Author Archives: ajebe

Spinner

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Spinner!All the kids in Alex’ school have a spinner, except for Alex, and that situation needed to be corrected. Buying a spinner would have been the easiest, but making our own spinning toy was much more fun.

The result was something that made us both very happy. The steps to make a spinner are easy. First you need four bearings, some glue and a piece of shoelace.

First you need to take one bearing and take of the metal coverings and clean it with some soap to remove all the grease. This make the bearing spin faster. Step two is gluing the other three bearings and glue the shoelace around the entire spinner to make it a bit stronger.

In the middle we put a piece of wood, so you can also spin the spinner on the table. The easiest way is spinning it in your hands, but Alex’ hands are still a bit to small. The only issue is that after some use the glue does not always hold and the spinner needs some repairs.

Gouda

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Every Dutch person likes to eat cheese, but in Spain they also eat their fair share of cheese. Dutch cheese is even present in every supermarket. We always buy Gouda or Edam cheese and these can be found everywhere. A nice cheese for a nice Dutch breakfast.

The last pachage of cheese had something that called my attention. There was a small german flag on the package. Strange, because Gouda for sure is a city in the Netherlands.

Finding out what was going on was easy. I send an email to the cheese manufacturer and within a day I got my answer. It seems that the name Gouda is not protected at all. Only “Holland Gouda” or “Dutch Gouda” are protected names. As long as the words Holland or Dutch do not appear on the package everyone can call their cheese Gouda. If seems that I have been eating non-Dutch cheese for breakfast for years.

Fathers day

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Last Sunday it was fathers-day, and I clearly noticed. During the entire day I received lots of presents. Bonbons, a personalized shirt for running, an own for on the fridge and lots more.

Movie or picture

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Sometimes I find myself with a dilemma. Do I grab a movie, or is it better to shoot some pictures. A difficult choice at times and in Leeds I made the wrong choice. I made lots of pictures, and only a short movie of a wonderful micro-concert by our own Alex.

Bomat test

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Bomat!Finally I found something at which I am very good. I was asked to do a BOMAT test, and my results very good.

The result summary was as follows:

Your result of 25 correct answers gives you a sten score of 10, which means that about 98% of the reference group achieved a lower score than you, 2% achieved a similar score, and 0% a higher one.

Although I’m happy with the result I still have to see is there is a practical use to all this. The test was quite straightforward. You were shown a number of figures which represented a sequence of evolution’s. The last image was always blank and you needed to select the correct one from a list op possibilities. Not hard in the beginning but it quickly became more complex to figure out the evolution that was displayed.

Ryanair and Leeds

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It was the typical spam message that notified us of some very cheap tickets to all over the world. Directly to the trans I thought, but Ana thought different. She started to look around and figure it all out. All the destinations around the world were quickly reduced to only a very few options. From Gran Canaria we could fly for cheap to Leeds and that was about it. Still, a round trip would cost us only 22 euros, so why not, we got the ticket.
Leeds!Four days we were in Leeds, and it was cold and rainy, but we had a lot of fun. We took Alex with us and he loved the early norming breakfasts with bacon, and ofcourse the fish and chips.

Birthday factory

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In Alex’ class the parents have agreed to celebrate the various birthdays together. Whenever a couple of kids have had their birthday an invitation is send to all the kids. The party is always in some kind of factory specialized in kids birthdays. In Las Palmas there are a few of these sites and all use the same canvas. Entry, take off the shoes, playing, eat some chicken nuggets, play again, the birthdays kids have to sit on a chair and receive their gifts, unwrap gifts, store gifts in a big bag, play, final dance, put on shoes, receive a bag of candy on the way out.

These celebrations take three hours, and until now this time is adhered to very strictly. Three hours after the beginning you’re outside again. Something accepted happily by all, but still very very un-Spanish.