The life of Niek Storteboom

Another year gone

2008-07-14T22:35:00.002+02:00

and many more to go.

*Knocks on a load of wood*

Another....

2008-07-04T08:06:00.003+02:00

.....off the list.

I'm running out of European countries to visit. Today -> Portugal. A few days on the beach, boating, karting, and above all, good food and wine. After this -> Zolder racetrack and of course Dance Valley. Tiesto is giving a concert in honour of my birthday, in case you didn't know.

Finally

2008-05-20T18:25:00.002+02:00

Connected at home

High school gym class

2008-04-21T10:58:00.002+02:00

Acting like you're 13 years old is fun.

Especially when it's 1am on Saturday night, at a party at a studentloft located on *the* red light distict street in A'dam. Hanging upside down on the beams, legs locked, trying to drink a rum & coke cheered on by 20 girls whoohooooo-ing you is loadsa fun.

Untill you realize you're a tad heavier than you were 15 years ago, almost falling on your face and your legs hurt like mad. Luckily I managed to de-upsidedown myself wihout breaking anything.

Acting my age? Never!

British Biased Co.

2008-04-11T20:16:00.000+02:00

Boys & their toys in Prague

2008-03-15T08:02:00.001+01:00

Just FYI: we're on two seperate sleds.

Athens in the snow

2008-02-18T15:25:00.002+01:00

This is the reason why I'm currently still in Greece. You haave to see it to believe it. The country grinds to a screeching halt when it snows. I will fly out later today. 36 hours too late. Plenty of funny stories to tell though....

NYE in Munich

2008-01-06T14:18:00.001+01:00

In chronological order:

Airport pick-up taxi

Grocery shopping for the party

Posing next to my dream car

The party itself

The afternoon after. Lovely walk in a wintery Munich.

It was a fantastic 2 day timespan. Rides in a Golf R32, BMW 335ix, the CTR & the GT3RS. Drinking good beer and Moet. Good food.

But best of all, great people and an awesome party.

A bunch of bricks, some cement and a roof

2007-12-21T16:22:00.000+01:00

Well, as I predicted here 2007 was going to be the year that I would dive myself into the world of debt.

Why would I do such a thing, I hear you ask.

Well...................for the first time in my life I can call myself a homeowner.

Yes, Niek, the most immature person on the face of the planet bought himself a house. A real house. With a garden and everything. YES!!!!

I will put some pictures up, but suffice to say, I'm quite pleased. And scared. But mostly pleased.
Some important stats:
20 KMs from work
5 KMs from the beach (see the priorities)
In the centre of Haarlem, one of the nicest cities in the Netherlands

The house is from the 19th century, completely renovated. And it has (shock horror) a walk-in closet, a bit too nice of a bathroom and a lovely kitchen. But enough about the girly bits. It also has a fully integrated speakerwire system in the walls for my stereo system. Nice..... :-)

Can't wait to move in.

Oh, and before I forget.... Merry Christmas!

Pictures from the fall

2007-12-12T23:04:00.000+01:00

Parties, exhibitions, cities and just various other stuff

Well, I have a new laptop now and I'm clearing out and checking out the pics I've taken the last few months.

Some I want to share.

Did a 10km walk thorugh Paris some weeks back. Unbelievably touristy I know, but hey. You're there, you gotta take a pic of the Eiffell tower.

Milan Motorcycle Show. Work sucks.

See above comment.

Me driving taking a pic on my mate Erik driving the Peugeot 309 GTi-16you can see in the mirror. About an hour before his engine blew up while he was racing me.

My good mate Chris who I visited in Goettingen with the lovely Aleksandra.

Better pics to follow. Going to be in Munich for NYE. Should be good.

Cities you love to hate (and love)

2007-11-23T10:51:00.000+01:00

Spend 2 days in Paris this week and had one night off. So I walked from my hotel to the Eiffel tower -> Trocadero -> Arc -> Concorde -> Eifell Tower again -> hotel. All in all some 10 KMs.

So...Paris at night. Impressive. But ultimately so not for me.

I've never really liked Paris, and never will. That "Je ne sais quoi" (loving the irony) just isn't there. It's dull. And up its own arse.

Just like London for that matter. LA. Milan. Beijing. They just don't it for me.

All are cities you're supposed to love, but I just don't.

On the other hand: I love Munich, Prague, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Napoli, Athens & Stockholm. Not the first choices most people would pick for a city break, but I defy you to have a bad time in one of these places. It's impossible.

Fahrste quer, siehste mehr.....

2007-10-31T13:13:00.000+01:00

Or : "when driving sideways, you can see a whole lot more"

With many thanks to www.frozenspeed.com and www.broosbakens.com

Nobel Peace Prize

2007-10-23T14:36:00.000+02:00

Normally I'm a calm guy. I can get annoyed with something sometimes, but usually I just let things slide, have a beer and see the world for what it is: a wonderfully messed up place in which there's a lot of fun to be had.

One thing has rattled my chain in the past few weeks though, which is (of course) the risible awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to that laughing stock of a politician: Al Gore.

This pissed me off for various reasons, not least of which is that dumb movie of his.

I'm not going to waste my breath on saying (yet again) that it's a complete joke, that "movie". Instead I would like to emplore to read this well written piece:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf

and then make up your own mind.

What angered me most of all though is that an Institute which I have admired in the past, allowed itself to used for the greatest BS campaign since "Saddam has WMD's" was the no.1 news item.

