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

Happenings

Two pieces of news:

1. Housewarming on Oct 2. featuring the Boxers and Alexander's band (see above)

2. We made it to the second round of the Change Your World competition! This weekend we will compete with ten teams for a 10,000E prize.

Lists

Even though the New Year (both Western and Chinese) have both just come and gone, I have already been breaking all sorts of resolutions. One of the broken ones is to blog more consistently, which I haven't been doing (Ellen you too!). Today I try to catch up a bit before I leave for snowboarding tomorrow in Morgins, Switzerland. Maybe I will elaborate on these later, but for now they will remain lists.

Recent projects:
1. Symposium on Controls and Modelling
Logo, splash and bag design
2. Krashna, Next Generation Project
Poster and flyer design
3. Editing for the university's new research portfolio brochure
The perk is that they picked my photo as the cover image :]



Sanne, Jorn's niece..

Recent events (reverse chronological order):
- Joined KTK in playing Makeup in the volunteer's party of the IFFR in the Schouwburg, kleinzaal. Awesome party.
- Chinese New Year's celebration in den Haag complete with dragon dances, fireworks, dimsum, and mahjong.
- IFFR Filmfestival
- Live in your Livingroom, very cool concept of having bands play in random people's livingrooms
- Skating in Nieuwkoop and at the Delftsehout.

Films:
- 199 Ways to be Happy (2.5/5)
- Achilles and the Tortise (4/5) This one was too long for my frame of mind. Was pretty funny though in both understated and ridiculous ways.
- Still Walking (?/5) I fell asleep during this one. Very intense family drama in Japanese and subtitled in Dutch. I think I might have really liked it if I stayed awake...
- Art of the Devil III (2/5) Fun to watch but really convoluted plot. I loved the gore, but everything happened too fast, the dying that is.
- The Pot (4/5) Made me feel sick while watching it, nice psychological thriller.
- Grand Turino (3.5/5) I didn't end up seeing this at the film festival, since I had watched it a week earlier. It turned out to be the surprise film that I had left all you can eat sushi for.

Pre-emptive thoughts

I am in the last stretch of my project. Just three more weeks and I will be graduating on Halloween. Now I am sitting in my office working on video analysis, procrastinating and dreaming of when it's all over. I made a list of things I have to do/after graduation resolution:

1. Bike to Brussels
2. Get off my fat butt and exercise/find a new sport to play
3. Get a job, go to job fairs
4. Finish my unfinished projects (that painting in the corner, make Maya model of my yo-yo design)
5. Practice cello in time for Jamaica
6. Write letters to those people with whom I have lost communication
7. Fix my portfolio and website
8. Participate in some design contests
9. Keep working on my project
10. Finish that PSS course
11. Figure out how to train my bonsai

*I can't remember the original item which inspired this list, so I will add it later.

Links to investigate further

Note to self:
1. Geovative.com, create your own GPS tours
2. Moving Audio and the 230 Miles of Love project, Interview
3. Roadtour.uk
4. Garmin, GPS navigation company
5. Blogging about 230 Miles of Love
6. Cool: tech and gadgets

Spring updates

amaryllis and basilicum

jasmine, rose, thyme, rosemary

Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

I've been doing a bunch of things lately but haven't had time to record them or reflect on them. Here's a list. Maybe I will go into more detail later.

1. Motel Mozaique 2008. Unfortunately I could only go Friday because I left on tour the following Saturday morning at 6am. My plans to volunteer again, get a free tshirt were not totally foiled though. I did get to watch Holy Fuck in Rotown, and some dude in Schouwburg. Lisa had some chance performer wristbands for us (Inga, Jorn, I) as we left the 1upToys 2 year party round the corner at 10pm.

2. Krashna tour (Saturday 12 - Friday 18). Four concerts in Hamburg, DUT (Denmark Technical University), Malmo, and Copenhagen. Numbers in the audience ranged from 15 to 1,200. It shows that good publicity helps. Also, I think Copenhagen is the most beautiful big European city that I have seen so far. Every nook and cranny is beautiful and filled with character. I performed for the last time in the Aula of Delft this past Tues, playing Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony.

