Australia Day

Australia Day was fun. We met up at Dan and Shelles (D&S's) place with a simple plan. Cricket and a BBQ in the park. Easy. So at around 2 when we met up the sun had started to fade and we had to move. All we needed was (1) a bbq alternative, (2) a cricket set, and (3) maybe some Aussie beers to start us off.

(1) We came across a dumpster out the front of a houseboat which was filled with wood from a recently renovated kitchen or something. Firewood, score! That combined with the grill from D&S's oven is our bbq. You're allowed to light fires in the park, right?

(2) We used a treated pine paling with electrical tape wrapped around one end as the bat, and a tennisball with tape around it as a cricket ball. Sweet.

(3) We knew of a bottle-o that had aussie beers, so we got some fosters and I got a Boags. It was good, but would have been better if it was cold, less flat and fuller. The reason it was flat and a bit empty is because this city still has enough bumps to shake the bottle and the basket on Shelle's bike wasn't supportive enough to keep the lid from being bumped loose. Ahh well, still had a boags for Australia Day, mission accomplished.

We made it to Westerpark at about 4:30 (an hour before sunset), found our spot, confirmed with a person that worked in a community centre joined to the park that we were allowed to light a fire, and we set up our cricket pitch (bin for stumps, bag for crease, and bike as wicket keeper).
The fire got going after a bit of hesitation and was blazing in no time - well, just enough time for the "politie" (police) to come, tell us off and make us put it out! We got out of a fine due to our combined charm, the fact that it was australia day, and our fingerpointing at the community centre approval.
With about 25 mins of light left we played a quick (intense) game of cricket, had a few more beers and slowly made our way back to D&S's to cook our snags.
Australia Day turned into Australia night as we as we hit the city and had a few more drinks at a few more pubs.

Good Times.

Brews in the Belly, No Bruise in the Back Pocket

I just bought a 6 pack of Hoegaarden for €3.76 (actually they say €3,76 - with the comma, but whatever...).

€3.76! For Hoegaarden! 6 of them!! The conversion rate, as it stands today, puts that at $6.30 in Aussie dollars (or bucks). For Hoegaarden! 6 of them!!

And during today's research into Australian beers abroad (in time for Australia day) I heard that it costs around €5 (8.36 bucks) for a VB at the aussie themed tourist pub. Has the world gone crazy! Global warming. Terrorism. And now this!

Pierre Bastien

The other night I went to a gig, pretty much based solely on the fact that the performer made his instruments out of meccano...


What Pierre Bastien does is makes these fairly complex instruments out of a frame of meccano, old record players, chopped up harmonicas, woodwind reids and hundreds of other things it would seem. The instruments are "looped" using cogs powered by dismantled record player motors, that push down the notes, and an electronic pump "pumps" wind through the whole thing. He then plays the muted trumpet over the top. He also has a live feed camera that gets right into the guts of the contraption and shows you, to some extent, whats going on.

Thats the deal of the show I watched, in a nut shell, but according to his website he has created lots of other mechanically played instruments over the years. He also can explain what is going on better than I. Pretty fascinating.

It was really really good, better than I imagined, and better than the brief youtube video I watched the night before. The overall sound that he creates is awesome. As a fan of loop based music (usually more hip hop in nature), but also having a big interest in more organic and eclectic type sounds (including artists like Tom Waits, Ennio Morricone, Tin Hat Trio, Beirut and so on), this was, strangely, a great mix of these two tastes.

He Works Hard for (no) Money

I have been busy working on a portfolio over the past few weeks. I think its pretty much ready to go out to perspective employers now. Hmm... Just gotta work out who those prospective employers are exactly...

Here are some images. Some new, some old, some re jigged, all in the portfolio:




I am printing it up as an A6 landscape format book. I regularly ride past a digital print shop on my way to and from my "office" (AKA Bens place), so I'll head in there in the next few and get an idea of prices etc. Hopefully I'll also wow them into employing me as a full time designer/print operator or something...

... By Night

A few photos, taken in my usual fashion of long exposure.

Across the road from my place.The colours really haven't been given the justice they deserve by capturing them digitally and then compressing them for the web. Those windows really glowed all across the spectrum.

Out the front of Dan and Michelle's place on one of my first nights here. There is a light dusting of snow over everything. probably one of the coldest nights in my whole time here so far. Guess it was good to get that out of the way early.

Same night, you can see a thin layer of ice on the canal and snow on the cars. I used somebody's bike seat as a tripod, so there was a real chance my camera could have ended up in that canal.

Same spot as the first pic. I like that it has all the elements: Typical amsterdam houses, canal and bridge with boat, and 1 trashed bike for every 3 good ones.

I think most of the shots that will make their way here, for a while at least, will be night shots. Thats cause its dark from about 5:30pm and while I'm unemployed theres no way I'm out the door before 4pm...

...relaaaax, I'm joking mum!

(Oh yeah, I think that if you click the pics they will come up larger. Works for me)

xmas/international travel/nye

Xmas:
Did bugger all on the 25th. Spent the day mostly by myself, my new bike (an oma fiets - or grandma bike) and my headphones, just cruisin the city. It was a beautiful sunny day, as many have been lately, so was more than happy to be out amongst it. Had a couple of duty free gins in the arvo with Ben and his super awesome girlfriend Judeth (pronounced "you death"), and 1 beer in the eve at home. But the "low keyness" of xmas was all good cause they also celebrate a "second xmas" on the 26th, and we had a sweet party at Ben's, and I got my obligatory "post xmas" hangover on the 27th.

International travel:
Spent 2 and a half days in Brussels visiting my good friend's Ryan and Chiara. It was really awesome seeing them again, and Me, Ryan and Ben have schemed up some pretty exciting things to keep us occupied over the next year. On top of our music project "Overboard", we are setting up a website to act as I guess a portfolio site/outlet for all our creative endeavors. Be it design, writing, music, filmmaking, or whatever else were in to, this site/collective gives it a home. More on that as things progress... Oh yeah, Brussels looked like a pretty nice city aswell.

NYE:
Had a crew of about 6 of us go to a small (as they all are here) pub/music venue called the "nieuwe anita" to get started, and then into the streets for the count down. FAARK! Fireworks everywhere! It was like a warzone! Will try and work out how to upload some video I took in an attempt to capture the madness.

In other news:
I now have all my stuff here (20kg bag of music equipment was sent separately as unaccompanied baggage, due to weight restrictions on my flight), and Ben's apartment has now truly taken on the title of "studio apartment".

Whatever time that is not spent out enjoying dutch things has been spent working on my portfolio and resume. Getting there, should be right to send around in the next week or so. Just gotta work out exactly what way I present it, printed or what. And who to show it to I guess!

Also, I have my camera cables now, so future posts should have a few more pics to balance out and distract from my bad writing skills.