I want to be your star
Angelica came back yesterday. I also fixed her internet so it was actually working, through the router and everything. It was great, I thought “FINALLY! Some stable internet!” And was pleased with myself for conquering the set up. Then I went to bed. My bad apparently, because Angelica ruined it again. I woke up and my laptop wasn’t connecting. So I get up to check on the cables and she moved them all around and unplugged the router altogether. I tried to restore things like I had them before, but to no avail. I reset the modem and router and everything I did yesterday (including praying to the internet gods) and still nothing. I was going to sacrafice a goat this evening after work, but Angelica was watching her cheesy old soap operas. Instead I decided to test god’s love for me and started up my computer without checking the internet; and what do you know, god loves me! Angelica’s internet was still local only, but the neighbor’s internet has returned and things are good for at least another day. Hooray! In celebration I lawl’d extra hard at my webcomics and lolcats (they were especially good today).
In other less dramatic news, today Robin asked to talk to me, which was scary at first given yesteday’s events. Turns out he just wanted to know if I’m ok since I’ve “seemed down.” Like he’d know, since he’s never around, but the gesture was nice. I told him I was frustrated with Angelica and my model. He told me to just let him know what I like to do (at work) and there will probably be something for me, which is ironic given the lecture I recieved. He also mentioned a project that is coming up that I may be able to storyboard.
As I understand it, a company that usually organizes huge rock concets and such wants to create a 75 minute, traveling ice-stadium show about the creation of the universe from big bang to space exploration. They have a huge budget and some pretty cool ways to present things and they want Mirage 3D to design/direct it. “Storyboard” may also mean write, since there is currently no story or anything. It’ll follow fact, obviously, but it’s gotta be presented in an entertaining way. If I get to work on that, it could be quite an interesting design project.
Otherwise I’ll move onto Darwin’s room, which I’m perfectly happy with. Especially after spending 8+ hours UVing my coral. Yes, I spent all day today UVing, and Laura did a couple hours of it yesterday and I still have at least an hour tomorrow. The UV is insane. I’ll post a picture tomorrow I think, especially for Lindsey. I’ll be glad to move onto non-organic objects. Especially if they can be easily UV’d.
We are the ones that will open your mind
Monday, mondaaaay. We had another office meeting and Robin saw fit to lecture me about “working in the real world” because I wasn’t done with my coral yet; saying that you can’t always model what you want to model and things need to get done. Ignoring the fact that I took two weeks break from it for those books, and it’s a detailed coral with 4200 hand placed single-planes for the flowery bits. Also ignoring that I never complained to him about it, nor did he ever express the need for me to work faster either. It was just very sudden and very frustrating. I had also mostly done two other versions of the same coral which he wasn’t very pleased with, prompting me to go at it from a different angle. Today he denied ever not liking my previous versions -_-. Too late now though, I’m half way through texturing it.
So I spent the morning angry. I put my headphones on and blasted Disturbed to both vent and to avoid talking to other people. Didn’t want to accidently snap at someone. On a side note, I LOVE Disturbed still 
At lunch Laura brought me a Mars Bar which instantly made everything better. <33 Nothing like chocolate, caramel and fluffy chocolate stuff to make the world right again.
Almost done with it though and then I can start on Darwin’s room. Robin is letting me do as much of the room as I can, so I can put it into my Portfolio as one large piece instead of a bunch of random items. That should prove to be much better on all fronts.
–
So at the request of Jeromy, and my wanting to mention this anyway, being surrounded with people who aren’t native English speakers is definitely affecting my spoken English. When I type here, I can go back and fix issues and stop to think about what I’m going to say; not to mention rereading things before I publish. But every once in a while when I speak (or IM) I’ll make weird errors. Usually it’ll be like a tense mix up, which is pretty common when speaking different languages. On the other hand, I’ve also been thinking about English grammar and such more than I do at home. Maybe that’ll pay off when I get back home. Or maybe I’ll go back to the way I always was. Hehe.
