December 30

I've been reading stories for the poor children in the public library. It seems that my warm and honey-like voice has a very calming effect on them.

December 28

Today I discovered the flee market at Waterlooplein. Everything is really cheap. Buy shirts, sweaters, boots, pants for prices around 2 euro.

December 27

Today I finished a painting I started over a year ago. It's a painting of Joanna Newsom and I'm really happy with the result!
I spent many hours on this one...

December 22

Today I followed the exchange student from Estonia to his high school and pretended to be a exchange-student as well. It was so much fun. Many people were very enthusiastic to talk to this 'Markus Olausson' from Sweden. I had to watch myself, because I could of course understand the dutch even though I pretended not to. A few times I laughed about the dutch jokes they made, and I even forget my foreign name at some point. But nobody seemed to notice anything, and I've had the most interesting talks with people which I wouldn't have had otherwise.

I even took pictures as if I were a tourist

December 20

IKEA today. Normally I'm not such a big fan of mass-orientated places, but the IKEA is perfect for a student like me. Good things for cheap prices. Still I try not to show too much that I am a slave of the IKEA! As I took the train home I thought of a little rhyme:

Take the products of your liking,
Choose a kitchen with your wife
Yet the difference is striking,
When you're back into your life.

December 19

There's this amazing construction in the library: a mouse-mansion. You can walk around it and see inside how the mice live, the details are incredible.

December 17

For a long time I have been wanting to visit the evensong in the Saint Nicholas church. Today I had the opportunity, and it was really amazing. Almost as good as the King's Choir! They sang a lot of christmas carols, like Ding Dong, Merrily On High. The church itself delivered a massive and beautiful echo through the whole building.

December 16

I made a cover of Ane Brun's 'Words'. I really like this song, and recently it has gotten some extra meaning for me. One of my best friends has lost her mother, and in this song Ane sings:

'Words, take her with you.
Let her rest in your rhyme.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iPsHhbM3OU

December 14

As I posted a few days ago, the College of King's Choir is in town. Previously the tickets were to expensive, but as I walked into the library today I noticed they were selling last-minutes to this concert. I bought one and got really excited as I took the bus there. The concert venue was incredible and so was the concert. After the break there was a song by Giles Swayne that made me cry. I know that I'm stating the obvious, but the voices of those boys are like angels. The clearest of light.

December 6

A poster showed that the Choir of king's college of Cambridge is about to perform in Amsterdam. I looked them up, but tickets were between 40 and 70 euro...
There was one good thing: their setlist was online and I learned about an amazing song by John Tavener. It's called The Lamb, and the verses are written in 2 different tonalities, giving a very dissonant feeling. The chorus on the other hand feels very romantic. So in the end this song pleases me on both intellectual and emotional side =)

December 5

Actually, TODAY it's Sinterklaas. Not only the children that look forward to this, the shops can't wait either. Below are some commercials I've seen over the past week:

December 4

Today's Sinterklaas :)     lot's of presents... We all really enjoyed it.
Sadly enough there was an awful message for me in the evening. My current landlord, which I really like, told me his son had drowned during one of the floods in Thailand. I'm very sad about this, and the contrast between my happy evening and his miserable message is unbelievable.

December 3

Saturdays are for making fun, so I made music. All day I played Coldplay's 'Paradise'. I feel bad for playing such mainstream music, but this one is really nice. I recorded my version, have a listen below. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGhVjASviJ0

December 1

The second Taizé-service was today. It was so nice, I had a great time. I was worried at first, because I hadn't practiced the piano as much as I would've liked. But the people that came were wonderful, and the singing was great.

November 30

Got lucky twice today. First I missed the ferry, but it turned out I had mistaken the clock for one hour. I was perfectly in time for everything.
Then at school I got a free ticket for the cinema. The movie was 'Fight Club' and it was so cool. I felt kinda... reborn(?) after watching the movie.

Meanwhile, tourist guy below gets eaten by the doves on Dam square.

November 29

Today I went to the cinema, to a movie called 'The Ballad of Narayama'. It's a Japanese movie about a small village where people have to die when they are 70.

The movie was terrible, and with that very interesting. In one scene there is a man who fucks a dog, and in another scene a whole family is being buried alive. This film is brutal! Next to that, the volume of the music was ridiculously loud so that I had to sit with my fingers in my ears through the whole movie (at some points I took them out to hear the actual volume: the sound penetrated my ears painfully).

