Bubbly Red Stuff

Outro

2011-08-26T23:37:00.000+02:00

I started this blog almost 7 years ago, when blogs were all the rage. It gave me a place to write little stories about things going on, which I thought was good, to keep exercising my writing muscle occasionally. Over the last couple of years, I've had less inspiration to post. I didn't want my blog to die though, like so many others had, so I tried to keep a rule of posting at least once a month. I've had a really hard time sticking to that this year though. So I thought it was time to close the book on Bubbly Red Stuff.

I decided I did want to have a blog still, but with a different focus. I wanted to focus more on stories with photos included, especially from trips I've taken. So I've started a new blog called Picturesqueties. I invite you to have a look.

How I've Spent My Week

2011-05-04T22:07:00.000+02:00

April certainly didn't go according to plan. I last wrote about how busy the month was going to be, but many of those plans were wiped out when B was not allowed back into the Netherlands after we returned from Ireland. It was not something I imagined would happen, certainly not when I had come straight back into the country a couple of times before I was living here legally. But after such a wonderful week in Ireland I found myself going back to Leiden on my own, unable to really comprehend that I wouldn't see B for at least a few months. He's written here about the whole experience of being sent back to the US the next day.

So, subsequently April was not spent visiting the tulip fields and showing him Amsterdam on Queen's Day, but instead figuring out what the hell we were going to do with this situation. I began to look into whether he could get a residence permit based on our relationship, repeating the process I went through to get here, but now I was playing the Dutchie. It was a bit surreal to be looking at the same sort of requirements I needed to meet 10 years ago, but now from the sponsor point of view (and as the one who could understand Dutch. There has been some progress over the years). Fortunately I'm in a rather strong position as a permanent resident with a permanent contract for a full-time job. Once I confirmed that I could sponsor B even though I'm not a Dutch citizen, that my permit is enough, then we were pretty much set for meeting all the requirements. B booked a ticket to come back at the end of June, once 90 days out of the country had passed, and I told him to get copies of documents like his birth certificate.

Monday though everything changed again. It started off well. I went into an IND office near my work and spoke with someone who was helpful and knowledgable, and who went over the application with me, pointing out the parts that would need to be filled out and the documents we would need. I left excited, being pretty sure that B would be able to get a permit. I got to work though and I decided I should finally give the Military Police (Koninklijke Marechaussee) at Schiphol a call to try to confirm whether B would indeed be able to return to the country after being gone for 90 days.

I got a guy on the phone who didn't seem all too thrilled to help me out at first. He said he could only speak generally and what he said couldn't be a guarantee of anything. He told me that B should call the Dutch embassy in the US. I told him that B had called them and they said to call the Military Police (and even gave him the number). So, the guy eventually sighed and looked up B's record in their database. Once his info was pulled up, he told me that there would be a "very high" chance that if B tried to come back he would not be allowed to enter the Netherlands. He told me he should look into getting a visa in the US, explain to the embassy why he'd want to come back, explain that there is our relationship and he's trying to be with me. I hung up and felt utterly deflated. It slowly sunk in that simply coming back in June was not likely an option and the issues regarding applying for the residence permit were nothing compared to this. It's only gotten more complicated from there.

For the last couple of days, I've been learning about the rules surrounding overstaying in the Schengen area and trying to find out what visas B could get when an American doesn't normally need one. B has been fighting with getting an answer out of the Dutch embassy, who have been really unhelpful. I shouldn't be surprised, but still, they first kept pointing him back to the Military Police and now they tell him to go talk to the IND if he needs a visa. He's found out that the ticket he bought is non-refundable and expensive to change, so a lot of money may be lost because we didn't wait to find out this information before he booked a flight back.

Going back to the Schengen area rules, they don't look promising for his situation. I fortunately found a site called Vagabond Journey which is full of real details about people's actual experiences of trying to get into various countries, and advice from Wade, the guy who runs the site and is a perpetual traveller. First of all, the Netherlands is apparently one of the most stringent countries in the Schengen, along with Germany and Switzerland, so Amsterdam was one of the worst places we could have returned to after Ireland. (At least it wasn't in Switzerland though where, along with being sent home, he would have had to pay a $500 fine.) So yes, things have definitely changed from when I first moved here. But I also found out why B would likely be refused again if he tried to come back. By being denied entry, he was likely entered into the Schengen Immigration System (SIS), which should be used by all Schengen border controls to check if someone has overstayed before. The penalty for overstaying is a 3-year ban on being able to enter the Schengen area. So B may have this ban hanging over him. Which is very bad news indeed.

Right now, we are weighing up our options and trying to learn as much as we can to see how this can work and if he can get a visa in the US so he won't be denied at the border if he tries to come back. I found the address of where you can write to the police here to find out your status in the SIS and he'll send a letter to them to at least find out if he's banned. In the meantime I am also looking at places that offer free legal advice and will try to get whatever help I can from them, especially since the actual officials are of course pretty hopeless.

It's rather needless to say that the past few days have been completely stressful and overwhelming. I partly wish I could go back to the lovely weekend when I was still in happy ignorance of all of this, and partly that I had found out about it sooner so we'd have that bit more time to work things out before B's planned return date at the end of June. There is the bright spot that we'll see each other when I visit the US in June. But I hope everything can be worked out for him to move here. I refuse to believe that one mistake such as this cannot be fixed, especially with the argument of us having a relationship. But then I know a couple of tough stories of people trying to keep their partner here, and losing. I just have to keep my fingers crossed.

Bring on spring!

2011-03-21T21:49:00.000+01:00

It doesn't seem like there are many years that we have so much sun this early on in March, and while it was not exactly anywhere near 20 degrees yet, during the weekend I at least tried to make the most of the sun. On Saturday, B and I joined everyone flocking to the terraces. We decided to have lunch at the V&D and managed to nab a table that was just barely in the sun still. After sitting there for awhile though, we were fairly chilly.

After being reminded that the full moon on Saturday night was meant to be a "super moon", we took a walk in the evening to see if any noticable gain in size could be seen. Unfortunately a Dutch city is just about the worst place to look at the night sky so I'm not sure the moon actually looked that much larger, but it was certainly a clear and bright night. And cold, it was like a typical winter night again. We headed over to a windmill that I've never really gone to check out and, while the windmill turned out to be on private property so we couldn't get that close, I made friends with the dog that had started barking at us as we came up the drive. He was large and looked intimidating, but once I got him to come over, he plopped in front of me and welcomed some attention. He was just a big softie really and it made me miss having dogs around, especially big, huggable ones.

On Sunday, we biked out to the lakes to the north of Leiden and were determined to have a picnic lunch even though we were freezing. One of these days we'll finally be able to sit out in just t-shirts. On the way back we stopped by another windmill which was guarded by an angry Shetland pony.

And now my week is rather quiet since B went off to Prague. Once he comes back though it'll kick off a very busy month. First we'll be spending a week in Ireland and attending a wedding. Then B's parents will be visiting for a week, at the same time a friend of mine will be visiting from Germany. After a brief break, we'll be going to Barcelona for a few days, and just a few days later will be Queen's Day. I should enjoy this down time while I can.

Video game goodness

2011-02-13T17:43:00.002+01:00

I went to the awesome Arcade exhibit yesterday at Mediamatic. It's been going on for awhile already and they keep adding "levels". First was some interactive stuff, then arcade games, then a slew of console games. Next up will be handheld games.

Two of the interactive things were memorable. One of the best things of the entire place was this racing game you could play in your living room which used a projector on the ceiling and any object would become an obstacle (it could sense an object and you could change the course constantly). There were four cars controlled by wireless controllers. It was in battle mode where you could shoot the other cars with the lights from your headlights.

The other was a tea cup into which you drop this rfid tag that you got when you paid admission. The tag was registered to you, so with your tag in the cup, it would search online for your registered name and then sentences found with your name in it were projected around the cup. It was supposed to be spilling the secrets of your online life.

Oh, there was also Pong for smokers, you controlled the paddles with a lit cigarette. Of course someone was in there with a joint instead.

And then a bazillion consoles and arcade games to send everyone on a nostalgia trip. Oh, and weird Japanese stuff, like one where you are trying to uncover a nude photo. I also was totally winning a Mortal Kombat-like fighting game not knowing at all what I was doing, I just was slamming the buttons a lot. I couldn't even figure out how to jump and I still won two fights.

A couple of photos below; more are here.

The Christmas Season

2010-12-16T14:40:00.001+01:00

Looking back at things I wrote a year ago, I was rather Scroogy in most of the lead-up to Christmas. I didn't really want to do Christmas cards, I hated all the shop displays and Christmas songs –- I just wanted to hide until it was all over. I got into things eventually, but this year I haven't had much of a Scrooge period. Ok, I bristled at Sinterklaas and was glad for that to be done with, but for Christmas itself, I've accepted it pretty well.

If you are in more of a grumpy mood though and are fed up with the holidays already, you might appreciate the polls going on over at Tomato Nation, the NC Double Scrooge. There are various divisions per type of Christmas season annoyance, including one solely for all of those horrible, horrible Christmas songs we wish never existed.

Speaking of Christmas songs, there is one listed which people either completely loathe or have never even heard of: The Christmas Shoes. I fall into the latter category and I'm sort of curious to hear just how bad this song is, but I am also afraid that once it's heard, I'll never be able to wipe it from my memory. I really wish I could wipe Wonderful Christmastime from my memory, which I now have in my head just from reading the poll. gah.

Fall

2010-11-28T18:34:00.000+01:00

I know I sound like an old fart saying this, but I can't believe it'll be December in a couple of days. December, as in the last month of the year. Just a few more weeks and we close the book on 2010. I'm not quite sure how that's happened.

While November was rather quiet, I did take a trip to Germany to see my friend, AM, in October. We hadn't seen each other in about 7 years. Her oldest daughter, who was a baby when I last saw them, is now in school and taking ice skating lessons and learning to speak German. AM was the same as ever and it was great to hang out and catch up. We went one day to Trier which was quite pretty with a quaint German center and Roman ruins. Her oldest was excited to show me around the cathedral, which they'd visited before, so she led me around while AM and her younger daughter took a rest in the pews. The next day, after their ice skating practice, we hit a nearby outlet mall. Her daughter was now excited to help me shop, so she looked at clothes with me at Desigual, then came with me as I tried them on and offered her opinion. It was really sweet.

I had time to kill before I headed back on the train that Monday, so I went to work with AM, which meant I went to school. She teaches middle school home ec at one of the Air Force schools. So after going through security to get onto base, which included having us get out of the car while they checked through it a bit, we headed over to the school building. Parents walked by in uniform. We entered the school lobby right as the pledge of allegiance was being said over the loudspeaker, so we stopped and faced the flag in the lobby. That was so weird for me, I felt like a fake, so while I put my hand over my heart, I didn't recite the pledge. We got to AM's classroom which felt like we could have been in a school in the US. There was an American flag on the wall and American textbooks. I watched her teach two classes while sneaking handfuls of Golden Grahams from the box in her desk. It was strange being in a school setting again and I wondered how she handles dealing with pre-teens everyday. The whole experience was so warped: sitting in this piece of America dropped into Germany, remembering what it's like being in school, the military angle on everything.

Now, as we get our first wintery weather of the season, the holidays are picking up and December will likely be busy. I'm not sure what I'll be doing for Christmas yet, but only a few days after that B will be arriving in time for New Year's Eve. I plan to take him up to Amsterdam to experience the madness there. He'll then settle into Dutch life for a few months, yes, dealing with the winter, but also getting to see the colors of spring, as well as some concerts (The Decemberists!) and Queen's Day. It should be an interesting time.

Superstitions

2010-10-22T21:33:00.000+02:00

After spending another thrilling Friday night at the laundromat, my brain latched onto the idea of beef and broccoli in oyster sauce. I didn't quite order that, but Chinese food had to be had. When my order came (suspiciously after only 15 mins) the delivery guy, some older dude, asked me "this is house number 17, right?" I said, yeah. And he said all excitedly, "that's strange because, look, you live in house 17, your order is 17 euros, and..." (gesturing enthusiastically at the order ticket) "...the receipt is number 17!" I, um, didn't quite know what to say to that. I just laughed and said "how odd." I gave him a good tip though.

Maybe it's something in the air. It's the full moon tonight, the full moon of October. Since it's a prime number, living at number 17 has always felt a bit strange in my mind. Though it is the 22nd today and 22 is my lucky number.

(This is what you end up with when you have a mom who still to this day throws salt over her shoulder when she knocks over the shaker and who doesn't like to look at the full moon.)

Hitting the hamam

2010-10-19T23:28:00.001+02:00

Before I went to Istanbul last month, I had a few people recommending a trip to a hamam, or Turkish bath. I wasn't 100% sure of what was involved, I just had an idea that it was sort of like a sauna, but you had an attendant, well, attending to you. I looked online for stories that would give me a better picture of what the experience was like and I came across this clip of Michael Palin visiting a hamam on one of his adventures:

After watching that, I thought there was no way I was going to go to one. It look more torturous than relaxing. But a couple of friends insisted that it was a wonderful experience I wouldn't want to miss. So I decided I would visit the Cagaloglu hamam and give it a go.

Upon arriving, I couldn't get the memory of going to the baths in Budapest out of my mind. Instead of unwinding in a beautiful setting, I was tense after dealing with the unusual customs, language barrier, and gruff women attendants. It was a memorable experience, but perhaps not for the right reasons. Fortunately, my visit to the hamam was better.

After choosing what treatment I wanted (the one including a massage and scrub), I was lead towards the women's changing rooms, along with a girly group of 5-6 Dutch women. I was lead to a changing room, a fair-sized cabin where I left my shoes and clothes and then wrapped myself in a towel that was more like an oversized tea towel. I went back to the center of the room and waited to be taken into the bath area. From the moment I left the changing room I also was no longer wearing my glasses, which was disorienting and annoying. I really wished I had contacts. Before we went into the baths, I was given a slip of paper with some indecipherable notes on it and was told to choose a pair of slippers to wear. I had heard about this. They are wooden sandals with just a strap across the toes and I missed joining the Dutch girls being lead to the bath because I couldn't find a pair that fit well. Walking in them was rather uncomfortable and awkward, and then downright scary once you entered the wet and steamy bath area. I don't know why they don't use something more practical.

I entered the bath, blind and attempting not to break my neck on the marble floor. I had no idea what to do. An attendant passed by though, looked at my slip of paper, which was quickly getting wet from the steam, and told me to sit on a bench along the outside edge of the bath. Near me were two British women who seemed as confused and baffled as I was as to what the process was. They had had their slips of paper taken from them though, so an attendant who came by wasn't sure what to do with them. I made sure to keep hold of my piece of paper.

The room was fairly large and octagonal, with an octagonal slab at the center. On this slab were 8 women being massaged and scrubbed by attendants. Around the edge of the room were little basins of water which had a metal bowl in them to ladle out some water for rinsing or cooling down. It was a beautiful room, though I missed out on the details by not having my glasses on.

An attendant finally came over to claim me, holding my arm as we walked over to the slab so I wouldn't slip. She had me lie down on my back (I was naked at this point) and proceeded to scrub me with a big, rough mitt. A friend quite accurately described it as feeling like you are being cleaned by a big cat tongue. After scrubbing my stomach, she pointed down at all the dirt and dead skin she'd gotten off. Uh, thanks for that.

We then walked back over to the basin and she poured water over me to rinse off the gunk. This part was hard for me; I don't like water going over my face and this was made worse by someone else being in control of it. So I stood there with my eyes shut tight and my breath held, waiting for her to pour the water, but then I ran out of breath and took a breath right as the water went over me. I didn't choke, but I got quite a bit of water up my nose.

She shuffled me back over to the slab and began the massage. It was not as intense as the one Michael Palin received, but it was fairly rough. I remember it was quite painful when she ran what felt like her knuckles down the backs of my legs. After this, she washed me with soapy water, which made me very slippery on the marble. She would bump against me and it felt like if she pushed just a bit harder, I'd go sliding out into the middle of the slab.

When I was sitting waiting for my turn, I thought the attendants were very gruff and not particularly nice, but, even though they didn't talk much because their English is limited, my attendant was quite sweet and asked if I was enjoying it and such. The whole thing must have still been making me tense though because she told me to relax at one point.

After the wash, we went over to the basin when I now dreaded for the soapy water to be rinsed from my face. Then I sat on the floor and my attendant washed my hair, followed by one last horrible rinsing. That was the end of her services, but she pointed to a hot room I could enjoy and I could stay in the bath as long as I wanted.

I shuffled over to the hot room which was quite nice and empty, and I tried to relax after all of that. It definitely did go better than the Budapest baths experience. I sat in the main room a little longer, then rinsed and headed out. You exchanged your tea towel (which was by now soaked) for a normal towel that was big and fluffy. I sat awhile in the changing area and had a cup of mint tea and watched the attendants go about their business as they took a break in there away from the bath. My attendant was there and smiled and asked if I liked it. At one point I wasn't sure if she was expecting me to tip her. I didn't and later worried I that I should have.

So I will add to my friends' recommendations and say that a hamam visit in Istanbul is a unique part of going there. I very much liked the Cagaloglu hamam, though perhaps others are more off the beaten path and visited by more locals. I'd be curious to visit a Dutch hamam and see how the experience compares, though it's just not the same as being in Turkey.

Sold

2010-10-09T10:55:00.000+02:00

I now belong to a new company. Or rather, I belong to my company which now belongs to a new company. My company is no longer part of Elsevier, we were bought by a company based in the UK (their main office is in a former woolen mill in Manchester, but they'd prefer our building because we actually have windows). Looking at the deal, I think we are lucky that the mantra through the whole thing has been "nothing will change", and overall, aside from some things that of course have to change, that has been true. No one was laid off, our salaries and benefits stay the same, our jobs stay the same, our location stays the same. We'll see how things go in practice though. I may have missed my chance to move to Australia via Elsevier, however. If there was the chance to get a job there. I suppose this doesn't stop me from applying for jobs there, or even using my manager to put in a good word for me, but I won't have any intercompany move benefits that there may have been. Unfortunately the new company has no offices in Australia, so there are no possibilities there.

