You’re fourteen, and about to go downtown. Just fix the mascara, and you’re ready to leave in five minutes twenty minutes one hour. Maybe. Maybe not.

Two boys doing their homework, completely in sync.

The Kunstlinie is the performing arts centre in Almere. Fits very nicely in the new city center architecture with its squares and blocks, and it sort of connects the city with the lake. The only thing wrong with this place is the number of civil servants working there. Well, working… I don’t know. Any time you enter the building there are three, four of them sitting behind a nice polished stainless steel counter, doing….

This is the Bruynzeel in Zaandam (NL), or what is left of it. Used to be a door factory. Was taken over by Polynorm, and then Polynorm was taken over by Theuma. But Theuma was not interested in the Bruynzeel part and so it was shut down. What remains is an empty building, home to graffiti sprayers and pyro-maniacs.

My daughter with a friend at the Kunstlinie, that’s the performing arts centre in Almere. They are both 15 so once they start laughing they can’t stop.

Two girls dozing in the sun in a small village in the Zhytomir area, just east from Poland. Gucci, Ugg’s & iPods. Everything is quiet, except for a few larks and a storch that circles the village.

How I hate this. Taxes, insurance policies, bills, forms, credit card statements. My ex-wife had a system where she kept everything in a box, and then once a month she would throw the box contents on the table and do all the paperwork in less than 60 minutes. I am now trying to teach myself the same trick. I am at 60 hours, and I don’t see any progress. Still, I think the stacks look nice, I have it sorted on “sender” and it gives an orderly look.

Three girls on MSN. The one in the middle is my daughter and she says she has multi-tasking capabilities unlike boys her age. Indeed, she is reading MSN and checking her SMS inbox at the same time.

Shadows in the new shopping center in Almere. This new shopping center really upgraded the city. Used to be one street with the standard shops, barely suitable for 30.000 inhabitants, and Almere had grown to 180.000. The new city center is nice, clean, modern, and there’s a huge underground parking area. But it’s still windy, and not quite like Amsterdam. Oh well… in 500 years maybe.