Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

Unlike my luggage, I am back in town. I feel like I have a huge hangover! As usual jetlag has hit me bad. I flew back on Friday the 14th and it was a rough ride. To get on the plane that is; the flight itself was pretty enjoyable. No it was the mess before I got on the plane!

I was supposed to leave Tallahassee airport at 13:40 to get to Atlanta and leave there at 17:40 for Schiphol. I arrived at 11:50, said goodbye to Carrie and checked in at 12:00.

After I checked in and boarded the plane they announced that they had a weight problem. That's right: "a weight problem". Delta obviously did not do their calculations right and the plane exceeded the allowed weight for landing. So the pilot then gave the passengers the following option: if there where 3 volunteers that would get of the plane they would get 200 "Delta bucks" and upgraded to first class for their next flight. It was that or they would start to pick "volunteers" to stay behind. It took over 25 minutes before that worked out; very annoying! Continue reading "Left luggage" »

So I am back again from my short vacation to my girlfriend. I had a totally relaxing time there; I managed to think about work only a few times (mostly when I scanned my e-mail) and I totally enjoyed the Florida weather (25-32 degrees, cloudy but nice) and my girlfriends company. Also, for the first time in 10 years I can say I had a totally relaxed flight in and out. I flew with KLM - Air France to Atlanta this time, because I could get a good deal (Miles & Money, it's a Dutch loyalty program). KLM now uses the new Airbus A330-200 airplanes and I must say; they rock! In every seat (not only business class) there is a personal audio/video system with a remote control on the armrest of your chair. You can totally decide what movie/music you want to see/hear so you are no longer limited to the in-flight menu (eat that Delta!). The A330-200 has a total of 251 seats and is quite fast; during my flight back we cruised at about 898 km/h so the flight back took about 8hrs.

Flying from Atlanta to Tallahassee was a bit eerie; because Georgia and Florida has had a dry spell for more than a month (just like we had in Holland in March) some big forest fires had developed. Even though the fire itself was more than 150 miles away in Georgia, Tallahassee was covered in a thick cloud. You could smell something burning throughout the whole city. The first 2 days I was there it was like the city was covered in mist. Except this was no natural mist. Lucky for me it cleared up pretty soon.

Saturday night we had a lovely dinner at Outback but I ate way to much and suffered from it the next day; Sunday I felt bloated and sick all day, but nothing that a bit of Pepto-Bismol couldn't fix :-) We mostly relaxed and hung out at the pool, played with Phoebe (Carrie's new Chihuahua doggie) and shopped a bit. In always love to shop in the US; their malls are bigger and have much more interesting stuff.

I bought some new pants (Dockers), underwear, a small leather wallet by Tommy Hilfiger (Since American dollars are smaller than Euro's I always walk around with a big wallet so I decided to buy an American wallet just for my vacations), a nice Gerber Ridge pocketknife and some more small stuff (sunglasses etc..). Driving around in my girlfriends car was easy too since I have my new HTC P3300 smartphone with build-in GPS. Using TomTom it was a breeze finding my way. For instance when I went to Kevin's Sporting Goods to check out the Luminox Navy Seals watches.

But as usual: all good things come to an end and after a good week I flew back this Sunday and arrived yesterday morning. I slept pretty well and it feels like this time I may be not so affected by the jet-lag. I hope it stays like this and I keep the relaxed feeling I have right now. Other than that it's back to work I guess...

Yup guys & girls I just packed my bags and am ready to fly off to Florida tomorrow! Damn, am I ready for this break or what! The last weeks and actually months have been totally exhausting and I really can do with some R&R. I'm staying at my girlfriends house in Tallahassee, which a nice place to be. Not in the last place because I can take a dive into her pool. I'm sure we will enjoy our long Memorial Day weekend and we intend to do some nice stuff that day (canoe trip down the river). To cut a short story shorter; I'll Blog you later!

A year after Katrina struck the southern USA and New Orleans in particular, one can only conclude that almost no progress has been made rebuilding the hurricane struck city. The situation is still very bad. Indeed, one could say that one year after Katrina, New Orleans is the shame of a nation. The shame of a "super-power" that tries to justify pumping billions and billions into a war on the other side of the world, killing thousands in the name of 'democracy' and 'progress', but being utterly impotent and powerless at home when dealing with disaster. Millions of dollars disapeared into the back pockets of frauds or got wasted on the wrong stuff.

Still, Bush had the guts when he revisted the area to state he was seeing "a lot of progress". The thing was: he was visiting a rich, white neighboorhood. A couple of miles down the block he would have been standing on the same rubble and pile of debris that where there a year ago: in black neigboorhoods with the poor people.

Having witnessed the destruction first hand when me and my girlfriend Carrie made the mistake to visit Biloxi last Christmas, I can really say there are no words for the how bad it must be to people who live(d) there. Those who stayed or returned face a whole world of trouble. As Time Magazine reports:

Call it "Katrina stress" or the "Katrina funk", but it's all too real — and it has real implications for the future health of the city. While the physical devastation of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina has been well documented, the psychic toll is just becoming clear. The suicide rate has nearly tripled, depression is common, domestic abuse is on the rise, and self-medicating with booze is a favored method of forgetting.

Worse yet, the mental health care system needed to help deal with all this is in ruins. Private psychologists and psychiatrists are almost impossible to find. Emergency rooms outside New Orleans — those that survived the storm — are now packed with people from the city seeking mental health care. It's not just the pre-Katrina schizophrenics and crazies who have gone without meds for the year, but regular people who are stressed and depressed. "Life is just not easy in the Big Easy now," says Buras. "There's a lot of anxiety and deep depression."

The figures speak for themselves: half the population of New Orleans is still living somewhere else, over 60% of all the schools are still closed and only half the hospitals are open again. As always with bad situations, people are using humor to cope with everything. CNN reports that when you go downtown people are selling T-shirt with some funny texts:

"Make levees, not war," read one. Another: "FEMA evacuation plan: Run, motherfucker, run." And in a shot at the New Orleans police, some of whom were accused of abandoning their posts during the disaster: "NOPD: Not our problem dude."

In the meantime Florida gets the rain from tropical storm Ernesto. It's Nature's way of showing us there is just one real super-power in this world.

Hurricane season has started again and it always makes me a bit anxious. Not that I live in the USA/Florida, but my girlfriend and her son do. And I have seen what the results of a hurricane (like Katrina) can be. So I am alway a bit nervous when they announce the next storm, especially when it heads straight for the Florida Panhandle where they live. Luckily Alberto did not do that much damage in Tallahasse. A few fallen trees here, a crushed car there and off course the obligatory power outtages. I just hope this hurricane season is not as bad as last year.