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This morning Li-Xia went to the town hall to hand in her naturalisation appeal to the Queen. They complained about her birth certificate, as it had not been legalised. She understood that this was essential for getting the Dutch nationality. Only after we brought a visit to the town hall we found out that the non-legalised birth certificate is sufficient, but that they would like to have a legalised one.
To get a legalised birth certificate, you have to:
Somehow, I missed my parents, who could not attend because they are on some round trip through Indonesia. On Saturday, I was all the time looking forward to them coming, and then realizing again that they would be able to attend. This made me feel like it was less of a birthday party then I had in mind. Now, I understand a little more, how it is if one of your beloved ones has passed away.
My parents had said that they would phone every week, but it seems they have difficulties finding a phone with which they can make international phone calls. We had the same problem when we were in Beijing last summer.
Yesterday evening, I typed the list of publications from the back of the three books I have of Shinzou Maeda, in order that I could mail them to Gabriel Laderman of Zita Books.
We hope that it is caused by the medicine (anti-biotics) she has been getting for one week now, and are finished by today, otherwise we are definitely going to visit a doctor. We do not understand how she can manage with so less sleep. Many children of her age sleep at least 12 hours per day, but she manages with 8 or less, leaving us no time to do some of the jobs that have to be done around the house.
We parked our car with the parking place of Li-Xia's office, which is free of charge for us. We first went to a kind of drug store to catch some prints of photographs. Our experience over the past has shown us that they have the best quality for a cheap price. Nowadays, we need about 3 to 4 prints of each picture we take: one for Annabel's album, one for our album, and the others to be send or given to family and friends.
Li-Xia also wanted to look for a new brush, and while she was doing this, I noticed a couple who were visually talking about whether they should buy a certain kind of bottle (shampoo or such). I noticed that the man was wearing a hearing aid, so apparently he (and may also she) was deaf. I enjoyed watching them communicate. After Li-Xia had payed for the pictures and the brush, we decided that she would go ahead to the Yves Rouche beauty shop, and that I would follow her slowly, because Annabel has given us troubles at this particular shop, as seemed to be magically attracted by all the products on display.
Half way the shop, I waited at the square in front of the town hall, where there were many pigeons. While we were looking they suddenly flew up in the sky and circled between the buildings that surrounded the square, and I decided to continue.
The next shop we attended was the baby house, where we looked for a car seat for Annabel. It was rather quiet in the show, so we talked a lot with the owners. They were surprised that you had to speak Dutch if you wanted to be a Dutch citizen. Over and over again, I noticed that many people do not know about the problems that foreigners experience in our country. It made recall a TV program by a extreme right wing party that was broadcasted yesterday evening. (In the Netherlands there are many political parties, some of which carry extreme views, but they all have a equal right to broadcast political messages.)
I brought a short visit at a small second hand photo camera shop, while Li-Xia was waiting outside with Annabel, just to check whether he had any zoom lenses. It seems that there are more and more cameras in his shop every time I visit it. The owner made a remark (to the only other customers in the shop) stating he was not married, which was what I had expected. He is an example of the rare kind of shop owners who are making money out of their hobby (collecting cameras in his case).
At a small square (close to some bookshops) we decided to split up. Just before we did so, we met a Chinese friend of us. Li-Xia immediately started to talk Chinese, so I decided to bring a short visit to two of the bookshops. In the first bookshop, De Slegte, I saw two interesting books: one about threes, and the other about landscape art. Both are about $30, which is a good price, I think. In the other bookshop, I noticed that time was running faster than I had expected, and that I had to leave for McDonald's (that is where we had agreed upon to meet again) soon. I never seem to have enough time to look around in bookshops. But on the other hand, I know that visiting bookshops makes me weary.
While walking to McD, a came to a small square, upon which there are two large trees. And while trod with my feet through the many leaves, I noticed a crowd in front of a fashion shop. They were having a miss <name-of-the-shop> election. Earlier on, I already had wondered about what seemed to be a white mattress in front of the shop.
