Woke up this morning and the world was white...and to my surprise, it's still white this evening. Of course, it means all public transport has ground to a halt. It never ceases to amaze me how badly equipped we Dutch are at dealing with adverse weather conditions. Honestly, one snowflake is enough to plunge our roads and railways into chaos.

Getting home yesterday was murder. I don't think it was the weather although it was bitterly cold so it might have been, but there were delays and cancellations and getting from Schiphol to The Hague took me as much time as it took me to travel from England to The Netherlands in the first place. This didn't help improve my mood. I was fuming. Despite my having arrived at Luton airport the recommended 2 hours before my flight's scheduled departure time, the plane almost left without me. All because of the incompetence of easyJet's ground staff who, even with 10 check-in desks open, still couldn't process the crowds quickly enough (here's a thought: why don't they install the kind of do it yourself check-in machines you see at other airports? Or dedicate seperate desks to travellers without any luggage?) and as for the security checks...do you know they no longer provide passengers with clear plastic bags they insist you drop your liquids in? Nooooooooo - they sell them to you now, at the inflated price of £1! And, they confiscate any container with a content over 100 ml. So they took my newly purchased conditioning solution for my contacts, and then oh so helpfully suggested I purchase another exactly the same from the Boots in the departure lounge! Now how does that help combat terrorism? Unfortunately, by then I was so pissed off I may have muttered something under my breath, and got detained by a few jumped-up little toads spluttering with indignation at my lack of respect for them and their stupid rules, as they set themselves the task of examining every item in my hold-all. They didn't like the look of my housekeys, but they couldn't very well impound them, so they fixed on the converter I'd brought because continental plugs won't plug into UK power points without one. It has, of necessity, 3 metal prongs and I suppose you could, at a pinch, make it connect painfully with someone's (preferably an airport security guard's) face...but in the end they let me have that back, too. Luckily, they never discovered my metal nail file in its secret compartment...I'm sure I'd have been in real trouble if they had! They were wheeling the stairs away from the plane when they finally allowed me to proceed to the gate, and I was the last passenger boarding.

I came home to a cold flat, to find that the batteries on the remote had gone flat. I'll have to remember to get some new ones this weekend.

Once upon a long ago, bogwitch got us tickets to see Depeche Mode at the O2 Arena, and she did very well: she got us seats not too high up and virtually side on from the stage, which if you can't have first row centre is pretty much the next best thing in my opinion. A pity perhaps that we didn't have a completely clear view as some of the lighting rigging got in the way, but since there was this walkway projecting out from the stage that both Dave and Martin made extensive use of, this didn't bother me much.

The support act -don't ask me, I never caught their name- fancied themselves quite a bit but failed to ignite the audience; but then, I guess it wasn't their sort of crowd. They were a bit shoegazey I suppose, with all very samey sounding guitar-driven songs, a singer who posed like Jarvis Cocker and had a voice not unlike Ian McCullough, and a guitarist (there were actually two) who sounded quite a bit like The Edge.

I can't say other than that Depeche Mode were fantastic. Their show, their sound, it's just wonderful. They performed exactly the right mix of old and new, i.e. more old than new, material; in all, I think they did about 4 or 5 new songs, and all the rest was just an anthology of their by now enormous back catalogue. Many of my favourites were played, too many to remember them all. I remember Martin's set comprising Insight and Home, and for the encores he did One Caress; and I heard - in no particular order this:- Enjoy The Silence, Walking In My Shoes, Behind The Wheel, Stripped, Never Let Me Down, I Just Can't Get Enough (actually...no, not that one), The Policy Of Truth, A Question Of Time, It's No Good, Precious, Personal Jesus, and many, many more.

Getting back on the tube was a bit of an ordeal. In the press of bodies on the centrebound carriage I heard somebody complain they hadn't done Get The Balance Right. They had got the balance right as far as I was concerned.

I'm off to London in a minute...well, 45 to be exact. Right now I'm at Schiphol, my favourite airport in the world, mainly because it's so well-organised. The amenities may be sparse, but at least they're very well signposted.

