Block head

I get paid to write today but I can't write.

Insert your choice of overwhelming dose of self doubt here.

"This sounds like everything I've ever written."

"This sounds like everything else, everybody else has ever written."

"Those words/sentences/tenses/phrases don't make sense/don't go together/can't go together/don't explain what you're thinking."

"You're making a mockery of this person's work/career/intentions/life goals."

"This piece is about as inspiring and truthful as a script for a tampon commercial."
 

Lessons in

... How to destroy a brand....

- Have a bunch of 50 year old people with no experience in branding, or feelings or idea about the definition of "alignment" get together in a room and do a dance I like to call the "political hot shoe shuffle", while simulataneously waving their dicks in the air at any chance they get.


... How to lose career confidence....

- Sit in a room with people of above nature and realise that whoever screams louder and for longer will get what they want. End of story.


... How to blow off some steam....

- Go to Karnivale in Cologne and just pretend for 30 hours that none of this matters when it really really grates on you.

I wish someone had told me

I wish someone had told me taking the first step doesn't mean you're 100% committed.

Or even 25% for that matter.

I mean, I know I often do that. But that doesn't mean anyone else is allowed to do it.

Don't give me that look. What look? THAT look.

I once said to someone,

"There's only one look that's ever on my face - and that, is the look of honesty."

Translated into: I show every emotion which is going on inside of me, whether I like it or not.

I know this because people tell me all the time the exact thing that I am thinking, and that disturbs me greatly.

Apparently, I am an open book. Maybe not a book. Maybe an open magazine with scruffy dog eared pages. ( Always lose recipes and pictures I like in magazines unless I do this.)

What is the opposite of a Poker face?

How about a BINGO face?

As in the game that old people play? As in, they get antsy if they are closeto getting their combination of numbers in order to win? Or screaming at the top of their octogeneric lungs when they have won?

I think I care too much about things.

I am way too opinionated about things that I shouldn't even be concerned about.

There are some words I should really be channelling at the moment, and I am going to do my best to start with these words today:

NONCHALANT

ALOOF

UNPERTURBED


I am going to come up with a technique for dealing with things I hear/see/sense that all of a sudden shock me/annoy me/disturb me.

Just like the Seinfeld version of "Serenity Now", I need to think of something that makes me laugh, or smile serenely. Hmmmm, what could be that mechanism...?

Maybe I could just go to my happy place...

- Amsterdam Roots Festival or WOMADelaide.
- My recent holiday back to Australia
- My recent birthday party in Amsterdam where my friends presented me with not one but 2 birthday cakes and sung to me in dutch and english.

Or maybe I could think about things like

- winning a scholarship to gastronomy university
- getting made redundant, being paid out for the trouble and then being offered a full time travel blogging job

Thought du jour: Why waste energy that could go into YOUR transformation worrying about others are doing/not doing? Some people are Phoenixes and others are fodder.

Dismantling the delusions

Sometimes, things happen where you say

"WHAT - THE - FUCK."

No question mark required.

The situation is so bizarre that noone could possibly ever offer an explanation that would or could satisfy therefore rendering it completely useless to pose the words in a tone that would present it as a question.

Sometimes, when you ask for a sign, a deafening silence can follow.

And that is actually your answer you were meant to receive.

Push the button.

I push buttons all day, everyday.

Keyboards for a start.

Phone keypads.

Light switches.

Elevator buttons.

Train doors buttons to open them. ( God forbid anything happened here out of courtesy, even the train doors aren't chivalrous.)

I push metaphorical buttons too: my boss, my colleagues, my friends, my suppliers. I may not like/mean to cause a stir, but the drama sometimes follows me.

I'm going to Madrid tomorrow to celebrate pushing buttons.

I've pushed enough buttons now to be happy about where these jabs and clicks and index finger driven actions have taken me.

Tapped enough keyboards to create enough of the right words to have the damn good life that I lead.

Dialled enough wrong numbers to learn some lessons and punched a few right ones to get a few good answers.

Turned out some lights on some good and memorable nights, and flicked them on again to wake up to a new chance everyday.

Pissed off enough bosses to get me where I am today.

It takes a split second to push a button and those buttons, no matter how trivial at the time, will definitely shape your life.

"Send"

"Open"

"Delete"

"Buy"

"Confirm"

"Apply"

"Call"

"End call"

Cheers to the buttons, the fingers that pushed them, and the hearts that tell them "Just do it".

The highs are high, the lows are low

It happened.

The holiday.

The amazing and random.

The discoveries.

The cosiness of being with familiar and loving people.

The thing that was a pleasant surprise that you couldn't have orchestrated even if you tried.

The moment you've been hoping would happen for months also eventuates.

After all the anticipation, it came and it went.

