Rotten Lousy Weather

Next week is gonna be a hot week, weatherwise that is. Saturday thru Friday 29+ degrees Celcius. I DO NOT like that anymore. Way too warm, uncomfortable, sweaty and lousy weather. Luckily we have a airco at the office, here at home it is not cooling very well, needs freon. Normally it cools down rapidly when the evening arrives, but not now. Its 23:20 and still its 15 dergrees outside. It will be a long week.

Lessard and Callingwood Bridges

Today Waiward Steel Fabricators were awarded 2 road bridges across the Anthony Henday Highway, which runs around the south of Edmonton. M&D Drafting will take care of detailing while WSF is engineering the connections. The Lessard and Callingwood community bridges are not that difficult; large steel main girders, connected with diaphragm beams (sort of "Andreas kruizen"), covered with a concrete slab to accomodate 4 or 6 lanes and at both sides a walk/cycle way. Unfortunately they are skewed and curved, which makes it pretty interesting for drafting and even more to the shop where they only have + or - 6 mm play, a quarter of an inch that is. The bottom line: we are getting busy again, all the signs point that way. Hopefully we enter the the winter fully loaded. Which reminds me; if you ever order a fully loaded baked potato, in a restaurant over here (along with a very large steak), you will get a big unskinned baked potato sliced open and filled with butter, cream cheese and chives topped with bacon crumble. Tastes pretty damn good, I must say.

BoekScout.nl

Kort geleden ben ik, via Jan Dijkstra via Hyves.nl, digitaal in contact gekomen met Gert Blom. Een oud collega. Beiden hadden we toendertijds een voorkeur voor de Duitse Krimi Schimanski. Sinds die tijd spreken wij elkaar aan met Thanner en Schimanski. Dit geheel terzijde. Gert heeft in de loop der jaren aangetoond dat hij ook ballen heeft, is voor zichzelf begonnen en heeft zelfs een architectenbureau overgenomen, samen met een compagnon. Eerlijk gezegd heeft hij mij daarmee verbaasd, zo zie ja maar weer hoe iemand je kan verrassen. Na wat heen en weer gemaild te hebben o.a. ons vertrek naar Canada, kreeg ik het verzoek of een uitgever mij mocht benaderen voor een nieuw uit te geven boek. Het blijkt dat Gert in zijn vrije tijd schrijft, voor de lol en wellicht ook om bepaalde dingen van zich af te schrijven. Sinds ik blog kan ik mij daar iets bij voorstellen. En zo'n initiatief kan ik zeer waarderen omdat het ook weer getuigd van lef en hij verrast mij er weer mee. Click hier of op de foto voor een link naar boekscout.nl.

Golf Pro.....(to be)

Every year Waiward organizes the "Waiward Golf tournament" at the Coloniale Golfclub in Beaumont, South of Edmonton. You are invited to join whether you are a golfer or not, it is about a fun day, having fun, eats and a drink or two. The method of play used is the "Texas Scramble", which means that the best shot of the group, four players, is used, the hole is enlarged with a two foot circle. So anybody in that circle is the winner, but we holed all our shots and ended -3 for the round. Actually not bad at all for someone who had not played for 22 years. We quit golf prior to Joost being born. On the picture you see Jim McPartlan in the middle and James Lee next to him, Mitch our fourth team-mate did not shown up, so we took turn in being Mitch. Downside is that tee-time is 7:00 in the morning. We had agreed to have breakfast with Peter, 06:15am we were eating bacon and eggs with Canadian coffee, which is best described as serious slootwater. And they keep ri-filling it at no extra cost.

Just a funny observation

I'm waiting for Joka to pick her up from work. At a certain point a large, 5 inch raised 23 inch tyred fire-red Dodge Ram 3500 Turbo Diesel shows up, right in front of me. In it sits a tough guy, mirrored sunglasses and a cap, broad shouldered. Wonder where he is going. The door opens and with that tough guy comes a little Spaniel with a lovely red leach, it matches his truck. Is he? No, not in a tough truck like that. He enters the PetSmart. For a wash and a groom? It looks like the dog has been groomed recently. A couple of minutes later he re-appears with a big bag of dogfood on his shoulder and the red-leashed Spaniel is walking cheerfully besides him. He puts the dog-food in the trunk and of course the Spaniel takes the front seat, and with a lot of noise he drives off. It is always funny to watch people, you never know what comes next or what to expect.

