We zijn er, in Camp Smitty. gezien zowel Alexander als Michiel mee loggen ga ik alles bijhouden op de engelse log. Wel heb ik alvast een aantal leuke fotos gemaakt van onze reis met nederlands onderschrift. Het is 23:30 lokale tijd, snel pitten, morgen meer.
11:23:49 PM
First photos are up. BTW, wanted to mention that I've been sucking down over 1000 emails since I've been offline for a few days. Spam blows.
9:55:30 PM
After careful consideration, I've decided that it's best I blog my entire trip in English, and forgo any feeble attempt at writing simultaneously for my Dutch blog. It's simply too much work to describe the same experiences and thoughts in multiple languages. Luckily the majority of the dutch population speaks excellet english as a second (or sometimes third) language. Besides, the radio show will be in dutch 3 hours live every morning, as will my daily newspaper column and television reports.
My journey started in Belgium. Patricia insisted on accompanying me to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. That's a good hour and a half drive, which turned into more than two hours, seeing as I still had to pick up my sand-proof combat boots at our apprtment in the city.
After a brief press ceremony, which consisted of wine, cheese, dutch 'Bitterballen' and other assorted canapeï¿[product]s at the airport Sheraton Hotel, courtesey of the royal dutch marines, it was time to go. Our trip had been delayed for numerous reasons for the past few days. Visa's, security, logistics, all seemed to run afoul at the very last minute.
The press still hounded us all the way to customs, where we said our goodbyes to loved ones and Patricia and I tried to make the most of our goodbye kiss. Always a pleasure to watch, considering I'm 6'4" and she's 5'3".
A quick flight to London, 2 hour layover before we caught the red-eye to Kuwait. We spent our time at the pub in Heathrow airport drinking what would be our last beers for the next 12 days. I had ofcourse already smoked my last doobie before we left schiphol, but a nice lager added to the buzz and certainly helped me fall asleep in my seat before our east-bound 777 crossed the channel.
As we approach Kuwait, Ii can see nothing but desert. Cameras are srictly forbidden in Kuwait, so I sneaked a pic with my phone-cam.
......Fast forward to 11:30 pm, Camp Smitty. FInally an opportunity to upload my first report. Lots of blanks to fill in about our trip, which I recorded on video and with the digital still camera. First live broadcast starts tomorrow at 0800 hours. G'nite!
9:26:18 PM
