I have been away for very long from NIKHEF. First I spent 2 weeks at the PhD-school at Texel, right after that I went to help out with muon chamber installation at CERN for 3 weeks, then I spent one hectic week back in the Netherlands and off again for 4 weeks with my band all over Asia and Australia.
One of the most difficult things about being away for so long is having to start up again. Last two weeks I have been doing just that. I had some 600 emails to go through. Trying to get my brain back into fundamental physics I read some articles on supersymmetry. And last three days of the past week all the particle physics PhD-students in Netherlands (including me) attended Topical Lectures on "Supersymmetry and Higgs" hosted at NIKHEF. The bulk of the lectures was given by Abdelhak Djouadi, who was a very good lecturer, but as most scientists he was a little optimistic on what can be done in four lectures of 45 minutes each. It was extremely useful for me, as many subjects concerning Supersymmetry were discussed in detail. And even if I didn't follow it all right away, I can go back to his notes and study them if need be.
I have also finally started to look into some ATLAS software. Soon I will write my own program(s) to run analyses on data coming out of the detector, and who knows discover Supersymmetric particles or something totally new. The end of the year is drawing near and the next year looks like it's gonna be lotsa work and exciting developments. I will be stationed at CERN for at least a quarter of next year, when me and my colleague Zdenko will be helping out with installation of the muon spectrometer. (Read my previous blogs for more details.)
Now comes the big story about my trip/tour over the Pacific:
We started off on the 2nd of november from Amsterdam to Tokyo with a stop in London. We had too much stuff with us, as we were bringing enough t-shirts and cd's and sweaters to sell for four weeks. But somehow we got through the check-in without paying any extra. It was great to see all our friends from two years ago back at our shows. Some of the Japanese shows did not go as planned, but overall it went really well. Good bands, good crowds and good response. This time we also had more time to see the cities we went to. So what do they have a lot of in Japan?

Lotsa tall buildings.

Lotsa beautiful traditional temples which are being protected by fearless samurai warriors.
There are also many types of food which I have never seen anywhere else. Like fried grasshoppers or pickled horse-raddish roots. It can be tough on vegetarians like us, who don't speak any Japanese, but Indian restaurants are all over and serve very good food.
Next stop after Japan was Melbourne, Australia. Nobody from my band has ever been down under before, so it was a great adventure for all of us. The people organising our tour there were really nice and took good care of us. However they did manage to loose the key of our/their van every single night. But since the weather was always hotter then 20 degrees (Celsius), we had no problems waiting around and just enjoying ourselves. We went to swim in the ocean a couple of times, which was like having a vacation. So what do they have a lot of in Australia?

Lotsa kangaroos. We visited an animal farm/zoo where we saw these.

Lotsa other weird animals like this bird or a wombat or a echidna or a koala. Too many to show you all the pictures.
We had much fun walking around Sydney and taking touristic pictures like this.

Then we went even further north in a excruciating 13hour drive to Brisbane where it was even hotter. But after the show our hosts showed us the way to an outside swimming-pool, which was not 'closed' at night. The next day we went to a rain-forest nearby, where my singer almost stepped on a 6 meter long python. It was huge, but got pretty scared of all the attention and the camera's shooting so it turned around and went away. My singer decided that he still wanted to touch the snake, unfortunately the snake didn't sue him for harassment. I met another friend in the rain-forest, which I found out about next day after flying back to Melbourne. A teek decided that it was a good idea to go live in my armpit. I saw it just in time, as it was half way in, so the doctors could take it out without too much trouble.

That's me after the operation with my Australian mate Marty. Australia is a great country and I wish we had more time to spend there.
Then came the most insane four days Vitamin X ever had on tour. The schedule was to play four shows in four different countries in four days. First off was Singapore, where I think I lost three kilo's during the show. The room where we played had no airco and 150 people that showed up went totally mad, as if they didn't feel the heat. This show almost got shot down by authorities, as they were telling the organisers that it was illegal. Fortunately they made a deal that 3 bands out of 6 scheduled could play with us as headliners. We still had time to go the beach the next morning before flying off to Manila, Phillipines. And for the first time in my life I ate yellow watermelon. Yes yellow; it feels, tastes and looks like a watermelon, only it's yellow from inside. Check out the picture if you don't believe me.


