At last, Langlaufen

A few weeks ago I got me a pair of beautiful langlaufskis from the internet for only € 15. They were standing there all the time in the barn staring at me, but no snow, no sir. Now at last, snow! But, the thaw was going to set in today! So, I got up this morning at seven and hit the snowy trails. For more details read my biking blog.
After an hour or so I found out why the skies where that cheap, the soles of the shoes got of completely. But hey, I am a son of a shoemaker, so I will glue them together again.

Folding papers

The six tons of paper arrived yesterday. The papers are not folded by the printer. We use them as they are, but about 10.000 copies are send by mail or distributed on the counter of stores and therefor have to be folded one extra time. It is Christmas holiday, so this is an opportunity for the kids to earn some hard cash. And with the music and drinks it is fun tot do. This is a few hours work.

The voltige girth

The Voltige competition team is very ambitious. They work very hard and win a lot. In 2006 the two oldest members of the team, Milou and Nicky, will start solo also. In 2005 they were third in the National Championships and in 2006 they want to come out again. The two competition teams that are trained by Hellen become more and more professional, so they need good material too. This year we got the new bigger horse Zazie that improved the results dramatically. Now they also needed a new harness for the horse. On internet they tried to find a used one, but that is very difficult.
A completely new competition harness with white girth and head-stall costs almost 1400 euro.

The team earned some money with demonstrations and had 300 euro in their savings account. They got 100 last minute euro’s extra and a donation from some grandparents. This was enough to do a bidding on a used girth on a German internet site. It all worked out and we went to Germany (a real voltige country) to buy the girth. On the picture we are in Emden in North Germany, where the girth was sold by a member of a well known German team. With this girth they became European champion and World Champion! A very inspiring idea!

When we came home they had to try it, although it was almost dark and it snowed. They are all very happy. Jazzy jumps on the galloping horse with her hands on the new girth.

The last sold advertorial

There are always people who want to hav a last minute advertisement. The one I got this time came in only 12 hours before delivery of the files at the printer. We fixed it al in time. I donated half of the revenues of this last minute advertorial to the saving fund for a new voltige girth for the competition team of the prinsepaard. They need a new very expensive girth. Luckely we found one on e-bay in Germany. The other half I donated in my own saving fund for my bike. I bought it in Winschoten from a nice old man. It has a nice sexy aluminum frame. Now I can return Johns bike.

So much to say, so little time...

This beautifull woman is the covergirl of my new product,
'The Watersport Krant'. I worked day and night for three weeks, but now at last its finished. 24 pages, an attractive magazine and a nice profit.
In januari we are on two boatfairs to distribute the paper that wil be printed next week in a circulation of 100.000 copies. That is 6.5 tons of paper that will be delivered here 29 december.

That good old Sinterklaas

In Holland we celebrate the birthday of Sinterklaas (Santa Claus, although he is not the same as the US Father Christmas). He brings us presents, 'pepernoten' (gingerbread cubes), and chocolate letters. Each present has a little covering rhyme that has to be read aloud. This rhyme usually concerns the persons mischief. Nicky reads a rhyme about her MSN habbits in relation to her homework. Sometimes the present contains a surprise for the one who gets it. Very common are packages that are hidden somewhere in the house or barn. Twan got this knight because of his obsession with knights, vikings, wizzard kings of angmar and all the weaponery they wear. He made a complete arsenal of weapons at the pottering club with daddy.

A one horse open sleigh

Danita, our good old Shetland Pony, loves to make a sleigh-ride with the kids. The children that come for Therapeutic Horseriding with Hellen are absolutely delighted to ride the sleigh. Twan loves to ride also, although he thinks he is almost to old to have this kind of kids fun. Climbing our mountain is the best part of the ride.

Willem

Here she is, "Willem", you can clearly see the resemblance to her father. Together with her three little brown brothers she is waiting for a new boss.

The Marine Equipment Trade Show

The METS in Amsterdam is the worlds leading show in Marine Equipment. On this show my title "Watersport Krant" is represented by BAAS. They are very busy selling the advertisements. I meet lots of people over here with new products to write about. Some amazing innovations are shown.

