I just received part of my amazon order which included "A Dance with Dragons"! So after tomorrow's dive I can continue reading the "A Song of Fire and Ice" saga!
Also in the package were the following albums: Piano Magic-Ovations, Arch/Matheos-Sympathetic resonance, and Steven Wilson-Grace for drowning. I've listened to these on mp3 before so it's about time to replace the digital files with actual CD versions.

Steelers surprised me last night by beating the Patriots with 25-17 at Heinz Field. Always a pleasant surprise when they manage to beat a team which has so consistently kicked their ass throughout the years.

Seems I'll have to do a bit more paperwork to get Asnida registered here in Funchal. I found a phone number for the Portuguese embassy in The Hague so I'll give them a call soon. We need the marriage document translated and legalised (aka stamped), just like Asnida had to do with her Malaysian documents for the NL government to process our marriage request.
Shouldn't be a big deal but let's hope the embassy can do it easily in the week that we'll be in the NL.

The best way the avoid the Monday depression? To have a holiday on Tuesday! :-D
I'm going diving again tomorrow morning, probably going to Garajau again which is always a nice spot. I think that will be dive number 47 so I should be able to get to 50 dives before the year is over!

The documents arrived in Stein safely so everything is arranged now. Once they tell me how many witnesses we need I'll have my dad make copies of the passports and hand them in.
I'll be flying to the NL in 5 weeks from now. Time is marching on!

Now that I have no more book to read I started watching movies again. I've been downloading several the past few weeks but barely watched any. Herzog's "Cave of forgotten dreams" is another great documentary and "Trespass" with Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage is horrible.

Let's see if we get enough guys together to play football tomorrow evening. Only 6 so far...

We had the first rain storm since March or so yesterday. Howling wind, rain falling for most part of the day. So my car finally got washed again :-)
These storms will happen more frequently now and I'm sure they'll have an impact on whether or not I can dive each Saturday. Guess we'll see how it goes.

I finished "A Feast for Crows" yesterday morning and straight away ordered book 5 "A Dance with Dragons" (plus some CDs) from Amazon. I read the first four books of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series in about 7 weeks, that's pretty fast!

I just called the Stein city hall and apparently the documents from The Hague haven't arrived yet. It's been a week since they emailed me that everything was ok and would be send to Stein...
If the documents don't show up in a week then The Hague might've send them to the other Stein town. Which I explicitly told them not to do... typical.
Either way, I could still book the date and time so now it's official: we'll be married on December 5 at 10am.

For our week in the Netherlands I've booked a hotel for one night in Rotterdam and a hostel in A-dam for three nights. We'll go see Cynic in the Baroeg in Rotterdam on Wednesday December 7 so we can spend the afternoon checking out the city center. Maybe have dinner with some friends.
Once we get to A-dam the next day we can do a few more touristic things that we haven't done yet and also try to have dinner with a few friends maybe.
It will be interesting to see what the Dutch weather will be like in the first week of December. Asnida's hoping for snow... I guess she forgot the blisters that she got last winter :-)

funny stuff

finally!!

Asnida's birth certificate finally arrived in The Hague and our marriage request has been reviewed & approved! :-D
So now we're officially in "ondertrouw" and the documents will be forwared to the city hall (Stein) where we want to get married. Let's hope the docs don't get lost in the Dutch mail system haha.
I've already emailed the Stein city hall to see if I can book the date and time via email.
As soon as that's arranged I can book the flights.

Now I need a bachelor party....

refrigerator issue found

So someone looked at the refrigerator, determined the thermostat is broken and needs to be replaced. It can take up to 2 or 3 weeks before they'll have the replacement part.
Then he charged me 20 euro and left haha.

refrigerator issues

The refrigerator stopped working again last week and after trying out setting it higher and lower it still didn't do its job properly so I've finally given in and called my land lady. Always a challenge talking in English and trying to explain. Let's see when they can come and fix it. It would be nice to buy and eat some food again that I've had to throw out.

As usual I was browsing Asnida's facebook and sometimes I type in the name of some old high school friend, whom I haven't seen or talked to in years. Found one of them who's now married with kids :-)
While it would be nice to say hi and do a bit of catching up it probably would sizzle out soon enough. Kinda funny how easily you grow apart and then talking to each other again after so many years only to realize you don't have anything in common anymore. Such is life.
At least it's good to know that they're doing well.

We went to the Bowbelle wreck again and as I feared the water was too murky and most of my pics turned out crap. I shot 48 pics and uploaded 24 of these which are still crappy but with some imagination they're slightly decent. I've added them to the same album, and they start from page 4: http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Saldiac/scuba%20divings%20pics%20October%202011/#!cpZZ4QQtppZZ16

Fortunately I didn't have to pay for the pics since there is way too much back scatter caused by the sediment in the water. An example:

All those spots and dots are caused by suspended sediment in the water. After the dive I was told that I should've turned off the flash though I'm not sure that would have helped a lot. We were at a depth around 28 meters and without the flash the pics would be much darker.
Anyway, I'll get another chance with the digital camera on a future dive. I'll make sure it will be on a dive at the national park Garajau where the visibility of the water has been great on all dives I did there. Plus there's a wide variety of sea life which should make for some great pics.

