Enjoy Your Memories, Live Twice!

Travel Guide (Lebanon Inside and Out)

2010-12-16T12:24:00.037+01:00

Above the clouds there was till some sunshine, sinking through them there was no below as they caressed the earth in a thick blanket of mist connected to the earth in a thin film of ice. Welcome home...

Below a small guide to traveling, my way, possibly your way, with a focus on Lebanon, my most recent source of exploration and mind triggering creative imagination... Feedback appreciated as always :)

Travel With a Friend
Traveling with someone makes the experience so much more enjoyable. No one ever sees what you see exactly in the same light. Have someone there to challange and broaden you views it makes the experience so much more intense. The memories you make will always be ones you can share, ones that are there to recollect and spinn off. (I imagine one day being old and telling my kids about those days and they will roll their eyes- that story again?! and secretly hope to have an adventure like that as well.)
I was lucky to travel with Alain, a Lebanese boy (should I say man?) I knew from Hawaii (Volleybal). Lebanon is his home and once he suggested to one day show me his country. An idea that grew into a reality. Traveling with him opened up doors for me through knowledge I simply didn't have before, gave me insight to a culture I didn't know anything about and tought me to appreciate my friend in a new way, set against the backdrop of home. Thankyou Habibi.

Walk Places
When you walk you find things that you didn't plan on. When you visit a landmark or attraction explore the area around it. Familiarising yourself with routes and sites creates a sense of belonging. Personally, I really like to get myself lost and then find my way home again...
These broken wartorn walls are not uncommon to the city scape between high rises and fashionable stores. It is for a reason they call this phoenix country. It rises from the ashes again and again.

morning rays
highlight
the phoenix ashes
as they grow
-

Walking through the souks in Tripoli you emerge yourself ino the past, old structures that may have been part of roman or byzantine buildings, renovated by the mameluks and ottomans. There are shops in little nooks with cultural pleasantries originated in different habits and religions and people. Oriental art is abundantly found, designs are generally done on brass, copper, china wares, lamps, carved chests, Persian Carpets and painted furniture. Various perfume stores sport beautiful rows of bottles with naturally produced smells of musk and gardenia and go under names that indicate their effects on others. Furthermore people smoke (hookah) waterpipe a lot... it is a common passtime in bars and though I'm not always a fan of the smoke I love watching it. It holds a certain charm. If you ever wanted buy one they are quite easily found, whole shops dedicated to the tradition.

Always be in for a Surprise
Don't expect to know what people think and why they act like they do. There are plenty stereotypes in the world but as soon as you get to know someone they usually break with theirs. In my experience people are generally kind and curious unless you mess with their values.
People in Lebanon have a tendency to really stare at me but in a harmless way. Generally curious and welcoming (those who spoke English and didn't feel awkward talking to me often told me welcome and asked how I liked Lebanon). At some point in the souks(market area) Alain commented on people staring and I told him he was just jealous. Not long after, -I was waiting for him to buy some treats- I got quite irritated by someone staring who just didn't look away. No shame at all! I mumbled to Al I was going to punch that boy in the face if he kept that up.
Al told me "I would do it for you but then you might accuse me of being jealous again."
To which I replied: "No worries I can punch him myself if I really feel the need.
To which a scarfed lady who had been standing next to me replied: GOOD ANSWER! and walked off. Can't say I had expected that and it definitely put a smile on my face.

Know Some History (Religion)
Knowing history helps you know what to look for. Sometimes you have to be pointed in a direction to see what there is to see.
The coastal plain of Lebanon is the historic home of a string of coastal trading cities of Semitic culture, which the Greeks termed Phoenicia, whose maritime culture flourished there for more than 2,000 years. Byblos, believed to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, built by Cronos, was given it's name because the Phoenician city of Gebal was named Byblos by the Greeks, because it was through here that papyrus Bύβλος (bublos; Egyptian papyrus) was imported into Greece. Hence the English word bible is derived from byblos as "the (papyrus) book.

The Byblos castle was built by the crusaders from limestone and ancient roman structures. Interesting to see the different influences (and museum) on it's inside and fortification on it's outside. Spending some time on my own there I wandered into a bookstore and bought "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran (famous Lebanese author), sat at a little cafe and read most of it. Little book on life's wisdom. The site he loved and was later turned into a museum to comemorate his works of art and writing we visited a couple of days earlier. Researching Gibran you find he stayed in Paris (you can see a new technical skill and trend in his paintings) and he was a traveler finding his way amongst his people and those abroad. Sound familiar?

In Beirut I wandered into what originally was the Crusader Cathedral of St John (1113-1150 A.D.) the building was transformed into the city's Grand Mosque by the Mamlukes in 1291. Next to it stands, also quite grand, a church. I took a picture of course and dared to the door. They were prepared for visitors. Could I please wear this?! Inside it was spacious and cool. The lightfall form the ceiling impressive. This Mosque also contains the biggest chandelier in the middle east?? I wonder what a mosque needs something so pricey and glamorous for. It was a strange sensation to be inside and while looking at the people studying and citing the koran churchbells called the christians to mass next door. Somewhat like the Koran and the Bible standing next to each other in our living room book case. In this case the minarets (design) were the same, the two books have the first three pages in common (and much of the rest).

The Romans occupied Lebanon around the time of the birth of Christ and allowed some cities Roman citizenship. due to this reign the country now holds one of the best preserved Roman temple structures Baalbek situated in the Beqaa valley. The Gods worshipped were the Triad Jupiter venus and Mercury, superimposed on the indigenous deities Hadad, atargatis and a young male god of fertility and there are still local influences to be seen that deviate form the Roman style.

Talk To People
When you talk to random people you get bits and pieces of information about a place but not only that. You start understanding reactions and human logic set to the way people live, their hostory and their dreams.
I really wanted to take a picture of this boy but he was scared and ran at first. Alain asked him why and apparently the boy was afraid we would the gouvernment and he would not be allowed to work anymore. Who would have thought...

After entering a Maronite church and wonderign what difference this aspect of religion meant for christianity I asked the man outside what the deal was with the maronites (okay I used politically correct english but you catch the drift). He called down another man who in pretty decent english explained to me that saint Maroun was a preist and hermit who did missionary work and performed miracles and who had gained a lot of folowers. The people are direct decendants of those who recieved the faith from St. Peter. He also thanked me for asking and taking the time to listen to him. Nice man...

Nature
The Cedrus libani (Ceder of Lebanon) is native the mountains of the mediterranian region. In the past many have been harvested but being Lebanon's pride and national emblem the remaining cedars are held in respect and preserved. These trees are Giants of thousands of years and the air walking around the area was refreshing, giving one somewhat of a high, the air being cool after the first snowfall earlier that day, and the views through lebanon's heights only emphasise the majestic tree. (yeah it;s me at the bottom)

At the beginning of trip Al, Shady and I went hiking into Kadisha valley. Quite the trip with amazing views. Lucky for us it was still rather warm weather (very unusual for this time if the year in Lebanon it was dry and warm where there should have been cold and snow (in the picture where the light hits the mountain peaks there is usually a thick coating of snow). However it allowed us a hike. Down the valley past one of the meny monasteries that line it (the maronites took refuge there and up the other side. Right we went to that cave you see between our fingers. Not just to the cave, but INTO the cave. Crawling through the icy water on hands and knees wriggling through narrow edges and simply exploring. I absolutely loved it! thought these caves were nothign compared to the Jeita grotto's which were stunning and I have no pictures of (not allowed but please google!!!) this was quite an adventure! Coming out of the caves we had a campfire going and made soup in cans and ate other randomness we brought. Shadi and Al used to do this when they were boy scouts. Not bad, not bad at all!

Other than finding nature Tripoli is a trading city and on the mediterranean sea. Since it was becoming too big they devided it calling the other half El Mina, the port. Watching sunset at 16:30 over a calm sea on the first day and one over a stormy one (surf waves) the last day was a relaxing and meditative thing.

Language
Usually the first thing I do is learn some of the local words. I must say Lebanese was not too hard to pronounce having many similar sounds as in Dutch but was a disaster to remember. It doesn't help if you have (a) friend(s) to do the talking for you. However it is nice to be able to thank and greet in another language. Another word for loved one: Habibi was used a lot and even though I dind't understand the langage it quickly became apparent that you use this in many ways, real love, friendly love and often with a high dose of sarcasm when needed.

Go Local
Hummos was already a favourite, now so is manushi and hmmm Alain's fathers fish sauce. Fattoush is yummy and the Baklava in Lebanon is to die for. The dates are amazing and I definitely should have eaten more of those but you know, there are only so many times you can eat in a day. Alain told me right at the beginning: They love you when they feed you, any visit, moment, occasion is a good time. Visiting many people and many people visiting Al, there was plenty of eating to go round. But going local is not just about the food, allthough those who know me know I love to eat :). It was also great to be part of a family. Alain's father and I got along well and we both had a love for books. He also told me stories about the war, the family, the people in their family which I met and quite a lot of and funny facts about Al. Alain's mother and I got lost in translation a lot, both of us speaking some kind of French but doing quite well with pointing smiling and an English word here and there. It is impressive how much a facial expression can say, good fun. She took good care of the family, with a passion, like moms tend to do. I got lucky.

There are many more things we did, saw... went wine tasting, walked through Beirut some more, we tasted all sorts of of food and explored childhood sites, I talked to all sort of people and it was altogether a beautiful trip. All I can say is GO and have a look for yourself.

Now I'm home. The clouds are still hugging the earth but after some snow we have a beautiful winter landscape with frosty trees and snowy roads. There is beauty wherever you want to see it. (But wave another opportunity to travel in my face and trust me to be tempted!)

Music: This Light between Us, Armin van Buuren
Quote: Certainly travel is more then the seeing of sights; it is the change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. - Miriam Beard

Small Talk

2010-07-01T15:16:00.013+02:00

Hippo Talk
She sailed away on a happy summer day on the back of a crocodile... Okay really old song that ends up with the lady inside the croc and I was not that unfortunate, but I was on a boat floating dow the Nile, the White Nile mind you. It was rediculously hot and since all the spots on the lower deck were taken I sat in the front on the floor. Quite comfortable actually since by nature I am a floor dweller. I also had a great view and coud stand or sit without anyone in my way. Saw plenty of elephants and hippoes to end at the Murchison Falls. Gotto love water! On the way I fell asleep, soon to be fully engaged in my Larium (anti malaria drugs) dreams. I was exploring some dark corner of my mind when nearing the falls a wave of water came onto the boat. Though up and standing within seconds it took some time befor the mist of dreams wore off gradually I found myself in the middle of a group of people looking to see if I was functional. It was a long boat trip and on the way back I had a very interesting converstation with Tom, a friend I made on the trip, an interestign character with an interesting reason to visit Uganda in the first place. Man do I love people... funny too how I keep running into Germans everywhere ;)

Gulu and the Lord Resistance Army...
So after my wildlife trip I decided to leave the group and continue to Gulu. ad them drop me off a little (half hour drive) past Masindi, where two big roads intersect and all thebig busses come by. I sat under a wooden contraption wtaching people fry potato and goats meat to sell to anyone who slowed down around the area. The bug bus I wanted though took it's time and I started wonderign what I would do if it didnlt show. I contemplated sleeping there which the little boy I was talking to, who spoke english reasonably well and who had just questioned me about Buddha and Jesus and weather Iw as Christian or not asked: Are you now afraid of night dancers -ancestor spirits that come at night to take your life-.
After arriving in Gulu and talking half an hour to the first person I met Marijt (a Dutch girl doing research and whom I decided to meet with for dinner after finding a place to stay) I found a local hostel to stay where I ran into a bunch of students from Kampala University who were there to do fieldwork, urban planning. LOL if you see Gulu the word Urban is funny.. you can walk everywhere there or take a boda-boda (motor taxi) and the few buildings that are taller than one story are a couple of hotels. My room had a muskitonet! with two holes which i fixed with the sewing kit I brought, the toilet and shower were shared (as in I had a basin for washing and slippers under my bed and the toilet didn't lock so well and required squatting skills.
I went to a couple of NGO's and aksed, even though it was rather short notice, whether there was a possibility to join in on one of their fieldtrips. I then proceeded to join the Norwegian refugee council for two days, visiting projects (schools) they were running and getting a tour from Invisible children. I spent one day just running around the town and in between had a lot of fun chiling with Marijt whom I also killed a bottle of white wine with on my last night and discussing life as a side treat.

Picker Upper of Strays
So, this is me, and my new hairdue: it only took 5 hours and three people. The cat I picked up off the street. Most people in Uganda are a little scared of cats and looked at me oddly when I sat down to pet it (not that tey usually do not stare but now they REALY stared!. Some of the ladies that knew me by now told me I should take it. I replied that that was not a good idea as I was leaving soon and that maybe it had an owner??? They said it didn't... and with pain in my heart I continued thinking there was no point in Bringing Mama Lydia another cat. I did mention the episode though.
She knew some people that wanted one. Me all excited: "So I should go pick it up?" Sure she said so there I went; picker upper of strays. I would have taken her home in a heartbeat scruffy little thing that would climb on me and sit on my shoulder or lap everytime it could. I hope it finds a nice home.

Coffee Ceremony
Your visit to Ethiopia could not be without it. Beletech took us into her home like family.. for those of you who don't know, she and Hanna (her daughter) worked for us about 20 years ago when we lived in Addis Abeba. A few years down the line she came to the Nethelrands as an au-pair and now, married with a Dutch man, is settled in the Netherlands and supports her mother and two sisters in Ethiopia.Beletech doesn't look too different to me and her English is ever improving. Meat broke broke (minced meat) and ofoi ofoi being her favourite words. I must say I also vigorously celebrated non-vegetarianism in Ethiopia with all the delicious meats that go with Injerra namely Kitfo and Doro Wot with plenty of Berbere... oh glorious food!

Rock Churches
It is stange to have a picture on my camera similar to those that have always enticed me on posters of Ethiopia, 13 months of sunshine. Now, having wandered around for a day and been in and out of them and seen al the diferent sights they offer I dare say I would go back. Just to sit and paint or even simply gaze at the lightfall into the carved out doors and the layers of white ethiopian cloth the priest wear, even the pilgrims inspire me to stare in awe. The magnifiscence of the churches make you understand why locally some believe angles came down to assist in their building.

Market Day
Ethiopians definitely of nomadic decent travel large distances by foot. Not just to fetch water but to sell produce at the market. Some start very early in the morning, often loading themselves as much as their donkeys. We were lucky enough to travel past the market on our way to the Blue Nile Falls which looked more red to me than anyhting else, nevertheless we got to endulge in the sight of hundreds of people migrating their wear acros the area. Then, large masses of water never cease to amaze me, only the road (which the driver referred to as the cause of a free African massage) could have done with a little improvement. The little bus rattled so hard that even talking was too much effort. So I simply sat and observed in silence.

Awasa and the South
On the last part of our trip we went down South to the rift Valley lakes where there are plenty of birds and amazing changes in the landscape. Hanna's two sisters, Zeleka and Zewedenesh came with us lifting some of the language barriers and increasing the fun. We had a little boat trip to explore Awasa and stopped by Lake Langano (we used to go there when I was 8 but now they had gone bankrupt so the place had been shut down. For a small fee they let us in though and like many other places in Ethiopia I found that my memories were mostly contained in smells. The water was still red and brought back strange memories of canoeing with a friend, a little too far on a little too stormy a day. The grass was thorny and the air has this strange quality hard to describe to someone who was never there, warm, dry, semi sweet but definitely familiar. The trees, typically african in their reach for the clouds but seemingly limited by an invisible ceiling, make me smile and live in the moment. Then, one last night of Ethiopian hospitality and tastes and an early morning ride ot the airport landing in what they call civilisation: I think I mostly appreciate our washing machine, and the fact that I can drink the tap-water and that it tastes good... but the thought of living in one of those thatched huts and lving on posho beans and avo for a year or two is still quite appealing...

For now though I'll be a good girl: have just comitted to a two year phone contract and am looking for jobs... Man I sound like a normal person. Can someone please talk some sense into my head or simply come and rescue me?!

Music: Omukwano
Quote: "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Isaac Newton

Music and Memories

2010-06-13T19:04:00.005+02:00

"Sweet dreams are made of these who am I to disagree, I travel the world and the seven seas, everybody is looking for something"

It is interesting how music attaches itself to memories, or major events in life sometimes with an obvious link sometimes not.

Omukwano: Driving the local taxi in Uganda-bus to work -it is a Luganda hit and you can hear it blasting here and there on good occasion-
The Weary Kind, Ryan Bingham: Leaving Hawaii - the movie is not great but the song.. ahh...
Classical Gas, Vanessa Mae: Olympics Beijing - It was my warm-up song -
Ruby, Keiser Chiefs: World Championships in Perth -It matched my roommates abundant energy and she was in love with it -
Tradewinds, Pepper: Arrival in Hawaii, staying with Jen and having my first run-in with American culture
These Words, Natasha BeddingField: Hanging out with Amy in our room at Kingsgate
FireWater, Yellowcard: Driving to practice in Nijverdal - It was on a collection cd I made for driving, it made me speed on occasion! -
The Beautiful Girls: Last year in Hawaii and surfing -man I want to go surf-
007 (Shanty Town), Desmond Dekker: Christmas in Canada with my Family -played in the car a lot and my younger cousins enjoyed it too!
Lullaby Baby Blues, Keb Mo: World Junior Championships Calgary and chilling with my Uncle -he saved my sanity, 'nuff said-
Guaranteed, Eddie Vedder: Doing Art with Maxie and Kelly in our living room in Manoa -chaos and destruction-
Nickelback cd: Driving down to the pool to play for national championships in the Netherlands with Lieke
Noorse Bruiloft: Sailing
Bring me Some Water, Melissa Etheridge: Doing art in my room -there are many songs attched to differnt pieces of art, it could be a special entry!
Vogue, Madonna: Working in the greenhouses over summer one year -I'm not even sure I like the song but it was a hit and it played on the radio all day-
Torn, Natalie Imbruglia: Living in Indonesia with my Dad and Brother -I'm sure they remember cause I'm pretty sure that song was on repeat (I do apologise for the overdose)-
Street Spirit, Radiohead: Sitting on my cousin's balcony talking and playing guitar
Desmond Dekker CD: Cooking with Ecaterina before we had people over -girl I could live with you any day!-
God is a DJ, Faithless: Driving to practice in Bilthoven with our coach Nick 2004? -he introduced me to the music-
Quand je Marche, Camille: Having a Godaweful crush on a someone.. -yeah wouldn't you like to know!-
Hey now now, The Cloud Room: road trip, sharing a way to early breakfast and yoga session with Brittany.. good times!
Nothing Else Matters, Metallica: the first time I tried to learn guitar, tought by one of the boys one year above me in school
Don't be Cruel, Elvis presly: Dancing in the living room with my dad there was this other song that refuses to come to mind right now.
Hey There Delilah, Plain White T's: Surfing with my brother in Portugal -he brought the guitar and people enjoyed singing a long-
Grace Kelly, Mika: Afternoons with the National Team in Zeist
Titanic Soundtrack: Third year of Hightschool -the movie came out and I had the soundtrack; copied it on tapes!!! for some of my other friends.
K's Choice: Playing Guitar and singing with my Brother -any time-
The Closest thing to Crazy, Katie Melua: Lindsay, my mothers good friend.
In the Shadows, the Rasmus: Concert with Michelle -in the middle of a trainingcamp, nearly killed me but was flippin Amazing!-
Fidelity, Regina Spektor: Cycling around the Netherlands with Amy -I think because I had the song in my head but could not remember the author.
Universal Traveller, Air: A certain bench in the Sun in Rotterdam in Early summer with Britt -oh and standing o the bridge waving at trucks!- LOL
Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky: Ethiopia
Alice's Rabit, Running Downhill: Watching my brothers band practice in Wesley's basement. -LOVE IT-
Roxette cd: Driving in South Africa with Iris and Odile
De Paden op de Lanen in: Hiking Switzerland with my parents
Listen to your Heart, Roxette- Playing volleyball with Timm, Iska and his kids -the girl had a pink shirt that said listen to your heart-
Just a Girl, No Doubt: recording music from the radio in my friends room in highschool then writing down the lyrics
Snow on the Sahara: Dancing in the garden with Daniel at my mother's good friend's house in England one summer. He didn't like my music much and I was majorly impressed with his, so not sure how that song attached to that memory.
Peer Gynt, Edvard Grieg: Playing my Alto recorder with our music group. It sounded sooo nice!
Don't Know Why, Norah Jones: a certain e-mail my brother sent me :)
Take a Chance on Me, ABBA: Driving to France with my family when we were small -it was one of the few cd's everyone would put up with-
Tout le Bonheur Du Monde, Sinsemilia:- Hanging out with my Parisian friends in Hawaii
Gastarbeiders, Kinderen voor Kinderen: Singing in Church with my good friend Loes
Ik wil een Kangaroe, Kinderen voor Kinderen: The study in my Grandma's House
Las die Liebe Son Herein: Driving somewhere with my mother
Mon Bateau: Kindergarten in Burkina Faso

And there are many more, I could go on forever...but I think I might have sufficiently bored you by now, or at least, lost you to your own memories and music...

Hello Muzungu, How Are You?

2010-04-02T09:54:00.009+02:00

…is the rhythm that accompanies me down the street. I walk past the many stalls where they sell banana's (for cooking or for straight up eating), tomatoes, small green bell peppers, egg-plant, chapatties, greens (like spinach), sorghum, sweet potatoes, and posho (made from cornflower and water, rather tasteless without sauce) and ground nuts (peanuts) that they often grind and add water to to make that sauce. I'm dodging the occasional kid that has not spotted the Muzungu (white person) and is making a dash for some place or another in between and in awe by the amounts of chickens they fit in a pen.

When I arrived we were cooking on coals since the stove didn't work. While cooking it dawned on me that I had not seen a washing machine in this house and when I asked Juliana (the 16year old who keeps this place up and running since Veronica who is housing me has one un-usable leg so is not capable of the housework) she replied that she did laundry on the weekend, by hand. Why did I ask? we had a washing machine??? the next surprise came when I wanted to take a shower. No warm water; which is okay, I don't mind cold showers but yeah! Welcome to Africa!

The next major adjustment is eating habits. They don't really eat breakfast -Tea with powdered milk (NIDO!!!<--- memories!) and some white bread to dip in. (Yes you dip it because it is only soft the first day) and then lunch only at about 3... dinner at 10?! anyone who knows me knows this is going to be a problem, so I'm trying to find my way around that; eat an apple and a banana, and if someone remembers to buy it some white bread. Mama Lydia, the lady who runs the clubhouse, caught on and has started to make me eggs in the morning. However I know this costs her plenty money which she does not have so after having been here for a week, I think I can manage myself enough to get my own food.

I'm very welcome at the clubhouse, the members are a lot more open then they were in the US, for some reason they seem more social. I have been given the name Namazzi on my first day in as like anywhere else I go people tend to trip over the pronunciation of my name. Namazzi means water, but also life sustaining force, so I have quite the name to live up to! It also makes me Buganda (part of the Baganda people and part of the Lion tribe) which apparently can be derived from the structure of the word. I took to the name the moment it was suggested, and have been introducing myself as Namazzi ever since. It generates a lot of laughs and curious looks but it is appreciated.

