Sustainable consumption

I saw a very inspiring talk by Sir Brian Heap yesterday. The subject was consumption and happiness, and it was well off the topic of the rest of the conference which was focused on genomics. Anyway, he showed one plot which made a big impression on me, the generation and recovery of plastics in the US (see illustration). Your first question might be: "Then where does the rest of the plastic go?", and then you will realise that it is either burnt together with the rest of the house waste, or left in the roadside... So it is either consuming energy once again for its decomposition or polluting our environment. He also showed other examples that made me think twice. Now I feel like I should be looking more into sustainable choices for my everyday life. I do not want to be contributing to energy waste or pollution of our environment when there are other choices available.

Illustration courtesy: Earthcycle.com

Seasonal tea

The cold and wet weather invites to drink more tea than usual, not only to stay warm, but also to maintain the cosy atmosphere of the seasonal preparations. I like to try out the different seasonal teas that are currently available in the shops, not only mass-produce like the nice 'Autumn Storm' from Pickwick, but also different christmas blends and the 'Spicy chocolate chai' from Simon Levelt.

Wiz kid

Max threw a party this weekend for his family and the friends of his parents. Even though he is new in this world (only about three months now) he already knows what are the important things in life (well, apart from breast feeding). Here he is studying some literature before going to bed.

Photo courtesy: Allan and Olgas blog

That Theatre Company

As it is now a well-kept tradition in my family, we went with everybody to the newest play of That Theatre Company in Krudttoenden. The performance of this evening was two short plays written by Harold Pinter (The Dumb Waiter and The Lover). I did not know Harold Pinter before, but maybe I should look into his works. Apart from being entertaining, the plays had lots of interesting elements concerning communication, both in terms of body language and the verbal communication of the actors.

TussenTijdseToets

Yesterday I did my tussentijdsetoets (TTT a pre-exam for the driving lessons exam in Holland). Wow, did I make lots of mistakes... I did not really like the crude attitude of the examinator. Maybe he got annoyed when I told him to put on his seat belt before we left the parking lot. In any case he was telling me in very rough terms where to go and pointed out my mistakes as we went along. And all the time he had this characteristic frown on his face that appeared to say "why am I wasting my time here".
I did a few things right - got them ticked off on the list, so my real exam will focus on the things that I did not pass this time. However, to minimize the probability of making mistakes, I want to do something like 10 more driving lessons before the real exam in December.

Photo courtesy: Verkeerschool van Ool

Broodbakmachine

I have joined the club of bread baking enthousiasts - I am now the lucky owner of an AFK BM3 bread baking machine. Let's see if I find it as fun as baking bread the ol' fashioned way.

(no I have not tried it out yet, but I will let you know how it turns out)

Nerd joke

I don't know where this joke originated from, but I found it so hilarious that I had to share, even without a proper attribution to the artist. Please contact me if you know who made this pic.