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Willem-Jan turns 37 today, and since my parents moved ‘Up North’ for vacation (in Sweden at the moment) and we are in ‘Down South’ Corsica, there won’t be too much family attending the party tonight.

Oh well, him and I normally don’t make a big thing out of Birthdays anyway, I guess we both have been ‘infected’ by the Aboriginal approach after traveling through Ozzieland/Australia; you celebrate when you reach a next stage in life, having a Birthday is not an accomplishment as such (you just have to keep on breathing )!

Still, have a great Birthday Bro!

Corsica is not made for tall people like myself: I bump my head on every occasion I can find, we’re driving a small Renault Twingo (although that was by choice, being the cheapest rental car we could find ), the bed in the mobile-home is 1.90m so way TOO small, and as you can see below, even the trees are too small for me!

Haha, “I’m not a tree, I’m an Ent!” (Lord of The Rings – Two Towers quote)

Aahhh, THERE I am!

After last Sunday’s fantastic roadtrip we opted for another day cruisin’ through the Corsican highlands! We took the scenic route from Aléria to Sartène and drove back along the coastline.

Absolutely STUNNING views and pictures that look terrific due to the mixture of green trees, gray/grey/brownish rocky mountain tops and the bluest of blue skies! (and some occasional turquoise blue seawater! )

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Audrey Giorgi: “Once in a while you have to take a break and visit yourself.”

Haha, today’s planned roadtrip from East to West Corsica, Aléria to Ajaccio, got literally blocked by a uhh road block, but that didn’t stop us from having a FANTASTIC trip through the Corsican mountains! (Corsica is actually known as the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean)

It will not be the last roadtrip for sure, below a short impression…and yes, the sky is indeed cloudless blue!

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Eckhart Tolle: “Untouched by any happening or event is the eternal ‘I amness’ that underlies all the manifestations. You can look at the manifestations and recognize yourself, the one in every manifestation. You recognize the beingness, not through words but through stillness. And in that moment you recognize yourself in the other and the sense of separation goes away that was created by excessive thinking. And there is love.”

Well, the name gives it away; beach volleyball is played on the…beach (duh)!

It has been *ages* ago since I last played volleyball, and though this one was just for fun, it was great to get into it again…I just LOVE this game!! Some of the players could not get enough after 2 hours of play (in 30+C!) today, so I have a date for some more serious beach volleyball playing: the match starts coming Monday at 5pm, BE there and…GAME ON!

Oof,  my vacation reading list is longgggg this year! (well, actually as long as I want to make it!)

Besides the good’old paper books, we loaded the iPad with uhmmm 7,500 books!! (thx Muriel! )

I will finish the ‘real’ books first and as you can see below, those are enough to read already:

- Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now (this book keeps coming back, and keeps giving me new insights, ‘IT IS’ v2! )
- Leif G.W. Persson – Linda
- Richard Branson – Screw It, Let’s Do It! (Gaat Niet Bestaat Niet)
- Monaldi & Sorti – Dissimulazione (Versluiering)

Hehe, a happy blogger turns into a happy reader!

With weather like this, there is just one ‘best’ way to make dinner: a BBQ (aka ‘Barbie‘)!

It took us a day to find one (a one-timer, the search for a more permanent bbq continues!), so guess what was for dinner today? Oof, this certainly adds to the vacation feeling, yayyy!

(wine tip of the week: Chateau Janon, Entre-Deux-Mers 2009, give it a try at sunset! )

Yayyy, it is SUMMER y’all!! Time for the ultimate (one of many actually) summer Song of the Day: DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince – Summertime !!
I send you sun if you ain’t got no sun these days, there is more than enough to share from sunny Corsica!

Summer is about to ‘formally’ start (tomorrow at 17:16h UTC ), and vacation time is here. We are however not not taking any chances with weather in either Norway or NL, and are on our way to Corsica! Two full weeks of sun, fun, beach, cocktails (virgin ones for Kissy ) and overall relaxing! It’ll be our last vacation with ‘just the two of us’, so it’s gonna be quite special.

The forecast is FANTASTIC as you can see below, it’s gonna be good!

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An amazing video, Plains Milky Way, which uses the Time-lapse technique to show you the dreamworld version of night skies filled with stars and the Milky Way! The video is shot by Randy Halverson who explains the what and how on his Vimeo page.

The soundtrack for the video, “Exodus”, is created by Simon Wilkinson from thebluemask.com.

More of these Time-lapse videos can be found on dakotalaps.com. or the dakotalapse YouTube channel.