The unknown father

Benno, my dog, became father of 9 young puppys. I didn't know, until yesterday. I visited Cor and found this nest of puppys, fel in love with one little cute pup and heard that my dog was responsable for the 9 little fellows. Now I have to deal with this deep feeling I suddenly got for this beautiful black and white lady with deep brown eyes. Oh my, Hellen doesn't like dogs at all, I had to fight for Benno, now I have to fight again. But now Twan and Nicky are on my side. We already have a name...

Why a phone shouldn't be used to take pictures

You press the button, but you didn't intend to shoot the picture. Sometimes you remeber the moment, like the day I wanted to take a picture while driving from behind the wheel.. Sometimes your kids mess around before a mirror. This one I don't remeber, but its obvious that it was taken on board the boat, as was this one, showing someones foot. The floor is always a fine subject for a picture, and the furniture or the waterhose in the stable. And last but not least, the out of focus and out of frame faces of people, mostley your narcistic daughter trying to make a self-portrait. For some stupid reason all these pictures are saved on my hard disk. Now they even made it to the internet!

Submission for the Alchera Project

Digitizing Rickie Lee Jones

One of my all times favorites is Rickie Lee Jones's number The last chance Texaco. I have started digitizing my old record collection and found this beautiful number between Jimmy Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Pink Floyd. The Last chance texaco has this dreamy sound and beautiful lyrics. Now I can hear her on my I-pod. But something is missing, all the tics and hisses from the record are digitally cleaned and now it seems to smooth. I miss the clicks and pits.

I am an idiot...

Muddy trails

Riding the ATB in the fall has more fun, everywhere muddy trails and no walking tourist crowds. A problem is the darkness. I almost got launched because I forgot the pole that closes off the road. Didn't have the light with me because I hate to use it and think I don't need it. How arrogant, yes, folks, that’s me, always overestimating myself, until I am launched to reality and find myself lying in the mud...

Sisters

My mother and her sister Willie, the last of the family generation of my mothers side, on the other side there is only one member of this generation alive, the sister of my father Janny. The two sisters having breakfast squabble about anything like little sisters do. They giggle and chatter about their old boyfriends and how they kissed behind the church. Watching old familypictures one suddenly realizes that in a few years nobody remembers the names of the people on these pictures anymore. What do we know of these people, how did they meet, what did they do, where did they live?

How fragile we are...

The suit...

Working at home has its advantages, one of them I cherish is that there is no dress code. I can work naked if I want. As a matter of fact I sometimes do find myself working in the middle of the night or very early in the morning wearing my night outfit which is nothing more than my skin.
I like wearing casual clothes while working, shorts when its warm or whatever I found lying next to my bed.

I hate the usual white-collar outfit, the suit and tie so I avoid occasions where I have to wear it. When wearing a suit my own children suddenly call me sir and I walk the street unrecognized. On the picture you see me on such a rare occasion, visiting the Busworld Exhibition in Kortrijk, Belgium, for the presentation of the new book about Prevention of Back Aches for bus drivers and other people with a sitting profession. On the picture you also see my good friend John who wrote the book.

Computer garbage

I hate to throw things away, especially when they still work. What you see on this picture are computers, printers, monitors, modems and other computer stuff that I kept, but now will be thrown away. Most machines still work, there are actually 2 laserprinters, some apple computers, and a lot of broken monitors. There is an elektrical typewriter to, do you know what that is? A keyboard and a printer without a computer. Everything is obsolete, too slow, too small, or superfluous. Some monitors still have stickers with phone numbers on it or access codes. I still have a brand new toner cartridge for the apple laserprinter. I never use it anymore, I have one color printer in he network and that’s enough. The computers I work with run under Apple OSX and windows 2000. The computers you see here are far too slow or too small to even run the operating system. But hey, I don’t want to throw them away, I used to work with this stuff, I made things with these machines, books, magazines, newspapers, I earned my living with this pile of junk! So, come and get what you want, you can have it!

Lilys and freesias

These are my favorite flowers. The lily’s because they are absolutely beautiful, and the freesias because they smell so good. I often buy them together, they form a fine bouquet.
Flowers amaze me, they smell good, they have stunning colors and they grow for no other reason then to grow and be beautiful and propagate the race. In fact, I don’t know no other species that shows its reproduction organ in such a proud manner to everyone who wants to see it, although, some people I know...