Dutch Delicious

At last we found a Dutch grocery store here in Edmonton. This one advertised in the Edmonton Journal, Emma found it, about their grand re-opening; Gouda cheese for only $1.00 per 100 grams. And indeed as we arrived all Gouda cheese was sold out due to high demand. But re-stock will be done by Thursday, the race is on. We purchased a nice chunk of Leerdammer (1 kg) for $25.00. Actually not that expensive I think, back in NL it is a pricy cheese too, right. We bought 3 jars of sambal, Atjar Tauge en several boemboes. Chocolate sprinkels were brought in by Joost and Eefje, 5 boxes, no need to buy it now. There are about 10 or 12 different brands of peanutbutter here in Canada but there is none that I like, so now I tried the AH (how and where DD purchases I don't know) sold at DD, still have to taste it. The best, in my opinion anyways, Dutch peanutbutter was sold by the Aldi; PCD for only 0.60 EURO, but they took that out of the range of products. Also a smoked mackerel ended up in our shopping cart with several other "we miss"-products. We brought with us "The Windmill Herald" , a bit colored church paper, where we read on the merger of Woudenberg, Scherpenzeel and Renswoude. Of all places...

Firebag 3 and 4

Found a nice site on the Firebag projects I worked on, and hope to work on again, shortly. It explains nicely how the bitumen recovery works; if you want a in depth technical analysis look here. I still have to go up there to have a look and maybe a tour is also possible, because the technique is quite interesting and the projects are huge. So from a technical, drafting, point of view it is beautiful, environmentally they (have to/are forced to) become more aware. Public opinion demands it, rightly so. But no matter which way you approach it; the bitumen needs to be harvested, if it's not for us or the Americans, its for the Chinese. And that is not one of Nena's "99 Luftballons".

99 Luftballons

"Politie wil hulp burgers bij afpakken patserbakken" (Quote from nu.nl)
That worries me greatly. No so long ago there was a country, amongst others, east of West Germany where ratting also was propagated by the authorities. Is that where The Netherlands are heading? I sincerely hope not. Investigation will only take place after thorough consideration, they say. But still you are investigated based on a assumption by someone who is maybe jealous of you for whatever reason or has an business issue to be settled or of course it can be sincere. I think this is not the way to go and in the end does more harm than good, because you can trust nobody and by that I mean nobody! And more importantly what about your privacy. If you are considered than what about the collected data if you are clean? Will it really be destroyed or do they "destroy" it for future use? All the more reason not to travel this route. Hopefully it is one of Nena's "99 Luftballons"....

Frost warning

This is pretty soon, even for Albertan standards. A Frost Warning in August. Its rotten weather anyways, rain and some 10 degrees in the shade. But its favourable for our lawn and the farmers are cheering that its finally raining quite a bit. Hopefully not to little to late. We need the water also for our well, we are not connected to the city watersystem. But frost in August? Brrrr...

Back to Holland....

Joost en Eefje zijn vanmiddag vertrokken naar Nederland, helaas. Want het was heel prettig om het geheel weer even compleet te hebben en wij weten niet wanneer wij Joost weer zien, misschien met Kerst om te snowboarden in Jasper/Banff. Zij vliegen via de US, en dat is ook meteen de laatste keer. Veel te veel rompslomp met die Amerikanen, Customs. Dan maar een paar uur wachten op London. Bagage op de heenweg is 2x23 kg en op de terugweg 1x31 kg. Waardeloos dus.
Joost gaat op voor het afstuderen per 1 september en is dan naar verwachting klaar in Februari 2010. Wat er daarna gaat gebeuren weten wij nog niet, de tijd zal het leren.

No more Junk

After packing, cleaning and moving our stuff from our old home in Maarn, mostly done by Joka, we decided NOT to collect so much stuff (junk actually) anymore. That in mind we were building our Ikea cabinet and could not find a good location for it. So we decided to put it in the spare room. Some parts were almost ruined by the move, Ikea quality right, and I was thinking to keep it in the garage where it would probably stay until the next move or be simply forgotten about. Solution: BURN IT. The cabinet will most likely not survive a next move and we got rid of the excess parts. There were some strange colored fumes when burning, probably the glue or cardboard. Frightning is the speed the flames consumed the shelfs. Look here for a small photo-impression.

Joost en Eefje al weer bijna weg...

Helaas zit het er al weer bijna op voor Joost en Eefje en natuurlijk voor ons ook. Het is weer even heel fijn om ons gezinnetje compleet te hebben. En zelfs meer dan dat. Ze hebben een leuke rondrit gemaakt in de Jeep van Joka. Drumheller-Banff-Icefields-Jasper-Edmonton-Rolly View through the Rockies. Met de tent, zelfs 2 beren hebben ze gezien. 100% meer dan wij in 2006. Ze hebben even kunnen proeven van het Canadese rural leven, ze zijn zelfs in downtown Rolly View geweest. Veel te rustig natuurlijk maar toch ook wel weer leuk, zo voor eventjes. Nog een paar scouting kampen, als leidinx, en dan start voor Joost het afstuderen, wat hij dan in Feb.2010 hoopt te doen. Bachelor of ICT. Cool. En dat geeft hem ook een zeer goed gevoel. Nu nog een keer een Canadese winter meemaken, snowboarden in Jasper en Banff bij minus 20, dat is dus downhill ca minus 35. Seriously cold, but fun.

