Breaking News

Dear Diary,

I don’t have any breaking news. But I finished Frank Schätzing’s latest book the other day: Breaking News. The book is advertised as a thriller which isn’t quite true. But it’s similar to Schätzing’s other books such as Der Schwarm and Limit in which the story is intertwined with a lot of (historical) facts.

The way it’s written is pretty clever: there are basically two parallel storylines: one starts with a family that immigrates to Israel when it was still in its earliest days. The other storyline starts around 2010. Then you basically learn more and more about the family and how they develop through the years. They move from A to B and are affected by all the different events in Israel’s history and have close ties to the political powers that are responsible for some of the biggest decisions. Through this storyline, you learn a lot about Israel’s history. Some of the wars and massacres are described in pretty graphic details that are not for the faint of heart.

The other story line focuses on the front-line journalist Tom Hagen. He ends up in Israel through some very unfortunate circumstances and tries to find a good story to make a comeback. And this is the storyline that Schätzing uses to introduce a lot of the fictional parts of the book. Slowly, a conspiracy is uncovered and Hagen gets sucked into an action-packed thriller against his will. Schätzing has a great talent for writing very fast-paced action scenes.

Eventually the two storylines “meet”. The older one catches up with current events and the reader realizes the full extent to which the characters are involved in the fictional conspiracy. It’s very cleverly done.

I’d recommend the book to anyone that’s interested in learning more about Israel’s history, the political tensions in that part of the world, and doesn’t mind mixing it with some action. The whole book is almost 1000 pages long and I felt like the last 200 pages could have been condensed a lot. But it wasn’t bad enough that I think it’s not worth the time.

House warming party, old apartment, a little rest

Dear Diary,

yesterday, I had the final inspection of my old apartment at 14:30. The only thing that’s left there now are two couches. I hope to be able to get them over to the new place some time this weekend – we’ll see. One of the rental agents came by and checked that I didn’t damage the place. It was a bit weird because he didn’t really seem to give a shit. He just asked me “does everything still work?” while testing a light switch ( o_O ). I said, “yes”. And that was basically it. I e-mailed them my bank account number and will get my deposit back within the next four weeks.

Then I gave the guy my keys and now I am basically done. The next guy moving in there is someone I play squash with. JK will probably already move in on Saturday and will officially rent the place starting March 1. He had the option to either start on March 1 or April 1 and has to pay rent in his old place until the middle of March. So I suggested we split the rent for April. That way it’s convenient for him and I don’t have to worry too much about leaving my couches there for a couple more days. JK will also buy the washing machine, the curtains, and the bar table-thingy from me. So, yeah, all is taken care of.

There were a couple of things that I just needed to throw away. I went past the junkyard yesterday to get rid of them. Then I went to big Jumbo and bough three crates of beer and some chips and stuff for the party. Starting at around 8, people started dropping by (despite the shitty weather). It was a mixed crowd and a fun night. And of course I went to bed later than I should have (around 3:30). Today, both of us stayed at home to work from here. I am still not terribly productive but need to get some stuff done today. BB will leave at around 4 to spend the weekend with a couple of friends in a holiday house they rented somewhere. So I’ll have the weekend to myself and am looking forward to just siting on the couch and reading and starting to feel “at home” and rest a bit. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic.

Foxcatcher

Dear Diary,

PS: after watching the trailer: I think you should see the movie without watching the trailer. As often, it tells you a bit too much and the movie will be more interesting if you don’t know where it’ll take you.

last Friday, NB, BB, and myself watched Foxcatcher. (I forgot to post about it.) I knew nothing about the movie but NB has researched it a lot and was super hyped. Apparently, I got great reviews. It’s always interesting to go and see a movie without having any expectations so I just tagged along and went to see it. Here’s the trailer:

First of all, the acting in this movie was phenomenal. The movie was relatively slow in the build-up and wasn’t rushed at all. And it was surprisingly creepy. It’s kind of hard for me to figure out what the movie was actually about. I’d say it was mainly about really strange and screwed up personal relationships between people that all have their own little personal issues.

It’s an interesting journey and worth seeing for the outstanding acting alone.

Good-bye dinner

Dear Diary,

yesterday, I spent the day at the office but wasn’t very productive. When I got home, I spent about an hour cleaning up the place a bit more and organizing things a bit more. It’s now not such a huge mess of boxes anymore. We’re not mainly waiting for the landlord to remove the couches and the giant table so that we can replace them with our own stuff.

