Author Archives: Robbert Bloem

3rd Christmas Day

Thursday 27/12/2012:

  • 7:30: grüetzi miteinand!
  • 8:30: uh-oh, only cheese for on bread
  • 9:30: more post-retro stuff is being chucked into moving boxes indiscriminately more moving boxes are being packed
  • 10:00: the Christmas special in The Economist has a rough guide to hell. Haha!
  • 10:30: a light in the sky, bright enough to read a non-backlit (i.e. a paper) book by. Is this the mythical sun?
  • 10:45: my eyes! My eyes! Where are my sunglasses?
  • 11:00: preparing to go into the void, i.e. Wageningen down town
  • 11:15: holy shit! Do they make an actual vacuum toilet? I mean one where the air is sucked out of the room? Could use it at the moment.
  • 12:15: exchanging €45 worth of lottery tickets for €35 of price money. That’s actually a good score!
  • 12:30: yay Hollandse Nieuwe (soused herring)!
  • 12:45: buying things at the supermarket for export to Switzerland. Stroopwafels and hagelslag.
  • 13:30: going from the old house to the new house
  • 13:45: going to the supermarket
  • 14:00: going to the new house to drop off some toilet paper
  • 14:15: back at the old house again
  • 14:30: going to the new-new house, which is actually the oldest of the three and bought before the new house was rented
  • 15:15: back at the old house, which is newer than the new-new house, but older than the new house
  • 15:30: Adding to the confusion is that the new house and the new-new house are in the same street
  • 16:00: again at the new house to clear some moving boxes
  • 16:15: I repeat my remark about the post-retro stuff
  • 16:30: the new house will be called “boerderette” (kitsch farm house). It looks positively stupid.
  • 17:00: a cup of tea
  • 19:00: boerenkool
  • 20:30: if I sound cynical about the moving house plan, it is because there is none I am…
  • 21:45: in all the confusion about the house I forgot to mention that I cycled uphill here in Wageningen. I had 26 gears less than usual and an almost flat tire but it was still hilariously easy.



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    2nd Christmas Day

    Wednesday 26/12/2012:

  • 7:30: Good morning moving boxes
  • 10:00: Lots of post-retro stuff in this house
  • 11:45: in the temporary house of my farther. Not very logically arranged.
  • 12:15: in the new house. What is the best arrangement of the kitchen? With so much space, you should be able to decide that, right?
  • 13:30: leaving for granddad
  • 14:00: still leaving for granddad
  • 14:15: the floodplains are flooded. The melting water from the snow in Zurich two weeks ago.
  • 14:30: at my grand dads place.
  • 14:45: my father drives home to get some extra baquettes and to get my sister from the train station.
  • 15:30: aunt arrives with two cakes
  • 15:45: brother and girlfriend arrive with another cake and a boat load of baquettes
  • 17:00: my father drives home yet again because he forgot the fondue set
  • 17:45: lit the fondue set – the whole set – on fire. No problem for a cold-blooded chemist, my granddad in this case
  • 18:00: cheese fondue
  • 18:15: wait, no meat?
  • 18:30: oh man, too much cheese
  • 20:15: massive amount of dish washing: done
  • 20:30: let’s make more dishes and eat some more: desert
  • 21:30: a last chocolate: will people explode Monthy-Python style?
  • 22:30: I think everybody survived
  • 22:45: yawn
  • 23:00: yawn
  • 23:15: back home again. Why not have more wine?
  • 23:30: big yawn
  • 23:45: oh dear, tv is on. Bedtime



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    1st Christmas Day

    Tuesday 25/12/2012:

  • 9:30: merry autumn Christmas!
  • 12:00: time for breakfast
  • 12:15: yay more turkey
  • 14:00: on my way to Amsterdam
  • 17:30: via-via we have some freshly shot wild pig (boar?). Nice ragout.
  • 18:00: more good meat
  • 19:00: a soup without meat?
  • 20:30: more meat. Second day in a row with Brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce.
  • 21:30: desert
  • 23:00: heading my dad’s place, Wageningen
  • 0:00: a house full of moving boxes…



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    0th Christmas Day

    Monday 24/12/2012:

  • In Dutch we have first and second Christmas Day, not Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This means we can also have zeroth and third Christmas Day.
  • 6:45: Awake early
  • 10:00: breakfast: done
  • 10:15: beer and booze: in the fridge, chocolate: on the table. Christmas dinner is a success already.
  • 12:00: brother arrived, with his girlfriend and the groceries for the dinner
  • 14:00: lasagna lunch
  • 15:00: turkey is done, now time to get the pants I bought on Saturday
  • 15:30: turkey in the oven, will stay there for the next few hours
  • 16:00: glass of wine
  • 17:00: turkey looks good
  • 18:00: turkey looks even better, doing some dish washing
  • 18:30: melon with Parma ham
  • 19:00: cutting the turkey, it looks beautiful

