At parents now. First helped brother install his new Blu-Ray, unfortunately it can't be hooked up to his 5.1 audio system. Blu-Ray has coaxial out, audio system has optical in. There ARE adapters out there (for sale online, not in stores), but it's iffy since it might lead to delays, causing audio and video to be out of synch. Anyone have experience with this?

After dinner (Kale/potato mash pot! a.k.a. boerenkoolstamp) mom most likely wants to inspect my suitcase and dad will certainly start to nag about luggage labels and address stickers. If I forgot anything, we can still go into town tomorrow (shops are open every first sunday of the month).

And in the meantime, I checkcheckdoublecheck :D

Reminder: Do you want a postcard from Namibia? Leave your address HERE (comments are screened). Two more days until I fly..... Dutch-language travel log at http://robdriessen.reismee.nl That was my final link spammage. See you all in a few weeks!

OK, I always get the heebeejeebees when a holiday is coming up. Did I pack everything? Did I unplug my PC? Did I remove all perishables from the fridge? And for some reason I *always* manage to do screw something up. Not in a big way, but still.

Back in the days when I was still a boyscout, I always came back from camp with at least one piece of clothing missing. Or with a pair of socks that didn't belong to me. Then there's the legendary morning at Eindhoven Airport where I thought I forgot my passport, when in fact I forgot that I put my passport in my backpack the night before, so I wouldn't forget it. Got it? Good. That morning I think dad aged 5 years in 2 hours, rushing back home to help me find my passport, while mom tried to stall the bus heading to Brussels Airport. Oy vey.

So, with a history like that, I'm always nervous when travelling. Then on day two I discover what I did wrong or forgot, I slap my forehead, groan and move on. Silly, huh? So, the days before travelling I cling to my lists desperately, change them every few hours, lose sleep over trying to think what I could still possibly forget. Here, have another one

- Put music on my phone
- Bring earplugs to listen to said music
- Note down names and numbers of contacts in Namibia, including the photo guy with the shots of the dutch-adoption cheetahs
- Buy reading book (pocketsize) at Heathrow, preferably Mark Billingham (not interested in new Dan Brown)
- Disable my phone's usual behaviour of going online constantly.
- Sort what goes in checked luggage and what goes in carry-on luggage (I can hear George Carlin going "Carry-on? Carrion? I thought they were going to bring a dead deer on board!")
- IRON YOUR GODDAMN CLOTHES, YOU F*CKING LAZY A** B*STARD WITH YOUR STALL TACTICS!

That'll be all. Unless you guys think of something I haven't thought of yet....

Tonight from 6-8pm on www.monsterhitmusic.nl my last radioshow on MHM of the year! And it's going to be silly. Crazy. We're throwing the format overboard and just gonna roll with it. Tune in and join the fun. I have no idea if it's going to be awful or brilliant, but it will be legen......(wait for it)....DARY!

This message was brought to you by David Bowie's pointy nipple antennae

Glad it's friday? Battery almost empty? Need a recharge?

Well, you're in luck, because today and next week I'll be here to kickstart your weekend with lots of pumping rocktunes. Filling in for someone at NENS who does the fridaynight show and who likes rockmusic. And so I get to play Rock too! :D

So tune in from 7pm to 9pm CET through NENS.nl ("luister live"). I've got the newest tracks from Within Temptation, Peter Fox, Skunk Anansie, Paramore, Wolfmother and 30 Seconds to Mars. And much more guitar goodness, including stunning coversongs by Editors and Foo Fighters!

See you guys there!

My birthday's coming up November 4th, but I won't be home. If you want to send me a card, best to post it in advance, it might take a while to reach its destination.

Rob Driessen
Cheetah Conservation Fund
P.O. Box 1755
Otjiwarongo
Namibia

I'll only be able to read my e-mail about once a week (in a town 45km down a dusty road), so if you want to e-mail me something (text only, no HTML, pictures or e-cards), mail it to cheeta@iafrica.com.na (Yes, that's cheeta without the final h. Put "Rob Driessen" in the subject line)

For those of you who'd like to receive a postcard from Namibia, leave a comment with your address. Comments will be screened. I'll print the list the day before I leave, so even if you think I already have your address, put it down again so I have everything in one place! :)

My age, you ask? Ehmmm... well....
- The freezing point of water at sea level in degrees Fahrenheit
- or the number of completed, numbered piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven
- or the number of teeth of a full set of teeth in an adult human, including wisdom teeth

Never knew that putting a funeral service together created so much stress for all parties involved. Not to mention discord between siblings. I'll be glad when thursday is over.