Whereas I was hoping in 2000 that Gore would win the presendency, I'm now glad he didn't. At least Bush is honest about the fact (and just dumb enough to hide it) that he's an inconsiderate prick lusting for oil. Gore tries to hide the fact that he's a power and camera fetishist by saying :

"I care about the world....let me save you from certain death"

That he wants to do so by banning everything to control the people, while he spends $40K a year on heating his own mansion he just neglects to mention.....

But in the end there is indeed some hope at the end of the tunnel.

He created a "scientific documentary", but luckily the committee realized that giving him the Nobel prize for Science would just going one step too far towards looney land. Thank fuck for that. There is hope!

Last month

2007-10-04T09:59:00.000+02:00

Boring and not so boring.

Racing around, trashing rental cars, drinking on the Thalys, remembering why I don't like Paris, helping my kid sis with her new house and some other new more exciting stuff. Will inform when I have something tangible to report :-)

Define irony....

2007-09-14T21:30:00.000+02:00

Make an appointment on the day that you're debt-free for the first time since Uni to meet a man who will make sure you will have a HUGE debt for a few decades to come.....

Feck.

Holiday review

2007-09-09T19:32:00.000+02:00

Eeerrr.....

Beer, Wodka, party, fun, friends and 4500kms driven. Fecking awesome.

Link to some of the pics:

Click

or : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14028&id=536535842

Signing off

2007-08-22T09:53:00.000+02:00

Wellllll,

Less than 2 days and counting before I finally go on my holiday and leave this godforsaken country with all its rain behind me for a few weeks. Excited? Me? Just ever so slightly.

I have just one day fixed, and that day actually made me decide on what to do. I had to go to Poland anyway, why not make a tour out of it? *takes map out* And why not go here, and there and actually, I could go waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there as well!

Indeed, why not?

Acquired for the trip:
- A 2nd bigger car (more comfortable, has a big boot for the 15 cases of Tyskie I plan to import into NL on the way back)
- A new camera (to make sure you have enough pics of me pulling faces when I get back)
- A few maps (hate Sat Nav. Whatever happened to navigating your way by using the position of the stars/sun/moon?)
- Some vocabulairy I've completely forgotten in Slavic. Like Piwo. Very important.
and plenty of local currency in order to pay all the speeding fines I will surely collect.

But a preperation of course can never be full without a previous night of sheer debauchery and (more importantly) stupidity.

So me and 3 good mates will go to a concert tomorrow night.......of the Bloodhound Gang.

Never could prepare me better for this trip than to shout along the words to the Ballad of Chasey Lain, I feel.

Talk to you in September!

Exercise

2007-08-09T23:44:00.000+02:00

Had some exercise for the first time in quite some months last week. After going to the gym regularly last year I proceeded to do........ nothing at all this year.

Save for the 25km ride in the Eifel mountains last week that is. The first bit was mostly down hill (got up to 80 clicks) but the uphill bit was just a bit...eeeerrr....uphill.

After huffing and puffing for some time I managed to get to the top of a 4km 10% climb I proceeded to have a rest, and a ciggie of course.

The rest was easy peasy though. And then I decided to live a healthy life, eat better, stop drinking beer and of course: stop smoking.

And then I came to my senses. Life's too short, especially when you spend it racing back home on the German autobahns hitting the rev limiter in 6th on a sports bike.

Airside

2007-07-18T10:49:00.000+02:00

A new record was esthablished for me. 4 countries & 4 flights (~3 hours each) in 52 hours.

OK, one of them was airside, which now puts the total of cities I've only visited airside to 2. Prague & Budapest. Luckily, both these cities will be visited quite soon during my "Niek acting stupid, making friends and influencing people Tour 2008".

I'll be driving my E30 on the E30 heading east for starters. Then south. Some more south..... and some more south. Maybe I end up in Prague, maybe in Zagreb, maybe in Tirana. We'll see.

Another year full of experiences

2007-07-12T00:06:00.000+02:00

27!

Looking back: Things done in the last year

- Got my dream job

- Visited tons of countries I've never been to and revisited places I haven't seen in a decade

- Only have been in a few crashes

- Reduced level of beer intake -> got thinner

- Visited some old friends

- Got good at drifting

and had some really good meals

Looking forward: Things to do in the next year

- Travel some more

- Work a lot

- Ride faster and better

- Meet more old friends

A few things that are unsure yet, but I'll keep this up to date. But suffice to say, I'll be holding on to keeping my immature self alive whilst growing up at the same time. :-)

Nicknames

2007-07-06T16:42:00.000+02:00

I collected some funny nicknames in my day, from rude to extremely rude usually.

Cumstain is what one of my best mates calls me for instance. I wonder why I hang out with him sometimes....

Other ones include everything from
- Machlas (Nikos -> footballer)
- Jin Mao (skyscraper in Shanghai)
- Panlat (Local dialect for a tall, thin guy)
- Wim-Lex (don't ask)
- Nie-kuh (My Chinese name appearantly)

and now of course Niek-San. Gotta love working with Japanese guys.

Advice needed

2007-06-28T10:48:00.001+02:00

Well, as I'm turning 27 in a few weeks, I've decided to get of my arse and get myself something I've always wanted, the only male jewellery allowed : a watch. Now the only question is: which one?

Or for something completely different........

Answers on a postcard.....

A hairy arse and some good musicians

2007-06-04T15:39:00.000+02:00

I saw this live. With a 20 metre wide screen to help out.....

This, on the other hand, was fecking awesome.

Highlight: Slayer, front and centre. In the mosh pit. Whohahahahahaha.

Next weekend......

2007-05-24T16:31:00.000+02:00

Mud, beer, music. Isn't life grand?

From a colleague......

2007-05-15T14:11:00.000+02:00

Did I mention I hate the bastard?