Gineke ten Holt

June 23, 2010, I successfully defended my PhD. from Delft University of Technology. Henceforth, I am allowed to put a 'dr.' before my name, rather than a 'drs.'. All that work just to lose a single 's'... Some photos of the event will be put here soon.

Because there were no smileys for the game of go to be found on the internet, I decided to make my own. Some may look familiar to certain people... ;-). These smileys may be used freely, as long as you mention the source (Gineke ten Holt).
This collection will be irregularly added to. Latest update: May 28, 2010.

Another landmark in the life of a PhD. student: on Feb 3, 2010, I finished my thesis manuscript and sent it to the Doctoral Committee. Title: "Automatic Sign Language Recognition Inspired by Human Sign Perception." Currently, the Committee is in the process of evaluating the manuscript. Depending on their comments, I may still have to do additional work and extend or improve the manuscript. However, the bulk of the work is finished, and in June of this year, I will defend my thesis and hopefully gain my PhD.

I recently witnessed my Chinese (ex-)colleague Yunlei get married to her Dutch love. The ceremony was mostly Dutch (she wore a white dress, not a red one), but the civil servant conducting the ceremony did pay attention to the inter-cultural side, which was very nice. She even managed to put in a few phrases in Chinese, which is no small feat, and had added a red accent to her outfit, which was a request of the bride to all the guests (since red is the colour of happiness in China).

I just got back from a week's holiday in Istria, in Croatia. This is a beautiful region I had not visited before. We stayed with a group in a large house in Sveti Kirin, a tiny village close to Pula, which lies in the south of the peninsula of Istria. During our stay, we visited Plitvice Lakes Natural Park, one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. This region is a Unesco World Heritage site, and rightly so. It consists of a series of lakes that flow into each other, covering a total height difference of about 130 meters. Because of travertine deposits, dams keep growing at the edges of the lakes, rising with a speed of about 1 cm per year. This creates the series of small lakes (rather than one large river). The water runs in hundreds of little rivulets and large waterfalls from one lake into the next. The lakes are teeming with fish, and through the crystal-clear waters you can see the many different lakeweeds, looking like strange, underwater jungles.

Last week, I organised the goodbye dinner for my colleague and roommate Yunlei Li ( 李韵蕾）. We went to Long Ting in the Hague and had Chinese Hotpot. This is a form of fondue in which you dip all kinds of food (meat, vegetables, fish) into spicy broth, cook them, and then fish them out with chopsticks or little nets. It was great fun, unfortunately I did not take a picture. The food was excellent, so I can definitely recommend this restaurant. I will miss Yunlei here in our room, though. She started here at Delft University as a PhD. student around the same time I did, so we spend four years together here, and became good friends. Especially the exchange of our languages was fun, long discussions about the how and why of certain Chinese and Dutch phrases and grammar rules... Alas, all good things end, but we will keep in touch!

The 2009 edition of the Delft Go Tournament (4-5 september 2009) was once more a great success. It was the fifth edition of the tournament, and the fourth that I have organised, together with Herman Hiddema and Bas Vet. With 78 participants it was one of the largest club tournaments of the year. The same was true for the two previous editions, so we can safely say that Delft is becoming a popular item on the Dutch Go agenda. I had enormous fun organising it, though I was also thoroughly exhausted after the two-day event. Since I am looking for a new job, I may not be the main organiser next year (I may not live in Delft any more), nevertheless I intend to help out and be part of the organisation next year.

Willem Koen Pomstra (5 dan) was the winner of this year's tournament, collecting his third Delft title. More information can be found on the Go Club Delft website.

The 53rd European Go Congress in Groningen was a great success. I was proud to be a part of this largest Go event in Europe, possibly in the entire world, as a volunteer and the organiser of the Open European Pair Go Championship, which was part of the event.

My pictures of the event can be viewed at my EGC album.
More information and many more pictures via www.egc2009.nl.