In other news: 5 weeks and counting. Now go here, watch the video, cast your vote and spread the word. Help the cheetah with a simple click!

Last night, friday the 25th of September 2009 around 11.15 pm, at the honorable age of 87 years, grandpa finally gave up the fight and passed away in the presence of his four children and their partners. He will be missed, but he is certainly in a better place now. Apart from his four children he is survived by his wife to whom he's been married for 61 years, and 7 grandchildren. Goodbye grandpa, may you have lots of chicken, bees and bunnies to keep wherever you are now. Save some honey for me.



From left to right: Cor junior, grandma, Jos, my mother Susan, Annie. And grandpa in front.

Hey everyone,

just a heads-up: tonight will be my first radioshow at an actual local public radio station! From 9pm to 11pm CET I'll be hosting "Rob in de branding" ("Surf's up with Rob!") over at http://www.nens.nl

Click the tiny 'luister live' link in the top right corner of the website to listen in.

Gonna be fun, even though the music at Nens is a bit 'tamer' than the free choice I have at MHM. Plus I might have to mention exciting local news 'Kitten saves fireman from tree! Bingo night at the nursing home tomorrow!' Let's see if I can get some feedback from 'the locals' :D

It's monday and I'm at home. The last day of my extended weekend. I just spent three wonderful days in Maastricht in which I explored the city center again (they just can't stop redesigning and changing it) and acted as unofficial crew during my friends' summer LAN party. Much fun was had with games both old and new. Played along with Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Call of Duty (the first!) and Trackmania, and watched others have fun with Killing Ground (?), Battlefield and Warcraft 3. And while some of the kids pulled all-nighters fueled by energy drinks, I played the responsible adult and actually got 8 hours of sleep both nights.

Back up a few days: thursday night, I visited granddad who now has his own room in a 'recovery home', even though there's not much recovery going on. He lay in his bed, and I talked about my life, helped him take a few sips of water and cooled his forehead with a wet cloth. He can't talk anymore, just nod or shake his head a little. His right arm can move just enough to let his hand scratch his head or pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He looked much better than in the hospital, but it's hard to accept that he's not going to get better anymore and that he may pass away any day now. He's getting morfine to numb any pain. Let's hope he's not going down the same route as dad's mother who stuck around for a year and a half after her stroke, reduced to an empty shell. After visiting granddad, I went to grandma as well. She's holding up, hiding behind a mask of stoicity. "He brought it down on himself, he'd been having headaches and trouble sleeping for weeks, but that stubborn old goat just wouldn't want to visit a doctor!" And I sit there, sip my coffee and nod. We know. We all know how stubborn he is, and has been for as long as we can remember. When he passes, their children have the work cut out for them. Grandma and granddad each have their own bankaccount and their own financial administration. But one is slowly losing her memory and the other can't speak anymore. And they both were negligent in keeping any kind of record. So basically: no one knows if and how much money they set aside and who's responsible for paying the bills. Add to that the tasks of having to sell the house and find grandma a spot in a nursing home and you can see that 'the family' still has their work cut out for them.

Final newsflash, this just in: I went to my knee therapy session today and my knee gave way again during an exercise where I had to take big steps sidewards. The therapist wasn't happy with that and neither was I. Since my instability is still there after 2 months of firm therapy, he says I should seriously start to consider going in for surgery, getting a new ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) made from a piece of my hamstring. We're talking about surgery, a month on crutches and 7 to 9 months of new therapy to make my new ACL take the heat. Bah. So not looking forward to that. I might want to get a second opinion, but the second doctor will most likely concur with my trainer's findings.

The Africa trip will continue though. And after that: new knee.

And if my week wasn't full enough, I went over to Amsterdam today. Why? To get a ticket for a concert. The old fashioned way. I stood in line for over 2 hours to get one ticket. Yes, one ticket per person, photo ID required, wristband strapped. Why? Because it's sort of a secret concert. Not openly advertised. Special measures needed to be taken.