Creepy crawlies

2010-09-05T19:28:00.000+02:00

First, evidence of the slug that broke into my house while I was on holiday:

Somehow I didn't notice this trail across the speaker for weeks. So, judging from other evidence I've found, it apparently came in probably near the windows, went across the speaker, across one of my shoes, up my bookcase, across one of my Powell's bookmarks, which it also nibbled, then on some unknown path across the room to the kitchen area, where it nibbled on a page of recipes before ending up on the wall near the garbage can where it was when I came back and nabbed it and threw it back outside. Yuck.

And yuckier! This is living on the outside of one of my windows which is where it had better stay.

Hard to show the relevant size of the thing, but it's about an inch long. You can easily see hair on its legs! Just before I took this photo, I watched it crawl over and gobble down a mosquito that got caught in its web (which: yay!, but: ew). Right now I can see its web shining in the sun BUT WHERE'D THE SPIDER GO??? *meep*

Coming in September

2010-08-23T21:36:00.000+02:00

September is prime visiting Europe time, it seems. No less than 3 people I know will all be heading to Holland next month, a couple within days of each other, so I'll need to juggle meeting up with them after so many dry spells of having no visitors.

First, my friend, B, will be arriving early in the month to hang out here for a few weeks. He passed through Amsterdam a few years ago, but being here longer means he'll get to see more than the usual tourist haunts. He can lazily pass his days in quaint Dutch cafes and pretend he's a local. We'll also be heading off to Istanbul while he's here which will be slightly more exotic (even for me). I just hope the bloody weather cooperates more than it has this month.

B will hardly be settled in by the time the next person shows up, a guy I know from the Decemberists forum who is from Australia. It'll be nice to meet someone from the group who is from so far away.

And just after the Aussie leaves, a friend from grade school will be stopping in Holland for a week. I told her about the pilgrim connection Leiden has, so she is interested to visit related sites here, as well as see other places in the country since she's not been here before.

So, busy times ahead. To keep me from being too depressed in October, I've already booked a long weekend to visit a college friend of mine who's recently moved to Germany. I haven't seen her in quite some time, so I'm really looking forward to it. And I'll get to be the guest for once.

Roller derby

2010-08-03T21:26:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago I noticed a little flyer stuck into the corner of a poster frame in an elevator at work. It was for a roller derby group in Amsterdam and it was inviting anyone who was interested in participating to get in contact with them. Despite not having skated much in years, and not having been that great even when I did skate, I decided to get in touch and say I'd like to give it a try. Last night I joined the group for one of their twice-weekly practices in Vondelpark.

I was quite nervous: not only did I not have much faith in my skating abilities, but after checking out the group online, I also saw that they were all these totally alternative-looking girls: dyed hair, lots of piercings and tattoos, short skirts and fishnet stockings. I felt really boring in comparison and I hoped I wouldn't feel totally out of place. As I walked up to the group gearing up in the park, I tried to put on my best confident, yet relaxed, demeanor. I indroduced myself to the ringleader of the group, who I'd been emailing about coming to the practice, and she got me set up with a bunch of borrowed gear. Everyone else said hi as well and most introduced themselves. I found the girl from work who had placed the flyer in the elevator; she seemed very pleased that it had brought at least one person out.

I was slow getting all the stuff on; I had to take the skates on and off, which is no quick process, and had to put on knee, elbow, and wrist pads that didn't fit too well and which I wasn't used to getting on. Everyone else was finished and standing up, ready to go, so they were totally waiting on me. I said to go ahead, it's not like I'd be able to keep up anyway, but they said it was fine and they'd wait until I was ready.

Once I was ready, the lead girl (who wasn't on skates) helped me get up and onto the smooth pavement. The girl from work grabbed my hand as I looked for something to hold onto for balance. One of the trainers gave me tips on getting started. I felt horribly clumsy, but they were so patient and helpful, it really put me at ease. So many of the girls told me how they started out only a few months ago and were just as bad off as I was now, so they were very sympathetic. The girl from work hung around, making sure I was off to an ok start, then eventually it was just the lead girl and me, she was walking her bike and I held on to one side of the handlebar to keep steady. We walked that way from the Filmmuseum to the open air theatre, which took awhile, but I managed fairly well.

Most of the rest of the evening, the group practiced in the area in front of the theatre. I stayed off to the side and just went back and forth or in circles, at first staying very close to walls or poles to grab onto. But within an hour or so I felt much more confident and was doing little loops unaided. I was still light years from the exercises the group was doing, like slaloms on one foot, but I was happy on my own little scale of progress. After the practice, we headed back to the Filmmuseum and I made it the whole way without grabbing onto anything or anyone. And during the whole evening I didn't fall once. I was proud of that, though I also know that you kind of need to get used to falling, definitely within the world of roller derby, but also just with learning to skate, it's good to becoming unafraid of falling because it's likely to happen and it's good to know how to fall right to minimize injury.

While I was puttering back and forth during practice, quite a few of the other girls came over and asked how it was going, and offered tips and encouragement. All of them were totally sweet and not intimidating at all. I had a great time hanging out with them. I even got to be in a group photo already: the girl from work managed to draw in 3 girls who were sitting nearby on rollerblades. She worked her recruitment magic and soon had them interested in joining up. They wanted a photo with the group, so we all crowded together. I hope to see the photo online soon. Even if I don't stick with roller derby, I will have the memory of heading home that night happy about the people I'd met and pleased with my little successes.

Fourth of July

2010-07-17T19:55:00.001+02:00

I've been back from my trip to the US for a week now and I'm still very much processing the trip, both in terms of unpacking and going through stuff, as well as mentally. It was a very full 3 weeks, including seeing my friends and family and usual places around Portland, but also meeting new people and going to new places, and then there was the massive 8 day road trip I took in the middle of it all. It was all incredible and a bit mind-boggling, in a good way. Anyway, I want to try to post photos sooner rather than later, so I'm trying to break them down into groups to slowly get online. It may mean things end up a bit out of chronologic order, but that's ok.

So the first set of photos I've posted is what I took on the 4th of July, which had a lot of parts to it. In the early afternoon, my friend Brandon and I went over to Vancouver (Washington) for my first experience of buying fireworks that are illegal in Oregon (Oregon doesn't allow anything that goes airborne). Brandon's done this for years and knew which place was the best. We ended up at this massive tent filled high with fireworks.

Of course it was extra busy since it was the 4th, but the whole experience was a bit overwhelming for me, a whole reverse culture shock. First off, the moment you turn off the freeway, there are teens posted along the street and at intersections holding signs trying to entice you to whatever firework stand they are advertising. Each one says they're the best or the cheapest. Some stands are next to each other, so there are signs saying "Turn right for the best fireworks!" trying to lead you away from the place you were perhaps meaning to go to. The tent we went to offered extras like free soda and ice pops, as well as bouncy castles for kids. The parking was all precisely coordinated between a bunch of teens with walkie-talkies who would point you to the nearest empty space. It was like a fair, just for buying things that blow up, on a planet run by teenagers. My mind was reeling before we'd even entered the tent.

After purchasing a rather reasonable, small pile of fireworks, we headed back south on I-5 with the illegal goods and went to a park in NE Portland to play kickball. Well, actually the version being played that day was called sloshball: you always had to have a drink in your hand while playing, slightly handicapping your ability to kick, pitch, and definitely catch, not to mention the effects the alcohol was having on your abilities. One guy took it to an extreme and duct-taped 2 forties to each hand for the entire afternoon. He was very eager to catch the ball, which I was sure was going to lead to the bottles smashing together and raining glass everywhere (though we left while they were still playing, so who knows, maybe that did happen). I sort of got pulled into joining, though I managed to not embarrass myself too badly during my 3-4 times at... bat? Kick? I just avoided the ball when in the outfield, which wasn't too difficult when the entire team (about 20 of us) went out to field at the same time, so I just grabbed a vague area of the outfield and let the more experienced and enthusiastic people deal with going for the ball. It was a pretty fun afternoon, a silly, Portland kind of time. Close calls regarding an out/safe were decided by doing rock, paper, scissors. One guy brought his energetic dog who chased him when he ran the bases and once ran off with first base.

When we left the park, I grabbed a couple of photos of another group that was roasting a whole pig on a spit. It smelled pretty yummy.

We left the crazy kickball people for some slightly crazier (or drunker) people at a BBQ at a house in Sellwood. I kinda didn't really know anyone there, only the hostess vaguely, but it was interesting and they made us feel at home. One of the hostess's daughters was quite outgoing and showed us her pet rats and played a digeridoo. We ate and hung out until it got dark, then started setting off fireworks on the street. Various people in the neighborhood had larger fireworks and people would kind of cringe at the occasional loud booms going off, but it was all really tame compared to New Year's Eve in Holland. I was a bit jaded and thinking "please... you call these fireworks? And the booms? Try living in what feels like a warzone for days at the end of every year..." At least I had less fear for my safety.

A drink at the very cool Roadside Attraction closed out a memorable holiday. Though I kind of had to remind myself a couple of times what the occasion was, but enh, it was nice to just have some fun times.

The Cliff Notes version of my road trip

2010-07-02T08:02:00.002+02:00

A couple of days ago I returned from my 8-day road trip around Oregon. It was as epic and amazing as I hoped it would be. I have a few hundred photos to go through eventually, but for now, there are videos describing what I did. I decided to do a video diary during the trip (I think I've watched too many BBC travel documentaries). Here is the first one as I was about to set out towards the coast:

Here are links to the rest:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

As an added bonus, here are two videos I took while driving through dry desert landscapes.

Nottingham Odeon

2010-06-05T22:10:00.000+02:00

When I visited Nottingham last month, I had to be sure to pass by my former place of employment, the Odeon cinema in the center of town. I knew it had shut down though, so there wasn't much to see, just the blank marquee with a sign advertising the asbestos removers.

When I got home, though, I was curious to see what photos I could find of the place online. I was hoping to find photos from when it was still in use, but most of what I found was of its current, gutted state.

This blog post has some photos taken by some people who managed to sneak inside. They describe the building as being stripped and full of pigeons. A similar photo is here of the main theater, empty of any seats, wall covering, or carpeting. I did find this photo showing the main theater when it was still in use, just before the cinema closed, apparently. It was a huge theater, I can't remember how many it held, something like 500 or so? Maybe more... I remember when I was being taken on my first tour of the building, when we passed through this theater Eyes Wide Shut was playing. During my searches for photos and information, I learned that the stage in this hall was used for live concerts in the 60's and the Beatles played there three times in 1963-64.

Though working there wasn't the most brilliant time of my life, I do have some fond memories of some of the people I worked with, and the times I sat in on one film or another. It's unfortunate the cinema had to close down, if anything it would have been interesting to wander around it again.

Leiden

2010-05-28T23:55:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago, Aline recommended to me the Flickr site of someone who lives in Leiden. The girl is an excellent photographer who really captures the people and scenes of the city in ways I can't. Have a browse through her photos.

Also a few weeks ago, while searching for some information, I came across this blog that features photos of many details of Leiden. I'm happy how many of the details I recognize after such a short time living here. The recent post about the Bevrijdingsdag celebrations includes a couple of moving archive photos of Canadian troops being cheered as they drove down the Breestraat. Seeing the photos really brings the history to life for me, imaging the happiness and relief the people must have felt for the war to finally be over.

Lakes and fells (and, oh yeah, Nottingham)

2010-05-15T19:05:00.002+02:00

Photos? They are here.

A couple friends of mine who I know from when they lived in Holland, but who now live near London, made the wise decision to get married in the Lake District in northwest England. The groom grew up in the area and it is a wonderfully scenic place for a wedding. As soon as they announced the wedding date, I made plans to arrive a couple of days before the wedding so that I could visit some of the area. It's one of the most rugged parts of England, filled with many hills and, you guessed it, lakes. There are a ton of activites for everyone, from hardcore outdoors-y people who want to go rock climbing or go on lengthy hikes, to families and older people who are happy to relax in tea shops in quaint villages.

I was somewhere in the middle. I'm not quite fit enough for climbing Scafell Pike (the highest point in England, though it's only 3200 ft high, which is nothing where I'm from), but I wanted to do some walking and enjoy the kind of nature that doesn't exist at all in the Netherlands. I also wanted to eat lots of cake in tea shops. I think I was pretty successful in accomplishing both tasks.

I stayed in the town of Windermere, near Lake Windermere, which is England's largest (though it's more long and narrow than broad). It's one of the more touristy parts of the Lake District, but at this time of year, it wasn't too clogged with visitors. There are B&Bs left, right and center, but I was lucky to find one that was like a home away from home. Broadlands is very near the center of town and is run by Janette and Brian, who were both so friendly and helpful. They served a delicious breakfast each morning and chatted with me about their family and local events. I had a cozy room and it was just a wonderful place to stay.

I managed to get in a couple of walks. The first was pretty short, up to the top of Orrest Head, the main point behind Windermere. It was quite easy, mostly up a paved lane first, then later some stone steps, before reaching the views of the whole surrounding area.

I went down by a different route which took me through a few fields with sheep, as well as through some woods. All over England there is a network of public footpaths which allows you to cut across fields and woods as you are walking. It's a well maintained system, with clear directional signs and posts with arrows marking out the path. I sometimes had my doubts as I used steps to get over a stone wall to then trudge through a field with sheep who all started baa-ing to alert the others that someone was in their midst, but there was a vague path and then I'd find the next post and know I was on the right track. As a friend said, it feels a bit like a treasure hunt and it is quite fun. It's also beautiful, with many scenes reminiscent of the English landscape painters.

I went on a slightly longer walk the next day between the towns of Ambleside and Grasmere. The weather was great, not that warm, but I was warm enough while walking, and the sun came out enough from behind big puffy white clouds. The first part of the walk went along a gravel road between sheep fields. This part of the walk was called the Coffin Route because up until 1821 the church in Ambleside couldn't register deaths, so the dead had to be taken along this path to the church in Grasmere. On such a sunny day, it wasn't particularly morbid. It ended in a little place called Rydal where William Wordsworth lived until his death. His house there is now a museum. I then headed past first Rydal Water, then Grasmere lake before coming into the town of Grasmere. It's a well-worn path, but there is still some amazing scenery.

After my friends' wedding, which was so beautiful and a great time as well, I took the train (well, trains, 4 of them, in fact) from Windermere to Nottingham. Nottingham is a weird place to visit unless you have a deep fascination of Robin Hood, but I had lived there for about 6 months during the working holiday that first brought me over to Europe. That was 10 years ago now (eep) and I thought that while I was in England I should stop by and see how the city is doing, as well as visit one of my friends there.

Arriving in Nottingham after the charm of the Lake District was a bit of a shock to the system. It's not the most pretty of cities and there were many empty shop fronts and for sale signs. But it's not all horrible. I went to a movie at the art house Broadway cinema and it was bustling on a Sunday night. I mostly spent my time in Nottingham just wandering around (and cringing every time I saw Russell Crowe as Robin Hood on an ad covering a double-decker bus) and enjoying the cozy upper floor chairs of a cafe. I went past my old place of employment, the Odeon cinema, which is still empty and unused since it closed in January 2001 (about a year after I was working there). And I caught up with my friend who happens to be a Decemberists fan. Hurrah! In the end it wasn't such a bad little visit.

So it's about a month now until my trip home (I can't believe it's mid-May already). I'm actually hoping it doesn't come too fast because I think the trip will fly by and then I'll be back here with no holidays lined up and no Oregon-ness keeping me happy. But never mind that now, I'm really looking forward to it.

Touchy subject

2010-04-25T18:00:00.000+02:00

Yesterday a friend had a birthday party/housewarming at her and her boyfriend's house. As most of us sat in the living room enjoying cake and other good food, the husband of another friend happened to make note of something on the fork he was using. He pointedly asked my friend where the fork came from, but didn't say what was on it. The fork got passed around to each of us and as each person looked at it, they all took on the same shocked expression of raised eyebrows. It was a Nazi fork. It was embossed with Nazi symbols, and my friend had no idea how it ended up in her house. To top it all off, the guy who had noticed it and who was eating from it was German. He wasn't offended though and jokes were made about how the host must have planned for him to end up using it. Once the host also learned about this fork that had somehow made its way into his kitchen drawer, he joked back that the German guy must take the fork along when going to other people's houses to pin this on the hosts (plus, since the host is Dutch, he had to throw in a "you've probably stolen my bike while you're at it!") It was just some good, ol' World War II humor. I don't think anyone was truly offended, though the German guy said that when he was a student (I think somewhere outside of Germany) and he first saw the Fawlty Towers Germans episode, he was so hurt that he left the room. But he had grown up in an atmosphere where the war was a horribly shameful thing that no one talked about, and here were these English people making all sorts of offensive jokes. He said he's moved on since then, especially after living for so long in Holland.

The winteriest winter to ever winter

2010-04-22T22:37:00.001+02:00

I know, spring is in full force and then I decide to look back on the freezing winter we had. I was afraid to make this post for awhile for fear of jinxing things and having the weather turn on us. I've seen it snow here in late April. It can happen. But considering it's meant to be sunny for the foreseeable future, and up to around 20 degrees during the weekend, I think we are safe (knock on wood).

So yeah, it was officially the coldest winter in 14 years with a grand average of just 1.1 degrees. We also got snow. A lot of snow. Perhaps not so much depth, at least where I live, but once we got it, it hung around awhile. All-in-all I felt like I was trying out being an East Coaster: getting used to all of the bundling up that was necessary to go outside, wearing warm, grippy winter shoes to work and then changing into sneakers there, walking hunched over and with a slight shuffle. I didn't mind it, though I know some people absolutely wilted every time it snowed again. But I enjoyed the true winteriness of it, the dramas it caused, and the pretty snow and ice. A recap of some of the days I captured in photos:

The main, big snow, December 20th.

Icy canals in central Leiden, January 3rd

3 days later, January 6th, the sidewalk coated in ice and old snow

A ton of snow fell in Amsterdam on January 6th, people left work early, and then I got home to find not even a tiny bit of snow in Leiden. This photo was taken from my office on January 13th; it showed no sign of melting, it just got more icy each day.

A late-night walk in the snow, January 24th

Waking up to... snow, January 30th

Frozen over pond, February 14, finally the last day it snowed

Snail's pace

2010-04-22T17:28:00.000+02:00

Wow, I'm onto my 3rd novel of 2010. It took me two months to get through the book I just finished (The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters). Granted, it was 750 pages long, but still, that's pretty pathetic. Today I started Special Topics in Calamity Physics; it's 500 pages long. At my current rate, I'll still be reading it when I go to the US.

