Nigel de Jong & Ajax

It's done. Nigel de Jong has left Ajax for Hamburg SV, to join Rafael van der Vaart there. De Jong's contract with Ajax was expiring next summer and he already announced that he didn't want to extend his cntract. So instead of letting him go for free on a Bosman transfer, Ajax made some money out of him by selling him in the winter (for a reportedly $1.5m).

As an Ajax fan, it's a bit sad to see Nigel go as he was one of the very few Amsterdammers in the selection. He was born and raised in Geuzenveld, an area in Amsterdam West, where my cousin lives as well (and where I frequently stay). At first he was willing to do anything just to play for Ajax, but lately he only wanted to play midfield. Which led to him being sat on the bench quite a lot.

So I guess for both parties it's good that Nigel left a bit earlier. Good luck Nigel!

Earlier, Bogdan Lobont has left Ajax to join Fiorentina and Julien Escude for Sevilla. That's also a good decision as Lobont was not in Blind's starting eleven. And there are some other players that have announced that they will not renew their contract next summer: Steven Pienaar, Maxwell, Hatem Trabelsi, Nourdin Boukhari and Tomas Galasek. So next season Ajax will have to do without 8 players.

Hopefully next season we (or I) will see a fresh Ajax!

Snowboard

After 5 seasons using my Original Sin snowboard I thought it's about time for a change. So I bought a new snowboard last Saturday. It's the one on the picture that you are seeing.

Sunday I went boarding with it. It's nice. The edges are still very very sharp (it cut through my gloves actually), the bottom is very smooth and it handles very nicely. Unfortunately there wasn't enough powder (but enough snow), but still it was a good test.

Raclette after a (half) day snowboarding in the sun is very recommended, accompanied by some white wine and followed with a couple episodes of Lost.

iPod Video

At work, a couple of months ago, somebody at marketing thought it would be nice to hand out iPod in reward for understanding some new marketing concept. So marketing made a quiz, for which there were 5 new video iPods as first prize, 10 iPod Nanos and some iPod shuffles as consolidation prize.

Since I'm an iPod fan, I thought "hmmm, I can win a free iPod". So I did the quiz. I even took time to make sure that all the answers were correct by opening a couple of PowerPoint presentations and listen to some guy ramble about his product for an hour or so.

And it paid off. I won an iPod video. It was announced mid-December and I received it beginning of this week. So now have two iPod, a 60GB iPod Photo and a 30 GB iPod Video.

After that I was fiddling around trying to get videos on the iPod. With the help of First Use Wizard and Videora iPod Converter I managed to put my favorite episode of The Simpsons on it (Bart Gets Famous). It does take some time to decode and then transcode but it's worth the while.

Travelling with my iPod Video will be so much better now as I can watch episodes of Friends, The Simpsons, Seinfeld and perhaps Lost on it. And have music to listen to when I'm bored. What else do I need???

In the year 2005

So let's sit and rewind back and sort of review what happened in 2005.

Er, not much that I can remember today...

Anyway, just like all the best selling magazines I should make a list of The ... Of The Year 2005 in anakzaman's world. So here goes:

Footballer of the year: Ronaldinho, hands down, no argument.
Football coach of the year: Frank Rijkaard and Henk ten Cate. Just look at what they did at Barcelona in 2005.
Ajacied of the year: Wesley Sneijder. He stayed at Ajax and even signed an extension and probably the most consistent player of 2005.

F1 driver of the year: Fernando Alonso. Winning the F1 WDC and breaking Schumi's dominance at the same time.

Movie of the year: I liked Layer Cake a lot. Better than Revolver actually. Might have to dig up some archives and come back for this category.

Album(s) of the year: A good year for music actually. KanYe West's Late Registration, Hard-F1's Stars of CCTV, Kaiser Chiefs' Employment, Coldplay's X&Y, Bright Eyes' It's Wide Awake It's Morning, the Arcade Fire's Funeral, Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better...

Trip of the year: Driving to Kent.

Dive of the year: Going into a small cave in Nice.

Achievement of the year: Running (and finishing!) the escalade.

Gadget of the year: the iPod video, although I'm still fiddling with it trying to put an episode of the Simpsons on it.

Party of the year: Groningen; full of Feiglings and Flugels, ending up at FEBO. And Talampaya, DJing under the influence of absinthe.

Concert of the year: Franz Ferdinand at Paleo

Book of the year: I was Bono's Doppelganger - Neil McCormick; a funny insight in the life of Bono.

I can't think of any other categories, but when I do I'll add it.

And resolution for 2006: use the Calendar function on my work Lotus Notes.

Christmas and New Year Vacation

First of all:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2006!!!

If you were wondering what I've been up to, I just came back from a 3 week vacation with my girlfriend. There wasn't any highspeed internet connection so I couldn't update my blog.

The vacation: 17 days which were mostly filled with traffic jams, hot and humid weather, shopping malls, coffee shops, waiting at airports, and a bit of sun and a tiny bit of relaxation...

I did however saw a white tip reef shark, a barracuda and a blue spotted manta ray along the way.

"I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me"