Spanish economy

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Uncertainty!In the first quarter of 2012 Spain needs to save 8,9 million euro. The government wants to reduce the deficit and does this by freezing the salaries of civil servants and higher taxes on income, savings and property.

We have noticed the changes up close. After 5 years of loyal service you suddenly get a contract for a month. You should have had an indefinite contract after being employed three years. Your salary went down last year and this year it drops again a little bit, and suddenly you have to work on some Saturdays. The future is unsure and nobody knows what will happen. Uncertainty and rumors are everywhere. This is what is going on with the personal of hospitals in Spain. The government is cutting back on spending, and doing it rigidly. What will be the result?

Thy cannot stop all these contracts, because it will increase the unemployment rate a lot, and they will have to pay all these unemployed people (there is already an unemployment rate of around 20%). It’s true that an unemployed person gets less money, but his contribution to the economy is zero. On the other hand the uncertainty is resulting in a direct stop in unnecessary spending. A new car… lets wait a while ans see what happens. Slowly the Spanish economy is coming to a stop, and it will be quite a task getting it running again.

The Name of the Wind

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Name of the wind!A long time ago I was given the book ‘The Name of the Wind‘ by Partick Rothfuss. It is part of a series of three books. After a slow start the book caught my attention and now I am driven to read more. Quite a read because the book has 662 pages but somehow the story managed to grab my attention.

In the book one of the main characters is telling his life’s story. I’ve read around a quarter of the book and his life went from one extreme to the other. I am very curious about the rest and need to start looking for the other two parts.

Cereals no, fruit yes

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Fruit break!The little one is growing up very fast. Today he became 5 months. Two weeks ago we started adding some cereals to his milk. Alex gets a bottle twice a day when his mother is working. Clearly the cereals did not agree with Alex.

Last week we also started with fruit. First for three days we fed him teaspoons of orange juice and then little by little more juice. The orange juice was a bit acid, but Alex loved it. Long before the arrival of the spoon his mouth went wide open. After three days we added pear.. a slightly firmer substance which was also very popular. The most recent addition was some delicious apple.

3 kings 2012

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3 Kings!The three kings have arrived again! Tonight there is a big parade and tomorrow everybody has the day off. Of course little Alex will get a few more presents if he’s been a good boy of course. In that case the kings will leave some presents this night that Alex will find tomorrow morning.

Overview 2011

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Happy 2012!2011 was again a very busy year. The most impressive was of course Ana’s pregnancy and the birth of our son Alex on the 15th of August. Just like his father he was born in the year of the rabbit. A beautiful baby which fill us with happiness and pride.

Alex is born in Alcala de Henares and weighed 2.500 grams. In a few month he has grown an incredible amount and for us as parents it is a fantastic experience. After his birth grandma Nel and grandpa Kees paid us a visit and a few weeks later we took Alex to Holland to introduce him to our family and friends.

After giving birth to Alex the mother had some issues. Ana recovered quickly from the caesarean, but after a while she was diagnosed with a large amount of rocks in her bile. It was a very painful experience and resulted in a few weeks in the hospital. Eventually she was allowed to return home with a very strict diet. Her bile had been infected and needed to cool down for it to be removed entirely in January or February.

This year we published our first children’s story. The title is ‘Thomas and Valentine‘ and it is a beautiful story about a young farmer, his wife and a strange animal. It is not so difficult to guess the strange animal if you look at the books cover. This children’s book is ideal to read from and was written by Ana and Adrie. The book is available in Dutch and English. We are still working on the Spanish version. There are still some small errors in the texts but we are working on a new and better version. We thank everyone who has pointed us to errors in the stories.

Before Alex’s birth we visited the Canary Island ‘La Gomera‘. A very nice island that is perfectly suited for nice nature walks.

We also had some issues with the richest man in the world, the owner of the IKEA. This is our neighbor and we pointed out to him that he should maintain his property a little better.

A lot of family and friends visited us here on the island. It was a good year. The year of the rabbit proved to be a very fruitful year. We wish everyone a very good 2012!