3. Plants! This is the part I get most excited about. My plants are doing great. When I came back from tour, my basil had sprouted and my jasmine had bloomed. Apparently Vaniek did a better job watering than I would have expected.

4. Beginning of graduating. Yes, I am officially graduating now. I had my kickoff meeting with everyone official and everything. I am excited but feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything.

Movies watched: Species 1, Into the Wild
Books read: Art of Innovation, Debt to Pleasure

Upcoming: See Lanna walk or 1 week in California; koninginnenacht bbq at my place.

A Weekend of Movies

Without planning to, it seems like I spent all weekend watching movies and eating spinach (2 spinach salads in two days!). Here are my reflections:

No Country for Old Men - I watched this movie on account of having seen two seconds of a guy's skull and brain neatly punctured through with an air tank and cattle something. It starts out like a straightforward modern Western. It is obvious who the good and bad guys are; the bad guy is a great, twisted, and admirable bad guy. The good guy is slightly morally shady and very likeable. Straight forward right? It lives up to this first impression with great pacing, action, and character development until the very end where the film jarringly prompts the viewer to reflect on the past 90+ minutes.

Breathless (1960 version) - Wow, really great movie. I can't really say why I liked it so much. Neither of the main characters were as lovable as much as they were gorgeous, flippant, and unscrupulous. Awesome dialogue, nuanced, convincing love story, and a beautiful ending.

Terminator 2 - nuff said. I only want to comment that it is a good thing Arnold dies in the end so he and Linda Hamilton don't have to compete over who has bigger biceps.

Juno - When I went to New York a month back, I kept hearing about this movie (people going or wanting to see it), even though all I wanted to see was There Will be Blood. I finally watched it last night. It was funny and enjoyable despite the fact that the kid from Arrested Development and the girl from Hard Candy had the same exact personality as their other roles. The supporting cast was also great with Jason Bateman, that Alias chick, and the psychiatrist lady from 10 things (RIP heath). It didn't get too preachy and handled serious issues in a thoughtful, refreshing manner.

Assassination of Jesse James - Watched this movie at Inga's house waiting for dinner time (corn chowder, spinach salad, and Inga bread). Waiting for dinner time turned into waiting for the movie to be over. Although IMDB gives this movie high ratings, I felt like the whole production should have gone straight to the A&E channel. Good acting by the two main actors (too good by the villain - I couldn't bear to watch the movie because he was so convincingly disgusting and creepy), but the plot dragged and the story was only almost engaging at points. Oh yeah, and the movie took itself WAY too seriously and didn't measure up. I hate that.

IFFR

Last year I volunteered for the IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam as a member of the bouwplug. Under the dreads supervision of Waheed, I became one of the little minions who run around building things up before the festival i.e. stringing fiber optic cables across buildings and painting insides of warehouses). Unfortunately, I was so busy at that moment with school (damn you PAP), I didn't even go see one movie even though I had free tickets. I still haven't seen I don't want to sleep alone or various other movies that were on my "list" for last year, though the aforementioned has been rotting away in C:\ for ages now.

This is my one and only chance almost this year to see a foreign film (not English or Mandarin) on the big screen and subtitled in English. I regularly call the Filmhuis Lumen in Delft to ask if their sneak preview is in English or Mandarin. This is how I came to see the Marriage of Tuya in Delft. My other gripe is that films come so slowly to the filmhuizen here. Any independent English film takes half a year after its release before making it to theaters here (i.e. Scoop)

This year, I have bought some tickets though many movies I would like to see were sold out. To remind myself what I will watch at the festival or must download later, I am listing the ones that sounded interesting here:

1. De Stille vor Bach - Feb 1st
2. Le voyage du ballon rouge
3. Secret Sunshine
4. Flower in the Pocket - Feb 2nd
5. Naissance des pieuvres
6. Shanghai Trance
7. Hotel Chevalier
8. REC
9. This world of ours
10. Tout est pardonné

Also watched recently: Flodder - 4.0, Flodder in Amerika - 3.5, There will be Blood - 8.5, Bender's Big Score - 6.5