Springtime!

We've been quite busy the last few months. First we spent our Easter week in London with lots of sightseeing and three concerts. It was a great time and money well-spent!

Apparently someone had managed to hack into my US bank account in March so my bank blocked my card. After checking it turned out that the hacker spent my money to sign up for a few dating websites. Quite disappointing to see s/he had so little imagination haha!

We've finished puzzling and booking our return flights to Kuala Lumpur (KL). Since my institute will pay for the trip from KL to Sapporo, and from Sapporo back to Funchal, I had to get a flight from Funchal to KL. Asnida still had a return flight from A-dam to KL so she need flights from Funchal to A-dam and from KL to Funchal.
Sound complicated? Try finding cheap flights that actually connect ha! But we managed and I've now depleted all my bank accounts.

Let's see if the Portuguese IRS will give me any tax return. We got Asnida's fiscal number and online log in info so I filed my taxes last week or so. Had a colleague assist me since the online system is in Portuguese. But it should be easy to complete future taxes filing.

Of course we're still diving, I try to dive every Saturday and Asnida joins every other Saturday. Last weekend she finally went on her first boat dives after 8 shore dives which include her 4 OW dives. She was a bit nervous and afraid so it was good that we got our own dive guide. She seemed fine on the boat ride to the dive spot and once she got underwater she was having a great time. I on the other hand struggled with my buoyancy and felt overweight so I'll ditch some weight for my next few dives and see what happens.
After our safety at 5 meters depth for 3 minutes I signalled that we could slowly surface and that she should watch out for the buoy so she wouldn't knock her head. She managed fine and I stayed underwater while swimming towards the boat's ladder. She got there soon too but felt sick and as soon as she got on board she started throwing up. Might have been the nerves or seasickness, although the waves were just rocking slightly. We bought some seasickness pills so we'll see how her next boat dive goes.
Afterwards I was a bit afraid that she wouldn't want to go on boat dives anymore but while walking home she just kept on talking how excited she was and how much she had had underwater.

Oh yeah, Asnida also dove with a 10 liters tank while everyone else had a 12 liters tank. She's small and doesn't use much air so she surfaced with more air left than I did. Even though I have 7 times as many dives as she has....
Anyway, once we get to the Perhentian Islands she'll be like a fish for sure!

Finally, my 2nd underwater video attempt:

Will go for 3rd attempt this weekend. Let's try to find it's charm!

First of 2012

Apparently I haven't posted here since December. Perhaps facebook is killing my blog? Ha!
In the meantime Asnida got certified as an Open Water scuba diver and I got certified as Rescue Diver. We've done only one dive together after she finished her course, possibly the next dive will happen on Saturday.
She definitely needs to practice to improve her buoyancy to avoid killing the coral reefs once we get to the Perhentian Islands in July.

I ordered an underwater housing for my camcorder back in January but its saga hasn't ended yet. It actually has been in Funchal for 2 or 3 weeks now but I don't have it in my possession (yet?). Basically customs confiscated the package and I had to hire a mediating company to release the package. After paying an additional hefty 20% tax the package should now be delivered to M-ITI. That was the message on Friday.
Of course the danger is that the package doesn't get delivered and send back to the US. So I'll check tomorrow afternoon and call the mediating company to bug the local customs again. It's quite annoying knowing the housing is very close to my apartment but I can't simply go there and pick it up. Bureaucracy deluxe.

About a month ago someone emailed me to ask whether Archaic/Vampire magazine has ceased to exist. Indeed going to its URL leads to nowhere. Since I quit back in 2009 I haven't kept track of it and I guess it just went downhill even further until it imploded. Oh well, renaming it from Vampire to Archaic was done ironically and turned out to be prophetically. Kids these days don't read magazines anymore, they just download music and listen once or twice before deleting.
The only downside of the magazine vanishing is that all those reviews and interviews I wrote between 1997 and 2009 are gone too. Though it seems that a few bits have been saved on wikipedia and band websites. For some reason mostly comments from my reviews on early Arch Enemy album.
Oh I don't miss the reviewing and interviewing but it's a shame that this trip down memory lane is evidently gone.
Guess I'll just blast Entombed's "But life goes on" and Dismember's "And so is life"!

signing off 2011

Asnida seems keen on torturing me with supposedly unintentional spicy dinners on every Wednesday. At some point I won't even blink anymore while eating hot chilis like snacks.

Last week we were having an Orphaned Land DVD viewing with my Israeli friend Shay on my birthday when all of a sudden a group of friends/colleagues crashed our party. Definitely a fun night and now I have a mechanical darts board to play with :-)
A few nights later we hosted an X-mas party with dinner and movie ("Arthur Christmas") which was a blast. Asnida cooked two Malaysian dishes which were unanimously praised.