Chestnuts and Brussels sprouts

Today we found lots of chestnuts in the forest. I love chestnuts with Brussels sprouts, or roasted chestnuts, so I made a beautifull dish with pork chops, Brussels sprouts and chestnuts. I cook the sprouts and the chestnuts together. The chops and the nuts with a wild sauce on a dish make a real good meal for a dark cold night in the fall, after a long hike in the woods. And, what you pick or find in the wild always tastes better!

Fixing bikes

Fixing bikes is a returning job when you are a father. When the days are getting shorter the kids need their lights, so daddy has to fix them. It gives me a strange feeling of satisfaction to do so. I like fixing things, I am good at it, and mostly, I feel very fatherlike when doing it.
More and more I get the feeling that things appreciate being fixed. Like they feel they are taken care off, just like kids feel that you love them and take care.
When sailing, this feeling is overwhelming, because a sailing-boat has a mind of its own and if not treated right it can actually kill you, but when you treat her with love and care, she will save your ass when things are bad.
I am very good with boats, I love them, I feel they want to be treated right and I have developed the skills to do so. Maybe I am more of a thing man then a person man. I usually understand things better then persons, not to mention women. They really puzzle me, including my own daughter.

Circles of light

As circles of light form before my very eyes they emerge as figures through the skyes and twirling in my mind they seem to say the things I see will go away but fear forms knots all down my guts because I know I am going nuts when circles of light form before my very eyes and emerge as figures through the skyes while twirling in my mind to say the things I see will go away as fear forms knots all down my guts because I feel I am going nuts while circles of light form before my very blue eyes and emerge as strange figures through the blackening skyes the rage through my mind making the things I see form knots all down my very guts while I am sinking in circles of frightening light

Submission for The Alchera Project

looking down my own dead body...

Alas! Its my dead body I see
No sounds of sorrow, no mourning
No tears they shed for me

Alas! Its my corpse they handle there
No prayers or speeches
No words of comfort I do hear

Alas! Its my own funeral I go through
No preacher or service
No ceremonie, what do they do?

Alas! Just students around my naked self
No coffin, no peacefull grave for me
No final restingplace, just a cold white shelf

The Alchera Project submission

Picking pears...

Our peartree carried a lot of pears this year. After pruning the tree, it recovered from the peartree disease, and it gives a lot of very good and tasty stew-pears. I cook them with sugar and some secret ingedients to a pulp and sift it to a very oldfashioned tasting pear-sauce. I personaly love it and so do the kids.
My brother Harm and his wife Marijke visited us today taking grandma with them. They helped picking the last pears.This is the result of our hard work, four buckets, that's fourty pots of lovely pear-sauce.

Click on the picture to see Nicky as Japanese Manga Girl

What the world would look like if Japanese Manga Cartoons where realistic.
Here you see the results of a photoshop contest with that theme. Too late to sign in, I decided that Nicky would be my victim. Click on the picture to see the result.

Have a crap on the 'puts'...

This summer we sailed on the ha 97, a traditional sailing ship that was used on the 'Suydersee' to fish on eel. Usualy these ships don't have a toilet on board, but 'Wopke' the owner has two daughters, and they refused to sail with daddy without a toilet, so he had to install one.

We never used the toilet, we are so used to have a crap on the 'puts'(that is a bucket on a rope, used to get water to wash the deck) that we didn't miss the toilet. I always find it remarkable how fast people get used to simplicity.

Not yet on the cover...

Bert realy did his best but Midi is a magazine for women in their fourtys and they like to show some wrinkles. Smooth skinny models don't belong in this magazine. Nevertheless its a great honour to be on this page together with Ivo Niehe and Frits Spits, both famous radio and tv personalities in Holland.
Next week we will know if Hellen made it to the cover.

Ain't that something? My bitch a covergirl? What would be the T-shirt text?

If you can read this, the bitch is modelling...

The Master and his Apprentices

The Master Carpenter overseeing his apprentices, Bart and Michel, and not on the picture: Sven, Robbin (with 2 B's), Twan, Jacco, and little Mart.
They all admired the wooden toys of Twan, that we brought as examples of what can be made by an attentive and diligent apprentice.
The Master works as a volunteer in the communicty centre. As usual all the doors where locked and nobody knew where to find the keys and the (well-payed) social worker that would be there to open the door wasn't there.

A horse and a wife...

