

However for the life of me I cannot think what could be there that should be leaking. There's my bathroom, but that thing hasn't been changed since I moved in. The leak also is in a corner where I don't have anything there; no sink, no shower, no nothing. I also never had any flooding or something like that.

The only thing I can think of is that the mains are starting to deteriorate in between our floors... that would be nasty...

Halfway Brilliant

That was a brilliant idea to play tennis on clay AND on grass at the same time! Bring together the best tennis player on gravel (Rafael Nadal) and the best tennis player period (Roger Federer), and let them slug it out!

How would other sports handle this... Formula One races that are held on asphalt for the first bit, then move into the dirt for the last... an American Football field that is on one side normal grass, and astroturf on another... a bout between wrestlers and boxers, where one round they both must box, and the next they both must wrestle... (oh wait, that's been done to death already)

As a novelty it was halfway brilliant. Unfortunately also a bit half-assed... but good on them for trying.

Playoffs? Who needs playoffs

The American style of sports league always culminates into some kind of playoff, knock-out system. Everybody is always working to get to one game, be it the Super Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Grand Final; or maybe a final series, like the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup finals.

And it's all well and good. Attendance, viewership, the quality of the games is usually high (you are pitting the two best teams together). And yet I cannot stress enough how fantastic a climactic finish to a normal European league can be. Teams involved in championships play in different venues at the same time, but everyone has their ears on what happens in other stadia.

• Dutch eredivisie national championship 2006-2007: Before the day's matches AZ Alkmaar, Ajax and PSV are all level on points, but AZ has the clearly better goal differential. AZ loses unexpectedly away from small-time club Excelsior; Ajax beats Willem II 2-0, but PSV beats Vitesse 5-1, and achieves a better goal differential (50 over 49) to win the Dutch eredivisie.
  
• German Bundesliga national championship 2000-2001: Bayern Munchen held a three point advantage over Schalke 04 before the last game, and just needed a tie against Hamburg to win the Bundesliga title. Schalke however beat Unterhaching 5-2 and heard Bayern losing 0-1 to Hamburg, leaving Schalke virtual champions. There was however still stoppage time to play and a last gasp free kick gave Bayern the necessary goal to edge out a draw and win the Bundesliga.
• Spanish La Liga Primera Division 1993-1994: Deportivo La Coruna led Barcelona by two points by the final day of competition, but Barca had the better goal differential. Coruna played Valencia but couldn't score the goal that would give them the title. Barcelona beat Sevilla 5-2, and were virtual champions, until Valancia conceded a penalty kick in the last minutes of their game. Djukic took the penalty, hoping to score and give Deportivo their first title in history, but missed.
  

Careless Whisper

Another example that television really screws up our youths (or in this case, me)...

There's this unwritten rule in television shows that the hero figure is either

• a loudmouth, gung-ho, loner-type action hero; lack of respect towards authority comes as a bonus
• a brooding, mysterious dark stranger; no affiliation to anyone
  

And both, coming face to face with their adversary of the week, start spouting their threats... in a tone that I can best describe as whispering.

Now, in all my career so far no one has ever looked, seemed, or sounded menacing or intimidating or even charismatic enough, by whispering to everyone else. Everybody always has to shout.

Thanks to television, my description of a hero is forever tainted. An admirable person in fiction is someone who doesn't need to speak loudly. In real life, the people we most admire are the ones who speak most clearly. Not necessarily loudly, but definitely not whispering.

Do NOT read if you are depressed

"Respect is never given; Respect can be lost; Respect must be earned."
(Yes, tell that to a sociopath, or someone at the edge of his sanity.)

"If you see light at the end of the tunnel, it is usually a freight train."
(funny signature - not so much for a desperate)

Virginia Tech

I really cannot stress enough that the tragedy at Virginia Tech was shocking... and I do share my condolences to the people personally affected.