So we flew to Manila and stepping out of the airplane was an experience by itself. The second you get out of the terminal, there are people all around you asking if you need a cab or want to buy water or cigarettes. Our friends were thankfully waiting for us outside and got us out of the chaos into the car and on the road which was a total mess. It seemed like there were no rules on the road, everybody just driving however and whenever they want. No lanes, not many traffic lights just everybody using the horn all the time. Later on 500 people showed up at our show and another 150 people decided to stay outside, because they did not want to pay to get in, according to our friend the organizer. The people standing outside told us that they didn't have the money to pay admission, but the organizer said they try to do this at every show. Before but especially after the show many people from the audience wanted to take a picture with us and have our cd autographed. It made me feel like some kind of rock-star, which I didn't like, but who am I to tell these people what not to do.
Next morning we were supposed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but our flight company decided 5 days before that our flight was gonna leave at 5 o'clock in the evening insted of 7 in the morning. So we were arriving in Kuala Lumpur airport at 8:30 pm. The show was supposed to start at 5pm, but as we called the organizers after arguing with the aircompany, they managed to get the show started at 7pm. Still when we ran out of the airport into the car waiting for us and drove like mad, by the time we got to the show all the six opening bands were finished. Hundreds of people were standing outside waiting for us. So we ran upstairs to the show-hall with all our stuff. When we entered, the hall was totally full with 500 people and when they spotted us a great roar and applause went up. This made us freeze up and look around to see what people were cheering about, but everybody was looking at us. I wish somebody had put that on film. So we had to set up in 15 minutes and afterwards we played one of our best shows ever. There were so many people on stage taking pictures and filming or just plane dancing and singing along, that we had to ask everybody to get off stage a couple of time during the show. Here is a picture I took of the audience just before we started the gig.


After the show we went around Kuala Lumpur to see the city, where I took this picture of the national bank. I think that after the show at least 50 people asked us if they could take a picture with us and I signed probably 100 of our cd's.
After three hours of sleep we got back into the car, said good bye to our new friends and drove to the airport to catch the plane to Jakarta, Indonesia. When we got to the show hall in Jakarta, we decided that since the show hadn't even started we should go to a cheap hotel and get some more sleep. We told the organizers to wake us up in time for us to see one or two of the bands opening for us. When they did wake us up, it was already time for us to play and all the bands were already finished. So we we have played in Malaysia and Indonesia but we haven't seen any local bands. When we got to the show place there were many hundreds of people hanging outside. We went inside and started setting up and doing a soundcheck. In 5 minutes the organizer comes running to the stage telling us that we should hurry up, because the crowd is 'getting excited outside the doors', as he frased it. So we told him we needed another ten minutes and he ran back downstairs. Before the ten minutes were up, we heard a noise coming from the entrance and a huge stream of people was pouring inside. One of the first people in was the organizer, who told us that they "broke through the door. You have to play NOW!". So we did everything possible in those last moments and the organizer got on the mike to calm people down and introduce us.
The show was really wild and just as in Singapore, there were too many people inside a much too small room. So after 3 songs I was completely wet with sweat and oxygen was hard to come by. After the show I squizzed my t-shirt only to see at least 2 liters of sweat pour out onto the street. There were in total 800 people at our show and lotsa people again wanted us to be on a picture with them. So I decided that I want some pictures of these people as well, so here is one of them.

We spent another two days in Indonesia just relaxing, seeing some sights and visiting another rain-forest, this time without teeks. On one hand it was sad to go home as there was so much still to see, but on the other hand I wanted to get back to my girl-friend and my friends and my bed.
It was a great adventure. And as I look back over my blogs this whole year has been full of adventures and there should be many more to come.