Sunday we went to the beach. Together with Jelly I travelled to Leiden in the morning, and when we arrived we the weather didn't look too well and we actually felt some rain.

However, Rob and Kirsten picked us up from the station, and when we travelled to the beach, the sky became more and more bright, and when we arrived the weather was beautiful.

Daniël, Ellen, Erika, Evert and Gerlof were already there and had installed the volleybal-net. We played many games of beach volleybal: 4 to 4, 2 to 2... it was great fun.

In the evening we had pancakes together.

Saturday we had our yearly 99 tournament. Ninety-nine is a short card-game for three players.

My friends Daniël and Gerlof organized this tournament, which consisted of 12 players and had four rounds.

It was a very pleasant day, and I enjoyed the game and seeing my friends very much. The result of the tournament itself was disappointing as I ended last. The weather was very good. Gerlof and Ellen's apartment has two balconies, so we could play the game in the sun, which was excellent.

When I went home there a huge thunderstorm started. Luckily enough I was just at the trainstation. For about an hour it was storming like crazy but in the evening the weather came nice and fresh again.

I went running for 4,5 kilometers.

Ha, it's weekend!

Tomorrow there's a small game-tournament organized by Daniel, where I'll see a lot of friends. I must honestly admit that I haven't prepared for it -- it's been more than a year since I've played tomorrow's game ('99').

It's been an easy week: nothing spectacular happened, although I had a very nice evening Wednesday when Steven came to visit. The project at work is going well; we're ready with the start-up phase. Later more on that.

At the moment I'm looking at the Spring framework. A couple of books are written about writing Java software using Spring, and at lately I've been reading "Better, Faster, Lighter Java" by Justin Gehtland and Bruce Tate.

The book is interesting. The authors give a refreshing perspective on software development using Java. They describe how many software projects use over-advanced frameworks and tools such as EJBs, even for simple applications. They give suggestions on alternatives, and re-state the advices that have been been formulated since the beginning of computer science, of which rule number one has always been: "Keep it simple."

A nice quote from the book: "Java development without a little heresy would be a dull place, and a dangerous one. You've got to challenge conventional thinking. When you don't, bloat happens."

The Spring framework itself looks promising. Not revolutionary, but useful. I am starting up a new project at my work this week; it's a management tool for an existing application. Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to be difficult to introduce Hibernate or another decent database abstraction layer, as a lot of JDBC/stored procedure code has already been written. To enable a smoother transition later to Hibernate, it's probably wise to define a strict separation between the existing database access code and the new components that my team will make. I'm trying to find out if Spring is able to help out in that aspect.

Saturday afternoon I went to Middenmeer to see my parents. We played two games of Steden & Ridders, which had been a long time. Coincidental or not -- I lost twice.

Sunday we visited Ettie, my sister, and Gerben in Leeuwarden. We went to a Zoo and spent a nice day together. The zoo is called Aqua Zoo and they had a large variety of animals.

I couldn't resist taking some pictures.

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Yesterday I was home around 12:30 o'clock and I went to Chess in the afternoon. I guess I have to get used to the Dutch weather again: I left to work without a jacket and when I was done working it was pooring with rain...

I've put some pictures online; they are in chronological order.

I came home about 15 minutes ago. The journey went well, with an interesting trip from Baltimore to Philadelpha, later more.

Now I'll fresh up, and then I'll go to work.

Yesterday afternoon we travelled from Miami to Washington. Our journey took a longer than expected because the plane had a two hour delay.

Luckily enough we were still on time to go for dinner in a very nice restaurant at Adams Morgan. It's a Brazilian restaurant where Sasha has been before. The food was excellent, I had never eaten Brazilian before and it was great. The drinks were also very nice: we had caipirinha, the national Brazilian drink. There was a TV at the bar where a new soccer championship was on, the South-America cup. I'm sure my friend Jerry who's in Ecuador now will see many of those games as well.

We are now at Sasha's work, at the World Bank. The last time I was at the Bank was in October, when I visited Washington for about a week. We will have lunch now, it's 12:30 o'clock here. It's been a great morning.

A short update from South Beach, FL, where the weather is awesome and the beach beautiful! I'm at a computer in the our hotel now, The Bentley. There's no official internet terminal here but they were so kind to let me use an employee computer.

We spend our days swimming, walking and (when the sun's not too strong), lying at the beach. The hotel has a swimming pool on top of the building, which is very convenient even though the beach is only a few hunderd meters away. The hotel we're staying is located at the "Ocean Drive", a promenade parallel to the sea. We managed not to get burned from the sun -- except my right lower leg that I forgot to put lotion on the first day. I've made quite some pictures but I can't put them online now.

I saw the result of the soccer game between Holland and Portugal at the airport in Philadelphia, as well as the highlights of that match. Disappointing, that's for sure. We are not certain who to support now in the final match that's on tonigh, between Portugal and Greece. We found a place where we can watch the match. There is however a much bigger event going on today: it's July 4th, the American Independence Day which is traditionally celebrated with fireworks and a huge party.

So much for now, back to the swimming pool.

Sasha and I are in Miami Beach, Florida!

The weather is great -- it's sunny all day and even the water in the ocean is nice and warm. We're having a wonderful time.