At McD, I found Li-Xia waiting for me. I ordered the usual: a hamburger menu, and two hamburgers. When we have finished, we decided to split up again. She went to the open air market to buy some vegetables, and I went to a electronics shop, to ask whether the power adapter of my CD player has been repaired (or substituted by another one). It had not come back yet.
After Li-Xia found us again, there is only one thing left to buy: fresh milk. Our local store were we usually buy milk, did not have fresh milk, at least not really fresh milk. We decided to split up again. I ended up watching this miss election again. It was not very interesting at all, because the girls took a long time to get dressed, and I wondered why all the other people were watching. I felt I only watched because Annabel was quiet. Annabel felt asleep (as usual) when we drove home.
This morning I was waiting on Susan's room, while she was phoning with Jürgen. My eyes started wandering over her white board, which hasn't been weeped for a long time. The longer I watched the more I saw. I have asked her to take a picture of it, and put it on the web. Maybe, I make a clickable map of it, with explanations about what everything means.
This afternoon (Saturday afternoon to be precise), there were two Chinese movies were shown in the Dish hotel in Enschede by the department for education of the Chinese ambassady for all the students at the University and at the ITC. The movies were 16mm movies projected on a white wall (with some nails), and the quality of the projection (and the sound) was not very high.
The first movie was played in Macau (the Spanish Hong Kong), where a Spanish man felt in love with a Chinese girl with long hair. Afterwards, several Chinese remarked to Li-Xia that the movie was about us. There are indeed some similarities: Li-Xia does have long hair, and I also love her beautiful hair. (But I am not Spanish!)
The second movie was completely different. It was about a boy and a girl, who were send to Moscow just before the Second World War. The girl ended up in the hands of a crazy German general who decorated her back with a tatoo. (This movie was based on a real story.) The cruelties of this cannot be understood by those who have not experienced them by themselves. Wars are the most evil things in the world, and a sure proof of the evil which lives in human beings.
This evening on TV there was a movie about the life of Joseph based on the story found in the book Genesis. They gave some interesting twists to the story, as for example Joseph telling his story to Pontifar, after Pontifar's wife has falsely accused him of trying to rape her. Nevertheless, I found the general story biblically accurate and very interesting to see.
The last movie I saw, which was still going on when I started writing this, was about a man who had a very expensive collection of China, which had disappeared after his death.
At the brink of the Information Age, scientists should no longer be forced to compete in writing papers, but be encouraged to work together to make scientifical knowledge known to all in a structured manner. The Word Wide Web seems to be such a nice tool for making up-to-date annotated bibliographies for existing scientifical papers, as a means of bringing scientists together. Scientists should be rewarded for investing their time in making knowledge available.
Yes, I confess, I did have a short peek inside, but backed-out before I did see anything at all. It seems, that I, as a Christian, do not grow stronger in resisting the temptations of the world. True spirtual strength lies in the continuous acknowledgement of one's total lack of strength in resisting evil. Apostle Paul wrote (in Romans chapter 7 verse 24):
Let 1,2,3,4,5,6 have rank 0. Let the arrangements that result by moving one element (i.e. whose maximal in-order subsequence has length five, like 2,3,4,1,5,6) have rank 1, the ones that arise from rank 1 by moving one element have rank 2 (if unranked!), and so on... all the way to 6,5,4,3,2,1, which has rank 5.
Replace books trying to decrease the rank if possible. Also, note that even within the same rank there are better and worse arrangements: there are two elements in 2,1,3,4,5,6 capable of yielding rank reduction, but only one in 2,3,4,1,5,6 -- the rank being 1 for both. Of course the first one has _more_ in-order subsequences of length five.
The mutation problem comes to mind: convert string v to string w by insertions/deletions of elements in the minimum number of steps.
What you have to do, I think, is draw a graph with points for the books and lines between each of the two books that are in the correct order. With each possible rearrangement of the books, you have the look at the resulting graph. Now write down the squares of the number of lines connected to each of the points. Pick the arragement of which the sum of the squares is the highest.
Lets look at an example: Given the sequence 6, 1, 3, 4, 5, what is the best place to fit in book 2?
Lets look at the sequence: 6, 2, 3, 4, 5 with book 1 to be inserted. The only two sensible candidates are: