west pacific birthday

last night was great, met up with pina and irene and gang at west pacific. pina came with all kinds of surprises -- birthday blowers (?), caption sign/stickers, inflatable numbers for my birthday, bubbles, ... it was great. i got free drinks thanks to those numbers, not to mention hugs and kisses from absolute strangers. was the highlight to my day and the music was actually good...

getting ready to head to rotterdam in a couple hours for the weekend... greg is hosting this king kong party (once a month, 4-5 djs playing together?). sounds great, and since the guys had to work i figure i could go there to celebrate.

"bday surprises"

happy birthday to me

i just got home from one of the best dinners in history.. it was roderik and my going away/my birthday dinner. so all day in the office was busy, but a bit more at ease -- roderik and allard started cooking at 5/530... champagne all around, gifts, plus early birthday gifts, and a night of laughs, reminiscence, loud music, and heavy drinking. the dinner was exquisite -- roasted lamb, couscous potpourri, as roderik called it, and an amazing salad -- i haven't eaten so well in months! also, allard found his camera he had misplaced at the opening party, so we saw all of our pictures from day one... it was a nice note to end on.

on a sour note, earlier today i received an email from my roommate... originally she told me i had to be out the end of may, as they would be moving to barcelona, and her dad putting the place up for rent to a family... so i planned accordingly, started looking for places to live and took action. now she says, oh must be your mistake, you have to stay until the end of june. hah!

well i'm moving... and it took a big fight, and a loss of 200 euros to get out of it all, but whatever -- fighting is useless to me, so i would rather just go separate ways peacefully, without a lot of crap. my office is ready to set fire to my building as soon as they learn her identity. they've already made tons of threats... so i refuse to make a big, drawn out scene about it. tomorrow is my birthday, and i will be moving. i'm going to stay with yvonne for 2 weeks as she will be gone next week anyway, for a wedding in sevilla for a week. the big guy has offered to help me out, with the volvo we never took a road trip in... and hopefully there will be something left of me to want to celebrate my birthday. as of now, i want nothing to do with it but maybe a drink.

i need to go to bed as we have a very, early meeting to go to concerning the outcome of the vondelpark competition. that would be the best birthday gift hands down -- to win!

another enjoyable rotterdam weekend

left for rotterdam friday after work.. there was a house party at one of the oma people's apt. quite fun, and her roof terrace was pretty amazing. everybody was squeezed in, but it definitely added more life to the shindig. the night ended with everybody dancing and singing to joaquin's crazy rhythms on the cajon... he grabbed it out of thin air and just started playing magic. amazing! i think we were all blown away...

saturday che had to work, so i explored the city a bit and ran into mauricio in the middle of rotterdam. i didnt't even know he was coming to the netherlands yet.. so we caught up over lunch and some coffee and i left him at oma. i ended up meeting with cecile and remy and spent the rest of the day with them. everybody ended up coming over to the house and we watched bits of the eurovision, then opted to head out for the night. of course, it was just me and the guys, but we headed to some party greg was dj-ing at.. the music was super great and we stayed till they kicked us all out, at that time it had started to pour, so we decided to head back... we all lost each other and it turned into a long night -- i didn't get back to the house till 6 or 7.

spent this afternoon at oma with alex, discussing life plans over coffee.

ggd amsterdam

after my last, dutch medical experience a few months ago, i thought that i was finished and that would be the end of it all, but lucky for me i was in for a surprise. the pc said they would not trust my doctor's records from the us -- so i had no choice but to head to the ggd. the ggd is the local, we-do-it-all, medical walk-in clinic -- basically for people who need vaccines mainly or can't afford to go somewhere else. now i can say i have experienced the overall dutch medical tour.

i arrived early so as to not miss too much work, though i ended up waiting well over 4 hours. i came in for a polio booster, but in the netherlands it's a bit different -- there is no "polio booster," only dtp (diptheria, tetanus, and polio). they asked where i would be going and when i replied kiribati,i got the most shocked faces -- what's that? where's that? why are you leaving the netherlands? .... and on and on.. it was off to a confusing start as i explained in the us i had just received the tetanus booster, and therefore did not need to get it again, much less the diptheria vaccine. at first the woman was signing me up left and right for all kinds of vaccines as she said the us was killing their people by not using the correct, european way of vaccinations; plus in a place like kiribati i had better be ready for anything. after 10 minutes, i convinced her i would only be able to pay for the dtp, and the others would have to wait.

now when i went to send the information to pc, like the last results, they claimed they were not valid. that since it was in dutch they could not accept it... luckily i had met a doctor through another friend, and she was able to translate all the medical jargon for me. but really why so picky?

fbi infiltrating "vegan potlucks"

in preparation for the republican national convention, the fbi is soliciting informants to keep tabs on local protest groups

"nest rotterdam"

benjamin verdonck -- "nest rotterdam"

pecha kucha

www.pecha-kucha.org
http://www.pechakucha.nl/amsterdam/0-archive/arch-06.html

"creative people talking about creative things."

20 images at 20 seconds/each image.

highlights of the night:


http://www.designpolitie.nl/
http://extra.volkskrant.nl/gorilla/
genius team! they have a daily feature "gorilla" in de volkskrant.


http://www.dusdus.nl/
pretty sure they are the coolest firm around...


http://www.anoukvogel.nl/
i love her style and simplicity... pure elegance.


http://www.ilovekarimo.com/
creativity.

happy birthday dad

tu delft

yesterday morning the school of architecture at tu delft was engulfed with flames... supposedly it was caused by a short circuit problem and spread fire throughout the entire building. the fire fighters had difficulty putting the fire down, and there has been a lot of controversy here on the news and online... it was only about 13 floors, there are much taller buildings throughout the netherlands, so how do they expect to control other fires if 13 floors is too tall??

gli amici di beppe grillo

meeting tomorrow: 5pm at museumplein

schijnheilig

dinner at the squat.. over 50 people showed up for josh's delicious turkish food consisting of 2 courses. germans to the left, dutchies to the right... then pina, eric, and i in the middle. met another italian girl from milan and her boyfriend is right out of a movie -- the best mustache i have ever seen, competition for the rajasthanis. live music - groovy experimental jazz trio -- respectively from french, italian, and spanish backgrounds.

koninginnedag

april 29th was queen's night, and the 30th was queen's day... basically tuesday night was a nonstop party everywhere, tons of people migrate to amsterdam, as it's the place to be. the city becomes impossible to move around in.





yesterday was another nonstop party... free concerts on every corner, drunken debauchery, orange everywhere, a drag queen of the day competition, and just random craziness. it's also really popular to designate spaces along the canals to set up shop & sell what you want, this year it was supposedly "illegal" to reserve spaces, but you could see the taped outlines everywhere at least a week in advance. i ran across more broken junk than any jems -- old computers and broken toys for 10 euros. ehh... also everything in the city is closed, so it's just street vendors -- food, beer, and junk.





ran into a lot of friends on the streets... met up with che and alex and all of oma. partied the whole day, then headed to the grolsch bar in spui... where we spent the rest of the night, squeezed like sardines.