It's the time of the year for it: looking back to the previous year.

A new house
In January we found a new house. We had been living in Amstelveen for 6 months but we really didn't like it there. My mother spoke with somebody at a party and we got the name of a landlord in Haarlem. When I called him on the 2nd of January it was the answering machine. I didn't expect any result: just our names to be put on a long waiting list.

However, on Sunday the landlord called us and asked us to have a look at an apartment! He asked if I knew Haarlem a bit and I said "a little". But we he described the location of the house I had no clue :) He warned us: "This apartment will need a lot of fixing, it's in pretty bad shape". I told him we weren't scared of that, so on the 8th Sasha and I went to take a look. And wow! A whole apartment for the two of us with our own private kitchen and bathroom, a huge livingroom... we said yes immediately.

In fact the house was not in an extremely bad state, only very dirty. There was a lot of painting to be done but thanks to many people this went pretty smooth. We received the keys the 16th and we spent around 3 weeks cleaning, painting and fixing small stuff. It was a lot of work but very pleasant to do, especially because so many people came to help. Jaap & Mieke, Ettie & Gerben, Joost, Rob, Steven: thanks again! The best day was the day we were actually leaving Amstelveen... such a nice feeling to leave that place behind. It was a day of hard work: we expected the washing machine and dryer to be the most difficult (especially given these stairs). However those were pretty easy compared to the fridge...

We're still very happy with the house. The fact that we don't have to share it with anybody and that's it's so much in the center of Haarlem make it a wonderful place to live.

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Guus Bosman.nl
In June 2001 I started to keep a small logbook online. As you can see in the chart the first months (when we were still living in Florijn) I wrote about 30 articles per month. It's interesting to see that as soon as we moved to Amstelveen there were no more new articles. An important reason was of course the fact that I didn't have internet access there. Perhaps there were less nice things to write? In this period Tibi was hosting my site.

The first months in Haarlem the website was also rather quiet but in July we took an ADSL connection and a few weeks later I started experimenting with a new program for my website. I built a small server to run the new website and it's still going strong (after a few hardware upgrades). I'm very happy to see that more and more people visit my website, many of them every day.

A feature of this new software is that it's possible for guests to post comments to articles. The first comment was posted by jjb on the 3th of September, since then till today 66 comments have been posted, jerry (25), jjb (15) and me (18) have been the most active commentators. A very popular part of the site is my addressbook that I've added in September. Since then I've been updating and revising the information and now there are addresses of almost 400 people I know in it. It's only accessible by registered users.

Ettie has a digital camera and she let me use very often this year (thanks!). Thanks to her I could make some very nice pictures of Sinterklaas arriving in Haarlem for example, or pictures of the place where my teacher works (pictures of the CWI).

I would also like to thank Tibor for being my hosting backup (and registering my domainname) and Edo for the hardware he gave me!

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Guests during the summer
One of the nice things of having our own place is that it's possible to have guests for a longer period. During the summer we had a lot of them! First Sasha's parents, Milan and Nadia were here. They had never been to Holland so there was a lot to do and to see. We went to Madurodam, the Afsluitdijk, the Zaanse Schans, etc. I went with them to the Rijksmuseum where my Bulgarian was tested to the extreme: how to translate words like "hope", "mistrust", "relationship"... We had a really great time with them.

Two weeks later Irena and Ilana also came. I had been quite a long time since I had seen them. Taught Ilana some useful stuff about Holland: "What do they have in Holland?" "Windmills, wooden shoes and rain!". Jonathan, Irena's husband, followed them a week later. They visited Middenmeer and went to the Afsluitdijk and sluizes too.

David & Milena came by train from Frankfurt (a direct connection to Haarlem) for a weekend. They are now officially Mr. and Ms. Wende, as they got married June 22nd in Frankfurt. We were there too and we had a wonderful time there. Not only the party itself but also the staying in Matteo's and Eugenia's place was very, very nice. I'm afraid I still can't eat spaghetti decently ;)

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Net.Footworks stopped
I had a part-time job at Net.Footworks, a small software company in Haarlem. I worked there 2 days a week, but especially in the first months of 2002 I worked a lot more because of a project that had to be ready. I planned to do my internship there but in August Net.Footworks stopped existing. I moved the parent company (Chess-iT) to start my internship. It was a bit sad to say goodbye to many collegues but otherwise the change was not very big. The building I'm working now is even closer to my house than the Net.Footworks one.

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Study and internship
One of the biggest obstacles before I could start my internship was the course Coding and Complexity. It was an obstacle because the subject was quite difficult and I had to do an oral test to pass the course. Also, the teacher was going on a holiday, so I only had two weeks. That meant quite some sleepless nights. But in the end I was ready for it and I made it!

During the summer I was working on a paper on Visual Programming Languages. Several people pointed out it was quite boring but there was also somebody who wrote me he liked it. In september I started with a new course, Formal Methods, and on 27th October I passed it. Currently I still have to finish a homework assignment.

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Steden & Ridders
2002 was also the year of Steden & Ridders. I played it the first time with my parents in August and since then they've been terribly addicted (especially Mieke). We've played many, many games this year. In the beginning Sasha won all the games so I was very happy the first time I won.

We played with other people too. Daniël stayed with us after the Spellenspektakel a week and he explained Boonanza to us. In Jerry's place we played Wongar (I won!), and later Puerto Rico.

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999 Games
Next to my study and work at Net.Footworks we've also worked a few times for 999 Games, a game wholeseller. There were a lot of Kolonisten tournaments this year. The one in Haarlem was excellent (see picture on the right), just like the one in Leeuwarden where my parents played their first tournament.

We also gave a couple of demonstrations. The one we liked the most was in The Hague, in a shop called Kaatje aan de Rein. We already arranged the demonstration for next year with 999 Games! I learned to explain 'the Lord of the Rings' in a bookstore in Haarlem where we also had a very pleasant demo-day.

The biggest game event was the Spellenspektakel in November (see this life report or the very popular pictures). We were there 4 days. It was tiring but very nice. Next year again for sure, but perhaps the event won't be in the Beursgebouw anymore. Another event was the big Kolonisten tournament organized together with the VARA in the VOC ship in Amsterdam (pictures). There were more than 200 people playing Kolonisten van Catan, a record for the tournaments I've seen.

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It was a very interesting year, and I can only hope that next year will be as good as 2002 was. If everything goes well I'll finish my internship the beginning of March, then start working... We would love to go to Bulgaria this year, Sasha will have to do an internship at the end of 2003.

In the mean time I'll let you know what's going on using this website, although it can never be a real substitute for real life contact of course. We'll celebrate the end of the year with a few friends tomorrow night in Haarlem.

For now I would like to wish everybody a very good and healthy 2003!

Hope to see you soon in real life,