I haven't made any hard and fast plans, but then I'm only staying on till day after tomorrow. I may take in a show or a play tonight (Damien Lewis, Keira Knightley and Tara Fitzgerald star at the Comedy Theatre), or I may just stay in and read a book. Tomorrow though, is the big event: Depeche Mode at the O2! I'm meeting bogwitch for that, and to say I'm looking forward to it, is an understatement.

It's not been a good year for gigs for me, this 2009 that's drawing to a close. With me having started on a new job in the closing weeks of the previous year, for the first six months of it I didn't have many holidays accrued; and then of course, the boys didn't make it over here, and David...well, his dates were posted too late in the day for me to arrange for time off. Hopefully next year will offer me more and better opportunities.

Anyway, I'd better go and get the security check over and done with. See yous!

We picked our father's final resting place this morning, my sister and I. He will be interred in the 'urn garden' of the Nieuw Eykenduynen cemetery in The Hague sometime next month, the exact date to be decided still as we've agreed to wait until the headstone of polished green granite that we also picked out and ordered this morning, is ready. That way we can inter him and place the stone at the same time. So it will probably be some 6 to 7 weeks from now.

We've bagged him a lovely spot, next to a bamboo grove and with an impressive water feature close by...and, as we were being informed that the spot we'd picked actually held enough room for 2 urns, I quickly decided that I would quite like for my urn to be buried there as well when my time comes. My sister readily concurred, as she prefers to be buried in the family plot, which happens to be in the same cemetery and currently holds the remains of our maternal grandmother, one of her sisters, and one of our aunts. I didn't know my sister preferred burial to cremation, but since that's the choice she's made, it means she was quite happy to let me have that leftover space if -God forbid- I should die within the next 5 years, which is the time we've purchased the plot for. And who knows, we may just extend the contract after that.

I'm green with envy. My sister's got a new boyfriend, and he's only taken her to see Placebo tonight...Up until a few weeks ago, she'd never even heard of them! Now she's texting me from the venue to say she's having a grand old time.

Serves me right for not having paid much attention to the listings lately. By the time I learnt of their gig, it had sold out. Oh well.

Less than a fortnight to go before Depeche Mode. It made the new boyfriend prick up his ears when I mentioned it the other day, so there's some small satisfaction in that, I suppose.

I spent the entire weekend trying to sort out my Internet access. Despite my best efforts, ranging from taking the computer apart and rebuilding it to completely reinstalling Windows from scratch, I failed miserably. Now my only option is to wait for my inheritance and the January sales, and get myself that laptop I've been thinking about

I can't tell you how much I'm missing you all. I have been given Internet access at work, but it's approved sites only; and neither LiveJournal nor Facebook qualify.

My sister and I are having to decide on what to do with Dad's ashes. There's quite a number of options to choose from, ranging from the traditional (internment in either a grave or a wall), to the sublime (sending him up 20 kilometres in the sky in a balloon), the morbid (taking the urn home to sit on the mantlepiece) and the ridiculous (having jewelry fashioned out of him). The undertaker didn't even flinch when we asked if we couldn't use the ashes in a tattoo!

I know Dad wanted for his ashes to be scattered. He didn't stipulate whether this should happen on land or at sea, but since he had no particular attachment to or connection with the latter, personally I'd favour a scattering on land. My sister however, and to my surprise, is vehemently opposed to this. She says she's not ready to say goodbye to him forever, and wants to have him interred so she can visit him often and lay flowers...The surprise in this is that she hardly ever bothered to visit him when he was alive...

But, I've agreed to hold off the scattering for a few years. I don't think Dad would have really minded either way, and if it makes my sister feel better, then why not?

I've been dealing with and trying to settle my father's affairs since he died a little over two weeks ago. This has meant letters and phone calls to insurance companies, the IR and pension funds, and visits to the town hall and the bank. It'll take a few months before I'm done, apparently, and will probably involve the services of a notary public at some later stage as well. The laws of inheritance, although pretty straightforward in themselves, seem to require them.