I’m coming down fast, but I’m miles above you
So Parkpop was today. It was crazy. There were TONS of people there. Laura took pictures, I’ll post em later. There was an obscene amount of garbage there too. The festival people didn’t even pretend like people would use garbage bins, as I didn’t see any set up. When you were done with your cup or wrapper you just dropped it. Made for pretty gross lawn, but whatever I guess. Keeps people employed after the festival, right? Even if just for a couple more hours. Hope they have it cleaned tomorrow though, I want my park back. This is the park that is literally across the street from Angelica’s flat. It was super convenient this afternoon to walk out, cross the street and be in the festival. No parking or public transport.
As for the music, it was alright. Mostly bands I’ve never heard of before. Although the Dana Fuchs Band played, which was fun. (Dana Fuch played Sadie in Across the Universe). At the end of their set, they played Helter Skelter, which was AWESOME (be jealous Alisha!). She rocks. Also, she didn’t need to act much in AtU, she’s just that intense and heartfelt. It was great. When Helter Skelter started, I screamed like a fangirl (haha) and freaked everyone around me out. I was excited though, it was the only thing I was really looking forward to that day, and it was great.
After a bit more hanging out in the crowded grass, Steijn and Maud left. Shortly after, Laura, Mathijs and I decided to sit and hang out at Angelica’s since it was less crowded and more comfortable. The couch was much appreciated after the sandy ground in the park. The dirt here is very, very sandy; like mostly sand instead of top soil. There is some construction by the supermarket and it just has sand EVERYWHERE, where you’d expect dirt instead. Mathijs hung out and conversed until about 10:30ish and after he left I put my laundry away and hopped into this.
Got a pretty hefty sunburn today, and should have known better. It was overcast most of the day, but I know that sunburns are still possible. My chest is BRIGHT pink. Luckily I wore my 3/4 length striped thing and my fingerless arm warmers, so my arms/back/shoulders were safe. I think my ears got a bit pink too though. Meh. Wouldn’t be a real music festival experience without a sunburn though, right? Although I could do without the post-sun headache I managed as well.
Hmm… seems to be midnight now, should head to bed. Silly work tomorrow.
P.S “Lila” pronounced how I pronounce “Lela” means Lilac in Dutch apparently. My room is Lilac coloured. Lela sleeps in the Lila room. I’m entertained.
Oh Mr Milkman, milkman, milkman.
This last week seemed to have gone by much faster than the others. A clear sign that Laura and I are really adjusting to life here. Someone on the tram yesterday asked me how long I’d been here and I realised it’s been 4 weeks already. That’s nearly half the time we’re here, gone already!
Another good sign that I’m getting more comfortable is that I’ve started dreaming again this week. I hadn’t really been dreaming at all since we got here until this week. My dreams, so far, always include a bit of Holland in them and some Dutch sounding gibberish (since I don’t speak Dutch I know it must be gibberish, hehe silly brains).
The other night I dreamed I somehow was in possession of a new red convertible mustang, which was parked down by the supermarket Laura and I frequent most here. While I was going to get in, a lady came by and said something in “Dutch”. I didn’t understand her at first and then I realised she wanted a ride. I said yes and then my mom and some other stranger appeared in my car as well. So I started my car (remotely of course O.o) and got in. Apparently my new car idled at about 25 mph and I didn’t have the parking brake on because as I was buckling my seat belt we rolled forward quite fast. The city turned into California foothills at the end of the block and we almost careened off the side of the hill before I took a sharp left and got back on the road. The streets I was driving down were a combo of Chico and Den Haag roads, which made it super hard to navigate, especially since we were now in montage mode.
Eventually I thought to myself “Woot I did it! We’re close.” and then I got stuck in a lane getting on Hwy 99 at East going South and that was exactly what I didn’t want. We got off at the next exit, (which was more Dutch style) and stopped at a motel/auto parts store. Common combination, no? hahah. The two strangers and I went into the empty lobby of the motel side to find someone and climbed up some stairs to find a dressing screen on the left side. Just as we realised there were three people behind the screen (a hipster guy, a faux-nun and someone I can’t remember), a cop showed up and arrested the three people for “public wanking.”
