Well.... I am very, very surprised that the US has elected a black man, because the US is still a country up to its neck in apartheid/segregation and racism. I still fear for his life though. There are still forces that will not accept a black man in the WHITE HOUSE! And that's a reality.
But I do hope Obama's message of UNITY will embed in not only the US society, but all over the world.
It's time for fundamental changes, and for real harmony and peace, between ALL people of our world. I think that all people, everywhere, want to live in peace. And I think there is enough abundance in our world for all people to live a decent life without struggle and hunger. There is no need for poverty. All people are entitled to have good education and good health-care, It is - my humble opinion - perverse that a minority of 3% of the world owns 95% or even more.

I don't consider myself Surinamese or Dutch, I see myself as a world citizin. Maybe because of my heritage. I have all the main races in me, and more! ;-)
From my father's side, it's rather clear, his dad is 100% Chinese, his mother was an unmixed negro woman. And I know lots of people will object to the word negro, I don't mind. It's just a word, I don't consider it to be a bad word.

From my mother's side it's a mix of negro+whites. One branch of her forefathers were jews, who had to leave Portugal around 1690, because of the Inquisition. Her granddad is from Belgium. He left his monastry the night before he would become a priest, went to Holland, joined the army and was sent to Surinam. Other ancestors of my moms are Amerindians.
So, I have many many bloods flowing through me, which make it easier maybe to relate to most people. If somebody is a bastard, I just say THAT specific person is a bastard, not his whole race.

May all the people of our world join together and look for similarities in each other instead of differences.

May all beings be HAPPY and live in PEACE with one another!

Last Monday I came back from a 3 day retreat at the Phat Hue Pagoda in Frankfurt Germany with the Ven Ajahn Brahm. I bumped into Ajahn Brahm last year May, after I had finished my 1st 10 day Vipassana retreat in Belgium. I GOOGLED for buddhism and one of the first sites that was on the "hit list" was The Buddhist Society of Western Australia.

A great place where I spent hours and hours, listening to dhamma talks. I still listen a couple of times a week to the dhamma talks of the BSWA. I'm stuck at that place.
The way Ajahn teaches is extraordinary. Lots of fun and laughter is always helpful to understand subjects quite well.

WEBSITEBUILDING eT "MOI"

It's high time I start changing my pages. These pages have been made in Dreamweaver and are table-based. The new way of website-making is however based on tableless-"design".
Personally I don't like the word "design" so much. I find it kinda pretentious, and the word has been shamelessly misused (my humble opinion).
People who are just starting off with a handful of html codes, already come up with a company name with "design" in it. If I check their pages in the W3C validator, the number of errors is shockingly high.

Then again: NOT all of MY pages have yet been validated and surely are NOT yet error-free, so I should NOT be complaining about others so much.
Very unkind of me, I guess to be so critical and judgmental. I apologize.

Because the bottom-line really is about finding so much joy in wrestling and dancing with css & xhtml coding and feeling so damn pleased when the job is done!
We all should feel free in being involved in this fascinating hobby, whether we call it "design" or not.

So...
Hopefully I'll find some time soon to change these table-based-pages into table-less layouts.
Maybe even change the look of this playground of mine again!
Hello Photoshop, here I come....

Then there is also my Joomla project to make my own templates, because I don't want to stay stuck in using the templates of others. There are millions of beautiful templates out there, mind you, but still... it's always much more pleasing to make your own template, and not being dependent on the creative ideas of others.

Being busy with making websites, is about learning on a daily basis, it's like a never-ending exploration of countless possibilities how to "skin a cat". Ouch, that POOR POOR cat!

Yesterday I got back from my 2nd Vipassana 10 day silence retreat. Still not easy, but absolutely worthwhile for everyone to do. If the method is being practised the way it's been taught, life can't but change and definitely become more peacefully and harmoniously.
We are the masters of our own universe.

First paid website-building job. Naizzz...

To the right a link to the website I built for my footreflexology therapist Annelies Offenberg www.anneliesoffenberg.com.
Annelies is also specialized in orthomolecular therapy, flower remedy, and more!

Do yourself a big favor, fly over to her website and make an appointment. Very worthwhile. I highly reccommend her.

I've tried Joomla in the past. Not too fond of it. I call it brainless website making (...). So... uh... template based... Getting stuck within a framework, what's the joy of that?
Another version had been released late summer 2007. Only now I decided to give it a try.
It has some advantages indeed, but I like building sites wrestling with HTML and CSS too much I guess...
So, what I will be doing in the future, is trying to learn and make

my own template-based-layouts. That should be real fun! Click on the Joomla logo and fly to my Joomla template based exercise page. The person who designed this template has great taste indeed.

Another wonderful holiday with my sister & bro' in law. Up north, Oostmahorn, Friesland in a beautiful house on poles in the Lauwersmeer (a lake, which once was a sea). The weather was incredibly wet and windy, which made the waters look even more beautiful. The neverending interaction between the wind, the water, the rain and the sun, makes this place one of my ultimate favorites. I wouldn't mind living here forever.
This is also rainbow country. Never seen so many, and double ones as well. Place of magic.

Been to Surinam in March: 3 weeks.
A wonderful present from my sister Andrea and her husband Henk,
(picture right - click on the pic for a larger image). I had my doubts going on holidays (long flight was one...). It was marvellous and I enjoyed it tremendously. The 5-day-riverboat trip with the MiGudu (meaning: my sweetheart),

In the meantime another project has seen the light of day.
My Berkeley friend ~alan, who had been writing about the history of Berkeley, called me in december 2007 and asked if I'd like to build a site for him. I dived into it. Good way to keep me and my brains healthy, and not losing my sanity...To see this web-kid of mine, click the picture on the right.