When I enter the clubhouse I’m always welcomed: Sulabulungi! (how was your night?) and I respond with “Bulungi” (Good). Nothing in this country is accomplished before a proper greeting. The Clubhouse is much like it was in Hawaii except that now I do not necessarily get everyone's stories but am part of the crowd. They have a work ordered day where everyone is supposed to have a task, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the chickens, growing mushrooms (and I mean the ones we eat for dinner) or learning computer skills. Some have a real Job and come in for lunch to hang out. I'm trying to write a proposal to get some funding from some NGO's around the world to see if they want to sponsor the building of some houses. This is quite the feat because I have little to no idea about how building a house works here and since we have no funds at all other than a family in the US that sponsors us we can hardy go to a contractor to ask him to make a bill of quantity without which we can hardly send of a proposal! So we're trying to work all the connections we have and additionally it seems like we (the clubhouse members) are very capable of making stones themselves. They were surprised I hadn't thought about that!

Housing is necessary as housing here in general is quite different from what we are used to in Europe. They are often just one room for sleeping and one for living, cooking is done on coal outside the toilet is a hole in the floor and water comes from the tubes that randomly come out of the ground. Often the patients here are shunned, and not welcome at home, told to stay away when they leave the house and generally not accepted. Some of the people my age go to school but no one will sit next to them so the clubhouse really is a place to be accepted and have a family, even more so than in Hawaii.

I was becoming a little claustrophobic in the house we live in. My room has the most windows but the rest is rather dark. There is a high wall around the complex, typically African with pieces of glass bottles on top to make sure no one climbs in. But I came to the realization that even though we make the one hour ride to the clubhouse in the morning by car I can probably walk it in the same amount of time, or at least take the local bus half way and walk the rest. Traffic is rediculous and driving even rediculouser!!! although it takes a lot of skill to maneuver the way they do without touching anyone else. 50% of the roads are dirt roads and all have potholes that are generally bigger than the tires of a car so you can imagine you don't want to test the puddles in rainy season. So even though in Uganda they drive on the left hand side we drive right about 40% of the time too.. or simply in the middle.

The Baganda one of the bigger tribes of Uganda speak Luganda and this is the language most everyone speaks in Kampala. So, trying to pick up some basic words of this one is putting my efforts for Swahili to shame. I am having a good time trying to break all the stereotypes they place on white people. 1: I walk places... (no this does not make me tired or my feet hurt) 2: I know how to wash clothes, cook and clean all by myself! 3: All European women know this and no- we do not have people to do this for us 4: I'm not rich and I ask for my change if they think I'm going to let it slip 5: I'm not racist?! And of course I can eat local food.

Today is Sunday: church-day! Whoa, are they Christian or what! And wait.. last time I checked no, I'm not. And yes I love discussions about this but this needs a careful approach here! Of course me and my curiosity accepted the invite to accompany the the lot to church. I must say the pastor, who was from Kenia, was great to listen to. The mixture of topics and jokes and African english entirely held my attention. I was not prepared for the active participation of saying Amen and praise the lord, and holding hands and raising them over my head. Awkward!

I love it here though!! The weather is friendly (It is raining season so I fell asleep to pounding rain yesterday) and the people are too. Juliana is making my stay here much easier since she wants to learn everything about the rest of the world and everything I know. She is the workforce of the house (comes home at 6:30 from school or 8 if she stays to study, then makes tea (6pm) and dinner, I started doing the dishes (Imagine the things I know how to do), she cleans the house on Saturday and does laundry (I have joined her ins this effort too) usually she goes to school on Saturday morning so then this is Sunday work and that is about it. She learns very fast, talks about relationships sometimes like a 30 year old and other times like the age she is. She is always smiling, always at beck and call of her sister (Veronica) and will spend every free minute in my presence, to take me walking, indulge in my curiosity for road side foods, introduce me to her brother or simply to pick my brain.

English is altogether an interesting challenge here. Not because they don't speak it but because they have a very different pronunciation and a way of telling you things. I don't always catch on, which means that sometimes there are major misunderstandings. As of yet the worst thing that happened was that I got lost trying to get home in the dark by local bus. We had just gotten stuck in the traffic Jam caused by the mourning over the Burial Tombs (was this world news?) and spent 40 minutes sitting on top of each other in a small van and of course I had the broken chair and could not lean back. Thank goodness I had a Fiona with me who (is a clubhouse member and has plenty time and is willing to show me stuff) and at least she could make a phone call here and there... I recognized the place and would have probably found my way home, but this was slightly more reassuring since dark in Uganda is really dark! and the roads are dusty and muddy and there is the occasional pig running around and "note to self" it is not safe and under all circumstances to tell someone you are lost. Thank god my brain was primed and kicked in just before I did confirm the man's question.

The biggest shock I had so far was going to the hospital. It is a serene place on the outskirts of town. there is a nice breeze and the buildings, though small, look clean and well kept. There are two houses for the mentally ill: one for women, one for men. They all wear the same shirt/dress: A green, square piece of cloth with openings for the head and arms. They wander about, lie on the grass in front of the building, some eyes rolled back, drawling, some have sores, most are really hungry and they look like they have a mental illness. The sleeping spaces are two big rooms that lock down with heavy gates, since when they get too excited they are sedated and locked up. Beds are about one meter apart and though they look clean they are old and privacy does not exist anywhere. (Anyone seen "One flew over the cuckoo's nest?" well this was similar but with less privacy.

Some slightly more with it would come to see me, talk to me, touch me, shake my hand. (I hope I did not cause too much excitement). I also caught myself not wanting to touch some of them because they looked unclean. I don't know myself like this and though I did shake everyone’s hand if they offered it, I did distach the lady that attached herself to me. The girl we were supposed to visit (a clubhouse member) had relapsed and we couldn't see her because she had also been put down. In the male building I had a man suggest we should go around the corner to have some fun and some others really eager to shake my hand. I am usually not nervous around people but I must say there was slight discomfort being stuck between cultures and the mentally ill... It was good to be outside the gates again.

On behalf of the clubhouse I wrote a Memorandum of Understanding for the Head of Psychiatry to obtain the freedom to walk in and out and visit our members at our own time (We spent quite some time waiting to talk to people to obtain permission.) Mama Lydia has studied and worked at this hospital for 11 years -you'd think they'd cut her some slack.

So far that is all I have. Or at least the explainable bit!! :) Now all I need is internet! sigh... I knew I was an internet junkie but I'm definitely going through withdrawel! So... send me mail, I'm hungry for your news! Oh and as a parting thought: Malaria pills make you dream funny!!! I have thus far: met the president of Uganda walking on a red carpet that was spread on the dust road and watched the Dutch National Waterpolo team lose to a team assembled of players from Uganda Kenya and Congo... and then I wake up to someone’s driver washing the car -every morning… I was not meant to sleep in!

Tulabagane edda (see you later!)

Superstition

2009-06-02T11:07:00.002+02:00

We made it out to Makapuu the other night: a random get together, potluck kinda thing. Maya (from Turkmenistan) who is taking my room this summer), Antoine, Maxie, Robin, Adi and his friend Adi and I.

Happily eating away, listening to the crash of water on sand -the infamous shorebreak- and talking about Hawaiian myths and legends, we watched the last group of people leave when dawn set in. The only light was from the Makapu'u light house and the new moon. We had the beach to ourself.

Antoine started to whistle which caused an upstir. Whisteling invites the spirits after dark and we didn't need any of those: Maxie, a little obsessed over a getting her bed out of the way of the lined up doors when we moved into our new house beginning of December, just in case of nightmarchers; Robin for her own reasons and Maya trying really hard not to be impressed by the thought of spritis altogether. A little while into our conversation we all of a sudden hear a baby cry. Odd.. everyone left right? hmmm. Were there any other people then? A little disoriented we resettle, trying to find a comfy spot to lie down, watching the stars, falling stars here and there.

It isnt too long before we hear the cry again. It is a baby sound, coming from the rocks opposite the ocean side. We are all trying to rationalise. Wouldnlt we hear peoples voices then if we can hear the baby? why does it only give one cry and then stop? Nevertheless we are on edge. Time to leave? really? Okay. We gather up our stuff and head for the car.

It is a little rought going in the dark, the balck vulcanic rocks have belnd into a black mass and the beach in between was wet. Walksing across the wet sand little light come on. when you set down your foot all around little spots turn on and then fade again. I have seen this phenomena in waves but never on the wet sand. Beautiful! We hop around for a bit. It doesn't help everyone relax though. robin: can we go now? I really do not feel welcome here. Antoine, a true boy feels like he needs to explore and Adi is almost out there with him. But we leave.

The parking lot gives us a last jitter. Our two cars are really the only ones there and Makapuu is really not an easy walk from anywhere.

-Some intensive research on google yields a little bird called catbird, it's call sounds exactly like a baby. (to be found on youtube except that our bird was way better!) pfew.

My last day of packing and randomness ended me at Waimanalo with Ten Zin and the two Adi's. A a last day swim anbd relax. Ten Zin is learning swimming from Maxie and is doing great! trying everything even taming the sea! and Adi (the other one ;) ) let himself in with the salty water too! I donlt know what I would od if I didnlt know how to swim, but I'm glad they came with us and trusted us to look after them!

A little get together after that with those who were still in Hawaii was good fun! It is wonderful how well randomness works in Hawaii.. I make some snacks and you bring whatever you want to drink! I stayed up till 2:15 cleanign and packing last leftover bits, crashed for two hours and then made travel packages and poked at Robin who stayed over so she could drive me to the airport in Hajime's truck.

I'm home now..
I'll keep you updated!

Music: Nunca Mais, Zuco 103
Quote: A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -George Bernard Shaw

Canvas Abandon

2009-05-07T04:57:00.004+02:00

Art is leaving the museum halls in search of a more vital interactive context. In this day and age of individual accomplishment and self-enhancement it seems yet again our artists are one step ahead of us and aiming for the change that others only just begin to feel the need for. It is a change towards reconnection, a switch from using art to observe and analyze to making art the art of interaction, a social event.

The contrast is similar to what in psychology would be called natural observation (meticulously recording and analyzing what we see in a natural setting on paper) and setting up an experiment (the bringing together of people who actively participate and generate the result). Art is no longer a question posted by the artist, analyzed by him to then be presented to us as a conclusion of his thought process. It has become a question posted to the public and asking for their hands-on participation and analysis. “Giving each person a voice is what builds the community and makes art socially responsive.” (Gablik :82)

Where some might question whether this interactive form of art is really art; I would suggest to turn to art history for an answer. Many of the great artists we know from before were initially not accepted because their ideas were ahead of ours, because their concepts broke boundaries we had set for ourselves and because they explored our cultural norms in ways we had never thought of. They made art in a different way and we also questioned its validity.

While we used to have the tendency to sit back and observe art as if we were sitting in front of a TV, we are no longer going to be entertained as such. Having always been focused on looking, obsessing over, and gazing, art now requires action. Lygia Clark is one of those artists who challenges us to let go of our ‘normal’. She crosses the boundaries of observation and those of objects and people, and creates pieces where object and body become one. In blindfolding people, enhancing their other senses and giving them only their hands to grasp what life is around them, she challenged us to step out of our comfort zone, requiring interaction to experience.

Instead of depicting subjects of controversy one is now challenged to physically experience it. There is a common quote used among teachers everywhere: “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand.” I feel contemporary art is doing exactly that. We have gone from the showing stage to the involving stage. Art is out to change the world; not by hinting at change with images, but by grabbing people by the hand and making them experience and become part of the change.

So art is not contained on a canvas any longer, it has taken on the world as a place to manifest itself. From the halls of galleries where it only reached the elite few that came by, it now goes for a stroll outside, to meet people, to interact, to confront. There is no limit to space for art other than the limits of our minds and the world is our canvas. Through art we can negotiate the direction where we want to go with our life, our culture, humanity but, most importantly, where we don’t.

It seems a logical step for art to take on this social form as people are a social species and nothing in this world ever happened because one person took action. It was always an idea multiple people stood up for that determined the course of life. Art in a way is promoting this vision. Emotion is steered in a new direction, sensitizing us to the course we were so obliviously walking along, making us aware of the others walking alongside of us and asking of us to evaluate, in our newfound perspectives, our norms and values. Art is looking for a purpose other than pleasure, not only requesting awareness but a common step up to a world of harmony. We are still looking for aesthetics, maybe not on paper but in the immediate world around us, and art is still our way to represent it.

Coach

2009-02-11T02:48:00.006+01:00

Epiphany: women wear dresses because in the earlier days it was eaier to go to the bathroom that way... squat. And yes I was wearing a nice long skirt today, blue top and a shawl and my hair down; thankyou for asking. I forgot how tired one becomes of the same pair of jeans and sweats for two weeks straight and how much you need to feel female some days! ;)

Just gotback from our first road trip, San Hose and Stanford, 10 games in 11 days. We lost an important conference game (we were up 7-2 and lost in overtime and we beat them by about that much in the tournament but that didn't really count), and we upset UCLA which is big. Coaching really doesn't do much for me. I understand my coaches a little better, and realise this is something I can do but not something I particularly enjoy. i.e.: I can tell people what needs tobe said and I can figure out ways to get to someone in a game. However I remember what it is like to be in there too (want to get in sometimes) and am young and not set in my ways (up to a certain point LOL wait till you cross that boundary) and I can be felxible and I believe everyone can grow, I guess you need this quality as a coach and I'm sure I wouldnlt judge harshly enough if I had to select a team but can we stop judging each other? Ah! Womans!!!

I have very much enjoyed watching Ryan play. A girl who had never really played polo untill uni in hawaii. She still goofs sometimes but she is still discovering and getting better! It is just great to watch people grow.

Now I'm home and I really want to just relax, enjoy the house and the fact that I am in charge of my own time. I really like structure... and I do not mean that I need my entire week planned, but I think that if you want a team to perform they need to know when they can get food, when they can study and when it is time to sleep. I think they need to know (as do I) what time the game is tomorrow AND the day after and weather we need to bring food home from the store as the next hotel does not have complementary breakfast! And I need to not be called to my coach's room in a hurry half an hour before I need to drop someone off at the pool to video the game just to be told that as he had only just thought of it while we had agreed to meet that half hour later at the car. MY WORD!!! I like being in charge of my own time!!!

Had a fun night out the last night with some of the "older" girls. Two of which didn't enjoy it as much in the morning... Now I just wish I didn't have to leave again in a week... hm.

Music: M.I.A.: Paper Planes

Quote: “You are only as good as the coach thinks you are.” -Brian Williams

Fear is for Prey

2008-12-29T20:05:00.012+01:00

I mean: Merry Christmas and a happy Newyear

If ever you wonder where I went: I'm in Canada visiting my family there.
As always full of good intentions of writing christmas letters and cards and e-mails and as usual thinking of everyone a lot but not so much doing anything about it. It seems to be my style.

I've entirely merged into my Canadian family's life style of which the kids (my two cousins) are the pivotal point. It is good though, I've done literally nothing but play with them, read a really good book found in my uncles cupboard and visit their friends and family for just fun or game days and nights. I even got to write on one of the last pages of their victory book (they do game nights often). Of course this was a place I could claim after having prepared for this event playing high level competition and travelling through China and the US to finally come to Calgary, Canada to enter a certain state of flow, combining my practiced mental and physical states into a true victory worthy of comitting to writing.

At some point though, seriously lacking some physical movement I decided to take a hike up nose hill which is quite close by their house. This was truely wondeful! I felt like a little kid wanting/trying to run up the hil, wanting to merge with the white snow glistening in sunlight. Running doesn't work very welll through deep snow and high altitude frozen air though. Halfway up the hill I was knee deep in the snow which made me turn back alltogether (of course after denying defeat and trying awas more kind. I nearly gave up again because as the sun was setting and the wind picking up (there was a chinook wind- the warm wind and the reason it was -12 instead of -25). It was so cold I could barely breathe! Turning my back to the wind to catch my breath the hood of my jacket flew up, which made me realise my hat and scarf just didn't do the trick! This however gave me a new comfort (and breath) and had me attempt going up again. Up was wonderful! The sun was still shining there and setting between the hills in the distance and the clouds above. (Again no pictures as we have a virus here and it targets removable harddrives *sigh* technology is not on my side) I skipped down the hill when I was done taking pictures and studying Calgary from above in the changing light.. back home to have some REALLY HOT CHOCOLATE MILK!

Also went to watch a Calgary Flames game! I must say I quite enjoy watching ice hockey which is strange because I have very little patience for watching sports in general! I still get a little awkward when they break into serious fights and have bloos splatters to wipe off the ice, but I love the spead of the game and the agility on ice!

You must be wondering by now where the title of this blog came from though? Well??? can you guess?? no? Okay well.. Ice Age 2. My cousins got it from Santa and it has been played at least 6 times already (listening to it in the background as we speak). Justin, the youngest, has the greatet memory for words and texts. This particular one coming from Diego, the Sabertooth tiger who doesn't know how to swim. Swimming is like staling prey. Did I lose you? okay well just go watch.

Speaking of swimming, I went to the pool with my family a couple times now! Both my cousins grew a lot, as little people and in height (there is no denying this is my family). Lucas a true boy, showing off all his skills and making sure never to admit defeat or miss an opportunity to tell us he is good at things (I do remember my little brother going though a very similar phase) and Justin very good at playing on his own, sometimes coming out of nowhere to tell you about the fantasy-world he just submerged in while we were not paying attention and sometimes cuddly and loving. Those were the days!

Today being the last day of the year I hope it will be a good one for everyone! And a good one tomorrow for everyone too! I know I will start mine leisurely. Hope to get one day of skiing in, some more time with my cousins, maybe another hike and some sledding in the snow when it gets a little colder (makes the snow less wet!)
Hope to see you all soon... Hawai'i or eslewhere. All my love.

Music: ACDC
Quote: "When there is snow on the ground, I like to pretend I'm walking on clouds." -Takayuki Ikkaku

Quand je Marche

2008-12-09T21:26:00.019+01:00

Computer: R.I.P.: died in it's sleep... never started again when I prodded it in the morning...Moped: down and outBicycle: still parked where I left it one and a half years agoLegs: only a little sore from capoeira (again) but very good for walking.I walked to school the last three days in a row, takes about 35 minutes and it makes me contemplative. You have been warned!

"Entends-tu", m'as-tu dit,"le chant du monde?", alors depuisquand l'aube se lève, je la suiset quand la nuit tombeje tombe aussi-Camille, excerpt from the song "Quand je Marche"Such a beautiful language, I'm in love. I think I need to court it a little more, but for now I'm only listening and trying to understand.

I moved to my new place! Pictures for those who are keen to see, I will edit this post as soon as I find a way to function without my laptop (and I promise my room will not always be this tidy). Everyone is welcome! This means: come by unexpected, we have a lanai: a good place for talking or just contemplating and looking down into Manoa valley (or doing art), two crazy house mates/friends -but always good fun, the hills behind us, dinner if you want, three guitars in the house, the best breeze in Manoa, a garden, tea, cookies.. hmm maybe I should start charging!I shall attempt a house warming party after everyone returns from Christmas break!

Music: CamilleQuote: "Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." -Steven Wright

Goofy Footed

2008-11-30T21:17:00.007+01:00

What can I say, this is nothing new to me!
However I didn't know they would have a term for it when riding a wave. ;)
I think I'm turning my chlorine addiction into a salt water addiction though! Surfing is so much fun aspecially if you can do it a couple days in a row or with your random friends who decide to show up out of nowhere aka Brittany Kamai! (I just wanted to write out her last name as she finally got it officiallised and she is proud to have her dad's name, so there!)
First it was Nicolas who took me out once a week, if lucky but the three times I went so far were great! Man I bruise badly on my knees and hips from lying on a surfboard! Then I went with Britt:

On my way to thanksgiving dinner my moped broke down again (I just got it fixed two days before) so I walk it to the moped place, tie it up and sit at the busstop. First of all I talk to this guy who is a chef at one of the big waikiki hotels and who is carrying a bunch of pies. He tells me his life story, in short I guess but still... we discuss bus systems all over the world and right before the bus comes we get interrupted by a phone call: Brittanny!
"what're you up to?"
"hmm me? sitting at the busstop moping over my moped whattabout you?"
"you want me to come pick you up?"
"wait what?! Are you here?!?!?! heck yeah!"
So I tell the guy how cool my random friend is and he donates a pie to us for thanksgiving, figuring we are students and he has only a small gathering where we have quite a big one!
He takes the bus and britt picks me up. We go see her dad play first, so nice, so good, I suggest you all come listen to him play someday, and when Britt walked in he had the proudest smile on his face! So sweet!
Then we had thanksgiving dinner at my new house where I havn't moved in yet and at the idea of surfing with Britt in the morning I confirmed my previous notion that shopping on black friday (the discount dat after thanksgiving) really wasn't my thing, so we go home at 00:00 and go surfing in the morning...
More of this!
wayyyyyy more of this!

Meanwhile my friend (Isar) had asked me to come to cpaoeira sometime, so I did as it sounded like good fun! Little did I know I was going to be sore for the entire 4 days after! I tried to swim it out, walk it out (I took the stairs everywhere) but no... I'm going back on monday though! So fun, so hard though, but at least I can get better at it!

Also have been playing with the girls a lot lateley. I am getting better at it, so much so that Mich called me friday as he wanted me in. Friday was Sinterklaas though and my free day form waterpolo so I desperately needed to finish my 'surprise' and print out my poem... so we could be ready after practice! The girls invited me to the cafetaria (where I havn't been back since I left hawaii) and ended up eating a random veggie burger, slice of pizza and icecream as there was, as usual, no proper veggie food. Brrr that was so bad it was good! :) and Dagmar had some pepernoten after so we were all pretty much ready to explode. We had a lot of fun though, even the non-Dutch girls did such a good job in picking up the sinterklaas spirit, it was impressive!

One more week and then finals start, then I am off to Canada for christmas! I bought myself a woolen sweater to get in the mood! :D

Music: Nothing Ever Ends, dEUS
Quote: "If ti swells, ride it!"

Things

2008-11-09T20:48:00.015+01:00

Beach workouts have dwindled as season (accordingt o NCAA rules) has started officially which means there are no funny rules holding one back from using balls in practice and working out a certain amount of hours in the pool... It was fun... Taken at waimea beach and they weren't even greatful! I guess they liked the pictures of jumping of the Rock better! I must admit I thought it was! :)

It was halloween! Altogether waikiki was a bit dissappointing, it seems the center has moved to downtown which is where I'll be going next year! There are too many tourists in waikiki that don't dress up and just come to watch :S

We had an after weddign BBQ of Volker's brother and his girlfriend. It was a very spontaneous potluck and I met a whole bunch of fun people there apart from the very fun ones I arlready knew! Spent a lot of time in the sea avoiding Men of War... I was succesful, but not everyone. Ended up hanging out with Krystian and Isar who were my ride home from Waimea... which resulted in my latest piece of art (on the right or on my deviantart site)

We had dinner at our house. According to Adi this picture is proof Dutch girls can make real Indian food! :D (for those who know: Mango Dahl and Palak Paneer) And it is great when everyone likes it, especially a random culture clash like this! From left to right: Angel (Spain), Takuya (Japan), Adi (India), Ecaterina (Romania) and me (Dutchy!) Later for desert which was a combi of strawberries Gulab Jamoon hmmm and appel/caramel cakes Nicolas (France) and Lisa(Japan) also joined us! Good fun!