Crisis tourist

2010-04-20T22:12:00.000+02:00

On the way home from work yesterday, I decided to pop off the train at Schiphol and check out the atmosphere there. I didn't have my camera with me, but you can imagine the images anyway: empty arrival/departures screens, cleared out check-in desks, people sleeping on window ledges. There was a clump of people around the KLM ticket counters and a rather calm feeling. There seemed to be an actual exchange of information from the KLM employees there, which is in contrast to the stories I just read on the BBC website about British people stranded in various parts of the world. But maybe they were just having a chat with the people there. It at least didn't look like the travellers wanted to kill the airline employees.

On the arrivals level, I saw that there was luggage lying on the floor around each baggage belt. I wondered who all those suitcases belonged to and how long they'd be sitting there. Also, I saw a man who was maybe a taxi driver or coach driver holding up a sign like they normally do when picking up specific passengers. But instead of someone's last name being on the sign, it said "Spain 19:00". I later saw him wandering through the shopping area, I guess trying to collect anyone interested in getting to Spain.

Not that I can relate to the people who have been stranded here for days, but I was thinking of all airports to get stuck in Schiphol would probably be one of the best. On either side of immigration control, you'd have enough eating options, places to sit, and a few things to keep you entertained. If you're not airside, Amsterdam isn't that far so you can easily pop into the city (if you feel it's ok to leave for awhile) and get out of the mindset of the situation for a bit of time. I'm almost sad that Schiphol is my home airport since I never get to take advantage of what it has to offer. Unlike when I was facing a possible 3 hour wait in Stockholm in a wing of the airport with few food options, a dire shortage of chairs, and there was not-too-expensive internet, but the terminals were stupidly put on raised tables so you'd have to stand to use it.

With flights going again I feel a bit of relief, but I know we aren't fully in the clear yet. I've been wishing with all my heart that E and A get here as planned on Friday, and that I make it fine to my friend's wedding in a couple of weeks, and then to the US on schedule in June. itwillgofine itwillgofine itwillgofine...

Stockholm: The Amsterdam of the North

2010-04-18T00:40:00.001+02:00

Photos from the trip are here.

A long holiday dryspell of 6 months was finally broken when I went to Stockholm over Easter weekend. Aside from one night in Copenhagen when I was still in college, this was my first time to Scandinavia. I usually opt for warmer places to go on holiday, so going up north kept getting bypassed, even though I would love to see fjords and the Northern Lights someday (and I had planned to go to Iceland once, back when it was just up there in the Atlantic minding its own business). I don't remember much about the tiny bit of Copenhagen I did see, and I can't say anything about the rest of the region, but I definitely found Stockholm to my liking. It was similar to Holland, but less crowded, more colorful, and with more nature and nicer people. If it weren't so cold there, I'd probably consider moving there.

I spent my first day in Stockholm walking and walking and walking a bit more, first going to the north side of the city to the Östermalms Saluhall, an upscale indoor market selling everything from meat and fish to pastries and coffee. I enjoyed checking out the different stalls, though I didn't really end up purchasing anything. After a bit of a wander through the narrow streets of Gamla Stan (Old Town), which is the area I was staying in, I headed over to the south side to go to a chocolate shop I knew of. They make their chocolates by hand and include typically Swedish flavors like lingonberries, punsch, and cardamom. I rested my legs and had a spiced chocolate tea, enjoying the Simon and Garfunkel songs they were playing. That evening I had dinner at a restaurant not far from my hostel where I had a delicious moose burger with cheese and bacon.

The next day was Easter and I decided to spend it at Skansen, a large open-air museum where they have a collection of old buildings from around the country and the people who work there dress in traditional clothes. I knew it'd be mad because of the holiday, but I prepared myself as best I could. I took a ferry to get there (Stockholm is spread around many islands, so bridges and ferries abound) and then tried to get away from children as quickly as possible. It didn't feel too crowded since the park is so large. It's part market and village, part amusement park, and part zoo. I wandered through the village where I bought some buns from the bakery and watched someone sculpting glass.

Skansen village

I went into an old house where a couple was playing traditional Swedish music. I went through a market and bought some candy to take to my co-workers. I took a lunch break and this time tried reindeer, served on a potato pancake (it was also mighty tasty). I checked out the Scandinavian animals they had in the zoo area, such as bears, seals, moose, reindeer (felt a bit guilty for just having eaten one of their kind. Well... not really), and owls. By now, the day had become wonderfully sunny, though not incredibly warm, though it's all a bit relative. It was a little colder than it had been in the Netherlands, but it was some of the warmest weather they'd had yet, as evidenced by the ice that was floating down the water in the center of the city. There were many times during the day that I saw people resting with their faces angled up to the sun like a sunflower, eyes closed and a faint smile on their lips.

I took my leave of Skansen and went to join the sun worshippers. Someone had recommended a nearby cafe that would be good for a "fika", a Swedish word describing having a coffee and cake break. It was a word I liked very much. The cafe was housed in a greenhouse, but with an area with tables outside. I sat with some tea and a slice of carrot cake and marveled at the blueness of the sky and the fact that I was warm enough to take off my jacket.

Fika in the late afternoon

The following morning I cracked the curtain to see if it was a particularly sunny day and was shocked to see it was snowing. I shouldn't have been that surprised because I had seen the possibility in the weather forecast, but still, I thought the white stuff was behind me. I didn't really mind though, it didn't snow much and it gave the city a different feel. Since it was Easter Monday, most shops were closed and I wasn't sure if it would be worth sticking to my plans to take a ferry out to Vaxholm, an island in the vast archipelago east of Stockholm. I decided to go though because I really wanted to see what the archipelago was like. I didn't regret the trip, despite things being a bit quiet on the island, but that was part of the charm.

Beautiful islands on way to Vaxholm

It's hard to describe what I did on Vaxholm, because it wasn't much, but it was very memorable, being in a little town, tromping through the snow, admiring one quaint, colorful house after another. I was only there a few hours before having to head back to Stockholm on the ferry.

I spent that evening seeing some of the southern part of the city, which I hadn't had a chance to really wander around yet. It's the cool, hip area of Stockholm and I wish I had been able to make it there when the shops were open and in the daylight, but at least I got a feel for the area. It reminded me of the trendy areas of Portland. I even came upon an upscale grocery (that called itself an "urban deli") and when I saw it, I thought "oh my god, I've found the Pearl District of Stockholm." I ended up having dinner at a little, unassuming sushi place where the only other customers were a group of students who spoke a mix of English, Spanish, and Dutch. Oy.

So, next, in less than 3 weeks, I head to the Lake District of England for a friend's wedding and hopefully some walking in the countryside. Weather permitting. And now volcano permitting. Perhaps I'm safer because the trip isn't so near, but then we just don't know. I am crossing my fingers and knocking wood and hoping and perhaps even praying that this does not fuck up these trips I've been looking forward to for so long.

Stockholm videos

2010-04-15T19:44:00.000+02:00

Slowly working on my Stockholm stuff... Here are a couple of videos to provide a mild bit of entertainment.

This video is incredibly unexciting to watch, but it's the sound to pay attention to. One evening I was wandering around the little island of Gamla Stan, which is where I was fortunate enough to be staying, and I thought I'd get out of the mess of winding, cobbled streets and go check out the waterfront. As I got nearer to the water, I was horrified to find out that what might have been a lovely, quiet setting along the water was ruined by the absolute racket of thousands of seagulls that had come in for the evening.

Slightly more pleasing to the ear (well, it depends on your taste, but I like it), I present some traditional Swedish music played on funky violin-like instruments. I looked it up online and it is apparently a nyckelharpa, an instrument that is related to the hurdy-gurdy (which I just have to mention because its name is so cool). This was a duo playing at Skansen, an open-air museum, on Easter. The people at Skansen also dress traditionally. That, plus the little fire in the corner, made it easy to feel like you were back in the 19th century.

A couple of comments on Stockholm

2010-04-09T17:50:00.001+02:00

I spent Easter weekend in Stockholm, my first true foray into Scandinavia. I loved the city: the water, the hills, the colorful buildings, the food. There are a lot of similarities that can be drawn between Sweden and Holland, though I found people in Stockholm to be friendlier than in Amsterdam. But the languages are similar, some of the food is the same (a love of herring for one), and, on arriving in Stockholm in the evening, I noticed that the Swedes also have an aversion to using curtains, if only to subtly show off the cozy interiors of their houses with just-like-the-Dutch low lighting.

I'm going through my photos and will hopefully get them and further details about my trip online soon. One story about the trip home though: when I checked in, I was asked if I would mind taking a later flight because mine was overbooked. As compensation, I would get 150 eur in KLM vouchers, or 75 eur cash. I decided to take the offer, which would have put me on a flight 3 hours later, unless there ended up being spots on my flight afterall. By the time I got through security though I was somewhat regretting the decision because I was feeling exhausted and a headache was growing, so I had my fingers crossed that there'd be space on the plane. When my flight was boarding and I was called to the desk to be given the compensation vouchers by a KLM woman, I was resigning myself to the fact that I'd have to hang around the airport for another 3 hours. But then they handed me my original boarding pass and pointed for me to join the line boarding the plane. I was so tired that I didn't get it at first: I got to go home on my original flight and I got the vouchers. Sweet! So it was win-win.

Photography course

2010-03-19T18:19:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday I started a photography course focusing on vacation photography. I was midway through the class before I realized that in anticipation of the course I had spent more time thinking about the fact that it would be in Dutch than about who else would be in the class, what I should take with me, or, most importantly, what form the classes would take. Instead I worried over the idea of having to speak Dutch in front of strangers. But in the end it all went ok. And if I removed the foreign language element from the class, I really enjoyed it.

I didn’t set out to take classes specifically on vacation photography. It’s just that the basic photography classes had already started and were more expensive anyway. Plus I figure that what we learn in this course could be applied to photography in general. And I certainly wouldn’t mind improving my holiday photos. The class turned out to be small, only 7 of us, only one of which is a guy (a rather poncy-looking Leiden student type, but relatively ok as those types go). None of us are very experienced with photography and our interests and experiences vary. One girl admitted that she isn't really that into photography, but she is trying new things, so she signed up for the class. The SLR she brought with her was borrowed from a neighbor. Still, she seemed enthusiastic.

Learning depends so much on the teacher and fortunately we have a good one. At least I quite like him so far. He seems to have a broad interest in different types of photography and quite a lot of experience in it. He has an enthusiastic presentation style and a good sense of humor, so I think we all felt pretty comfortable with each other by the end of the first class. Which was spent going over the very basics of photography and the elements that make up every photo. It’s not completely new for me, but I did learn some things which are useful. I even came up with the answer to a question at one point, in fairly correct Dutch, which was my big achievement of the evening.

We left the class with two assignments: to bring in some photos (not taken by us) which we find good or interesting, and, a bit contradictory for a course in vacation photography, to take photos in our home. I walked home happy about the class and our assignments, and feeling pretty proud of myself for being able to follow the Dutch so well, that I’m finally at that level of being able to understand. Speaking is a whole other matter, but that’s ok. I’m already very much looking forward to our next class.

Minolta photos

2010-03-15T17:50:00.000+01:00

Nearly a year ago I finished off a roll of photos on my old Minolta SLR camera. They are mostly taken around Leiden, a lot of the same places I've photographed with my digital camera, but these have a nice 70's look to them. I had them printed after I finished the roll, but it's taken me this long to get them online (oops). You can check them out here.

In anticipation of spring (fingers crossed it does arrive), and of starting my photography class on Wednesday, I just loaded my camera with a new roll of film. Hopefully with this roll I'll take some photos that are a bit more interesting than these.

Ze lentekriebels

2010-03-14T16:54:00.000+01:00

It's been a long few weeks. I guess most of it can be chalked up to two things: winter dragging itself out, and me not having much going on. After a fairly busy January, I was happy to see some empty weeks in February, but instead of being productive, I sank further into the laziness I've had all winter and just ended up disappointed with myself. And bored. Very, very bored. Bored at work and bored at home. This feeling has been going on since early February, only broken up by occasional moments of hyperactivity. I think I have been spending too much time at home (for which I have no one to blame but myself) and the spring fever/cabin fever is building.

Lentekriebels is such a good word for how I feel because I do feel itchy and jumpy inside and wishing for something to happen. I've been thinking about home a lot and wishing I was back there with a car and I could just jump in and drive and drive and then get somewhere beautiful and walk and walk or just stare at the nature. I'm feeling so suffocated by the lack of nature and space here. Though I also very much miss just having weather warm enough to jump on my bike and go somewhere. That'd be something at least. I end up in these weird manic/tired moods where I have bursts of energy, but feeling like I have nowhere to direct them. They say by the end of this week we should be firmly into double digit temperatures, finally, and it's less than a month until I go on holiday, finally. Hopefully this period will be over soon.

Things recently said

2010-03-06T00:03:00.001+01:00

- I was telling someone at work that I used a tanning bed for the first time, but I couldn't relax because I was worried about getting burned. She said "Well, you do have rather fair skin." Oh, that stung. I have lost whatever olive tone I might have had. I blame this sun-forsaken country.

- When telling a friend that I'm sometimes tempted by the idea of just going back to the States because it would be so much easier, without all of the visa worries, she said "No, you can't give up all your plans for going to Australia." It was reassuring in many ways.

- Friend: "What are your plans for the weekend?"
Me, bored: "Nothin'...."
Friend: "Wanna come over tomorrow afternoon and eat chocolate cake?"

Josh Ritter and The Swell Season, Paradiso, Feb 23

2010-02-27T16:53:00.001+01:00

Last Tuesday I went to see Josh Ritter open for The Swell Season... It was a great, chill, fun, beautiful concert. I got there semi-early and nabbed a chair in the balcony. Josh Ritter was awesome, I haven't seen him live in awhile, but he loves playing in Amsterdam and is always so enthusiastic. I got chills during a couple of the songs, he was just so into it and enjoying it so much. Here is most of Harrisburg:

And then during The Swell Season, just so much went on, all sorts of getting the audience to sing or whistle and everyone was really into it, it was such a wonderful connection between the band and the audience. They played for over 2 hours, the encore was at least 5 songs, with Josh coming out back out for the whole band to play one of his songs. They ended with a Daniel Johnston song and the audience snapping and singing along. It was how shows should be.

February

2010-02-15T19:58:00.001+01:00

February's only half over and it already feels interminable. Not much going on, all the stuff to look forward to is still really far away... At least I'm still enjoying the wintery weather.

Some little things to look forward to in the near future:

- Someday I'll receive some magazines from the Oregon tourism board, if they haven't gone missing en route. I ordered them over 3 weeks ago. Maybe the email I got confirming my order, describing how the guides were going around the state to soak up all Oregon has to offer, wasn't so tongue-in-cheek after all.

- I'll get the new Quasi album in the mail, along with a DVD of their Who covers New Year's Eve show. In the meantime, I got a link to download the album and I must say I quite like it so far. Not as heavily political as the last couple of albums, quite rocky, with a more fleshed out sound thanks to turning into a trio with the addition of Joanna Bolme. I look forward to seeing them live in a couple of months.

- My only live show of the month is next week: Josh Ritter opening for The Swell Season. I admit I bought the ticket for Josh Ritter, who I haven't seen live in awhile, but I have now watched Once and am looking forward to seeing The Swell Season as well.

That's about all at the moment. Still about two months until my next trip. We are far away yet from being able to envision spring. Energy levels are low. I can't wait for this month to be over.

New computer

2010-02-06T19:47:00.004+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I finally assembled everything in my new computer and installed Ubuntu, which happily worked fine from the start. The basic internet stuff worked straight away, but in the meantime I've slowly been getting everything to match my old computer, all my files and programs. Patrick came over and volunteered a few hours to the tedious task of transferring the contents of my old hard drive to my new one. Since then, I've been using the new computer exclusively and I'm very happy with it. It's such a huge jump in hardware, as well as having the latest Ubuntu. It works so fast, I'm still getting used to how quickly things open and how smoothly they run. I don't have to worry about playing mp3s while editing photos or while running multiple programs anymore! Or just running multiple things at once, period. If I wanted the old computer to try burning a CD while downloading files and playing a Youtube video, it was definitely straining. But bless it, it never crashed, it was just frustratingly slow.

Here's the old behemouth next to the sleek new guy:

To geek out a bit, I've gone from a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor, with 2 GB memory and a 120 GB hard drive, to an AMD Athlon 64 x2, 2.70 GHz processor, 4 GB memory, and 500 GB hard drive. The construction of the box is so much more modern as well. As you can see from the photos, the old computer still has a disk drive and it has no USB ports on the front (leading to me always having to crawl to the back of the computer just to plug in a USB stick). The new computer has all sorts of helpful things right at the front, including a lovely built-in card reader. The panel at the bottom that contains the power button can slide up to cover the card reader/USB, etc area, but it's kind of fragile-seeming plastic and I figure I'll need access to the ports enough that I think I'll just leave it in the lower position.

I can't thank Patrick enough for all of his guidance and time in helping me get the new system set up. I learned so much in the process, which is still ongoing. In order to write this post, I first needed to install a couple of photo-related programs which didn't go as easily or as quickly as I hoped, but about an hour later I got there. I still feel very much like a Linux newbie, but I'm always so happy when I sort out my problems through the volumes of help there are online. Today I fixed the simple problem of my speakers popping loudly every time I started a soundfile or video; tomorrow I might tackle installing Skype, which is possibly a headache-in-waiting.

Things to look forward to

2010-01-18T21:25:00.000+01:00

2010 is already looking up, despite the fact that I got sick in the past week. I have 3 wonderful trips planned already and that is a very good thing indeed. Even better is that each is only about a month apart, so I have a happy few months in a row of travelling.

First up, and unfortunately still a few months off, is a few days to Stockholm over Easter weekend. It's a bit earlier in the year than I would prefer for going to Scandinavia, but I wanted to make use of the long holiday weekend.

Then in May I'll be going to the Lake District in the UK to attend my friends' wedding. I'll also be popping down to Nottingham to see how it's been, as well as hopefully seeing a friend of mine there.