But I really liked it, maybe because of it's weirdness. The last scenes on the mountain were very touching.

November 28

Today, after breakfast, I decided to mingle a bit with the blog lay-out. I created the logo-picture, and I'm so happy with it! Here's a little explanation:

November 27

November 26

Björk made a wonderful appearance on Later with Jools Holland, performing Cosmogony. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duk37-OIoW8&list=LL5G6nczjY103LgFeTwuub1A&feature=mh_lolz

November 23

I was making music in the evening, when suddenly I heard "The library is going to close in 15 minutes. Please prepare to leave." I hadn't written down anything yet! I quickly jolted some lines down and wrote wrote wrote the whole thing down. Even when people asked me to leave I was still writing as I walked down the chairs. But I finished it :)

Here's some autumn in Amsterdam:

November 22

A great day. It only took 10 minutes to bike to the ferry, and then 5 more minutes to reach central station, in comparison to the 45 minutes I used to travel! Also, the city was shrouded in mist which looked very cool from the waterside.

During some free hours I decided to check out the film-festival in the centre: the IDFA festival. I was lucky and got a free ticket for a movie called 'the Strawberry Tree'. It was great, and I got to meet some students from England who had traveled to Amsterdam especially for this festival.
(After the movie it turned out that it was the director himself that had given me the free ticket!)

November 21

Ai moooved, finally to Amsterdam.

It was harder that I thought, we had to ride the car 3 times. (I was so naive I thought we could do it in one time...). Here you can see that the car was packed, having a mattress and a bed above us, and sharing the front 2 seats with 3 persons.

November 18

This lady had a camera I had never seen before, it seems to be for stability.

November 16

Biking in the sun this morning was amazing, Amsterdam looked perfect everywhere I looked. Regardless of the bad reputation, the city looked like a place of peace and harmony.

November 12

I found a new room! After weeks of worrying, I finally got a new place. It looked great, and it's close to the city centre. It has it's own kitchen, and a lot of room so I can invite guests over. The only downside is that it's a bit expensive, but I think I can afford it. I'm really happy, and relieved.

November 11

I'm kinda tired of Amsterdam lately. The weather is cold, and the people are cold.
Anyway, I edited a picture of a friend, a kind guy with an angel face. Have a look below.

November 9

Ah, the months of tradition have arrived. I have a feeling that the centre of Amsterdam will make heavy use of Sinterklaas and Christmas.

November 8

I was worrying about money-issues on my way home. Then suddenly, 5 euro was laying at my feet. It seemed like such a funny coincidence! Nobody was around for miles, so I saw no other option than to take this money into my possession.

November 7

I had a lot of fun playing the piano today. Came up with some really nice melodies which, (breaking a certain tradition), are written in major and not minor.

November 6

Sometimes our dog refuses to go for a walk, that's why we got this little cart for her. She seems to be enjoying it, as if we finally treat her with the dignity she deserves.

November 5

I went to see Nils Frahm yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot, tears ran down my face during almost every song. Accidentally, a classmate of mine was there too, and she told me that she was rather disappointed with the concert.
The follow-up after Nils was a performer named Hauschka, I hadn't heard his music before. Yet his performance was almost equally interesting as Nils' performance. He had attached a lot of small vibrating things to the strings, or things that would vibrate because of the strings like ping-pong balls. The result sounded beautiful imo.

November 1

My landlord said some really disturbing things to me yesterday. I was sad about that... I share my grief with this kitten.

October 31

Today I was going to see a new room in Amsterdam. I decided to grab a bite in a nearby McDonald's and got company by some people in costume! I forgot that it's Halloween today.

Later that night I heard that the room had been given away already.

October 30

Played kolonisten van Catan with some exchange students. This version is based on Holland and Belgium.

October 29

While biking through Friesland I noticed how empty and sad this part looked. It almost felt like the countryside of Scandinavia. For me, this emptiness and sadness gives the place a certain atmosphere which is not unpleasant, but beautiful in its own way.

October 27

Today I found myself having the perfect score for the music theory test. I'm proud.
After this I tried to hand out some more Taizé-posters, but I was walking through the part of Amsterdam which only had sex-shops. And advertising about the church in a sex-shop seemed a bit of too much enthusiasm for me.

After this I talked to a happy Japanese tourist on the ferry. He had been visiting the capitals of Europe, and was staying in the hotel next to the ferry. His english was a little bit under-developed...

me: "Is it a nice hotel?"
he: "Thank you! Thank you!"