And somewhere in between all this my little brother turned 21!!! Must mean I'm getting old haha!
Oh, and we have a new president which should be great but the next topic of discussion is how he is going to be assasinated. This is a strange place to live... but we live right down the road from where Obama used to live!

Quote: "I am not young enough to know everything." -Oscar Wilde
Music: Pandora!!

Update from the other side of the Ocean

2008-10-15T06:12:00.008+02:00

what ocean.. well you know that bunch.. ;)

I know I promised pictures of my room and so on and so forth but I finally found some cheap furniture that I need to find somebody with a car for to get but I want to put it in there and then you can see all you like! So hold your horses!

Am living with a Romanian girl that I met before I went back home! Rather talkative (sometimes a little too much) and finishing her MA in business. I think she is very intelligent but she doesn't think so, it's kinda funny. She's tiny and does not do sports and then I mean: does not do sports! so nice! haha!

Life here is good, I had a great weekend for starters, went on a hike with Lisa to the mauna wili falls, played in the far falls and jumped from the high rock that is protruding above the front one. Actually there were a lot of people jumping, even from the higer ones and these are over 13m, I'm not going off of those, 10 is plenty for me!

Upon return I dropped by campus because there was a Kava fest. Lots of booths, of course lots of hippies, Kava samples (tastes like wet earth and makes your mouth go numb and supposedly makes you mellow without influencing your senses.. hmmm) Met up with Maxi and Kelly there and walked around for a while.

After the hike we (my roommate and I) went to Takuya (pronounce takwieja) one of our friends and he made us and some other folks dinner, really nice and laid back... we brought some fruit for dessert. Sunday was homework day however made dinner for some of my global cafe friends who I found I didnlt get to sepnd so much time with as everybody seems to be busy all the time! So fun! I just made pasta, but my roommate for one thinks I am the most amazing cook because I'm making her curry that she likes and am cooking with fresh herbs that she despises! LOL but she is eating more than she usually does! The other two: Adi (Indian boy) who has a permanent smile on his face and wiggles his head while he waves his hand speaking with a beatiful British Indian accent! And there is Alexey, very cool boy from Russia who is a little quieter but so nice to have around! Neways, we had fun, cracked a lot of stupid jokes and they brought a very good desert of caramel cake with additional ice cream that my roommate had stored in the freezer :D Then takuya who had barrowed my moped (ohja, I bought a moped!) came ot bring it back so he crashed for a little icecream too...

Am taking life painting which is hard! 6 sessions per model or so and oil paints! definitely a new experience! then I managed to leave my brushs in there and when I went back for them they were gone. Not sure where I took them out of my bag but put some signs up asking for people to phone me if they found them but I guess they are just lost... thankgod I left some at home so I have some backup ones... just the bad ones :S. Then I also carried around some red oil paint (which we needed to buy for the base of the painting. Very beautiful colour but not when it covers the inside of your bag and books and keys and everything) Ugh! Been waiting for over a week no to get it to dry properly! It defnintely dries faster on canvas!

Oh, Friday was the homecoming game for the volleyball girls so there was some reggae music and some tents with rando stuff to do, so we hung out on the grass and played with a turtle Kelly was babysitting... then we went to the basketball game where our freshmen had to do their initiation and do a cheer during break and a whole bunch of missions in the stadium: good fun! Then went over to Maxi and Kelly for (a bit too muchof) a drink...

Otherwise I have been re-experiencing how expensive Hawaii is. Allthough I found some more places to get cheap food, and now that I have a moped I'll go check out all the stores and see if I can get my grapes for a dolar per pound less. I invest in bread and yoghurt, because I'm dutch and cannot do without but seriously!!! $8,50 for 1,5 liters of yoghurt???

I am at the pool three times a week from 6:30 to 8 in the morning and about every afternoon for at least two hours... maye I should cut in that somewhat. Have some more beach time, but I feel bad leaving my 5 goalies to Mo and Mich who really are a little clueless about what to do with a goalie. Plus it is quite fun to be a trainer. I could not have imagined me enjoying this, but it is noce to decide when you get in and when you don't and when you feel like being reaosnable and when you feel like working them hard, and it is the coolest when you can show them they can surpass what they thought they could do... -I'm not that bad, I know what it feels like to swim hard ;)

Oh and BTW.. I found these on my hike but what is it? Ginger? I found a white image that looked a lot like it... and it smelled soooo good! ... All these pictures have bee taken with my new camera, can you tell I'm having fun! There are a lot more pictures I can tell you!
Hope you enjoy! I will try to be back with more soon!

P.S.: Anyone interested to come and join me WWOOFing in Maui this summer?? or something like that...??? common you know you want to!

Music: Alices Rabbit-Running Downhill
Quote: "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." -Albert Einstein

On Avo

2008-09-27T04:07:00.004+02:00

Careful to keep the fruit intact I spend my entire morning not bumping my bag into anything, not squishing it into the seat of my moped, not slinging it over my shoulder and not randomly stuffing my books in.

As a little treasure I carried it around, hidden in in my pouch no one knowing it other than me. Untill it's faithfull moment came and I pulled it out. A dark shiney green: soft but not too soft, big but not too big, and mine, most importantly, all mine.

Picking at it's center of suspention I got hold of it's cardboard skin. My first taste sucking the flesh off, sampling the whole. It peeled easily and sat in my hand like a big pear. A big baby pear, freshly arrived in this world, still sitting in it's bottom shell.

I contemplated it's perfect shape for a while and then took a big soft bite that started melting on my tongue as soon as it hit base. I tried to eat it slowly, picking bit's off my nose and cheeks, remnants of the feast of each bite, my hands soft with a thick green cream.

Now I sit satisfied, like the original fruit full, lucious and glowing green around the edges.

It is also mango season ans the pineapple we had the other day had my tongue sore for the day after as I had too much! so good! Jealous yet? Papaya's are pretty sweet too!
And tonight one of my new friends is cooking my roommte and me a traditional Japanese dinner!

Oh and guess what! the sun us shining!

Music: Sunshine, Matt Costa
Quote: "Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." -Henry David Thoreau

Mirroring the Moon

2008-09-17T10:01:00.002+02:00

Do you know what I mean?
Out on the beach, night just set in
out comes the glowing full moon
Filled up with Ahi and Poi as we are
possibly a little high on vulcanic air
We realise the moon is lonely up there
waves disrupting her reflectionin the sea
and really, since the water is warm
what should we care?

Three slightly awkward moons
wade into the water
Perfect symmetry

Music: A World of Our Own, The Seekers
Quote: Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides. -Rita Mae Brown

3D Person

2008-09-05T20:22:00.004+02:00

She felt like the weight of her two bags -exactly 23 kg's each- and the additional weight of the bottle of champagne in her backpack made it impossible for her to walk at a 90 degree angle with the floor. While she found her way outside she was congradulated by a few more people that had figured out she was the girl that was in 27C. Because of previous experiences she wisely kept her prize in her backpack though.

It was so good to be back! The smell of flowers on the warm wind, the slightly oversweet smell of the cinnamon buns (she could have done without that), the people slowly moving around doing jobs that werenlt always entirely clear... Which arrival hall was she in? would they find her? did they get the date right?

The heavy bags bumped up the stairs, each stair a different size, each bump a heavier one. She was definitely awake now but what did you expect form someone arriving at midnight and a 12 hour time difference?!

Walking to school in the morning after a wholesome three hours of sleep she told herself a couple of times: "I'm in Hawaii and I'm going to school! I'm in Hawaii, I'm going to school!". Unprepared as she was it turned out not to be all that bad. Nearly fell over twice during life painting - it is really hard to concentrate for 2,5 hours at 3 in teh afternoon, but the focal point -which for the purpose of this blog we shall call model- made her keep her balance and only ensued a couple of odd looks from fellow class mates.

The pool was where it always had been. Many faces changed but then; so had she. It was amazing that out of her soggy head there still came a somewhat understandable set of swimsets. This must be what one calls experience.

Now she is looking for rooms, and mopeds. It seems there is quite a good chance for each. She spotted an awefully beautifull light pink one. As you all know this is her favourite colour and so she has been having (quite extensive) visions of how to use her newly gained spraypaint techniques to turn it into somewhat more her style. Any cool thoughts on this?

She set a record of almost 5,5 hours of sleep last night. Rigth now it still seems like it was enough but tonight, after practice and a drink at Magoose they are off to First fridays.. the downtown art exhibition. Next mission to accomplish!

Quote: "Accept anyone who approaches you, don't chase those that leave you." -Japanese Proverb used by one of my teachers when people started leaving the lecture early.
Music: "Guitar Music by various live artists in this house"

Speachless...

2008-09-01T11:41:00.002+02:00

as you might have noticed!
I dreamed up a lot of things as a little girl but this never really was one of them LOL!

I thought about running a bunch of quotes of e-mails people sent me on here, but I just recieved the best one last night when I called my family in Canada. My cousin Justin picked up the phone and when he figured out it was me he told me in a brilliantly long sentence, slightly hoarse with excitement:

"Did you know... ... ... you guys won ... the Olympics?!?!?!?!?"

I guess this says all we need to know.
After a long week of being hailed by the Queen, the people in my street, the Swimming comity, our municipality and the one of the team I play on, giving a golden clinic (having all out sponsors show up and teach them sports) and receieving so many flowers we ran out of vases and buckets too and the wedding of a good friend (she was absolutely beautiful), I finally get to pack and as a bonus my other dear friend managed to give birth to Marjolein (she told me she'd manage it between China and Hawaii as she wanted me to be there. So I get to go see her today! SO PROUD!

I fly tomorrow, got to talk to Amy today (yes I'm still bouncy) and will now go on bouncing till I drop dead on the plain to Hawaii tomorrow so I can prepare for catching up a week+ of school and find an apartment and work the goalies on Aloha Island. Nothing aloha about workouts though!

Will catch up with all of you asap!
Thanks again for all the support, it means the world to me!

Quote: "Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognise it as such" -Henry Miller
Music: Muse, Starlight

My Prince

2008-08-15T12:45:00.003+02:00

Already a little way in to the Games, I can say we are doing quite allright. We had an awkward loss against Hungary to start with but made up for it with a quite decent game against Greece. Today we had an okay game and really should have left Australia behind, but for some reason we didn't seem to be able to shoot the ball into the goal on the other side and you could say this is a quite crucial flaw if you want to win a game! I would have liked to have made a difference in all this but I have not had any pool time yet so for now I'm still watching and cheering from the sideline. Feels like a shame of being so fit but oh well...

Yesterday we had visitors. Guess who? No? Well; our Prince Willem Alexander and his Wife Maxima came to our apartment and happily chatted about thier kids fighting over their seat in the bicycle trailer our games, the rest of their program and so on. Seriously, they are very nice people! And as to the question who was babysitting: well his mom of course! (aka: the queen) Fun stuff!

Meanwhile I have been entertaining myself with a chinese lesson, and am now stumbling over funny sounds and wishing people good morning in the evening and saying excuse me instead of you're welcome, which causes a lot of laughs mainly emongst the cleaning people in the morning. So maybe I'll stick with Ni Hau for now.

Quote: "You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Music: Punchlines and Prophecies, Running Downhill

The Circus

2008-08-09T04:40:00.009+02:00

So as most of you know 08/08/08 was the grand opening of The Olympics in China, Beijing. We walked, head up into the stadium and it was mesmerising though a tad little sweaty!

We were lucky; we were number 152 to walk in! This meant we had seats in another stadium next to this one and got to leave the village about an hour later than most. And guess who was sitting right in front of us?! well? Yep, it was Ethiopia.. so of course I walk over there and ask for a picture. Also got asked ot go to dinner as there was supposedly a good Ethiopian restaurnat here.. after the games of course, and the parents were welcome to join. Ha! The coincidence... This one's for you Hanna!

I also found Lesotho, recognised them by their hats from a little distance, so as we approached I figured I'd get a pictue for Iris there too! (Yeah I admit, I like africans and their dresses are way more fun to look at then all the european stuff!)

We did look quite handsome too! I must say the suits make everyone look very professional! I swear if anyone of my team tried to sell my a house that evening I probably would have bought it ;) However the smartness didn't last as long as it should have. As I had predicted the suits were a little too warm for this climate and being light grey this was not exactly a very big success! I think by not jumping around the entire day beside myself with excitement I spared myself from enormous embarresment but not everyone was this lucky.

By participating in the walking, we didn' t really end up seeing anyhting of the acts at all, though we got to see some flashes in between countries being called out on a big screen in the other arena. We did see the end, and the lighting of the Olympic Flame and it was really quite inpressive! Home at 2:30ish and really tired from standing up and having a little too little too drink, everyone ran through the shower and crashed... Long day, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss it!

Next up: our first game against Hungary the 11th!!

Quote: "...your beautiful smiling face just flashed across the screen really fast." -Amy Logan
Music: Olympic Anthem

Arrival at the Palace Gates

2008-08-05T09:25:00.010+02:00

After having hung out in Daxing for a couple days and sparring with the US team (which was a rather physical experience), getting over our jetlag and pretending to get used to the air quality, we finally took the bus to go to the Olympic Village. After a little search we found we were in buillding 9A, the top appartment from which we have quit the view most of the time interrupted by the smog and humidity in the air. Most of the countries have their flags bound to their little balconies. Across form us there is Congo and R'wanda. To name another exotic one: at lunch today I came across the Solomon Ilsands and they were wearing something that looked mostly like hawaiian shirts. Les flowers more leaves!

The Dining hall we call the binge barn (freely translated from Dutch) but it does it's name justice. There are different cuisines and within each there are three of the same buffets to be able to survice all the athletes that might decide to arrive at the same time. There is Asian, Mediterranean, Halal and International food, there is bread and cheese and hummus and all sorts of fruit. There is a breakfast bar with all sorts of cereal and bagles and and and.. there is more.. there is a McDonalds!!!! The fact that it is there is one thing but there are actually quite many people eating there too! Everything is open 24/7 too and we all have a little plastic bottlechip which we can use anywhere on any drinking machine to draw water, gatorade, coke, icetea or anything else you might want.

I share my room with Yasemin and my apartent with 6 other girls from my team at the top of the building (view is from the windo that says please do not open). Am very greatfull for the Dutch organisation to have organised wirless internet for us in the buildings as of course it makes it a lot easier to keep you all updated even when you don't really want to know what I'm doing.

Most everyone here is wearing their national team outfit which cuases quite the confusion because we are not used to have other dutchies around other than girls form our team. So every time you see the blue white orange comination you start waving or excitedly call out and then often come to realise you don' t even really know who these people are and possibly a friendly yet slightly confused smile. A similar reaction is that every time you see Russian or Hungarian or athletes from some other country you know plays waterpolo you think that is what sport they play but then it could really be just about anything when you are here. I did have to conclude though that really all the Russians look pissed off and all the greeks look somewhat arrogant! (no offence ot anyone!).

-(View on a less polluted day and on a higher one)-
We are not supposed to go off the village grounds untill we are done playing so I really hope I find some entertainment other then internet, my puzzle books, reading books and journal or else I'm afriad I might go a little crazy. The weather is really to humid and warm to do anything else and even though we have quite a large pool in this area I don't think I'll be spanding my spare time in there... I wonder why? They seem to have some music and dance going on at the far end.. maybe I'll go have a look there in the evening. Untill the next update!

And last but not least: Thankyou all for the comments on my post on blogger or by mail, they really do make my day! :D

Quote: Citius, Altius, Fortius

Countdown

2008-07-28T21:52:00.005+02:00

So as I'm waiting for my last load of clothes to wash and while I am still scribbling things on my note by my hand that holds all the things I still want to do in the morning I am findgin some time tpo update. I'm leaving tomorrow. For those who I have not bothered with details: We're going to Daxing to hang out with the US team and play and practice and then on the 7th travel to Beijing and attend the opening ceremony. We will be in our white training suit... however we wil also make an appearance in this at some point. (Can you tell I did ballet before I tried waterpolo?)

Neways, I'll try to update here occasionally during the whole event. Just not sure about how much acces I have to internet. We shall see!

For those interested in when we play:
11aug - 13:00 NED-HUN
13aug - 14:20 NED-GRE
15aug - 13:00 NED-AUS
17aug - 13:00 quarter finals
19aug - 13:00 semi finals
21aug - 17:00 3d/4th place 18:20 FINAL

Lady, Rice and Music Waves

2008-06-08T12:07:00.006+02:00

Test your vocab= donate rice!
Trust me, it is interesting fun and well if you feed a couple kids in the process no one really gets worse by it! I cannot seem to get past 42 (I guess that is not half bad for a Dutchies vocab range)
Only ennoying thing is that if you do want the word pronounced, you get a lovely American voice, male or female which messes with my pronunciation of things! Whichever way, go spend a couple minutes there and make the world a better place (and let me know how far you get so I can go and better you score when I get bored between practices!)

Secondly I have conluded I am as of now officially a lady ;) Most of you know me so realise this is far from the truth although I do a good imitation on a good day. However, walking back from the pool the other day a little boys soccer team walked by and one little boy trying to be bold said: "dag mevrouw" which means something to the equivelent of goodday miss/lady. I said hi back figuring it would be appreciated and it was. Nex thing he turn to his friend and says: "guess what! I rold that lady hi ans she smiled and said hi back!" Then he shouted BYE! real hard and I waved my hand at him continueing my path to my car, tripping, just out of eyesight of the bunch of boys over the little wall we jump over to get to the parking faster. Almost ruined his concept there!

Finally and this update has been due for a while: I went to Ameland, which is one of the islands along the top of our country. My good friend Britt (you know the one that has been causing half the adventures on this blog this year) and her couch surfing friend Robin went to a surf and music festival there.
We took the ferry and thank god had some beautiful weather out there! Also, we wenty surfing on the Dutch North Shore, with and without wetsuit, which was cold but fun anough to be bearable!
They had a great party both nights (although the music on the second was way better!) and I danced two nights in a row and did some crowd surfing which I never thought would be done with someone my lenght! LOL. I must admit I spent 2 days drooling over a beautiful man, it gave a whole new meaning to to a dutch expression about straing the beauty off of someone when you look too much. But hey, I'm allowed.. I get to spend whole weeks together with a bunch of girls in a pool... haha.

We spent three nights in an insanely little tent with the three of us which (after we managed to fit the matress in, barely fit us and we had to leave all our "things" outside at night. This included my feet.

Most my calories these three days came from beer... because there really wasn't hat much food and the line for the french fries served better for making friends then getting yourself anything to eat! Did get us some Berenburgh (strong liquor) though...

Finally I got the taste for surfing again, realised dutch surf really sucks but will be back in hawaii soon, met up with some good new music, interesting people and a crowd that was just laid back and fun as they all had an interest in surfng and not just in getting drunk and partying which made the party more fun too! There were plenty of hippies and hippy activity, I made a bunch of buttons and Britt took part in a capoeira class... very fun! An yes well.. many more things to tell but I need to post this becaue this was amonth ago and new things are happening! Sorry for the delay, I was wainting for pictures!

Quote: You cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to surf!
Music: Jaya the Cat

From Tree Hugger to National Champion

2008-05-17T12:03:00.008+02:00

16/05/2007 It's really strange to be writing this blog entry but I am just really hoping it will turn out to be.
We just won our first game of a best out of 3 series for national championship. I'm so exited to play and yet scared to death... it would be quite a way to end this year of waterpolo!!! But we still have to win tonight and it is going to be so hard!

17/05/2007 HA! well we did it!
have a look here! IT IS IN DUTCH (Of course I blocked some shots... but they show goals so here they do go in... LOL) My word this was a strange game. We should have won in normal time but the refs kept giving the other team make up chances. We had two players out with 3 personal faults which was quite hard but they lost a couple during ovetime. So when in overtime we had a little fall behind they finally decided to give us the benefit of the doubt (or they just wanted to controll the game, beats me) and we managed to draw again. The other team missed two penalties.. (missed the goal entirely) so I didn't have that much to do (yeah right!) and we won! I'm soooooo stoked! Then we went back to Nijverdal and had a really fun party... trying to wake up the entire town -who really all should have been in bed early because there was church in the morning- went to bed at 6am and well...

The tree hugger thing came from a little adventure I had with Britt in Barendrecht.. pictures for ya here! We finally had some decent weather and decided to hang out in the grass, pick dandelions, dance and take random pictures.
Britt had never seen so many of these seed pods together and didn't know they came from dandelions so that was quite the experience. We also managed to scare away a coupld birds and entertain some older folks who kept walking by and thinking we must be 16 or so and playing outside or something.
On our way back we stood on the bridge and waves at truckdrivers (this I believe is a very good thing to do if you even need some self confidence haha! We had a very good laugh!) Had dinner at the most amazing restaurant and being very hungry and having banana beer to start with this was quite a laugh too! It was delicious though!

Quote: "It's never just a game whe you are winning." George Carlin
Music: Zuca 143, Nunca Mais (Never Again)

Quarter Century

2008-05-04T16:59:00.009+02:00

So it has been a while, at least I seem to stick to at least once a month updates!

It has been a Quarter Century!!! And it went by quite relaxed and enjoyable. I tend to let my birthday slip by quietly as for some reason I'm never really in for celebrations. My friends however thought otherwise! Iris came over from England with the good intention of celebrating her birthday as wel as mine :) and Britt came back from the Europe Cup in Sciscaly (as she calls it) went out for one night and came over to my place the next. We had a lovely dinner and then went out to Ede to see what my brother and his band were up to! It was good fun hanging out in the pub/bar, and I really enjoy most of their music and their catchy choruses and must admit I'm a proud to show them off! Running Downhill

We went to bed late and the next morning had appelpie for breakfast with big cups of coffee... sounds horrible doesn't it? I had some really cool presents (my hammock-top/left- picture courtesy of Britt) I think I will be spending quite some time in there!

What else happened lately? I realised it is really expensive to have a car and how much I actually enjoy having one! I needed to take it to the yearly checkup and had to pay a little more than I had bargained for to keep it on the road. I realy already knew it was expensive business to own a car but this!!!! However I have made piece with it and now we are happily driving around the country together again. It is MY car and I don't think I'll be owning one again in the near future or after I bugger off to Hawaii so I am going to majorly enjoy it! So there!

I had a fun outing to the Keukenhof, which is a garden focussed on all our spring flowers and bulbs, with my grandparents. It was really beautiful and I had never been there so it was about time! 't Was hard to get them in my pictures though... they are great at avoiding camera's :)

Music: Hey Driver, Lucky Boys Confusion
Quote: "It's bald and driving a white VW...??: my brother -my across the street neigbour

Feeding an Addiction

2008-04-04T13:56:00.002+02:00

It sounds really scary and really it shouldn't be, but today turned out a little different.
I shoved a plate of shortbread cookies in the oven. Pam pam paaaaaaam.....

