We’re off for New York early in the morning so this is our last missive until some future time.

And the last batch of pictures too.

See ya!

Sunday evening, we just walked around some more and took a few more pictures (see this page). After that we had a late dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (it really is as good as they say it is here).

On Monday, I had the conference and Ann went to spend the day with my mother’s cousin’s wife (or, my first cousin, once removed’s wife) Jeltje. They went to market and then Ann hung out with them and various other cousins. Tonight (Tuesday, as I write this) we are having dinner there (home cooked Indonesian, I’m told) so it’s going to be a very fun evening. We took no pictures yesterday as it rained like mad all day long and any time spent outside was spent running like crazy from place to place.

At the end of the day, Ann met me at the conference and crashed the reception they held. I ate actual raw herring. And I liked it. So much so that i kept going back for more. Afterwards, we took a tram back to Janina’s hotel (Janina is with the American Foundation for the Blind and my co-presenter tomorrow). Once we saw her hotel, we knew we could not go back to our squallid hole in the wall so we booked a room for ourselves, went back to our hotel, told them we had to check out immediately due to a family emergency and moved to our new hotel. Ahhh… much better now.

And that’s about it. I’m on lunch break from the conference back at my usual hangout, In de Waag, a cafe in an old castle which has a free wireless network I can use.

There will certainly be more pictures tomorrow.

We’re here! The trip getting here was a bit grueling. We were supposed to leave home at 2PM on Thursday to get to my sister Jen’s in the Woodstock, NY area by 9PM or so. Instead, we left DC at 9PM and stopped for some sleep at my sister Ann’s at 2:30AM. At 8AM we continued to Jen’s, dropped Jack off (something that was much harder for us than him) and then raced back down to Ann’s. She drove us to JFK through some thick traffic which made us nervous. But, in the end, we got to our flight in plenty of time. The flight itself was very turbulent but was otherwise nice. We saw Northern lights from the plane!

We landed and got to our hotel and had them hold our bags since we can’t actually check in for some time. We called my cousin once removed (Mom’s cousin) Vim and have spent the last few hours getting the grand tour.

I managed to find a free/open wireless drop so here I am posting and uploading pictures.

The first set of pictures

More to follow!

(Oh, if you are trying to reach me, my cell phone ain’t working. Until we figure out what’s what, email is your best bet)

We’re nearly ready to go. A few things to buy, many things to pack, and then we’re off. Jack will be staying with my sister for six days which should be interesting. We really don’t know how he is going to handle both of us being away. Hopefully, my sister Jen will keep him busy enough he doesn’t notice. We’ll see.

We fly out of JFK on Friday night, arrive in Amsterdam Saturday morning. We’re staying at AMS Hotel Holland which is only a 2 star hotel. Here’s hoping that it’s not bad…

The conference I’m attending is for Daisy, an XML-based standard for making audio-books navigable rather than linear. It’s a bit rarified but we’re doing some work for the American Foundation for the Blind and I’m sharing the podium with someone from AFB next Wednesday showing off a demo we are putting together for them.

The conference is being held at ARTIS, on the grounds of the Zoo. It’s waaaay across town from the hotel but I did that on purpose. I love the idea of renting a bike for the week and riding along the canal to get to the conference. If the weather sucks, I’ll take the tram. Ann, meanwhile, will have lots and lots of time to wander around and see the sights. She’s all excited about an exhibit at the Van Gogh museum, just three blocks from the hotel.

I plan on blogging the trip so long as I can find a convenient way to get online. I decided not to opt for dial-in but instead hope to find either a cybercafe where I can use one of their computers or a cafe which provides wireless access so I can use my laptop. I’m still researching the latter option.

Anyway, we’re pretty excited to be going, even if it is a working vacation.

Chris writes about his upcoming travels:

One thing I’m going to try to do is visit some of the Aztec sites around Mexico city. I’d love to see the circular stone calendar if I can.

Dude: you are totally over-thinking the problem. There are much simpler calendars much closer at hand.

I’m traveling too. I’m off to Amsterdam at the end of the week. The jury is out on whether or not I will be blogging the trip. It all has to do with whether or not I have access to wifi and whether or not I have a digital camera with me. We shall see…