A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

(Jump to Sunday the 11th.) Jannie, hadn't changed a bit. She came in at eight o'clock and we proceeded to to the central Amsterdam, after-hours tour. Most things don't get started until 11:00 but we were finished by midnight. Everybody eats and drinks till wee hours of the morning. We ate a Mexican restaurant .. and silly me, I had a Corona in the land of Heinekin. We slept right through till nine in the morning. It's okay as the 'continental' breakfast in the cafe section of the hotel doesn't get going until eight thirty anyway.

We were only able to book two nights in Amsterdam. There's some sort of conference going on and that combined with weekend-Euro-party people seemed to fill every reservation in the city. We packed as if we were to leave and then checked at noon to see if there was anyone who had cancelled. We were able to get another room although a bit more expensive. This means we won't have to spend the weekend in Rotterdam or somewhere else in the Netherlands.

We ate a leisurely lunch and after we got key at 2:00 pm, we took the tram back to Central Station. That's where all the canal tour boats leave from. We got on one and saw the city from canal level.

Nap time was short today. We'll play it by ear and see what happens later ...

Labels: Amsterdam, Eurotrip 2005

I couldn't believe that we didn't even wake up until 9:00 am this morning. That ended up changing our plans of going to the city of Alkaram to see the cheese market. After breakfast we did get back to Central Station, then we went by train to Koog Zaamdijk. We walked to Zaanse Scans with is like an area where some have been kept. We crawled up a working one. Coming back into town, we walked around Dam Square and eventually ate lunch at 3:30 pm.

Tonight, in an hour, we're meeting a woman that taught with me in the UAE. Jannie is Dutch and married to an American guy. We've not been in contact at all for 10 years. I remember her as practically a child.

Labels: Amsterdam, Eurotrip 2005

The plane got in at 3:00 but by the time we got out of the airport and into the city and finally in the hotel it was 6:00. The Air Transat flight was on time but boy they don't have very large seats. Imagine not having wiggle room for nine and a half hours of flying time. I'm so tired now!

Labels: Amsterdam, Eurotrip 2005

We are just about out the door now.

I fully expect to be able to keep this blog up-to-date during the trip. Afterall, I have to justify carrying around an extra 5.5 lbs in the backpack. Actually, I have to carry around the extra weight to justify the purchase of the notebook! We'll be eight hours ahead of usual.

I will most probably be uploading just one picture a day to flickr. It'll be the same one that will accompany each blog entry. After our return, in three weeks, I'll hopefully be able to upload oodles of images.

Labels: Eurotrip 2005, Flickr (Page 1)

On trips which are a week or shorter, we always put the hamster in the bathtub. We leave plenty of food and water. In some ways that provides more freedom than keeping it cooped up in a small cage. With the slippery sloped sides of the tub there's no chance of escape.

A year ago at this time, we had headed off to Sri Lanka for a two-month holiday. That was back when we had H3. We arranged with some friends to come and check the tub. H3 was an old guy at the time and unfortunately passed away soon after we'd gone. We did not leave instructions for the caretakers and they were confronted with the unfortunate situation of getting rid of a poor, dead hamster. They had to call around and arrange for delivery to an animal shelter for cremation! We still feel sorry for the trouble we put them through. Our general habit is to bury in an untrod area at a park that's just across the river. Because the little creatures don't last too long, disposing of them becomes somewhat routine.



Now a year has passed and it's time to try again. This time as we're going to Europe for only three weeks it will be less of a burden. Embarrassed by the trouble we caused the friends last year, we have asked someone else to stop in a few times. I hope H4 makes it to our return at the end of the month!

Labels: pets

Last night, I was flipping through the TV channels and stopped at one that shows continuous oldies. I really think I should save money buy dropping a bunch of programming; however, the pricing scheme is very clever. It costs only a few dollars to add all sorts of specialty satellite channels. Still, how much of a bargain is it, if I never watch them?

Perry Mason was on. I couldn't help but include a picture of the hometown boy. He was born here and, in fact, rests in a cemetery in New Westminster, BC.

Back in 2003, I blogged about the Burr Theatre which is just down on Columbia Street.

I was going to blog a picture of our hamster today. Maybe I'll save that for tomorrow morning. We don't leave for our vacation until the afternoon.

Labels: New Westminster, stars, television

There might not be anything exceedingly impressive about the picture to the right. But believe me, it once amazed me.

It was a 256 color, 320 x 200 pixel .bmp file which took up the whole screen. I found the original intact on a historical backup CD. In order to post it here, I needed to convert the 64K file to .jpg format.

I first saw this colourful frog as a demo on a computer monitor in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia in February of 1988. I couldn't believe the stunning impact of the new VGA graphics cards. To me, the screen was just like looking at a photograph. I was almost speechless.

You see, prior to that time we were stuck with lowly IBM CGA cards. There were some Hercules cards with higher resolution but they were in boring monochrome.

Now, I see how photography has turned digital and how many images never even hit paper. I'm sure if I'd known that one day I would be saving my own images like this for viewing on a computer screen, I'd have openly wept.

Labels: computers, Saudi Arabia

I like to create tasks for myself. I've been madly uploading photo files. As I'll be away for a majority of the month, I wanted to get a good number online. I'm pleased to have over 500 available at present. As well as making available lots of digital photos from the past three and a half years, I have even been leisurely scanning some older images.



I went to Kuwait for my very first teaching job. The Al-Bayan School was in temporary facilities in the years 1981 to 1983. Here are some students at recess time. The kids in this picture would be around 30 years old nowadays but were only half that age during the 1990 Gulf War.

Labels: Kuwait, scanned, students