And in June and July I'll be making a grand 3 week visit to Oregon, one week of which I plan to spend road tripping around the state, plus I'll be there over the Fourth. I have the feeling that this trip home will be quite different from any other, due to getting in touch with people from school who I had lost contact with, and getting to know some people online who live around Portland. So there will be a lot more people than usual who I'll want to see, it'll probably be a bit hectic, but hopefully it'll be some good times.

Now, just a couple more months of winter to get through...

A clean Willamette - in the 70's

2010-01-16T17:36:00.002+01:00

When I was in Melbourne, on my last evening there I popped into a Korean restaurant to get some takeaway. As I waited for my order, I noticed some reading material consisting mostly of Korean newspapers provided to make the wait go faster. Amongst the newspapers though was an old National Geographic that just happened to have a story about the efforts that had gone into cleaning up the Willamette after it became the most polluted river in the Northwest. I wanted this nice little snapshot of the past, so I snuck it into my bag. Now, nearly 2 years later, I finally got around to actually reading the article and checking out the dated photos some more.

The article, titled A River Restored: Oregon's Willamette, in the June 1972 issue, details how strong laws were passed (this was during Tom McCall's reign as governor) preventing any pollutants from being poured into the river. Cities built sewage systems to handle their waste water, while at the same time providing fertilizer for local farmers. Companies along the river, such as paper mills, spent millions of dollars to make sure they weren't discharging chemicals into the water. Citizens took up the cause and reported any signs of pollution.

All of this resulted in a near-pristine river full of spawning salmon and people not afraid to go for a swim. This picture of a happy American family enjoying a day on the river was the issue's cover photo:

The caption states, "Oregonians enjoy the newly cleansed waters of the Willamette River. Today, the entire length of the Willamette to Portland provides a safe playground for water sports, including swimming. Perhaps even more important, Oregon's accomplishment instills a valuable environmental awareness in the state's young people, heirs to the river of tomorrow."

It's not an awareness we kept for very long. A few decades later and the river is a Superfund site, at least around Portland. It's a shame we let it get that bad again.

Also I'm not sure what happened with the Greenway plan, mentioned in the article, to create a nearly continuous belt of parks along the entire river. Perhaps it does exist in some of the parks and nature areas that we know today. There is this photo of downtown Portland in the article:

It is pre-Waterfront Park, so there has been at least that improvement along the Willamette, as well as the more recent Eastside Esplanade. It's unfortunate that I-5 was placed where it was though.

The photo's caption reads, "...The busy harbor, once a festering sinkhole for all the Willamette's ills, now ranks among the cleanest in the Nation." Unfortunately I think it's back to "festering sinkhole" status.

What a different skyline the city has in the photo. Downtown looks more like the eastside. In the background though is a sign of a growing city, with the Wells Fargo building under construction. I love how photos can be such time capsules.

This is also true of some of the ads in the magazine. There are no fewer than 3 ads for cameras, including this one for the Minolta SRT 101, the precursor to the SRT 201 that I have.

And to have a bit of a laugh at old technology, there's this ad for a video recorder, which sort of looks like a portable reel-to-reel with a video camera attached.

It is touted as "a miniature tv studio, a mere 20 lbs. to carry." So only slightly less heavy than carrying around a full-sized tv studio. It is noted as the exclusive portable video recorder of the 1972 Munich Olympics. There are as few other ads mentioning official Olympic partners, such as one from Lufthansa declaring Europe "the uncommon market".

Falling apples

2010-01-04T18:27:00.000+01:00

Today an apple falling from a tree greeted me when I opened Google. It is to commemorate Isaac Newton's birthday and coincidentally I saw an exhibit about him and his laws yesterday at the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden. It's a museum dedicated to the history of science and medicine and I've been meaning to visit it for ages because 1) it is named after Herman Boerhaave, as is the street I live on, and 2) it would please my inner science geek. I found it to have a really cool collection of things, contrary to the Dutch brats who were stomping through declaring it all "saai, saai, saai".

The exhibit on Newton highlighted the fact that it was 3 Leiden professors, Boerhaave included, who latched on to the importance of Newton's ideas and were key to them being noticed by others. It started a golden age in science where even the layperson wanted a microscope or other scientific instruments in their house to use as a conversation piece with guests, and people were thrilled by lectures on new discoveries in astronomy, chemistry and other sciences, presented with slides projected by a sun projector. At the end of the exhibit there was a room with various games to illustrate Newton's laws. I must say I had a few goes on the pinball machine that used two different balls to illustrate how the different materials influence how they fall around the machine (enh, I didn't notice much difference, I just love playing pinball, especially when it's free).

Aside from the current exhibit, the museum houses all sorts of cool old science tools and specimens. There are early microscopes and telescopes, as well as tools used to measure the size of the Earth. There are mechanical calculators, some of the first electron microscopes, and electricity-making machines. The medical sections were the most memorable, with many instruments including amputation saws (which weren't much different from a handsaw you can get from the hardware store), speculums, rib retractors, and catheters used in the removal of kidney stones (ow, ow, ow, and ow). The 20th century was represented with early x-ray machines and an iron lung. They also had things floating in jars, such as embryos, someone's large toe, a fetus creepily decked out in beads, and various animals, including a lizard with two tails. It was pretty eerie going through those rooms. They were dimly lit and there was some art installation going on called Soft Voices that meant there was a voice constantly reading out a poem from a room further away in a murmur loud enough to hear, but soft enough not to be able to make out the words.

Maybe I'll go back again when the next exhibit starts and have a closer look at some of the rooms I didn't look at so closely. Though there are other Leiden museums I plan to get to, such as Naturalis, De Lakenhal, the Pilgrim Museum, and I definitely need to make another visit to the Hortus Botanicus when spring comes.

New comments

2010-01-01T23:21:00.000+01:00

The old commenting service I used, Haloscan, is being stopped and turned into a paid system that emulates Facebook. I didn't really feel like signing up for that, so I've exported my old comments and am now using Blogger's system for commenting. Unfortunately, I can't import the old comments into Blogger's system, so they aren't visible on my blog anymore. Apologies for them all disappearing.

Old and new

2009-12-30T20:41:00.002+01:00

It feels like the end of the year has just snuck up on me. I can't believe it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. It was a weird year. I worried it was starting off with a bad omen when my dad died, but fortunately things went fine. I had a bit of luck even, like that my accident in Croatia wasn't any worse than it was, and that in a year of the Mexican flu I didn't take one sick day and only had a couple of minor colds. Looking back on 2009 though, it was just sort of... there. Not particularly good or bad, it just was. Which I guess isn't really a bad thing. I'm ending the year feeling rather strong and stable. I've changed some things recently and feel mentally better than I have in awhile. Now if I could just get into better physical shape...

There are already a few things I'm looking forward to in 2010: going to the UK for a good friend's wedding, making what should be a pretty epic trip to Oregon, possibly going to Spain again. And hopefully making some movements towards Australia by the end of the year.

Here's hoping everyone has a wonderful and happy new year!

Gifts and food

2009-12-30T17:59:00.002+01:00

I have a lot of photos to post lately. It's the holidays I guess...

Anyway, beginning with gifts received... The last few years a forum I participate in has done a little gift exchange. I've joined in last year and this year. Names are drawn by one person so you don't know who will be sending you gifts and you get to surprise the person whose name you get. It's pretty nice, especially since we live all over the place, so you don't know where your gift could come from, plus a lot of the people on the forum are pretty artistic and make some cool stuff. So the other day my package arrived in a UK envelope. A handmade card and a bunch of little gifts were inside. Here is what I got:

The girl made a lovely piece of art with a sort of abstract design, and she sent a notebook with a Russian doll on the cover, one of those handy compact shopping bags with cute, happy food all over it, and a piece of tambourine from one that broke during a Decemberists show in London. I thought it was all very sweet.

Then I finally got around to making the gift I got last year. Amongst other things, I was sent a sewing kit to make a chicken cushion. I know, sounds a bit weird, but I thought it was pretty neat. Here's my chicken:

It's aimed at kids actually, so it's pretty simple, though it took me some time to get the hang of the stitching. I got there in the end, though the most tiring part was cutting up some old clothes to make the stuffing. It took a lot more to fill it than I expected; there's 3 shirts and 6 socks in there! It's lucky that in the process I didn't accidentally cut a hole in my pajama bottoms (yes, I lived in my pjs today). It took me most of the afternoon to finish, but in the meantime I listened to some music, and then to Billy Connelly and QI mp3s, which was good for that kind of work.

I guess I didn't feel like I've had enough food in the past few holiday party-filled weeks, so I made a full turkey dinner for myself. I realized while cooking that it was probably the most food I've made at one time in my little kitchen. I had to shuffle things around quite often.

The little kitchen that could

I had so much food. Which is the mark of any good holiday dinner, I suppose. In the photo on the stove is a big pot of mashed potatoes, gravy, and leftover sweet potatoes from Christmas that I had planned to reheat, but just couldn't be bothered with by the end. Then in the foreground is the turkey (just a fillet) and stuffing. Mostly hidden to the left is a big bowl of homemade cranberry sauce. It's the first time I've ever made it, but it was a really simple and delicious recipe using orange juice.

Let's eat!

Guess what I'll be eating for the next couple of days....

My 3rd day of Christmas

2009-12-27T14:50:00.002+01:00

Christmas gathering 3: Boxing Day

E and K had a casual gathering at their house, featuring tons of delicious, homemade food, mostly Swedish specialities. I was quickly buzzing on sugar overload and drunk on glögg, Swedish mulled wine.

The food table, including the glögg, Swedish gingerbread, and salads some people brought

More sweets: thumbprint cookies, meringues, and knäck (caramels).

The living room and Christmas tree

In case all those sweets weren't enough, they later made a pot of risgrynsgröt, a rice pudding sweetened with brown sugar and cinnamon and served with milk. Yum.

There were also the cats to play with, of course.

Lillet, looking very graceful

Sazerac, trying to look innocent

Good, ol' Coco

Now that the Christmas celebrations are over, I can begin a week of sitting at home doing nothing. Well, not nothing, I have tons I'd like to get done and I hope to not be too lazy. But it will be nice to mostly just chill.

My 2nd day of Christmas

2009-12-25T23:10:00.000+01:00

Christmas gathering 2: Christmas Day

An American girl I know in Leiden hosted lunch at her house. There were supposed to be 5 of us, but a couple couldn't make it, but that was ok, it was still a very nice afternoon with delicious food. The girl hosting made most of the meal which included wild mushroom soup; a simple salad with rucola, orange, and fennel; asparagus and goat's cheese quiche; and peppermint creme brulee. I also added glazed sweet potatoes to the offerings.

The table looked very pretty and festive, and included Christmas crackers

The soup also looked wonderful, with balsamic vinegar and sage leaves

The scrumptious creme brulee

It was a relaxing afternoon and it was nice to spend it with others and enjoy good food. In the early evening I carefully shuffled back home in the freezing wind and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol. Later at night I called my family and wished everyone happy holidays. Some bittersweet times: my cousin is due to have her baby, the first of the next generation, around the 1st of the year, while my mom told me that my grandpa is ill with cancer. Such is life.

My 1st day of Christmas

2009-12-25T11:49:00.000+01:00

Christmas gathering 1: Christmas Eve

A groups of us in Leiden got together in someone's lovely apartment and had a potluck dinner and exchanged small gifts. The food was great and quite diverse, considering no plans had been made for what each person should bring. We amazingly ended up with only one dessert, which was a delicious apple and raisin bread pudding with maple sauce. There were also Spanish cheeses, salads, homemade Chinese dumplings, and some curry and samosas. After we'd stuffed ourselves, we started a game to dole out the gifts. You rolled a die and each number had an certain action, plus there were slips of paper to draw with further actions. So gifts were shuffled around and won and lost (first while still wrapped, then unwrapped), but of course in the end everyone got something. I got an LED headlamp. Very handy!

We then settled in with conversation and wine, and eventually the hostess set up a hookah with fruity tobacco. It was the first time I'd used one and I quite liked it, especially in such a nice, social setting. A wonderful evening in all.

How I spent my Sunday

2009-12-13T20:45:00.000+01:00

I baked a cookie or two:

The chocolate ones took forever because I couldn't put too many on the tray and they had to cool a bit before I could take them off the tray and I only have one cookie sheet so I had to wait before putting more in the oven. Oh well, they are so good, so it was worth it.

Food consumed so far today (as of 8:30 pm): two bowls of cereal and a lot of cookies. That can't be good.

As I baked, I listened to a lot of music though, which I've been doing entirely too little of lately. I caught up on some mixes from a friend and listened to some Quasi. I also listened to Eels' Electro-Shock Blues, which I've been wanting to do over the past few days because I'm reading E's memoir and I'm at the part where he talks about recording that album. I was also trying to get into the holiday spirit by listening to some Christmas songs recorded by a guy I know in Portland. Some of the songs reminded me of the Christmas album I must have heard hundreds of times growing up, The Perry Como Christmas Album, which we had on 8-track, which meant that it would keep playing until someone stopped it, so it would often play 2-3 times in an afternoon. I still consider his renditions the gold standard for some of those songs. Of course I had to go and try to download it, which was a bit hard, but I got most of the songs. It brings back good memories of the times when my parents still had the energy for Christmas and there were decorations all over the house and lights outside, and a big tree, and we opened our presents in this little area of the house where my mom would set up her collection of those ceramic houses that are lit from the inside. I'm also trying to get some of the old Christmas movies that I loved watching every year, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Charlie Brown Christmas.

Croatia

2009-12-04T22:54:00.002+01:00

My delays with holiday photos continues, but finally, my Croatia stuff is up. My photos are here.

I'd been interested in going to Croatia for at least a couple of years, after hearing friends rave about it and hearing that it was regaining its popularity as a holiday destination. The days of the Yugoslavian war seemed long gone and it was rebuilt and safe. Before going, I had the impression that the country was full of beautiful nature, friendly people who speak good English, and an interesting mix of cultural influences. I found that all of these things were true and I had a very fulfilling trip there.

I flew into the capital, Zagreb, which I had heard wasn't the most brilliant city, but the flights there were cheaper than to Dubrovnik. I had that afternoon and evening to look around. I mostly wandered around the older part of the city, where my hostel was. There were some interesting parts I came across, but I left with a strange impression of Zagreb. Maybe it's just because it's quite different to the more touristy cities I spent most of my time in along the coast.

After one night in Zagreb, I flew south to Dubrovnik. Before I even entered the city, just from my first glimpse through the gate in the city wall, I was already enchanted by it. It's so easy for me to fall in love with old cities made up of tiny, narrow streets, and that pretty much describes all of Dubrovnik's old center. I hiked up to the hostel I was staying in (a lot of stairs were involved) and found out that my single room was actually a couple of doors down in a private house. A lot of the accommodation in Croatia is rooms in private houses that people rent out. I stayed in a few rooms like that and it was pretty interesting, a nice way to see Croatian life. So the man who owns the house came and showed me to my room, carrying my bag for me, which was nice since I was tired of hauling it up the stairs. I then spent the evening checking out the city. Just down from the hostel was a door through the city wall which lead out to a bar set up on the rock overlooking the sea. I peeked out and caught sight of the sun setting. After dinner, I spent a couple of hours just walking all over Dubrovnik, around the busier places, but then up into quieter corners. I loved every minute of it.

The next day I woke to find the sun beaming down from a nearly cloudless sky. It hadn't been all that sunny so far, but now it was perfect. I had breakfast and then joined the masses shuffling along the city walls that Dubrovnik is known for. So many old cities in the world only have ruined reminders of the walls that once protected them from any outside threats, but Dubrovnik's walls are fully intact. Walking around them gives amazing views onto the city and out over the sea. I took my time and made the circuit in about 2 hours. I was so happy the weather was so beautiful. The entire walk was very memorable. In the afternoon I had some time to kill, so I took a glass-bottomed boat ride. We didn't see many fish, but it was still different to see the city from the water and to go past Lokrum island just off-shore. I then went to the bar on the rocks near my hostel and relaxed there, soaking in the view, until dinner.

I had to leave Dubrovnik the next day and spend most of the day heading up the coast to Split. 4 1/2 hours stuck in a bus. I was expecting to sleep or listen to music, but I never got to that. Instead I met a few people on the bus who I talked to, or other people whose stories I listened to. First, at the Dubrovnik bus station, I met a guy who happened to live in Vancouver, Washington. I sat in front of him on the bus and we talked awhile. Later, a Croatian guy got on and sat in the empty seat next to me. He was very talkative and he told me about the history of places we were passing through, how pirates used to rule one area, and about his family's olive groves, and about how Mjlet, near Dubrovnik, is the most beautiful island in the world, and about being in the army during the Yugoslavian War and driving a tank into an area to liberate it when he was only 18. I enjoyed his stories. We arrived in Split in the late afternoon and by the time I settled into my room and then headed out into the city, it was already dark. I walked along the Riva, the waterfront area that looks out to all the ferries that carry people out to various islands, or even across to Italy or to northern Croatian cities. I had a wander around the main attraction in Split, Diocletian's palace, which is now filled in with shops and houses and restaurants. It had a similar feel to the old, narrow streets of Dubrovnik, but it just wasn't as charming for me. Overall Split didn't really win me over, but maybe I just wasn't there long enough. I left the next morning on the ferry to Vis.

It took 2 1/2 hours to get to Vis. It was a bright, warm day. I laid on a bench in the shade on the top deck of the ferry and watched the puffy white clouds move slowly back and forth to the slight rocking of the ship. When we arrived in Vis harbor, we almost seemed like we wouldn't fit, the ferry towered over all of the buildings in the town. I arrived and had no idea where I needed to go. I had an apartment booked, but I didn't have any directions for how to get there. I went to a travel agency and a very nice guy helped me hunt down the owner of the apartment. Two things I liked about Vis: typical of small island life, everyone knew everyone; and just about everyone was so friendly and helpful. So the apartment owner came and got me from the waterfront and took me to the apartment, which was so close to the harbor I had a view of the ferry out my window. The apartment was wonderful. I had a large bed and a couch, a fridge, my own bathroom, and then the patio. A huge, enormous patio that was larger than the room. Larger than my apartment in Leiden (not that that's hard). I wanted to stay there forever. I was glad I'd be there a few nights at least. I went to the bakery just on the corner from where I was staying and got a huge made-to-order sandwich that only cost a couple of euros, and then I sat in a park-like area on the waterfront and enjoyed the sun and the atmosphere of the place. It was then that I saw the band leave on the ferry.