On 2nd X-mas day I broke my longest dive record with a 63 minute long shore dive with Monchu and Shay. We saw plenty sealife and the visibility was still pretty decent. The water temperature wasn't too cold but I was glad that I wore two wetsuits. Still, after more than an hour underwater my bladder was about to explode so good thing I didn't have much air left anyway.

The last few days we've booked everything for our London trip, flights, hotels and so on. We'll be spending about 7 days in London from 2 to 8 of April. But we'll also attend a gig in the Netherlands on April 1 so that will be a very quick mini-trip within the London trip :-)
The only thing still missing are the Boltfest 2012 e-tickets which have been mailed to both my yahoo and gmail accounts yet have not arrived in either inbox or spam folder. I have a credit card statement as proof that I did pay so let's see how this will unravel.

No big plans for New Year's Eve other than staying in and watching the fireworks from either our balcony or the building's roof (if it's opened). I'll try to shoot some vids with my camcorder so we'll find out whether the often highly praised Madeira fireworks are indeed magnificent.

Back in Funchal

Last week went by like a whirlwind :-)
We had a bit of quiet time while staying with my parents the first few days but as soon as we headed out on Wednesday morning things got sped up significantly. Our hotel in Rotterdam was very close to the central train station so after checking in we headed out to the Euromast. I can't remember ever having visited it so after a short tram ride we ended up halfway up the Euromast with the wind blowing rather hard. Due to the wind they had closed the top since it would be too dangerous up there.
The view of Rotterdam was still very good regardless.
Just as we got to our hotel we ran into Bas so we headed up for some drinks to wait for Ed to show up. If I remember correctly the restaurant was called Humphrey's, which was quite enjoyable and close to train station Blaak from where we hopped on a train to Lombardijen to catch Cynic in the Baroeg.

On Thursday we headed to A-dam and stayed at the hostel in the Vondelpark for 3 nights. After buying some groceries we went to see "Puss in boots" which is a fun movie. We had to visit The Hague very briefly on Friday to pick up the translated and legalised marriage document at the Portuguese embassy.
In the afternoon we caught "Hysteria" (movie about the evolution of vibrators) and followed with dinner with Alexander and Steven at the awesome O-cha Thai restaurant near the Nieuwmarkt.

We slept in on Saturday and caught an evening screening of "Drive" which is an awesome movie! After a quick Thai meal we headed over to visit Joost and meet his girlfriend Aaltsje. His hair is fairly epic these days but obviously no competition for the epic beard I had in 2008 ;-)

The trip back to Funchal on Sunday went fine but I found out the hard way that booking a return trip while not actually flying on the first flight leads to cancellation of the return flight. So I had to buy another ticket for Asnida or else I would've had to leave her at Schiphol haha.

Asnida shot a whole bunch of pics last week but I don't think she's posted them online yet. We'll get to that asap.

Being married in 2011: sitting next to each other, each of us on our own laptop :-)
Asnida playing some diamonds game which has her full attention.

Yesterday was fun. The ceremony was concise, just a good length for a small intimate gathering of some family. Also did some paperwork for the Portuguese embassy in The Hague so we'll go there on Friday to get the translated and legalised version of our marriage document. Then Asnida will be able to be registered in Funchal.

The weather in the Netherlands isn't so good with all the rain and cold temperatures. But it's a nice change from all the constant sun and 20 degrees Celsius in Madeira :-)

We're leaving Limburg tomorrow morning for Rotterdam. Hoping the weather forecast is wrong since they predict thunderstorms. Either way, we'll do some walking, get dinner with friends and finally catch Cynic in the Baroeg venue.

Then on Thursday we're off to A-dam and stay there until Sunday. Plenty of indoor activities to do there so it won't matter whether it rains.

Being married in 2011 redux: Asnida turned off her laptop and then realized she needs to do something with her 2nd online banking account. So I have to hand over my laptop now ;-)

wow!

I loved "Merantau" and this trailer is awesome! Must see this!

drag

Got sick on Tuesday night but still went into work yesterday. Bad idea so I left before lunch time. Sucks because we were supposed to go to a Turkish restaurant in the casino area. Well, at least the others still went and hopefully had a good time.

I think I've packed pretty much everything I need for the trip. Hopefully there won't be any delays in the trip and my flu will get left behind in Lisbon.
Next week's weather forecast for the Netherlands seems to be rain all week long. Oh well.

Back to my tissues!