A horse and a wife,
a fork and a knife,
thats the way you spell real life, ride on...

or was it

a knife a fork
a bottle and a cork
thats the way you spell New York?

With this cocaine running around my brain
I realy dont know what I meant to say with this picture
Salvador Dali climbing the step-ladder to
paint one of his light paintings perhaps?

Or is it Bert Strootman trying to make the picture that will win a prize?
Or is it Bert, just doing his job,
taking pictures for MIDI, a famous dutch magazine?

This is the result, a horse and a wife, thats real life, ride on...

Trampling the green garbage container

Sometimes weight can be usefull. In our town the garbage is seperated in a green and a grey container, the green for compostable waist, the grey for the rest. The man and the dog are not to be waisted, they just ad their weight to compact the green litter. The dog jumps in on command. He would jump anywhere, if I tell him to. He loves jumping on haystacks, on trailers, anywhere. Now I mention the dog, he is on 4 out of 10 pictures.

Vertigo

I am afraid of heights. Hitchcock's film "Vertigo" came out in 1958, my year of birth, maybe thats the reason. I hate climbing up the scaffold to fix and paint the gutter. The view is beautifull, but I dont care about that. All I feel is this sinking feeling in my gut, this vertigo.
And why do people walking and cycling by feel the need to shout things only they think are funny?

On the cyclepath downunder they pass, shouting their wits to me, while I am clamping to the scaffold and paint the gutter.

Gutterman!

Water kills our house. Through this broken tile, the crack not visible from the ground, water dripped on the woorden roof underneath, dripping and trickling further on the planks of the gutter and soaking everything.
This is the result, after removing all the rotten wood, a beautifull hole.
This means a challenge for GUTTERMAN! And there he is, on his scaffold, the one and only gutterman in his beautifull white coverall! Can you fix our gutter GUTTERMAN?

Corrections by fax...

The faxmachine became obsolete when internet and e-mail was used by almost everybody. But still, the fax is used by some people so, I keep it in order. This week I recieved almost 40 metres of fax, containing all the pages with written corrections of the book I worked on.
Thisis whats left, a box of paper and several empty beercans.

Long time no see...

Hi guy's, its getting darker and so we get inside earlier. We worked very hard here. Got a new horse, got a new piece of gras land that needed attention, the voltige team won the third prize in the National Championship, that meant a lot off work too. I finished two books and started writing another. So, we where pretty buzy this summer. Oh yes, we have sailed two weeks and had a lot of fun.

But now, back again on the internet, hope I will find the time to write and work on the blog.

The Greatest Voltige Show on earth...

More than 150 people watched the annual show of the Prinsepaard. The children from age 6 to 16 gave away a perfect show of almost 2 hours. On the websiteyou can see more pictures. Bert Wijers also send some pictures.
It was a lot of work, but it payed of!

Six centurys of salt water through my genes...

Pieter Moorman had a school-project about the VOC, the first company ever to be financed with stocks and during almost 200 years the wealthiest and most powerfull trade company in the world. The class organised a trip to the Batavia, a real wooden build replica of a VOC trade ship that sunk on a reef in Australia.

On the picture he explaines some details about the ship. I was the main sponsor of the project, I supplied the tickets. (I got them free with a beautifull barter deal with the Batavia ship-yard.) I also drove one of the cars with kids.

Standing on the main deck I felt the salt water running through my vaines and genes. I felt very at home on this deck and wanted to sail away, searching for treasures, pirates, slaves and trade. I wanted to command the crew in the mast setting the sails. Damn the British and to hell with the Spanjards, lets sail to the Indies!

Another dead owl

Beautifull blazing and biting I held this owlschick in my hand two days ago. It was pushed out of the nest as every year one ore two chicks are. The real struggle for life is everywhere around us. Today I found it in the barn dead. The mother sometimes brings the fallen chicks a mouse, but the chicks in the nest go first. It is complete and has a wingspan from almost 60 centimeters. A beautifull bird. At night I watch the parents fly in and out, very silently and smooth.

The next party, a beach party?

The day after. Another party, Nicky's birthday-party. Let's use the tent again! There's only a slight little problem, the party-animals decided that sleeping on a party was not their idea of having fun. So after the usual formalitys and a brief introduction around the table the party became a real beach party. Playing volleybal, eating, drinking, kissing, chasing horses, and playing more volleybal at four in the morning, and having breakfast at six in the morning and playing more volleybal.
Members of the party-gang were Yvonne, Jenna, Angela, Britt, Caspar, David, Willem and Nicky. Because of messing with sneezing powder David ended in the swimming pool, cooling down as you can see.