On my first day on Vis, I decided to rent a scooter since I never had ridden one before, and well, we all know how that went. But I don't regret renting it. It was a more interesting way to get to the other side of the island than taking the bus. It was pretty cool and Mediterranean, riding along in a skirt and sandals on a sunny day, even though I was actually rather terrified, especially on the ride over. And especially because I stopped at this viewpoint before heading downhill into Komiža and when I pulled back onto the road, I ended up with the cross-island bus behind me while heading down a bunch of switchbacks into the town. It was slightly nervewracking and I felt like the slowest scooter rider ever. But I survived it, parked the bike (with the help of this middle-aged guy), walked to the waterfront, plonked on a bench, and spent half an hour gathering my nerves back together. I decided that, fine, especially since I was having trouble with this whole parking of the bike, and it all made me nervous, I would just stay in Komiža for the afternoon, go to the beach, relax, and just drive back to Vis in time to return the bike. No worries for a few hours. So that's what I did. I had some lunch and played with a cute kitten that came to check out what I was eating. I went to a beach that was not the most beautiful on the island, but there were other foreigners there and it was close, so it worked for me. It's unfortunate that almost all the beaches in Croatia are not sand, but pebble. It's a bit uncomfortable. But the water felt great and little fish swam around my feet. I'm so not used to swimming in the sea. Once I laid back to sort of float on my back and I got confused when I found it difficult to stand up again. I forgot about the high salt content. As you dry off, you end up with a white coating of salt. After a couple of hours of hanging out, I headed back to Vis Town. I took a different, longer road back across the island and that drive made renting the scooter worth it. The road slowly climbed above the sea. The sky was starting to haze over, so there was this pink sun casting light on the water and Komiža. This road was quieter, I didn't encounter any other cars for awhile, and it was pretty nice being on the scooter, having nothing blocking your view, just the hills around you and the sea below. The road crested a hill and then headed east and down into the center of the island. There is where the island has all of its vineyards and olive groves. There were plenty of both on both sides of the roads, and the vines and trees were full of fruit. The houses were back from the road or up on the hills that lined the valley. It felt like Tuscany. After crossing most of the island, the road headed back uphill before heading down towards Vis Town, with amazing views over the bay. It was after that that I had the accident.

The following day I took it easy and stayed around Vis. I walked north from the town, first walking past a small church and the town's cemetery. I carried on along the road until it ended but I found a path and ended up with a wonderful view over a more northern part of the island. It was so quiet I could hear the waves from where I was and I sat there for at least an hour and didn't see anyone. I relucantly went back into town and later in the evening headed in the other direction to check out the neighboring town of Kut. On the way there I had stopped for a second and this guy walked past and said hi. I didn't recognize him at first, but it turned out he had been at the medical center when I was there, he and his wife had to take their daughter in because she had come down with chicken pox. We chatted for a few minutes, he happened to be Dutch, but didn't sound Dutch because he's lived in England for awhile. In the end he invited me to dinner in the house his family and a bunch of friends were renting. He told me to come back to the house in about an hour, so I wandered around Kut in the meantime and watched the sun set while wading in the warm water. I then joined a bunch of strangers for dinner, but I felt at home straight away, they were all lovely people. The guy I had run into was cooking dinner: chicken paprika and roasted potatoes with wild rosemary he had picked down the road. It was delicious, the company was great: it was all wonderful, a happy coincidence that made the accident almost worthwhile. That experience was the final thing to make me truly fall in love with the island.

I sadly and painfully had to leave Vis the next morning. Painfully, not because of any lingering ache from my fall, but because I had to be up at dawn to catch the catamaran at 7 am. I was able to stay awake as we left the harbor, but I was sound asleep for most of the crossing. Back in Split, I wandered around Diocletian's palace in the daytime before picking up my rental car and heading north to a small town called Korenica. It was an interesting drive on a rather empty freeway with long tunnels through the mountains (one of the longest was 3.5 miles long). Arriving in Korenica was a very different place indeed from the touristy towns on the coast. It was cooler and much more basic. The town attracts people wanting to stay overnight near the Plitvice Lakes, which is why I was there, but despite the fair number of visitors, it was much more Croatian than the places on the coast. I stayed in a private house owned by a middle-aged couple who were kind, though they didn't speak much English. It was a cozy house with quite a few furs and mounted antlers about.

I delved back into tourist land again the next day when I went to visit the lakes. I can't imagine what it would be like in high season, it was crowded enough in September. And most of the paths through the park are these wooden boardwalks above the water, barely 2 people wide, with no railing, and used by a lot of retirees with poor footing. I wonder how often people fall in... Plitvice Lakes are in a national park in Croatia, one of the most recommended, and it lived up to the reputation. There are a series of lakes, each divided by travertine, a mineral deposit that forms from the water and moss. The water then builds up behind the travertine and creates waterfalls between each lake. The water is an amazing shade of green-blue and is so clear at the edges. There are a lot of fish and ducks and the whole area is surrounded by hills which were covered with trees starting to get their fall colors. It was a beautiful place, and it was so reviving to be in nature. Fortunately near the end of my walk around the lakes I managed to shake off most of the crowds and had a more quiet, solo walk through the woods. Before boarding a shuttle bus back towards where my car was, I took a peek at the last lake for me to reach, which was the highest of the lakes, so it was really the first lake. I stood gazing at the beautiful lake and the layers of hills in the distance and wondered how long it would take the water there to reach the bottom.

Epic weekend of FOOOD

2009-11-30T16:59:00.001+01:00

So I got to have Thanksgiving after all. E took pity on me and asked her friends who were having a Thanksgiving dinner if I could come along. They fortunately let me join them and it was a wonderful time. The hosts were really cool and it was great to meet a whole bunch of new people. Funfunfun. The FOOOOD: a proper, whole turkey, baked in their big oven, the usual sides: cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing, gravy, roast potatoes and pumpkin.... Total feast. And pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert. My first ever pecan pie. 'Twas yum. The DRINK: coffee with Kahlua, champagne with Disaronno-soaked mandarin pieces, Hemel op Aarde liqueur, homemade cherry liqueur.... I missed out on the white russians, unfortunately, but I had my first ever Bloody Mary. I wasn't so keen on it, maybe because I don't really like tomato juice.

That was Saturday, then yesterday a group of us went to the Christmas market in Cologne. We shuffled through 3 of the markets which got cozier as night fell and the lights came on. It was cheery. I didn't really buy any gifts, I mostly just bought FOOOD, like 2 servings of Käsespätzle, potato pancakes with applesauce (delicious greasy/crispy goodness), apfelstrudel, and boozy eggnog with whipped cream. I didn't manage to fit in a bratwurst. Perhaps that is for the best. We all fell asleep on the train home.

Dinner tonight is gonna be so lame. I think I need to make potato pancakes soon.

A conclusion, 12 years later

2009-11-26T23:31:00.003+01:00

Some backstory for my main story: In 1996, it apparently was (I thought it was maybe a bit later), I went to a book signing in Portland by Kevin Canty, for his new book, Into the Great Wide Open. I must have read about it in the paper or something, it's not like I usually went to signings. I was totally captured by the passages he read, so I bought a copy of the book, even though I was a poor student, and had it signed. I loved the book and it influenced me a lot over the next couple of years. In one of my college classes, I even wrote a poem based on the book. I also gathered my nerves and sent a copy of the poem to Kevin Canty. He never replied though, which I still thought about over the years, wondering why he didn't reply, or whether he even got the letter.

Fast forward to last Friday: It was the first day of the Crossing Border festival and Kevin was going to be appearing for a reading. I'd seen him listed in the program and thought it was too bad he wasn't appearing on the day I'd be at the fest. But then I got an email from someone I know who was also going to be seeing the Decemberists on Saturday, she was saying that she was excited because her friend Kevin Canty was at the fest and she was heading to meet up with him. I wrote an email to her explaining the story above and then on Saturday night, I ended up being introduced to Kevin. I didn't tell him how much his book stuck with me, or ask him about the poem I sent or anything. A couple of days later though: he added me as a friend on Facebook. Ack! It was just so bizarre. So I had no choice but to send him the poem. I did, and he said he enjoyed it. Before anyone asks, here it is:

Kenny, with Blue Lips

The envelope of nudes snuck out,
Uncamoflaged soldiers marching before your eyes
Turned by my uncontrolled hand, doubt
Tensing my shoulder you touched in the October moon.

At the canal, pregnant gray of early winter
Seeped into us as my worm of a scar
Wiggled out, stopped by your icicle finger,
Leaving a "ssshh" mark still felt in June.

My camera captured that day, your lips
So blue even in black and white, a stolen
Sideshot of a living corpse.
I later exposed you in the silent darkroom,
The orange light like the lamps at dinner that night
Melting the blue out of you, the secrets staying behind.

So, there, 12 years later, the author of the book I based the poem on finally, definitely saw the poem. It's just so weird, kind of like meeting Damien Jurado recently who my friend knows and played with, and thinking back to seeing him play ages ago in a long-dead all-ages club in Portland, only knowing his name at the time, and calculating that it must have been around that time that my friend was recording with him, and now here we all were coming together on another continent. It's mad, life.

It turns out that Colin Meloy was indeed in a class of Kevin Canty's in the writing program at the University of Montana, though Kevin doesn't remember Colin. But he enjoyed the Decemberists's gig at Crossing Border, as did, I think, everyone else there.

Feeling dejected

2009-11-16T17:47:00.002+01:00

Last week I found out that a co-worker is moving to Australia. I was talking with her about her plans, of which I'm very envious. She also fell in love with the country during a working holiday and has just been biding her time in Holland with her Dutch boyfriend (whom she met on the holiday), dreaming of heading back. Her boyfriend is actually almost more eager to move back than she is. When she gets there, she'll do some extra study and get back into the area she loves. Also, they are moving to Melbourne. *sigh* I often get so frustrated with my situation that it's hard for me not to get emotional while talking about my plans. Especially when people suggest one way or another to get there, most of which are options I don't have. I know they are just trying to help, but it makes the frustration more acute.

The frustration was particularly bad last week since I came to the conclusion that I likely will not be able to move by the end of 2010 like I'd been planning. Part of that is due to financial reasons. The other part is because there are places I want to go to in Europe before I leave, plus I am getting itchy to visit home. And unfortunately the 2nd part is bad for the 1st part. So I don't think I'll even start looking for a job until late 2010, as opposed to the spring like I was going to. It's not the end of the world, and admittedly I felt relieved to push it back a bit, but I still feel like adjusting my plans is some slippery slope towards not moving at all, though I know that's silly.

Week in review

2009-11-03T21:25:00.000+01:00

Last Tuesday - After work picked up E in Utrecht and then headed down to Den Bosch to see Damien Jurado play. The show was very good, he played solo, so the songs were quite powerful, with his voice echoing around the theater. He played Medication, one of my favorite songs and one I don't think I've heard live before. Someone took a better video of it than the one I made.

We talked to him a bit before and after the show, he recognized me from when we saw him in Amsterdam earlier this year, which was nice. E and I then trudged back to Utrecht.

Wednesday - A lovely, relaxing day in Utrecht. Sat around chatting for awhile and getting some anti-stress therapy from the cats making rounds between our laps. Hit a couple of vintage shops in town, though I did not find the Perfect Winter Coat. Went to Bond en Smolders for coffee with lots of whipped cream and a pastry. Nabbed some of their gevulde speculaas. Popped by Ekko and found Damien's wife, Sarah. Ended up chatting with both of them outside next to the canal before heading off to Amsterdam to see The Thermals. Grabbed dinner first at Getto (burrrgerrrrrs). The show was fun, very energetic, of course, and the crowd was really into it.

Thursday - My birthday. It didn't feel like it by the end though. Went out with people from work in the evening because of two people leaving. First went to Wynand Fockink for liqueurs, then had an Indonesian rijsttafel for dinner. I probably should have stopped at the liqueurs, I was so tired during dinner.

Friday - A bunch of people leaving work and having sweets for their goodbyes, and some Halloween candy, meant I was buzzed on sugar all day. Had fun carving my pumpkin that evening and managed to do it without cutting a finger off.

Saturday - Downloaded the old Charlie Brown and Garfield Halloween specials and watched them for the first time in ages. The Charlie Brown one was kind of boring, but the Garfield one was actually pretty funny in places. The pirate ghost part that always freaked me out as a kid was disappointing to watch because the glowy nature of them was too high-contrast in the video, so you couldn't really see what they looked like. I was surprised at how short of an amount of time the ghosts were in the episode.

In the evening, went to see some short films as part of the Leiden Film Fest. It was in an (unheated) chapel in St. Elisabeth Hospital. As expected, it was a mixed bag. The two animated films (The Pierce Sisters and El Empleo) were both awesome and humorous and bizarre. Tanghi Argentini was very sweet. A couple others weren't really my thing.

Sunday - In the midst of baking a carrot cake, I went to see two films. There was this steady drizzle almost the entire day, so I got pretty wet on my way to and from the first film, then I didn't really dry out before heading back for the second film, so I started out all cold and damp and only added to it. Fortunately I got a break on the way home from that film; the rain had finally stopped. I quite liked the first film, $9.99, a stop-motion movie about various people living in an apartment building. The second one, Gigantic, was ok, but it felt like an indie movie being quirky for quirky's sake. The leads were cute at least.

Well, it's not bad news

2009-10-27T12:04:00.003+01:00

I've gained back a tiny bit of hope regarding the possibility of moving to Australia via my company. I was talking with someone in HR there and she made it sound so easy and possible, but I started to worry that it might not really be so easy for me, someone who would not be looking at manager positions or IT jobs or things like that which are probably much easier to be transfered for. So I wrote her again and ask what the likelihood really is. Of course she can't predict whether it will actually work for me or not, but if I can find a role I really fit and can bring in specific experience, and if it fits a certain salary minimum, then it should be ok. So. In a few months I'll be watching the job postings like a hawk.

The minor downside in all of this is that the Australian office has a pharma division that does work similar to where I work now. This should be a big plus, it would fit my experience the best and I could maybe talk with them and discuss what unique knowledge I could bring to their office. But they have taken a hit this year when news got out that a few years ago they published some medical "journals" which were not actually peer-reviewed and were really marketing materials. So they don't have the best reputation right now and it may affect my decision to work there, or their ability to hire.

Late 90's Quasi

2009-10-22T19:22:00.003+02:00

Quasi's new album has been pushed back to February, but they (a trio now) are out there playing some shows, which I would love to go to, especially the New Year's eve show they are apparently playing at the Doug Fir.

But to step back in time for a sec, here's some video of them playing at Satyricon in the late 90's. I got to see them there once, I think it was my only Satyricon show actually. Not this one though, I remember Sam was wearing heavy boots at the show I was at because they came very near to my face when he would lie on his keyboard.

When I am old, I will use the f-word

2009-10-22T10:37:00.002+02:00

Going into old-lady mode...

To the city of Leiden: If you don't want people parking their bikes along the small fence at the back of the station, how about investing some of that money you must be making off of people when they come to reclaim their bike that you've hauled away and put up some fucking signs warning people that if they park there their bikes will be carted off? I know, I know, you would probably argue (and probably do argue to the people who undoubtedly protest when they come to get their bike) that there are signs around the edge of the station area that state where you can and can't park your bike, and according to it, parking along that low metal fence isn't kosher. I will point out in return that in the direction I come to the station from, there is only one sign, on the other side of the Rijnsburgerweg, which gets less cyclists, and it faces in the opposite direction to the direction of the bike traffic. Which is just cheeky. So just put up some fucking signs near that fence already, there's poles already there, it can't be that hard.

To the NS: Pleeeeeeeeease stop fucking using such goddamn short trains on my route. Besides the commuters we have going to Amsterdam, we stop at Schiphol, where a bazillion travellers with their bazillion bags get on. 4 carriages is a fucking joke. 4 carriages is hardly a train. I know, you've probably taken a chunk of the train that used to be used for my route and given it to some other new route that's opened, but I want it back. I'm tired of fighting for foot space across from some too-tall Dutch guy. Or Monster Dutch Woman. Or tourist who shoves their suitcase in between us. And I know, I should be happy I even have a seat, but this is a downgrade, not an improvement.

Open Monumentendag

2009-10-16T23:29:00.002+02:00

For this year's Open Monumentendag in September (which I don't really remember being aware of before, though it's a national thing) I went with some people around to some of the historic buildings in Leiden. It was great, sort of like playing tourist in your own city and getting to see places you normally never would be able to go into, including some private homes. I finally put some of the photos I took online.

The party ferry

2009-10-10T13:13:00.002+02:00

A few hours after I arrived on the Croatian island of Vis, I was sitting along the waterfront in a little park-like area shaded by palm trees, enjoying some lunch and catching up in my journal. After awhile a whole group of people carrying musical instruments came walking past. I would say they were a high school band, except some of the people were way too old to be in school. They were gathering to board the ferry which was soon about to leave to go back to Split. Once the ferry was open for boarding, members of the band went up to the topmost deck and started playing songs. At first it was just one or two trumpets and some drums, but later more and more of the band joined in.

People both on the ferry and on shore were definitely enjoying the impromptu entertainment. A somewhat strange barefoot older woman was hanging around and dancing. I managed to catch a bit of her dancing before she headed back into the town.

By the time the ferry left, the band had a strong and enthusiastic audience. The people on the ship were clapping and dancing, making it seem more like a party cruise than just the regular ferry back to the mainland. For those of us on shore, we stayed around until the ferry had turned out of view and the sounds of the band had fully faded. I wonder for how much of the 2 1/2 hour trip the band played.

Decemberists video

2009-10-04T16:49:00.003+02:00

I came across this the other day from a Decemberists show last year in Seattle. A onstage perspective of Colin and John singing Raincoat Song. I can't wait to see them again, though I'm not sure there'll be antics like this at Crossing Border.

I have no idea why someone is on the corner of the stage signing the lyrics.

And even though this song is a few years old, I'm just falling in love with it now. A very good song for the fall.

