Back in the game

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about wanting to get back to playing Dungeons and Dragons. Unexpectedly, I got a lot of replies from my friend who had the same idea.

Actually, I got more replies than there is room for players in a D&D group. So now I have two.
In both groups I am the 'Dungeon Master', or story teller, or what you might call it.

Last Tuesday we started off with one group. I am the current DM there, but we agreed that we all do short adventures, since nobody really likes the long epic quests in which you lost the main story and will likely never finish. So, this is only temporary story telling. After that I can play as well.

I have created a Shadowcaster. Some kind of dark wizard who uses shadows as his domain and can do really creepy stuff. I probably will piss some p eople off on a regular basis, but that is all part of the fun!

The other group will play this Saturday. I have decided to do not much story writing myself and will just use a big adventure I've had lying around for a year now. I have read the first few chapters and really like it. I really am curious to see how things go. Sure hope I have at least some time to prepare for Saturday.

Spring whiskies

Apparently spring is in the air. Not that we can see that anywhere outside, since it rains all day and is still not too warm. I did see it at the Whiskykoning last Friday. The Spring Tasting was on!

Theme for the tasting: Lowlands whiskies. There are not too many lowlands distilleries still running, but some of them closed down some 15 years ago, which means that  there is still quite a lot of slightly overpriced whisky available from them. The menu:

• Auchentoshan 8, Battlehill series
• Glenkinchie Distillers' Edition
• Bladnoch 15 Sherry finish
• Bladnoch 15 Rum finish
• Littlemill 20, Hart Brothers
• Rosebank 20, Rare Malts

And as an extra, a Rosebank 13, distilled in '78 and bottled in '91. Bottled by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Very very rare, very very good.

The Auchentoshan was very good for a € 22,- bottle. Nice and crispy. A little bit flowery but one that I will consider buying.

The Glenkinchie was highly anticipated, since there has been a run on it since it came out last year (November I believe). It was a nice whisky, sweet sherry finished. But not as good as I expected.

The Bladnoch was nice. A little bit of sulfur in the taste (old barrel?) but not too great. I liked it better than the Glenkinchie though. Drawback is that it is only available at the distillery, or by mail order.

The other Bladnoch just didn't do the trick. I have been let down by rum finishes before and this one just follows on that list. No sharp edges, just more sweetness without compensating that in taste, which sherry does a lot better.

The Littlemill smelled like a tonne of oatmeal porridge. Tasted a lot better though. It was a whisky that tasted better with each sip. Quite affordable at € 100 euros for a 20 year old bottle of a closed down distillery. Not on the wishlist.

Rosebank 20. I expected it to be the top notch of the evening. It went there and delivered everything I had hoped for perfectly. What a great whisky it was! Too bad they closed down Rosebank. I have only tasted great things from them, and this is one of the best ever (for me).

The extra was the Rosebank 13. Sweet sherry finished. It was a very special treat. Incredible depth in the taste and I can only guess at the price for things like this (€ 500 is on the low side I guess). Thanks Rob!

Wilders

Yesterday was the day on which Fitna saw the light of day. Fitna probably needs no explanation, but for you who live in a cave: Fitna is a movie made by Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who is really scared of people with different beliefs. It shows a compilation of already known material, all referring to Islam and related events.

The days before Fitna's release were filled with news of expected problems and riots within and outside of the Netherlands. Now the movie has been released and nobody seems to care, since there is absolutely nothing new in it.

Fun fact: Wilders used a Danish cartoon about Mohammed, which caused a lot of trouble a couple of years back. Now the artists who drew the cartoon was in the news again, because no agreements on copyright have been made. Wilders illegally used the cartoon...

What an idiot...

I really can't believe anybody actually listens to what he has to say. The only thing he seems to do is try to cause riots and fear, which, I hope, the Dutch prove to smart for...

Back home again

Minsk was great. We had a fantastic time, in which I never slept more than four hours per night. We went clubbing every night, till at least 3.30. Our daily meetings started at ten o'clock. Short nights and long days.

The 'team night' we had on Wednesday was really cool. Went out for dinner first, and clubbing after, with everybody there. Nice to get to know everyone a bit better out of a work setting.

On Tuesday we went to see the new office for ByLectric, which is a major improvement from the cave where our guys are now. Lots of light, and the construction is also a bit less scary.