Anyway, I've decided to take my mind off the whole gloomy business and focus on a fun future event today: seeing Depeche Mode live in the O2 in December! To that end, I've now booked my flights and a twin room in the Covent Garden Travelodge, and I'm very much looking forward to spending a few days in London and hopefully meeting up with some of yous there and then!

Bone-weary. Slept fitfully last night. All the events of the day kept going through my mind, and the knowledge that my father's gone kept sleep at bay. Got up in the middle of the night and made myself a cocoa. Watched a bit of nighttime TV, which is even worse than daytime TV.

I picked my flowers up from the florist's; they'd done a terrific job on the piece using many of Dad's favourites, chrysanthemums and dahlias in autumnal shades, with a few deep red whatchumacallits and orange somethingorothers, a really masculine bouquet that I was very pleased with. The more so as it turned out the floral arrangements we'd ordered through the undertaker's never materialised, but of course I didn't know it then and we never even noticed until after the service, so many people had sent their own flowers.

More people showed up to the cremation ceremony than I'd dared to expect, including some colleagues from both me and my sister's work, which was really wonderful. We've both been getting lots of support from our respective employers and co-workers with e-mails, phone calls and text messages, and we've both been given special leave for the week.

I delivered the eulogy and my niece read a poem, then my sister added a few words of her own. Then we both got up and thanked everyone for coming, we had a minute's silence, and then the casket, that she and I had closed together, slowly moved backwards into whatever space is there at crematoria where the dead are prepared for their final journey.

We had a short reception in one of the adjoining rooms, with tea and coffee and Indonesian finger food, where people could mingle and offer us their condolences. Then afterwards, we took 20 of our family and friends out to dinner to a Korean restaurant, in memory of our father who had been a Korean war veteran *). We had a very pleasant evening with good food, a lot of laughter and some tears, and everybody was agreed we'd given our Dad the most splendid send-off and he would have been so proud of us.

*) The first thing I did, the morning after Dad's death, was contact the Dutch Korean War Veterans Association, to ask if they would send a delegation to form an honour guard as I'd seen them do on previous occasions, when others of Dad's former comrades had died. The secretary said he'd do his best, but as those who are left are mostly in their eighties and struggling with various degrees of ill health, couldn't guarantee he'd be able to gather the necessary quorum. In the end, only one vet made it, but he was someone whom my Dad had known and he was most welcome. My sister and I commemorated our father's time in Korea in our speeches, because it was such an important event in his life; it shaped the man he became and so touched on our lives as well. Therefore, our music choices for the service were as follows:

- Suicide Is Painless from the M*A*S*H* soundtrack, our Dad's favourite TV show;
- Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits;
- Peace In The Valley by Elvis, which always made Dad teary-eyed whenever he heard it; and
-Old Soldiers Never Die by Gene Autry, which was the veteran's anthem as far as he and his comrades were concerned; it was played at all their funerals

My sister and I met at the funeral parlour to make the arrangements for our dad's cremation yesterday morning. So much to think about! Thank heavens we were of one mind as to how we wanted the service to progress. It didn't take us long to agree on the lay-out and text for the invitation to be sent out, the floral arrangements for the service to be picked, the date, time and place for the ceremony to take place to be agreed, the food and drink to be served there. In this, we were helped by Dad's foresight in having taken out an insurance policy years ago that covered all the basics and some of the extras, giving us a clear idea of how he would have liked things to be done. It also helped with the finances; when the final tally came in, we were surprised to find it hardly made a dent in the sum we'd set aside in our minds (not that we had discussed this at all beforehand). So, for his final and proper send -off, we came up with the idea to host a dinner in a Korean restaurant for all mourners after the cremation ceremony, which is going to take place late afternoon this coming Tuesday (it had to be a Korean restaurant, as the time Dad spent in Korea fighting the communists had been the determining factor for the entire rest of his life, and he ever afterwards thought of himself as a soldier first and foremost, even if he left the army shortly after returning from the war in the final days of 1953). We're meeting with the chef and proprietor later this afternoon to discuss numbers and menu.

