Chagrijnig

- being cranky / bad mood -

Oh nooo...2009 already started bad for me. I have received The Blue Envelope from 'De Belastingdienst' (tax company). Which means good or bad news. OF COURSE it was BAD news for me and now I have to pay A LOT of taxes...Bitches! I was gonna save up some money for a new iMac but nooo.
I have to pay almost one third of the price of a new iMac. Boy oh boy. It's hard being Jack Daniel. Always struggling in life.
(I also had a flat tire, so I had to bring my bike all the way to a bike...thingy! Bikestore / Bike-repare-store / Bike-garage.)

Anyways. My sister cheered me up by telling me all these stories of people she knows being in bigger (financial) problems than me and took me to a nice place called Latei. Perhaps my fellow blogger and only regular Dutch visitor of my blog, The Man Who Knew Too Much, knows this cozy place. He probably does...hence his name. He knows a lot...

Check out these pics I made during my crankyness-mood to happiness-mood. Amsterdam is the right city which can make you smile again, even when you're in a very depressing mood and struggling hard to survive.
Thanks Mokum!


- There were these different lamps (for sale!) hanging on the ceiling. -


- Cups, boards, plates. Almost everything you see in this lunch / breakfast place was for sale. -


- Then, after lunch we walked into an unexpected Asian event: I think the Dragons are supposed to move the bad spirits out of the houses. But only the places where they had how do you call this in english? for the Dragons. -


- Hanging up the food which the Dragons had to eat. -


- Cute Dragon. -


- My sister. Scared like a mouse of what's coming up next! -


- Firecrackers! -


- And then we moved along. Walking over the little bridges to cross the canals. -


- Of course, we came across lots and lots of bicycles! -


- Almost near our place. This picture (of Sarphatistreet) was taken when we were walking through Sarphatipark.. -

Nieuwe ronde, Nieuwe kansen

Yeah, 'New round, New chances! It's 2009. Let's do it all over again.

Oh my LORD. What a night. I celebrated New Years Eve with friends starting with a nice dinner and booze. I'm glad we didn't had any fireworks because most of us were quite drunk at twelve. We would've blown our hands off, for sure.


- One of my mates bought some very nice thin cigars...I'm not a smoker. But yesterday, I smoked (a half!!) one. (This is not a 'blunt'!) -


- My friend, Eva, lives on the third floor so we had a good view! Yeah, sorry it's not a sharp picture but I had to be very fast for this one. If you look closely, you can see the trail of fire. :) -


- This was somewhere else. Me and a friend were going to this other party where his girlfriend was. But a lot of people were about to leave to a bar somewhere around the corner. So...they left us with a lot of drinks...hahaha...oh boy. -


- The place had a great view of the 'Maagdenbrug'. -


- My mate's girlfriend...drunk as hell! We didn't expect that, so we stayed there to take care of her. Poor thing. I fell asleep until 9-ish in the morning and around that time, we all decided it was time to go back home. -


- It looks like they had a party on this bridge! I hope no one fell off from this bridge into the water. But later that day, I heard on the news that they found a body of a man in one of the canals... -


- Fireworks... -


- Bikes -

If you reach the year 2010, I hope you're going to look back to 2009 with no regrets. Live your life to the max because it will be all over before you know it.

Last post...

...of this year!

I don't have the time to make a beautiful post with some nice pictures. So instead, just a picture of a text I found online.

I wish you all the best in the new year!
I hope 2009 will become an even better year than 2008. I have my doubts about that because 2008 was a very special year to me. Probably one of the best years of my whole life.

Enough rambling.

Have a great day / evening / night...

I hope to see you all in 2009!

It's Kwistmus!

explanation of the title of this post: that's what my sister said the whooole time


- What time is it? -


- 'It's Kwistmus time!!' -


- With one Bonbon to share with the whooole family! (Just kiddin'...) -


- And then it was time to go back to Amsterdam -


- Goodby boring Ede. It was okay to see you again. But I love my parents who are still living in this lil-nothing-special-to-do-getting-bored-and-getting-violent-very-easily-town and it was good to see them again. -


- Hello Amsterdam. I love you. -

Cousin in Amsterdam

My cousin from Doetinchem (a place, waaay back in the east of The Netherlands) came to visit me in Amsterdam. And of course I had to show him around town!

Well...here are a few pics I made tonight!


- Near the famous 'Spui square' -


- Taken near the huge warehouse called 'De Bijenkorf' -


- Close up shot! -


- Taken in de cozy Utrechtsestraat -


- Damstraat -


-Dam -

Well, me and my sister are going to visit our parents tomorrow...'cause it's Christmas!
Happy Holidays to all of you...!

G/L/A/S/S/C/A/N/D/Y

Karl Lagerfeld likes their music. (Picture by The Sartorialist)

It's Glass Candy (Portland, Oregon, USA) y'all. With the very beautiful, sexy voiced Ida No and producer Johnny Jewel. I've been to their concert a few weeks ago in Amsterdam's 'Paradiso' club. Their music is a mixture of 'Electro-pop/Italo-Disco', if I'm correct...:) I've been constantly playing their album ('B/E/A/T/B/O/X') over and over again, ever since I got it...for free (they threw a bunch of CD's into the crowd!) at their concert.





Here, you can read an interview with them and also listen to a track called 'Miss Broadway'. Check it out.

And also listen to the track called 'Candy Castle', which they've mentioned in the interview. Just click on the 'play' symbol........haha.

Can you imagine those models walking down the catwalk in Karl Lagerfeld's designs while 'Candy Castle' is playing in the background...?

Wandering 'round the house.

Yesterday...,


- I was sitting on bed...and decided to take some pictures of my room -


- My sister was really nervous about today. Because she was going to the selection-day of an Art school here in Amsterdam. But she passed!!! And is now going to the next round. This little piece of drawing is about a Bird Of Paradise which is captured by something...I can't remember what those things are, around that black bird. -


- And this one is taken through my bedroom window -

yyellowbird

-created by Me!-

It's yyellowbird! Check out her work on her Flickr-page. I'm trying to create those bokeh-thingy's like she does. She always has these nice bokeh-lightnings on her pictures. Recently, I did it by accident...!!!

Papa & Mama in Ede-Wageningen

I went to visit my parents today in Ede.


- My dad kind of redecorated the living room -


- Ede-Wageningen. A quite important 'stop' here in The Netherlands -





- Empty platform! I always take the train when going all the way to the middle of The Netherlands, Gelderland. -


- Made by accident! -

Lykke Li - Live @ Paradiso - Amsterdam - dec. 6th - saturday - 1am

Awww, last saturday I was at Lykke Li's nightconcert at Paradiso.


- Lykke and the smoke machine -


- The lights were off, so that was the right moment for me to keep shooting. As they got brighter and brighter, they revealed a resting Lykke. -


- Swingin' Lykke -

I recorded the whole concert with a Micromemo, but most of the time it was (as expected) not really good. A lot of distortion.

But here's small clip of one of my favorite Lykke Li songs: Everybody but me.
(Thanks to The Man...'s blog I got me a flash mp3 player as well. Hahaha...)

The House Of Viktor & Rolf

Illegal shit right here, baby!

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this picture because it's an official press picture made by 'Blommers en Schumm'. I don't want to post other peoples work on my blog but I received this picture in my mailbox at work from the Centraal Museum in Utrecht where you can check out the exhibition of 'The House Of Viktor & Rolf'. And I just thought this was a cool picture!



- Viktor & Rolf and their porcelain dolls -

I will post my own work later this weekend. Hold tight!! It's coming!