Yet there are plenty of cynic aftershocks I have to mention:

• true statement by woman at supermarket counter, seeing the shooter's face in the newspaper: "hee kijk, das die klootzak die al die mensen in Amerika heeft doodgeschoten. Het is maar goed dat ie zichzelf heeft afgeknald, anders had ik het wel gedaan..." (I don't think it's hard to imagine how this guy got so crazy; also kind of convenient that the guy shot himself in the face... did anyone actually see the body?)
• true statement on the radio: the opponents of free gun sales in the United States use this tragedy as a strong argument for their cause... but so do the supporters. In fact, the supporters actually say that had there been MORE free gun sales, the people who got shot this week actually had the chance to defend themselves... (*sigh...* c'mon guys...)
• the victims roles were nicely distributed. You've got the man who had the heroic sacrifice, the innocent, the beautiful girl... but strangefully, I didn't see people who were supposedly the ones that irked this guy so much, the charlatans, the arrogant assholes... where were they?
  
• what little time will pass until we see the first scenes of riots against Koreans? The over-under is at one week.
  

Yeah, that could happen

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Tales from the front

The war is on between Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft for supremacy over your video game budget. With all three consoles on the Dutch market for a month and a half now, it's time for some observations from the front:

• Sony is doing badly. You've got stacks and stack and stacks of big huge PlayStation3 boxes in every electronics store in the country. It's huge and it's heavy... and so is the price tag. Seriously, 600 euros!? I would have believed 400 euro. I don't pay 500+ euros for a DVD player/recorder, so why would I pay that money for a PS3? Seriously overpriced. And that's why the boxes are still there... or is that Sony's marketing strategy? Use electronic stores as your own personal advertisement boards?
  
• In contrast the Nintendo Wii is NOWHERE to be found. We are now about five months into the release and I have NEVER seen a stray Wii in the wild. As soon as somebody finds one, it's gone. The Wii is like urban myth. You hear about people who have one, but no one can tell you where to find another.
• And now Microsoft is getting egg on its face because of the Dutch consumer market. Apparently DVDs and game discs in the XBox 360 get scratched, even after a small amount of time. Microsoft has now been featured in at least two nationally televised consumer programmes, Kassa and Radar (coincidentally, both from our local communist station VARA). Microsoft might finally get some backlash, after a year of moderate success in the market.
  

Maybe I better skip this video game generation...

Time spent at work

Contractually I'm obliged to work 40 hours a week, save holidays. I also have 26 free days. In 2006 this amounts to a grand total of 2.069 hours I am paid to work for.

Now, I've been keeping track how much time I spend at work. I note when I arrive at the office and am ready to actually do my work, and note when I leave. Generally I'm accurate to about five minutes in this. Of course this time also includes non-productive things like coffee rounds, smoking breaks, and lunch, so I'll take into account an extra hour per day.

I summed up the numbers and I spent the grand total of 2.122 hours at work in the calendar year 2006. This amounts to seven working days of difference across the whole year. Four can be attributed to me taking up less vacation than I have allocated (23 instead of 26). That leaves three days I am at work more than contractually agreed.

Considering some of my colleagues work nights (at least according to their e-mail sending times) I'm actually not that bad. At least, if you happen to think half a week of unpaid work is not bad.

Difference in style

Sometimes you'll see a commercial coming by about joining the air force, or the army or the navy. The emphasis I see here is on helping people in far away countries if need be, growing as a person and toughening up.

The army's commercials in the US are a little bit different. For one, they look like the trailer of Blackhawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and Starship Troopers. Very Hollywood. Also they emphasize (quite heavily I might add) being a patriot, much more than over here.

I guess marketing departments in the armed forces do quite some checking on demographics before they do this. I just don't really know if you actually get the recruits you want fighting your wars using the US commercial.

You know you're too old

Now I know I'm officially too old for clubbing.

Jumpstyle. Who got the bright idea for this?

Professional Suicide

After a couple of years in the business I am glad to say I've managed to survive many of the growing pains one would get in professional life. Actually becoming somewhat successful in doing so. It also never ceases to amaze me how others remain blissfully clueless.

Now here's a guy who has the mad skillz, but not the chops to make it in the business. Delusional, single-minded, severely non-empathic... those would be terms to describe him. He is also figuratively a roller coaster ride. And apparently someone who is capable of committing professional suicide, without even knowing it.

Usually young inexperienced guys you would shield away from harm, but I have to say... when someone really, really gets on your nerves, all bets are off.

I'm not proud of this, but I really feel like letting this guy go.

You Don't Know Anything

The funniest on-line game I've seen in quite a while is one that's one of my old favorites. Way back in the day there was this trivia game that wasn't actually completely on the level. The questions where a bit weird, and slightly far-fetched, but always made sense. The pace was frenetic, and it was great fun with two or three friends around, just like in a game show.

