Amat victoria curam!

After the highly successful auto.nl keyrings we now have something new to give away: A authentic auto.nl T-shirt. The first couple will be given away when you like our brand new facebook pages which will be launched next week...

David Sedaris was for the very first time life in The Netherlands. Sure we attended a reading by him earlier last year but it was great to see (and meet!) him in Carré. As always the moment he started reading the whole place was upside down and laughing out loud - and that only stopped one and half hour later...

Förra året klarade över 10 000 personer jägarexamen i Sverige – en ökning med nära tio procent från året innan. Den som vill bli jägare behöver ha ett vapen och för det behöver man en vapenlicens. En sådan kan beviljas av polisen om man fyllt 18 år och tagit jägarexamen. Det finns även skogsbolag som söker jägare och det annonseras om platser i jaktlag.

You can clearly see that their coach is Peter de Jong, better known as 'Maxi' of Mini & Maxi. But their performance also has influences from Tommy Cooper, Jackass or even Monty Phython. And that makes - although the guys are good in what they are doing - the show predictable. I didn't see something new...

OK: and with a cappuccino for Marijn...

Running with thousands of people can be a bit annoying and in the beginning is was hardly running at all but when the final results came in I realized that my time actually wasn't so bad. In total 7.000 people ran the 4M. Place 201 gets me in the top 3% :-)
Official result:

Startnummer	54107
Naam	Marque Joosten
Woonplaats/Team	Amsterdam
5,3 km	30:07
Netto eindtijd	35:48
Bruto eindtijd	40:08
Snelheid	10,788 km/uur
Afstand	4 Engelse Mijl trimloop
Plaats	201e

When I wrote about Louie Zamperini earlier this year I used a photo which I found at a Bookreview website. It turned out that the picture was from photographer Tom Sanders who asked me, rightly so, to either remove the picture or give him credit. I removed the picture and put the cover of the book of Laura Hillenbrand in it instead. But when I had a closer look at the pictures Tom makes I knew I had to use at least on of them... :-)
The picture of Louie was taken for a book Tom made about The Faces and Voices of the Last "Good" War. It full of moving stories and the stunning photo's are really prove of that stories.
Have a look for yourself at Tom's website or see (and buy) the book at Amazon. I did (at amazon uk - at which the book is much cheaper and with free shipping...)

At the last moment I decided to run just 4M at the Dam to Dam - so actually is was a Dam to Dam, but then in Zaandam. I was very lucky because we only had a few drops during the run and I ran a smooth 35 minutes.

Roland - not super happy

High level discussions...

A nice tour through Northern Holland with the Guys today - It was pouring rain - but that didn't stop us :-)

Ousama Itani of Al Jazeera told a very interesting story about the role of social media during the Arabic Spring Uprising at Eday 2011. To bad that the food at this lunch was to awefull for words - some apricot jelly with couscous... To make it not to bad for you guys, I will present it only in Black&White...

I am still shell-shocked by the sudden death of Richard Sommers. I have known him for 10 years and just last week while on his journey through Europe we were planning for a dinner in Amsterdam. The first date was cancelled and we were texting and calling about a new date later that week. He never returned my last call – now I know why…

I first met Richard at the Homestore office at Westlake Village when I just set up a Real Estate Classified website. We clicked immediately – both very passionate and ambitious about our work. He was tremendous intelligent and gave me al those years crucial advise. You could feel his presents and when he laughed (which he did a lot) it was a real laugh, a thunder :-)

Over the years we keep on seeing each other all around the globe at different events a couple of times a year. Next to that he was coming over to Amsterdam and I to San Francisco at least once a year. Always having dinner at the very best restaurants, drinking the best wines and he most of the times ordering a double main course. At Acquarello, Michael Mina, La Rive, Le Ciel Blue.

During his tenure at Classifieds Ventures he ask me to join the Board of Advisors which I did gladly and after I was fired by my board at my own company years later he directly offered me a job at Zip – which I declined – but not after contemplating how much fun and interesting that would have been: being in a team with Richard.

The following years we keep on making plans of starting a business together somehow. Last time about a web based Health Company. It a pity that we never could make that happen Richard – it would have been a blast!

So full of sweet memories I think of you Richard, I will never forget you – you really changed my life. Thanks.

This weekend was WWII movie teletron weekend. Thanks to the nice people of De Telegraaf we had a box containing these great movies:
Von Ryan’s Express
Battle of Britain
A Bridge too Far
The Dessert Fox
The Longest Day
Patton
Sink The Bismarck
Tora Tora Tora

All very good films, highly watchable - even after so many years.
Extra nice was that in The Battle of Britain the score "The Battle in the Air" from William Walton is played with no sound effects of aircraft engines or gunfire, giving the "Battle" sequence a transcendent, lyrical quality.

Today was the last chance I had to prepare for the Dam to Dam 2011. I have two start tickets - one for the 4 mile and one for the 10 mile run, courtesy of Nike+ running. Since I never ran a 10 mile before I guess I will go for the 4 ... ;-)

Banana Rupublic introduced a special MadMen collection - a great idea! Unfortunately the mens' collection is very tiny - let's hop it is a huge success and they bring more of this stuff.