Ben ik nou gek......

"DELFT - Bedrijven zijn nog niet klaar voor de nieuwe regel die voorschrijft dat zij expliciet toestemming moeten hebben voor het ongevraagd versturen van zakelijke e-mails en sms-berichten. Vele zijn er niet van op de hoogte dat dit vanaf 1 oktober verplicht is". Quote van NU.NL

Maar je mag wel ongevraagd bellen of je een email mag sturen? Of moet je ongevraagd emailen om te mogen bellen? Hoe kan je trouwens toestemming hebben of krijgen voor het "ongevraagd versturen van zakelijke e-mails en sms-berichten". Als je toestemming hebt dan heb je het toch al gevraagd? Of ben ik gek? Hoe kun je in godsnaam nou toestemming krijgen om iets ongevraagd te versturen? (Inderdaad 2x zelfde vraag). Duaal beleid? Zitten hier soms de telefoon bedrijven achter? Zoals ik het lees dan ligt per 1 october het email verkeer plat, want je mag niemand meer ongevraagd emailen of sms-en. Is dat ook vanuit het buitenland, zal mij niet verbazen als daar alweer een verdrag over is om weer een boete te kunnen opleggen. Wat nou als ik royalties wil hebben over een email bericht dat door een ander geforward wordt? Is dat de stichting Thuiscopie waar ik moet aankloppen? Of moet de sender toestemming aan mij vragen om dat te mogen doen en dat doet hij/zij dan weer ongevraagd........ Ik snap het niet meer. Maar misschien kunnen we er nog een dollar/euro uithalen, eh.

Rules and regulations

Despite all rules and regulations, English style, here in Canada this happens quite often. A falling crane. Nice detail being the fact we are engineering and drafting the widening of this bridge. There is not much that is going smooth on this project and that translates in things happening like this. We bid and were awarded this job back in March and it looked liked a smooth one, but looking smooth and being smooth are two different entities. For example, we made templates for drilling anchors through and through the piers, after drilling and surveying them the were 3 inches off. As the steel was being fabricated the shop ended up plugging and re-drilling a few hundred holes. The falling crane issue will have a bigger impact, all traffic was suspended and a full blown investigation will be taking place. What that does on the schedule? No clue. But there will be severe penalties for not living up to that schedule. There goes the profit, if any!

Heritage festival

Every year all etnic cultures in Edmonton present themselves at the Heritage Festival in Hawrelac Park. The Netherlands, of course, were also there. Joka has an very adequate description on her blog. I didn't feel like going, had worked hard on our land and was building a fire, but I was forced to go and there was another reason: haring met uitjes. Surprisingly there was no line-up for the herring and we could order ours without waiting. And they were good, nicely salted and tender. Johan had his on a bun, I like them the Dutch way.
We found out that for Indonesian food we will have to go to Calgary or Vancouver. Nothing here in Edmonton, bummer. Their booth was located next to the Dutch one and we had a nice chat with the quy who served us Rendang and Sate Ajam (including peanut-sauce and chilipaste, I believe its called sambal here too). So Vancouver here we come, pretty good for seafood too.

Twister...

We have had our own small twister in the backyard, I call our own nature reserve (about 11000 square meter). It touched down when we had a thunderstorm out here. Fortunately it was only a small one, we discovered it the next morning. Pretty cool. Twisters are not uncommon here. In 1987 there was a fullblown F5 tornado, which pretty devastating.

Building campfires

There is a lot of debris, pine and poplar branches, on our acreage. We have given the pine trees a golf-coursecut, and that's pretty neat I would say. The lower stem is exposed for about 3-4 feet, so the grass can (but will it?) grow beneath the tree. I looks nicer and is more convenient in the maintenance department. We can use the John Deere tractor to mow the grass. A during the winter it looks much nicer with all the snow beneath it. We can mulch all those branches or we can build large campfires. The latter we like the most, it's fun and warm too except for your backside, right. Evenings can be a little cold here in Alberta. When there are scouts around, well campfires grow large. No point in stopping them, branches have to burn, preferably all at once. And actually I like that too, but there is a limit to the size of the tractor rim.