We went back to the street since no one was around and my mustang turned into a van of the same color. The back seats were missing and I had 70’s-tastic carpet in the back. This was all natural, of course. I opened the back doors to talk to my Mom who had gone into the autoparts store while we were gone and bought parts for a fan she was trying to assemble because it was hot in the back. I woke up shortly there-after.
Anyway, back to reality, went out with the boys after work yesterday. We ate at some overpriced, overcooked, (“greek”), egyptian type place and then headed farther down the street for Fiddlers, which is where we went last time (neat place). But Fiddler’s was packed, so we sat outside the place next door instead. A couple friends of Johannes’ showed up, impromptu I think, and joined us. One of them seemed super stereotypical European. Between sitting across from him, the way the buildings were lined against the sky, the weather, the Dutch conversation and the beer, it struck me that “Hey I’m in Europe. For real-real, not for play-play.” It’s always been clear that I’m somewhere that’s not-home, and obviously I knew logically that I’m in Europe, but it didn’t sink in emotionally until yesterday.
After a couple rounds, the guys decided they wanted to go “pooling.” So we went into Fiddlers to see if the tables were open, and it turned out they were broken and the live cover-band SUCKED so we got out of there, but not before I tried to teach Mathijs to moonwalk in honor of Michael Jackson (several of our drinks were in his honor). He didn’t really manage, but he tried, which is way more than I can say for the other guys. Party Poopers.
We headed to a more outdoor oriented part of the city to resume sitting outside and relaxing over by the Parliment buildings which were set up for today’s Veteran day celebrations, we think.
Just after 1:30 I think it was, the guys wanted to go home, proving party pooper status again 
. I was still having fun, especially teasing Steijn about his jacket and his girlfriend. But we all walked over by the tram stop, although the trams had stopped running and caught a taxi home.
–
Today I woke to construction guys taking the scaffolding around our building down and moving it over to the next set of flats. They have been powerwashing/sandblasting the building, which makes a big difference in appearance, but it’s also loud and annoying.
Laura and I remembered it was Market day around 2pm and we wanted some produce so we hoped a bus over to the market and bought Cherries, Potatoes, Bananas, Pomegrantes, Popcorn, Garlic, Broccoli and what I have dubbed “Pomegrapes.” They were unmarked so I dunno what the Dutch for them is, so I can’t look up the English for it either; but they are tasty, pretty, delicate little seed-berry things. Like a combination of pomegrante seeds and grapes (hence the name). We then took a tram over near where we work to pick our bikes up from the day before, and now here we are.
Flogging Molly is going to be in the east side of Belgium the weekend before my birthday. I really want to go, but I don’t know how much the tickets are, or how we’d get there. Tried to talk Mathijs into driving us (Laura, maybe Steijn and myself), but he complained about not being able to drink if he drove. I don’t know what the train ride is like, or if it would be a pain in the ass to get to the venue from the train stop, but that might be a more likely alternative. I dunno. I do know that FM rocks, and I’m sure they are even more fun in Europe.
What, what?
Now’s the time my friend,
For awesome haikus and fun!
Please, enjoy yourself.
So, the guys told us,
We possess T.V English.
Totes awesome, that is!
Temperature rising,
the sun is up late nights,
I can handle this.
With the hot weather,
Peter bought two-tone ice cream,
Five syllables, mmmmmm.
Biking is so great,
The weather is just too good.
Through the park. HOORAY!
Stijin; He with dreadlocks,
Is lending me the Watchmen.
I’m drawing for him.
(fair trade!)
Not only relish,
They don’t eat pasta salad!
How shocking to me.
Work keyboard remapped,
Symbols scattered everywhere.
Totally annoyed.
“Lul, Europe” decieves,
Kees told me Dutch “Lul” is cock.
I lol’d extra hard.