September 21

2009-09-26T18:59:00.000+02:00

It was a day of firsts for me: first time on a scooter, first time really swimming in the sea -- and first time I got stitches, which is related to the scooter part. I was staying on the island of Vis for a couple of days and thought about riding a scooter after noting agencies listed in the Rough Guide that rented them. It sounded like a cooler way of seeing the island than by using the bus that ran from Vis to the other main town, Komiža, on the other side of the island. So I rented a scooter and hopped on, heading across the island at a top speed of not quite 60 km/h. I was more freaked out riding it than I thought I would be, I mean it's incredibly easy to operate, and I know how to drive and how to ride a bike, so the concepts are all there, but I was quite nervous. Maybe it was the idea of how vulnerable I was if I lost control, more so than on a normal bike. I relaxed into the whole thing a bit more by the time I arrived in Komiža less than half an hour later. I did feel like a complete girl though because I didn't have the strength to get the scooter pulled up onto its stand, so I worried at the thought of having to park again (and made a resolution to work on making my arms stronger).

After an afternoon on the beach in Komiža, I started heading back to Vis. I took the longer, old road back, which was an amazing drive (I'll write about it later) and it was made more memorable by being on a scooter, having the openness around me. It was all going so well. I arrived in Vis and went to the gas station to refill the tank before returning the scooter (and felt quite embarrassed at not being able to get the scooter on the stand and not being able to open the seat to access the gas tank. Arg.) After refueling, I just had to go maybe half a kilometer to the rental office. But the office was back the way I came, so I needed to turn 180 degrees from the gas station. I knew it was hard for me to turn so sharply, so I did walk the scooter a bit into the right direction, but when I started off, it all went wrong. I wobbled a bit, then had a moment of panic where I saw I was heading straight toward the sidewalk on the other side of the street at a reasonable speed, and I think I overcorrected, perhaps even unnecessarily accelerated a bit, and the scooter went to the right and I fell off to the left.

Besides feeling some scrapes on my knee and hand, most of the pain came from where I impacted at my mouth. Like when I crashed while snowboarding years ago, I thought I had maybe knocked a tooth loose. I lifted my head from the pavement and blood started to drip down. I didn't know where it was coming from though, I thought from my nose, which didn't make my sense because my nose didn't hurt, but I just didn't think of my chin. Some people seemed to come out of nowhere and rushed over to see if I was ok. I was handed tissues for the blood. A girl kneeled in front of me and I asked her where the blood was coming from that was starting to form a puddle on the ground. She said it was my chin and had a closer look and made a grimace. Wonderful, way to reassure me. She gave me a pile of kleenex and told me to press it hard on my chin. She helped me to the curb and her boyfriend picked up the scooter and pulled it out of the road. They asked the gas station attendant to call for an ambulance. I assumed they were Croatian (I don't remember them speaking to the attendant in English), but they were Czech, and they were wonderful and kind, staying with me until I went off to the doctor. The girl sat next to me and assured me it would all be ok (and told me the cut wasn't that bad, not big, just deep) and did her best to get me to talk about other things to get my mind off how much it hurt. I am so thankful for their help, I don't even know what their names were, but I'll always remember them.

As we sat waiting for the ambulance, not really being sure what sort of medical services there were on the small island, a guy came along on a bike who happened to be from the place where I'd rented the scooter. Shit. No, it was fine, and it was thanks to him that I got to the doctor sooner. He left his bike with us and drove the scooter back to the office, then came back with a car and took me to the medical center. After some wandering around the two parts of the building, when I was particularly confused since I couldn't understand what was being said, I was eventually lead into an exam room and was helped out by two women. I thought the older woman was the doctor, but I think she was a nurse, and then the other was a young girl who assisted. Fortunately Croatians have good English, so they could explain things well enough to me.

The nurse gave me some anesthesia injections and then started with stitching me up. She asked me at one point if my teeth were ok and I said they were. I think I have strong teeth, seeing they survived this and the snowboarding crash. I did feel some crunchy bits in my mouth though and thought they were pieces of tooth, but they were tiny rocks from the road. Heh, I literally ate pavement. After the nurse had done one stitch, a man came in and peered in at my face. I guessed this was the doctor, though he looked like he'd just come from the beach (which perhaps he had). He didn't think much of the nurse's work and some discussion went on between them. Then the doctor summed up for me in English: they could carry on with only a couple of stitches and I would need plastic surgery, the scar would be so bad, or he could give me a stronger anesthesia and do better stitches and it would be perfect. I said to go ahead with the perfect option. I think the nurse had told him I had freaked out a bit at the anesthesia injections, though I wasn't that bad, just a bit whimpery. The doctor was very no nonsense and quick with the additional injections he gave me, but as he put it, a bit of pain, then no pain. Then he started in with giving me what ended up being 7 stitches. The nurse looked in from the top of the table, using it as a learning experience. When he was done, I was left with the assistant who had me get up slowly from the table to have a look in the mirror. I was surprised the wound was so small, and now it was black with the closely-spaced stitches. I also finally washed off the blood that was on my hands and arms all this time, making me feel like Lady MacBeth.

Scab and bruising added to the stitches for maximum ick effect.

I was set up with some paracetamol with codeine (whoohoo!) and had a mostly chilled evening back in my room watching an episode of Mad Men that I'd already seen (they blessedly don't dub TV in Croatia). The pain was better in a day and I mostly went about business as usual, though the bandage on my chin still draws stares and the occasional double-take from people. While walking at Plitvice Lakes a couple of days later, I think people who saw me assumed I had fallen while walking. One tour guide pointed at his chin and smiled and nodded. I wasn't quite sure what he was trying to communicate. And when I returned the car I had rented, I realized it looked a bit bad coming in with injuries ("No, no! This didn't happen in the car!") In a couple of days I'll get the stitches out and see how perfect the doctor's work was. If not, I'll have a life-long reminder of Croatia.

The End

2009-08-29T22:29:00.002+02:00

Oh holy hell, I have finally finished with putting all of my Australia photos online. Getting on a bit since the end of the trip, but I told myself I would get it all done. So, read the last story here (it's a bit long, but it was quite the adventure with bus problems, very early mornings, and the amazing things the outback has to offer) and check out the photos.

Feeling decidedly unskilled

2009-08-23T19:31:00.003+02:00

Lately I've been making further enquiries into how I'm going to get to Australia exactly. There are various work visa options and a couple seemed like possibilities. First, there is applying for jobs with my company's office in Sydney and getting them to sponsor me. I emailed someone in HR there and she made it sound very easy and possible.

Another option is the regional skilled worker visa, which tries to attract skilled people to non-urban areas of the country, where people usually aren't as willing to move. That sounded like it could be an unexpectedly interesting experience, living in a smaller town, doing something very different from what I do now and getting to meet nice and/or quirky people, a whole Northern Exposure kind of thing. But it's not as easy as saying "sure, I'll live in a regional area and do what job I can find!" You have to have skills, the right skills, things that not many people in the non-urban areas can do. And I don't really qualify. I'm not a doctor or nurse or bricklayer or plumber or baker. All these solid professions where you can say "yes, I am one of those, I've been one of those for years, I can be one of those for your town." So unfortunately I think my quirky little-town fantasy has been killed.

I've looked at a couple of other visas and I'm likely not skilled enough for them either, so I'm pretty much left with the option of transferring with my company. Which isn't bad, I am very fortunate that there is this possibility, I guess I just worry about having the one hope to hang on to. I will check into it more though, make sure it is possible, if needed start getting my manager to tell them to hire me, damnit, because I am good and they want me in their office. But they also have to convince Australia that I'm good and deserve to be in their country taking a job away from an Australian. Why does it have to be so difficult?

Concentrated tomato goodness

2009-08-21T19:57:00.004+02:00

The produce stall I've been frequenting at the market has some wonderful, sweet mini roma tomatoes. So I knew I had to get some when I saw this photo from Lynn. I spent an evening earlier this week oven-drying the tomatoes with rosemary. Here they are before:

And the delicious end-product:

Tonight I'm throwing them on the wheat spaghetti with grilled veggies that I'm making.

Australia podcast

2009-08-21T19:44:00.002+02:00

I put together a little podcast for a Decemberists forum project. It consists of songs either by artists who are Australian, or songs that remind me of my time in Australia. Go check it out!

Fall getaway

2009-08-05T15:58:00.002+02:00

I told myself that I wasn't going to travel much this year in order to save up some money, and I was doing pretty well, but the travel itch got too strong and now I've planned a 10-day holiday to Croatia in September.

Planning this trip was different from most trips I've done in Europe in that I won't be staying in one city for most of the time, I'll be moving around the country quite a bit, so a lot of logistics were involved. Making all the plans reminded me of planning out my trips in Australia and New Zealand though, so it felt good to do that again. For better or for worse, I'll even be staying in hostels again, though this time I've granted myself the luxury of only taking single rooms, no dorm beds. Croatia also has an abundance of people offering rooms in private houses, so I booked some of that type of accommodation as well. Overall, the average I am spending per night is around 30 eur, which is pretty reasonable. Less reasonable is the cost of renting a car, but I'll only be renting one for a couple of days to get to a more remote area.

My general itinerary is that after spending time in Dubrovnik (it'll probably not be enough time, unfortunately) I'll head up the coast to Split and then take a ferry out to the island of Vis. I'll spend 3 nights there, so it's a fair bit of time to explore the island or just relax, depending on what I feel like. Then I ferry back to Split, pick up the rental car, and drive to the area near Plitvice Lakes, a beautiful national park containing the lakes, waterfalls, and forest where I'll have a full day to hike in the park.

Hopefully it will be a good little extension of the summer, spending time on Adriatic beaches and getting some sun. Croatians sound very friendly and helpful, I can already see that in the emails I've received from the places where I've booked a room in a private house, I feel like I can't wait to meet these people and stay with them. I'm looking forward to another little adventure.

A ticket bought

2009-07-31T21:57:00.000+02:00

Today I purchased my first Decemberists ticket in about 2 1/2 years. I should be more thrilled about this, but I haven't been able to muster the excitement yet. The reason is that after 2 years of not visiting Europe, the band is only coming over to do 3 shows in 2 cities. Now, I am lucky in that one of those two cities is very near me, but they aren't playing a proper show of their own, they're playing as part of the Crossing Border festival in the Hague. They've played the festival before and I decided to see them in Germany rather than see their show at Crossing Border. To me, it's just not the same experience as being the headliners. Plus it's already been announced that they will be playing Hazards of Love, so I worry that in the setting of a festival, that is all they will have time to play, unlike the shows they've done in the US, and will be doing in London, where after the Hazards of Love set they do a set of older songs.

Anyway, I will be happy to see the band again and by the time the show rolls around, I'll probably be front and center grinning like a fool.

Tour of Tasmania

2009-07-26T00:58:00.002+02:00

This is my second-to-last chunk of photos to post from my Australia trip. I've promised myself to finish it off within a month. Way to extend a trip I wish I was still on, I suppose.

You can read about the 6-day tour I took of Tasmania, or if your eyes start to glaze over, maybe some photos will wake them up.

Old photos

2009-07-19T16:54:00.003+02:00

While I was in Paris, I went to a wonderful shop called A chacun son image which is filled with found, vintage photos. The photos came from nearly every age of photography, some from as far back as the late 1800's, and up to as recent as the 60's or 70's. Many were just family snapshots or photos of friends, people at the beach, on holiday, at family dinners. It was easy to lose yourself while browsing, getting glimpses into strangers' lives from many decades ago. Adding to the magic was the old jazz being played in the shop and the French being spoken.

Before visiting the shop, I imagined walking out of it with a handful of photos which I liked, but the prices were too steep for that. I ended up buying only two very small photos and they were pricey enough. Here are the ones I chose:

I recommend the shop to anyone visiting Paris. It also is on the Marché des Enfants Rouge, a lovely, small market filled mostly with stalls with prepared food to eat there from a range of cuisines, such as Moroccan, Chinese, and Carribean, as well as traditional French food.

Dredging and whinging

2009-07-14T16:50:00.000+02:00

I happened to catch a dredging boat in action today in Leiden. It was just a little thing that listed well to the side when its claw grabbed at stuff on the bottom of the canal. The boat was already carrying a fairly large pile of bikes that had been pulled up, all the same black-brown sludgy color. One bike stood out as looking fairly normal, it was still a definite silver color. Either it had not been in the canal long, or the boat operator had decided to pluck a bike from the side of canal just to spite someone. The boat attracted a lot of attention, especially since he was working right under a bridge, so most passers-by stopped to have a look. It's what drew my attention, all these people stopped on the bridge looking at something. So I hung around watching as well, though I'm not sure the boat operator liked everyone watching him, but he must be used to it by now. He dug around in the water, kicking up a cloud of black silt, and came up with a couple of claw-fulls of bike tires, and then he nabbed another bike as well. We watched him completely mangle the front wheel of the bike and quite a bit of the frame to get it off the claw after the bike's fender got caught on it. I wonder what they do with all of the stuff they pull out of the canals. Perhaps recycle the metal of the bikes? I also thought of my camera bag lying in the gunk at the bottom of a canal in Delft and wondered if it will ever be dredged up.

Leiden has entirely too few pharmacies in the center, something I've learned when my lovely little pharmacy closed at the end of June. It was not far on the other side of the station, so it was easy to go to before heading to work. Now the clients from my pharmacy have been combined with the only other main pharmacy in the center, which is probably total overload. My doctor tried to warn me to go elsewhere, saying the waiting times were long, but I ignored her, thinking that this one was handily open on Saturdays. I went for the first time last week, in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and waited for over an hour. I got to practice my Dutch, and integrate myself, by having a mutual complaint fest with the older lady sitting next to me (though I was inwardly cringing at myself for not using the formal "you" with her when it was what would have been appropriate). Anyway, I have now registered at a pharmacy in the next town because it will be better than watching my life dwindle away every time I go to pick up something.

New apartment look

2009-07-08T15:01:00.002+02:00

I rearranged my apartment a few weeks ago and I have completely forgotten to post photos of what it looks like now. Here's the new layout:

So there's this little living room area now where the bed used to be. I'm pretty happy with it, I was trying to think of how to rearrange everything and nothing was going to work, and then I thought of not putting the couch against the wall. And it's even easier now to watch TV while cooking!

My favorite songs of late

2009-07-01T21:44:00.000+02:00

Two quite different artists... First, a lovely acoustic sort of number by the band Blind Pilot from Portland. The song is called 3 Rounds and a Sound.

Second, a band from Sacramento that plays music described as Victorian punk. This song, That's Not Edgar's Heart, was on a mix by a friend.

Coincidences and connections

2009-06-29T22:40:00.000+02:00

On Saturday night, after seeing the new Terminator movie in The Hague, I was waiting in line for the toilets when I ran into a girl I know from Leiden. She and her husband had been in the same movie M and I were, and we ended up going with them to see a band playing outdoor for free.

Then on Sunday at Parkpop, again while waiting in line for the toilets, out of the thousands of people there, I spotted a friend from work who I knew would be at the festival. I headed over to say hi and found that she was with another co-worker of ours, Marinella, as well as Catherine, the French girl who lives upstairs from me.

This wasn't as strange to me as it might have been because I fortunately know the connection between Marinella and Catherine, and if you (want to) bear with me, I can explain. Marinella's boyfriend teaches jujitsu to Catherine and her boyfriend, Mattieu. Who live upstairs from me. Mattieu and Catherine had a housewarming where I unexpectedly saw Marinella's boyfriend.

But that's not all... The couple we ran into on Saturday, Phil and Sarah, also know Mattieu and Catherine because they were all in Dutch class together. In the spring, I had met Sarah a couple of times, but not Phil, but then I met Phil at the aforementioned housewarming. He mentioned his wife but we didn't know that I had already met her.

Glad that's all clear now. I was actually going to make a diagram showing who knew who and how, but it only made it more confusing.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

2009-06-21T11:00:00.000+02:00

Utrechtse Heuvelrug

2009-06-19T19:41:00.002+02:00

Wednesday I took a day off work and went to a large forested area called the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. I had never even heard of it, but I found out about it online while looking for a nature area to go to after deciding that it would be too much trouble to get to the Hoge Veluwe. It's amazingly close to Utrecht and has miles and miles of walking paths through forest. My photos from my walk are here.

I took a bus along the bottom edge of the park on a road that passed through a couple of small towns and went past many unbelievable homes. It was quite pretty. From the bus stop I dove straight into the forest. I only had a vague idea of which paths to follow since I didn't feel like shelling out 7 eur for a map of the entire park, but after about half an hour I came across a picnic area with a map, so I plotted a route to take. (And depended a bit on modern technology: I took a photo of the map so that I could refer back to it on my camera.) Aside from the bubbles of people there were at places like the picnic area or later at a cafe, I hardly saw anyone all day. It was wonderfully quiet. Though unfortunately there were almost always reminders that I was hardly in a wilderness: I had to go pretty far into the park, and on the other side of a slight hill, to finally stop hearing distant traffic.

About halfway through my walk, there was a viewing tower you could climb. The view from the top was amazing. I don't think I've ever seen so much green all together in this country. It was hard to imagine I was in Holland. Until I heard a far-off ambulance siren....

Not far after the tower there was a cafe with a large terrace overlooking a sandy, meadowy area. I'd already been dreaming of pancakes, so I thought I could do with a later lunch/early dinner. The food energized me enough for me to carry on in a circle back to where I had started, instead of ending earlier on a different road. I highly recommend the Heuvelrug for someone wanting a day trip to somewhere different and unknown. Granted, I was lucky enough to be there on a weekday, but still, it's a big enough park to find a quiet corner and get lost in nature for a bit.

My new steed

2009-06-15T22:51:00.002+02:00

After the exhausting bike ride to the beach on Easter weekend and then deciding to rent a bike to ride around the tulip fields, I thought that perhaps I was in need of a bike upgrade. I felt a bit like I was betraying my bike, the only one I've owned here which has done well for me, but I had to admit it just wasn't good for longer rides. It's not even been particularly good lately for daily use around the city. The pedals have been slipping which makes for tiring cycling. So I decided I needed to look for a better bike, one with gears that would be more comfortable to ride for the times I wanted to head out of the city.

