Day 70 & 71 - Boxing and Packing Boxes

Monday – uitsmijter day! Yay! When i came in this morning, i was looking forward to working on some vibration analyses with albert-jan, but some plaxis work with ben was more pressing. There are very specific design standards in NL for vibration calculation and tolerances. The code (CUR 166) even gives example CPT’s from different regions around the Netherlands to compare your site-specific data with! Pair that with an intuitive fugro spreadsheet and its quite easy to estimate vibrations induced from pile driving or blasting or dynamic compaction, etc. much of it is empirical data anyways.

It is worth noting, that over the weekend, I was one of the over 1 million people in the Netherlands that went skating outside! I wasn’t aware, but there were several organized events where you could skate along the canals at varying distances (usually 15km or 30km), then receive a medal at the end! Marten P. and Flip both did this. So did poor Hein and he had the scrapes all over this face to prove it. He took a pretty bad fall. So did Klaas Wester (look him up if you don’t know him all you fugroians), who apparently took a really bad fall and smacked his head on the ice and was in the hospital with what I was told was “brain damage” but I think they really meant a concussion and it was just lost in translation.

Another piece of interesting trivia, flip was telling a story about getting a finger sliced off, and Annemiek said that if you lose a finger you’re supposed to put it in your mouth until you get to the hospital so to keep it at your body temperature. I always thought you should put the digit on ice?? Could you image putting your severed finger in your mouth?? Gross!

So after work I went to my kickboxing class, which was quite full again with new years resolution bandwagoners. I shared a bag with a girl who, by her own description, hadn’t been sporting in 3 years. I believe it. She was wearing big earrings to class. That’s how I can tell newbies or not-very-serious people. Girls that wear their hair down, or have big earrings, or are wearing a lot of makeup to class (or all of the above) are not going to last long. So, since I lost my gloves, I had to borrow a pair that were too small for me. Which was fine, but by halfway through the class my knuckles were dripping blood. The second half we did more kicking than punching, but it was really painful for me to do any punching.

So after class, I go to get my bag out of the locker, and I opened the wrong one by accident… and my gloves were in there!! I must have left them in the locker 3 weeks ago!! I always use the same 2 or 3 lockers when I’m at the gym, so I’m nearly positive these are my gloves. I can’t believe no one has taken them! These dutchies are so darn honest. Elisabet can’t believe my luck either. Yay I have my gloves back now!

When I got home I made this really great pasta, just some linguine with fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh grated parmesan. Simple but really good. Oh and some green beans too! I finally filled out all my postcards from paris and got those ready to be sent out tomorrow. I sent a bunch to my little cousins in buffalo. One was a postcard of a big starfish from the jardin des plantes in paris where the museum of natural history and evolution is. The starfish is bright red on a green underwater background. I spelled in big kindergarten letters: “To Anthony, you are a shiny star!” and for Lil (my god daughter), on her postcard was fish that looked like Nemo I wrote “To Lil, I am in Paris. Can you find Paris on the map? It is 9:00AM here, can you find the time on your watch? Paris is a big city with lots of people”. I sent her a watch for her birthday in November and a book on how to tell time. She just turned 5 but I figure I can start prepping her now to take over the world. Might as well start with telling time. Do 5 yr olds tell time? Who knows. The watch was pink I’m sure that’s all she cared about hahah! After filling out a zillion postcards, I watched some internet highlights of the rock of love tour bus with Brett Michaels (Jeremy… seriously… you’re watching that right??) and made it to bed just after midnight. Could television get any worse? Where the heck do they find these girls?? They must do their casting calls at the either 1) strip clubs, 2) plastic surgeons offices , 3) methodone clinics, 4) Hollywood Boulevard, or 5) all of the above.

Tuesday I wanted to shoot myself to put myself out of my Plaxis misery. The program basically exploded my computer after a mysterious thick black line kept showing up in my outputs. After a few restarts, and one attempt to throw my computer out the window, all was well in Plaxis land again. The file was corrupted so I had to recreate a good portion of it, but it didn’t take that long.

One thing I thought about today on my way to work. To get into the parking garage at fugro, you have to wave your badge in front of a sensor to open the door. The sensor and the door are at the top of a ramp, so if there is a car already up there, its common to wait at the bottom to avoid having to start your car on a steep uphill (in a manual transmission is quite tough… think SF hills). But, I observe nearly every day, as soon as the person waiting at the bottom gets to the top, they stop and wave their badge for the sensor… even though the door is still open from the last person. Why not just drive on through? Its open! I always just drive through. I tested it, and the door won’t close on you. its on a sensor too and won’t close if there is an object in the way. So I thought about this more. I think it’s just a cultural difference. I think if i were to describe dutch people, one of the many descriptions would be “follows the rules”. Simple..they just follow the rules here. Traffic rules are obeyed. If there is a merge, people don’t wait until the last minute then try to sneak in. they just merge. And people let you in no problem. If the crosswalk says don’t walk (or don’t bike)… they don’t. On Sunday when i went skating, the rental fee for my skates was 5 euro plus 20 euro deposit. I only had with me 24.50 euro in cash (so 0,50 euro short), and she WOULD NOT let me rent the skates. Against the rules she said. I said but i’ll get the deposit back in the end (of only 19,50 euro), so i’m not really shortchanging you!! NOPE. Against the rules. So i had to borrow 0,50 euro and come back to get the skates. Following the rules has its advantages of course. Things are nice and orderly. You know what to expect. It’s quite calm and peaceful actually. Just a little annoying sometimes.

Tonight I was reunited with my most favourite spinning instructor. He was looking yummy as always. It’s been nearly 3 weeks since ive seen him! Too long definitely. After spinning I had leftover pasta from yesterday and packed up a few boxes to send back to the US. I’m going to be WAY over my allowable baggage limit… so I’m trying to do something about it now. For one, dany brought over one of my suitcases for me, so already I have one extra bag beyond the allowable two checked bags. PLUS all the things I’ve bought here, Christmas presents people sent me, and other things visitors have brought me. Pretty much, I’m screwed! I checked lufthansa’s baggage policy, and one extra bag is 200 USD. So I’m really trying to avoid that. Ben says that i can ship a few boxes at a cheap rate if they go a super slow route. So it might take a few weeks to get back to CA but its OK. We’re going to price it out this week based on the weight and see which is cheaper.. the shipping or the airline fee. We’ll see!!