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  • 19:15: and it tastes quite well as well
  • 19:30: our plates look like a war zone: bones, red (cranberry) sauce and just general chaos
  • 20:30: oops, while cleaning the dishes earlier, we accidentally threw away most preparations for the desert: egg white (unbeaten) and citron zest. The seed for a family feud is planted. Separating some more eggs
  • 21:30: yay for kitchen improvisation, pity about the meringue on the citron-meringue-cake
  • 22:30: coffee with some liquor and a chocolate
  • 23:30: knock-out in bed


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    Live tweeting my holidays on my blog

    Friday 21/12/2012:

  • 9:00: Last organizational meeting of the practicum I have to teach. Bit odd time for drinks and snacks though.
  • 12:30: Cleaning the lab Students clean the lab, I boss them around.
  • 15:00: What the heck, it is far too early, but lets head to the airport. Tram is rerouted a bit and makes an honorary lap around Bahnhof Oerlikon. At the airport the tram driver wishes everybody happy holidays.
  • 16:00: Through security, first person I see is a colleague. Wondering if I will meet more people I know.
  • 17:00: The Burger King at the airport is busy. Some guy is ordering a complicated custom menu. Alternative is a lukewarm slice of pizza, or some overpriced sandwiches.
  • 18:00: Thinking that maybe I should have taken a tram later.
  • 19:00: In the airplane, ready for departure, 20 minutes early or so.
  • 20:30: Pilot is joking that the reason we see nothing out of the windows has nothing to do with the world coming to an end. We’re just flying in the clouds.
  • 21:00: Time gained from early departure lost by landing on the Polderbaan (Schiphol Amsterdam Airport), which means we first have to fly over the whole country and then have to taxi for 10-20 minutes. The pilot does put the pedal to the metal though.
  • 21:30: More time lost waiting for the checked luggage. Somehow the luggage from a flight from Athens was 5 minutes late, while that from Zurich was 5 minutes early. Typical? Or can those people from Greece really not get a break?
  • 22:00: Having a drink.



    • Saturday 22/12/2012:

  • 8:30: Leiden (where I am now) is 600 km northwest of Zurich. It is remarkable how much later the sun rises. I’m surprised that I notice it.
  • 10:30: The other people in this house are not early risers either.
  • 10:45: How complicated can a shower get? This one has more buttons and levers than my iPhone. I think you need a diploma to operate it.
  • 11:00: I have an evil sock that is just too small. I think I have thrown it aside many times now, but somehow it seems to follow me around, even to the Netherlands.
  • 12:00: rain
  • 13:00: still raining
  • 13:30: I have been away from Leiden for 11 years now and most shops have changed. Luckily, not my favorite clothing shop: “Henny’s Rits” (zipper). They have a wall full of jeans, they ask you which color you want, they look at you to determine the size, you try them and you’re done! Their motto is “one pant for two buttocks” (or should pant be plural?)
  • 14:00: how different is the situation at bookstores. Three bookstores, all filled with people, all asking if book X or Y is still in stock. The demise of bookstores becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy this way.
  • 14:30: I had luck with moderate rain until now, but now it starts pouring. Damn!
  • 14:45: home again.
  • 17:00: glass of wine
  • 17:30: another glass of wine
  • 18:00: making a lasagna
  • 19:00: eating lasagna
  • 20:00: making another lasagna
  • 22:00: watching a movie on tv. Next, I’ll put something on a floppy disk, put it in an envelope with a stamp priced in Guilders and walk to a letterbox.
  • 22:15: changing channels on a tv is really slow nowadays. It was faster even with the old black-and-white tv without remote control – you had to stand up and walk to the tv. That element is back now though, when you have to pick up the remote control after throwing it around in anger.
  • 22:30: bloody tv ads. This makes moving GIFs on websites seem adorable.
  • 22:45: time to stop the misery and go to bed.
  • 23:00: still raining by the way



    • Sunday 23/12/2012:

  • 8:00: did it stop raining?
  • 8:30: hmm, lasagna-breakfast
  • 12:00: doing some tech support for my mom. Now able to use wifi on the loo.
  • 13:00: stroopwafel!
  • 16:00: time for a Westmalle beer
  • 18:00: preparing dinner
  • 19:30: choice between 5 different types of ice cream
  • 20:00: preparing the turkey for tomorrow (sort of brining)



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