Saturday looking for a bike was on my list and I found a shop straight away that had a rough, handpainted sign advertising used bikes at the end of the alley it was in. I popped in, told the guy what I was looking for, and soon found a sturdy, 26-inch bike with 4 gears that looked to be in good shape. I went for a test ride and couldn't find anything wrong with it, so I went ahead and bought it. I bought a bike before I even got to any of my other shopping for the day! Without further ado, here she is:

I left it in the shop and went back later to pick it up. I transferred over my saddle bags from my other bike and went for a ride in the evening through the Leidse Hout. It was a beautiful evening and I was very happy with the bike. It rides really well and the gears and brakes work great. I have gotten used to the handbrakes pretty quickly, though I have a feeling I'll want to brake with the pedals if it's sudden. I need to adjust the seat and handlebars a bit, but otherwise I'm very pleased with my find and I can't wait to go to the beach again.

Moving forward

2009-06-15T22:47:00.002+02:00

This weekend I finished two books. Quite pleased with myself. I now am reading World War Z, which I've been looking forward to for months. I'm only about 20 pages in and it is already pretty gripping; for the first time in 2-3 weeks I stayed awake on the train ride home. I may be having some nightmares though.

Photos and video from Mallorca

2009-06-14T17:15:00.000+02:00

Some of you may remember that I took a few days' holiday to Mallorca a year ago. I was telling myself that I would put the photos from the trip online after I was finished with my Australia photos, but since that is still a work-in-progress, I thought I'd get the Mallorca photos online. You can check them out here. If you want to remind youself what I did on the trip, you can read my story of the trip. I also uploaded a video I took while navigating one of the windy mountain roads on the north side of the island.

Memorial Day

2009-06-08T14:58:00.001+02:00

It's a couple of weeks past Memorial Day, but I just got a photo from my brother of my dad's grave in Willamette National Cemetery.

It's the first time I've seen the stone in place since it of course wasn't there yet on the day of the funeral. I believe the flowers are some rhododendrons that my mom brought that grow next to the house (she also always takes some to the graves of my grandma and great-grandpa on Memorial Day).

Long weekend in the Ardennes

2009-05-30T18:00:00.000+02:00

Spending a portion of this sunny holiday weekend to write about last sunny holiday weekend... Want some pretty pictures? Here they be.

M and I got invited along with a group going to the Ardennes for Hemelvaart weekend. Someone arranged an apartment rental near the town of La-Roche-en-Ardenne and our group of 7 headed down in 2 cars after work on Wednesday. The 3 1/2-4 hour drive, coupled with a break for dinner, meant that we didn't arrive in La Roche until just after 11 -- which was when the apartment owner closes up the restaurant just next to the apartment and goes home. The other car arrived ahead of the one I was in and they called us to let us know that they had arrived, but that the restaurant was locked and dark, and any calls to the phone number of the owner went to the answering machine. I was starting to envision a long night spent sleeping in the car. Fortunately it didn't come to that, the owner eventually answered the phone and came back to give us the key. We unloaded the cars into a cosy, but spacious enough, apartment which was really the lower level of a house, the larger upper part also being rented out. It was in a lovely setting; right next to us was a little area with some goats, a couple of sheep, and a donkey, we were along a lane lined with fields containing some horses, and on one side of the fields was a river. We were just enough outside of the town to have it be more peaceful and pretty, but close enough that we could easily walk from the house to town.

On Thursday, after a breakfast of scrambled eggs eaten on the patio in front of the apartment, we walked into town to check it out (we had arrived after dark, so we didn't really get to see what it was like). Most of the group went on a walk through the nearby forest areas, but M and I stay in La Roche and wandered around. We enjoyed some French-style pastries and then went up to the castle ruins that hang above the town. The views were beautiful from up there, all quaint village houses and green hills. We also checked out the old Citroens that had been bumbling around town; some had stopped cruising and were showing off their cars in one of the main parking lots in town. I took a video capturing the French feel of the gathering, though the group was mostly Dutch people. That evening was spent waiting for a shepherd's pie that just would not cook; I think we ended up eating some time after 10. Then we all nearly had a heart attack when M was pulling the pie out of the oven and the shelf fell, spilling some onto the oven door. I think by then there would have been a mob if dinner was ruined.

The next morning we were treated to a clear blue sky that had us all out on the patio basking in the sun. The day was absolutely gorgeous and in the afternoon we headed out on another walk through the surrounding forest. It was so nice to be out amongst pine trees, though often we were reminded that we were far from being in a wilderness: one time we crested a hill expecting to see a beautiful landscape before us, but instead we had met up with a road and cafe; another time we were having a break in the woods and realized we could hear some not-so-distant traffic. That evening we made use of the large barbeque grill at the apartment and had a wonderful feast of kebabs, sausages, potatoes, and salad. We went back into town to have some Belgian beers at one of the cafes. Walking back to the house, it was nice to take in all of the stars you could see out in the country and it made me regret that I've forgotten so many of my constellations.

Saturday morning again was bright and blue and we had breakfast outside (in fact, all weekend we only ate one meal inside the apartment). Most of the group went into town to check some of it out. M wanted to visit the local war museum that documented the Battle of the Bulge that took place throughout the Ardennes and had devastated La Roche. It wasn't really my thing, so I stayed behind and went on a short walk along the river with a girl from the group. In the afternoon, we jumped in the cars and headed to Luxembourg, which wasn't as close as it seemed it should have been, it still took an hour and a half to get there. We spent the late afternoon and evening in Luxembourg City, the capital, which is quite beautiful, situated on upper and lower levels of hills and divided up by a couple of rivers. Unbeknownst to us, there was a marathon on that evening, so the main roads in the city were beginning to be blocked off. It caused a bit of a headache when we left later on, but it made walking around really quiet and unique. Once I paused on a bridge to just take in the sound of distant church bells ringing, which probably would have been drowned by the noise of traffic. The group began to go off in different directions and I went on my own on a loop of an upper part of the city that surrounded a park that laid in a valley-like area below the upper part. I did eventually venture into the park as well, which was large and quite different with various levels of paths cutting along the slopes. The group reconvened for dinner, choosing to go to an Indian restaurant we had passed earlier. Despite being in Luxembourg, and the waitstaff looking more Vietnamese than Indian, the food was excellent and we all nearly had to roll back to the cars.

Sunday was unfortunately our last day, but we were in no rush because there was no one booked into the apartment after us, so we could leave whenever we wanted. The day heated up quite quickly and was up to 27 degrees by the time we left mid-afternoon. After a pancake breakfast, we went off to go kayaking down the river that ran near where we were staying (and which carried on to run through La Roche). M and I shared a kayak, which I later regretted a bit when I was caught in the crossfire of a splash-each-other-with-our-paddles fight. It was all really fun though, I had a great time, and got a bit toasted out in the bright sun. After that it was just a matter of packing up and cleaning the apartment. We had one last outdoor meal, having a varied lunch to try and use up what remaining food there was, so we had scrambled eggs, bread, veggies, and French fries. All very yummy though... We then grudgingly left, trying not to think of work the next day. I said bye to M there since one car was going straight back to The Hague (the car I went in) and the other detoured through Maastricht (which M wanted to see). It was a wonderful weekend though, the group was really good, we were so lucky to have stayed in the place we did, and it was refreshing to get out into nature. Monday was definitely a rough day.

Bird show

2009-05-10T10:48:00.002+02:00

A girl who was at the Andrew Bird show on Thursday liked the photos I posted on Flickr, so she's used some of them in her review of the show. Check it out, as well as the links to some videos on Youtube.

Weekend roundup

2009-04-27T12:43:00.003+02:00

Friday night started with a wonderful dinner in Amsterdam. I didn't even know where we'd be eating, it was all being arranged by a friend of a co-worker. The restaurant turned out to be an Afghan restaurant in the Jordaan that was simple, but looked classy, and was owned by a lovely Afghan family. Everything came out in these little dishes that we served ourselves from. After some simple salad-y starters, there was some filled pasta, which gives the restaurant its name, Mantoe. They were delicious, filled with spiced meat and covered in tomato and yogurt sauces. Then for the main course we were brought a mountain of wonderfully fragrant rice, chicken legs and potatoes, grilled eggplant and zucchini with tomato sauce and onions, a delicious kidney bean dish, and grilled lamb. The potatoes were some of the most flavorful I've ever had, they weren't just hunks of starch. Dessert was cardamom pudding with a lemon granita on top. I wanted another one, heh. I definitely want to go back there sometime... My evening ended with a stroll through the Jordaan back to the station, all the terraces were full and people spilling onto the sidewalks on a still, relatively warm night.

Saturday morning was beautiful and warm. I zipped around Leiden doing errands while also trying to take photos with my film SLR. I went up to the top of the Burcht for only the second time ever and hopefully got some good photos from there. For lunch I got a sandwich and was eating it alongside a canal. A pair of ducks swam over because they spotted my bread loot, so I tossed them a couple of nibbles (and damn, female ducks are pushy. This is twice now I've seen them totally plow over the male to get at food). The female duck then jumped up onto the canal side and came right up to me, eyeing my sandwich. I was afraid she was going to attack me for it. She was not shy at all, she only went away when I shook a paper bag at her, but then she'd come right back.

Saturday evening I convinced myself to go to my upstairs neighbours' housewarming party. They are a French couple and the guy has now lived on each floor of the house. I was rather tired and not really in the mood for going to a party where I'd hardly know anyone, so actually the thing that pushed me to go was that I'd never seen the top-floor apartment that they now live in and I really wanted to check it out. It is lovely, I am quite jealous. It has two bedrooms (one they use as an office), a large back balcony that both bedrooms open onto, a large kitchen, and a huge, light bathroom with a tub under windows cut into the sloped roof. Despite my worrying about not knowing people there, I met a few awesome people, including an English guy who had also lived in Melbourne, so I was chatting about it with him; an older Dutch guy who I had written off when I saw him, but he turned out to be actually rather non-typically Dutch and quite interesting; and the cutest Spanish couple ever, the guy in particular didn't look very Spanish, but he was cool, and the girl was so sweet and so cute. There was also further evidence of the small world that is Leiden: the boyfriend of a friend from work showed up; he happens to be teaching jujitsu to my neighbour.

On Sunday there was another surprise dinner of sorts; this time I knew what the restaurant would be at least, a Mediterranean restaurant in Leiden, but our group would be having a 4-course verrassingsmenu. I was rather disapponted with the dinner; it was tasty, but a bit small, and certainly not worth the price we paid, which was a full 10 euros more than the Afghan dinner had been. Fortunately we had a good group there and I met this sweet Norwegian girl who has lived in the Northwest, in Seattle. It's good to know there are so many cool people living in my town.

Out to the fields

2009-04-20T22:34:00.000+02:00

On Sunday, a frighteningly large group of foreigners gathered in front of the Leiden train station to venture out on a bike ride around the flower fields. I think there were at least 50 of us, often stopping traffic when we crossed the street as we headed out toward Lisse via Warmond and Sassenheim. It was a gorgeous day, well, at first. It unfortunately did go overcast and a bit cold, but it stayed dry and was good cycling weather. I've uploaded a few photos I took, as well as a video I took while biking.

Weekend of epicness

2009-04-14T21:40:00.000+02:00

I had a wonderful and busy 4-day weekend, starting with getting out in the sun on Friday and cycling to Katwijk, the first time I've biked to the beach in the time I've lived in Leiden. Before setting off, I got a photo of the trees blooming on my street.

At Katwijk, we glanced at the sea for a bit before heading south into the dunes between Katwijk and Scheveningen. Not before being told off though for climbing onto a bit of dune by a very Dutch guy who had a red, bulbous nose and who was wearing red trousers. He asked if we were Dutch and when we said no, he asked if we spoke German. We said no to that as well, so in the end he reprimanded us in Dutch and even did a bit of finger wagging.

The dunes were a bit difficult for unfit me and my one-gear city bike. There were hill-like things and a headwind that soon killed my legs. I did ok though, it wasn't so bad after awhile, but I still had to get back to Leiden and there was a long stretch where I was pedaling against the wind and that made it a very tiresome ride home.

Saturday M and I went to a large market in the Hague that I didn't even know about until a few weeks ago. It predominately attracts Turks and Moroccans, and even on the walk to the market, the neighborhoods felt like we were in another country. The market was appropriately bustling and overwhelming, with stalls with unique vegetables and fruit and spices and other food on offer.

On Monday evening, E treated us to a Mexican feast and K made his delicious margaritas. I got in some Coco cuddles as he unknowingly enters his last few days as sole cat of the house. It was a lovely evening to close out a brilliant weekend. Work today was indeed hard.

Trip photos: drive from Sydney to Adelaide

2009-04-11T13:23:00.002+02:00

Next part of my Australia photos are online, from my epic 6-day road trip from Sydney to Adelaide. Some stories about it are here. Pretty photos are here.

Books

2009-04-09T15:49:00.002+02:00

Oh my god. I finished a book. I have been such a slow reader that I couldn't even remember the book I had read before this one. Looking at my read books list, I'm not doing so well this year; three-and-a-half months in and I've read two books and a graphic novel. Woo. One of those books I read half of last year, and the other book I read was a kids' book with rather large font (though it was about 600 pages long). I'm also stuck about halfway through Maus. *sigh*

Travel

2009-04-05T12:08:00.001+02:00

In order to save money this year, I wasn't planning on taking many holidays. Perhaps even doing some "staycations", to borrow a term coined in the tight-times US, taking time off and not doing much, maybe doing some day trips within the Netherlands. But things change and now I have a long weekend to Stockholm planned with M in July. I'm quite looking forward to it, especially since I've not really been to any of Scandinavia yet and I'm eager to visit that part of Europe.

It is quite freaky, as someone at work pointed out, that this trip is almost twice as far in the future as M and I have been seeing each other, but it has felt like a very long couple of months, in a good way. I remember how not quite a year ago I was with a couple of friends, all of us single, and we were discussing travelling on our own, something I was a bit afraid of despite having just travelled alone for two whole months. I guess it was that Australia felt quite easy and safe, whereas, thinking of where I wanted to go in Europe, I did think about things like the language and what I would feel comfortable doing on my own and how predatory men there would be. I had travelled to Florence on my own years ago and got a bit tired of men chatting to me when I would have liked to have just been left alone. So one of the friends I was talking with sent around some websites she knew of that organized trips for groups, which I thought would be ideal, like the tours I took in Australia, get to meet some new people and have various activities planned. It looks like I won't need those websites though in the near future at least, and I ended up going on only one trip on my own when I went to Mallorca last year (which was a great trip). And actually, all three of us who were discussing single travel a year ago are single no longer.

Things from the past week

2009-03-29T23:23:00.000+02:00

Last Tuesday, a bit belatedly in my opinion, I finally received my pre-ordered copy of Hazards of Love, along with the t-shirt I ordered with it. To my surprise, I actually managed to nab one of the first 750 copies of the CD to come with a signed booklet. Yay! Now I have all 5 of the band member's signatures, unlike my copy of The Crane Wife, which only has 3. Sadly, I did not bag the signed baglama saz that went to one lucky fan, though I'm not quite sure what I would have done with it aside from have it as a conversation piece.

I actually had a 3-day weekend. Friday seems so long ago that I've nearly forgotten that. I didn't do much with my day off anyway except blissfully sleep in. From Wednesday through Saturday, I had a friend of E's from the US staying with me while she attended a conference in Leiden. Bit of tight quarters in my little apartment, but it was nice to have met her and I think she enjoyed what she saw of Leiden.

With the sun out today, M and I went for a walk in the Leidse Hout near my house. We stopped at the cafe in the park and ended up getting slices of this chocolate cake they had, which was really lovely. It may be a bit dangerous knowing that that place is so near to me...

As if that weren't enough sugar, I then baked the snickerdoodles I had planned to make. I've never made them before, but a (non-American) friend at work requested ages ago that I make them because she'd had them once and really liked them. I didn't make them back then because it was before I got my oven, but I'd been meaning to get around to it once certain people at work were all back from various holidays. So, a bit of a surprise for them tomorrow. I'm quite happy with how they turned out, they taste as they should, heh, and I guess M liked them since between the two of us there are probably about 10 less cookies for my co-workers. Which isn't as bad as it could have been, really...

It is pretty sad that I still have not started to ride my bike this year. I really need to take it out of its winter hibernation.

I've been watching so many movies lately I feel like I should start keeping track of them like I do with the books I've read. They include: Eagle vs Shark, Magnolia, Milk, La Vie en Rose, and Chopper.

I have 4 concerts planned, and frustratingly, the first one is still more than a month away. Still, it's nice to have what should be some great shows planned. I haven't been to a show since December and then I'll suddenly have 3 shows in one week:

May 3: Liam Finn, Tivoli, Utrecht
May 5: Beirut, Paradiso
May 7: Andrew Bird, Paradiso
June 30: Fleet Foxes, Paradiso

What would make me a very happy bunny though is the announcement of a European Decemberists tour...

People are going to die tonight.

2009-03-21T12:15:00.000+01:00

Recently Colin Meloy posted to Twitter that he had a spreadsheet tallying the amount of people who died in Decemberists songs. Paste Magazine has now posted their own list of deaths, with input from Colin. The final count is a rather-low-seeming 70, but this only counts the characters created by Colin who actually die; there are many more songs that allude to vicious deeds or refer to ghosts of people who didn't die in the song. Cheery stuff, but then that's what we love the band for.

To balance out the gloom, here's a happy photo. I was feeling rather shitty and borderline sick yesterday, so M brought me some flowers. It's been awhile since a guy gave me flowers. And aren't they lovely:

Recent weird comments

2009-03-17T20:14:00.002+01:00

- Today from a co-worker: "You must have Irish in you with a name like Diamond." ?? Since when is Diamond Irish?
- A couple from a guy I used to know on the Nirvana mailing list who I got in contact with again via Facebook: "M? Of M and O fame?" It's not like we were Sonny and Cher...
- He also hoped I was still loving Belle & Sebastian. It's just weird that I'm remembered as a Belle & Sebastian fan. Especially since I'm completely failing at it right now, only realizing now that I'm missing two of their CDs.

Onwards with Australia photos

2009-03-10T21:09:00.002+01:00

Considering I've now been back from Australia for over a year and I still have a month's worth of travelling to get through, I figured I need to cut corners a bit and focus on getting the photos online. So I've not written much of a story about this part of the trip, but instead tried to tell a bit about things in the photo captions.

