Gineke ten Holt

Last weekend, Herman qualified to participate in the Dutch Go Championships in Jan 2012. This will be the third time in a row he is competing in this tournament, the highest-level national tournament. The qualifiers, called Indis, were played over eight matches, in two weekends in October. Herman scored a total of 5 points, which got him the sixth place and a ticket to the championships, so yay! More details and results can be found on the Indis website. Read more »

On 7 Oct, the current board of Cover, the student society of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen, organised a reunion dinner for all former Cover board members. This was a very nice idea, and as a former board member (1998-1999) I of course attended. I was curious whether the rest of my board would turn up, I had not seen any of them in quite some time. In the end, only one fellow member from my year turned up, but it was still great fun meeting again. I was surprised (and a little shocked) at how few of the other attendees I actually knew. Only three (out of about thirty)! Read more »

On Monday, September 5, Herman became an uncle! His sister gave birth to a sweet, healthy daughter. She is named Fenna, which coincidentally is also my mother's name (this was not known to the parents at the time). Fenna arrived a little earlier than expected, the calculated date of arrival being September 14 or so. An extra reason for us to be glad about our early return from Greece: if we had stayed the entire period, we would not have been back until three weeks after the birth, and we would have missed a lot! Read more »

For the past four months, we have been sailing around the Greek Islands, mostly in the Ionian. We had a wonderful time, enjoying the beautiful scenery. We've anchored in lots of tranquil coves and bays, and berthed in any number of picturesque little harbours. And we've sailed to our heart's content. Read more »

Since our sailing adventure is starting soon, I decided to get some practice in beforehand. I booked a day course in Harderwijk, on the yacht 'Karina', owned by skipper Jan van Zadelhoff (www.jlcharters.nl). The yacht was a Jouet 37, a bit longer than our Jeanneau in Greece, and quite a nice boat. She was a bit heavy to handle, since the steering wheel was mechanical (rather than hydraulical) and her turning circle wasn't as small as that of modern yachts - she's from 1978. Read more »

The organizers of the Sign Language Colloquia lecture series of Radboud University, Nijmegen, had invited me to give a presentation about my PhD. research. On March 28, I undertook the long journey (2,5 hours) from Groningen to Nijmegen and presented my work to a mixed audience of students and professionals interested in sign languages. Radboud University has one of the largest centers of sign language research in the Netherlands, at which, among other things, interesting work is done on creating corpora of Dutch sign language. Read more »

We've got our boat for our great sailing adventure: http://www.corfuyachting.com/sun_odyssey_331.htm
After some consideration, we opted for renting long-term rather than buying and selling (since the market is not too good at the moment). We'll be setting out from Corfu at the beginning of the summer, and sail Greece, Turkey and perhaps Croatia for the next five months. We do not intend to keep a tight schedule, but to go where the wind is blowing, and stay where it's beautiful. Can't wait to get underway!

My new language partner, Ning Ding, is the president of the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars in the Netherlands. She asked my to give a talk about our journey to China for new Chinese students during the introduction activities of Hanze University (IBS). It would be interesting for them to hear the impressions of Dutch people visiting China for the first time. I, of course, was happy to oblige. Read more »

One thing we want to bring home from China is the cooking - the food there is truly delicious everywhere. Especially in Sichuan province, which is renowned for its food. Our favourite dish was Mapo Doufu, a very well-known Sichuanese dish of creamy beancurd in spicy sauce. In fact, it is so famous that you can find it on the menu almost everywhere in China - but it did taste best in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan). Read more »

The past three months, Herman and I have been travelling around China. Fantastic country, so much beautiful historic and nature sites to visit. We definitely want to go back someday, to visit the places we could not include in our schedule this time (such as the far west and Yunnan province). Being away from home so long (and being together constantly in small hotel rooms) agreed with us remarkably well. We foresee more traveling in the future :-) But for now, we're back in Holland and look forward to a few quiet months of working and living in our own place.

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. Read more »

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. Read more »

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). Read more »

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. Read more »

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! Read more »

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. Read more »

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.