I found a new treat,
The cookies from posts gone by
Nutella covered.
Angelica gone,
The flat is so very relaxing.
Wish this was constant.
Now for less fun times,
I want to update you all,
But still in Haiku!
I emailed Sue,
She avoided the issue,
I’m over her bull.
She is a liar,
who won’t be acknowledged;
I banned her IP.
Olberman.
So I’m going to deal with this directly to be as clear and concise as possible. I’ve tried to be subtle about it to no avail, but before I can move on to completely ignoring it, I have to be sure that my message is getting across. Hopefully this will solve the issue and I won’t have to ignore it at all, because it’ll be gone.
Laura’s Aunt Sue reads both our blogs. She also leaves nasty judgemental and hypocritical comments on Laura’s blog, inbox and facebook. We’re both sick of it. We tried being nice, we tried explaining things, we tried asking her to stop; Laura’s parents have asked her to stop and she continues to be horrible and sneaky.
Here is a direct quote from one of the messages she sent Laura this morning:
“If experiencing the culture means bitching about everything and wondering why nothing is like America (gee, maybe it’s ’cause you’re in EUROPE?), then by all means, go see a movie and further reinforce everyone’s low opinion of Americans, ’cause we sure as hell need that, right?”
(She is angry that Laura wants to see Transformers 2, and lamented the delayed movie releases here on Facebook.) You read my blog, and if you’ve not read Laura’s blog you can go see if yourself, but we have not once wondered “why nothing is like America.” In fact there are more similarities than differences. We don’t write about them though because they aren’t as interesting to share as say, the contrasts in societies. We’re not looking for America here, and we’re not trying to live like Americans. We live in the middle of an honest Dutch neighborhood, work for an all Dutch company, eat Dutch food, go to Dutch festivals, are trying to LEARN Dutch, do our laundry like the Dutch, and get around the city (and continent) like the Dutch. The only bit of bringing America here we’ve done, is be ourselves. Oh, and we made deviled eggs the other day, which apparently they don’t do here. If that’s a crime, then fuck you.
And now, the message I started this post for.
Aunt Sue,
PLEASE STOP. The things we write are not in judgement of a country or culture. They are observations and stories about our experiences. Just because I write that the Netherlands doesn’t have relish doesn’t mean “WOW, I HATE THIS COUNTRY. RELISH MAKES AMERICA THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH. USA! USA! USA!” what it means is “Hey, I found an interesting cultural difference I wanted to share with my friends and family back home, and remember for later.” This applies to everything we share. It is not American snobbery, it is not narcissism. It is an educated, semi-academic recording of our current life situations, written in prose for current and future readers. (I also try to make my blog an interesting read without bending any facts by changing up styles*, syntax and a dash of humor.) If you can’t understand that, so be it; but leave us alone.
Thank you.
*For everyone else, I have been playing around with the idea of doing an update in haiku. Stay tuned for more information!
Lul, Europe
So apparently the Netherlands doesn’t have relish? Laura and I are making macaroni salad tonight and the store didn’t have relish anywhere. And the cheddar is super expensive. They didn’t even have any colby anywhere (we were going to make Mac n cheese first, the salad was a “well, we already bought a huge bag of pasta…”). I’ve also not seen any cheese-its, or regular asparagus (just small white baby asparagus). And their form of BBQ chips are “Paprika” flavoured. Just some of the little things I always forget to post hehe.
The other thing they are missing is excitement. I think I posted before about how the guys dislike American faux-happiness/enthusiasm, but when Laura was bit happy about her table coral model at the monday meeting this week the guys asked me later if she’s always so enthusiastic about her models. I hadn’t really noticed anything other than Laura, so I said “yeah, I guess she is. *shrug*” But she wasn’t really that excited for it, just glad it was coming together. Thinking about it this evening, I’ve not really seen them excited for anything at all. I wonder how they would react if Laura and I were to be really excited about something. Weird, small cultural things I suppose. The emotions in public thing is frowned upon here even more than in America. People are just neutral all the time.