How this all came about? Well... My moms good friend Lindsay came along and to my excitement she had brought some shortbread cookies. I think I can devour these thinks by the pack so this was great! however I tried really hard to not eat tham all in one go. I had 2. With tea...

The next day there was one lying in the box in the table and I figured I would wait till the end of the day again to have it, not thinking it was the last one as there were two boxes right?!?!?!!?!?

However to my great dissapointment (I'm not blaming anyone for anything!) but my family had already eaten them all! And someoneelse decided to have that same last cookie with tea. :(
(and I thought I was a cookiemonster!).

Not all was lost though because supposedly they were really easy to make! So being home alone today I figured it would be good to try.

It turned out to be a new recipy: Shortbread cookie crumble! haha
They taste allright :D However they are tooo thin so they became really crumbly and broken. Ahhh whatever! Practice makes perfect and I'll feed some to my waterpolo team... butter makes you float right?

Antics in Amsterdam

2008-03-18T11:21:00.004+01:00

Spent a good day walking around Amsterdam with Britt.. of course, who else... off to a new adventure! We met up at the Central Station and walked everywhere from there. This was good to get a better idea of how Amsterdam is organised seeing as I knew where I had been before but no clue how to get there.

First we went off to the Bloemengracht where I knew there was a hammock store and I have had my heart sent on one of those chair hammocks since a year or four ago or so. We tested them excessively up to the point that people walking into the store started asking us for prices and other possibilities. After this we went on a hunt for a very good restaurant that Britt had discovered on an earlier trip. It was absolutely unbelieveable. Additionally we ended up sitting on a carpet with pillows along one of the canals and had fresh mint tea to accomapny our dish. We toasted with some tourists passing by in a little boat and I guess I'm now on a picture of someone with my glass of mint tea raised above my head. Branded a hippy in Amsterdam for the rest of my life. I think I can live with that.

Of course we went to another thousand stores (including book sotres which are great in that they provide maps of Amsterdam) and of course ran into the occasional gay book store and free tibet store and whatnot. Ended up at an Ethiopian restaurant after which we met up with my brother and his band to go to see One Republic in concert. Very nice however, I felt I wanted to move but the music was too laid back. still it was good!

I abandoned Britt who had more plans to fill the night and took the train home. Apon arrival one of the cars (singer of the band) had been broken into. The navigation system had been taken out so that was a bit of a shame. Otherwise it was quite a good day!

The next day was my dad's birthday which we celebrated after he flew back in from Ethiopia and am now back in Zeist.. trying to have an normal week of waterpolo, weights, waterpolo, sleep, waterpolo, food, waterpolo, weights and sleep.

Music: The noise everyone is playing and is frustrating me yet, I am calm... outwardly.

Quote: My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell

Venice Vidi Vici

2008-03-18T10:35:00.007+01:00

That was the plan but not entirely how it turned out!

It al started off with me sitting on Dusseldorf airport quite relaxed waiting for my team. However after a couple of textmesaages telling me they just arrived and were also looking for the gate and would contact me when they knew but me not seeing any of them, I started worrying. However I didn't want to seem inpatient so didn't call... no reply to my text, no flights that went to Italy... I finally get a call asking me where I am...

Turns out we all started off at the wrong airport (Dusseldorf Weeze not Dusseldorf) and when they realised they rushed on to make it in time and forgot to inform me. I guess that is what you get for travelling on your own. So I missed the flight. Drove back home, took a train to Amsterdam, stayed over at a teammates dad's house and hopped on a plain the next morning, gameday.

We had some serious issues starting up and when we finally decided to play up to par we were a little late. We drew in the 3d quarter but lost due to having a lot of people with 3 personal faults -which get excluded form further playing-. On the brigt side I did block two penalties. We ended up losing with 3 goals. This means we will have to win by 4 goals this weekend. Possible (and neccessary of we want to play euro-cup finals) but definitely not easy!

The day after our game we got to wander around Venice. A place I had always wanted to go and now, without even expecting it we had a whole 4 hours to spend there. I must say it is not easy to find your way trhough this maze of little streets and waterways, but definitely quite the adventure! Was good fun to hang out with our team somewhat more then just in the pool as well. See them from a different side and enjoy the good weather with them. Another place I need to have some more time to hang out!

Run Through 北京 (Northern Capital (Beijing))

2008-03-01T09:49:00.006+01:00

It was a very quick trip, not so much in that it all went by fast but more so in that events followed up upon each other very quickly. Sure it didn’t last very long either, we touched down on Monday at 2pm and left on Friday at 12pm but with the amount of “things” that we ran through it seemed like I must have been gone for at least a month!

We practiced every day and we played a game against China every day. Playing water polo against China was definitely a very interesting experience. They were an extremely physical team, very bound on winning which they didn’t manage as we ended up pulling through around the third quarter of every game. However one can tell they are going to be a team you better not under estimate because if your concentration wavers; you lose.

The climax, literally and figuratively speaking, was the highest point of the Great Wall of China that we hiked up. This is Seriously not for the faint hearted, only 5 of us decided to pull through all the way to the end. And I must admit I twice thought of not going all the way, but you know, once almost there it would be a shame not to finish it off! I have now two very sore calves to remind me of the hike of a million stairs that all had a different height. We stopped at every tower between staircases: after the first couple to catch our breath and after every next couple to make sure our legs would still go on!

The forbidden City was pretty, but also very empty. Luckily I have a mind full of imagination filled by the text of a history book on the last empress of China which made the walk through it a lot more interesting! The houses were very pretty but no trees or plants or anything grew on the thickly stone paved floors put down there so no one could hide behind trees or dig tunnels into the forbidden city to harass anyone within its walls.

Walking through a great mall type of thing there was more you could buy then you could possibly imagine for less then you could possibly pull out of your ATM back home. At first excited by the prospect of haggling I was quite glad I ended up not buying anything after I came out. OF course it is only too easy to forget all the child labour going into these things but I guess that when I can be only a little help to avoiding it and being conscious of what I buy then I will.

Meanwhile we were dealing with a major jetlag with no real time to get over it in between all activities. We were not supposed to sleep on the bus but going through China traffic makes every place we wanted to go at least a sixty minute drive away. Guess what… yep! However, this meant that when you jolted to a stop or when our Chinese tour guide decided to tell us a story you magically appeared at certain locations with no conscious memory of the trip!

The Olympic pool was pretty impressive too and really interesting to see it with no one in there! It better be swarming with people at every game but somehow I’m pretty sure it will!

Even our tour guide got all excited and started taking pictures. On the way home she started cracking jokes (we laughed mostly at her excitedness about the punch lines and at her disappointment over us already knowing the answer to her final ground breaking joke which were all very appropriate jokes the worst one taking a stab at the stupidity of the Japanese!)

All in all a terrific trip in a little too short a time! And for the purpose of taking the bite out of out china experience, I’m not sure it did its job because I think it only made me want to run around there even more to experience the country and the culture. I only want to know more about the Chinese language and I only want to see more of the countryside. But That will have to be an episode in the life of memories of Meike. For now, 再見/Chè chè (thankyou) for reading! I will as usual update pictures soon (my camera broke so I have none to show for!)

Quote: "Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall" -Confucius

Music: The China National Anthem -sang by our tourguid in the bus after she had us sing ours and nearly cried over it.

The Things one Finds on Beaches

2008-02-16T11:55:00.006+01:00

I had another Britt adventure and this time we took it to Scheveningen!
It was amazingly good weather and we were able to run around without jackets and on and bare feet.. considering there is an inch of ice on the pond in our back yard today that is pretty bloody amazing!
The picture below is kinda old, and JonChing mad it when he was here! I realised I never posted it as I deleted my christmas post. So here you go! I'm in love with this one! Although I'm not sure what my eyebrow is up to ;)
Having a long weekend this weekend so that is good! Get to meet some friends! Short Update, sorry!

Quote: "The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'" -Phillip Lopate
Music: Island in the Sun, Weezer

Barcelona, Rome, Athens

2008-02-04T18:38:00.002+01:00

In order of appearance:
Barcelona where we've seen most things as we've been there a couple of times... so we found a fountain show which we found once we were there, wasn't on because the big fountain was defect. Still, some nice pictures and good fun!

Rome, where we practiced in an old Olympic pool with marble floors (yes the pool had marble floors) the actual floor and walls were filled with little stones (which made you happy to be wearing slippers) and beatifull mosaics! The picture is from the track field.. or at least one of the many statues surrounding it. He's a pretty tough looking man. And holding his Lion by the tail!
Athens.. well can you guess?? I don't have a picture to show for it yet but I went to see the Acropolis, Temple of Athena and the theatre of Herodes Atticus (quite impressive and rather last minute but a couple of us got up early and went. Sweet!) My camera's batteries had died in Rome (too much focussing in dark pools) so picture update will come!

Now before you all think we had a laid back trip we didn't! We played 9 games in 11 days in three countries... we had no more than two hours max to see some of these cities biggest attractions and nearly ran through! Which is quite a shame. We also managed to kick some ass against Greece, Australia and Spain and not so much against Russia.. but I guess they can win all they like when there is nothing at stake!

In between all this I managed to finish two books: Life of Pi and A Thougsand Splendid Suns. Both I would say are definitely worth your time although the first takes some getting into!

An additional bonus of this trip was the sun. sunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunsun!!!!! I think I found a new obsession to life. And I think to piss me off someone just taped grey pieces of paper over the windows of our house. Welcome home! Check back for an update soon!

Music: Tasmin Archer, Sleeping Sattelite
Quote: "It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do." -Jerome K. Jerome

Edit: Update as promised!

Pope's Palace ;)

Trevi Fountain

Colosseum

Still more to come!

Anton Pieck

2007-12-28T22:41:00.000+01:00

So this is a simple, but to me very important, piece of information:

Anton Pieck was a great artist and one that I have on many occasions been inspired by Probably starting with the illustrations in the fairytale books from the brothers Grimm that triggered my imagination from an early age and those in a book of piano music by Shubert that my mom played from.

Little did I know at that time that he was also a family friend. MY Grandma's father was a publisher and went on cycling holidays with the man. He also published the book of music by shubert with Anton Pieck's drawings. He also drew four brithcards, one for my father and all of the following siblings which used to hang on my grandma's wall and now all have found their way to their own homes.

He became famous for his lithographs and graphic art. These detailed pieces of work, inspired by what seems to be the past and the fantastic, are hanging on my own wall. I walk by them and sometimes even forget to look taking it all in a stride.

Of course I have thought of this before, but today I thought I needed to make the world (I am a little concieted to think I eveyone reads my insignificant little blog but you gotta start somewhere) concious of yet another great artist.
So I hope you enjoyed this very rare piece. There are more samples of his work to be found HERE and maybe you will want to buy a book of fairytales now.

Quote: "Every man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's fingers." -Hans Christian Andersen
Music: Die Forelle, Shubert

I Love Winter Because:

2007-12-13T12:19:00.000+01:00

- my dad makes us fresh orange juice almost every morning
- IF it actually gets cold enough I can go ice skating
( Edit: I WENT ICE SKATING!!!!!)
- when nobody is home I get to turn the heater up
- my cat thinks it is cold too so cuddles up in my bed
- it makes hot chocolate milk taste better
- it makes for pretty pictures when it snows
- IF it snows you can go out and play
- I love rain when I'm inside
- the stars on my frozen windshield in the morning are beautiful
- I get to wear sweaters all the time
- I have to buy warm shoes

okay I'm done convincing myself, it is not working!

Music: KT Tunstall, Under the Weather
Quote: "Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel." -Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Ta!

2007-11-24T12:47:00.000+01:00

Here's me showing off my latest. Kind of happy with how it turned out, it gave me a whole many more ideas but they'll have to wait as I'm off to Madrid for the Europe Cup and then of to L.A. for the Holiday Cup and then I think it is about christmas time :) I might have some time again around then but seeing as there are a whole bunch of people coming I doubt it! I might make them sit down and draw with me! - you all be warned!
Then the other morning I got woken up by a phone call from AMY!!!!! YAY! But it just doesn't cease to amaze me that I can talk on my cellphone with a laptop in Hawai'i! I mean, I remeber the days when my dad was off somewhere in India and we would try to have a conversation between two landlines with and echo that made you wonder to what sentence the other person was replying as it took about 5 seconds to transfer the sound! We came such a long way!

I was wondering what else, but ranting about all these cups I forgot to mention we won the Cup for the netherlands yesterday!!! I really didnlt expect we would, and we played such a lousy game at that! The semi finals the day before were way better! But oh well, I guess it doesn't matter how you win right! Celebration time!

Uhmmm to make matters interesting, there is a video of some high-lights of the final here under waterpolo, link to the right. And an article on me here both in Dutch!!! haha! but just in case you felt like having a look!

C'est tout! I am now going to attempt cleaning up my room so I can leave in an organised fashion tomorrow morning! Ta!

Music: KT Tunstall, Under the Weather
Quote: "Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing." -Phil Jackson

WOUP=Week Of Unfisnished Projects!

2007-11-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

So after a couple of weeks of trying to keep breathing/functioning I just had a friday morning off which gave me just enough energy to remeber I had a life (and funsctioning legs). Now, after playing two (one more) games this weekend, I have a remotely easy going week with mostly club team requirements before playing final 4 and running off to play Europe cup and then on to the Holiday Cup in LA.
Sounds promising doesn't it! Well as usual Im looking at it one week at a time: this is my week off finishing unfinished projects and I'm already well on my way!

I have all these things that are half done: my South Africa photo album, a really cool piece of art (which has a story of itself because I had a random interview with a Dutch newspaper and they wanted a piece of my art in the picture that accompanied the text. So I showed them some and this guy decided he wants this unfinished piece in there. I'm like: "it's not even finished!!!" so he goes: "what's not finished about it?!" -stupid. I thought a photoghrapher had a slightly better sense of art. Grrrr) Then I am going to finally be able to call these people at the music school and ask them if it is feasable for me to take guitar classes because I'm gone half the time and well you know... I got all the other documents for discount and that so that is cool!
Then I have some friends to hang out with... I kinda want to go see my grandparents. And well I can go on and on, but I should stop if I want to fit it all in this week. It will be good though!

Also just finished this really impressive book: A Piece of Cake. If you like autobiographies, this one is very well written, very hopefull and very eye opening. I also picked up on a bunch of slang and the differences between dope, crack, black and red beauties, the four white pills, gang banging, tooting and what not. -Iris thanks for passing me all your cool books, I'll make sure to pass them on!

Now is coffee time!

Music: Maybe tomorrow, Stereophonics
Quote: When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. -Eric Hoffer

Season of Change

2007-11-03T11:47:00.001+01:00

Check out this Poem by Britt yellow leaf, it fits really well with the mood!

So everybody seems to be radically throwing their lives around and that sure set me off to some inspiration. Also I really needed to do some good (though about) art instead of just randomly plonking around random sh*t on paper. I'm not sure how pleased I am and have not signed this piece thinking it is not finished so I might add on later (You know it won't happen!)

My knees are on a slow recovery to betterness but of course it is way to slow and meanwhile pissing me off because I cannot use my legs at full capacity= not good when you are a goalie! Plus The Europe cup is coming up and I just wanna do life at full speed instead of needeing to recover every time I move! I love the coloured leaves and keep being distracted from the road because I'm wathcing them while I drive... but man! am I having issues with the cold.

Good thing there are lots of cool people coming over between now and (around) Christmas so that is promising even though I'm going to be gone half the berloody time! It'll still result in fun times and nice destractions. They better anyways! Time to keep/get my act together!

Quote: "Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others." -Jonathan Winters
Music: Melissa Etheridge

In Search Of...

2007-10-09T14:07:00.000+02:00

In search of what? Well, not so much really, I guess randomness is the word, but then even that is not true entirely. I guess it is just something I like to do as a passtime and I have a sister in crime right at hand now so... we set out with a camera, good spirits and a litre of orange juice and got lucky to have some sun present as well. (Thankyou Britt for the cool picture!)
Where we went???
Well right below the earth where the secrets lie ;)
I used to go there as a kid when we just moved over here, went back a couple years after and went back again now. I must say it has changed, but not much more than I have. It became smaller and less easy accessable, I became taller and a little less flexible. The area now has barbed wire spanning the perimeter, I guess they don't want you to go there anymore, so that makes it all the more fun! It is a bit of a mission to get inside, but it also makes for some interesting situations, and down there is a place for lots of fantastic dreams and fantasy scapes!

Quote: "Bombing for Peace is like Fucking for Virginity"
Listening to: Gare du Nord, Beautiful Day

IF - The Blues

2007-10-03T09:33:00.000+02:00

"Some stars never make it into the sky, they get stuck and their light fades out."
I guess that was my unconcious pouring out because it is random and unplanned and simple and I'm not sure even if I like it but what the heck; at least I did some art!

Technocratie

2007-09-27T20:40:00.001+02:00

So I learned a new word. At least I think I did but as it was also explained to me that this word kind of lost it's meaning in recent times I'm not sure how much meaning I should ascribe it and so I wonder did I really learn it seeing as I canlt ascribe it much meaning?!

But no worries, I really didn't log in here to tell you about that. I wanted to tell you about the discussion resulting from that: How much do we depend on technology and, even more inmportantly, could we do without.

The issue was raised that we use so much technology that it doesn't even come to mind that we use it to cook our food and keep us warm and help us write. However, I figured I would manage without all that and figured I could always eat cold food or make a fire in the back yard. So in the end I happily stepped in my car and drove to practice feeling quite snug in my newly gained knowledge and theories.

Little did I know then that later that night I would be pushing my car off of the middle of an intersection and call the automobile service to come and fiz my car. Little did I know that I wouldn't make it home just yet and would have to call them yet again because while driving 120k/h on the highway my lights would fail and my battery would die on me while my engine swiched itself off...

I was home at 2am...

...and not so smug anymore.

Music: Ben Harper, Suzie Blue
Quote: "Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." -Putt's Law

Amazing Heigths

2007-09-14T15:36:00.000+02:00

I'll try to keep this as compact as possible, but I probably will do a lousy job as too much happened; be warned!
Apart from arriving home from Russia, doing laundry and packing for diverse climates I tried to help my brother prepare for his first week of Art School. Lets us make an outfit out of foodwrappings. Good fun.. a work in process!

Then I left the country hoping I got it all, had a lousy sleep on the red-eye, arrived in SA and spent the afternoon hanging out with Iris, waiting for her sister (who owned the car) to be done with work so we could go home. First thing the next morning we drove back with her into Joburg (Johannesburg) to rent a car to drive to the Drakensbergen. We stayed in a timeshare owned by some friends of Iris their own wern't coming. We did some amazing hikes around the area. The area was really dry but every aspect of brown, yellow and red was captured in the landscape. Most interesting was that at parents in the time they lived there and who needed to adopt a pair of "kids" as every sunset eveything took a different colour. The first night everything turned red, the second night everything turned yellow. Didn´t think of taking pictures the first time round though. Beautifull!!!

I must admit it was also very nice to do something different then move through water, it was quite the opposite! And I don´t think it was a big surprise that we kept coming back to the song "I´m on the top of the world" every time we made it up another peak.

Bloemfontein, went for a cup a tea with Louise, oneAfter 3 days there and another 50 pictures down the line (I´ll make a photo album in case you wanna actually see it all!) we drove down to of Iris highschool friends, dropped of our rental car and jumped on the plane to Kaapstad-Capetown. There I was to meet the locals )another friend of Iris who lived in something like a community house, where we were very much welcomed and crashed on the couch.

We went up Table Mountain and during our hike to a supposedly amazing view were overtaken by a huge cloud which severely cut our view short. However in the valley between table mountain and the oes behind it we could see. Cape Town was a lot colder and more like europe in climate. So it was good we packed up well, and thank god I brought mu hiking boots. We did a good 5 hour walk that day.

Most notable on our hike over table mountain was that it was covered in fynbos, in other words fine forest, consisting of low vegetation in beautifull colours. It was like you were a Giant walking through a normal forest. Among all this forestry was the Protea, South Africa´s national flower, which you can spot in the very misty picture.

One night was spent bonding with "the Locals" or maybe we should call it "shrek´s cousins" instead? Which ever way it was good fun. I love meeting randomly interesting artsy people on my way!

On our way to Cape Point we went by an Ostrich Farm, and were guided by a most interesting Tall african man who had the most beautiful hands I have ever seen! The Ostriches were very entertaining and I have a feeling might appear in some art sooner or later. Ostrich leather is used according to it´s texture, caused by the feathers sticking through their skin, and is dangerously expensive. I guess it is a good thing I´m not so fond of handbags. Cape point was beautifull and the wetaher cleared up the closer we got to the tip.

The next day we kidnapped Roxanne (Iris´ friend), drove to Stellenbosch, famous for it´s wines (of course I bought some) , onto Hermanus to do some whale watching which kept us a little past the time we should have stayed there and then home while the sun set along the beachy trail. Breathtaking.

The next morning we did a coffee at the waterfront and cruized through a shop which was more like museum with a collection of masks, chairs, and statues from mostly West Africa and I was absolutely stoked that I actually new where to locate stuff and which kings to assign things to. Plus it was really nice to be able to see things for real instead of photographed in an art history book or on slides. At the end of the day we again said goodbye to our car and hopped on the plane back to Joburg. The next morning we were getting up early(4am) to go to Kruger with Odile, Iris` sister, but before that we went to visit my fathers aunt who told us some intereting tid bits about how my dad was when he was young. Always good to know. °evil grin°

Kruger was another long ride, but by now I was getting quite used to driving on the left hand side (I was initially fazed by not being able to find my back mirror which someone had put to the left of me instead of in the corner of my car I kept staring at the car´s frame for way longer them was neccessary. It really wasn´t that exceptional a car frame!

Kruger brought us in no particular order: elephants (a whole herd of them), rhino´s, wildebees, empala, fighting hippos (at lake panic, how befitting), lots of pretty birds, zebra, giraffe, very little giraffe, water buck, beautifull stars at night, heat, dust, animals coming for water at another lake, elephants spraying mud, crocodiles etc etc etc.... look at the pictures! I´m sure Iris saved my hand from getting bitten of!

The last two days were reserved for hanging around, finding a recently published book written by my uncle, bying myself an african singing mask, (obviously for a very special price and very old and very hard to get lately (my ass)), going to a cricket game (SA won) and for the final night we had booked for the Lion King.
I don´t know exactly how to describe that... I will just advise you that, the day you do make it over to SA (or anywhere else they are still performing it) you have to go and see because their voices, the masks, the story, the setting is absolutely worth it.

Okay, so I probably left out more than half of what happened (penguins!) but this is the really short version so you won´t get fed up. Hope you enjoyed.. I will be back woth more soon as life just crashed in on me and I can still feel it!

Quote: `The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.´ -Winifred Holtby
Music: Ngotsostsi, Dorothy Masuka

Qualified!!!

2007-08-26T18:15:00.000+02:00

So.. I got some internet...
trying to update my blog in Russian is quite interesting as there are a lot of interesting signs that do not exist on my keyboard nor do I know what theymean. However I need to update as this is Crazy!!!!
We just qualified for the Olympics in Beijing!!! It is pretty unreal! and we hardly believe it yet, but we just beat everyone including Russia in their home country! We must be pretty darn awesome!