In short: the only way to get a ticket for tomorrow's concert was to go over to the concert hall today and buy one. There were hundreds of people in line. In the end, everyone in line managed to get a ticket to the newest hottest superband of the moment.

The name: Them Crooked Vultures.
The line-up: Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) on drums
Josh Homme (Queens of the stone age, Eagles of Death Metal) on guitar and vocals
John Paul Jones (LED ZEPPELIN!) on bass.

bander managed to snag a ticket as well, so we're getting ready for some funky mind- and earblowing ROCK.

Twitter down, LJ down, how was I supposed to let the world know that absolutely nothing interesting happened during the past two hours?!

The priest has administered the Last Rites to grandpa. Absolution. Anointment. Viaticum.

Every last one of his children, friends and grandchildren has visited him by now. Including my little brother. The last to visit him was my uncle, his youngest son, who flew home early from vacation. Grandpa actually managed to open his eyes a little to look at him. Uncle said "It's OK, dad. You don't have to fight anymore. Let go and rest."

It's all up to grandpa now how long he still wants to hold on. The food tube was not placed, there were too many risks of infection.

Mom's been put on 40 mg of Prednison, 8 times her old dosage. Still, she's glad and relieved she finally knows what's wrong with her. She's going to bring her doctor flowers and a bottle of good wine.

Well now.... misery loves company as they say. Feel free to skip if you've had enough bad news for today.

Yesterday, I had a very nice evening with friends to take my mind off current events, for which I thank them. Unfortunately today comes around to bite the asses of the entire family.

a) Grandma has to make The Big Decision today: doctors are suggesting a feeding tube into grandpa's stomach. The family thinks it doesn't help anything, but will merely prolong his suffering. Docs probably have a different opinion otherwise they wouldn't suggest it. But in the end, the only one who can say 'yes' or 'no' is grandma. And it's causing her no small amount of stress, as you might imagine.

b) After many tests and almost 15 (!) years of wrong diagnoses and wrong medications, finally a doctor took the effort of wanting to really discover what condition my mother has, instead of suppressing symptoms with Prednison. Today, my mom finally got a name to pin on the medical troubles she's had for so long: Churg-Strauss Syndrom (Dutch - English). Bam. There we have it. First course of action for treatment: Get mom back on the Prednison that's been force-fed to her for all these years. The 'medicin' her body got so used to that she actually had withdrawal symptoms when she stopped using it.

The only positive news today came from dad whose financial advisor has calculated that he can safely retire without having to take a step back financially. But right now money doesn't mean much when your wife is struggling with her health and your father-in-law is slipping away.

He's not doing well.
He's not swallowing anymore and the reflex will not be coming back.
The doctors are 'letting nature run its course'.
The family is hoping and praying for a swift and painless end.

Guess my visit was a goodbye after all.

Just a heads-up to those who are not following me on Twitter.

- I dropped my demo off at the 3FM studio, complete with candy bribe and motivation letter.
- The DJ-trainer received a few hundred (!) entries for the demo-competition
- Only one winner would be picked.
- The winner eventually wasn't me (not that I expected to win, but hey, I took part!)
- The winner was an 18 year old kid who's already in the Radio Veronica DJ School and has his own show on KinkFM

However I decided to try my luck and contacted the local radiostation NENS, servicing my neighbour-town of Noordwijk (I once visited the Katwijk local radio station, but man.... too religious. Ask me about it some day).

- Got an invitation for a chat
- Visited the studio (first floor, no airco, oy!)
- Gave the manager the same demo I sent to 3FM
- Waited for feedback.

Long story short: As of Sep 1 (hopefully Aug 31, actually), I'll have my own two hour slot on local FM and cable radio, mondays from 9pm to 11pm. I'll have two months to warm up and try out (they know about my trip to Africa). If both parties are happy, there'll be possibilities to move the show to a more 'premium' slot like Saturday. Furthermore, since it's a local station with 80 volunteers covering all the local news, sports and politics, I can take part in making reports, going into town with a mic-unit to interview people, do shows from a different location than the studio, etc. etc. In other words: after working at a music-only station for the past years, I'm now going to be a part of a team that does much more than just music. My show's choice in music will have to change (more oldies, less ROCK!), I might have to change some items and my choice in words a little (target audience: 35+), but I'm genuinely psyched. I'll probably only have 10 listeners max, and I shouldn't expect much phonecalls or mail from them, but still: local live radio! Woot!

