preparation

Before I’m off to work on the script of ‘The Silent City’, I went to visit one of the few ‘Fish Fillet Masters’ outside Japan. His name is Jacob Doorn (Japie-San for the Japanese). He works for the fresh fish trader Jan van As in Amsterdam. Jacob is the only non-Japanese who is allowed to fillet tuna for the top Japanese restaurants. It was wonderful to see him and his skilled colleagues at work. Every fish needs a different treatment, as the readers of my novel ‘De stille stad’ know. These specialists fillet manually every fish according to the customers’ specifications.

With this in the back of my mind, I’m leaving to go writing. Back to the lovely island. To the silence, the lack of internet, no annoying tax assessments, no ringing telephones, no unexpected visitors. Just a laptop and my mind.

I’ve still a software problem with my site. The only way to get to the Dutch pages: click first on the English flag and then on the Dutch flag (left side of this page). This concerns all pages except for the weblog, which is only in English. Direct link to the Dutch pages of The Bird Can’t Fly. And the direct link to the English pages.