So Angelica left for reals today. (Note: The following conversation is of questionable reliability, it’s hard to understand her, as you’ve seen). Her son won a bunch of money through a poker game, and bought her a ticket to Chile. So I think that’s where she went. I have no idea how long she’ll be gone though because she wouldn’t tell us (I don’t know that she knows). I’m guessing at least a week though, hopefully two or three. She told us before that it takes like 2 days to get there with plane changes and trains and such, so if she spends 4 days traveling, and only 3 days there, that’s at least a week. I imagine if you’re going to go through the hassle though, that you’d stay for longer than it takes to get there and back. I guess her daughter is coming to spend the night tonight because it’s close to her work, but I don’t know anything else, like how long she’s staying here, or how often that happens. But her daughter seems nice (we met once for like 2 minutes, a week ago) and she speaks much better English, what with having grown up here and learning it in school.
Also this weekend, there is a music festival called ParkPop in the park across the street. I guess it’s the biggest, free European music festival. According to the guys, no one good is playing, but it should be interesting at least. And it’s across the street (and free) so we’ll be checking it out for sure.
I think that’s about it, it’s been a pretty chill week. I hope to finish modeling my broccoli coral by the end of the week, and texture it by the end of next week. This Friday Robin is going to Darwin’s actual study to take pictures of everything to model/texture from, and he’s going to let Laura and I model everything in the room (or as much of it as we can before we leave) so we can have the whole place for our portfolios. Should be awesome, especially the it’s-not-coral part of it. Who knew coral was such an intense, tedious thing to model?!
Yeeeah Boeeee
So minus being awoken by the upstairs neighbor sweeping his tiny balcony (for over an hour!), today was pretty good. Got up, watched some puppy cam. Then ventured out on my bike for a bit while waiting for Laura to get up. Just rode a couple blocks in directions we’ve not been yet. It was informative, but not too exciting hehe; does help piece the city together though. I noticed today that Laura and I are well enough equipped to really get around the city and not worry about getting lost too much or stuck somewhere.
Like later, when she got up, we headed to Centraal, and then walked around a bit until we found the Roze Zaterdag celebrations from the huge Pink Ballon Arches they had up. It was pretty neat to be there, and EVERYTHING was pink. They had even wrapped pink satin cloth around the trees and put pink flowers, streamers and balloons everywhere. There were, naturally, tons of people in the pink’d square in the middle of the city and they had a major stage set up (although it was covered in standard black cloth, but equipped with only pink lights). There were couples of all ages and sexual orientations there, drinking, hanging out and having a generally good time. There was even a man in a bright purple semi-shiny suit which was amazing. The general age was overall higher than I expected at this kind of event, but everyone was in good spirits all the same
In the square, there were bands and shows on the stage from noon to well, we left around dinner time, but supposedly until midnight. We stayed for one band, I can’t remember what they were called, but they were a British Punk-Pop band who did some covers and some of their own songs. The singer was awesome. She had a crazy strong voice and did a great rendition of Blondie’s I’m Gonna Getcha. She was also wearing a NEON lime green dress which was short enough that we saw her bum a couple times, and that was no surprise.
Before we found the Square though, we found this Children’s park which was having it’s own kind of Indian themed celebration thing, and with it was this older guy and a well trained dog. They had this cute little show where the dog did tricks and took the man’s hat and such. It was quite entertaining. I took a couple pictures and will post them when I’m not feeling so lazy.
After we left the square, we went to a tiny sushi place we walked by between the weakest Chinatown I’ve seen, and the “normal” part of the city. The waiter sucked, he was friendly but pretty much ignored us. He also only ever spoke to us in Dutch and I was able to understand well enough to order a drink and food without a problem! I think that’s why he never switched to English. He came by to ask what we wanted to drink and I didn’t even pause, just asked for some water (albeit in English) and same when he asked what we were having to eat. I had a California handroll and some Cucumber rolls. The California wasn’t cut though, which was interesting and unexpected. So I kinda finessed it into my mouth without making too big a mess. Laura even called my last, extra large bite “graceful”. Eating win! They were delicious too, and it was only just over 5 euros together. Yeah, we’ll be doing that again. The waiter never brought a cheque though, which was annoying. He came and took our plates, but never asked if we wanted anything else, or if we wanted the bill. So Laura and I did our best approximation based off the menu and just left money on the table.