In fact, it was a game show.

And now it's back. You Don't Know Jack is back weekly with new shows, new trivia questions and more fun! It's easy to get the hang of it, although most of the questions are U.S. centric and you have to be up-to-date on American pop culture if you wanna get the high scores.

Idols

Must be wonderful having someone to idolize, someone to look up to. You always have a goal, a wish, something to want. Someone that blinds you, cannot do anything wrong in your book. In fact his or her signature in your book will actually mean something for you. (When in fact most of us put down our signatures daily at least five times, and it doesn't sell better on E-bay one bit.)

Could be a movie star, that you've fallen in love in. It could be an author whose stories or poetry you admire, an athlete whose performance sent you in raptures (strangely enough, win or lose), a scholar whose theories speak to you, an religious figure that you believe in. It could even be mom or dad.

What if you didn't have all that? You'd be unimpressed by pretty much everyone around you. That could be easily mistaken for arrogance, although that wouldn't be the case per se. There are just no qualities in anybody else that justify you idolizing them more than the next person. You'd also have to be self-motivated, because pretty much no one else would be able to. No one else in this case would be able to set goals or examples for you.

With global mass media the exposure to people whom you could potentially idolize has grown exponentially. You get to see them from much farther away, as we get live TV feeds from the Pacific, the southern-most tip of Latin America or the deep Arctic. The range of people is also bigger, because we have local news that covers only what dogs a family in Lutjebroek, Pennsylvania keeps, and specialized news that covers South-Eastern Asia. There's talent and reality TV shows for god knows why (Idols, Who wants to marry..., MTV Made etc.).

So all in all everyone of us has a huge number of people to select an idol from, with performances that are - by nature of numbers - growing more insignificant.

Don't blame me for not being easily impressed. Blame television.

They actually did it

Wow... simply tragic. As if the death of Pakistan's national cricket team's coach Bob Woolmer wasn't already sad enough, now the officials have come forward and declared that the guy was actually strangled.

Strangled.

Somebody actually took the time to choke out every last breath of air in his body. That's just pure hatred. What did this South African dude do, to deserve this? I'd imagine he stole large amounts of stock and bonds, gambled away lot's of somebody else's money, or insulted someone's mother.

Don't Call Us, We Call You

Funniest line read today (paraphrased): the ABN AMRO board of directors and strategic braintrust are in closed door meeting to discuss next steps, possibly even a merger with Barclays. They sent out a memo to the second echelon of management: "You are in charge now."

As in: "Don't even try to contact us right now."

When you least expect it

I'm a supporter of the movement that says everything, every event, every person is connected. Things happen, because things happened before and things are supposed to happen (if you think that's cryptic, try me when I've been awake for 33 hours straight)...

Anyway, this comes back to me for example getting phone calls. Lately I've been getting them when I'm in the car (so I can't pick up), in the bathroom (so I can't pick up), sleeping (I don't wanna pick up), when I'm on a date (I don't wanna pick up), or in a meeting (I can't pick up) and the list goes on...

I'm going to need a personal secretary for this very soon. At least then I can get calls when I expect them to.

Travel Note #4

I'm pretty sure these regulations for fluids on airplanes is only helping retailers. If you can't take a bottle of Spa along in the plane, you're forced to get one at your destination... at tourist prices.

What's next? You can't take your clothes on the plane anymore? That would be... interesting.

Travel Note #3

Whenever two consultants meet for the first time, they will try to size each other up. It's a bit like two dogs sniffing each others crotch to determine who is the Alpha, and who is the submissive.

Usually this means consultants introduce themselves by career level, tenure, engagements they've been in, people they know and so on.

A conversation would go something like this:
Consultant A: Hello, I am So-and-So.
Consultant B: Nice to meet you, So-and-so. My name is John. John Doe. (with the undertone: why don't you know me in the first place man?) What are you doing?
A: I am currently senior manager for a multi-million dollar Random company. I lead the team that covers operations for half of the continent.
B: Is that right? I am department head of anotherRandomCompany.com, our recently started joint venture. I work with BigWig A, BigWig B, and report to Hugo G. Partner.
A: Wow, nice. Ehm... hey, you know what? I'm gonna talk to someone who looks smaller than me.

