Sat 7 Oct

I was watching the entire series of Gilmore girls again before coming on this trip. When seeing those cheesy town events of Stars Hollow, with the parade and reenactment of how the town was liberated, I had the impression that it was just part of the silly plot to make the serial more interesting. And guess what, today, everything jumped out from the TV and appeared right in front of my eyes. Starting from yesterday evening, there was band parading the town in rain! And today, there was carnival setup through the city, there was Ferris wheel, army and speed boat activities in the canal and people in costumes on floats and carriages parading around.

We are so used to the Chingay idea of floats going down the 5 or 6 lanes Orchard road but this was big tractors pulling the floats through the tiny townstreet through the city. Initially I was not interested to see the cheesy sights but we ran into Sander's mum and grandpa. Seeing how enthusiastic was a 78 yr old man walking around to get a good position to catch a glimpse of the fun, I cannot resist but felt the urge to join in and so we did! Haha... funny and cheesy but I am starting to feel more for this town of 100,000 people. There are a lot of simple joy especially with the older folks and I am truly enjoying the slow and slightly lazy spirit all around.

Tomorrow, we will return to Shanghai and with the time difference we will be arriving on Monday morning. I will have to plunge into work immediately with a client visit and dinner and presentation on Tuesday already!! Oh man, dunno how I can survive that ....

Day 8-10 Wed - Fri

We rented a car and went out travelling around to visit our offices in The Hague, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge to meet up with ex-colleagues and meet some people to make sure people know and remember us and hope that it will lay some foundation for our future job search. Anyway we really don't know where we will be after Shanghai. Both of us really quite like the company and will want to stay on but there will be some stringent restrictions which we have to overcome. For eg, he must go back to Holland and I must return to Sg, so we are still trying to figure out the best way to do it without too much sacrificial from one.

And on our way in the Hague, we went by the city hall and presented our documents of all verificaiton of mine and his identity and status and we had gotten our temporary go ahead to register for marriage. They however will take 1-2 months to come back with the ultimate confirmation. So, we have temporarily booked for 6 Jul 07 Friday 1600 for registration (ROM) in the municipality of Alkmaar. We will do a small dinner with friends and famly thereafter. And 14 Jul 07 Saturday we hope to be able to do Church wedding in Singapore and a bigger party with all our international friends and of course people from Sg. Well, this was one of the largest task we had to do on this trip and really thankfully, it went well.

We had managed to squeeze in between one day holiday in Brugge, Belgium. It is another nice cosy little town swamped with tourists. We visited 3 museams, unbelievable right?!! The Beer, Diamonds and chocolate one respectively.... haha how difficult was it? Anyway chocolates are really really nice here and every corner is filled with fresh chocolate smell!!

Day 6/7 - Mon / Tues

For these 2 days, we were invited by Sander's parents to travel around at all expenses paid. It was really sweet of them and long before, they had enquired about the places we have and have not been around and they planned for the days.

On Monday, we went to Amsterdam and visited the Madame Tussard and took a canal tour. Smell of the big city environment makes me so much more comfortable than in the quaint little village... haha an easy day!

Then on Tuesday, we went to an ancient town call VoleDam. This place has very well preserved buildings and being flourished by tourism, there were many shops with cheesy goods and services awaiting. As we were browsing in a souvenir shop, I saw some cute little traditional costumes for kids in the milkmaid apron etc. I teased Sander about it and said that I want to take a wedding photo in similar! He of course was very very very against the idea and seeing his agony I of course had a good laugh and opps, his mum heard us and thought it was a brilliant idea! She immediately told us that we didn't have to wait that long and we could do it this very day in this town where they offer such services to tourists. And quickly the idea was made known to Henri and they were laughing so happily and insisted that we do it and they pay! With that, Sander could not run further and later that afternoon, we really went to a studio......

What happened in the last week...

Day 4 - Sat
This is a fun day! First i started with a visit to Mary Borsato shop. Apparently it is the wedding shop in Netherlands. So I went in to try and really saw something which i liked but it was bloody 1600euro! Haha but anyway now i can maybe try to get similar tailored in China with much less.

Then it was a walk around the market, trying all the snacks around n buying so many things from the supermarket to stack up for Shanghai

In the late afternoon, we went to a friend, Mike's house in Ana Paulowna. It is a even more village place 1 hr drive away. Mike moved there because of Audrey, his girlfriend who did not like Alkmaar because it was too noisy!!! Urghhh we think she will simply die if she has to live in Shanghai. Anyhow it was really nice of them to re-do this house warming cum birthday party for us. At there i had also met the big gang of Sander's close friends whom he knew from 7 years back from working with the supermarket. There was Renate really pretty gal who seems deeply loving the guy, Menno, who is doctor in training and doesn't want commitment and wants to go to africa to do research. They were ex and now nothing but still all over each other! Then there was Jolien, the nice little young girl from next door who kept reminding everybody to speak English for me :) then there was Paul whom had visited us in China before already.

It was a not too late party since everybody was showing signs of getting old. haha ... another interesting part of it is Audrey had a lot frens in the neighbourhood who dropped by as well. Many of these people had stayed entire life in this small village and it is certainly different to talk to them

Day 5 - Sun
We came back from the even smaller village to Alkmaar and went straight to town as there were some band performances. Sander played the drums in the band since 8 and only quitted last year when he left for shanghai.

Wow... memories from my good old band days streams back as well. i guess it is really different since we played for school and stopped whenever we left whereas these ppl played for the community clubs and stayed entire life almost. Maybe some of their kids will even join in the same.

Then in the evening, we went to Rody's house. He is living alone, had a bird and smokes in his house ....I fell sick 2 mins of entering his house and my eyes was swollen for 2 days and had a flu... Wat jammer!