A Pyama Party

A pyama party in a tent, a birthday party can't get any better. The flags guide the way to the tent. And what do you do all night? Messing with fire is always entertaining for little boys. This is the gang, from left to right, Job, Gillian, Lars, Stan, Wei Lei,Twan, Stijn, Alwin and Robin. The party was given by Stan, Job and Twan.
The next morning breakfast with daddy's pancakes. Looking very sleepy, but being a man at night means also being a man the next morning!

Our new old boat

This is our (Twan and Me, Father and Son) new project. This is a very special boat, called a 'Leukothea'. It sails, with a sloop rig, you can realy row with it and it has a beautifull round shaped hull, in Dutch we call it a 'vlet'. It's very seaworthy. We use it as a tender and for fun, and to learn how to sail and row. I hate to see little kids in rubberboats with an outboard engine, looking bored, making noise and learning nothing. Give them a boat like this and they learn everything while playing and fiddling around. We debatted a long time about the name and the colour. The one followed the other, it will be black with yellow stripes, and the name will be 'Black Pearl'. And yes, we have a pirates flag.

Never intended to make...

By accident you press the button, or it's still on timer, or whatever, but you didn't intend to shoot the picture. Sometimes you remeber the moment, like the day I wanted to take a picture while driving from behind the wheel.. Sometimes your kids mess around before a mirror. This one I don't remeber, but its obvious that it was taken on board the boat, as was this one, showing someones foot. The floor is always a fine subject for a picture, and the furniture or the waterhose in the stable. And last but not least, the out of focus and out of frame faces of people, mostley your narcistic daughter trying to make a self-portrait. For some stupid reason all these pictures still stand on my hard disk, using precious space. Now they even made it to the internet!

What do I do to make you love me?

Artist: Anupama Bagwe

The gallery of your mind
Still hangs on
Without your smile
It came out strong

The color of your thoughts
From the canvas it came to me
Not prepared I was
Not allowed to see

Now I long to stare
But nowhere you are found
Just the shade of paint from where
I feel that you ‘re around

The tears I felt
Where they yours to shed?
The pain I saw
Do I have to forget?

The picture of your mind
Still burning on my soul
Wondering if we’ll ever meet
And make each other whole

The Deer, The Car and I...

I met this Deer on a beautifull evening on the road to a party where I was going to. The Deer didn't survive our meeting. All I saw of her was a brown flash. I heard a big bang and that was that. This was not the meeting I had in mind.

The Car is made in France and as everybody knows the French have a lot of style, but are not very practical. This also affects their way of building cars. Their cars are beautifull styled, but technicaly not very practical. Beautifull solutions for problems, but nothing easy to fix. And a lot of plastic. This is what needs to be fixed.

And I, whell, I have to repair another car. The parts that need to be replaced cost alltogether almost 600 euro's. So with a lot of glue, polyester, tape and pieces of leather I will tinker everything on its place.

it runs again

It runs again, yes, I put in another engine, because the old one could not be fixed. It runs again, better than ever! I got help from Cor and from Niek. It went in faster than it came out.

Use what you have

My father was a shoemaker and he learned me to use the tools and the materials you have to fix something. In every odd-job we did he used a little piece of leather. Not intentionaly, but just because it was always at hand. Now I am a publisher, I make newspapers, so why use wooden blocks when there are plenty packs of unused newspapers to stuff under the car? I want to overhaul the engine of my van because the distributionbelt broke and some valves are bend. The engine comes out downunder the car, so the car has to go up. With lots of packs of newspapers and a hydraulic jack the engine came out.

Queensday in Groningen

Tired after walking along the traditional street flee market in Groningen. We are having coffee in a pavement on the market in Groningen. We came by train, just for fun, and saw lots of music groups and bands playing on the streets and markets. Queensday in Holland is very special, everybody is on the streets, selling stuff, playing an instrument, eating, having fun. This year is special, because our queen Beatrix celebrates her 25 th anniversary as a queen.