Our flight home was uneventful, which is nice.

Of course, I was happy to be home again. It is always nice to go to Minsk, but after four exhausting days I really like going home. Not in the least because I missed Anneke.

In Minsk again

After the first full day in Minsk, it is like I come here all the time. The country advances fast, but certain things seem never to change. There are still Volgas on the streets, there are still people crowding clubs on weekdays, and meetings are still being held at Belhard.

Today we had several meetings with the entire Minsk team and we visited the new office. The office is just that, an office. But the new team members that ByLectric hired a couple of weeks ago are nice guys and it is nice to see that we are moving forward fast.

The new team structure at Lectric Zaltbommel has been introduced here and the new project manager, Marcel is having a very good time. Especially last night, at Max Show...

Of course, the program is filled with actual work, meetings, evaluations, planning, discussing and writing documents for all kinds of projects. Issue fixing for running projects is being done between acts, so it is a full week for all of us. Just to keep things interesting ;)

A first time for everything!

Since the beginning of my Last.fm account, CocoRosie has been my overall top 1 artist. Until last Sunday! For the first time in a year, the #1 spot has switched to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

I expected it to happen much more early, since Mr. Cave has almost 30 years of work to listen to, and CocoRosie is something of the last 3 years. But apparently I really like it that much.

A weekend of Whisky

This weekend was really focussed on whisky. On Friday Anneke took me and her parents out to dinner at Hielander, in Alkmaar. The six course whisky menu was exceptionally well combined and the whiskies were ranging from OK to incredible:

• Smoked salmon with caviar - Bowmore Surf (new release)
• Sausages of game (pheasant, deer and rabbit) - Dalmore 12
• Curry soup with lobster - ??? can't remember
• A combination of deer and roe - Tomatin 12 (Ultimate)
• Oat pudding - Dalhuaine 19 (Ultimate)
• Coffee - Clynelish 12 (Adelphi bottle)

After dinner I ordered one of the owner's own bottlings, a Springbank, which I had there in January too. Quite fantastic.

Yesterday was the Whisky Live Brabant festival in Eindhoven. I had to go there, of course. Anneke went with me and we had a great night, with the two of us. She had to admit that she started liking whisky a while ago, so I guess my collection needs additions more often now.

We didn't taste 22 different whiskies like in Leiden in November, but still quite a lot. These are the ones I wrote down or remember:

• Old Schiedam Genever
• Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban
• Glenmorangie Nectar d'Or
• Ben Nevis 1992 (Signatory) 55.8%
• Ardbeg Uigeadail
• Auchentoshan Three Wood
• Macallan Fine Oak 25
• Glenfiddich 30
• Glengoyne 21
• Glenugie 1981 24 years old (Blackadder) 61.8%
• Highland Park 1978 28 years old (Blackadder) 54.8%
• Lochside 1981 26 years old (Blackadder) 55.8%
• Caol Ila 1984 (Scott's)
• Some mystery whisky with which I could win a Balvenie 30
• Royal Lochnagar 12
• Ledaig 10

I was really surprised by some of them, and some other were not as great as I expected them to be.

The Glenmorangie Nectar d'Or was very very good. I really enjoyed that one. The old Caol Ila was really great. The Ardbeg didn't let me down, but didn't really surprise me either.

The three Blackadder bottle I tasted were good. The Highland Park was not as good as I expected. It was nice though, to taste a Highland Park without the regular sherry finish.

Anneke's favorite of the evening was the Nectar d'Or. I think mine was the Caol Ila form '84.

Another step ahead

At my job, we have been working with a team of nice dudes in Minsk for little over a year now.

Next week have planned another visit to do some reviewing of past projects, discuss and fine tune our standards and agreements.

There are two new guys working for ByLectric as well, so it is a nice way to get to know them just after they started at Lectric, and to introduce the new internal structure.

The site for our branch in Minsk has been live for a couple of days now and things are looking fine.

Since a little while it is official that we have our own company in Belarus, instead of using a couple of guys from a big IT club in Minsk. Another step for Lectric, one in the right direction, in my opinion.

A lot of stuff is planned for next week, lots of meetings and full day schedules, since things always take more time than we plan.

Looking forward to catching up in person with the guys I already know and meeting the two new guys!

Guitar Hero

No, not the geeky toy guitar with which grown men pretend to be cool rockers. I mean Joe Bonamassa. We went to see him yesterday in De Effenaar, Eindhoven.