Still no developments with regards to grandpa.

And so I distract myself with lots of things.

Last movie seen: Crank: High Voltage. The new benchmark in Over The Top movies. With David Carradine as asian pimp and ganglord. And Ron Jeremy.

Games currently played: Professor Layton and the Curious Village on DS and Lost Odyssey on XBOX360

Books ordered: Creating Powerful Radio and Essential Radio Skills. The how-to-draw books for radionerds ;)

Dinners planned: Next friday - Entrekoos, Leiden. Weekend after next: Tex Mex, Scheveningen

Holiday!:

English: I'm gonna keep a dutch-language blog over at http://robdriessen.reismee.nl for my adventures in Namibia. Eventually there'll be photos there as well. I can't keep two different language blogs at the same time, so use Google translate to read said blog in drunken english. ;) You can leave your email-address there so you'll get a mail every time I update the page.

Nederlands: Ik heb een reislog aangemaakt op http://robdriessen.reismee.nl voor mijn reis naar Namibië. Je kunt je emailadres daar achterlaten zodat je een mailtje krijgt als ik een update heb.

---

Just 9 hours to go until Snow Patrol and U2. *bounce*

Ahhh the joys of dealing with Hong Kong e-bay dealers....
----
Dear Customer,

Thanks fo your purchase and prompt payment,

Your order have been shipped on 08/07

please allow 7-10 business days for international delivery.

We genuine to follow up all the case.

If you order can't arrive within 15 days, please contact me to let us report your case ASAP
*** Refund or Resend must be issed for all purchase which can't arrive in 30 days ***

What a day. Drove to the therapist after work so he could examine my knee and come up with a battleplan. He compared both my knees, did some pulling and pushing, lifting and kneading.

"Well Rob, you still have quite some fluid in your bad knee. And yeah, your anterior cruciate ligament is definitely torn. Here, feel while I pull your good knee *tug, tug, tug*. Your leg sends a message to your brain going 'OK, that's far enough, now pull back!'. And now I pull your bad knee *tuuug, tuuuug, tuuuug*. Feels like an old rubber band, right? That's because your ligament doesn't send any messages right now, allowing your knee to stretch further than it should.

But here's the deal: we're going to work on your stability and security. Our goal is to get your knee back into shape so that you can run, jump and even play squash again without fear. We can do this in three months, with two supervised one-hour sessions a week. So ideally we'd like to have a total of 24 sessions with you, but it depends on your health care provider if they're all covered. You'd better check with them first and if it's less than 24 we can either cut down on the number of session and have you go to the gym instead, unsupervised. Or, you could pay for a couple of sessions yourself. In any case, we'll start on monday and here's a list of exercises you can do over the weekend."

I return home, go online, check my coverage, slightly anxious because I only have the basic coverage. "Physical therapy: in case of chronic pain/injury: all sessions after the first ten. If cause not chronic: zero." Oh shit. I keep on reading, also checking the more expensive add-on packages. One covers four sessions, one covers 18, and the super-duper-ultra-mega-sparkly package coveres any number of sessions. I decide to call the provider.

"Yeah, so here's my problem. I have the basic coverage, I got injured, I need therapy but there's no therapy in my current coverage. Can I upgrade?"
"Sure you can! Starts next month and by the end of the year you can cancel the extra package again if you want."
"Eh... seriously? ORLY?"
"YARLY!"
"*does a little math* Let's see, so I either stick with the basic coverage and have to pay 24 sessions out of my own pocket, or I take the middle package for 5 months and get 18 sessions covered for the price of 5... Lemme think for a moment. Well, DUH! Sign me up!"

So all I need to do now is tell the therapist that he's been booked for 18 sessions (we'll see about those last six when we get there). And we need to do some .. err ... creative bookkeeping so that I can train from July to September while he bills my insurer from August to October. If I can manage that, I think I've got myself a good deal out of it all.