I can’t get enough of live music, after Guus, The Baseballs and Doe Maar yesterday, I am at the Parkfeest today! Several nice bands on stage, with Kane as closing act!! Once again, HEAPS of fun!!

Hehe, not the easiest blogpost-title for y’all english readers…!
Fact is that I am on my way to Guus Meeuwis‘ ‘Groots met een zachte G’ concert tonight in the PSV stadion, Eindhoven…uhhh, Guus Meeuwis?? Yeah, indeed, his music is not really my cup of tea…then again, we’re with friends, the ambiance is supposed to be FANTASTIC, and they should have enough beer to make me forget the music!
It’ll be a great deal of fun, two support acts; The Baseballs and…the infamous dutch ska band from the 80′s (that’s uhh my time! ) Doe Maar will be performing too, and THAT…will be truly HEAPS of fun!!

Aine: “The more beauty you see in others, the more beautiful you become.”

My mom turns 62 today: Happy Birthday Mom!!

We are wondering what to give her: bungee jumping or sky diving/parachuting? The hot air ballooning gift for her 60th Birthday was such a success, even though it looked so challenging upfront…haha, we should be able to increase the bar now!

Then again, perhaps not: it apparently takes a LONG time to before a present ‘materializes’ as we finally went hot air ballooning a month ago, our present TWO years ago!

Coldplay played many, many great songs last Saturday, I liked this one the best…Yellow!!

Paulo Coelho: “Love doesn’t limit itself to relationships. It is a celebration of life.”

A lovely ‘after-Pinkpop’ day this has been, quiet and lazy, a true Whitsunday; playing FIFA11 most of the afternoon (game f*^#ing ON! ) and we went to see an adventurous movie in this evening; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides…in 3D which makes uhhh, Penélope Cruz verrrry real!!

Going to a festival for one day instead of a whole weekend has a big advantage; there is no tent to set up! The drawback: no tent means no access to the camping, so no aceess to the Pinkpop afterparty…oh well, the day was terrific anyway! I was finally able to close a circle with the Manic Street Preachers; they canceled their performance at Rock Werchter around 15 years ago…
Simple Plan and Elbow were great and Coldplay concert was absolutely fantastic! Pinkpop 2011, done that, and enjoyed it!!

I left Norway today for almost five weeks (!)…for all the right reasons; a day at the Pinkpop festival tomorrow (it will be great with performances of De Staat, Manic Street Preachers, Elbow and Coldplay! ), working from the dutch office coming week followed by two weeks vacation in Corsica…oof, I am SO looking forward to vacation!! I will work some days after ‘Le Corse’ and then head to Slovakia for Pohoda 2011!! A great couple of weeks ahead, yayyy!

It seems that I left Norway just in time, heavy rain has caused floods and problems with the mobile network, wow! Leaving Norway was a close call; I was flying on standby and all flights were packed…luckily the pilot granted me a seat in the cockpit (thx Robert and Raymond!), it is becoming a habit! It was a Boeing 737-900 this time, less electronics, more ‘real’ flying, FUN!

It is asparagus season, which is great since I *love* asparagus (especially with Hollandaise sauce ). The chef in the canteen at work apparently loves them too, since he puts asparagus soup on the menu every other day. Quite nice, but there is a drawback; your urine smells TERRIBLE afterwards! (and quite fast too, within 30 minutes!)

Studies on this phenomenon are not consistent, but it is believed that most people do produce the bad smell after eating asparagus, but only about 22% of the population have the genes to actually smell it…and I am one of the lucky ones!

A summary of last Monday’s WWDC keynote speech, done as a musical by a bunch of geeks who didn’t make it through the America’s Got Talent auditions…oh well, it is something different for a change.

Kahlil Gibran: “It is well to give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.”

The past years Apple traditionally used its World Wide Developers Conference to introduce new hardware, specifically a new version of iPhone recently. This years WWDC was different, but not less exciting (even if you think that Apple is evil who is only after world domination by uhhh <Apple fanboy alert> creating uber user-friendly devices and software! ).

Steve Jobs was on stage doing his keynote speech (aka. ‘Stevenote‘, watch it here!) and by now the whole world knows about Mac OS X Lion, iOS5 and iCloud (seriously, how *important* can this really be? It is *everywhere* on the web, as if there is no real news! )

Anyway, since the info is all over the web, I’ll spare you the details (everything can be found in the links above and below!). The only thing I want to say is that Apple did it once again!! With OS X Lion, iOS5 and iCloud they set another big step forward into usage simplification of ‘that-damn-complex-thing-called-computer’, allowing people to focus on tasks that matter to them instead of getting distracted by ‘what action do I need to perform now so that my computer does its thing’!