Then we spent a few hours writing out the invitations, and calling and taking calls from people shocked at the news of our father's sudden demise. Because it had been quick, and unexpected. He hadn't been ill. He was woken up day before yesterday same as usual, washed and clothed, and then before he went in for breakfast complained a slight tummy ache. The doctor on constant call in the home had a look at him and deciding that he was just a bit constipated, was in the middle of prescribing him something to ease his stool, when Dad made one final jovial remark...and slumped back on the bed. The doctor said he'd never seen anything like it: one minute, his patient was trading jokes with him, the next, gone into the next world.

I'm glad it happened like this, both for his sake as for mine - it means there's nothing I could have done, even if I had gotten the news immediately. Because I'd allowed my niece to change my ringtone, I didn't realise it had been my phone ringing in my purse all day, and therefore only noticed I'd missed 8 calls when I took it out in the evening...

Before we left the funeral parlour, my sister insisted I see my father. Up until that moment, I hadn't shed a tear (or maybe just one). But she was right, seeing him opened the floodgates, and we stood there, clutching at each other bawling our eyes out. Then she left me alone with him to say a final farewell, and that was hard. Strangely, he looked better than I'd seen him in weeks, very peaceful and still. But he was so cold, my fingers froze when I touched his cheek the way I'd always done to wake him up whenever I found him asleep, and it was then that I realised, he really was gone. When I got home a few hours later, I was so blinded with tears I stumbled and fell on the stairs. I put my left hand out to break my fall, and I think I must have sprained my wrist, because this morning it's swollen and hurts like a mother. If it's not better in a day or two, I'll have my GP have a look at it.

When the home couldn't get in touch with me, they called my mother, who after having given up on trying to reach me, notified my sister. She came down and arranged for him to be taken away, because the house rules stipulate that a dead body has to be removed from the premises immediately. Likewise, his few belongings will have to be removed within 3 days of the death occuring as well, so I'm going down there after posting this, or they'll be destroyed. We don't know if there's anything we want to keep, but we don't like the idea of his stuff ending up in the skip so soon after his death. After that, it's off to the florist's to order a wreath, and to the photographer's to have our favourite picture of him enlarged to poster size, to set up in the crematorium for use in the service. Then all we need to do is make the final arrangements for the valedictory dinner, and for each of us to write our speeches. The wake, or viewing of the body, has been arranged for Monday evening.

my father passed away this morning at 9:15

Earlier in the summer, CAD (i.e. the company I work for) decided to update our internal telephone directory, and to that end we were all sent off to the photographer's, to have our pictures taken in an artsy way. Here are two of them, the two I'm least embarrassed to show you (I thought Trinny and Susannah always maintained that stripes worn lengthwise had a slimming effect?)

( cut for modesty )

(oh, and BTW, I'm at work, not in Oxon...wish I were though, and it's only my second day back on the job!)

This morning, while I was trawling through the shops of a very, very rainy Amsterdam, I found Series Two of Life on Mars on dvd, or thought I did. It wasn't until I got home that I noticed they were the wrong region...I wouldn't have thought there'd be much call for Australian dvd-s over here, but it seems I'd be surprised.

About a month ago, I signed up for German conversation classes on a whim, and I took my first introductory lesson last Monday. I was a bit tongue-tied though, even if I'd just been to Germany...but I suppose I muddled through my first hour and a half sufficiently well enough for my teacher, a woman hailing from the German-speaking part of Luxemburg, to decide I'm going to be first up for the Vortrag next time, a 20 minute monologue on something in the news, or anything else I might wish to discuss. I wish I could think of something! Still, I've got 4 more days to come up with any ideas...should be a doddle ;-).