The truth about potatoe chips

I took potatoe's, peeled them and cut them in thin slices. I dried the slices carefully, not to break them. Meanwhile I heated peanutoil in a pan and when hot enough I carefully put the slices potatoe in the oil one by one because they tend to stick together. You have to wait till they are brown, then they are crispy. Kids love to help, Twan helped me with these. When the chips were ready, we wanted to fry more, so I made a dough and we made fried banana balls.

Now an other story. You take a lot of potatoes, don't mind how they look, dehydrate them and grind them to a powder. Then add wheat starch, flavour, sugar, flavour enhancers: monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, milk proteins, flavourings, onion powder, lactose, colour: paprika extract, garlic powder,lactic acid, rice flour, corn flour, maltodextrin, emulsifier (E471, this means a special food add, allowed bij the EEG) salt and dextrose. This mixture makes a paste. With this paste you make a chips like form, that is fried in vegetable oil. Each one exactly the same, so they fit beautifully in a tube. People will love these fake potatoe chips because off the amount of flavour enhancers that are put into it. In fact people become somewhat addicted to these enhancers. So they are willing to pay almost 2 euro for a tube.

How do trees know when to blossum?

Each year I see that trees and bushes of the same species blossum exactly at the same day in the whole country. Suddenly you see the hawthorn blossum everywhere. On the picture you see the old peartree next to our house. It was totaly neglected when we first came here. We pruned it thorougly the first year and now it blossums beautifull and it carries lots of pears in the fall. He blossums together with all his brother and sister pear trees at the same time. Do they communicate? I think that the native American Indians (and a lot of other native people, like the Australian and African tribes) are right when they say that everything that lives is bound by a great Spirit. Unfortunaly we lost the connextion with this Spirit. We look and listen to old grey men dressed in purple robes. We should listen more to the trees and the great Spirit in our harts. Then we would also know how and when to blossum, together with our brothers and sisters.

My beloved apple with his twin screen

Working with the right tools always is a pleasure. I work a lot on this computer. It's an Apple PowerPC G4 working under OS X. The twin configuration of the two monitors is very comfortable. Working on one monitor with all the menu's on the other is a pleasure. I love this machine. This computer is also the server for the network, it contains another apple and several windows computers and printers.

New haystack

We have not enough land to feed the ponys and horses, so we buy hay to compensate. The hay comes from a nature reserve nearby, "de weerribben", an area where they used to make turf and while making turf they created a beautiful area with a lot of water. This hay comes from grass that doesn't get artificial fertilizer and therefor contains little protein. To much protein is not good for our horses. We got 150 packs stacked in our barn. The hay and everything else in the barn is protected with sails against the owls-shit that pollutes everything. On this picture you can see the owlsnest, an ordinary wooden case.

Fishing eel on the IJsselmeer

A fishing boat from Volendam lies on his anchor, the fishermen working on the fishtrap in a little workingboat. The fishtrap is called "Fuik" in dutch. In the Rightward Model the image of the "Fuik" is used to discribe the way people are formed and how they become trapped in their own life. These fisherman remind me on one of my roots, the little village of Urk, once an island in the Suydersee, now part of the polder Flevoland. My grandmother came from this island. Fishermen they where, sunday in the church, monday at sea. Standing at the helm of a botter, an ancient wooden sailing fishingboat of which a lot again are in good condition, I feel totaly happy. I think its the place that's meant for me, where I realy totaly fit in.

Jack Vance, his latest book

The master of dialogue, Jack Vance. In his books everybody uses a language that is almost juridical. They search very carefull the outlines from what is said. In business transactions there is always a trick that one can discover by carefuly using the language and hearing what is not said. No one ever realy lies, but the unsaid things are the key. Like Rudolph Magnus investing in a project that can't go wrong until the moment when the truth is unveilled. Whith the help of the IPCC database and his bright intelligence he always succeeds but also finds a way to loose all he gained. Brilliant.

This grass tastes shocking good

Life can be hard when you are hungry. Do you eat and get shocked, or do you wait till it's time for your hay. Some can wait, but some can't. Then it's simple, the rules of physics take over and as we all know, these rules are ruthless. Getting shocked doesn't depend on your character or on your good behaviour, it's just a matter of plugging in the power, touching the wire and making shure that you are grounded properly. If these facts are occuring, then the shock is inevitablbe.