Travel Note #2

So, we were advertised a travel time of about one hour from the airport to the hotel. We just needed to book a cab. That proved to be quite difficult in itself, but eventually we got one, with a young woman behind the wheel... who was a month into her job.

Because of the distance between airport and hotel, we negotiated a price, about fifty bucks. She got in the car... and about an hour later we were still driving around. The SATNAV was not doing much: it couldn't find the street name.

We didn't really mind though... we were not in any hurry. But slowly we could sense the taxi driver getting frustrated and starting to despair. Eventually she stopped driving and just gave up.

Luckily the people on the street were quite helpful. One even jogged into his home and came up with a nice Google map with directions. That even did the trick.

We felt sorry for the young woman. She was so distraught at the end of the ride, that she basically told us that the ride was for free. That was not an option for us, so we paid everything plus some tip.

So the moral of the story? Women can really mess with men's minds. Even unintended.

Travel Note #1

My most uncanny ability is probably the one where I - more than average - get singled out for "routine checks" at airport customs. I understand, I usually travel alone, I pack lightly, and I speak muffled when I've had a 10 hour flight, and I'm from the Netherlands (So There Must Be Something In His Suitcase); a customs officer will have found enough suspicious things sizing me up to take me in.

All I can say is, BRING IT ON. I got nothing to declare.

Also, it's probably not a good idea to have me bring stuff over. You're better off giving it to someone who's more... average looking, and doesn't attract as much attention.

Or until I'm travelling with someone.

I hate my trip computer

Having a trip computer in my car is something of a new thing for me... and it's pissing me off. Mostly because I am now forced to face the cold, hard truth about my driving... it's just not very nice.

According to the car maker's manual, my Golf is supposed to drive 6.4 l/100 km in general use (mixed freeway, inner city driving), or 15 km to 1. I drive on average (after about a month of relatively incident free driving), 7.4 l/100 km, or 15 percent less efficient than the car could potentially drive.

However I must say that my Golf can only make 6.4 in case:

• there's little traffic (try that on a normal working day)
  
• average speed is about 10 km/h less than the legal speed limit
• you pull up really slowly (as in geriatric mode) from traffic lights
  

Coupled with two inner city speed traps, this makes the most disconcerting month of car driving I've had in some time.

Oh well, at least the radio is still intact.

Conflicting interests

Strange thing this... consultants are hired help. That's true. Companies take in outsiders to help them do a job, complete a project or help them (consulting them) with a conundrum.

Consultants however (especially the ones at my employer) are quite young, often hideously ambitious, and extremely quick to move. That means that whomever takes on anyone of us, should not be looking to keep us long-term. And yet that's exactly what clients expect (especially if you're really good).

In the current market a consultant is really a commodity with a high turnover rate. Consulting companies are falling over themselves to gain headcount, but at the same time just as many consultants are dropping out and moving away. If any consultant thinks he's not appreciated, or he's bored, or he's stuck in a rut for too long, he straight-up leaves.

This leaves a client in trouble. A client would desperately like to keep good people, even if they are outsiders. The client could offer them a lot of things, maybe even the same things as they would to their own employees, but realistically speaking that is not their duty. It is the duty of the consulting firm to keep employees happy. The consulting firm however has little control in this. They are too far away, and it's one thing to sell services to a client, it's an entire other thing to tell them how to treat your people. But the firm has to do something, anything, lest their employees leave in droves.

So we have a conflicting interests here: a client whose needs are best met by people serving them long-term; consultants whose needs are met by having exciting jobs; consulting companies who see that making jobs exciting involves moving people around at high speed. And then having to make a client unhappy and frustrated, because you're pulling away people, experience, knowledge.

I'm somehow transported back to the monologue Jack Nicholson gave at the end of A Few Good Men:

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Taxes

I don't get taxes.

• I don't get why it's supposed to be due in April
• I don't get why my tax returns are exactly the same as my deficits two years ago
• I don't get why for each individual source of income arbitrarily a tax percentage was created

And it takes so bloody much time.

But then again, everybody has to do it, apart from the queen.