1 year anniversary

Today it's been a full year since I arrived here in Madeira. While this in itself might be reason to celebrate the additional cuts by the Portuguese government are anything but celebration worthy. Another 5% cut in salary and no summer and Christmas bonuses. Soon enough I won't be able to afford living comfortably anymore.

It seems I'll have to start applying for other jobs soon so I'll add that to the 'to do-list' with the research grants I'm working on.

divine intervention?

So Asnida's birth certificate arrived in the Netherlands, then they said the recipient moved, then s/he wasn't home and after a week of not being claimed the document was returned to Funchal...
Frustrating doesn't even come close to the annoyance level.
I now send the document again but to a different address and I added the person's name who is handling our marriage request in the Netherlands.
If the document is still returned then it must be divine intervention! (another good reason to be an atheist lol)

I was supposed to do the 2nd training dive of the digital underwater photographer course yesterday but the digital camera came back too late from the dolphin trip. So I just did a regular dive with Sergi and Monica during their 4th/final open water dive to get certified. I still got 57 minutes underwater and experimented with breathing and buoyancy so definitely a useful dive.

I've rescheduled the training dive for next Saturday morning since the dolphin trips are always at noon. So nobody will have taken the camera when I get to the Divepoint.
I was told that we'll either go to the national park or to the Bowbelle wreck, I'm hoping for the national park since there's a lot more fish :-)

A Song of Fire and Ice

After finishing "A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow" aka book 3 part 1, I was wondering why the body count of main characters was so low. Well, now that I'm reading "A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold" and on page 358 already 3 main characters have died haha.
Then again, a few of the characters who died earlier in the books have either survived or been resurrected. I guess that's a benefit of the fantasy genre, you can do whatever the hell you like and then pull a trick to smack the reader over head yet again :-)

Good wicked fun!

scuba doo

So I had my first lesson of the digital underwater photographer PADI course today. While I shot 108 pics only 58 were decent enough to be put on my photobucket HERE.

The best pics are the following 5:

A Song of Ice and Fire

I've been calling this book series "Game of Thrones" since that's the title of the first book and the TV series but I guess after reading books 1, 2 and 3 part 1, I should call it by its rightful name "A Song of Ice and Fire".
I read book 1 in two weeks, book 2 in one week, and book 3 part 1 in four days :-)
I guess you could say I'm pretty hooked on this epic tale!

In contrast to, for instance, the Harry Potter books, the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books don't wrap up the story line nicely at the end of each book. They just end like a regular chapter and you're left wondering what the hell is going to happen next. Since there are so many story lines you get used to having to wait what happens with a certain character but with each book ending you just want to dive into the next book to continue reading.
So, I'll probably start reading book 3 part 2 "A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold" tonight! There have been a few very cool twisted events which I love so hopefully George R. R. Martin doesn't let up in the next books.
I already have the paperback edition of book 4 "A Feast for Crows" so I'm still good for quite some time. It seems that book 5 has only been published in hardcover so far and I'll see if I can be patient enough to wait for the paperback version to be released. Probably not haha!
And after book 5 I'll have to endure the wait until books 6 and 7 will be out...

Winter is coming!

almost anniversary time

I've been in Madeira for almost 1 year. I arrived on October 14, 2010 so only 11 days before I can have a party of one to celebrate the anniversary :-)

Seems my left thigh is getting old and injury prone. After the July injury I pulled (separate) muscles in that thigh over the past 2 weeks. Interestingly, it only happens when I kick the ball, not while running, turning or whatever. While it's good that I've learned to use both legs for soccer while I was a teenager it's hard to avoid the automatic action to kick with my left leg when the ball is perfectly placed in front of my left foot. Either way, I'm taking a break for a few weeks from playing soccer now. If I pull yet another muscle in my left thigh the next time I play then I'll go see a doctor.

It's good that despite the thigh issue I can still scuba dive without any problems. I guess I use different muscles to kick my fins underwater which don't hurt or cause injuries :-)
We did a fun shore dive on Saturday while the waves were pretty strong and the swell kept shoving us left and right, back and forth. I felt pretty comfortable though and getting more and more into my buoyancy. We stayed underwater for about 54 minutes which is quite long. Although our maximum depth was 14 meters we stayed in shallower depths (around 7/8 meters) for most of the dive.

Since it's been a while since I did any speciality scuba dive course I will start doing the digital underwater photographer course on Wednesday and probably finish it on Saturday. After that I'd like to do the night diver and underwater videographer specialties. Once I have done those I will do some more challenging courses: search and recovery diver, cavern diver, and rescue diver. Each of these 3 more advanced courses consists of 4 dives while the usual specialty course is 2 dives.
Finally, after I get the rescue diver certificate I'll go for Master Scuba Diver which is "the highest non professional level in the PADI System of diver education". I don't expect to go pro after that but the top level of fun diving seems pretty effin good in its own right!