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

Oktober 7

Had a great time in school today. Never thought that music theory could be so entertaining!
In the evening I went to see the movie 'Melancholia'. I thought it was wonderful.

view from library

October 6

I discovered that the library has a 'silent' piano on the 5th floor, where you can play with headphones. So today I've been pouring my musical heart out, and loved it.

biking home

October 4

Awww man... water on my notes...

October 3

The third and definite version of the Taizé-poster is done. We are all very happy with the result!

October 2

morning glory when biking to school

One of my cousins is going to travel in Australia for one year. I hope he will have a great time, without any poison bites from snakes/spiders/scorpions! We went to his farewell-party and wished him well.

It's been great weather here, like it's summer.