The Dutch soccerteam will play Scotland this weekend. Interesting bunch of people, around 16.000 in kilts in Amsterdam this weekend.
Last weekend it was great weather, for the last few days it is "Dutch" again, meaning not so nice, raining, grey, cold and at some places even snowing again .... and it is Spring :-(.
Yesterday evening I went to the "Concertgebouw" in Amsterdam to view and listen to a classical concert. Bach's Brandenburgers (1,2 and 4)and some of Henry Purcell 's theathrical pieces were performed with Jordi Savall as director and Spanish orchestra Le Concert des Nations.
I did not like the first, Brandenburg Concerto no 2, but the rest was played very well with the Purcell's Suite 'The Fairy Queen' to my opinion as best part.
At the end there were several encores and the director even mentioned all members of the orchestra by name, rather special.
About Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall (b.1941) is a violin player & conductor from Catalunya. He has been one of the major figures in Early Music since the 1970s, and has been a major exponent of solo viola da gamba performance as well as various innovative approaches to ensemble. His repertory ranges from the medieval era to the French baroque and beyond.
Possibilities are there. We won again and our younger team lost. Next week is crucial, we will play number one Lelystad which is 5 points ahead. Both we and our younger team will have to play against them.
We played for several hoursat Mobiegolf and had dinner afterwards. It was very nice, but the golf itself was not my best performance.
Mobiegolf is some sort of Virtual Golf, but with normal clubs, just playing on whatever course you want, well almost.We will play with some of my hockeyfriends.
MobieGolf is an indoor golf centre in Amstelveen, just south of Amsterdam. You can play and practice 365 days a year. More than 50 world famous courses await you at the mere push of a button on one of our professional “Full Swing golf simulators”. The world most advanced simulators, approved by the US PGA. In addition, we have a broad assortment of computerized (video)aids to analyze your skills. This makes it possible to measure and improve your capabilities, time and time again.
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Below is what makes it very easy:
Wuala is neither a website, nor a classical desktop application - it bridges web and desktop, combining the best of both worlds. Being a free application that can be started directly from a website, it allows for typical web use cases like sending someone a link to a file or using it in places like internet cafes where installing applications isn't allowed. However, as a desktop application, it can perform most tasks locally on your computer, making it much faster than a typical website and allowing for a level of security that wouldn't be possible if it were a web site. Read more about the features.
It is a bad year for Dutch soccer, all teams are out of the European championships. The last one, Ajax, had a draw against Olympique Marseille and that was not enough after the defeat 2-1 in Marseille itself. There is not enough money any more to keep or get good players for several years. I also think the coach (Marco van Basten) is no the right person to get them to a higher level, I hope Ajax will have the same view.
Holiday that is :-). Although still several months away by having to pay it is getting closer. Meaning I will also try to find me some B&B's on the possible road to travel. It seems there are many nice ones for 50-70 $C, and that is a rather good price with the Euro today at 1.65 $C.
We, number 3, played against number 4 Muiderberg. It is a much younger team, but we there was no real competition, we won 0-6.
According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century. The earliest known documented reference in English occurs in an 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini:
Rossini was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.
However, some folklore is passed on through oral traditions. In addition, "determining the origins of superstitions is an inexact science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork."Consequently, several theories have been proposed about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition.
One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.
In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s. It has also been suggested that Friday has been considered an unlucky day because, according to Christian scripture and tradition, Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
On the other hand, another theory by author Charles Panati, one of the leading authorities on the subject of "Origins" maintains that the superstition can be traced back to ancient myth:
The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."
Another theory about the origin of the superstition traces the event to the arrest of the legendary Knights Templar. According to one expert:
The Knights Templar were a monastic military order founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307 - Friday the 13th.
The connection between the superstition and the Knights Templar was popularized in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. However, some experts think that it is relatively recent and is a modern-day invention. For example, the superstition is rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. One author, noting that references are all but nonexistent before 1907 but frequently seen thereafter, has argued that its popularity derives from the publication that year of Thomas W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth, in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.
I normally write about nice stuff .... but
This morning in the USA
A gunman has killed at least nine people in a series of shootings across two towns in the southern US state of Alabama before killing himself.
Officials say there were at least four separate shooting incidents.
The gunman fired on homes, a petrol station, shops and vehicles in Samson and Geneva near the Florida border.
Five people - including a child - were killed in one home. Several of the victims are believed to have been members of the gunman's family.
The bloodshed began when the suspect is thought to have burned down a house where he lived with his mother in Kinston, near Samson, local coroner Robert Preachers told the Associated Press news agency. This afternoon in Germany
Fifteen people have been killed after a teenage gunman went on a rampage in south-west Germany, officials say.
Most of the dead are thought to have been pupils at the Albertville secondary school in Winnenden, north of Stuttgart.
The gunman, a 17-year-old former pupil, is also dead, police say.
The teenager, who was said to have been wearing black combat gear, was chased by police after fleeing the school into the centre of town.
We won our first game after the winter break, 2-1 from Weesp. We lost last time 0-3, so it is a good result, although we should have made much more goals.
Ten games to go ...., btw we are Pinoke Vet C.
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Updated my last Canada visit in 2005 with some entries and pictures. Will be writing about my 2009 Canada in the same Canada Tab.
