Category: 101 Happy Hotelier

All you may want to know about Happy Hotelier and his blog

My First Five Twitter Followers

Twitter is fantastic, but soooo slow!

I’m not sure, but I assume the sequence of Twitter is right. I’ve developed a very slow way (more or less) to quickly scan my Twitter followers (from bottom to top): It does take a little bit of copying and pasting, but the result is nice: You get a faster loading page than the actual page on Twitter Twitter | People Who Follow HappyHotelier:

No Avatar Twitter ID Site
5 wilhelmus William Bakker
4 globetrotteri Carrie Marshall
3 stephenjoyce Stephen A. Joyce
2 roadup Jim Stanger
1 travelrants Darren Cronian

These people are my first five Twitter followers.

Three of this Five I’ve met IRL (In Real Life).  And I like them! …Like I said: “Twitter is fantastic”

WordPress Update to 2.7

In case you’ve seen strange things happen here. I was just in the process of upgrading to WordPress 2.7.
Pff…. All seems intact.
I Kept only 3 themes to switch to and from. See the side bar. Need to update some items of the the Newspaper theme and will than be ready…

BTW I’m testing a Polls widget. Please be so kind to answer my poll which of the three themes you like best?
[poll id=”2″ type=”result”]

Looking Back to 2008 (3): The Blog, January – March

215 posts in 2008 opposed to 166 posts in 2007 – Many developments worth mentioning:

WiWiH Hospitality and Travel Bloggers Community
  • January 2008:
    Community building – Published my second T-List Ranking update, Continued to ask attention for the Travel Bloggers Community at WiWiH which more or less died in the course of 2008 from lack of interest and other developments.
    I started asking attention for Daren’s and various other Travel Blogging Carnivals. Alas, during the year Darren discontinued his Carnival as the weekly scheme proved to much of a hassle.
    I posted about the strange marriage between Ian Schrager and Bill Marriott. They still seem to be working together: Here is a link to the teaser Edition Website and here is a Youtube video I found of the Edition Lauch party:
  • Februari 2008:
    I got enthusiastic about mini blogging like Tumblr, and about Travel Bloggers Hopping. I made preparations for my first Travel Bloggers Meeting at ITB Berlin.
    • ITB BERLIN 2008 TIPS FROM THE T-LIST
  • March 2008:
    Visited ITB Berlin and the Phocuswright – Tips from the T-List Berlin Blogger Summit. Found out that I needed to update my equipment, which I finally did shortly before the end of 2008. Had a mayor computer crash at my office and although I use to have a reasonable Backup policy, I cost me a lot of time to get everything in order. The main advantage is, that the former office computer crashed every time I tried to crop or edit only one photo. With the new equipment, later combined with the acquisition of the new CS3 Adobe suit, I don’t have those kind of problems anymore. Started my Quote of the Day category.

Happy 2009! – Oliebollen and New Year’s Concert


Happy New Year!
On another forum an insatiable curious lady asked me yesterday: “What will you be doing ?” and that is a good item for my first post of 2009.

We looked after some guests. We had some typical Dutch Oliebollen. Oliebollen are sweet dumplings. They taste a bit like donuts. Ours were filed with some raisins as you can see them stick out from them on my photo. In addition we sipped some – better than Champagne – sparkling wine (Creme d’Alsace and Creme de Burgundy).

As usual my DW (Dear Wife) and I were a bit floored and watched, also a Dutch tradition, two Dutch stand up comedians commenting the year 2008. We laughed a bit. We are always a bit subdued in remembrance of my mother in law who passed away January 2, 2003. Ever since we aren’t in the mood to party excessively into a New Year anymore.

Thereafter we watched the London life coverage on BBC with the countdown and magnificent fireworks at the London Eye and went to bed. BTW the BBC has a nice World Fireworks Compilation Here

Actually I would have liked to be in Vienna, to waltz into the New Year and to visit the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra life.

Today we watched it on TV. It is hardly possible to get tickets. Via e-mail you can enter their lottery as of tomorrow. I tried last year to no avail, but I’ll try again. If you don’t try I’ll have a bigger chance:-)

The conductor of Russian Israely Argentinean ancestry asked for peace in 2009. Especially important in the Mid East now that the Israeli and Hamas are misbehaving again.

The Austrians do a tremendous job with this worldwide concert coverage. In the pause they show beautiful footage of their magnificent country. This year they asked attention for the city of Linz, which, together with Vilnius, is appointed European Cultural City of 2009.

My city The Hague is in the race to become European Cultural City of the Year in a future year. I will report about that separately.

We will forgo the traditional TV coverage of the New Year’s Ski Jumping in German Garmisch Partenkirchen to visit a New Year’s party of friends.

And, tell me, dear readers: What did you do yesterday and today?

Looking Back to 2008 (2): World News

I found it tremendously good news that with their second attempt Earthrace succeeded to circumnavigate the world with bio fuel in a record time. See their Blog for the day to day coverage of this adventure.

As I said in my prior post I’ll try to be as concise as possible when pondering 2008 and will be spilling my thoughts over several posts.

I enjoyed the year tremendously, despite the economic crisis.

Three most important worldnews Items of 2008 to my view:
I tend to stay away from most of the news. That may change in the near future, as (according to Alltop) I’m now a respected news source for The Netherlands.

  1. A new President for the USA
    I believe Mr. Obama will put the USA again on the map where it belongs: A Super decent Super Power as a role model. His choice of ministers gives a strong impression of his will to bridge differences rather than to enhance them. This maybe wishful thinking from a guy who grew up in the “Polders” (i.e. reclaimed land) with our famous “Polder Model” (i.e. endlessly discussing the differences until almost everybody agrees to a solution).
  2. The Olympics in China
    The Olympics did a tremendous job for China to make it more visible in the world as it should be. I particularly liked the impressive and impeccable organization of the spectacle including rockets to keep the rain away in stead of the students. I love the new Herzog Meuron “Knotted Olympic Stadium” I have a feeling the authorities have become a little more relaxed about freedom of speech partly because of the protests by the athletes and the press. I was proud to see my own small country The Netherlands ending relatively high in the medal count.
  3. The bankruptcy of the financial institutions
    I have always learned from my forebears that you shouldn’t trust bankers, although they are usually immaculately dressed. Almost all have proved a tremendous lack of due diligence. The bailing out of the financial institutions may be wise to prevent 1929/30 alike situations, but I have a strong feeling we have to get rid of all bankers. Kick all incompetent dummies out. Let’s start fresh from zero, scratch, zilch. Let banks be led by sensible diligent housewives who know how to flip a dime three times before spending it and who I trust not to spend anything on derivative nonsense. I’m not even talking about the hedge fund managers and the like: Back in the 60ies to 80ies we used to call them corporate raiders. In fact they are mere buccaneers or even thugs. Although I strongly disagree with the ideas behind Guantanamo Bay, I believe that’s a place they belong while their fortunes should be confiscated and used to curb the losses in bailing out the economy. I’m not a communist and neither a socialists, but the lesson of 2008 is that most financial guys have crossed the line and we (and particularly our “leaders”) all stood there and let them do it. I hope 2009 will be give us much more of “Back to Basics”. Let’s throw the greed out of the window!

What is your view?