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Interesting; one year after I started my new role as manager a group of 8 people, I am attending a leadership training program. Hehe, *finally* I’d say! 😉

Then again, most of it is common sense, and it’s good to go through this program while having practical experience. Part of the training is self reflection and then work with some useful tools. Key to success is repetition and integrating the tools/behavior in everyday life. And as with most things, that really depends on yourself and the motivation to change your ‘ordinary’ behavior…hehe, come back to me and ask in a couple of months!

I am having some days off while my parents are visiting us. It makes it possible to work together with my dad, the handy-man in our family, on some things that still need to be finished in the house. The list is long and we’ll not be able to finish everything, but there is some nice progress and, still one day to go…I’m extremely happy so far (and can’t wait until he comes again! ;))

The days are not filled with working alone; there is still time to play the typical dutch card game ‘klaverjassen‘. The men won the first round yesterday, tonight is the revenche for the woman (they keep hoping ;))!

Tonight’s gonna be a good night…the Black Eyed Peas perform on stage, and an avenue filled with synchronized dancers complete the show!

The cultural center in the community we live in (Gjerdrum) has a quite active team responsible for the program. Last month I saw the two amazing guitar players Jørn Hoel & Steinar Albrigtsen and tonight we went to see the finals of a local choir contest. The community has been divided into several areas and each one of them formed a choir to compete in a kind of local-Idols setup; they performed one Abba song and one self-chosen song. I have to say, it wasn’t all that bad and my parents who came with us also enjoyed the local evening out.

It has been quite a trip; I left home last week Thursday, have been basically living out of my suitcase for over a week and am now at Brussels airport waiting to board the plane back home, YAY! A true TGIF moment! 😉

I’m looking forward to the weekend, as my parents will visit us for some days (flying into Norway just hours after me)!

Since I am such a big fan of IKEA (uhhh), I cannot overlook the fact that the 30th anniversary of the Billy bookcase is celebrated this month! This bookcase in its most simple form has already sold a stunning 41 million in total and is currently produced at the rate of 15 a minute, 3.1m a year!

It should be no surprise that my first bookcase was a Billy too, I bought when I was still a student. 😉

I got my work laptop upgraded to Win7 today, let’s see how it behaves. The reviews are great at least…hehe not bad for a Microsoft product! 😉 (unfortunately Macs are not part of company policy, so the obvious choice for a new OS, Snow Leopard, was no option :()

The first impression is indeed good; it’s faster, snappier and looks way better than the old WinXP. I’ve still got a lot to discover, hehe, it’s gonna be geek-night in in the hotel tonight!

I saw part of the dutch volleyball supercup match on tv yesterday, and now noticed that I blogged on a match I played today three years ago…it made me realize that YES, I want to start playing volleyball again, the game is just so much fun! (and I can use the workout too ;))

I am a big believer in the theory of fun (dunno if it ‘officially’ exists, but in my book fun is an elementary part of life; having fun, making things fun to do, using fun to get you through tough times, etc., etc.).

I was therefore delighted to find a website called thefuntheory.com.

It turns out though to be a Volkswagen initiative to change people’s behaviour for the better by using something as simple as fun. ‘Better’ obviously is a relative statement, but the Youtube clips on the site definitely show that human behaviour is influenced when fun is added to the equation!

(and ‘obviously’, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, or throwing rubbish into the bin instead of onto the ground, should be considered as better bevahiour…;))

For the first time in weeks I have a weekend without any fixedplans, nice! I am staying in NL as I came back from Brussels yesterday and have to be here on Monday anyway, no need to travel back and forth to Norway. I’m staying at Robbert & Suzanne’s place, both are gone for the weekend and I enjoy this quiet Saturday a lot. Movie night tonight with some friends (probably ‘Gamer‘, the plot seems interesting) and then a lazy Sunday coming up…good! 😉

You can love soccer or not, but you have to agree that this guy is amazing! (I’m in Brussels tonight ready to leave for dinner with colleagues and for some reason talks about soccer have been following me all day, I guess that explains this video ;))

PS: Se busca means something like ‘wanted’…

Hehe, I *am* looking back in time these days; yesterday a sad moment to remember, and today exactly five years ago there was quite a highlight, especially in that period: I ‘met’ Adam Curry in a traffic jam on the dutch A4 highway, he was recording his Daily Source Code podcast in his ‘Audi A8 – studio’, while I was listening to an earlier episode on my brand new iPod!