Baron Rupert Du Sigikid III was so kind to celebrate his 6th birthday with us this morning. After all these years he is still a loyal friend who always gives me wise advise and comes up with solutions. Rupert has been round the world many times and he always is the darling of airport security personnel and stewardesses.
We seem to agree on everything - the only thing is that he only speaks French, which sometimes makes it hard to understand his jokes...

Känner du dig trött och icke-kreativ på eftermiddagarna? Prova att byta ut lunchmackan mot en timmes intensiv diskodans. Fenomenet Lunchbeat sprider sig nu över Sverige.
Först i Stockholm, Malmö och Goteborg och snart i Amsterdam?

Hurray: Doris has a new album - is it her 200th? Well at least she has sold millions. The nice thing is that "My Heart"contains some new songs too. Can'y wait to hear how a 87 year old Doris sounds like.

Today marks the fifth aniversary of the death of Steve Irwin - the inventor of reality nature documentaries. Steve: you are still an inspiration for all of us!

Ali was @Nyenrode for the lustrum party and we had a great time talking to him and seeing him perform. He is really a nice guy :-)

Although the original castle is from 1275 - Nyenrode University was only established in 1946 - so 65 years ago. Time for a (BIG!) party. More then 1400 alumni, staff and students turned up and we had a blast. Thanks to all my fellow members of the organizing committee to make this possible.

Han var Sveriges snyggaste kvinna och nu finns det boken ”Allt eller inget” Vi följer hans karriär – via After Darks hyllade shower och Melodifestivalens glamour, till sammanbrottet i Globens källarkorridorer och nu om är han är en snygg killa - med sin panikångest...
Jag är jätte nyfiken :-)

Henry Cavill is the new Super Man in the new movie "Man of Steel" - his suit looks a bit sluggy - maybe they need more Computer Animation to make it work?

Why do I not meet guys like Christopher Villa @my gym?

Why is it the homophobic, family-values, conservative ultra-religious Christians are the ones who always get caught with their hand in another man's cookie jar?

State Rep. Phillip D Hinkle (R-IN), the 64 year-old anti-gay marriage Republican was caught hustling an 18-year old boy he found on Craigslist, finally admits that he paid the boy.

He exchanged e-mails with 18-year old Kameryn Gibson, through Craigslist and also admits that he paid Gibson $80 "for a good time," They just talked about "baseball and the view" from the hotel room.

Disk two is previously released stuff (but including "The Island) but on disk One you can find "So many stars" which I like in the recording of Sarah Vaughan (Gorgeous track from Sergio's 1968 album "Look Around" Written by Sergio Mendes with Alan & Marilyn Bergman) - but this Barb version is nice too.

I wonder what is written on his side? It looks like "Marque"

Piet-Hein är inte bara min Svenska lärare men också en jätte bra konstnär. Här en fin teckning av Brügge - det finns allt: statyn från Michelangelo och målning från Rogier van der Weyden med vackert utsikt över Brügge.

After 5 years Gilera Runner it was time for a new scooter: The Peugeot Jet Force C-Tech Dark Side. I hope to have just as much fun with this bike in the city as I had with the Runner. It looks pretty cool...

It's been a while since his last novel "Une mélancolie arabe" but the waiting was worthwhile because he won the Prix de Flore 2010 for 'Le jour du Roi. It now arrived in Dutch translation, which hopefully makes it a little bit easier to read for me.

After Abercrombie & Fitch offered compensation to Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino, a character in MTV's TV show The Jersey Shore to cease wearing A&F products maybe it is time for Andrelon hair products to ask Geert Wilders to stop using their "Zomerblond" (Summer Blonde) product?

Hurray! It's time to book my next flight with Malaysia! Malaysia Airlines is to ban babies traveling in first class on the airline's new Airbus A380 and Boeing 747-400 fleet. The airline said they have introduced the baby ban after receiving a number of complaints about crying infants from first class passengers...

(thanks to arnaud for sending this to me)

Lamborghini Aventador - from every angle quite a pretty car...

Nice illustration of Autumn Whitehurst (nice name too!) in the New Yorker.

While we are all waiting for the first novel (We the animals) of Justin to be published the end of this month - we could enjoy a short story in the New Yorker - Reverting to a Wild State.
It is told in a unconventional way: it starts at the end and ends at the beginning...
But it really doesn't matter: anyway Justin tells a story is great :-)

I am running with iPod Nano/Nike+ for 5 years now and am very satisfied. Altough I must admit that I am a little bit jealous of all the nice maps the runkeeper or the nike+ iPhone app make. But running with my iPhone? Noway: to heavvy, to cumbersome. But now there is a new Nike+/tomtom GPS watch which can do the trick (and is more accurate then my current set up). So I rushed to order it and will start running with it tomorrow - I hope...

Is this the future of apps? The HTML5 kindle "app". It combines the best of native apps and webbased functionalities offering a seamless user experience. I have deleted my old kindle app and are now using the cloud reader. I can see a lot of other usages for this kind of HTML5 apps.

I hope that you are not to much disappointed...

I realized that have to much unused profiles and accounts on The Internet and that a summer cleaning would be a good idea - I started today with Hyves. Next is Myspace and I wonder when I close down Facebook...

In today's Volkkrant this little quiz because of Amsterdam Pride - which 4 of these guys are gay?

The result of 250 snapshots I took @ The Office in 20082/009 with dailymugshot.com.

En överraskning på Gay Pride Amsterdam: Svenska Polisen på vatten!

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