We (Arjen, Bin, Arjen’s father, Adrienne and me) are having a nice and busy time here in Beijing. We arrived on Sunday the 14th and walked around the city. We had lunch in a place that served “BT Chicken Wings” that were said to be notoriously spicey. After taking a couple of bites Arjen said “these are not so spicey at all”. 10 seconds later tears were running down his sweaty face. I guess when the Chinese say that something is very spicey, it is extremely spice and probably needs to be handled as a chemical weapon.

A day later we went had breakfast in a small “restaurant” in one of the Hutongs (old streets of the city), it was quite good food and the price was 13 RMB, which is 1.30euro’s for the five of us! Afterwards we went to the Forbidden City. A nice and huge site, but also very touristy and crowded.

Check out the barbeque’d scorpions and seahorses. We haven’t tried them yet…

I usually try to be the first one to check in online for a flight so that I can have an emergency exit row seat (I’m 2 meters tall so a normal seat is very cramped). As always I went to the KLM website a bit more than 24 hours before the flight. I tried to check in the flight but as usual (before 24h) it gave some error, so I didn’t really mind and waited until it was 24h before my flight. Instead of giving me the check in website it told me “Your flight has departed.”. Whaaaaat!?! For some strange reason I thought my flight would leave the 10th instead of the 9th! I must have mixed up the arrival date with the departure date or something! In a big stress I called the KLM/NWA hot line. After waiting for 30 minutes I finally got a hold of one of their agents who connected me through to another agent. Again I had to wait another 15 stressful minutes. This agent told me I forfeited the flight by not showing up. I had no right for a new ticket and would have to buy a new one (costing over $1600,-). I was shocked and asked her what to do. She was kind enough to talk to her supervisor and in the end could come to an agreement that I could get a ticket for the next day for “only” $250,-. I of course took the offer and am now writing this message from my couch at home.

On my last day in New York I went to Brooklyn to have a look at the bridge.

Two more days and I leave for my holiday to China… Will the jetlag ever end…

Yesterday evening we went on a dinner cruise organized by the conference I am visiting. Leaving from Chelsea Piers, the boat made a nice tour around Manhatten. The view was great. Afterwards we went for some drinks to a bar/restaurant called Le Pere Pinard. Check out the selection of pictures below and if you are interested visit my Picasaweb for the rest of the pictures.

Yesterday we went to the observatory deck of the Empire State Building. It took quite some time to get up there (1 hour), but judging from the ribbons that were put up like a big snake to guide the queuing people it could have been much much worse!

We waited for the sun to set on the crowded observatory deck to take some pictures of Manhatten. It was a bit foggy and the sunset wasn’t that nice, but I won’t go through those lines again, so these pictures will have to do.

This week I am in New York for the MICCAI conference. I arrived two days prior to the start of the conference so that my jet lag would over when I have to present my work (I have to present today and I can’t really say it is over yet however). These days however did give us (me and my colleagues, Alessandro, Paulo and Vesna) some time to have look around in New York.

Apart from the regular sights like Times Square, Trinity Church, and the Hawaii Tropic Zone restaurant/bar, I of course had to visit the B&H photo store and Adorama where I bought the Canon 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens. You can see the result in some of the pictures.

Last weekend me and my colleagues went on our yearly group outing in the Ardennes. We rented a big house and had great fun playing twister, talking, presenting our life stories to the group in 5 minutes, canoeing, drinking, and sleeping very little.

Check out the rest of the pictures on my Picasa Album.