Merry Xmas!

Christmas tower in Ijsselstein

Aikido in Norway.. and more!

Tonight a new Aikido semester is starting, the kind of traveling about every weekend for seminars, my kind of semester!

This weekend I will be in Stavanger for Bachraty sensei, 5.dan, missing unfortunately the fjord part of the semianr that has now become a very good tradition; next weekend it will be Oslo with Kuribayashi sensei, 7.dan, back after a quite successful seminar last year.

About the unrelated not Norwegian part (“..and more”), apparently there is a new Aikido club in the little town where I work, Ijsselstein: Aikido Groene Hart, that has very conveniently a session on Tuesday nights, when I got no class at Aikido Amsterdam. The club is just starting up and I will visit it soon. It might be an extra class, only good for my mind and condition!

 

My Dutch eclipse

At the official time we enjoyed this:

Then a few moments ago I could have a replay:

Always exciting the works of Mother Nature !!! 😉

Windy windy windy morning!!

The first thought was that the strong wind blowing since last night would move away the rainy weather of yesterday.

But then a look at the morning sky had been dampening the hopes: even darker clouds seem to move in!!!

Sky, light, fumes and traffic

What a sky today, a great mix of events, both natural and man-made, beautiful and scaring, good feelings for 2015 and extremely bad ones for a terrible start of the year…

AS if the burning morning sky was not enough, a real fire started in a company not far from mine, and the fumes rose high..

..and few minutes after, we looked to the other corner of the sky noticing such a high traffic:

新年快乐!!!!

In other words Happy New Year folks, first to my Asian friends, 7-8 hours in front of us.. them Europe then American friends getting late to 2015 but still getting there…

Anyway, Chinese is the language for new year fireworks, even if western new year is not so special in China. But even in Ijsselstein a local shop advertise today as best day for fireworks in Chinese:

Not sure though how many can understand the Chinese, besides my Chinese colleague 🙂

Where is everybody??

31st December on the way to work: the driver and me on the bus after 4 stops!!! Amazing!!!! 😂😱👻🎉

Desolation!!!