Then, the visitors leave. The alarm clock is back on. The familiar frustrations come flooding back. The uncertainty of 'what does it all mean?' wafts back onto your radar.

Now what?

Listening to your Inner Peanut

Laura: I think your inner peanut is good. You should listen to it more. Sometimes your outter peanut goes a bit crazy, but your inner peanut knows what's happening.

(In reference to listening to my intuition, which coincidentally, her boyfriend and her have named "my inner peanut." Funny because back in the day a 'Pinda' (Peanut) is what dutch people used to call Indonesian people, but in a not so polite or affectionate way.)

Even if they turn the lights out, the show is going on...

" Never ever put 'em down,


You just lift your arms higher,


Raise them til your arms tired


Let em know you're there


That you're struggling, survivin'


That you gon persevere


Ain't nobody leavin'


Nobody goin' home


Even if they turn the lights out,


The show is goin' on..."






I fell off my bike. In the middle of Dam Square. On a Saturday night/Sunday morning.


It was raining. I was leaving a bar. It was 3.30am. You make the connections.

Vulnerable was my middle name at that moment in time.

But, you got to pick yourself up, and dust yourself off, and keep cycling.

Because these things happen. And all you can learn from it is that once in a while, shit happens.

It hurt. I'm still hurting. I wonder if there was something I could have done differently to change what happened.

But I know if I had my time again, it would have all happened anyway. Some thing are inevitable, and you can't avoid it, no matter how many precautionary measures you take, or no matter how much experience in bike riding you have, you are sometimes going to fall. Hard. In public.

It was only a matter of time before it happened again.

It's not the first time, and it won't be the last.

Top 10 list w/c September 6th 2010

What's Hot

1. Dry September - 3 weeks of sobriety. You read correctly the first time. Not a drop to drink from 6th September until 24th September.

2. Commitment - Mattress Shopping on Saturday. Big bucks spent means more long term comfort for moi. Previous hesitation to spend up on household items went out the window since I slept for the first time in comfort on a FUTON in Hamburg in a little while. It's just not right.

3. Vegetables - I had delicious homemade carrot and sesame seed soup tonight, with a rice, carrot, beetroot and apple salad, a la Laura. Bellissimo!

4. Reading - It's the quiet life for me, for a little while. And that's A-OK with me.

5. Hamburg - This city has got it going on. What's not to love? Cosmopolitan, with a bit of a gritty edge, it's where media and shipping moguls wheel and deal, and it's flat. Also the city where I found an original Russian produced 1994 Lomo LC-A camera (discontinued, limited edition!!) at a Flea Market for 5 EU in prima working condition. A restored one made in PRC costs 200 EU online!! OMFG!! Lomographer's HOLY GRAIL! Check out more here.

6. Reunions with old friends and making new ones - Italy and Germany was good for seeing them and meeting new folks.

7. Nice guys - Love it when friends find a good one.

8. Having nice colleagues - Surprise Tim Tams from one that came back from Australia, cheery and helpful colleagues, and lovely colleagues you don't often work with that notice you were out of the office for a while.

9. Random 16 piece brass bands killing time in German Railway stations.

10. Scandinavian clothing labels

What's Not

1. Trains - No more travel by rail. For a long, long, long time.

2. Restlessness - Need to find a cure from within.

3. Faux-mance over Romance - Not playing anymore.

4. Carbohydrates - Overloaded in Italy and Germany.

5. Rain - It returns tomorrow for a week and may stay for a while. Like 8 months.

6. Aching - It hurts. Everywhere.

7. Overthinking mortality - Good time or a long time?

8. Indecision - It plagues me.

9. Facebook politics - U.G.H.... I just DON'T want to fret for another nanosecond about this.

10. Wanting a holiday after your holiday, and realising your next holiday is going to be just as frantic.

Repeat after me: I am resilient.

Art by Kwon Kyung Yup

"Be patient and tough;

someday this pain will be useful for you."

- Ovid

Miss Communication

I've been having this really odd week, where people are talking to me - in english - and I have no idea what they are trying to say to me.

It seems everyone is trying to tell me something. Colleagues, bosses, boys, shopkeepers; Critical information is flowing and I am on receiving end. But I'm just not getting it.

I'm watching their body language, listening to the words coming out of their mouths, asking them to repeat themselves- everything to try and understand what the mercury is going on, but it's like the antenna's broken and I can't seem to unscramble the white noise and process it into intelligible meaning.

What do you people want? What am I supposed to do? How do you want me to react?

For someone who is a born communicator, this is highly frustrating.

La vie est belle

Life was beautiful this weekend.

I have a magical life full of awesome, inspiring, creative, strong, hilarious, beautiful, and giving friends, and have been given more opportunities than you can poke a stick at in this overseas adventure.

