Succesfull home brew and Japanese nulear failure

One of my hobby's is brewing my own beer. A couple of weeks ago I brewed a batch, yesterday I tasted the first bottle of it, and it is good. Without a doubt the best beer I've brewn so far. I've already tought of some changes I'll make to the recipe next time, but I'm very pleased with this result.

Then the thing everyone is talking about: the Japanese earthquake. The Earthquake in itself at this point seems pretty much irrelevant compared to the problems they are facing in there nuclear power plant. Personally, I don't believe that they've said everything. Both containment vessels are said to be intact, altough the buildings around them have exploded. The explosions of monday and saturday seemed quite large, but perhaps they are right, and the containment vessels are intact.

Then there is the story about the "partial" meltdown. At this point they acknowledge that probably in all three reactors there fuel rods are melting or have already melted (even on saturday there were rumors about melting fuel rods in two reactors. But the actual reactors would be intact. When the fuel rods are melting, that's a sign that it is very hot inside the reactor, and a mere 15 cm of steel isn't going to hold very long unless some very serious cooling is happening, which is aparently failing. Also, the increasing number of reports about radiation measured outside of the reactor complex to me seems like a very bad omen.

Last but not least, multiplt times already we've heard about radiation levels dropping after a few hours. This can only happen in to ways, Either the radioactive isotopes had short half-lives and had already decayed by the time of new measurments, or the isotopes had somehow flown away. But once radiation was measured, that simply meant that radioactive material had escaped and WILL decay outside of the reactor, regardless of whether or not radiation levels were lower a couple of hours later.

Let's just hope that they ae able to finally get a grip on this problem before it get's even worse.

good movies and inexperienced teens

Yesterday I went to the movies and saw Rabbit Hole in avant première. In the beginning, it had kind of a "lost in translation" feel. But it developed into a powerful story about a couple who had lost there child and are uncertain in how to deal with this. Sometimes these types of movies turn into very heavy stories which leave you with a tired feeling afterward, but although the theme of the movie is very serious, there were many humurous moments in the film. I'd really recommend this one.

This week, the highschool students are having the week off. And that usually means that they come down to the college towns to taste college life (some colleges allow them to actually follow some classes). As I was walking home from the movie theater yesterday night, I passed a bar which is popular with students, and as such, the highschool students were there as well. In the vicinity of the bar, I walked passed no less than 8 people whho were so drunk that they had to be held by there friends. 2 still fell to the ground, dragging there friends with them. And I have never seen more puddles of puke on a single sidewalk than yesterday night. I honestly believe that I new how to handle my liquor way better at that age.

Right now, I'm enjoying a bottle of Chilean cabernet sauvignon. I pretty much like Chilean wines. Don't know why, but they seem to have a good price for their quality.

I'll be throwing a beer tasting party next week next week tuesday, Just hope that some people turn up.

If you believe it, they believe it

Yesterday, a friend of mine, who was in his senior year in college and had been getting very good grades told me that actually, he had been lying for the past 2.5 years to everyone, his friends, parents, girlfriend,... and currently wasn't even enrolled in college. He had just been pretending to be. In reality, if he would decide to pick up his education again, he would be a sophomore, rather than a senior. I always expected that perhaps his grades were a bit exagerrated, but I never fathomed that he would simply have made up his education itself.

I went to the movies yesterday night, the intention was to watch the movie: "the Kings Speech" but I accidentally strolled into the wrong theater, and watched "Rundskop" (roughly translates as Bullshead". Good movie, it talked about Hormone maffia, and somewhat parafrased the killing of famed hormone hunter Andre Cools, altough the movie was set in the present rather than 20 years ago.

I found out today that I was supposed to write a paper in a group collaboration, but I didn't show up at the time when the groups were being formed, luckily my 2 partners are bright, hardworking people who won't hold me back.

hanging out with the beautiful people of tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to a speaking event organized by a local management school. They had invited some people, including the chairman of one of our political parties and the manager of our university to talk about entrepreneurship.

Most of the speakers were fairly interesting, althiough they all kinda said the same. Work hard, having an idea is only a small part of starting a succesfull business,...

What I thought of as most terrible was the knowledge of the english language by the actual stucents of this school who were announcing the speakers. It was just appaling, there accents were as thick mud, and on top of that, there public speaking skills were terrible. If that's the way you graduate from these schools, I'm quite sure that the rest of the knowledge gathered there won't be all that great, and you'll never be able to come off as confident and succesfull talking that way. Also wearing suits whichh obviously don't fit and talking into a blackberry just to show off that you have a blackberry  don't make you look anything more sofisticated.

The reception afterward where champagne was handed out quite liberally was fun however (although downning 3 glasses of champagne and a beer during the first hour did kinda take the edge of)

On a different note, two days ago, I watched planet terror and Machete. Two great films which I can really recommend. Plots are barely existent, and plot holes are ubiquitous, violence and sex is everywhere, but somehow Rodriguez succeeded in delivering two strong films if you manage to look behind the superficial.

And with that it's weekend again. I'll be rehearsing with my band, tomorrow. In about two months we've got a gig, and there's still some work to be done.

Inside job, 7 card stud and no longer wasting my time following lectures

watched inside job today, it was pretty good, but didn't really contain any new info. Although this is ofcourse a good way to get this information a bit more mainstream.

I aslo tried my hand at a bit of 7 card stud rather then the good old texas holdem, and it paid of with a 10bb win in just over 30 hands. I'll be playing a bit more of this game in the next days, but ofcourse, it's way harder to multitable this game than holdem. It just seems as if it's an easier game (read, opponents aren't as good there)

Haven't really been going to classes lately, it's just a waste of time. Spending 2 hours at a lecture should mean that later on in the year I should have to spend at least 2 hours less at studying a certain course, and it doesn't. Therefore I've chosen to ignore classes for the most part and just crack the courses the way I've been doing for the past fes years: by figuring out the styles of the professors and the courses rather than the matter itself.

I'm going out now, have a few drinks with a friend. then perhaps get some sleep, otherwise, just spend the night behind my computer watching some movie.