Neways.. it was quite the week.. Russia is quite boring as in we are in Kirishi and there is nothing here.. so all you do is hang around in your hotel. I was second goalie so I didnlt get to play that much although I got bits and pieces and a quarter in the finals so Ilse (the othergoalie could get her act together.. but she was pretty darn amazing so that makes all that okay!

At least now I know I amde the right decision going home to the Netherlands for a year. I bloddy miss Hawaii and my friends and well... my life there but I guess Olympics makes up for that! Wheee!!
Okay running out of internet time, just wanted to give a quick update!

Hasta Mañana

2007-08-15T12:28:00.000+02:00

till we meet again...

So I'm off to Russia for European Olympic Qualifications (keep your fingers crossed), a two day break and then South Africa with one of my best friends Iris!!

Should be back by the 14th and functioning again by the 20th!

Quote:"Veni Vidi Vici" -Julius Caesar

Puzzel Pieces

2007-08-07T15:39:00.000+02:00

little holes that eat whole the things

in life amiss
that swallow without thinking like
an abyss
like time folded into itself

an unpurpose for space
unaware
hidden in colourfull life but
everywhere
considered whole

no peace of mind for pieces missing
unfound
by those who search to fit
dumbfounded
by the shapes they come in

Now this is random.. starting off with the IF theme "missing" I ended up with this. It is NOT FINISHED but as I'm leaving for Germany tomorrow and then for Russia and then for South Africa I doubt this is going to be finished soon... I'm also a little stuck.
But it is interesting!

Quote: "That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art" -John A. Locke
Music: Moonshadow, Cat Stevens

Dawn

2007-07-28T23:11:00.000+02:00

This seems to be one of those nights you kinda just want to stay up till dawn, maybe inpired by my painting and the accompanying quote, but still.. it is one of those productive nights. After a whole day of not doing anything and hanging on my friends cauch watching movies (40 year old vergin=bad! don't watch it= a waste of time!) and eating a marvellous dinner cooked up by my dad, I wandered off to my room (which I finally cleaned and vacuumed) and sat myself down. I think the emptyness helped starting a new project, it just flowed out.. after some brainstorming (consisting of not more then 5 lines per sketch and a couple of words) yesterday I just started painting.. no sketch, no controll, no nothing..

I knew this illustration friday thing was going to be good for something! It gives you deadlines! So... I watched the bats pass my window as dusk set in, had my heart go out to a coupe of friends, and then my mind set of to God knows where.

The moon has so much magic, is such a fascination, a guiding light and well; the origin of so much
myth and legend I didn't at first know exactly how to show my association with the moon. It has always been a sign of femininity and creativity... a full moon is there for me to stare at, to charge me with creative energy and after a little thought bits and pieces of this quote started coming back to me. One that I associate with myself and so the one that inspired my picture...

Quote: "A dreamer is one who can find his was by moonlight, and his only punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." -Oscar Wilde

Last week we had a rather intesnive training week, but it was filled with good teambuilding activities like cycling, going out for dinner and sailing!!!! I think the sailing very muchy contributed to being creative.. honoustly there are few things that go above and beyond straining a ship against the wind, beaing beaten by the wind and flying over the water. Soooo good!

Music: Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing

Cross-Eyed but Satisfied!

2007-07-22T13:35:00.001+02:00

Tadaaaaaaa! Okay so I am a little proud but I think I'm allowed to be. I finally finished this piece! It is a first time attemot at scratchboard and funnnily it fits every category of the last three IF topics; maybe that is why it took me this long :)

Twist (in the ropes and o the marionette theme), Discovery, an Poem (I've had a like image in my mind for the longest time but it was never good enough to draw and by someone analysing the symbolism I realised this is exactly what my poem needed. Triple satisfaction!

Grown-Ups Land

At the doorway of understanding
I hesitate
The world I'll enter is demanding
but I just want to investigate

On the treshold of of responsibility
I falter
My life will change inevitably
and I dont want to alter

One step in doorknob in hand
I fret
this is what they call grown-ups land
and I don't want to go there yet.

IF

2007-07-14T21:32:00.000+02:00

So I was introduced to this site called Illustration Friday a little while ago and was absolutely down to sketch something every week, according to their topics.. just to keep me going. However I have posted naught so far. Yeah.. I know what you're thinking; it sounds like a new years resolution doesn't it. Well let me tell you. It is not like it doesn keep me drawing, it is just that I cannot draw something simple and not time consuming and be done with it. I'm still working on the topic of two weeks ago, made a sketch and then decided to work on it with scratchboard. It seems the forum doesnlt so much give me thoughts, but finishes them for me. the thoughts I have in my head get somehow given an extra twist by a simple word appearing on a website weekly.
It'll take me another week to finish this one, and the next one (finished by this weeks theme: discovery) is already knocking to come out. I think I need to start carrying a sketchbook to the pool again, I got more done that way!

Lots of fun things coming up.. I'll keep you posted!

When you grow up...

2007-07-07T15:56:00.000+02:00

You know that question people ask you when you are about 12: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Okay so usually this consists of being a princess, an astronaut, famous; then slightly more realistic there are the vet, doctor, teacher, mom. Though I've thought about being a vet, and then an artists I've also always wanted to be like my dad.. be an irrigation engeneer and travel through Africa. What I want to do now is really not all that different. Apart from persueing my own interests in Psychology, dabbling in art, loving animals and attempting to be a famous waterpolo player, I still wanna be like my dad, and I still want to travel through Africa or live there. So... this vacancy might seem somewhat challenging for me right now, but if I'm hounest with myself, this is exactly what I intend to be doing in a couple of years from now.

Programme development manager

Objective of the job
Ensuring that War Child’s programme is in line with War Child’s mandate and ensuring the quality of the programme’s content. Additional objectives include developing the capacity of national staff and local partners to ensure the sustainability of the programme.

Responsibilities of the job

Leading and facilitating process of developing programme and project proposals. Monitoring local needs and developments by performing in depth needs assessments. Monitoring programme implementation and measuring programme effectiveness. Advising the Country Director and Field Location Managers on programme content, direction and implementation.
Developing tools and formats for planning, monitoring and evaluation. Developing training manuals. Training/coaching local teams of programme staff and building the capacity of programme staff. Managing the staff of the programme unit. Representing War Child in content meetings and coordination platforms.

Candidate profile

Relevant academic background (Psychology, Pedagogy, Community Development, Social Sciences); Knowledge of monitoring & evaluation tools. Knowledge of & experience in psychosocial programmes for children within the development sector. Experience with community based programmes with in a post-conflict context. Experience with training and capacity building of staff. Strong advisory skills. Capacity building and training skills. Good analytical and problem solving skills. Social and communicative skills for coaching and managing staff. Culturally sensitive

image copyright to AMREF

Quote: "Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it." -Theodore Roosevelt

Music: Dire Straits, Lady Writer

South Africa

2007-07-03T22:01:00.000+02:00

Here I come! :D
Oh my god I'm sooooooo excited!

Music: KT Tunstall, Suddenly I See
Quote: You can take man out of Africa, but you can never take Africa out of a man.

Impending Damage

2007-06-29T18:40:00.000+02:00

You wonder if one will ever learn. I certainly thought I would eventually learn to see injuries coming and simply refrain from jumping in the pool or lifting weights.. but seeing as I've just been marching on for like what, 6 years now? Impending damage or not, I think I officially am blind to them. I just assume that my body can handle everything I trow at it. I have found though that my body seems to have a little mind of it's own (I wonder where it is physically oriented.. like in my stomach or something or behing me kneecap?) Which ever way, it simply cripples me whenever it thinks I'm not taking enough care of myself. So when It hink, hmm swimming is making me dizzy the next thing I know I'm done swimming because my shoulder stops functioning, and when I find some other activity to do anyway (my shoulder is not enough to hold me back) then I mess up my back. So now I'm sitting up straight behind my computer, pretty much similar to the way I watched everyone lift weights this afternoon and very opposite to my final attempt at practice this morning, thinking the termination of gravity in the water and warming up somewhat would make me capable of movement.

BOO! but then I could see the positive side of it.. I get to postpone cleaning my room again, and just get to lie on the floor doing art, preferably doing art, propped up on my elbows (this is the exercise I'm supposed to do for about 1-5 minutes 5x a day) so if I do well, maybe I can get some art done!

On an entirely different note, today I saw someone struggle with insecurities of whom I'd never seen it before. I mean, I know everyone has some, but some people just seem oblivious to them. Sometimes you don't notice the struggle untill you hit a subject close to home. The subject in this case was a compliment. Which ever way, I always want to heal the bloody world and some things you simply cannot fix, which really bugs me. One way or a nother though...

Okay and finally.. I found that I can doodle in between practices and that people will leave me at peace most of the time. So another image rolled out.

Music: Natalie Imbruglia, That Day

Quote: "In this business you either sink or swim or you don't." -David Smith

Holy-Days

2007-06-24T11:09:00.000+02:00

Yeah you know, Holy Days! The ones that no one can take from you, you can just be you, that are unforced, creatively or otherwise inspiring and generally fun!

It started of well really, I should say Friday... We had had weights the day before and an hour of swimming which had pretty much left eveyone broken. So now we had a two hour wateroplo practice and two hours of weights afterwards. The waterpolo well, is what I still am in this for so was managable (who am I kidding) and then our weights would consist of a wrestling practice. This was my (and most peoples) massive bear on the road and guess what?! It turned out to be a very huggable bear! It was very fun and very tiring, but it wasn't over the top and I had lots of fun trying all these things with Gillian (the oldest player on our team who has a way of making eveyone and eveything around her at ease and who enjoyed this just as much as I did! -good laughs!) So that was hreat! That night I went to bed with the joke: If you hear someone falling out of bed tomorrow it will be me.

Jinxed myself! Luckily nobody heard but man were my muscles sore! Then we were off to Hanna and Jaco (you know, Hanna, my big Sis!) I hadn't seen them since Christmas in Hawai'i! It makes it extra special to see people if you don't see them all that often, even if you don't get to hang out a lot because there are so many people. They had organised one of their "geniet" weekends, translated roughly into an "enjoy yourself weekend" to celebrate their 7th anniversary and their new house, and it reminded me how much I enjoy talking to strangers! The world is so full of interesting people it makes you wonder how many you miss by assuming they are not interesting or simply not taking time for them! (Which brings me back to my earlier decision that only those people that walk down the street that you never met or talked to before seem normal) So after being all life and art inspired I broke through my artist block and did two tiny drawings for my two new children friends Thalia and Joppe, and ended up practicing circus acts in the huge back garden. I finally got to stand on my head (something which I wanted to do ever since we put down gym mats for the wrestling thingy) and for those of you who know what I've been up to in Hawaii.. well Thalia inpired me all back into it. We had so much fun trying all these things and she entirley trusted me to hold her and did whatever she fancied pretty much spending most her time obove my head. I remeber what it feels like being juggled around on someones legs and arms and it was pretty darn amazing! So if anyone ever feels held back, please go stand on your head or go balance on a rock, throw some fire or, I dunno, do something that makes you feel free because it is revitalising!

What I'm doing today? that depends if I can see past the mess, but if I can I might just go draw something!
Edit: that would be the something: Shizophrenia, a sketch inspired to be persued by the theme of camouflage. Concept art... smeared on some paint without really caring where it ended up.. feels good occasionally, not sure if I want to keep it this way or if it needs revising.. it is still bothering me, maybe I'll just leave it and move on.

Music: Matt costa, Astair
Quote:"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." -Eric Hoffer

FINA vs LEN

2007-06-19T07:51:00.000+02:00

Well sure anyone into sports knows that the FINA is the International body that represents all the water sports and the LEN is the one that represents Europe.
What was I doing in Russia apart from kicking their asses?? Right, playing the preliminary rounds for the world league which actually went really well!
so where do the FINA and the LEN come in? well let me tell you:
We played a really good tournament, beat all the big European countries except for Spain. Problem was that Greece beat everyone except us and Spain beat everyone except Greece. Greece had a better goal difference in the wins so they came first, applying the LEN rules we would have come second by beating Greece, but as this is an international tournament we came second as Greece was taken out fo the race and they only looked at head to head scores between Spain and us. Now that was a bummer!
I did get top play a bunch and it was quite fun and went quite well but the end result of such a tournament really puts that in perspective for you.

About other things in life: I just picked up a guitar.. kinda of forgot that those things hurt your fingers if you don't keep up playing!!!
Also still in the process of cleaning my room but I really just want a new one to redoecorate.. so back to searching for one tonight!
Art... I wonder if it really was me who used to paint, but paint needs water and I feel like a dry well, or maybe the problem is that chlorine doesnlt mix with paint? Whatever... que sera sera.

Did get some reading done in Russia. Two rather disturbing books in a way: Such a Pretty Girl by Laura wiess, about a girls who got abused by her dad who gets out of prison early because of good behaviour but with bad intentions, and Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini about a boy growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan, the intercultural relationships, honour, love, justice and really I hope you are all familiar with this book because it is a definite must read. It drags you through all the absurdities of life and is brutally honoust about them. Hmmmm 7 more books lined up!

Music: the same cd they always play on the bus in Russia... LOL
Quote: "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" -Vince Lombardi

Painting and Cooking

2007-06-06T16:42:00.000+02:00

I wonder if cooking and painting are similar.
If so, this painting is not going to taste very well!

Old Glove

2007-06-04T19:54:00.000+02:00

Back to practice... really there is little difference except that the team has grown up and I guess so have I. And of course there are the typical things that really never change in a womans waterpolo team. Most notable thing is that two of the girls, well you know.. they are 35 now haha, but they became mothers recently. these two are pretty much people that I suspected least to see as mums last I saw them on the National team. One has quit and is indeed having an interesting experience being a mum. the other one ran off to Italy, found a man, or well I should say he found her, she left us for a year and now has a little kid. It hilarious to have seen them single, on the man hunt, talking dirty in the dressing room complaining about muscle aches not from doing weights, and now exchanging comments on diapers and rashes and cooing over each others kids!
Then there is the typical "life is against me, I'm special and cannot do what the rest does, and it really all sucks and kills me kinda person.. still the same... there is a bunch of very comitted people, those that get injured, take two years to recover and still go head forst into the sport and live it with passion, the odd ones dangling at the bottom of the team who sometimes get to go, usually expecting it or not expecting it and getting thrown through the emotional rollercoaster, there are those that think they are way better then they are, those that never believe they will be great (yet they are playing on their national team) and those that lead the team without really knowing it. Of course there is the bitching but it has gooten a lot less... Like I said we grew up a bit. Typical how people always think they're grown up but then find there is a lot more growing up to be done!
Finally I must say it is really good to be back on this team it is really nice to have 15 people shooting at you that all make you work and that can all challenge you in different ways. I guess you can never compare any clubteam to a national team, but I think I finally understand that whan some people quit they quit the sport alltogether.. it just feels so awesome to play at this level again, and well, I must admit, it feels sore too!
Right now I'm sitting outside, behind a cabin in the woods where the pool is. I'm sure I'll be complaining of lack of time for art again soon, but for now I'm looking forward to practice and to going to Russia...

Music: Astair, Matt Costa
Quote: "Normal- those people that you see walking down the street and donlt know."

Alienation

2007-05-27T18:01:00.000+02:00

So yes, I'm home.. slightly alienated form my traditional community and wondering where I can go to make this less offensive to the people around me, but for now art and things that are comfortable around me take off the load. Waterpolo will start soon so then I'll have something to direct the occasional frustrations into. Haha this all sound terribly upsetting but really it isn't all that bad! I guess they call it adjusting! It's just a different routine, people around you that expect to know what you are up to and scrutinise your every move and always want to talk, compared to roommates who are around for silent comfort and provinde a moving image from the corner of your eye to let you know you have some common souls around you and that when you all feel like it you can join in with for some interesting conversations or activities, but who can also just let you be, and usually sense that better then, well, your parents.
Also I miss my coffeeshop on the corner of the road, and the weather. F! it's cold!

So I've seen some friends, done some art, left the chaos in my room because I kinda want to empty my life out of there.. there is this one issue I have with my animals.. you know those furry, fluffy, cuddly ones? Well I have quite a big collection and I was waiting for me to grow out of them but I just feel bad sticking them head down into a plastic bag and storing them in our attic, or worse, throwing them out. But I'll get to throwing the rest out.. everything except for my art stuff.. because seriously, what do you really need... and then when I move into the room -that I'm gonna find asap- all I need to bring is that and a really big piece of wallpaper ;)

Today in a spare moment driving home from Eindhoven visiting with friends and after coffee with my grandparents, I realised I could hear myself think... havn't done that in a while.. you know when you just go from one thing into the other for a while and then all of a sudden find there is nothing... very nice. Wanna know what I was thinking about?
Music. (I know, not as intellectual as some of you might think me to be but,)
I just bought one of those things "not apple" that make your radio into your Ipod and I have so much music that comes by though random generation that I kinda missed tha days when you bought a new cd and just played it 100.000 times to hear that one or two songs and learn to appreciate the others. Now there are so many of those "one songs" that you get to listen to that you kinda forget about the rest. So now I'm listening to The Cloud Room, very determined to hear it all, really hear it, text and music... it feels good. an there is more than one song on there.
Have finished some art, had left some sitting since I was home before worlds and decided it was a good idea to take all my art stuff home (never again, it nearly did me in!), and some experimentation with ink on newspaper trying to draw mental disorders...

Opened a new gallery.. still getting used to it, but it has some advantages over the other two so I think I'll pull out of those and stick to this one untill one day I'll make my own and sell art! I'll put this one on my blog as a link soon but for now you can look here: http://ataratis.deviantart.com/

Music: Sunlight Song, The Cloud Room
Quote:"Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home." -Bill Cosby

Need to Share

2007-05-16T08:43:00.000+02:00

This is only one thing from a list of things that my housemate behind me is reading about
and it is simply infuriating. This book was written before Bush was elected (it is a miracle this can be published in America) and this is only one in a list of many but I just needed to share:
Bush stated in a speech in a childrens hospital: "I am touched by the kids and the nurses and the docs all of whom are working to save lives and will make sure the health care systems are funded." (visiting Egleston Childrens hospital in Atlanta March 2001)
Bush's first budget proposed cutting funds to Childrens Hospitals like Egleston by 15% 03 34million USD and his 2004 budget proposed cutting another 30% (86million) from grants to childrens hospitals.
Another little interesting fact I learned today is that red ants are associated with the Nazis. When they fight with balck ants they capture their eggs so they can hatch them and, as ants recognise the first ants they see upon being born as their "goup", they become their slaves and work for them...
We (my housemate and I) decided that American laws are contradicting (like you didnlt already know): We are here on a scolarship, taking their money, not contributing in any way to their world, not allowed to work off campus (you might as well make use of us while we are here??), holding bck their younger upcoming athletes.
What else? well I thought about it.. now I'm going back to selling my furniture on craigs-list and having some more cookies with my tea... see if the world cares...
how backwards.

Music: The General, Dispatch
Quote: "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -H. L. Mencke

Rhine Stones

2007-05-14T09:19:00.000+02:00

Exams are over… everybody is packing to leave or has left, houses are getting empty, campus quiet and bars louder.

Today I got treated to something special by our second goalie as a thank you for this year and as a birthday present. So we went to lunch which was really good (we were both rather hungry and seeing as it was mothers and graduation day the traffic and the line at the restaurant gave us enough of a wait to be ready to eat plenty.
Next we drove somewhere in China town, and lo and behold, we got out at a pedicure place. The first pedicure in my life!!! It was really cool.. I’m still looking at my feet and wondering if they belong to me.. dark red nails with white flowers and rhinestones. She does this quite regularly and must have had a good time watching me lean over and looking at all that was going on. Pedicure semi/foot massage… sooo nice! Wonder how long it will last. So that was pretty special. Hung out at her “new” apartment for a while which is pretty darn amazing! It has a view over the beach and you can look slightly into the diamond head crater. I mean I can’t complain, but this was pretty sweet!
Then upon coming home I sat around for a while until Amy and Emily walked in and got inspired by my toes to do their nails. While they were at it Amy gave me a French manicure.. so that was another first. I feel really unlike me right now.. had a little vision of me trying to paint with my nails all pretty or running around a grass garden and losing a rhinestone. It really is not very much my style but it feels very ladylike!

Music: Running, Evermore

Quote:"The journey of a thousand leagues begins from beneath your feet." -Lao-Tzu

Abnormal PSY

2007-05-10T03:03:00.000+02:00

Studying about abnormalities. Also learned I'm not allowed to call it that so therefore: eccentric, emotional, odd, dramatic, anxious, fearfull and erratic are words that serve me well at the moment.
Makes me want to draw all those people.. imagine what you could do with a painting! I bet I won't be as into this when I get home and have time, but now that I'm supposed to be studying as I already ran out of time, I really want to see if I can draw people with a disorder. Okay I don't mean to sound degrading or anything, it's just because it interests me and I want to make it more tangible. Afraid to put people in a box though because I've never met two people that were alike and never expect to treat two that are. (running a little ahead of myself here) but hounestly, it works both ways.. yeah you're putting labels on people, but you learn a whole bunch of interesting words to throw at people too....
So will you stop being so histrionic!??!!? Then I can go and do some drawing! uhhh some studying ;)

Music: Airconditioning and Study hall airco buzzing
Quote: "I stay in the present and I focus on what I have to do now." -Tiger Woods (hanging above my computer)

"There’s this path, this door and key"

2007-05-06T22:34:00.000+02:00

A present for my friend who is going to Europe so she has a memory of home when she needs it.

I guess this is my first real Hawaii inspired peace of art. It rolled out.. no sketching, no planning, just going with the flow of where it took me. donw at 2:30am (oil pastels)

I feeeeeel good, ta na na na na LOL

Quote: "The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." -Voltaire

Explanations

2007-05-06T03:09:00.000+02:00

What to do with 4 extra hours in a day? and two because you are not tired enough to sleep more then 6 hours at night?
Right:

Explanations

The world deals us another blow
when we realize its search
for explanations
Configurations or recepies to the way
life works and love
and imagination
Considerations for those “abnormal” ones
that cannot help their ways are
somewhat deviant
Defiant of those that let their mind
and feet wonder or wander beyond
reality
Finality when the walls they scratch at fall
to let them go to where they are accepted
then firmly resurrected
releasing them
unexplained

Don't worry if it doesn't make any sense to you, it does to me ;) but I think it is pretty obvious. I dunno if it is the amount of time I suddenly have.. if it is because I'm not studying for my exams, or if the poetry slam set me off the other night (which was way cool btw) especially since the company was quite diverse too and there were some artists sitting in the background of the stage painting while the poets slammed...
Yep, life is pretty sweet!

Some art on the way too! :D (product of last night haha, obviously not sleeping and still waking up at 6 in the morning!)