When BB got home, we went to the Media Markt to buy a bluetooth receiver for the stereo so that we can play music through our phones and computers without having to physically hook it up to the stereo.

Then I went to my friend NB who invited me for a good-bye dinner. He’s doing the same master that I did and is going to do the research project for his master thesis at MIT in Boston. Which is awesome! I am really happy and excited for him but a bit sad that he leaves. However, he’ll only be gone for about four months so it’s not too bad and I am sure he’ll have a great time.

OurGroceries app

Dear Diary,

since I have a roommate now, my shopping habits will change. We need to coordinate more and make sure we know what we need to buy and don’t buy it twice. We looked for an app that would allow us to synchronize shopping lists and found a free app called OurGroceries. It’s very easy to set up and very simple. But it works just fine. You basically just add things to the shopping list and it shows up on each device that’s hooked up. When you buy something, you cross is off the list and it’ll be taken off the list on each device.

You can do more advanced things like having multiple shopping lists and order things on the list by categories (such as what shop to buy things from etc.). The app is free but has some ads. You can remove them by paying 4.49€ which I find pretty expensive. But we’ll see – if we end up using this for a couple of weeks/months, that’s worth paying just as a thank you to the developers.

Anyways, handy little apps for any household that needs a smart way to synchronize their shopping activity. :)

Very active week

Dear Diary,

I just got last week’s summary from Fitbit. It gives sums all the steps, distance, floors, and calories that it counted throughout the week and gives averages as well. Here’s the overview:

As you can see, covered quite some distance and burned quite some calories. I also climbed a whole bunch of stairs which is related to moving all my stuff to the new apartment. I an definitely didn’t get enough sleep. I fell asleep very fast but woke up a lot during the nights.

I kind of knew all of these things but it’s cool to seem them in numbers. ;)

House warming party

Dear Diary,

BB and I invited a whole bunch of people and will have a house warming party on Thursday. Should be fun!

Internal squash tournament

Dear Diary,

this week, the club is organizing what they call the “week tournament”. There’s a tournament each day Monday through Thursday and on each day, players of different levels are encouraged to sign up. Last time, I won the “intermediate high” level so this time, I signed up for the highest level: “advanced”. I played a couple of good games and finished 11th which I am pretty happy with. Especially winning the last game (against LM who’s the best female player we have in the club and who I’ve never beat before) was nice.

A fun night with lots of squash. I had a chance to fully test my new shoes and they are great! Very happy with the purchase.

Because there’s tournaments going on each night of the week, there won’t be any training this week. But that’s not too bad because I have enough other things scheduled for this week.

The Wind Rises

Dear Diary,

last night, we set up all the electronics in the new place and tested our new home theater by watching Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises. And it was great. Here’s the trailer:

The movie’s very beautiful, first of all. It’s also very interesting with regards to the story and the imagery. I really, really enjoyed all Studio Ghibli movies I have seen so far and feel like I should try to just watch all of them. Each of them (so far) has left me with a feeling of wonder.

New place is shaping up

Dear Diary,

yesterday, BB and I spent another day moving things around. In the morning, we drove to his parents’ place because that’s where he stored all his stuff before he moved to the States. We picked out a couple of things that we wanted to take from there after we had a relaxing breakfast with the parents and caught up a bit.

We packed my and his parents’ car with the stuff and drove back to Groningen with the four of us. Then we brought everything upstairs and distributed it across the house. After that, we went to Ikea to buy a couple of small things. The weather was super nice and it was a Sunday but Ikea was ridiculously busy. It was crazy. :o We got everything we wanted and went back to our place. I put together two shelves we bought (one for shoes and one for our electronics, esp. the projector).

Then our friend and colleague WS came over. We ran into him at the Ikea and invited him over. We ordered Chinese food and watched a movie. BB and I were both pretty tired and we ended up going to bed early and caught up on sleep.

Now we need to wait for the landlord to remove some things from the living room. There are two couches that we thought about keeping but we won’t. And a huge dining table that is too big. We hope she can arrange for them to be picked up pretty soon. Then I’ll get the two couches from my old place as well as a table from there and then the living room should be more or less “done”.

Today, I am meeting the rental agent at my old place. They’re showing someone around and I’ll give them a set of keys so that I don’t have to be there for that in the future. I’ll arrive half an hour early to clean up the place a bit more and pack up some of the stuff that’s left in the apartment. Then there’s only some stuff left that should be thrown out – and then that’s done as well.

Phew. Exhausting but very productive weekend.