No joy in sorting out my Internet woes yet. I think the problem's in my modem now...or one of the problems is. I really should ask someone who knows about these things.

I know it's been far too long since I've updated, and I'm ashamed to say it's been equally long since I've checked in to see how any of my friends here have been doing. When my Internet failed at home, I thought I'd soon remedy the situation by throwing money at it...and it was then that I found out my financial situation was a lot less rosey than I had previously assumed. Bills kept coming in and in the end, the money I'd set aside for the purchase of a laptop had to be used on maintenance charges on the flat instead. It turned out the painters had miscalculated their original quote at the beginning of the year, and us flat owners each had to cough up an extra bit of cash or they would walk off the job. Unfortunately this means that two months on, I'm still without a connection. I'm typing this entry up on my phone, but it's far from ideal.

Anyhow, I got back from a short stay in Berlin two days ago, and I felt like jotting down a few words on the subject. It was my third visit to the city in recent years, and I feel like I'm getting to know it pretty well. This is in part due to my travelling companion M., who never leaves home without an itinerary worked out to the last detail. To my mind, this can be both a blessing and a curse: it's good to have some sort of plan of what to see and how to get to what you want to go and see, but...I don't like to be ruled by plans. As far as I'm concerned, they should be more like guidelines, to be deviated from if and when circumstances (and my mood) change. M., unfortunately, doesn't agree; and so, after four or five days, I could barely bring myself to be civil to him. I remember rebelling on the fourth day, saying I didn't care what programme he had planned for the day, I was gonna go shopping...and then getting really stroppy when his response was that if I really really wanted to, perhaps I could, if we timed it right, and if he could tweak our itinerary just so, possibly maybe have half an hour in KaDeWe at the end of the day. He's suggested I take him to see New York next time, but if he thinks I'm taking him across the pond, he's got another think coming. It's bad enough being miserable on my own continent, thank you very much; I don't need the same hassle on another.

Other than that, we got along fine (well, we have been friends for like 15 years or something), and I did get to see some interesting parts of the city where I hadn't been before, like Tempelhof, the old airport that closed last year. They're doing guided tours round it now, and our guide, an old man who had spent all his working days there, took us to see all the nooks and crannies. The stories he told were amazing, full of personal detail and very informative.

We also, on this occasion, paid a visit to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. I wasn't sure I wanted to go at first, but I'm glad I did. No matter how much you think you know about Nazi atrocities, no history lesson can ever quite make you imagine what it must have been like than to see the desolate place where some of these took place. Also, I was surprised to learn that after the war, the Soviets took over the camp and ran it as a facility for their undesirables for a number of years, and people continued to live and die there under appalling conditions. All this, of course, was swept under the carpet during the period of the GDR.

Speaking of which, I really enjoyed going round the tiny DDR museum (which hadn't been included in M.'s itinerary initially, but I threw another hissy fit)...the mind boggles how people could put up with a regime that couldn't even provide them with a decent cup of coffee and forced them to wear nothing but man-made fibres for forty years before they lost patience and tore down the Wall...And then there was a very interesting exhibition on the Bauhaus in the Martin-Gropius-Bau that we saw.

But the brilliant thing about Berlin, to me, is the vibrancy of the place. Even when it's grey and wet like it was last week, the place feels alive, and welcoming. The people are nice and friendly, and the food they serve is tasty and wholesome and (compared to Dutch prices), cheap. Yeah, I like Berlin; but next visit, I'm going on my own.

So I tried to get on here yesterday, and let you all know how much I was enjoying the fine weather the gods had deigned to gift me on my birthday, but alas! I kept encountering an Internal Server Error after hitting the Post-button. This morning I read in the paper that Facebook and Twitter were off-line all day yesterday too, so perhaps there's a link.

Anyhoo - just a quick note to say I'm still having problems getting on-line, and no idea when I'll be able to post regularly again. I've received several pokes through Facebook, but so far haven't been successful in logging onto the site -- but it does feel good to be missed!