I headed back to Australia from New Zealand on Christmas Eve and spent a couple of days in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Then I spent about a week in Sydney, including New Year's, which was amazing. You can view the photos here. Some videos from this part of the trip are here.

Continuing the weak photo taking

2009-03-07T19:28:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday I got roped into going on a 14k walk from Gouda to Oudewater. I had hoped to take a bunch of photos that I could post, but a combination of gray weather and a rather bland walk, first along a road, and then through fields, resulted in a whole 3 photos being taken, one of which is really boring, so I'm not posting it. But here are the two ok ones, taken when we were still in the center of Gouda.

Here's a photo someone else in the group took during the walk through the fields. Yeah, it was like that for about half the walk. It was only occasionally broken up by coming to a gate and having to walk on some boards out over the water to get around it, so then there was at least some vague threat of someone falling in the water, but that was about all.

I really need to get somewhere with some sun and scenery so I can get some better photos taken. Though, I do still have a bazillion photos from Australia to put online.

Requiem for a backpack

2009-02-28T19:47:00.002+01:00

While in Australia, it became apparent that I really needed to replace my Jansport backpack. As much as I loved it and had vowed not to get rid of it unless it was falling to pieces, I couldn't ignore that its straps were flatten to about half their original thickness and it was uncomfortable to use for long periods. I decided to get a new backpack when I went to the States last September, which is what happened. While I was slow to move over to the new one, I've been using it for a few months now, so it's time to say goodbye to my old Jansport bag that I used for 13 years.

I've written about my old backpack once before (strangely, exactly 4 years ago), so I won't repeat myself. Here's a photo of what it looked like in the end, complete with some dried-on mud left over from Rock Werchter, the last time I properly used it.

I just tore up the edges of the patches I put on it in 1998; it's definitely a different shade under them. I plan to move at least a couple of the buttons over to my new bag. I'm not sure what to do with the backpack though. It seems wrong to throw it out, but I don't want to hold on to it. In any case, my time with it is done. It served me well.

I spent 4 days in the UK and I came back with only one lousy photo

2009-02-15T17:01:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I spent some time visiting friends at their house west of London. It was really good to catch up with them and hang out. I only took one photo though, of the juice I bought at Marks & Spencers:

What? I had to get it...

I didn't take one photo of my friends or all the snow still left or their two cute kids. I dunno, I planned to, it just didn't happen. It was a bit tiring, but sometimes quite sweet, to hang around with the kids. They are so outgoing, so the moment I stepped into their house, they were both babbling at the same time about what they were doing and showing me recent owies they had. I enjoyed playing with them, either giving little tickles or playing with toys or puzzles. There was the afternoon I had the girl, the older one, on my lap and her younger brother standing nearby, keeping them busy with Abba videos on Youtube while I tried to have a conversation with their mom. The last night I was there they requested that I read them their bedtime story, so I crowded onto the girl's bed with the boy on my lap, read the story, and then gave them goodnight hugs. It's funny entering a kid's world, where even my clothes were scrutinized. I wore a couple of Threadless shirts while I was there and they always had to ask questions about what was on the shirt: "What's this animal supposed to be?" "Why does the girl have her eyes closed?" Those were the good times at least, there were of course meltdowns and whinging as well, but when they were cute, they were pretty damn cute.

After I came back, I found out that my new glasses (the frames of which I bought in Portland back in September) were ready, so I picked them up Thursday evening. I was so excited to get them since I've had the frames for so long and I was looking forward to the change of wearing them. I've not started wearing them full-time yet, but I'll try to do that tomorrow. Here they are, sort of like my old glasses, but also quite different:

January 20th photos

2009-01-24T11:36:00.002+01:00

A beautiful and inspiring set of photos from Inauguration Day on the Boston Globe site.

Curse you, Wissenkerke!

2009-01-21T17:29:00.002+01:00

Yesterday afternoon I scrapped my plan to go home early to watch the inauguration and instead went to a cafe near work with a small group of people. Someone had called them to ask if they would put on the inauguration for us and they said it was no problem, so we headed over around 5:30. I imagined the grand moment of Obama being sworn in and us all cheering; yeah, this would be better than watching it on my own at home.

We got to the cafe and found their tv on already to Nederland 1 (boo), but they didn't have the sound on, music was playing instead. We asked if they could change to the sound from the tv and they said they would put it on when he began his speech. Hrm, not really what we were hoping for. Around 5:45 we asked again if they could turn on the sound, and they said "in a few moments". Gah. But soon enough they turned off the music and turned up the volume of the tv -- which did absolutely nothing. Various people from the cafe began fiddling with the remotes and they could not get the sound to come on. We were not happy. So, as the prayer was given, and as the oath was made, and as Obama was introduced as president, we were not really watching, but instead desperately trying to think of a way to get sound to go with the picture we had (I suppose I'm glad we at least had the Dutch subtitles). One girl called her husband and asked him to put the phone next to the tv at home, but then her phone didn't have speaker. Someone else tried to see if they could get online with their laptop. She did eventually -- after buying a wifi access card from the cafe. In the end, we saw most of the speech with 4 of the group huddled around the laptop (which didn't have the most powerful top volume) watching a delayed video stream, and me listening to the girl's mobile that had the connection to her house and the sound from her tv. It was an interesting way of going about things, I guess. The cafe people never did manage to get the sound to work on their tv.

Last part of the New Zealand trip

2009-01-16T22:53:00.002+01:00

I didn't make it before the end of last year, but no matter, here's the final part of my trip in New Zealand, including a beautiful train trip up a river gorge. Just want to check out the photos? Jump to them here.

RIP, Dad

2009-01-14T20:35:00.002+01:00

My dad passed away on January 4th, less than 2 months shy of his 90th birthday. I got the news last week and flew home the next day to be there for the service. It's something I had thought about and sort of prepared for for years, but it was still a definite shock to get the news. He had only been in the care home for a couple of months and I certainly thought he would be there much longer, despite the health problems he had. He's had problems for years, plus he's just stubborn, so I didn't expect him to so suddenly be gone.

A simple memorial service was held on Monday at Portland's military cemetery, since my dad was a veteran. They did military honours for him, which was nice, but also strange because I don't think of my dad as a military man, we're not a family that has that close of ties to the service. But they did a gun salute and then folded a flag to present to my mom. A couple of people were there who I hadn't seen in ages (these kind of life events do end up bringing people together) and some people showed up who we weren't expecting because they had seen the obituary in the paper, so it was nice that they cared enough to come. After the little service, some of us drove up to his burial site. It's a nice location, well, the whole cemetery is on a hill, so it's quite pretty. It was really foggy all day, which added a certain mood to everything.

I don't think I've really processed everything, I've been too preoccupied with flying to Portland and back, but it is hard to know that I won't see my dad again. The Alzheimer's made him so unlike himself anyway though, so it's hard to think back on the last few times I saw him. And for a good portion of my growing up, I didn't get along with him. But things were pretty good for the few years after I had moved here, but before he started developing Alzheimer's. At first he didn't understand at all why I wanted to live in Europe and he would ask me what I found so great about it. But it was because he loved Oregon so much (and I'm sure also feeling hurt that I was living so far away). He had fallen in love with the Northwest and left his family in New York to move out West, and when I moved away, he couldn't understand how I could leave Oregon (something I wonder myself sometimes). He eventually realized I was happy here and then seemed to brag to people that he had a daughter living in Europe.

Despite us not seeing eye-to-eye for years, I can't deny that my dad was one of a kind, and I know many people will remember him for his creativity and humour. My dad was a talented artist who would always be sketching ideas, or painting, or drawing plans for the home renovation work he did. He was creative in so many ways, from writing a song that he convinced my grade school teacher to teach to my class, to writing a short story about a ship crashing into the entrance of Depoe Bay, to building things and inventing games and making intricate 3D birthday cakes for me and my brother. He couldn't resist cracking cheesy jokes and he loved playing with kids, who he usually made giggle endlessly. These are the things I'll try to remember about him, and I hope he is in a better place now.

New addition for the new year

2009-01-04T15:55:00.003+01:00

I seared myself on the tosti machine a couple of days ago. Perhaps I've gained a new scar.

War zone

2008-12-31T11:52:00.002+01:00

So much for sleeping in as much as I had hoped to this morning. Bit hard when people are setting off firecrackers up and down the street.

I made some last minute plans to join an expat party in Den Haag. I had been just planning to hang around Leiden, but this should be much better. It's hard not to think back to a year ago though, spending the afternoon in the sun in Sydney and then the amazing fireworks show to ring in 2008. *sigh*

I hope everyone has a wonderful (and safe) New Year's Eve, and all the best for 2009!

Cooking fiend

2008-12-21T17:13:00.001+01:00

E, your husfru-ness is contagious. Or something. Friday afternoon I was consumed by this unbelievable desire to cook and bake and roast. I couldn't stop looking at recipes online (and no, it wasn't due to a grumbling stomach). Maybe it was thinking ahead to this weekend, and the longness of next weekend, and thinking of how best to utilize the time. Or how best to utilize my oven. Plus I bought a cookbook in Portland that has so many things I want to make, so I was thinking I could start on some of those, and I need to make more things involving sweet potatoes, and I could do something sort of special for Christmas, and... all I could do was plan possible menus in my head.

I've chilled out a bit now, but perhaps that is due to deciding on what to make this week. So, to share:

- Last night I made this recipe of curried lentils and sweet potatoes. I halved everything and I still had enough for a filling dinner and two containers I can take for lunch. Things I did different from the recipe was use one of those red peppers you can get here so much easier than jalepenos; I completely skipped adding the chard, or any other green; and I skipped the garnishes. Next time I will reduce the amount of curry powder I use because it came out much spicier than I expected. Still very good though.

- Tonight I'm grilling salmon with teriyaki sauce and having it with sweet potato fries.

- For Christmas, I got a chicken rollade (roulade in French-looking English?) from the Albert Heijn. It's filled with a fruit chutney and has a plum sauce to serve with it. I'll also make mashed potatoes (normal ones this time). That should last me for days.

An old poem

2008-12-19T22:45:00.002+01:00

One Morning

I wake up thinking of two-person beds
Mysterious laughter during fantasy pillow fights
Hard versus soft
And people dancing in classrooms

I get up
Brush my teeth
As the waltz of a kiss and a hug plays
And I actually sing along
Even with toothpaste foam
Sputtering from my mouth
Next would be the song about the drunk
Who had nothing better to do
But I have to leave

I go out
In my striped sneakers
Watching the squares of sidewalk
Pass beneath my feet
A great blank comic strip
Where Nothing is funny
Especially when leaves and bugs
And my footsteps are added to it

Those panels--
Such neat, perfect containers--
I could spread my dreams
Into them
So they would stay in their places
Stop mixing with the real dreams I've lived
But it's hard when
In them both
Everyone keeps telling me the same things

Mostly music-related news

2008-12-18T18:22:00.002+01:00

I seem to have been quiet lately. So some recent bits and pieces...

I brought back a pair of vintage glasses frames from the US but I haven't had the lenses put in yet. I went around to shops in Leiden getting price estimates, but then I was looking into sending off the frames to an online shop in the US. The shipping was cheap and the lenses would cost a fraction of what they would here. But after reading some reviews, I decided it's too large of a risk to send off the frames. I'm really nervous about them getting broken, even by an optician here, and when I read about people receiving warped modern metal frames from online places, I don't think I can really trust them with fragile plastic. I'll probably wear my glasses a good 4-5 years anyway, so I may as well make the investment.

Damien Jurado's latest album, Caught in the Trees, has replaced Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog as the CD that I can't seem to keep out of my CD player. There is hardly a song on it I don't like, and there are many beautiful melodies and lyrics that I keep going back to hear.

Last night I went to see The Thermals in Utrecht, likely my last concert of the year. It was very good, very energetic. We managed to get spots right at the front, just to Hutch Harris's left, it was awesome. I regretted not taking my camera, though E took some photos. The band, including the new drummer, was joking around a lot and the audience was definitely into it. There was some lower energy when they played songs from their upcoming album, but the enthusiasm during the songs we knew more than made up for it.

The Decemberists will have a new album in March and I think they will be taking themselves again to epic heights. I've heard a live, Colin-only version of the main song that runs through the album and it is brilliant. It reminds me quite a bit of The Tain or The Island, so it may not be the most groundbreaking, but it's still impressive to hear. I also finally bought my first Decemberists shirt (though it hasn't arrived yet), which seems rather overdue. And the band is "strongly rumoured" to be in the lineup for Glastonbury 2009. If it is true, it is not too much of a leap to assume that they might also be at other European summer fests. Like Rock Werchter. Which I've been pondering going to again next year. If the D's are playing, I'm there.

I've been more involved lately on the forum for the Decemberists, and for Christmas someone organized a secret Santa exchange. I received my gift last weekend from a girl in the UK. She sent me some American candy (Reese's Pieces, Nerds, Hershey's Miniatures) and then a kit to sew a cushion in the shape of a Spanish-looking chicken. It sounds a bit weird, but it's funky, and, as I told her in my thank-you note, I like to sew in theory but I don't really know how to, so this is something at my level. Maybe some afternoon during the holidays I'll put it together.

Next part of New Zealand

2008-12-06T23:35:00.002+01:00

In this installment of my drive through New Zealand, I get to Wellington, cross over to the South Island, and start heading down the Pacific coast. Photos start here.

So much for my hope to have all of my trip photos up by the end of this year. At this rate, I'll be happy to have the New Zealand part done by then.

Liam Finn - Paradiso kleine zaal, 28 November

2008-11-29T21:45:00.000+01:00

The second show of the week, and the closer to a mostly great month of live music... A dedicated audience was in attendance to see Liam Finn, whose debut album I've recommended here before. I did catch a bit of the opener, Sarah Blasko, who has an lovely voice and played a solo acoustic set. Then things got a bit louder when Liam Finn came out, joined by EJ Barnes, who also played with him (and opened for him) when I saw him live in Melbourne. The style of playing echoed Andrew Bird's show, since they also used loops of music to build up a lot more sound than you'd normally get from only two people. He played much of his album, with an improvised song thrown in that he seemed quite pleased with. He really gave it his all onstage, jumping around, hammering at the drums, and yet he was so down to earth and sweet once the music stopped. It was a great show, and I told y'all to be there, so if you weren't, you only have yourself to blame.

Andrew Bird - De Duif, 25 November

2008-11-29T17:27:00.002+01:00

Tuesday was either the 3rd or 4th time I've seen Andrew Bird live and it was a brilliant show. To begin with, it was in a unique location, in a church on the Prinsengracht. Most of the audience was seated and the people I was with managed to grab some of the last free chairs. It may be old-fart syndrome talking, but I enjoyed sitting during this concert, concentrating on watching Andrew Bird build layers and layers of song all alone. The church was a bit chilly, but it had a warm echo that added to the sound. Andrew Bird said a couple of times that he very much enjoyed being able to perform there. During Tables and Chairs he tried to get the audience to sing the violin part, but we were a bit shy. He wanted to fill the hall with the sound of voices, to use it as it should be used, but he said maybe we thought it was too reverent of a place to be loud in.

He played many new songs from his album, Noble Beast, that will be out in January. It seemed to me that he played more songs from Mysterious Production of Eggs than Armchair Apocrypha, and then there were a couple of covers, including Giant of Illinois by the Handsome Family. There was also a wonderful song (a cover?) where the violin sounded less orchestral and more like an Appalachian folk song. Perhaps predictably, though I certainly look forward to it, he played Why? He even addressed the fact that he always plays it, saying he was trying to ween himself from it, but he keeps coming back to it because it sets him straight. I don't think any performance can quite match the first time I saw him play it, but I still very much enjoyed it.

The naming of things

2008-11-29T17:17:00.002+01:00

Today, just over three years since I got my first tattoo, I finally thought of a name for her. I had thought of various names before, but none were right. Then this one occurred to me and it seemed so obvious I don't know how I didn't think of it sooner. I was happy to finally find the right one.

So, Monday is December? Really? How the hell'd that happen?

My 5-year plan

2008-11-23T16:25:00.002+01:00

To borrow the idea from E...

I definitely need to start looking into what I want to do in the coming 2-3 years and stop just talking about it. All I know right now is that I desperately want to go back to Australia, to Melbourne, to live there more permanently. I've spoken about leaving Holland for years, almost as long as I've lived here, but I never was sure of where to go. Now I know very well where I want to be and I hope I can get there. I'm determined to get there.

The main problem, I think, is that I don't have very specific skills. I mean, it's good that I have a university degree and am a native English speaker, but my degree, and my subsequent job experience, is rather vague and hard to sell as particularly worthy of a skilled-worker visa. I've taken the points test to see if I could get a visa now and I fall short of the required number of points.

So, I am considering going back to school to study something more specific. The first idea I had is to become a librarian, preferably a university/research librarian. Natasja suggested museum curation to me, another area that would be interesting, and both are professions with a higher number of points for getting the visa. I'm quite conflicted though about studying again. One moment it all sounds so exciting and I have many areas open to me that I could go for, but then I panic about the money it would take and wonder whether I want to be a student again.

I'm not even sure which country I'd go to school in. Holland might be easier because I already live here. The US would be easier in terms of not needing a visa to study there, but it would be more expensive. (Though, dang, the price difference at a Dutch university for EU nationals versus non-EU nationals is huge: at the University of Leiden it was something like 2000 eur versus 13,000 eur. And I don't know if my permanent residency counts for anything.) Or I could study in Australia, already get to live there, and then hope to get employment there after school.

Hm, it seems like the study-in-Australia option is actually the best because they don't recgonize study done outside of Australia as valid for getting the visa. So if I studied in Holland or the US, I would then have to do a year of work to meet the work experience requirement, which means longer before trying to go to Australia.

Another option I've been thinking of would be to go back to the US for a couple of years and get work experience in an area that would qualify me for going to Australia. Or an idea some people have mentioned is to see what my company could do for me regarding connecting me with a job in an office in Australia. Unfortunately, most of their offices are in the Sydney area, though if I had to, I would settle for Sydney. ;)

For the next year, at least, I'm not going anywhere since I hardly have any savings. So 2009 will be spent saving and mulling and planning. And dreaming. Lots of dreaming.