I like routines. Whenever I find myself in a new situation or environment, I seek to establish new routines. I guess I find comfort in it.
And so I have established a routine with my HP Mini netbook, which I purchased a year ago. It's a routine which concerns my online browsing pattern.
What I do is, I fire up my Firefox web browser, which takes me straight to my homepage, Google.com. Then, in the same browser window I open three new tabs: Kamus Orisinil, Google Translate, and Kateglo. In the drop-down menu on the homepage of Kateglo, I select "Glosarium". In Google Translate I select "Dutch" from the left-hand drop-down menu and leave the default "English" in the right-hand sided panel. I don't use Google Translate to actually translate stuff, but I use it rather as a handy Dutch-English (v/v) dictionary.
From the homepage I go to Google News and search for the following news items by typing in these sets of key words – in turn and in this particular order – into the search bar: "marco van basten", "van halen", "slash guitarist", and "guns n roses". I sort the news by date, do the necessary reading, and once I'm done I restore the tab back to Google Search.
Next I open a new tab and go to NU.nl to browse for the latest in the Netherlands. Reading readers' comments is actually more fun than reading the actual articles. When I'm done, I close this tab.
I open a new tab and go to Youtube.com and type "andre van duin" into the search bar before selecting "Upload date" from the "Filter" drop-down menu. We do the necessary downloading (if any), and when finished, we close it.
For a while this was it and I would be good and ready for the order of the day. But recently I've added something new to the routine.
I open a new tab and go to geodruid.com, and explore Wormerveer in "Street View". This is way cool and I've procrastinated many hours exploring the streets of my old hometown, so by now I've seen most of the stuff I wanted to see and the exploring has waned a bit, though I still consider it as part of the routine.
It was only a matter of course then for me to go and roam the streets of Amsterdam, in "Street View", and whilst circumnavigating the Dam Square my eyes fell on a cafe awning on which was printed www.amsterdam-dam.com. I went and clicked on "Webcam", and before I knew it I ended up on a page broadcasting live feed from a cam overlooking the Dam Square. This particular page I will open in a fresh tab from time to time throughout the day.
The Dam Square is covered with snow as we speak.
PS: I'm looking to work in the official twitter page of the Dalai Lama into my routine. Good stuff.
Showing posts with label Wormerveer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wormerveer. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Time out, or something
I've been browsing eateries and hotels on Google Earth as of late. I've largely confined my browsing activities to the Netherlands.
I must say that I've learned some interesting stuff. For example, my old parental home in Wormerveer is, as the crow flies, only 10 miles away from the Tuschinski in Amsterdam, and 7,000 miles from where I live now.
Also, I've made out Wormerveer's surroundings relative to neighbouring towns and villages, surfed the main streets of Amsterdam and its cafes behind the Old Church, checked out bakeries countrywide based on random whim, and sampled hotel accommodations and amenities, also countrywide and based on random whim.
Wormerveer has some cosy looking inns and an inviting looking lodging establishment. As for its restaurants: while a couple do seem like well thought-out projects, others look like they could use a Restaurant Makeover (I base my verdict purely on what information and pictures I can find on their websites, so tifwii).
I guess I'm in need of some time out or something, and that I like food a lot.
I must say that I've learned some interesting stuff. For example, my old parental home in Wormerveer is, as the crow flies, only 10 miles away from the Tuschinski in Amsterdam, and 7,000 miles from where I live now.
Also, I've made out Wormerveer's surroundings relative to neighbouring towns and villages, surfed the main streets of Amsterdam and its cafes behind the Old Church, checked out bakeries countrywide based on random whim, and sampled hotel accommodations and amenities, also countrywide and based on random whim.
Wormerveer has some cosy looking inns and an inviting looking lodging establishment. As for its restaurants: while a couple do seem like well thought-out projects, others look like they could use a Restaurant Makeover (I base my verdict purely on what information and pictures I can find on their websites, so tifwii).
I guess I'm in need of some time out or something, and that I like food a lot.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
That song association game
Today we're going to play a game where I associate songs to places; places I've had the pleasure to call home.
Bogor
My favourite city. The year is 1994, I'm in my first year of college and Sheryl Crow's All I Wanna Do, Dada's Dizz Knee Land, and Counting Crows' Mr. Jones get heavy airtime and form a soundtrack to that particular year, but none so more than:
It was a late afternoon and I was in my room when I heard the song playing from a television set in the room opposite mine. I went to check it out and concluded that the singer in the video clip was a cool cat and that the song summed up where I was at the moment: clean air, excited to be away from my parental home, exhilarated to be going to college, grateful to be going to college at all, ambitious.
Wormerveer (NL)
My hometown. Recently I've come to appreciate how big an influence my childhood has had on my adult life: soccer, the books I read, the movies I watched, Saturday morning cartoons, the teachers at school, family gatherings at my grandparents'. The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music, which I got exposed to when a cover band was practising at the yellow-painted community centre, and Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades are all reminders of these, but none so more than:
After I took in the video clip on TV I might have stepped outside the door and into the crisp air – the sky featuring wisps of white clouds but otherwise clear and blue, the apartment building blocking the sun and casting a shadow onto the street below – and trying to decide how to spent the rest of the day in ways that should be nothing less than most excellent.
Bogor
My favourite city. The year is 1994, I'm in my first year of college and Sheryl Crow's All I Wanna Do, Dada's Dizz Knee Land, and Counting Crows' Mr. Jones get heavy airtime and form a soundtrack to that particular year, but none so more than:
It was a late afternoon and I was in my room when I heard the song playing from a television set in the room opposite mine. I went to check it out and concluded that the singer in the video clip was a cool cat and that the song summed up where I was at the moment: clean air, excited to be away from my parental home, exhilarated to be going to college, grateful to be going to college at all, ambitious.
Wormerveer (NL)
My hometown. Recently I've come to appreciate how big an influence my childhood has had on my adult life: soccer, the books I read, the movies I watched, Saturday morning cartoons, the teachers at school, family gatherings at my grandparents'. The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music, which I got exposed to when a cover band was practising at the yellow-painted community centre, and Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades are all reminders of these, but none so more than:
After I took in the video clip on TV I might have stepped outside the door and into the crisp air – the sky featuring wisps of white clouds but otherwise clear and blue, the apartment building blocking the sun and casting a shadow onto the street below – and trying to decide how to spent the rest of the day in ways that should be nothing less than most excellent.
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