Pics this time are a couple more from Sloterdijk, these interior shots. Popular demand.

Gasquet vs. Wessels. What fine tennis that is. But we're not here to watch tennis, so it's off to the Albert Cuyp Markt with Hans and Rina and the grandchildren. The grandchildren are along because tonight is the première of Oogverblindend, and of course Cyrus is very busy. These kids are so much fun. Kyra's still pretty shy, but there's no longer any question whether she can understand my Dutch.

We've got her stroller out of the garage and her into the stroller. Rina has her hands full with something, and I'm behind the stroller out of Kyra's sight line. I ask whether I can push her instead of oma, and there is no sound, but the little head is shaking "no" so vigorously it's a blur. But then, no wonder we communicate so well: she was born the day I arrived in 2001.

What we're doing here is shopping for food for tomorrow's dinner, and the Albert Cuyp Markt is a fine place to do so. We don't really have anything quite like it since it's a combination of farmers market and flea market that also has a number of snack food stands. Furthermore, it is situated on a street lined with cafes and restaurants food stores of all kinds. Excellent shopping. I have a fun exchange with a fowl merchant over the fine fat chicken of his I'm purchasing to cook with spices smuggled in from California.

To take a break, we stop in at the Bazaar, a new place that Cyrus has recommended that serves North African foods. I hope to eat dinner there, as we just snack on an assortment platter that is quite tasty, the highlight being the best falafel by far that I have ever eaten.

Back home on television, it's Nadal vs. Malisse. Well, it doesn't hurt to have Roland Garros stadium in the background while I'm resting. For some reason I don't understand, I never really liked Malisse, but now, for the first time, I do. And I know what it is. It's pity. I'd feel sorry for anybody with only a net between him and Rafael Nadal. It's just not fair to hit winners and have them slugged back to an inconvenient place in your court.

Afterwards, Malisse is being interviewed, and he's really charming off court. Also, I learn something else about him. He speaks very fluent-sounding Flemish, and I grow to like him more even though I can barely understand a word he is saying. Then again, the other day I was watching a Dutch program that provided subtitles for the Flemish speakers.

I'd like to see more of that. Routine subtitles in the language that folks are speaking. Wouldn't that be a kindness to foreign learners everywhere? Not to mention allowing the average American to understand what they're saying on British television.

In the evening, I'm off to the première. As is so often the case, I manage to mess things up. Somehow I get into the lobby of the theater next door to the one where Oogverblindend is playing. And wait for Rina...and wait...and wait...and finally discover I'm in the wrong place. (In my defense, there was stuff all over the walls about Oogverblindend.)

I race next door, where Rina is so traumatized worrying about what has happened to me that she hands the usher the wrong tickets, and there is this frantic scene that is resolved only when she is finally reduced to declaring that she is the mother of the playwright and that those three seats right there on the front row are for us.

The performance is stunning. Even for me, and since I'd spent a couple of days analyzing the script word for word and then spent a couple of hours discussing the language in it with Cyrus, there were no surprises for me.

As I mentioned earlier, there are only two characters, a Dutch woman and an Argentinean man. The woman is played by a Dutch television soap opera star (Georgina Verbaan) who is making her stage debut. She is excellent, and her English is flawless. Her pronunciation is virtually perfect standard mid-western American.

The other character is never seen. He's purely a telephone voice, and the Dutch actor (Rene van Asten) speaks as I might expect a well-educated Buenos Aires surgeon to speak, with good English but with a Spanish accent that is slight but perfectly consistent throughout the performance. Mr. van Asten also handles with great sensitivity the gradual deterioration of his character's voice.

Afterwards, about 90% of the audience troops next door to a bar/cafe to talk about the show. What a wonderful idea!!!!!! Why don't we do this? The fringe benefit is that I get to meet another of Rina's delightful friends, a woman named Ingrid.

Rina takes me backstage, and I compliment the actors. Turns out Ms. Verbaan found me distracting because I was taking notes. Well, sorry, but I didn't realize she could see me for the floodlights, and it certainly didn't show in her performance. Besides, I just had to make notes about the changes Cyrus made to the text on my recommendation. I forgot my hearing aids, so I missed a few words here and there, but it sounded to me like he took all the preposition and conditional tense errors out. (Not that there were that many of them.)

I think he ought to put 'em back in. For goodness sake, nobody gets those perfectly in a language he learns as an adult. (Well, nobody except my friend Chris.) I really believe that at the premier, the English in Oogverblindend was too good to be realistic since the characters were both speaking English as a foreign language.

Then again, George W. Bush hasn't yet taken my advice, either.