I bought another bike yesterday. This one cost me €50, plus €10 for a clamp-style lock for the rear wheel (I’m going to get a second, even heftier lock soon). It’s somewhat worse than the bike that was stolen, and it rattles a lot. My hope is that I will be able to sell it at the end of my time in the Netherlands for most of the purchase price.
You can see the lock on the wheel
I also met with one of the guys from PUSCII. He seemed like a very interesting, intelligent guy, but also very intense. He apparently spent 10 days in jail for chaining himself to railroad tracks along with other protestors to block the movement of trains carrying equipment for the war in Iraq. The charges were eventually dropped in response to bad press. He’s a true old-school computer guy, he even has a Commodore 64. He seemed to feel like the hacktivism scene in Europe was getting stale from a peak in the late 90s with the tech bubble. PUSCII at this point doesn’t have much of a physical presence, and he said it’s been hard attracting volunteers. He did give me some tips on other groups that might be more active (including a couple in nearby Amsterdam). So I’ll probably try to check that out.
The PUSCII sign
For dinner I cooked up this thing that’s sort of a Turkish equivalent of the frozen burrito. It was actually fairly tasty with vegetables and spices and stuff (I cooked it in the oven instead of the microwave, which usually helps). But what was really bizarre is that actually printed(?) onto the wrapper/tortilla part of it is the word “Mmm”. You can see it in the photo below. When I first saw it, I thought I was imagining it, or that I’d somehow failed to remove all the plastic covering. But no, it’s actually printed on there with food coloring or something. As a general rule, I try to avoid readable food, with special exemptions for alphabet soup/cereal.
"Mmm"
Looks like a hot pocket with letters.