Blogthings

You Are a Prophet Soul

You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone. Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people. Sometimes this faith can lead to disappointment in the long run. No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way. You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle. Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people's feelings. A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning. You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

I don't know what it is with blogthings; once I get started I fill my Firefox toolbar with Blogthing tabs in no time. When I'm working on a quiz I go like "hey, that's fun as well, let's take that one as well" and before you know it I've worked through twenty quizzes. The above quiz was fun to take, and is quite accurate, for me at least. Who wants to be my disciple? Anyone???

Your World View

You are a moralist with conventional ideas, which some people would call old-fashioned. You probably think that most of the world falls badly below your standards. Your inhibitions and sense of guilt are in the way of your happiness. You think that people tend to use sex for evil, as a weapon. Your parents probably played a big part in the formation of such a guilt complex as yours. Your mind is in chains, and it's time you did something to free it.

What Is Your World View?

Your Heart Is Purple

For you, love is about establishing and developing a deep connection. If it's true love, it brings you more wisdom and inner strength. Your flirting style: Sincere Your lucky first date: An afternoon at a tea house Your dream lover: Is both thoughtful and expressive What you bring to relationships: Understanding

What Color Heart Do You Have?

There's a 12% Chance That You Need Therapy

You almost certainly don't need therapy. You have your life under control - and things are going pretty well. If anything, you would make a great therapist. You have a natural understanding of human psychology.

Do You Need Therapy?

Of the above: The first one is quite harsh, I'm just a little bit conservative, and I am always optimistic, so that's bull. The second one, well I guess I can't comment much on that one. The third was too obvious to take seriously; you could guess the outcome miles ahead of the end of the quiz. It is accurate though, I remember my endless conversations with a girlfriend (A girlfriend) about her sex-partner and her continuous depression, on top of her overweight.

Anyway, tomorrow I have an intake conversation with this geodesy company. I need some work to do in the holidays, and that potato farmer can fly away for all I care, I ain't rolling out of bed at 6 AM for 3 euros an hour. I hope the meeting goes well, I even re-knotted my tie so I should look sharp enough, haha! Ah well, I guess I'll be fine; working in geodesy is much better than harvesting potatoes, and it's something I can put on my CV. Besides that a little experience on that part is always handy in civil engineering.

Below: it's true that I often laugh about the absurdity of my life; the ridiculous stupidity of some people in it, the horrors and the pleasures all seem like a big joke sometimes. And as I've said before, I love rain, whether I'm hiking, biking or trying to sleep in bed, rain is always a welcome visitor... well, when I'm outside a soft, misty rain is okay, a complete storm is a bit too much. The rain storms tapping on my roof are a pleasure to hear though.

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh. You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming. Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you. You are best known for: your touch Your dominant state: changing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Back, and broken --- Brokeback!

Haha! Anyway, I got back alive, and here's the post I promised. I've decided to not post more stuff about the school trip to Limburgh because I don't really feel the need to do so, I will post some more pictures, simply because I still have them and would hate to keep that away from y'all.

>>THE HOSTEL<<

>>THE ENCI<<

The training course for scouting was also very fun, and quite interesting. We've learned a lot on safety issues, insurances, responsibilities and camping as a whole. This training was much more fun than the previous two, because it was longer, and with fewer people. Also the cub-scout leaders and the scout leaders were not separated for the course, so it was a very different experience. I did make less photos though, probably because I wanted to save my battery and totally forgot to take pictures. The few I did make were either too dark and blurry to be worth posting, or otherwise insignificant.

The first day (Thursday) I got up early, just to find that the buses were driving at the Sunday schedule and I had to ask my mom to bring me to the train station. We gathered at the Central Station in Groningen, and continued by train from there. Once we arrived at the station from which we were taking the bus, we noticed that the route planner was mistaking, and that we had to wait half an hour for the bus to arrive. When it finally did we got the female chatterbox type for a driver. In the end she turned out to be a lesbian motor-maniac and we were happy to leave her chat box and continue to the camp site on foot. Once we got there we did some silly but also fun introduction game. That day was mainly about getting the tents up properly and educating us with food information and other camp things. At night we had a campfire (of course) with first some stupid songs which were not a very great success. If only they took some standard songs which everyone knew... After those songs we were free for the rest of the night, and were told we were going to be woken at 7:30 and were to have breakfast at 8:15. With that in mind I went to bed after a couple of beers, somewhere around 00:00.