Of course I’m well aware that my Internet problems could be over at a stroke if I would just fork out for a new laptop, but unfortunately it seems as if the last couple of weeks I receive nothing but hefty bills in the post, and so that plan has been put on the backburner.

But at least Common Rotation vs. The Dust Bowl Cavaliers arrived with perfect timing, a lovely present for my 47th!

and much reduced: I can't get on the Internet because Windows appears to have crashed on my pc, or my pc might have developed an aversion to Windows, and who could blame it? Anyway, I'm well, no major changes, except that I've been promoted to 'senior' which means more responsibility and more hours, but as yet, no more pay. Now, let's see if I can post this from my phone without losing it in cyberspace a third time. Missing you all, hope you're all fine!

( my new boots, let me show you them )

And that, in a nutshell, is what I've been doing these past few weeks when I've not been on here: I've been indulging myself, mostly in an effort to forget what a crappy PC my computer has become (honestly, I'm amazed it's actually working today). I've been toying with the idea of getting a laptop to replace it, but every time I've gone into town, I've come home with another pair of shoes...What can I say? I know where I am with footwear, and I don't know what I should look for in computers. Should I stay with a Windows platform, or go for a Mac?

It's the last day of my summer hols, and weather-wise, it looks to be a good one. Unfortunately, now that the sun has finally started to peek through the clouds, I still won't be able to take much notice nor indeed advantage of it, as I'll be running around doing all sorts of errands.

First off, I have a meeting with the house doctor, a representative of the nursing home's management, and the head of the nursing staff to discuss my father's care and how he's been faring since arriving at the home three weeks ago. Then it's off to the police station to file a report, as it has transpired that Dad has lost his identity card/passport, probably in the move from the care home where he was first located to the last. I went to get a replacement at the town hall, but was told a police report would be required before they could process the application. When I rang the police I was told Dad would have to come to the station in person, and bring identification. When I explained that my father no longer had any identification other than a driver's licence that had expired in 1975, and that moreover he was physically and mentally unfit to go anywhere, they relented and told me that as long as I could bring a signed proxy, they would allow me to come down and file the report on his behalf. I just hope they won't have changed their minds in the intervening days, as I do realise that the compromise we arrived at is highly unusual and probably not even legal.

I'll be meeting my sister and nephew at the train station later, so as to be there at the other end of the country for our uncle's cremation ceremony tomorrow morning. Ronnie's funeral is set for Saturday as well, but as we were already committed to attending our uncle's send-off, all we could do was arrange for a wreath to be sent to his. So before we leave The Hague, I'll also have to find time to pop into the florist's and make sure our floral tribute is delivered on time and as specified.

One bit of good news before I go: my geyser finally got repaired yesterday, apparently not a moment too soon -- the repair man/plumber/gasfitter when he checked it over concluded that it had been a health hazard for some time in that it had been emitting dangerous levels of carbon monoxide gas, so he fixed it and installed an alarm at no extra charge. I don't know if it's the reassuring presence of that white box in the hallway, or the fact that there's no more carbon monoxide wafting through the flat, but I did wake up far more alert than usual this morning.

'Only in America' is what we used to say of gun crime and assassination plots. But things are getting just as crazy over here.

My sister texted me with the news that a mutual friend of ours, someone we grew up with and someone she has worked with in her professional life for the past couple of years, was shot through the head and killed while on his way into work this morning. It happened on a zebra crossing near the office building where they both work. The perpetrator has been caught and in a statement to police has indicated it was a crime of passion; Ronnie had just started going out with this man's ex-girlfriend.

I'm amazed at how upset I am by this news; I'm shaking and everything. It's the shock, the pointlessness of his killing. In my life, I've lost friends, people I've been close to, through accidents and illnesses, but none have ever been murdered before. And even though I hadn't spoken to Ronnie in years, I still thought of him occasionally, and asked my sister for news of him every once in a while, or for her to remember me to him next time they had occasion to meet...and now this. It's incomprehensible, and such a terrible, terrible shock.