On Art

2007-05-04T06:01:00.000+02:00

Set off by a random comment from someone and on looking at an art magazine and then well, just letting go...
Life is pretty wierd at the moment.. I have time, to waste, to hang out with people, to study instead of cram, to go to the beach and to be social and have time on my own as well...
The picture is with kind regards to Britt, who saved my life by bringing some oil pastels on our last plane trip and in the trend of the poetry slam tonight here is the poem that formed in the last couple of days:

A Process

I hide in a world
where flaws are style
and lightfall can be changed

where passion can be felt
through a gently tracing stroke
where reality can be feigned

a room with doors that close
windows that can see
life walking by observed

where you can hear
your thoughts at night
uncompromised and undisturbed

Occasionally I dare
two feet among many
a walk under the sun

where words and deeds
trace back their steps
a journey unbegun

where strangers lure you
into contests, staring down
action or mere thought

then I retreat onto the
coloured canvas where original sin
appraisal bought.

Quote: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." -Lewis Carroll
Music: Gavin DeGraw, I don't want to be

F American Waterpolo Politics

2007-05-01T09:42:00.000+02:00

I can be short and sweet....
America screwed us over..
I guess Hawai'i is too foreign for them
we are not going to the NCAA's
even though we are 4th in the nation
and the number 5 is going.
Said enough...

So I guess that is it for this semester...

A Little Dusty

2007-04-29T06:18:00.000+02:00

So after being totally blow away in the first quarter by a much faster paced Stanford and after we were just getting a little more controll over the game some really big clouds started pulling overhead. My first reaction was: Good, get that glare off the water and the sun outta my face (it was 41C out that day). My second reaction was: okay this looks like we might have to stop for a big rainstorm and some good thunder and lightning. But then, a couple of minutes later I got confused because though I still knew it was a storm, it didn’t feel like it was goign to rain at all. Not much later my feeling was sorted out because the game was stopped and we were all made ot go inside for an approaching dust storm!
I thought that after so many years of water polo I had it all, but stopping for a dust storm?! It was really hot and stuffy and all the asthmatic people already had some trouble breathing… We sat it out for half an hour and then got back in while the air was still burning our longs and stinging our eyes and while the dust and leaves and other randomness still floated on the pool surface. Okay we lost, but we played okay in the last quarter. It didn’t really matter.. if we want to beat them we need to do it at the NCAA’s so we didn’t play any special techniques and just tried to get used to them. The point is, we are going to have a chance to play them at the NCAA’s because we beat SDSU yesterday!

P.S.: The sky was pretty darn amazing after the storm, but I doubt anyone got a chance to look and I probably shouldn't have been looking either!

Quote: "We are as good as I think we are" -Amy Logan
Music: Shawn Mullins, Lullaby

I'll Race Ya!

2007-04-27T20:01:00.000+02:00

Do you even realise how many things you can be better at then someone else? I realised that some days I feel like I make a little competition out of everything. Maybe that is called winning spirit, but sometimes it is really ennoying. I think my good friend Iris called me out on it the first time when I took a sprint up the metro stairs in Barcelona and I was like: "no I don't" and then realised I actually did. Well I grew out of it a little, but I still think it: who did better on that test, I got more clothes hung in a shorter time, I make better coffee, I made it out there faster even though I went by bike and someone else went by bus (although in Hawaii that is pretty easy) or, who blocked the most balls... and I guess the last one is a good one ;)

Which ever way, we are in Arizona playing MPSF finals.. had a good win with 22-8 yesterday and need to win today to make it to the NCAA's. So I definitely need to blaock mor balls then whomever is on the other side :) think the team came together a bit more this week.. we have had some rought games the last road trip but it also helps that we are not trying to play 5 games in different place in LA, but just play all the games in the same pool and that we do not have ot move every night.

Had an interesting practice today, tried a new 4-1 technique on the man down and I hve yet to learn to like it, but I guess my role is still"-blocking balls- so I'll try to not be discouraged by it. Sometimes I wish I could show people where to go because it seems so logical tome (from the goal) and seeing as that is my domain I know where to find it and how to keep it closed. Maybe I should have everybody train to become a goalie and then they might understand better...

Finally I'm having a grand time listening to Pandora, it comes up with a whole bunch of random music and its pretty darn good to have something new to listen to'. The internet in this hotel is pretty sweet so the music does not get interrupted and my roommate is usually up when i am so I can turn it on whenever.

Quote:"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is." -Chuck Reid
Music: Brandi Carlile, Throw It All Away (random pandora generation)

Just Trust Me!

2007-04-23T22:40:00.000+02:00

Okay so this is short and sweet, tried some recipe yesterday and totally messed it up and it turned out awesome ;) So here are the ingredients, it takes less then 15 minutes to prepare and 1h15m to bake.

Moist Fruit Bread (originaly banana bread but we didnlt have enough bananas)

2cups of all purpose flower (whole wheat)
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of butter
2 eggs
1 tbs allspice
1 ts baking soda
pinch of salt
1 cup of mashed bananas
1 cup of cut up dried apricots
1 cup of applesauce
(I'm sure some raisins or wallnuts would go well with this too)

- Mix the butter sugar and eggs untill smooth, then add the fruit mush.
- Add the flour, salt, allspice and baking soda and mix untill moist (don't overmix)
- Set in pre-heated oven for 1h:15m at 350F (I guess 170C??)

Music: Regina Spektor, Fidelity
Quote: "I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something. -Mitch Hedberg"

High on Sunshine and Good Music

2007-04-23T05:17:00.000+02:00

Last night there was.. the Jack Johnson concert! I think I migh have enjoyed Eddie Vedder and Matt Costa even better, (Jack was a little out of practice) but it was all very relaxed and amazing! You know it is Hawai'i after all... you wander in, you spread out your little mat somewhere on this huge grass field spread out your snacks and pretty much have live music entertainment from 3 till 10pm. First in the shade of some trees with a view of Diamon head later with a warm breeze in the dark, what else do you want.. some people stand, some people sing, some people get really drunk and some people get very high, but all in good spirit. It was absolutely incredible!

This morning I woke up too early (what's new) and made a good attempt at starting my essay. Just read it and it sucks, but at least I got it started. Then prepared a picknick and hung out with some friends at Kapiolani beach under a really big tree, had too much good food, and a swim and some sun and now feel like I could be on a holiday.. wrong mindset!

Of course when my mind gets a break from normal things it rapidly falls back into random sh*t so be prepared to be entertained. See I was wondering about myths, because there are an aweful lot of defenitions for it. So here is my piece of cake.. yes I actually thought this all up while lying on my back and slowly being washed ashore by the waves (I float well).
So God created us in his shape, but didn’t we create the Gods in an equal way? When we look at pictures form the Norse God they look like their people, when we look at the Hindu Gods, they take their skin colour and integrate their sacred animals into their looks. Isn’t Jesus portrayed differently depending on which group of people is expressing their faith in him? It seems like it is a dual dependency. There are stories of Gods that ceased to exist when people stopped to believe in them, fairies that disappeared from the forests and dwarfes that stopped helping the people. It seems to be like that with any kind of dream. When you stop dreaming the reality of it is gone, when you stop believing in the life of the earth, it dies.

Any more random sh*t? no worries.. that was alll. I didn't spend that much time at the beach.

Quote: "Not all those who wander are lost"
Music: Mat Costa, Astair

Compassion

2007-04-20T09:17:00.000+02:00

So I get up at quarter to 6 after having woken up 3 times during the last two hours because I have soo much on my mind. I go to practice, finish of my ten page paper, cram some more African art history into my head, walk to the student athlete centre to print it out, cram some more while walking to the other side of campus. Take a pause on the steps to finish reading one last paragraph and knock on my teachers door.
She settles me into a freezing cold room (the room where they keep all the slides where at least it is quiet and sets me off to my test.) I didn't know I could blurt out soo much info in such a short time...) when I give it back to her she starts telling me her life story which I try to listen to for a little while but eventually awkwardly excuse myself to go get a coffee beofre her class period starts and I have ot sit in the dark looking at slides for anothrer 1,5 hours while freesing my but off with an already low concentration from lack of sleep.
"I'm sorry" I said, "I think I'm having some trouble catching up with school after missing it for over a month."
"Oh no problem" she says, I just been sick for almost a week and am totally behind, even tried to do some work at home, so I totally understand."
Well I'm glad she does.

I'm going to buy ome new guitar strings after practice tomorrow. I wasn't going to before I went home but with all my art stuff out of reach (took it all home on my last trip around the world) I am really ready for a creative outlet. Even if that means sucking at playing guitar which I havn't done in a lifetime!

Quote: "Sometimes you have to see someone love somethng before you can learn to love it."
Music: Vanessa Mae, The Requiem of Gods

No. 7 Hawai`i Upsets No. 4 Cal, 10-9, On Senior Day

2007-04-01T21:54:00.000+02:00

So I'm back to my normal life.. or so I like to call it.
We got picked up by a good friend from the airport, dropped at home while they went for practice, and had a 3 hour nap. After which we went for afternoon practice. and a hard one at that! no problem really but just a little intense after a ten hour red-eye in which we didnlt sleep.
Had a lovely dinner made by one of the girls and very much enjoyed seeing the crowd again.

The next morning I woke up from the alarmclock. It was time to go to practice.. again.. for an hour or so.. I slept in till 9:30!!! this in aan apartment that is filled with light form abaout 7am onwards. Must be the jetlag. We watched man ups an downs for an hour (the first ten minutes okay, I payed soooo much attention after that!) then we had and hour of practicing that.. which became about one and a half hours, which left us.. two hours before we had to be back on the pool deck. had lunch, tried to get a small nap but for those of you who have ever attempted at playing sports in their sleep... windows are pretty hard if you think you are blocking a ball, so that didnlt really work out. Then back to the pool for more video. then warm up and then playing. I was dead before we started but did not do alltogether awefull. We could have won by a few more goals I shall admit but we had the scoring potential high on our side; we scored a lot!

It was probably a good game to watch, too bad we didnlt get some more supporters. I mean there were a few but we've seen better ;) Surprise to the day was though that this was THE senior game. In hawai'i the last home game is the senior floatoff. you get leid, get lots of hugs, contemplate crying a lot (especially when you're tired and just won the game that got you to the NCAA's) and then float off into the pool on a floatie.Mmine said: The Brick Wall. Well all brick walls have some cracks right?

It was a really good day, so glad we won, made it soo much better!
I'll see if I can get hold of some pictures soon, then I can upload them :) as of now I have none.
Now back to focussing on exams... (WTF?!) and then we are off again on Sunday.
Never a Dull Moment.

Quote: "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" -Vince Lombardi
Music: Suddenly I See, KT Tunstall

Interpretations

2007-03-24T02:52:00.000+01:00

It is wierd living in two worlds that are really one and the same.
There is Waterpolo in Hawaii and waterpolo in the Netherlands and trying to do two at the same time was obviously not the best idea. Trying to have serious conversations over the mail is not too smart either, especially when it concerns things you care about. But I guess everyone grows and everyone learns new things by overstepping a line sometimes.

Meanwhile I'm submerging myself in the etiology Abnormal Behaviour and the origins of African Art, but not nearly enough to be up to date with what I am supposed to be learning in lectures in Hawai'i.

Loosing to America wasn't so bad because we knew there was a big chance we would, and we nearly had them! We played well and only because we lost some concentration in the third quarter we fell behind, which really was a shame!
Loosing to Greece the next day however was really worrysome, especially the way it went. It was one of those down-ward spirals that no-one seemed to be able to break though. No matter how hard we tried, no matter what we said, no matter how much we wanted it and had been excited to play well at the start of this game, something just didn't work.

RESET
It is great to have so many Dutch fans to support us, a little orange cloud waving and watching from between the rest of the people. a very difineable sort of people...
The sun decided to shine and people aired out thier heart to one another and found some distracion in things other then waterpolo by roaming around the area.
Possums are rather Q'te animals although they are like pigeons in Amsterdam... used to being fed... This morning everything seems back to how it is supposed to be...

Waking up, grabbing the blue waterfly suit (so nice to not have to think about what to wear), breakfast, a walk around the block, people telling sarcastic jokes about others and catching each other up on gossip and waterpolo at home. We're obviously ready...
We play Kazachstan today, I hope they are too!

Music: Instructions, Neil Gaiman
Quote: "Language is the source of misunderstandings." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!

2007-03-18T23:17:00.000+01:00

So Australia it is… I’m not the starting goalie for now, but then I was playing like shit so that made sense. What did not make sense however was that as soon as it was decided I seemed to enjoy the games and practices more and that even though my knee decided to have its own little party I seemed to function better. Wonderful timing! But oh well…
Lots of things going on here, Grand Prix, Saint Patricks day, Worls Champs (obviously) and some big football game for which, I just found out, Australia has different rules then America… I knew it was a weird sport!

Yesterday was the grand opening. Not so grand as I remember Barcelona or Montreal to be but it was still cool. I especially liked the sound simulations from two guys that tried to kill a fly, did a tap dance-off and tried to get rid of a dog by dumping his stick in a taxi. Yeah sounds weird, you should have been there or be part of my family to understand that this was really funny but just trust me on it. Alltogether it took a little long, (important people that needed to talk, a list of famous aussies, and a lot of countries with flags) but it was good to get the adrenaline flowing and to point all our noses in the same direction so to say.

Tomorrow we play against the U.S.A. I think they have a good chance to win World Championships but I think we can make them fight for it really hard. So bring it on!

Music: Permanently my roommates whatever is on a little to loud.

Quote: "Reality is that which, once you stop believeing in it, still exists".

Let my feet, hit the ground. Running!

2007-03-17T03:28:00.000+01:00

Dropped my orange shirt on the floor and dug up my comfi and trustworthy once upon a time green pants and my black sweater and went down for breakfast.
This last day I got to run around the area and Amy would come to pick me up.. along with Emily and Kelly. Yay! How homely.. *grins*
As a goodbye comment I got a: “Nieuwe broek gekocht Nooy?” which means as much as: “bought some new pants, nooy?” to which I smiled and let them all walk out the door to go get a starbucks, right next to all the other fun little cafés along that road.

It seems being home did a lot to the Kiwi’s spirits because they were all very excited and smiley.. or do you reckon it was because the got to see me? Or maybe it was because World championships was about to start? Or because waterpolo was fun? You decide..

Went for lunch and then for tea and sat in an entirely orange room on an orange couch! Trying to make a point about this colour guys?? We got to pick from over a hundred kinds of teas and got a big pot to drink from. That’s what I call proper tea. Thank god for the British influence ;)

Then went for a drive to see Emily’s house and drop Kelly off. Couldn’t see Amy’s house at this point so I’ll have to come back for that someday. To messy anyway, right Amy? Instead we went to Piha… which was very much worth the ride. It was rather up and down though something that looked like rainforest but probably wouldn’t qualify.

Piha was an opening between huge rocks where the sea came in rather angry. It was really windy and you could almost lean into the gusts. Didn’t have too much time but ran around a bit and it felt really good to be out and get splashed by the waves (I took the picture right in time ;)). On the way back we got hit by some serious autumn rain. Good rain like the kind that turns the street into a river and makes you barely see the road when driving. I made it home in time for dinner and merged back into shape with the rest of the team again.

Touchdown in Melbourne: 15/03/'07

Music: Evermore, Running

Quote:"How my achievements mock me!" -William Shakespeare

Kiwiland

2007-03-10T06:05:00.000+01:00

So New Zealand it is...
I'm sitting here on a bench next to a busstop stealing bandwidth of some unknowing fool.. it's pretty darn fast and pretty fun. Me and my friend Simone decided this was more effcicient then paying a whole bunch for it in the hotel. we are soooo bad!

NEway.. so far so good.. the flight was pretty long, but between the two times 12 hours I think I kept my self pretty well occupied with either sleeping, wtahcing movies, reading (Psychology) and eating stuff. They managed to put me and one ather girl pretty much on the other side of the plain, so not with the rest fo the team. first I was kind of buggered but at least now I only had myself to occupie, and when I felt like being social, the other side of the plain is not that far away!

I saw, Happy feet which was quite a cool movie and hmmm well it was a good movie,...\ LOL but twith chinese or something , undertitles so sometimes hard to follow.

Today we played England, 20-1 and yes that one got scored on my in the last quarter :S (we play two quarters each for now) and then tomorrow against germany and then finally against New zeland... kinda interesting playing against my Hawaii teammates!

Still feel I need to fix 100 things in the way I\play, the level feels slightly above me, but that might be in my head as well.. I think my expectations of me might be even higher than those of others. Anyways.. it is good being back and I'm most definitely enjoying practicing at this lever again!

I hope I have internet in my room in Australia
will be back with more soon!

Oh and the pool here in New Zealand is very pretty!
Good thign we get one day off, hope I get to hang out with Amy and see some more of this country!

"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."

...he had 10.000 men

2007-03-03T08:48:00.000+01:00

he marched them up to the top of the pool and he marched them down again.

Okay it wasn't 10.000 but it was at least 2000 people that came to watch our game against Italy, and I knew and awefull lot of them too!
I got to play the second half, and usually I don't mind that, but by the second half I had worked myself into such a sytate of stress that I couldnlt even swim with my head down because I coudnlt breathe. I know silly.. and definitely a first for me! I played shitty.. (at least I think so but the worst I got form someone else was that it wasn't one of my best games.. shit happens) and then, I could blame it on the jetlag... on playing to games in L.A. and not swmming down before hopping on the plain, on the broken rib or whatever you wanna blame it on. But of course I expected a miracle and one of my best games yet ;)

IT is good fun playing ont he National team again, I'm not having too much trouble fitting in and everythign works so beautifully well! Like defense for example.. I barely have time to call anything because people generally know what they are doing!

Home is great too, although I feel like all I do is sleep here. The local television channel has decided Im interesting filming material so they will come by in a sec and follow me to Zeist (the pool we practice in) Urgh.. I hate camera's!, I had to get a medical check up, and I'm generally kept busy.

Tonight I get to hang out with a good friend, have a breather and then get back on track with washing and packing and I really want to go see some more friends but I'm not sure this trip was meant for that!

It was really hard to leave my team in Hawai'i, but they did win the last game they played which is great! feels wierd to have them play without me though. Glad some of them keep in touch and.. me updated!
I'll be back in April!

Around the world in..

2007-02-20T01:28:00.000+01:00

what is it? 38 days or so?

In any way.. couple of days in LA with the Hawaiian team, couple of days at home, couple of days in New Zealand for the Southern Cross tournament and then onto World Championships in Melbourne!! it seems so unreal right now!
So instead of updating my blog I should go and get my act together.. right now!
I'll write a decent update on the plain tomorrow or in the hotle when I actually have time.
See you all soon!
Love
Meike

Pennies in a Pot

2007-02-07T20:41:00.000+01:00

First of all I need to apologise for abandoning all my faithfull readers. Not that there were that many, I think, but I've been out of the loop for a while since my computer decided to crash on me and since life decided to take it's course into it's own hands once again.
I'm back on the comnputer, semi online (if I can steal the neigbours bandwidth) and still not in controll of life!

My holiday was great with the highlight being going to the Big Island (where I had no responsibility for anything anymore and where we went swimming.. with dolphins. Once by accident because we were snorkeling and we saw them so swam out to meet them! It was pretty darn amazing! Once on a boat called mellow yellow, with a bunch of hippies in the open sea, so incredible! I might get some picures at some point, but it was so wonderfull. You could dive down and sometmes they would swim along with you and when I tunred along my axis one of them turned with me. I didn't know I could hold my breath so long nor that I could go that deep under water. There were at least 20 at a time and they were everywhere.. NEway.. if you ever get the chance, GO, you'll never regret it!

The penny thing? right, we just came back form our road trip and we had the day offf to catch on school.. so we have this pot of pennies and as we all needed to procrastinate we ended up counting them, and then.. well, aiming them back into the pot! It was so fun and so addicting! and I made a waterpolo ball from newclean pennies and old dirty ones. well.. you know, you are obsessed or you aren't. we are.

Music: Stranger by the Minute, Porcupine Tree

50 word story challenge?

2006-12-19T02:28:00.000+01:00

Up and down the winding path she knew it’s bumps and corners. The trebles and emotion leading her into another world so craftily created that she lost touch with the here and now. Lost until the record player broke and Tchaikovsky and his Valse became part of history again.

I couldn't resist :)
wanna try???
Go to A Wonderer in Paris's blog.

Music:Tachaikovsky
Quote: After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Leid in Hawaii

2006-12-18T21:23:00.000+01:00

As most of you probably know, that is the common joke here. A Lei is one of those flower necklaces that you recieve here for any occasion really. So I got the honour o Leiing my family. Why does that sound so wrong?!
NEways, they are here. It was interesting borrowing a car and picking them up form the airport (where I had never driven on my own yet) the night before my big exam day and after having been sick for forever and having had a fever well, pretty much the whole week. (I know, what happened to: "I don't get sick, I just get injured", right? must have had something to do with going to L.A.)
So now half of them are here and today they are all out on a hike so I can finally catch up with myself. Really great to have them here and so much stuff I want to show them, but really I just want to go incognito for a week and crawl under my blankets and sleep. ahhh I got 9 hours last night! Imagine that! What a treat!
Had a very beautifull wedding from one of the girls on our team last night. she was absolutely gorgeous and I donlt think I've ever seen anything so well organised! It was quite interesting as it was a union between a guy from texas and an australian, so the dads had each other say certain "typical" frases so they would be accepted if they came to the others "home" and it was quite hilarious! Otherwise it was very traditional with a ceremony in the only church that loks like a church here in hawaii. (Guess I am spoiled coming from Europe?)

Today I finally had the peace of mind to pick up my guitar again and for the rest I'm just going to do some serious grocery shopping and maybe spend some time at the beach and then meet the fam at 6 for dinner. pfew.

Finally (I just thought this was funny), Iris, my good friend from.. hmm home? send me this e-mail on how it was discovered that vergetarians had a higher IQ. Well there! I feel really bad for all you meat eaters out there, LOL.

*back to playing guitar*
WOW I'm on a HOLIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

correlations

2006-12-14T06:44:00.000+01:00

After geeting my act together and studying all morning (okay okay, almost all morning) I took a nap cuase I felt more dead then alive, had lunch and went to do some art. Now I really didnlt feel like it, but usually when I sit down I warm up to it. Today however it didnlt work that way.
I didnlt really have a choice because I got my portfolio date extended by a week for going to LA so I figured now was the time to finish some of it.
I planned on going home at 7 but was home at 6 after sopending 3 hours intently trying to get some lines onto paper and eventually going with what I had because it didn't seem to improve. It obviously didn't because when I was about half way and I compared it to the other pieces it was supposed to complement, within a couple seconds was turned into a basketball and I aimed it for the bin. WHAT A $4!%#$#%^%^$%^##^ WASTE OF MY DAY!!!!!!

So now that the rant is over.. I should go back to studying.. just trying to not take it out on my roommates.. who are kind opushing it right now.
bleh!

Happy post eh :)
I was listening to some very fitting music too: Funeral Song, The Rasmus
And I won't bother finding a quote, so there.
I need space!
laterz :)

Waterpolo, A Way Of Life

2006-12-11T18:58:00.000+01:00

Back in the Dutch team after a break of one season: Maike de Nooy. Foto: Wolfgang Philipps
p.s. that picture os from World Champs in motreal... and they managed to spell my name wrong.

Nou that would be the understatement of the year (looks up at the title). I think it must be some kind of addiction, like smoking: you stop overindulging or you quit altogether but all you need is someone to offer you the bloody thing and dangle it in front of your nose to become totally submersedagain and to endulge like never before. I think in proper psychological terms it is called priming.

