Vacation

Hello world,

After a very nice vacation on Crete, I had to some catching up to do. Between accumulated mails and chores, I need three days to get things back on schedule. But now my house is clear, the fridge is stocked and I have time to write my blog again.

While on Crete, I have actually made an interesting discovery about my blog. I've been mispronouncing the name for ages. Xanthi Rising is named after the Battlestar Xanthi. And said Battlestar is named after the town of Xanthi in Greece. I picked the name because Xanthi is located in an area known as Thrace, which was a nice tie-in back to Kara Thrace (aka Starbuck).

The thing is...in Greek (both the current version and the ancient), the X stands for CH. And that is pronounced as a soft G. So while you write Xanthi, it is pronounced Ganthi (or maybe Chanthi ?) The things you discover on while on vacation. 😉

Books

Another thing I did in my vacation was make some progress in my book case. For...well, way to long, I have had a shelf of books I still have to read. But now I am slowly making progress. And speaking of books....

Martijn

On 14 May 2014, my cousin Martijn passed away. And now, there is a book about him. Alas - sorry for my English readers - this book only comes in Dutch. I picked up my copy today and have already skimmed through it. And I can tell you...it is a true work of art. For those of you who wish further information, there is more behind these links...

• https://www.trouw.nl/cultuur/schetsboeken-bieden-kijkje-in-de-wereld-van-iemand-met-asperger~a5c797ae/
• http://aldomanuzio.nl/boeken/9789082545395/martijn-kroniek-van-een-asperger.html

Scrapbook

Finally, today I got around to updating my scrapbook. When I was in my pre-teens, I would often ask my grandparents about how things were they were young. And some times, they could not remember the answers to the questions I asked them. This inspired me to 'secure' some things for nephews and nieces for when they were older.

So I brought a photo album and started gluing in little things, creating a personal (family) history books of sort. Amongst the things found in this scrap book are a couple of movie stubs, pieces of airlines tickets (including one from my recent vacation to Crete), a article on the moon landing, some old stamps....

And plenty of other things. This left me with one last thing to do. Update my blog. Which is now done as well.  😊

Edmond Dantes

Still here...

...alas, the last (couple of) month(s) have been far from inspirational. But now the waters are calming down again. And summer is approaching fast. Which - over here in the Netherlands - always begins with a day of sadness and a day of joy.

The 4th of May is the Day of Remembrance. We remember all the people who died fighting for freedom in WW2 (and since). The 5th is Liberation Day, the day the Nazi occupational forces surrendered. These are always odd days.

Beyond that, there is no much to tell. I'm getting around to some chores I have been putting off for a while...such as properly writing my LinkedIn page (the current version is rather minimalist, and basically version 0.5) and taking another hard look at my Bol.com page. And, of course, dusting off Xanthi Rising. Hopefully, this will increase my Internet visibility a bit. (Basically, the time has come to do some Internet housekeeping.)

Edmond Dantes