In September/October of 2007 Julie and I went to Indonesia on a long trip through the Banda Sea. We visited some very remote islands, some of which have a very notorious history. Especially the Banda Islands themselves were fascinating. These islands are known as the spice islands, and many sea battles were fought over its riches in the 16/17/18th century.

I wrote a 4 page story about the trip which can be read in Duiken Magazine, and will be available as a pdf in a few weeks with this article.

What is even cooler is that Julie got the cover of the January issue with a nice image of 2 boys coming to pose underwater.

Our new cat Ruby (the tabby one) has acclimated very fast. We were initially afraid our older cat wasn’t going to like sharing the house, but things have gone great. Once in a while Samba (the black one) will attack her, but she is very submissive so tussles end really quickly. They seem to tolerated each other really well. We’ve found out Ruby is a really good jumper, and loves to play with toys. She’s also a bit of a beggar, and tends to sneak up on counters at night and knock things over. But all in all, she’s a lovely cat!

Julie and I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert last night in the Gelredome, a soccer stadium with excellent acoustics. We’re not especially big fans of Springsteen but we’ve always wanted to see one of his concerts. We ended up with awesome seats and had a great evening. He performed with his band “The E Street Band”. What is it anyways with concerts that they don’t want you to take pictures. They were haunting everyone with cameras, even useless phone cameras. Seems a bit silly to me. Those things cant make photos worth a damn, as the below image shows.