In Iceland there is a special word for when there is no wind (logn). On the rare occasion that the weather forecast in Iceland is "logn", it is always wrong. Yesterday I was sitting on the balcony here in The Netherlands, drinking a cup of coffee, the rain was pouring down, but I was perfectly dry, because there was "logn".

This morning I took the bicycle to work like usual. It was dry outside when I started but I heard few thunders nearby, and getting closer. When I was about half way to work, it started raining and the thunders and lightnings were almost on top of me. When I got to work I was so wet I haven't dried out completely yet and it was so dark outside it was like the middle of the night. I understand this happens few times a year here, in Iceland thunderstorms are nearly unknown phenomenal. Weather like this would happen couple of times in a century there.

India is fighting overcrowding so many Indians are moving to other countries. There are lot of them here in The Netherlands. There are also many in Norway. In one school in Norway, over 90% of the children are from India. India is still the country in the world that is growing at the largest rate. But it seems that they've found the solution. Export the people, preventing them from creating too much strain on the Indian economy and the nations infrastructure. Who cares about the problem it creates in other countries.

I'm going to Iceland tomorrow. I'll have the best ice cream in the world. Eat at few of the best restaurants in the world and I'll be able to speak my own language for a week. This will be a good time, but expensive.

I took a taxi to the airport in Portugal yesterday. The speed limit on the road was between 80 and 120. The taxi driver was so interested in talking to me, face to face, I didn't have the heart to mention the fact that he was driving at 180 most of the time. In fact the only time I saw 2 digits on the speedometer was when he drove through the toll gates, clearly marked 30, at 90. :)
If anyone is interested. I have the phone number of a very good taxi driver in Lisabon, Portugal, that will get you quickly to your destination, and that for an inexpensive prefixed price.

Mohamed Ali once said. "I can't read, but that's OK because I have people working for me that can." On Monday I'll be signing a lot of papers and although I can read I have no idea what the text on those papers means. Therefore I've hired people to check them for me. Or in other words, on Monday I get the keys to my new apartment. The papers are for the 110% loan I get from the ING bank with just over 4% interest. In Iceland I think they have gone back to max 70% loan so the buyer has to get the 30% difference elsewhere. I'm told that in UK the max loan is 80% which has led to the average age of the first time home buyer to be over 40 years.

This evening I went to another Indian restaurant. I had the standard Chicken Tikka Masala. It was really good, I would highly recommend the restaurant if the service hadn't been so bad. I find it really strange how service differs between countries. I was in Slovenia the other day and the waiters, like most waiters in The Netherlands work hard to avoid eye contact with customers. Iceland is no better. Sweden has terrible waiters. Of the countries I've been to this year, I'd say Portugal has the best waiters/service.

During lunchtime I went with my coworkers to a restaurant I had not tried before. It was one of those Indian restaurants that does double duty as a store so you can get your food canned or on a plate. We choose the second option and told the smiling person behind the counter what we wanted. He put that on a plate and told us to sit down. He would bring us the food. Then he put the dishes in the microwave. It was delicious.

I sit here in the Privium lounge at Schiphol airport and think about traveling. Especially air travel. Now self check in is obligatory, so I went to the machine to check in. It told me to put in the first 3 letters of my next destination. Then it told me there were 2 options for that destination and asked to choose which. I had no idea, and had to call the travel agency. I'm pretty sure that human at the check in could have prevented that. Then I went to the check in counter to check in the luggage, only to be told that my luggage was too heavy and I had to go to the excess baggage counter and pay extra. Then I had to take my luggage to the outsize baggage counter. So I've done four things and I'm not even at the security gates yet. Thankfully Privium membership gets me priority through that. 

Women and leadership.
I recently watched a video on Ted.com, made by the Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. Where she talkes about women in business. It is HERE. Her conclusion is that women tend not to rise to the top because they don't believe in themselves and are not pushy enough. My niece Sif and her friends believe that there is a conspiracy by men to keep woman down because they don't have penises. I would have thought that women their age would know more about the opposite sex.

The difference in service for apartment/house buyers in Iceland and The Netherlands is big. Yesterday I got a call from a company that works with the real estate agent. They went over the options of where to get the cheapest electricity, internet access, TV stations and so on. The financial adviser I contacted earlier went over the options I had for loans, insurance and so on. The real estate agent and the financial adviser will come with me when I get the apartment delivered. All of this advice and service is free (not the real estate agent himself). The advisers work on percentages, from all companies. In Iceland there is no such service agent. If you're in Iceland this would be great business idea for an independent person who wants to be their own boss. Be the middleman, put together packages, make agreements with all service providers so you can offer your service free to the customer. I claim 10% of profits.

If you need to go to Malmö for some reason, and are hungry, I recommend that you find Lilla Torg. It's a small town square (like the name says) that is surrounded by restaurants with tables outdoors. I can not recommend the service at the restaurants. The waiters seem to avoid looking at the customers and unlike Spain and Portugal it's almost as if they don't want you to enter the restaurant area. But the food, when they finally take your order, is very good. I also recommend the hotel Noble House, couple of hundred meters away, with friendly professional staff. The hotel has a small collection of books and DVDs in the lobby. By the book shelves there is a sign saying "Take a book. Leave a book." If I come back here, I will definitely bring some extra books.

It looks like I bought the apartment at the perfect time. Which is rare for me. The tax reduction that is saving me thousands of Euros has had the effect of more than third increase in prospective buyers.

The supermarketchains here in The Netherlands are interesting. In Iceland it doesn't matter to what supermarketchain you go to, they all have the same products. Here you sometimes have to go to all the supermarketchains to get what you want.

I'm going to Sweden next week, Malmö to be exact. It will be interesting to go to another country where everyone is also named something-son and I can almost understand the language.