The week’s wrap up
How’s my week been, you ask? Or rather, you’ve ended up here, and you want to read something new? Well, all right.
Last Friday, our statues finally arrived from Zimbabwe. That is, two of the three crates finally arrived. The third, the largest of the three containing all the personal goods as well as all the metal works, including four huge masks, is still missing.
At first, it was claimed it was never shipped. Now that it’s clear it was shipped, they’re trying to find it again in the warehouse in Rotterdam. The story continues next week.
I shipped from Zimbabwe with UTi. I know that, even if they retrieve the missing crate, I won’t be doing that again. Sure, they were cheap, but the missing crate also contains my university diploma. These people are putting me through a lot of trouble.
Meanwhile, receiving what we did got, did not stop me from starting selling the statues that we did get. I’m still working on getting all the statues on line, but what’s already there can be found at ShonaBeelden.nl. Yes, the site’s in Dutch, but that’s where we live, innit?
Betsy’s parents are completely wild about the whole thing and one of the statues is already on display at Knipping, where Betsy’s father works, in some huge mall in Wolvega (in the north of Holland, I’m sure many of the Dutchies don’t even know where Wolvega is).
While in Wolvega this weekend, we visited Leeuwarden, to check out this year’s Noorderlicht, an annual photography exhibition. This year, it’s centered around pictures taken in Arabic countries. Sadly, we were misinformed about opening times and missed the most interesting part of the exhibition: pictures by Arab artists made in Arab countries. Luckily, this exhibition runs until early next year, so there’s a reasonable chance we’ll be able to check out what we missed.
Also, I finally got round to reading ‘Does your meter work?!’ by Jim Soliski. I know Jim through Travelhog.net, where currently 31 of his stories are listed. He self-published a book earlier this year and I got to deliver a quote for it (ANOTHER of my claims to fame). In short: I liked it.
Bombs!
When I’m unlucky, I get as much as 100 spam emails per day. But today, I got the best one, ever. It invited me to buy rocket propelled grenades and anything else I might need to perform a terrorist attack (no kidding). Here are some snippets:
“You’re invited to shop for large selection of bombs and different kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the following types of rockets you will be able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power stations, bridges, factories and anything else that comes your mind. Most items are in stock and available for next day freight delivery in the USA. Worldwide delivery is available at additional cost. Prices are negotiable.”
It even listed today’s specials. Here’s one:
******* AIR BOMBS *******
OFAB-500U HE fragmentation air bomb
Fuel-air explosive air bombs -Not in stock
BETAB-500U concrete-piercing air bomb
ZB-500RT incendiary tank
500-KG SIZE RBK-500U unified cluster bomb
RBK-500U OAB-2.5PT loaded with fragmentation submunitions
RBK-500U BETAB-M loaded with concrete-piercing submunitions-Not in
stock
RBK-500U OFAB-50UD loaded with HE fragmentation submunitions
And then it went on to list some references:
“Our clients are well known Al-Qaida, Hizballah, Al-Jihad, HAMAS, Abu
Sayyaf Group and many other terrorist groups. We are well known
supplier in the market and looking forward to expand our clientage
with assistance of Internet.”
Man. I’m no fan of that Global Supercop. But this is a bit too much.