The next day we got instructions on building a small camp site, with a table and a fireplace. The four tents, like four teams, got separate instructions, one team had to build a camp without disturbing the soil, we had to use a hammer, and the other two teams could only drill holes in the ground. We were lucky to have the hammer, because it's the fastest and strongest way to establish a camp. We decided to go for comfort, and made a garden-table design eating table, and a plain double cross fire crate support. It's nothing like we're used to, except for the table which we do build in a similar way. I'll show you pictures of how we usually establish a camp from the upcoming camp, the NPK, or Noordelijk Pinkster Kamp (Northern Whitsunday Camp). We had practically all morning for the construction of it, and the afternoon was again filled with debates and other stuff.

Saturday we had a small hike through the forests, to help understand which guiding methods are appropriate in which situations, methods like compass are not very handy in village surroundings, while they are excellent on large plains etc. One team managed to get lost on the half-an-hour hike, of course it was not my group. That afternoon we played a large game in which we had to plan and arrange a week-long summer camp. It was really one big simulation, where the trainers played different bureau's, like "parents", "camp terrains", "Government", etc. We had to plan it all withing the year, and they changed months every twenty minutes. We didn't have much problems with arranging things. But like all groups we forgot some small things, and all together it was quite fun but stressing to do it all withing the time limit. There was really not much time to think clearly. For the picture below: the four people in the front are the folks with whom I lay in the tent. The guy on the left is Anne, a 41 year old man, married and with some kids. He joined scouting because his son did, and the they also needed more leaders. The guy sitting on the bench is Robert, he is a scouts-leader with my own group, and I will join his team for the coming year because they have a serious leader shortage. The girl in the purple-ish sweater was in our tent as well, she is a cub scout leader just like me. And yes, I've forgotten her name. The guy leaning on something to the right is Jaap, he is a cub-scout leader as well.

Sunday we tore down the camp sites, and the tents. Also we had some final courses before clearing the entire camp and receiving our recognition as proper camp leaders, and the important recognition to be allowed to camp on the NPK, which does not allow groups without this recognition in the leaders team, to camp. When we headed back we were brought to the Central Station of Groningen again, by Roberts Asian girlfriend, at least not a lesbian chatter box. I got home pretty late, but on time for dinner. After a long, hot shower and some guitar play, which I missed more than anything, I went to bed. And there was no question of going to school the next day.

Besides all that, I would like to introduce you to Mike Voss.

Checkpoint

Hey guys, just a short post with a bunch of pics.

I've been away the past few days, on a trip with school, all the way down to Limburgh, the other side of the Netherlands from the place where I live. I got back late this evening, and tomorrow morning I leave for another scouting training course, this time not the common "learn to play nice" course, but a camp-training, where we learn more safety stuff and drink even more beer- after all, it's four days long in stead of two.

The trip to Limburgh will be explained more with text and more images when I find the time, and when I get back from the upcoming camp; I'll probably make it a double post. These are the images of only a few facets of the trip, just the ones I took pictures of : )

>> THE HOSTEL <<

The place where we slept was different from the previous year, probably because it was larger. It was basically just a 'pimped' old barn with a tap and toilets, and a whole lot of cheap stack beds with even cheaper matresses. I was wise to bring a pillow of my own, because appearantly Limburgers don't use them.

>> LOCAL PUB / RESTAURANT <<

The local pub; "Tinus"; is the place where we went the previous year as well, we had dinner there, but not much more than that because there was beer at the hostell as well, and at a lower price.

>> THE ENCI <<

ENCI is a Dutch cement plant, and the only place where we find the particular gravel which holds the basics for making cement. The introduction film and bla bla how great they were was crap, and so was the tour because we couldn't hear half of what the man was saying through his defective speaker. The sight was spectacular though, especially that of the grand quarry and the 120 meter long, rotating oven...See ya later guys, I'm in a hurry, need to take a shower, and repack my bag for scouting. I got too much on my mind lately, that's also why I didn't post anything before I left last Monday: I need to do some left over work for school, am busy getting a civil engineering-ish job for the holidays (at least it's something you can put on your CV) and have to arrange a meeting with the head of the department of civil engineering for the Province of Groningen, for my half-year stage-period for school. busy busy busy, and darn tired... but that's all fixable, I just wish I could sleep all weekend.

Besides that I didn't wank for three days ; )

Koninginnedag

Yesterday (Monday) we, the Dutch, have celebrated the birth of our queen. Well, not exactly our current queen, but it doesn't matter, because no one really cares. It is just a lot of beer and orange nonsense.