Yet it was very nice meeting this guy. We talked about Japan and the cities of Europe. Rome, in his opinion, was a very expensive city and in Amsterdam a lot of people had traditional-looking faces. After that we quickly took one picture before saying goodbye (sayonara).

October 26

My landlord decided that it's time for us to start cooking for ourselves, and so I did so today. It tasted reaaaaaaally good because I could finally use the spices that I got from the Japanese exchange student. They turned a normal dish into an incredibly tasty dish.

So, thank you Mayuko!

October 25

I've been going through Amsterdam with the Taizéposters I've made, asking the owners of shops and cafeteria if I can advertise there. I'm really surprised with how many of them agree with this! Even in some of the more 'chic' looking cafes I was allowed to tape my poster behind the window.

I really wonder how much influence these posters have on pedestrians...

October 24

This morning 2 ladies came in to talk with my landlord. They said that hiring rooms to students was illegal in his case, and that he had to stop with it. They said that me and the other guy have to leave the apartment before December.
We were all really surprised by this. The landlord for example, has been hiring these rooms for 21 years now.
Oh well. I had started looking for another room already, and this gives me a clear deadline. Below is a game of risk I played this weekend.

the green forces are mine

October 23

The day after the Ane Brun concert my cousin and I recorded one of her songs, called 'Are They Saying Goodbye?'. My cousin was still in her pajamas, and sang the song in 1 take. For those interested to hear this cover, have a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQiAJ3ceAN0

October 21

When I was walking to school a couple of teenage girls were pointing at someone, whispering things like 'oh my god look at him!'. They were pointing at a Japanese guy who obviously was wearing traditional clothes. I spoke to him and he turned out to be a very enthusiastic person! He was happy to tell me that I could take a picture.

October 18

I went to see Ane Brun in concert with my cousin. She's pregnant, so the guys working there made sure that there was a chair for her to sit on. We were allowed to go in first, and got great seats!
Ane was amazing, her voice was perfect and so was the music.

... and yet I couldn't fully enjoy it. It was weird: I could hear that this was music of a very high level and that she was being very creative, and still the music was unable to give me the goosebumps her music usually gives to me. I think the show for me was simply too perfect. When I watched her as she stood on the stage it was like I was watching a performance on television.

Still it was a great evening.

October 16

Today I finally finished reading the 100 pages of homework for Musicology. It was a monster task..!

The work with Crystalline is going well. I had some about the quality, but I have decided to show the growing crystals in the verse and my face in the chorus. The crystals alone look stunning:

October 15

Today I canoed with my friends. It was a beautiful day with the sun omnipresent. The horses stared at us in silence and kept following us with their eyes until we were gone again.

October 13

The publisher that we sent the poster complained, saying Your picture dpi is below 150. We are not sure whether to print this because the quality will be low. I panicked when they said this 'cause I had exported it in the highest possible resolution (PFD format). I checked the poster again, zoomed in to the max, and saw that the quality was still fine.
So to hell with those publishers, print our poster without complaining!

Now we await the result in fear.
But the sun is shining, it's great weather to bike.

October 12

Amsterdam

Taizé preparations are developing well! At a certain site we could order 2500 flyers of our poster (A4 and A5) for a relatively low price. And they are printed on 100% recycled paper!
Also, a music-group has started, and I'll be playing the piano parts for these services. There's a 'silent' piano in the library that anybody may use, so that's where I've been practicing the songs these days.

October 9

Last week a friend came over, and I played a song of mine on the piano in the library. This friend loved the song so much that she decided to share it with her friends on facebook, who reported that they liked it a lot too. This was a really nice surprise.

I worked on a project that started 4 months ago: covering Björk's 'Crystalline'. The cover itself, the music, is almost done. The video on the other hand is just a collection of ideas, but today there was a lot of progress. 

I created my own 'bluescreen' and recorded the raw footage (me lip-syncing the song). Then I made the color 'white' transparent so that any other material would show through it. Like this:

Then I exported this video to the right format, and combined it with the crystal videos that I captured before. The combination of them looks like this:

I'm very happy with the result! This weekend I'm going to experiment more with different videos/pictures. 

October 8

Today I sat in the train for 4 hours. This was perfect, as I had to read a lot of things for Musicology and would not be distracted this way. I also slept very well, for the first time in a long time.

it's getting colder and autumn is really here now