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Emily Dickinson: “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”

My time in NL is spent well; I have been meeting loads of friends and family all around the country in the past days (many miles in the car and public transport! 😉 ). My travels brought me in Breda tonight, ready to partyyyyyyyy all night long at the Dance Festival Breda…haha, dance ’till you drop, I am IN!!!! 😉

Lydia M. Child: “You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.”

George Asaf: “What’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.”

Henry David Thoreau: “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

George Herbert: “The best mirror is an old friend.”

Stephen Covey: “The way we see the problem is the problem.”

Pretty amazing that the beauty of Peru&Bolivia didn’t make it as a header graphic so far, I guess I have been busy doing other stuff. 😉

Anyway, it is time for the hot summer header graphic of the Lidnesnes Lighthouse from end of July to go and be replaced by one of the many highlights of my trip to South America!

I normally try to match the header graphic to the season, which ain’t all that easy as it was late winter/early spring in South America while it is mid autumn over here. So, instead of colourful autumn leaves, this one shows the Lost City of Machu Picchu…fan-friggin-tastic!!!

GOOD times! 😉

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.: “If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.”

THE reason to be in NL this weekend (with Misha) was to go to the largest theme park in NL and one of the oldest in the world, de ‘Efteling‘, with the whole family (7 adults, 5 kids)…we spent most of today in het ‘Sprookjesbos’ (Fairy Tale Forest), a pretty unique and magnificent place for children, which brought back good memories from my own childhood.

Misha didn’t miss any opportunity to explore the park and has been running around the whole day…haha, daddy is pretty knackered now! 😉

A GREAT day!!

John Barth: “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

Now that Misha is two years old /young), he is no longer qualifying for the discounted ‘baby’ fare for flight tickets, so I enrolled him in KLM’s Flying Blue program to get at least some benefits back. His card came in last week, so today was his first ‘formal’ member flight! (I have to claim some earlier flights 😉 ). As always, he was mostly happy during the flight, just a tad frustrated when the fasten seatbelt sign ‘forced’ him to sit still, and having fun entertaining the other passengers and flight attendants!

My favorite Frequent Flyer! 😉

Logan Pearsall Smith: “Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”

Oprah Winfrey: “I believe that [everyone] is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.”

Most have (or should have) heard of Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists of all time, who formulated the Laws of Motion. You might remember his Third Law of Motion: ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action’, yet I doubt that you know the equivalent Third Law of Emotion (Energy in motion)…

😉

Samuel Johnson: “If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.”

Two studies show an interesting paradox; while according to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) the dutch are among the happiest people in the world (ranked #4, still beaten by Norway at #2 though 😉 ), they are also the most depressed people in Europe (a study by researchers at Australia’s University of Queensland)…the worldwide average of people being sick due to depression is around 10% of the time, in the Netherlands it is 16%!

Uhhhh…huhhhh?!? Not sure what to make of this…does this mean that the majority of people in NL live on one of the far ends of the spectrum? Being either depressed OR happy? (one cannot be both, or?)

Perhaps it is just a good example of how ‘true’ (/subjective) studies are…

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”

John Barth: “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

The car manufacturer would never approve this commercial (especially taken their country of origin); it is quite an unorthodox way to show off an life saving feature…pretty awesome 😉