So yeah, a whole bunch of you figured out the reason for my silence. I hounestly didn't have time although the internet connection wasn't that good an excuse this time because the ones in L.A. hotels work fine!

Yeah, I'm in L.A. I'm playing the Holiday cup with my national team, or at least, we just finished. The National team coach decided to ask me back about 3 weeks ago? For possibly the World Championships in March and in any case the Olympic year after that (don't get too excited we still need to qualify). When I said yes without too much thought and a little hesitation because what the hell was I doing, would my knees last and could I fix it all with school, he immediately asked if I could make it to the Holiday cup as well. Well, I said no at first because I have exam week... now. But here I am!

So sorry for this short update, I felt I needed to, but as I spent most of this week sick and feverish as well and decided to get in and prove myself anyway, I didn't get around to studying for my biopsychology test tomorrow morning much so I will go do that now. Somebody have a smart brain I can borrow? Mine obviously is a bit daft at the moment.

for those who read Dutch and want an update on the games: www.manmeer.nl
for those who read English (as well) and want to be interested: www.waterpolo-world.com

Quote: "Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem." -Henry Kissinger

Friday Night Fever

2006-11-19T02:40:00.000+01:00

Just when you think your life is getting settled in some sort of way something happens to throw it all into perspective. Never get used to what you have because things are a changing!
I'll let you all know later ;p

NEway.. went out again last night. This time to the invitation of two Dutchies I met here: Ruud en Kirsten. I go to something called global Café every thursday night which seems to be organised by the baptist church for internationa students. Seems kinda vague because there is not much reference to the religion other then a couple of flyers but I guess it is a really nice way to let international students meet up. Got some Germans attending, Russians, Chinese, French (they're everywhere!) and well pretty much a little fo everything. 't Was good fun and I could have gone on all night but somewhere in the back of my mind was a watch your knees, so I went home at 2 which was smart enough because even though I was awake enough and I could ignore my tiredness from dancing my knees were TROUBLE! NEwayz I made it through the 3 hour Saturday morning practice, actually had good fun because we got to mingle with the players and I got teamed up with one of the Kiwi's, Lisa, for an excersize where you held up a 5lb ball for 20 sec, wresteld each other (i.e.: tried to drown each other) for some time and then fought your way to the other side of the pool. If you came last you had to go fly on the way back and trust me you don't have energy or breath to spare for that. So I lost once, drew once and won once. I thought that was kinda cool for a goalie :)

Next week thursday is thanksgiving, or turkey day. Some girls are going home, others are staying, Margie's mom invited us to come to her house for thanksgiving dinner. I guess she likes having people over and she is really nice. It will be nice to be outta here, spend one day at the beach and the rest of those free days catching up with all the stuff I've been neglecting due to waterpolo. (I could be doing some now but I just can't be bothered) Mostly art and Loads of reading...

Right now listening to all the music that I used to listen to. LOL. good memories get attached to music.. so do bad ones, and some I used to sing with my bro behind the computer.. *grins* kinda like now.. just canlt hear myself cuase I'm wearing headphones. Must be bad, but no one complained as of yet :)

That's all for now Folks

Music: Under the Bridge, RHCP
Quote: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas A. Edison

Dancing Queen

2006-11-05T03:22:00.000+01:00

I sure felt like one!
HAdnlt been "out"in a while, my knees where a good excuse but I'm seldom in the mood to dance. However last night didnlt start with that intention. I met up with Erica, one of the girls form my art class, who pulled up in a rather fance car. We were going to see a music performance at the Academy of arts and meet up with Alice, another girls form class. When we got there we ofund they charged 25 dollars and we were both not very conpfrotbale with spending that amount of money on Indonesian Music, so we continued to downtown China Town where every first friday of the month there is an Art Walk. All the galleries are open and some serve some appetisers and other refreshments. I ran into a guy I knew form two semesters ago (also art class) and only seconds later his friend showed up. As Sabrina would say: Hey Hottie! tall, dark, big eyes, well dressed... anyway ;)
We went to a gallery with the four of us, they hung out there for a bit longer and when we leave we say goodbye.
We end up in this little place where they are showing short films in premiere which was cool and then they played some nice music.. lets dance. Erica met up with some friends and obviously belings in the filmbusiness because the friend took her to meet the big guy (the one who made the longest movie and organised the whole thing) Then we went to see some more ghalleries and ran into Mark.. the tall dark one. We asked where he had left Mike and he would come back for him in a bit but we first went to see some art galleries together.
So we wondered around, found Mike and went back to dancing. I gave Britt a call (girl on my team who was going to go as well with Emily and Kelly (my roommates) and Kristy, our aussie, also waterpolo.
Britt came to join me, on her own, as the rest had decided they didn't feel like going. Britt knew Mike which left me to dance with.. Well you can figure it out.. Erica had decided to go home just before that so there was just the four of us. Later joined by a friend of Britt. Went to another bar where we got in free as Darcy's (ex-waterpolo) boyfriend was a security guard and danced some more.
Felt like a true dancing queen, guess those workouts wereg ood for something, though I must say at bout 2am I was ready to go home. We did have practice today and my legs and knees were starting to give out!
Awesome night, thanks Britt, Erica, Mike, Mark, Darcy and your boyfriend..

And I got to sleep in till almost 9 :)
Tonight I'm goin ot babysit so I have to get my act together now.
Now let's see if my internet is still working...

Quote: Pimples are like cats, they always pop up where you don't want them and in the most inconvenient places.
Music: Marillion, the whole CD, thanks Sjoerd.

Vision

2006-10-23T09:42:00.000+02:00

-sorry I have been stusying too much-

It wasn't untill
I looked beyond
of what I know I see
not untill I left behind
the colour that I usually find
when I focus and my cones respond
that I came to be

It wasnlt untill
the lights went out
that I turned remotely blue
not untill I found my cues
my limited view became unlimited views
my world turned into an expressionists stew
that I learned something new

It wasnlt untill
my lashes kissed
and I saw within my mind
realised the black and white grey area
on the edges of my retina
are like thoughts subtleties we miss
so now I am no linger blind.

if it makes any sense
YAY for me!

Shaken not Stirred

2006-10-23T09:11:00.000+02:00

... a week after the quake...
Better late then never I guess, I am a survivor of the quake in Hawaii.
There are actually T-shirts saying that. I guess they needed to get money off of something seeing as the whole days lack of electricity must have cost the state plenty. A lot of higher buildings also didnlt have any running water, like ours, because it gets pumped up, with need of electricity...
At the moment of the quake I woke up, facing the window in our 10 high apartment and saw the world sway. Interesting... after telling Amy, my roommate, who was sitting straight up in bed, that it was an eathquake, and after decding that if the building was gonna crash I wouldnlt have a chance at making it downstairs anyway I decided to go back to sleep. However I realised I was too excited and when my other two housemates came running through the door like the Conn Trapp children in the sound of music who were not scared of the thunder but merely checking up on us, I was rather awake and watched the people stream out of their buildings onto the streets while we were experiencing the aftershock. Most people were trying to use thier cellphiones at the time the elctricity gace out and most cellphines did too. I promise that people here hace no sense of humour when it comes to having no electricity. I'm sure that two more days of this an half Hawaii would have been dead. There was police everywhere and the big supermarket that did open again had police to escort you inside and the lines were endless!
NEway, I went to my faourite cafe cause I was dying in our building and got the last ice coffee (the ice was melting.. and after reading my book for two hourse they started handing out all their food as they were afraid it was going to go bad.. I was on a sugar high the rest of the day!
We did ghost stories untill we went to bed.. twas quite a good day :)

Music: Zombie, Cranberries
Quote: "Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."
Lord Byron

I speak 4 languages!!!

2006-10-05T20:59:00.000+02:00

:Dutch, English, American and I dabble in Art... Although sometimes I suspect that I make the most sense when I try communicate with the last.
... and no, I never have issues with English, they solely arise in my dealings with the utterances I see transofrormed into grotesque scribbles without "u's" and "z's" instead of "s's".

And now for your entertainment only:

The New EEC Language

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, theEuropean Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways ofimproving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, throughand thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, beadministered by a committee staff at top level by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible.Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould bedropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

Music: Saez, Sauver Cette Etoile
Quote: If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur. -Doug Larson

Small World

2006-10-02T09:00:00.000+02:00

Very relaxed weekend, got slightly lobster red at the beach, made Indian Currie for some people before going opff to see a movie (Illusions) and eating a bucket of Ben and Jerry's.. oh and maybe I conveniently skipped getting slightly drunk on friday night at Indigo's in China town; hum.

Today was the best though! I spent the entire day doing art! After waking up, I had some random Sunday morning time. When I went to meet Maxi I had the most random conversation with this random guy who decided he wanted to talk to me, which was quite interesting actually. He was a Law Student and had just come to Hawai'i.
Then at the Sunday morning art session (models come in to draw and you pay four bucks and get to draw differenmt poses all day with a whole bunch of people) some people who had seen me doing art abnd had told me to come previously were excited to see me and came to look at what I was doing. I had some cool conversations:
1. This lady I already met last year who is always full of good advice (sometimes more that you can take)
2. Some random guy who found my artwork masterly (hrmpf that was too obvious!)
3. This really old Guy who happens to be Indonesian and who makes the most amazing watercolour pieces. We talked Indonesia, the Netherlands (he could count till ten in Dutch), art, and he is gonna take me and Maxi there. Awesome!
4. The lady who runs the place asking if I wanted to model sometime!!! I do not need a social security number, it is on Sundays = no waterpolo, it pays bloody awesome :) and hrm yeah, it is waht you think, it is nude modeling LOL but I guess coming from Dutch-land that shouldn't bother me (or so everyone seems to think). It will only be in November, but still it should be interesting and they like artists as they presumably know interesting poses to draw. Hrm. We'll see.

You're wondering if I did anything besides talk? Here's the collection:

For the rest I did some required work on a bigger piece that I'm sure will show up here at some point.
Ill upload a bigger version of the left part on Art Attack (see links on the right) It was really good fun!

The Bonus was the art gallery opening downstairs where all the teachers of our department show their work this month. Grand opening with some delicious food: Hommos, crab salad, guacamole toast home made iced tea, brownies mochi and pineapple grapes melon and other goodies! So that was out lunch.
The art was pretty cool to see, my last years life drawing teacher was there and he came up to do some draing too and commented that my work was looking well but that I should start abit larger next time. (He's right of course (about the larger thing)) he sat down next to me, whipped up the same image that I had only he took 40 minutes to my hour and then left again. Random people, but all good fun! I guess artists have an unspoken bond or something LOL but it made for a great day!

Song: Nous Sommes Deux, George Moustaki
Quote: "It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating." -Oscar Wilde (what can I say?)

Insomnia?

2006-09-22T09:10:00.000+02:00

Count the Lights...

Garuda

2006-09-16T23:04:00.000+02:00

Couldn't help myself and got distracted of my weekends activities by someone's story writing challenge. Also needed to go sleep so I set myself the one hour limit.
Found the challenge at: Inner Minx's blog, and it was started by: Skint
As I only had an hour I didnlt really edit it :S but then, I am not a writer and not a native English speaker, so deal with it! :) Hope you enjoy! (wrote it yesterday night 10:45-11:43 but the internet connection was faulty...)
Maybe one day I'll have tome top illustrate the story.

Garuda

Yes, it was a wheel. Debris in the form of long pieces of grass, discarded pieces of cloth and half a plastic water bottle stuck onto it, but it was definitely a wheel.

Suddenly Arun saw a way. He was going to ride that race. No one could tell him otherwise, he was going to be part if this.

He ran home to tell his friend Miri who looked at him questioningly when he laid out his plan.
“And you want me to come and help you pull out what you might think is a whole betajk, fix it up and race it?” he asked incredulously?
That was exactly what he wanted.
It took them the whole afternoon, pulling, digging pushing and turning. But when night set in a silhouette of an old and broken betjak could be clearly seen against the darkening blue sky.

Some people had accumulated, of which some had left again shaking their head, and some had stayed to see what the plan was. It was too dark to see the glow on Arun’s face. But he was filled with a pride that only those with a vision have. His Race, his Betjak.

There were some jeers from the side about the old broke betjak, but he didn’t hear them. There was a man who tried to buy the betjak off of him as he saw a future for the instrument, but to Miri’s great dismay he declined.

It didn’t take him that long to replace the missing wheel, and the slight bend in it didn’t matter. They were the same high and the betjak moved. It was big. Bigger than he had anticipated, and so he found some blocks to stick on the pedals so that he could reach. The one block was slightly thicker then the other, but it didn’t matter. He was capable of riding it and that was what mattered. He rode it everywhere, and soon most people knew who this boy was and what he wanted to do.

The reactions were still the same: Older people shook their head and left, the youngest ones stood in awe, the rest laughed or jeered. However Arun held his head up high and rode on.

He found some yellow paint and took to painting the whole thing yellow. The orange and red pieces of cloth he got from the lady at the market who had left over scraps and who found herself rejoice in the boys enthusiasm and determination.
He bound them to the back so they would dance in the wind.
“I am like the sun!” he yelled at her and she smiled…

On the day of the race the man at the track looked at him and laughed.
“you wanted to ride in the race” he asked.
Arun eagerly nodded his head.
“Well that will cost you 5.000 Rupia entrance money then”
.
His world seemed to shatter, but only for an instance for it only took him an instance to come up with another idea. “What if I started later”, he asked, “no one has to blow his whistle for me.”
The man at the entrance box shook his head at this nonsensical boy.
Who would want to start the race later then the rest? “You can’t win if you start later,” he said, but the boy persevered:
“Would it be free if I started after everyone has started off?”
In a way the man felt sorry for the boy with the yellow betjak which looked like it might not even make it to the start… would there really be any harm in letting him start late?
“Sure it would be free”’, he said, “but make sure everyone has left before you start”.

Arun hurried to get his betjak. It wasn’t like he didn’t have chance still he thought. He had trained hard and his calves had hardened from his trips to the market and down the dirt road along the river. He was ready and very excited.

There was a clutter of betjaks at the start, all different colours. Some new and fancy ones, some very old but made to look as if they were going to ride the stars of off heaven. The start sign hooted, the gas running out before the sound had fully well come to an end, whichmade it sound a bit pathetic.

Arun had stalled his betjak right next to the entrance. You could barely see him there unless you knew that there was someone there. Someone eagerly waiting for his chance to ride.

His muscles tense with excitement, he stepped down on his peddles as hard as he could. He was young and he felt he was catching up. His concentration was such that he didn’t hear the noise and laughter behind him. He paddled most of the way without losing sight of the other contestants, his betjak cracking and squeaking.

But the other betjaks were superior to his and the different higt of the blocks was wearing out. When one side came crashing off it heeled over to the other side precariously, but it still moved, and he kept on.
He had lost sight of the other contestants and even though he knew his race was overand he had no chance to win, he was riding this race because it was his dream, and he kept going.

When down by the river the end of the race was neigh, the boys that had been jeering at them earlier stepped out on the road.
“you move like an old donkey!” They called at him
“No I fly like a bird he shouted back.”
And like before, his excitement could not be diminished.
When they threw the can of oil which lit up all the red and orange streamers, the yellow paint turning a flaky black, he came to a halt, and slightly before the finish his betjak gave a last loud eerie squeak and slumped as if an old man who could go no further. Arun watched it burn, the left over he gave a shove, back into the river which ate it with a slight hissing sound.

Earth to earth, dust to dust, and betjaks back into the river
There would be another race next year
And there would be other old betjaks in the river.

For those of you who didn't know: Garuda (Phoenix in Sanskrit) is the mystical firebird which is considered as chariot of Hindu God Vishnu.

Creative on Command

2006-09-11T19:14:00.000+02:00

So this weekend I spent at least 9 hours in the art building...
No, we do not have a crazy obsessive teacher...
Would her being British have anything to do with it?
Yes, I refuse to draw another senseless object this semester...
I am quite satisfied with ho some of them turned out though :)
The assignment:
Find two objects, stick them together, draw them. Fin another object, add it on, draw them again. Go in search of yet another object, make sure they ae securely stuck together, add t on, draw it again. Please use a different medium for each, try some different background materials... I want ten done by tuesday... and I reckon you need to spend at least 3 hours on a piece to make it succesfull. (She is right, of course, but if you have 10 pieces to do!!!)
So these are the results:

I left out 2. One because it was a picture (creative huh?) and the other simply because I forgot to take a picture of it. I think I definitely got more into it towards the end.. whadda you think?(there's bigger versions when you click on them) I think they are pretty neat pictures for a whole bunch of disposable objects LOL.

Oh and the highlight of my weak: I got called a neat freak to my face haha! and it was supposed to be an insult! Well let me tell ya, I'm still wondering if maybe I was dreaming. LOL

Music: Cassandra, ABBA
Quote: Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. -Frank Zappa

Cup, cup, cup, cup,... of, of, of, of,...

2006-09-04T05:17:00.000+02:00

Well yes.. tea :)

Started the day off very well with some eggs and toast.. fresh farm eggs mind you! They were delicious! Nice ot know Amy had the same tradition at home, made it all the more enjoyable.

All satisfied and well I went to China town where, to my disappointment, the store where I got my T-Mobile card was closed. I found another one, but this man didn't speak plenty enlgish to no understand that I want simlock off! I guess not then! The official T-Mobile store was also closed, so I'm still unreachable.. I don't mind so much it is just a little inconvenient..

So seeing as I didn't need to spend money on that this weekend I went to waste it elsewhere! I bought myself the teapot I saw last time.. "happy happy joy joy" Yes I'm a little bit of a tea junky. So, especially after having a talk with a good friend back home and concluding you get lazy when living on your own and just don't make tea for yourself, I figured something needed to be done. (Thanks Vera!) This buy was very justified!

The teapot was bought in this fashion:
After talking to this lady for a while who imported the goods herself and inquiring about all kinds of tea and how it was grown and how that was different from Indonesia or India and what the customs were in China, (somewhere we even talked about thiopian cofee) I walked out of there with a teapot and 4 little chinese cups (because you couldn't just buy a teapot according to the lady) for merely 10 dollars. The teapot was 10 to start with so I guess I did a good job somehow... and in the end it was of course chinatown :)

This all in grave comparison with the lady in the store before that who tried to sell me a somewhat larger teapot for 36 dollars.
Next story:
I came into the store, which was stacked with porcelin dishes, cups, teapots, non-stick pans, chinese dragons, christmas ornaments, you name it! and in which I barely dared move in case I'd knock something over, I asked for the price of the thing as nothing had a lable on them. When she told me I lifted an eyebrow turned around and walked out. As I reached the door she said:" I can make you a nice deal for 13 dollars!!" but alas, I think she had hurt my pride too much by assuming I was a tourist. There ya go! ha! don't sell anything then! what was she thinking!!!

So now I have a nice little teaset and some delicious green tea and I emptied the whole pot over lunch. Life is just sooooo good LOL. Funny how such little things become such a big deal sometimes!

Of course I also went wild on Amy's moped, and I bought some flour and a cake form at walmart.. with the true intention of baking a dutch appeltaart(applecake).. however coming home I realised I had no measuring cups, no raisins, no bowl to mix things in and no butter.. ahhhhhh! so that will be for next weekend... (How Homely!)

Music: Voyage, George Moustaki
Quote: "There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you." -A. Whitney Brown
However if you are 6'1", white, and well you wear a big black bag and carry veggies as if you belong there, you stand out and feel like you are the only one in this world.

The secret Language of Music

2006-08-24T03:59:00.000+02:00

Question: How do you get a guitar player to shut up?

Answer: you put a piece of sheet music in fromt of him.

I tell you it is not a joke it is the pure and awefull truth. Most of you who know me know I play music. I can read notes.. for a alto recorder and the right hand piano. I can figure out the left hand if I need to too, just not very fast. I can play guitar, okay lets not boast, I'm self tought, but I can play some songs and it is not all awefull. So I figued: put two and two together, it can;t be that hard.

WRONG!
I think I need to go study. I just remebered my weekness in music. Reading notes... Give me tabs! let me play after someone elses tune! but I guess this is simply a part of playing classical guitar. Wish me luck! and time...

My art class looks like it is going to consume me. Here I was thinkign I could take another class on this semester! Wheeeehaaa! This very English lady used to be a singer and an artist and teach.. and is all about planning. well if you dindlt know how to, she'll make you learn real fast. She told us we'd have 10 pieces done in twop weeks and she has some really random assignments! fhew!

So that is it for the creative part.. mostly. My other doom this semester will be BioPsychology. this is no matter of fun. This is some serious brain study and I think it will leave me rather brainwashed. And al these teachers expect me too read those 800 page books.. good thing practice starts soon.. I'll have a good excuse (for myself) not to be up to date..

Excited for tomorrow.. my psychology on self expression class.. hope it is as good as I think it will be!
Okay.. gotto go read :) I'm still pretending to be studious at the beginning of the semester ;)

Music: highway and people
Quote: "Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence. " -Abigail Adams (AMEN)

China Town

2006-08-22T07:04:00.000+02:00

First day of school, but that is not very interesting, or well it was but going to China Town was way more of an adventure!

So I had to get some duplicates of our key because sharing two keys for an apartment is not a good plan! And I wanted to get a T-Mobile simcard so I could actaully call people.

I borrowed Amy's moped and drove down.. very nice.. slightly awkward driving in this country where passing left or right doesnlt make a difference, but it was fun. Then found a parking spot, still not sure I was allowed to park there but it worked fine.
Ran into the first store that I saw that looked like the sales person might speak some kind of English and asked her where the T-Mobile store was.. while she was chattering to her friend on the phone I looked around and bought a very nice tiger eye pendant which obviously bought her friendship too.

So it is a bit of a long story, but basically I got taken into the inner circuits of chinatown. I had mentioned art so I was vaguely instructed on T-Mobile and then escorted to a little art store (I mentioned I liked art) there she left me ith a man who was barely capable of speaking English.
Obviously the plot was to let me buy some art. And I must say I would have but the 20% discount brought the amount down to $560,- Well I'm sorry but I donlt have that kind of money!

He was visibly disappointed, but still in good spirits. took me out the back door, up a stairs into this gambling hall where all these Chinese people were gathered together and well.. gambling. For a second I thought: Oh God! this is what parents always warn their kids NOT to do! But I was there.. and about a head taller then the tallest people around and well I wasnlt exactly scared.

I got given a new guide who was assigned to me witha waterfall of chinese out of which I only understood the word T-Mobile. BAck down the stairs out the door and through a couple of little streets. Into this little mall.. (I guess it was a little mall with all these little stores inside, wares stacked up to the sealing, seamstresses, food, things I don't want to know what they were and a lot more.) Into this supermarket pointed at this little Chinese guy and told me to give him my keys. (I'm not sure when I mentioned the keys, I think to the first lady I met, but I din't think she had understood me.) My keys took a while and meanwhile I was pointed to some other place in that mall and left to myself.. I got a T-Mobile sim card, walked back, payed 2 dollars for the keys and was done.

Yes I'm too trusting, but sometimes that is good!
The rest of the day consisted of broken down mopeds, simlocked phones, e-mailing about beds and a desk, making dinner and getting used to living with four very different people in one household.

