How did I survive this long without this vital knowledge in my repertoire: "Do you want a cookie?" "No, I don't want a cookie."

Eat, drink, sleep, work, organize, watch 'Scrubs'. That's pretty much sums up my daily rhythm right now – therefore not much movement on the blog. Here's some work-in-progress stuff, idea's already been kicked again, but hey, I still like them :)

Thanks to the Funkanimal for the link!

This was one of my walls back in my room in Copenhagen. Collected and piled this up during my 5 month stay there: posters of events I've been to, entry tickets, scribbles, findings from the street, postcards, presents. Just thought I'd share it.

That's what I didn't have a lot of this past week. And that's eventually also the reason for my scarce blogging the past days. So here's a quick update:

It took me most of Sunday to get rid of my headache from the new contact lenses. In the afternoon I managed to make a two hour trip to another big park here in Den Haag called Haagse Parken. Again it was more of a forest than a park – lots pf trees and bushes, almost no grass or free areas. The cool thing though: the whole thing isn't flat like the rest of the area here, in fact it's made up of lots of small hills and banks. And the second, even better thing: besides the big pedestrian walkways there are hundreds of small trails and dirt tracks cutting right through the woods. It's perfect for riding a dirt bike through it! Of course there aren't any big drops or steep ramps but it's still fun to speed through the brush.

Well, and the rest of the week was basically spent on working on school projects. Monday and Tuesday for the big 'Demonstration Manual', Wednesday for Type Design, Thursday for Calligraphy. All went well, I'm getting a lot of good feedback from my teachers (remember, it's all teachers on the same project now) who seem to like my ideas and I actually really enjoy working on it. The talk with Michel Hoogevorst was very productive, the one with Gert Dumbar quite entertaining – the school group meeting with him was accompanied by the consumption of three bottles of wine and several more beers, Prof. Dumbar probably drank the most... Afterwards a couple of the students went to city and brought the evening to an end in two nice bars – The Fiddler and Silly's. The Type Design class last week was canceled, so no feedback on my font experiments. Friday was kinda unfruitful – although Frank Blokland is really nice to me, I think when it comes to Calligraphy he still regards me as worthless scum. Oh well. Below are some examples of my 'progress'. At least I had that amazingly cool night out afterwards ;)

Hey, my first weekend night out in The Hague! But to be honest, wasn't really the greatest of all time. First off, it was kinda weird only being here for a month and already having the first farewell party – Sayuri, another exchangie from my class, is returning to Japan next week. So at ten, her and a couple of others met in the city and had some first drinks at the Café Paard van Troje with a live rock band playing, which was quite frankly... horrible. Old 'what-my-parents-would-listen-to-rock' performed by cliché dudes in tribal shirts (Felix, you know what I mean). After exchanging a few glances, we left and wandered around aimlessly for a while. Then Ege, exchangie from Turkey, had the brilliant idea to go to the "best place ever, guys!" – the Havana. Why not, I didn't know any clubs in the city and actually Cynthia, a local, had already suggested the same place a while before. She said that it was a Salsa place while Ege insisted that they played Reggaeton. In the end they were both wrong.

I hate to say this but that place might just well have been one of the worst venues I've ever been to. It had everything: cheesy decoration and interior design, crappy music (Top 40s, bullshit R'n'B, cheap dance house – cutting off the few good songs just before the climax), not my type of crowd (wannabe pimps and hustlers, brainless & skanky bitches, preppy upper class douchebags with too much gel in their hair and first time party nerds – basically everything you find at your local 'Großraumdisse') and oh-so-cool barkeeps who thought they were the hottest shit walking this earth since Frank Sinatra but took 15 minutes for a friggin' Tequila Sunrise and kept dropping their high-flung glasses.
I really tried – alcohol, cigarettes, nothing helped. It was just plain impossible to make this place look good. At about half past one I decided to call it a night and left, I couldn't stand it anymore. For some reason, the others followed (I didn't wanna spoil their night!) and even tried dragging me into yet another place. Not being in the mood for more 'experiments' I said I'd take a look at it next time. But as Vincent – the boyfriend of one of my classmates, Deep House DJ and my only ally that night – already told me: if I want good Electro I have to go to Amsterdam. Damn...

By the way, on the last pic, clockwise from top left: Cynthia (NL), some weirdo, Ege (TUR), Sayuri (J), Cynthia's friend (NL).