Wednesday, February 25, 2009 by twocatsdesign
I was in my bathroom around 10.30 when I heard a lot of sirens. We live very nearby a highway and my first thought was that a major accident had happened at the highway. But when I turned on the news I heard that a Boeing 737 of Turkish Airlines has crashed during its landing on the Polderbaan. It missed the landing strip and landed in a field between highway A9 and the Polderbaan.



The Polderbaan is a landing strip at 5 km distance of where I live. The plain is broken in several pieces. I don’t know how many people are injured and if people died.
We have often seen “almost crashes” it was just a matter of time. I am glad that I wasn’t a witness of this terrible accident.



.This is a picture of a plain heading to Schiphol using the Polderbaan.

I’ll keep you informed

Update: The plain is broken into 3 pieces, 9 people didn’t survive the crash and several are severe injured. Ambulances can come close to scene because the plain is laying in an acre. (ground meant for agriculture purpose), paramedics have to carry people out of the plain to the ambulances. People are moved to a village nearby where they established an emergency shelter.




Schiphol Airport Area

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I wish those who were in this crash, family, friends, paramedics and witnesses a lot of strenght to cope with horrible accident.

My daily bread

I recently got a bread making machine and now I am baking my own bread!



My stomach gets upset from Supermarket bread so I discussed this with one of my friends. She has a bread making machine and is very content with it. At the moment she doesn’t use it and offered me to try it for a while to see if I like it.

The machine is very handy except for the display, it has no light so I can’t see what I am doing. She discussed it with her daughter, and guess what, her daughter has a different type of machine this machine has a light in the display. She doesn’t use it anymore because her family doesn’t like the bread . So she offered me her baking machine for free!!! Isn’t that kind
I already baked four breads, and I am experimenting with different kinds of wheat and things to add to my bread.



My Recipe

So I use 500 g of whole wheat with seeds
320 ml milk/water
1 tbs sunflower oil

Put the milk in the container
add the whole wheat to it
adding the oil to it

Push some buttons and wait for 3.45 hrs

My home smells delicious…and I can’t hardly wait till it’s ready.

In loving memory Mikey

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 by twocatsdesign

Today I got a phone call from the mother of my Scottish friend Mikey. I didn’t know Mikey’s mum, so it was kind of awkward to speak to her. First I had to “set” my ears to English, and than I had a little trouble with the Scottish accent. She told me the sad news, Mikey has passed away last Wednesday at the age of 38 years.

Mikey and I have a special bond, we both have the same very rare bonemarrow disorder DBA and we shared our birthdays. Diamond Blackfan Anemia, is a very rare disorder which we are born with and is very similar to Thalassemia Major and Aplastic Anemia. Our bonemarrow doesn’t make enough red cells to survive, other cells like Thrombocytes and Leucocytes are also decreased. So every month we receive a bloodtransfusion. Mikey also suffered from time to time of Neutropenia, it means that he didn’t make enough white cells, so when he was neutropenic, he couldn’t leave the house because he could get very sick.
Due to Iron-Overload, a thing you can’t avoid it is a side effect of getting so many transfusions, we both developed severe diseases amongst Cardiomyopathy. Mikey passed away last Wednesday due to Cardiac arrest, his heart simply stopped.

I get to know him through an adult DBA-yahoo group eight years ago, and we met him once. I often spoke to him through messenger. He was a big fan of the Hard Rock Cafe and traveled all over the world to visit them, he always bought a T-shirt as a throphy. So one time he decided to come over to see me and take us to the HRC in Amsterdam. We offered him to stay at our house, you can imagine how stressed out I was, but we had a great time, and laughed a lot. We didn’t talk that often about our disorder, most of the time it was just fun. In the past year we didn’t hear much of him, and we already suspect that something was real bad. He had started with new medication to decrease his iron-overload, and since then his condition was getting worse. Last Christmas we send him a card, and we get one back, so he was still alive and kicking. That was the last time we heard from him.

Now it’s so final, I shall never talk to him on the Internet or receive silly text messages from him. He will never come over again to take us to the HRC. I am glad we’ve met him, and get to know him. We always remember him, his weird kind of humor, his laughter, his craziness and his funny accent. We shall miss him, but we are glad that he is free and now can do what ever he likes.

Goodbye Mikey, have a save trip, say hello to Dawn from me, and we will catch up someday.