The entree act was canceled, which is pretty good, since I have never seen an opener that was actually worth watching. So it was Blues-rock from the start.

Joe Bonamassa is pretty young guy who sounds like and old blues guitarist like B.B. King and the likes. He was named Blues Rock Virtuoso by some magazines and he lives up to the name.

The show itself was pretty OK, with really good songs, and some lesser songs. The title track of his last album, Sloe Gin, was way too long, but other songs really rocked.

Would I go again? No, but that is just because it is not entirely my genre. Did I like going? Hell yeah. Apart from the fact that I like hanging out with friends, it was well worth it to see it once.

Zune

On the way home from Mexico we had a several hour stop in Atlanta. Which was partly ok, since the Homeland Security is completely rediculous in The States and it took us 2 hours to get through customs. And we didn't even want to get in the country...

After that we did some shopping. I wanted something to read for the flight to Amsterdam and we liked to buy a new MP3 player, since both our players broke down during the last year.

We couldn't find too many different players, but we did find a Zune player, by Microsoft. My biggest complaint about iPod was iTunes, so this seemed like the right solution.

30 Gigabyte harddrive, and it was discounted to 160 bucks, which is just over € 100. Quite cheap. We bought it and as soon as we were home we were toying around with it.

It was a bit of a hassle to get it running properly on my computer, but once it was it rocked. Automatic software and firmware updates running smoothly and uploading music to it was realy simple.

Anneke is going to use it mostly, since I go to work by car, but I still regret not buying a second one for myself. Would be nice to watch a movie on the way to Minsk.

It a good looking thing, works well and controls are easy. It has quite a big screen too. I think it is a bit bigger than the comparable iPod, but with a large harddrive, a bigger screen and it being about € 150 cheaper it is very good purchase.   

Back in the routine

After being home not even a week after my vacation in Mexico, things are back to normal.

This means, of course, that I went to buy myself a new bottle of whisky yesterday. I didn't really have a clue what I wanted until wednesday evening, when the new Auchentoshan 18 was added to the whiskykoning's collection.

For some reason I liked this bottle. I have hardly any experience with Auchentoshan, only the 10 years old but that one got more fascinating as the bottle got more empty. Not because I got drunk, since the bottle is not empty after almost a year.

I never had an old Auchentoshan, the shop owner couldn't tell me anything about it, I didn't read reviews and it was quite expensive, but I still found it a fascinating bottle.

So I bought it and tasted it. The whisky is nothing too exclusive. It is a very smooth Lowlands whisky, which I expected. The sherry finish is exceptionally well done, so the taste of the added sweetness is good. It is cask strength, so there sure is a finish, but it is a very long and very good one. Nice and lingering.

When all is said and done, I am happy with my purchase. This is a good whisky, nothing too fancy, but after the sickly sweet violence of The Macallan 10 CS, this was exactly what I wanted!

More Mexico

The day after we went to Uxmal was a day of travelling from Mérida to Campeche.
Campeche is a city some 150 kilometers south from Mérida and on Unesco's World Heritage list. The city has a very colonial look and it has an eventful history of Maya kings killing Spaniards, Spaniards killing Maya, pirates killing everybody and so on. We stayed for 3 nights, 2 days.

On the first day we just walked around the town visiting some museums and restaurants.

The second day we did a day trip to Calakmul. Calakmul was one of the major Maya centers of power, and the city is incredibly large. Only about 20% has been uncovered, and from that only half is open for public. We couldn't see everything in 4 hours. There are two high pyramids, both around 50 meters high. From the top you can see the canopy of the surrounding World Heritage jungle and some other Maya temples and palaces popping up.
We saw monkies in the wild, and many bird species. We hoped to see a jaguar, but we didn't get further than hearing one.

After Calakmul we had planned to have one more day of travelling and then some relaxing on a beach. We thought that the Carribean would do and we went to Tulum to find out.

Our hotel was a long stretch of beach with Cabañas on it. Wooden huts with palm roofs. Quite expensive, as is everything on the Carribean coast. We spent just as much money in the last four days of our holiday as in the other 10 days. But it was quite worth it to just be able to sit back, relax and see the ocean.

The beach was white, the ocean bright blue. I felt like being in some photoshopped ad for a resort, but without the thousands of tourists.