A busy period and a short holiday
The previous true update was from the end of February. March saw some other attempts to revive the LJ, but so far none of that has really panned out. I may well return to the Personality project when I find the time, but I am not sure when that may be.
The first week of March I was not all that busy and started some of the initiatives mentioned above. At the end of that week I started planning the May holiday I just returned from. Someone inquired whether I would consider giving Dutch lessons IRL (as well as in several Yahoo! groups) but afterwards never returned to the subject.
The week after I was exchanging MSN accounts with a few people, which marked the start of a period of more chat sessions. I reached the Appendix of "What the Buddha taught" and wrote a little piece about the previous weeks' Amsterdam gathering for the MM website.
Later that month I had an encounter with a car whilst on my bike, and I finished the abovementioned book and started on one about neurology. I happened to find the URL about high IQ featured in the Personality project (which was probably a trigger). The company I work for had a change of CEO, complete with farewell party. The fourth of April I had difficulty going back home from Amsterdam, because of a bomb alert at Amsterdam Centraal. In the end I got home around 5:30am instead of 1:30. The evening before had been very enjoyable, though.
In the second week of April the DHK mailinglist blew up never to be heard of again. On April 10th I played in the Dutch Shogi Championships and did pretty well. The week after I went to a double birthday party in the family. On the next Monday there was the annual meeting of the owners of the apartment building, and since we had some importants matters to discuss we planned another one in June. On April 24th several things about the house were done.
Around this time the pressure at work increased a hell of a lot, because of illness (not mine) and an approaching deadline. By the time my holiday arrived I really needed it.
On May Day I celebrated it together with some people in a park in Amsterdam. We had quite a good picknick. I actually stayed over in Amsterdam with a friend, because I wanted to be there the next day too: a friend from Northern Ireland was in The Netherlands again. So we went shopping the next day and had fun until after dinner, at which point I was going to another meeting also in Amsterdam. (Yes, I know--I was doing rather a lot of things in my free time as well.)
On Wednesday evening we had a small company trip, in which we made a tour of some lakes around Leiden. The next Saturday I expected some people to come and visit here, but that event was cancelled at the last minute, and I ended up thinking and writing up some thoughts. Sunday was Mother's Day here, so I went where you would expect me to go--not that I don't go there several times a week anyway. ;)
May 14th I finished at a reasonable time at work, determined not to pay attention to anything until June 1st. That appears to have worked. That Saturday was my mother's birthday.
On Wednesday I left for the UK. I took the train through the Channel Tunnel again, and was picked up from Ashford International by a friend. I stayed three nights in a hotel in Sandling (near Maidstone) in Kent. I visited Rochester (castle, Charles Dickens centre), Dover Castle, the medieval town of Favesham, Aylesford (The Friars), Upnor Castle, Gillingham (Gillingham Reach, Royal Engineers museum).
Of these I liked Upnor best, though Dover is very impressive. This castle is best known for the raid the Dutch made up the Medway in 1667, in which they captured the flagship of the British navy and a large number of other important English ships were destroyed. Only at Upnor were the Dutch forced to retreat. The historical details were quite interesting. I gathered that morale among the English troops was not very high, also because of severe monetary problems on the side of the English ruler, etc.
On Saturday I made it to Stonehenge (which is really a number of stones in a field that the hordes of tourists are not allowed to approach closely at all, and so makes hardly any impression at all), and to Bath (Roman baths, Jane Austen Centre, Assembly Rooms, etc.) before going to Emsworth (near Portsmouth) where I stayed the next two nights. On Sunday I just had a quiet day near Emsworth.. walked around that little town and played some Scrabble (in English!) and such. :-)
The last three nights I stayed at Wrotham Heath (near Seven Oaks, Kent) and visited Hever Castle (home of Ann Boleyn) and Gardens, Leeds Castle (near Maidstone), Maidstone (Mote Park), Bodiam Castle (in Sussex), the Yalding Organic Gardens and Ightham Mote. I finally picked up some souvenirs before returning to Ashford to take the Eurostar back to Brussel, etc. It was a very pleasant week. For the last few days I have been relaxing mostly.
Also, I finished the neurology book a few weeks ago; on the way to England I was reading "The Tibetan book of living and dying" by Sogyal Rinpoche. I did not like the first part much, but the second seems to be better. While in England I read an English history book (the title eludes me at the moment), which was very enjoyable and I started on Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", of which the first few chapters seem very simple to me [though obviously that is because the subjects treated there were part of my maths and cs education already].