Over brunch today, I was sitting with my friends at a table, and after buttering my toast, or taking a bite of my toast and eggs, suddenly announced "I'm feeling happy."

My friends just looked at me, surprised at my random outburst, and said "That's good." and carried on talking about something or rather. ( I think it was about futuristic asian indian fluoro costumes. But I could be wrong.)

And I continued to eat my fried eggs and sage. Or Portuguese egg tart. Or something.

La vie est belle - Happiness is recovering from my birthday shin dig I had the night before, sitting at a brunch table in East London, amongst some of the most genuine people in the world and having the honour of calling them my friends.


And this feeling continued on all day. The world was just so fuzzy and warm today.

Thanks Universe.

Remembrance Day and Apeldoorn syndrome

Since I can't read dutch that well (and admittedly, don't go out of my way to peer at news headlines) or understand the "heel snel" newsreaders on tv ( admittedly, I don't go out of my way to watch the daily 8pm news here either... yes, 8pm news.) I usually have no idea what's going on in The Netherlands.

A double edged sword really. Ignorance really can be bliss.

So, imagine my surprise when I walked into the office yesterday and my colleague told me that there was a big drama on Tuesday night, in Dam square ( the main central square) infront of the war memorial monument, during the ceremony where the Royal family commemorate the Dutch war heros.

"There was a ceremony on Tuesday night? How can I live in this city and not know these things?"

Thinking, thinking, thinking....

Where was I? Oh yes, on the tram home past Dam square wondering why there was a lot of security surrounding it. Duh.

May 4th is the Dutch remembrance day, and May 5th is Liberation day.

On the Tuesday night before Liberation day, the dutch do their 2 minutes silence (double the respect the Australians give their war heroes?) and Queen Beatrix lays a wreath in Dam Square.

During the 2 minutes silence, a "drunken tramp" (using the Media's words) started screaming because he couldn't find his bike (?!) , startling the crowd, making someone drop a suitcase, and making a crowd fence barrier fall, which the crowd confused with the sound of gunshots and consequently causing a mass stampede of chaos. Another version claims the drunk man was talking on his phone and when someone told him to shut up, he started screaming, and the suitcase fell, and someone called out "Bomb, Bomb!"

Since the public asassination of Theo van Gogh, the film maker and Vincent's grandson, and also since there was an attempted attack on the Dutch Royal family at last year's Queen's day celebrations in the town of Appeldorn, there has been an underlying air of hypersensitivity at public events here, it seems.

The instinct to panic at large scale public events where the Royal family are present has been deemed as "Appeldorn syndrome".

Watch the events that unfolded below. And I had no idea that this all happened. Until 48 hours later.

Double digit temperatures

Ooooooh yeaaaaaaaaah.

16 degrees and sunny tomorrow. Today an Australian colleague and I went out to the centre of Hoofddorp to the shopping centre and ate icecream to celebrate the first day of double digit temperatures in MONTHS.

D Day

Campaign launch day... hiccups with the campaign website I facilitated the construction of.... hundreds of thousands of Euros lost by the hour, for every hour of it's 5 hour delay.... do i still have a job tomorrow....?.....time will tell..... why am i here again....??.... what happened to the year of the Tiger bringing me luck and prosperity...???.... shit.

Lost - Reward offered

Looking for my chin. And my waistline. And my flawless complexion.

Coincidentally, these things have been MIA since winter started.

Have resorted to countouring my face with makeup to make it look like I have some definition, and wearing lots of layers of clothes to disguise bulge. Ditto for foundation on my face.

If anyone sees the aforementioned items, please do not approach them, in case they freak out and seek refuge on someone else's body. I need them returned to me in mint condition.

Meanwhile I will conduct my own search for these articles in places such as the gym, the solarium (only once a month for 10 minutes a time!) and the beautician.

Just think like a guy

"You know for guys, it's like smashing a wine bottle against our balls, over and over again... you know it hurts, so just stop doing it!"

- My flatmate's adorable Italian boyfriend, in reference to how girls obssess about past, present and potential relationships

Actually, I changed my mind, I have something important to say

I was supposed to go home today.

Well, I was supposed to board a flight from Helsinki to Tokyo, and arrive home on the 14th of December. But I was supposed to leave Europe today.

Today was the day I had my flights booked from my original itinerary, because it would have been symbolic of 4 months in Amsterdam, and I figured that I was either going to be lying in a gutter, begging for food, talking in tongues to the junkies in the red light district, or I was going to be ... somewhere else. And if, per se, I was in the former situation, then, better to just go home, or at least live in the knowledge that I know that I have a ticket to go home if I wanted to go home.

Well, I am somewhere else, and ain't that grand, because I am sure that junkies here would much rather be spending their precious time flogging off bikes than trying to interpret my inane banter.