It became a historic podcasting moment (a true ‘god’cast as Dave Winer once called it!) and it gave Adam unexpected feedback that he was on to something big (podcasting has gone mainstream shortly after). Listen to the ‘famous’ clip yourself (at the 26 seconds mark), it still gives me a boost of energy, yay! 😉

PS. the Daily Source Code hasn’t been ‘daily’ for a LONGGGG time…Adam, are you ever gonna fire this baby up again??

It has been a tough day; I try not to hang into the past, but the the death of my cousin Marcel, today one year ago, has left a big gap…has it really been one year already?

Most of the practical things are taken care of by now, his house finally got sold some weeks ago and will be handed later this month, hopefully this will give my aunt some more closure…yet questions remain, some answers came from a letter he left behind, but still…

He lives on by our memories about him, I just read back what I wrote last year on the day of his funeral:

“He must have had his reasons, reasons that no one, probably not even he, could comprehend. Reasons that exceed the human brain and heart in which he must have felt so trapped. No one really could get through, and he could not get out…

I hope he now found what he has been searching for for so long, his peace…it’s up to us to find ours…Marcel, you’re in my heart, I love you!”

BCC News: “Norway is the best place in the world to live…according to an annual report by the United Nations.”

A full overview of the statistics presented in the report can be found on the UNDP website.

The Netherlands is 6th on the list, so it’s also not a bad place to live in…nice to know considering the fact that I am spending almost half my time there these weeks! 😉

And also, the top 5 is mostly known for its low population density and extremely nice nature (Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada and to some extend Ireland) while NL is extremely high populated compared to those countries; interesting and quite special to have NL so far up on this list!

It’s World Animal Day today, a day that animal life in all its forms is celebrated!

Hmm, and we are not home these days *and* left our three cats ‘alone’ outside…they obviously have enough food and water, but still…I’ll give’m something extra tomorrow night when I get back home!

KLM is celebrating its 90 years anniversary this year and they organized an Open House for all personell at Schiphol airport this weekend. That meant that Kissy got tickets for Robbert and me. Rob and Stefanie would come too, but couldn’t make it since Rob broke his ankle last weekend…:(. KLM does this every five years, so it was my third time ‘backstage’ at the airport. And again it was special to take a look into KLM’s ‘kitchen’.
One of the highlights was the opportunity to see the only still flying Douglas DC-2 ‘Uiver’. That was the airplane that won the 1934 London-Melbourne race, one of the greatest events in the dutch air history!

We’re staying over at my father in law’s place this weekend (he’s using his apartment only to work anyway), and just found out that he canceled his internet subscription and it got terminated two days ago!! Uhhh, kind of a surprise…and, what now? Kissy was planning to stay here the whole coming week, so I guess we have to arrange something, eh? Of course I checked and unfortunately there is no open WiFi point available (crappy neighbors ;)), so I guess that a 3G solution for the Macbook is the way to go..

Two events that I have marked in my calendar for coming year;

This morning I signed up for Skarverennet 2010, the same 38km cross country ski race that I participated in earlier this year (and yes, I *do* plan to train a lot more for this one…experience tells me that participating with almost no training is far from optimal! ;))

And, THE news is out; there *will*be a new Pohoda festival in 2010!! It has been unclear for a quite some time whether or not there would be a next Pohoda at all, this because of the terrible event that ended this years Pohoda halfway the festival. The decision has been taken, which means that I will be in Slovakia around July 15-17, yay! 😉

I am at Oslo airport, ready to board for my flight to NL and I just discovered that I forgot my wallet at home, ggrrrr! Luckily Kissy is flying on Friday and she’ll bring it. 😉 I also discovered that I don’t need my wallet that much the coming days (most is prepaid with plastic ;)), a bit strange experience since one normally holds on to the money religiously…oh well, all part of the ‘let go, let go, let go’ principle! 😉

So, how many do YOU recognize? 😉