Life, etc.

I've been looking for a new job...in the meantime I went on a weekend to Cochem, in Germany, our exhibition opened at the NAi, and we had our housewarming. Besides, the job finding stress everything is going pretty well. This week and next week, I have some meetings so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I also watched a lot of Hitchcock in chronological order and got addicted to the BBC series, River Cottage. In a few years I hope to be able to own and work my own farm. Gotta start reading those permaculture books!

nuclear test suburb we stayed in

exhibit at the NAi

pre-housewarming

i made a toy

i made a toy

This morning I saw a cute orange-ish squirrel on the way to the metro station. It was a smaller, cuter, less rodent looking variety of squirrel that I have never seen before with cute orange tufts coming out of its ears. I usually think of squirrels as gross, but this one was really, really cute!

I have discovered that squirrels are a sort of novelty to Dutch people, as they only exist in small quantities in the south of Holland. Jorn and Daniel kept taking all these squirrel pictures in Central Park when we were on vacation in NY, which I found very irritating.

I couldn't get close enough to it to take a picture of it, so I decided to sculpt it. Coincidentally, I was eating a wedge of cheese with the red wax around it, so I made a squirrel toy in the spirit of spielwarenmesse. Here it is on a dessert plate.

Pictures of MP3 reactable toys

here are the animals i'm talking about in strange, non-western colors.


Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

Nuremberg, Part 2: Spielwarenmesse

Today is day 2 of hanging out at the spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg. There is an overwhelming amount of exhibitors from every land (12 gigantic Costco size halls, housing 100+ booths each). I can easily lose myself (and have) wandering about. Just browsing, I feel a bit jaded because most toys fail to catch my attention for very long, or I find myself criticizing poor design. However, there are many cool toys and gadgets. Being here and seeing everything is very inspiring and a little bit daunting. It is really interesting to me to see all sorts of toys that would appeal to non-European/American markets. This includes Japanese baby dolls that really creep me out in a different way than Western baby dolls do. Also in the Silverlit space, there are some MP3 connectable electronic animals that are in very non-Western colors that I could imagine are successful in the Asian market.




I am working for Silverlit, a Canton based electronic toy company, who are currently producing the Air Drums and Air Guitar an invention of 1up-Toys. Together with Jorn and Robert, I have demonstrating the products to toy buyers. This mostly means playing Wild Thing and Seven Nation Army. We are getting better and better, and I am definitely developing my drum skills. What is very surprising to me is that none of the buyers ask to try the product...

Incidentally, I can't read or understand German at all anymore so naturally I accidentally ordered some sort of tongue on our first night out in the city. I don't mind though.. yummy. I also tried some of these little sausages that Nuremberg is famous for.

Yesterday evening we ate tapas, something I definitely can order with more ease. Good thing I am not a vegetarian. Ronald (our boss and former TU Delft student) has been eating soup exclusively for the past few days.


more pictures on Flickr...

Nuremberg, Part 1: Cultural Differences

I arrived in Nuremberg today via ICE (Deutsche Bahn's Intercity Express) train thirty minutes ago. Now I am sitting in my hotel room wikipedia-ing Nuremberg and waiting for our leader (just arrived from New York) to awaken from his jetlagged slumber.

On the way here I noticed a couple of things that my American mind, and maybe other people as well, might have trouble comprehending. The first point is regarding at least the Netherlands and Germany, and maybe other Europe. The second is regarding the color of U-bahn buttons.

1. In the bathroom there are two buttons for flushing one of the two major functions that can occur in a toilet bowl. One is significantly larger than the other by at least 2.5 times. The other is small and usually cut out of the larger button. Which one do you press for which function? Scroll down for the answer.


2. Buying a metro card for the U-bahn, I was confronted with a green, zuruck (back) and a red, abfart (continue). This is the complete opposite of logic especially when considering how the colors for go and stop in driving remain the same. Maybe it means CAUTION, you might be spending money on the wrong thing. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

More to come on this topic and on other toy or Nuremberg related things...

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Answer: big button = no. 2, little button = no. 1.

My logical answer would be the opposite. In my opinion, logically the button that should be bigger should be the one that is used more often not the reverse. Even after a year of pushing the wrong button, I still have the inclination to push the bigger one.

Poll: in your opinion, are the buttons logical?

Poll results, ok I lose:
Logical - 8: Athena (UNC), Gemma (UNC), Mike, Jenny, Jamie, Jean, etc.
Not-logical - 2: Shauna, Ellen

The results might be skewed by the UNC people because they are used to two flush functions.
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Grim Stories

I am off to the Spielwarenmesse in Germany for one whole week! This is coincidentally the Heimat of the famous Grimm brothers. In order to improve my Dutch, I have been reading a book of Grimm's tales I found in the secondhand bookstore in Delft.

Up until now, I have read 5-7 stories and I have discovered that there is an alarmingly high death rate for characters in my book, which is not at all what I remember from my English childhood Grimm renditions. At least four of the stories involved one of the two following premises:

1. Everyone dies (happy or sad ending, depending)
2. Everyone dies except the one who inherits the world (happy ending)

Ok, now I'm off to Germany. Tchuss..

Note: Maybe it's because I have been reading the shorter stories, because I am too lazy to read the longer ones. It's moelijk...