6 months ago, I left my hometown to jump over the edge of a cliff I called "anticipation", and into a dark dark abyss that I call "uncertainty".

I am pleased to say that I am still alive, and my god, am I ALIVE.

I can't get my head around the last 6 months, it feels like yesterday I had to make some of the most gutwrenching "goodbyes" I have ever made in my life, and I still tear up about those memories. And now, I type from my (messy) bedroom, contemplating my day at the office tomorrow, having just got home from a bike ride in the misty, foggy atmosphere, from Nieuwmarkt, along the canals, and the houseboats and the Christmas lights, in the city I live in. And inbetween the date of June 8th, 2009, and right this second, I am sure I have felt every emotion that a human being can feel when faced with an unmapped, and unplanned future.

I just can not believe that it is December. And I live in Amsterdam. And if the last 6 months have just flown, that means the next 9 months of my visa will absolutely fly.

Laura showed me a poem that she studied in highschool, and I loved every word of it after I read it. It has become my mantra for my time here, I carry a copy of it with me every where I go.

More to write tomorrow or the next day I am sure, and I promise December will have more posts and 2010, even more so.

Miss you all.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-William E. Henley

Bike Maintenance and Shopping Behaviour

I went to the Post Office this morning to pick up a package from Ma (Thanks Ma! xxx)

When I got there, I realised that I would have to haul it back to my apartment somehow... and what was a beautiful Autumn day yesterday (translate: no wind, no rain, spots of sunshine, autumn colours in full bloom) has turned into a wet and windy day... again.

Luckily, next door to the post office, there was a bike shop, and I pleaded with the dude in the shop to sell me an elastic for the back seat of my bike with all the change I could muster (EU 5.70 instead of EU 6.50) He sold it to me, on the condition that I come back to the shop after I get back from London and Berlin, to fix my handlebars that keep sliding off... I promised I would.

Bike maintenance is just such a hassle for me. I barely took care of my cars in Australia, but this bike is doing my freaking head in.

I just bought a rain cover for the seat, which I always have to carry around because in the likely chance that it rains, and my bike seat gets wet, I won't have to sit on a wet bike seat, and because I can't be bothered getting my front light fixed, I bought these little portable lights that i just tie on to the front and back of my bike every night, which is SO annoying. If i get caught with no lights on my bike its a EU 35 fine. Now I need new handlebars, and probably some air in my tires, and I am just about to go shopping for a bell, and some spray paint or flowers to tie to it, because everytime I pass a bike rack that I THINK my bike is in, I can NOT find it for the life of me because there are about 20,000 ( NO FUCKING KIDDING, it's ridiculous) bikes that look like mine, all racked up in a chaotic mess. Add the wind, rain, darkness and usually drunken state that I am in when seeking my bike, and it's just a big ol' shit fight to get home.

But the irony is, the better kitted out and good looking your bike is, the more chances that it will get stolen. So you go to all this effort to personalise your bike, and then some fucker just takes it.

I can't really talk, I suspect the guy that sold me my bike wasn't exactly a legitimate sales person.

In fact, shopping in general can be pain because of the whole "no car" situation, so it's really opportunistic shopping for convenience of carrying little loads in your arms or on your bike. If I happen to be near a chemist or a Hema ( like Big W, but tonnes more awesome and stylish!) I just have to go in and buy stuff I anticipate to be running out of, even if it's the most expensive shop because I just don't want to spend my weekends looking for stuff, and I don't know when the next time will be that I will be near a store like that. If I move house, and am more in the centre, as opposed to the harbour, I think life would be easier, but at the moment, I am just buying things every day to get me through the days...

The dutch haven't really grasped the whole convenience shopping thing yet....like if I want to wrap a present, I have to go to 3 different stores to buy the paper, the stick tape, and the ribbon. The only plaza type place I frequent every day is Centraal Station, and they don't even have a full supermarket, (just 2 x convenience type mini mart things). I would expect a mobile phone store, and also a shoe repair guy there at least!! But nooooo... they just don't get it.

I then went to the bank today to activate my new card (banks are open Saturdays here, Love it!) and then I went to the el cheapo chain store in town (Blokker) to buy some house stuff....because I just got paid!!! Yes!! Yes i did!! Damn it feels good!

The rate of pay was slightly lower than I thought, because I am getting taxed 30% of my wage. 30%... shit. That's high.

Saturday nights plans?
Wallowing. I am feeling a bit low at the moment, the weather is making me a bit flat, and I suddenly feel like my life has plateaued into boredom.

I might have a drink with Irish chef tonight and catch up with him, but otherwise no real plans.

Sunday:
Mobile Phone contract
New handbag
SD card for my camera so that I can finally start taking photos of my house and put them up, and also of my daily life sights!!
Soup?!?