The Unnatural Profession

Consultants would usually be involved in engagements with only a limited timespan. After a while a consultant would leave, and everybody knows about that. It is quite an unnatural way of working, because the very livelihood of man is to make your mark, build relationships, and become skilled. Moving around has not been the traditional way of doing this, although technology has helped somewhat in this department.

Also it is the nature of man to grieve at goodbyes. Airports are full of crying mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, girlfriends, boyfriends who have to part with family and friends. The very nature of consultancy however reduces an emotional moment into a rather bland afterthought.

All I'm saying is that consultancy is an unnatural profession. I'm sure consultants play a good role nowadays as experts, or specialists or professional help. But in the grand scheme of things none of the characteristics a good consultant has, fulfill the relationship needs of a human being. By definition a consultant is temporary. By definition a consultant will leave.

Of course, you can always get a consultant back.

Sometimes I amaze even myself

Truth and objectivity are often confused. What people believe to be true is not always based on fact. Sometimes what people believe to be true is simply based on what they themselves believe to be true. That is called faith.

Reason is faith hidden behind a sliver of objectivity.

Speeding and thinking

I wouldn't know if this is a natural reaction or not, but if you're driving a car and you get caught speeding with a big flashy speed camera:

• either you sit completely still, keeping your head straight (thinking that if you don't see them, you don't get a ticket), and you slow down to WAAAY below the speed limit (thinking if you compensate enough, the average speed is going down)
  
• or you get pissed, flipping the cops off (thinking you can scare the police from giving you a ticket)
  
• or you floor the pedal, thinking, "hell, I'm caught anyway, can't get any worse, can it?"

And all the while, none of these points is going to prevent a nice ticket arriving in your mailbox. Even better, you just might get to see a motor riding police officer moving up beside you, and waving you down. Arrr....

Guilty Pleasures

Considering it is a movie that's already been out for quite a while in other parts of the globe, and is not one of very high quality either, I may have been a little bit too anxious to see DOA: Dead Or Alive. But I did, and I'm actually glad I did.

Again this is one of those movies, where some Hollywood mogul apparently took notice of the revenue numbers video games generate nowadays, and decides it is a good idea to perhaps make a feature length motion picture out of a popular game. Usually this turns out crap (Super Mario Bros, Double Dragon, Street Fighter), or disappointing (Doom, Mortal Kombat, Wing Commander). Rarely does it turn out even remotely satisfying, let alone good. I'm afraid that purely on the criterion of quality, Dead or Alive is a movie in the brownish category.

But why am I not vilifying this movie then? Well... the video game Dead Or Alive is a fighting game pitting two characters against each other in a tournament. The big gimmick in this game however is that the characters are usually HOT women, even for a video game, with features that would fit nicely in a Playboy, FHM or Maxim pictorial.

Now the great idea here was to make this game into a movie. Forget that they tried to copy the game's plot into the movie, completely exposing the lameness of the story; Forget that they made Kevin Nash into a Hulk Hogan-lookalike (oooh the irony); Forget that they opened up every cliche in the book (nerd secretly in love with hot young broad with heart of gold; selfish thief turns noble (well... actually he doesn't); freaky businessman turns into freaky evil overlord); just enjoy the fine shapely bodies of Holly Valance, Sarah Carter, Jamie Pressly, Devon Aoki and Natassia Malthe (no, I don't know them either, but who cares?); enjoy them throwing punches and roundhouse kicks, in tasteful slow motion and Dolby Surround...

Okay, okay... in all seriousness... bad movie, but NICE visuals. Get the DVD and burn out the pause button.

N.B. Dare I mention? NOT a good date movie.

Riddle me this

It is white, and it carries a warning:

"it is legal to sell, but not legal to use."

No, it's not snow.

Apparently the Netherlands finally approved the sale of small FM transmitters for our iPods, so you can listen to your own music in the car, without fiddling with all kinds of wires and stuff.

Except that in the Netherlands one is not allowed to broadcast something, even if intended for personal use, across the FM band.

I haven't heard of any legislation that would soon end this ban, but apparently selling these nifty little gadgets is already going on. (in fact isn't Holland a little bit behind the times?)

Now, what I want to know is:

• the average iPod FM transmitter has a range of about three to five meters. Can someone actually pick this up if not in the immediate vicinity?
• if this kind of FM broadcasting remains banned, are you then left with a useless gadget? would you not use it anymore?