Quote: "I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." -Woody Allen
Music: Colour, Blind Counting Crows

Update on Forgotten Things

2006-08-21T09:10:00.000+02:00

Like most of you know, occasionally I feel the urge to write stuff. As usual, inspired by the people and things in my life!
Hope you enjoy.

---

Happy Endings

We Read books with happy endings
To content our troubled mind
Compassionate donations make placebos
Experimental
Double blind

In dreams our life is perfect
Pure light from dawn till dusk
Though the image of a gold rimmed raincloud
Mesmerizingly
Intertwined

Lo and behold the beauty lies
In creations less then perfection
Unique the flaws that make things whole
Happy endings
Redefined
---

Cardboard boxes on the Beach

2006-08-19T08:15:00.000+02:00

So yeah.. I know a lot of you thought I would be comping out on the beach right now but Hawaii wouldnlt be Hawaii if you wouldn't be taken in. I passioanately hate asking people for things as I always think I can sort things out myself, but WOW..

When I arrived I signed a lot of papers which Amy had sorted out with Kelly and Emily (the other two girls which are staying with us!) and faxed and posted them. Then I got invited to Laurens Birthday party!! So me and Amy took the bus over to Lauren where we had a very relaxed evening. (I had some trouble staying awake initially but after a while (when everyone else was passing out) I got quite active.
We crashed there and had fresh farm eggs for breakfast. Really relaxed. We went back to Mich's office the next morning.. uhhm afternoon, to call people and find some more places to stay.

Now we are staying with Margie's mom, who decided we needed rescueing from the teamroom (where I have not stayed a night yet) so now we are stayng at Kailua, really amazing place, where we can make dinner, walk to the beach (which is 5 minutes down the road and way better then Waikiki or Ala Moana.

And best of all.. tomorrow morning we will be signing the lease for our house! We will be hunting for beds and cabinets and other random stuff that needs to go in it, but if nothing else, we can always sleep on the wooden floor.
I havnlt actuially seen it yet :) But I know it;s good.. I've been into a similar one and we have a terifiic kitchen en living room (of which half will be Kelly's)
It will be great! I just hope we can find and organise bes and things tomorrow!
Wheee!

---
We got a place.. 10th floor! really cool view when there is no traffic. This is Amy in our room.. it is an absolute chaos we've got no furniture and no beds yet.. sorta expensive :) but we're doing good deals on second hand stuff..
Today is Sunday.. the day on which all shops here are open except for the ones you might need. Like the bicycle shop to buy a new lock or the key shop to get our keys copied. 4 people 2 keys and an elevator that needs a pass to get up.. really inconvenient.
The apartment is quite nice, we have loads of windows which is great because we're not allowed to stick anything in or on the walls. :S Maybe I can find a bed with a desk underneath. Hmm.. would be interesting. I need to store all my stuff!!! ahh!
Tomorrow school starts and I can go get my books and organise everything else, it will be good when we are really settled in!

And then we can get internet instead of hoping I can steal it from floating connections occasianlly if I'm lucky.. like now.. better publish before it is gone! (so also sorry for not e-mailing yet, I might mail some from the student athlete center tomorrow!) if I don't feel too rushed with all the things I need to do apart form school! Love for all!

Quote: "Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
-John Howard Payne
Music: A Sorta Fairytale, Tori Amos

San Francisco 11pm Local Time

2006-08-16T11:00:00.000+02:00

So yeah.. I figured I would get a hotel room for the night but as I didn’t manage to keep my eyes open on the last flight I’m really awake right now. So I guess I’ll keep my-self occupied for a while and well, aint you lucky, you get to enjoy my boredom.

I really like San Francisco Airport, it’s one of the better ones, BY DAY! The last flight just arrived; I’m pretty sure they came from Honolulu if I look at their clothing and attitude. They just look very Aloha. So except for the staring people walking past me and two cleaning ladies the airport is deserted. All the shops and even food stalls have just closed. Not before I got myself a Grande Tao Tea, Green Ginger of course, which looked delicious, (after not being allowed drinks on the plain and not getting enough liquid in me), but tasted like soap. At least I know which tea not to take next time.

I’ve now armed myself with a bottle of water (I can have one as long as I’m on the airport) and a couple of muesli buns I brought from home and am sitting here waiting for time to pass.

Every so many minutes the loudspeaker clicks on and a slightly too loud ladies voice tells me I have to report unattended bags by calling 911 on the nearest phone, closely followed by another female voice almost to soft to hear that WE are in a state of war and that security measures have been moved up to orange which means that we are now not allowed any liquids aboard… *sigh*

At Chicago I was happily entertained by this guy I met named Paul. Actually it was a happenstance meeting caused by a little girl which traveled by herself.. in Dutch we call someone like that: een UMmetje.. or, an unaccompanied minor. She was really young and crying and obviously very unhappy so I offered to sit next to her instead of the man who just read his newspaper and didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that this little human being was so distraught. Which was a good plan for the time being… however she was looking for her friends.. people she had met on the other flight, and when they finally showed they ended up sitting with her and I got one of their seats. Well done! Emergency exit so big I could stretch my legs entirely.. next to Paul.. nice to meet you.. oh you’re Dutch too?!

Sometimes you meet people that just seem to be interested in the same lines of thought and with whom you can just about put the whole world under a loop. Fun and interesting. He is a doctor at the AMC in Amsterdam and was off to do his PhD. I guess psychology is something that is interesting in his line if work as well and the research he was doing on fainting made him interested in waterpolo.. well as some of you know once you start me on waterpolo you got me going so that was that..

In Chicago we figured we’d go find some dinner as he had a 5 hour lay over and I had 7 :S so we went to find the food court. Once found, the healthiest thing were wraps (apart from the McDonald salads that is). WOW I miss the food at home already! We had earlier discussed that in America all the food starts tasting the same which we then proved by getting confused about whose wrap was whose because eI had tuna and he had chicken..

After saying good bye I went for a run around the Arcade (another section in Chicago) and another round and another one… bought an orange for 1,20 found some coffee which was drinkable and had a gevulde koek. Wrote one of my friends a really long letter and went though her wedding pictures from last year. You definitely get some funny looks if you are stupidly smiling at your computer screen and give an occasional chuckle.

The next flight was pretty much spent in silence.

Okay I’m boring you.. if you made it till here good for you! I’ll bugger off now! I’ll be back with on a regular basis in Hawaii! See you there!

Music: Camille, L'Amour
Quote: "Little by little, one travels far." -J. R. R. Tolkien

Transsexual Pickles

2006-07-31T15:39:00.000+02:00

So for the record: I'm done chasing wild geese, I mean, pigeons.. They decided that there were too little of them to pay someone for keeping them away. Too bad, I really enjoyed all that readiThat evening someone called from the restaurant I had applied at if I wanted to start working tonight, an hour before my emplyment agency called to say they had another job for me.
So now I can work weekends (5-10 or so) which is really the most fun, in a little Italian restaurant where I am the tallest of the staff of four men :D Where they have the best Italian espresso and where it is truely a joy to run around.
On weekdays I get to put my Psych education to the test because I have to deal with transsexual pickles. Are you laughing? I figured..
Sure laugh! I'm serious though, these plants are either male, female or both and some individual flowers can't decide on their sex either. It's a really sexist job really.. I have to sort out the most beautiful flowers (male and female) and stick em together. Another random fact?? Well every female gets two males LOL.. I mean seriously, can you imagine the jokes flying around?
And then lo and behold.. the farmers that I kept running into on the field and occasionally drinking coffee with when I was scare crow spent the rest of the time in the greenhouse next to the one I work at. So I get to drink my coffe with them yet again. (Immediately they tried to hook me up with one of the younger guys (Well my age but younger in their group and which they had been doing the last couple of weeks as well) who is a little shy, sorta Q'te really, but they told him here was his second chance :)
These people are so much fun to hang out with! Very random people, but most very Dutch ans 80% of those very "Wagenings" (which is the pace that confirms the sterotype Americans have of Dutch people: people that wear woolen socks and comfy clothes and live of the land and eat health food etc etc... there are even a couple that wear clogs ;))
So yeah, it is looking good, I can make some decent money which I can use on my apartment this year in Hawai'i! And I'm sure I'll have enough to spend some of it on some cooking stuff and such! Can't wait! Amy we better find a house soon!

Oh, and speaking of jobs, I know where I want to go, for an internship or for a real job, I'll have to see that when I get there, but this looks soo much like something I would love to do! YAY! it makes me wanna go study hard! (how scary is that!) Warchild

Music: Splintertime, The Wreckers
Quote: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas A. Edison

Let's stop complaining about the HEAT!

2006-07-25T11:50:00.000+02:00

As in it's warm, sticky, people are starting to use the Tropic schedule for work (start earlier, do less, drink more, and leave earlier... )

But really: it's the heat is a lousy excuse.
It can mean many other things:
Heat may refer to:
A period of increased sexual drive
A segment of a race
The strength of chilli peppers
Applause or booing given by fans to a professional wrestler.
A fastball in baseball colloquial

but what I wanted to focus on was this:
Heat is a transient form of energ! so what is all this puffing and complaining about!
We finally leave winter behind, people get to wear all their skimpy clothes, and get injected with a tremendous amount of heat! Look at the energy!
There is a reason people became happy in summer, they get warmth and energy.
There is a reason more people die in winter: energy low.
And there is this song that gets ennoyingly stuck in my head every summer: Summer loving, happens so fa-ast.... sure..I'll shut up..
but really, start enjoying it while it lasts!

Quote: "The summer night is like a perfection of thought." -Wallace Stevens
Music: Isn't that obvious?? (Include the rest of that movie too!)

A Penny for your Thoughts

2006-07-18T11:25:00.000+02:00

Of course I have been reading, and of course my mind set off on what I was reading. Really it is only a childrens book, but one that mesmerized me when I was younger and well, it did it again.. why? well it really goes into telepathy and communictation between people. So I can't help but wonder what that really is.
I used to believe that it was merely the understanding what someone close to you was about to do or think because you understood the circumstances and them so well. Now I wonder. I mean how often do you call someone, to pick up the phone before it ever rung and have them on the other side? How often do you finish someone's sentences almost before they started? How often do you shift between ideas and start off on a same tangent? And what if such a thing could really be developed? Could people ever hide anything from each other ever again?
I presume it would be a good reason to really change your life. Imagine everyone you talk to or meet to understand all your thoughts, not just what you tell? Would you be comfortable right now? All that is in your mind at this moment, would you be willing to share it? I sure would notl at least not everyone!! (apart from that I think very few people could sort through the chaos they'd find LOL)
But imagine the trouble it would save.. no more talking behind someone's back, no more hiding no more misunderstanding?
I don't think people could handle that right now, we'd find a way to shut off I'm sure, but still!

This I found on the net (I was bored and surfing) and it struck me as interesting!

You Are A Poplar Tree

People tend to look up to you, and it's a bit lonely at the top.
Inside, you are not always self confident, but you show great courage.
Mature and organized, you are reliable in any situation.
You tend to have an artistic or philosophical outlook on life.
You are very choosy in love and take partnership seriously.

Music: Come away with me, Norah Jones
Quote: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Suess

Amstedam

2006-07-14T11:53:00.000+02:00

Just because I always get to hear: "Dutch people and their bicycles!!!"
Well I was wandering around Amsterdam (yes this place is in the Netherlands) and found that there were even more bicycles here. I mean you donlt have a choice because driving there is really not an option!
You take the Tram (a mix between a bus and a train) a boat, or yes, you guessed right, a bicycle.
The parking is not really a problem either because even if it was not allowed, they do not really have the ability to move that many bicycles. (I think)

Having cycled a lot (on my brothers bicycle) since I came here, I realise how well the facilties are here.. and how easy it is to get from A to B by bike.
and I LOVE CYCLING!!!

Music: Maria Mena, Just Hold Me
Quote: "Of all the things to believe in, why not believe in yourself?"

Most Unlikely Self Portrait

2006-07-07T12:24:00.000+02:00

Why this is me and so not me either... you think ya know?
(Inspired by a conversation I had with the optician about sunglasses after I tried ot find myself a normal pair of glasses)

So... I've been busy doing Art There are about 5 updates!

Then I have been bonding with my cat (we're almost pals again)
I'm working as a scraecrow. Yes you heard right :) I run around a field almost every morning from 5 till 10 to keep the piqeons off the colliflower. This is a test company so it is of great essence that there are no birds around to ruin the different batches. That is my job.
I get a lot of reading done :) and some sketches, and some more reading. Listen to lots of music while I hike around the fields, sing into the wind (very safe if you're sure no one will hear), have lots of tea and water and occasionally talk to the farmers who come out to work occasionally.. such a mens world *grins*.

Music: Sleeping Satellite
Quote: "An artists is someone who attempts communicate what it is like in his world, to the people outside of it that care to look further then their own."

-If-

2006-07-01T21:48:00.000+02:00

I came up coughing and squeaking in desperate need of air. My nose and my eyes were full of salt water and my snorkel and goggles were hanging around my neck.
I wondered how I had lost hold of reality so easily but then; dreams seem realistic and reality seems unreal sometimes, so why not?

I had done it several times, I have one very vivid memory where I was under water holding my breath, green in front off my eyes and feeling the approaching lack of oxygen. I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to simply swim up towards the surface, but it never did.
My head felt like it was about to explode, colours started to change from green to purple and red and eventually there was nothing I could do but open my mouth to let the air in. I fully well knew I was going to drown.
I didn’t get a rush of fresh air. Instead, I felt I was just breathing normally, a calm sort of breathing.
I realised I must somehow be extracting the oxygen from the water.

It is strange the thoughts you have when dreaming

I had the time to look around and instead of just green, I could now see the water was light green. Light green because I saw the surface and the light coming down from it. I could see an arch of coral, rock? And I’m sure I saw the silhouette of a dolphin against the light up there somewhere. It was only a short experience and of course I left this underwater world by the time I started thinking I wanted to explore this place, this underwater arena in which I seemed suspended.

My inability to hold onto dreams or turn over to finish them is becoming increasingly frustrating.

The feeling of suffocation was always there, however the more often it happened the less afraid I became to breathe. Lately I even decide to try it before I reach the moment of no return. I remember that I can breathe.

So when I entered the water and graciously took a couple of strokes, letting the momentum carry me forward, smooth and elegant like the turtle swimming next to me, my lungs burning trying to prolong the moment, I realised I should probably just breathe.

I finally remembered.

Music: Turn, turn, turn. The byrds
Quote: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams

Home Sweet Home

2006-06-25T09:53:00.000+02:00

Sorry for abandoning all my faithfull readers, home was a little hectic! But a good kind of hectic!

The day after I arrived home I decided to be organised and write things in my agenda and sort out my mail. On doing that I checked whether Kezia, who I would be going to Paris with in July, had supplied me with a flight number so I could write that down too. Good thing I did because while checking on that I found she flew in in June and not July. Yikes! Change of plans. I had about two days to get myself into gear to go to Paris! (Doesn't my life suck? ;) haha)

So on the 10th I picked up Kezia form the airport after visiting my grandparaents who I hadn't seen in a really long time, and whom I'm glad to say are still up and running (just not running as fast as they'd like to be, but reallY!).
Kezia walked into the airport with abag just about her size and it reminded me of the first year of highschool where we always made fun of THAT BAG running of with the kid!
It was so good to see her though!!
We went to my house for the first night so I got to show her our house and it was really strange to have someone from Hawaii with me on the other side of the world! Makes me want to visit her and Amy and everyone elses homes too! So interesting! We walked out to the Rhine and enjoyed the amazing weather that had decided to visit our country. We drove out to make sure she saw the neccesary windmill (because you cannot pass though our country and not see one) had dinner, talked, talked... Slept.
Then we went to Paris at 9 the next morning but as HAwaii time prescribes we did pretty well leaving at 9:30 or so. It was quite a long ride as Kezia doesn't know how to drive stick! (Kezia I'll teach you next time! and Amy do you know how because we plan to take you with us!!) but it was good fun and great to drive her somewhere instead of the other way around. (In Hawaii she ends up to be the one driving as she is one of the few with a car and she is too nice to say no).
Paris was great! Wasn't there long enough, but that means I get to go back sometime?? Kezia and I walked around Paris by day and visited all the big attractions, the Sacre Couer, the Louvre, the Notre Dame and of course the Eiffel. The last by night with the guys.. or well, with Cyril and Cycy. Vincent came to meet us downstairs with his girlfriend Fang. It was really good to see them all again and really strange to see them in their "natural" setting instead of in HAwai'i at the beach! Haha they were Frenchmen after all. LOL.
I struggled through a whole couple of sentences in French while we were out there and was surprised that all those words were still in my head somewhere. They must have tought me something after all! *grins* It really does make a difference in France when you are attempting French.. and maybe the fact that we were both blonde and pretty?? (the last I derive form the fact that we got called that severla times a day, you didnlt think I was that vein did you?) helped us too...
I can tell you it got us to the top of the Eiffel for free, and got us discount on the metro passes and I got a free Keychain.
We went to diner a couple of times and Yanncik decided t pay us the honour of his companionship a couple of times too! Tibault never showed :( maybe he was afraid we'd make him speak english again.

On Kezia's last night (she went home anight before I did) we got taken on a surprise boat tour and we got to see Paris by night from the River.. uhhhm the Seine. (Please let me be right!) It was quite amazing, the company as wel as the view ;)

When I came home my dad was home too! (Just flown in from Mali) :D Parents really don't change much.. they only grow a little older.
I got myself a job as.. lo and behold.. a scarecrow! 5 -10 am: sit on a field and make sure there are no pigeons that eat the test companies different varieties of colliflower. Not bad at all.. I managed to read a whole book already: The Birth of Venus which was quite interesting and which had been calling out to me since I got it for Christmas! Thanks Bart, Megan!
I managed to do a decent journal update and, well.. I scared a couple of pigeons. You won't be surprised that by day 4 I indeed looked a little like scarecrow.. windswept hair, slightly tired and, haha packed in layers of clothes! Brrrrr

I also managed to do some art since I got home! two pieces on my ArtAttack page. Of which I cannot get the link ot work so.. One I started in Hawai'i but never had the peace of mind to finish and the other one is a watercolour sketch from my journal. LEAVE COMMENTS!!!

Yesterday I went berrypicking with my Dad and later my brother joined as well. We picked two big buckets full of black currants and red ones. Yum! Took a lot of ants and lice with them but it felt very much like being home. "So.. show me the berries?!"
"Uhhhmmmm.. we, we..... we ate them! :)"But we got dinner anyway! Pfew..

Quote: "Home is not where you live, but where they understand you."
Music: Ma Liberté, Georges Moustaki

London/Heathrow ---> ALMOST Home

2006-06-06T15:21:00.000+02:00

Rant, rave &*(!)*£*$(!!!!!!
So I'm stuck in Londen where I'm trying to stay awake to get rid of the 12 hour jetlag even though it feels like 3 in the morning!
I was walking around the airport where everything is mighty expensive and where I really donlt want to buy anything even if I could carry it, to stay awake. Half an hour, I can do it! Then I looked at the board and it said: delayed, so Now I'm pissed... I mean, being delayed in LA is one thing, but being so close to home and then not getting there is actually really frustrating, and that after the typical Londen-Heathrow customs which take forEVER!!! Newayz..

Last night, ot actually that would now be two nights ago.. Amy decided seeing as we couldnlt get hold of the french guys by phone or msn that we should just drive by, because when am I going to see them otherwise?? it was quite a mission because they live up in this apartmebnt where you canlt get into and in which the buzzers donlt work. If you live on the 11th floor that si the only floor you can stop at. So we convinced this girl who lived on the 16th floor to let us up and we tried to take the fire exit stairs down. This was a good idea untill we realised that all the doors wre locked form the inside, so we got to walk down 16 flights and ended up outside again.
Next I tried to sweet talk the guard in letting us up, he could come with us if he wanted and then I could knock on their door. If they wern't there we would ome down with him. Well he was not allowed to let us in.. but he could go up there and knock himself, so that is what happened... we got lucky and could hang out for a little bit! YUSSS!

Before we went out there, I had had a good bye dinner . Awwww! I was sent to my room by an 8 year old (Emilie) who with her sister cut out some pictures and organised the night and made the table. We played a game (if you were lucky we got three different coloured stickers and we would win the grand prize!!! and I got a little card as wel as her sister and her mom. Mine said: we will miss you, see you next year! The one for her sister wished her luck with her first year at school and her moms I'm not sure, but moms are something you just canlt skip.. right?
*reminds me of when I was in Ethiopia and I made cards for all the visitors that we got when my parents had a party or something. I just sat around at the door for everybody to come, the amount of patience you have for those kind of things at 8!*
So that was really adorable! Though I feel terrible that I forgot the candy lei that I got (however I'm sure the kids don' t mind)

We dropeed Iris off earlier that day, also a bit of a wierd sensation as time flew by so fast it was hard to come to the realisation that it was really time for her to go. So yeah, see you in a year or so... :( But we had an awesome time!
Then Linda had to run some errands and while we were at Ross I decide ot buy a new bag as both of mine look like they might not make the journey home! uhoh! so I bought a cheap one so at least the smallest one could be raplaced and I had something to do whe I got back: Re-pack my bag!

I slept two hours before O life at 4:45 yesterday when Amy came to pick me up and drive me to thr airport. I obviously had to finish reading: My Sisters Keeper before I left. Defenitely recommended reading.

Okay my time is almost up! (bloody £3 for 30 minutes of internet)
Love you all!
See you soon!

Turtles!!!

2006-06-02T21:41:00.000+02:00

So there is a whole bunch of pictures and I promise I'll put them on Ringo, but these two I just had to share with you all! The first one is me gazing at a turtle (or actually trying very hard to stay down long enough for Iris to take the picture!!! LOL
The second one is Iris, absolutely exhalted that she could hang out with the sea turtles here!!!
It really was quite amazing and the pictures turned out very well!
We have been showing them off to everyone who had time to see them... So Proud :)

It is our last couple of days on Hawaii, I'll be going home soon and Iris will be going on to discover the rest of the world. I've been looking at pictures from where she is going and I cannot help but be jealous! It is just sooo amazing!

Just spent about 3 hours at the beach, soaking up the last bits of sun before going home to where it will be cold and dreary. Although I will get to sleep under a thick duvet! Hmmmm snuggle up with my cat! NEwayz... I spent the first hour bodysurfing and it was great. Iris wasn; to convinced because it got rather shallow at places and she didnlt feel comfortable with that. Well call me crazy but when I'm on wave... I get lifted above and beyond life. IT's such a rush, especially here where when you catch a wave you can actually press your hands on the water and it makes you go up and you can see everyone ducking under the wave and the approaching shoreline!!! Whoa! you should all come and hang out!

Okay, got to get ready now, a little waterpolo with Britt, a shower at her house and then to the Artwalk in China town! Dinner.. hmm we'll see about that later.
Hope I can get hold of Amy before we go...!!! AMYYYYY!!! Laterz.. Almost home!

Music: Kinderen voor Kinderen, Krokodil als Huisdier
Quote: "Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…" -Ralph Waldo Emerson