Today's Column: Book or phone?

Another month, another column:

Column: Het boek of de telefoon?

Not my finest piece of work, but hey, I'm on vacation so I 'tis not the season to be fully inspired. It's that time of the year to lie in the sun all day and wasting away the hours at your leisure, reading some smashing book or stuff. Which I did, when I wasn't taking country excursions, doing some local shopping or chasing stormy supercells and getting woefully drenched. There wasn't as much sun as I had hoped for, I must admit, but that severe thunderstorm made up for it a bit. At least it wasn't a regularly rainy day, but an exciting reminder of nature's awesome power and a death defying road trip to boot. Yes, this, too, one can experience at the beautiful quiet isle of Texel.

As for the non-issue addressed in my column, against my better judgment I took my new smartphone with me, to keep in touch with whomever I felt I needed to keep in touch with and check my mail more often than was necessary. I spent more time on my phone than I had hoped to, but mostly the slow loading time of Buienradar.nl is to blame for that. That site at least proved a useful tool, considering the erratic weather patterns. I didn't watch any movies on my phone, not even some silly YouTube shorts in some lost hour or two. I did visit Cinema Texel this time. I felt I had too, since my last visit was a year ago and I happen to really like this small but idyllic comfy venue. My movie of choice: Ted 2. Not the best choice, but at least there was a major Jurassic Park reference and the evil, greedy Hasbro toy company was made out to be the bad guy, so that scored points with me. This week's film program wasn't stellar to begin with, though at least the theater proved fortitious enough to skip showing that dreadful Fantastic Four movie (which I already had the sincere displeasure of seeing the week before). A light yarn was the best way to describe the time I had at the movies on this year's visit.

Nevertheless, this trip to Texel made it obvious that no movie can compete with nature's raw power and destructive beauty. And nature proved it is no match for smartphones, since despite almost drowning in torrential rainfall myself, my phone, which I brought with me to capture the stormy event on camera, returned home in better shape than I did. It appears it's kinda waterproof.