Unlike most folk of my age, I wasn't still in bed, sick of the booze I had the night before ("Queen's night"). I had to go prepare a 6-camp in the center of Winsum, the place where the scout base is. A six-camp is mainly just a series of games, played in rotation to make sure each team is always occupied, and only one team at a time is at a camp. We gather at 9:00 on a terrace of a local restaurant, and received some coffee. After that we started setting the camps up. There would be five teams, from in and around Winsum, that would compete for some kind of prize, I dunno.

First we built the fun bit: the rope over the water. As scouts, this is a standard, because it's so easy to set up we do it all the time. We put the rope over a small canal in front of the larger supermarket, when that was done we continued more towards the center, setting up the camps as the tractor moved along. We always have a tractor and a cart for these sort of things; it's un-doable to carry all those materials from our scout building to the center of the town.

After we'd set up some more games we gathered again, and divided who was going to occupy which post. I was set up for the A-frame post, which is another pretty cool scouting event where the team has to guide their team mate through a small course, while walking the A-frame. You'll understand more of it when you see the pictures. After settling all that, we had lunch (a bag of fries and a fricandel-special (with onions, mayonnaise 'n ketchup) accompanied with a can of tonic). It was only about 12:30 then, and the 6-camp wasn't going to start before 13:30, so we had some time left to relax and enjoy the sun, and our lunch.

When we finally got started, some idiot in the organization that ordered the 6-camp got the mad idea to not rotate, as is the usual way to do these sort of things, but to have all teams do one game at the time. With five teams, that made the 6-camp last five times as long, and made us cut in our program to meet the finale at 17:30. Ah well, it wasn't that bad, it just took way too long for comfort. We started at the single rope over water (single, because it's harder, we also use a double rope, one above the other, which we call a monkey-bridge)...Now, there really are good ways to cross single ropes, without getting wet. And our scouting way is really easy and successful, after some exercise... Somehow, even with our advise, these people all ended upside down, we call it "enteren" which means boarding, like pirates do along the anchor ropes. It works, and can be much faster than the scouting way, but it really hurts because the rope will grind against your leg if you do it too fast, or wrong.This is a monkey-bridge, which you cross sideways. If longer distances are crossed this way, say a canal, the rope will easily start swinging, and you might find yourself hovering with your back first above the water.And this is how you are supposed to cross a single rope. With your left leg hanging down for balance (like bikes that cycle on a rope, they have a counterweight hanging below the rope), and your right leg to push while your arms pull to get forward. Staying calm is really the key when you're hanging on a single rope, above (cold, wet and dirty) water. Anyway, after the rope, there were two other games, when the teams got to the other scouting game, the A-frame. It's called an A-frame because it's shaped like an "A."Okay, it was a bit crowded... Anyway, the thrilling part of this, is that the teams didn't understand how to handle this. The person standing in the "A" is supposed to lift the feet of the frame, one at the time, while the rest keeps it from falling. These folks were lifting the feet with the ropes; pulling the legs up and swinging them forward. Several times they lost control and the frame swung around almost hitting and probably killing people. Ah well, we weren't responsible.The next fun bit was the skiing. We haven't had a real pack of snow for several years now, but with these skis you can still have a good time. As you can see, this takes a lot of coordination and teamwork. They had to cross the bridge, turn and then come back as fast as possible. Another fun bit was to see the homophobia of these straight guys. The person up front, and the person guiding the skiers were all guys, some really had problems holding another guy's arms. It is important to hold each other well though, as you'll fall really hard when the team loses the rhythm. You'll have four other guys falling on top of you as head-man, so you really do want to stay upright.
And these are the pictures of the last camp, the parcours. The original idea behind this is that each team, gets five/or some minutes to get as much water from the bucket at the start in to the bucket at the end. They get a cup, in which they have to transport the water, and the next person can only start when the cup is returned. We started with a simple double ladder, followed by a "under-over" where they have to go underneath the lowest pole, and over the highest, four times. Then a small slalom, and after they'd emptied their cup a sheet of army plastic, to crawl through. But of course, someone from "the organization" came in and said that they wanted to do it differently. With no time limit, but having 6 persons per team do the parcours. The logic result was that they moved like snails to spill as little water as possible, with their drunken heads. It was annoying to watch that game, that could have been done in 40 minutes, last for almost an hour and a half.

All in all it wasn't such a bad day, oh, by the way, I wasn't there as a cub-scout leader, I was there as a core member, wearing the orange uniform like all others who helped that day. We didn't do it entirely for fun either, our group received a 250 euro payment for her assistance. Besides, we got a free cup of coffee... : )