After dinner we were getting tired of walking about, so we hopped on the tram back to our bikes, and stopped at the store to get deviled egg ingredients, cookies, bread and ice cream. Well, they were out of bread (-_-) but we did manage the rest, and some good beef for tomorrow. But of course we didn’t think things through, as we don’t have any freezer space, so we were forced into eating the whole carton as soon as we got home. My, my, that was a tramaic experience. Gorging one’s self on ice cream is always a torture, as I’m sure many of you know.
Now we’re just winding down and relaxing, the way weekends should be
Cheers!
For the interested
Here is a test render for the scene I made the books for. Unfortunately, this shot makes it hard to see the books, but they are playing with various angles (partially to get a better view of my books )
Also, the ink wells were done by Laura.
*Edit: Also forgot to mention that because it’s meant to be shown on a planetary dome, it looks fisheyed on the flat screen. From the composition I think you can extrapolate where the “front” is. But the edges and everything will be stretched on the dome to not look crazy warped like it does above.
Highlights of the evening
Angelica was very chatty today. She made us dinner (some of the cheapest pork I’ve ever had), made us sit at the nice table with her and talked at us for ever. She then went out with some friends and when she came back she sat down and talked to us again for what felt like hours.
During all this I was also talking to Nate online and started transcribing bits and pieces of what Angelica was saying to us to give Nate a feel of what her conversations are like, and why they are so tiring. Many of these comments were without earlier context, or she said some things we didn’t understand before hand. Angelica does babble a lot, and without transition.
Enjoy.
—-
Lela: she’s telling us about chilean politics and being kicked out of her country or something.. and raising her kids alone? i only sorta get it, and the tone
[E] yori: …awkward
Lela: totes
Lela: she’s like opening up, and we dunno whats going on
Lela: something about not dating boys you don’t share a language with O.o
Lela: dunno
Lela: “1 oclock, 2 oclock, 12 oclock, dutch is not possible. in chile is not so.”
[E] yori: eh?
Lela: thats a direct quote, and i have no context
Lela: now she’s talking about poker winnings? but she seems offended by the idea of playing poker.
Lela: “no. I don’t know. You are. I see now in the future. When you come back to Holland you are here in my room.”
Lela: *yelling suddenly at laura* “yes lady, because you are 90…19 years. When this comes to me. I don’t believe.“
[E] yori: dude… what?
Lela: no idea. She was asking us about Frank, and then she turned to Laura and yelled that *editors note: I can say that we told her how old we are several minutes ago and she was shocked. But this was still random.*
Lela: “take or don’t take. and I say to take. Is ok. or more you think. or (brown wart?). If you think this is ok. go for it but never take brunt weight when you don’t know. because not so. because we are women“
Lela: “I have good feel. When i have no good feel. Don’t ask me.“
Lela: “many times, i think. she she is in the door. DING! I am here. 5-10 minute later. and the other is the same.“
Lela: “when you are a very small girl. 1 year. 8 months. in holland, take the centimeter. and heres, ok. one year. umm, sometimes borning is the babies with bick head, small body. but is not ok.”
Lela: highlights of this conversation will be emphasised in my blog for everyone’s enjoyment
[E] yori: sweet
—
In other news, tomorrow is apparently Pink Saturday, so Laura and I are going to check that out. Pink Saturday is a culmination of Pink Week, which is a big celebration of LGBT, with discussion panels, music, shops, etc… I had no idea it was going on until today at work the guys mentioned it being Pink Saturday, but didn’t know much else about it. If we find the crowd, I’m sure a great blog post will follow.
