Police interceptor

the honor of driving in this vehicle probably goes to the policeman that handed out the lowest number of tickets....

MFA evening

on wednesday nights, the museum of fine arts in boston can be entered free of charge, you only have to politely decline their request "do you want to make a donation?" (or not), and you can get lost in this enormous museum that seems to be expanding every time we visit. 

above was in the new wing of contemporary art. this piece of neon text was particularly interesting, as only in the picture you could see that the words actually have different colors. you could not see that in real, there it was just all white neonlight. i dont know how its done, but im sure it was on purpose. i forgot the name of the (danish?) artist, and could not find it back on the MFA website, so i cannot find out more about it....

we also went to the relatively new wing "art of the americas" where they had a lot of paintings from john singer sargent. this painting is in their permanent collection, and every time we go, we go see it, i like it so much! (in reality its much better than this picture of it). im not that much into "old" paintings, but his i really, really like, and im always happy to recognize one in one museum or the other. i just checked the blog of the sartorialist, and his latest post is of some lady in paris that reminds him of a living singer sargent painting. i agree!

Speeding elephants

the circus arrived in boston. and therefore their elephants, 6 of them, walked from cambridge to the TD garden, where the circus will be. i had read this on universal hub, so me and tim where present to witness it all, in front of the museum of science. we were wondering how it would all happen, as traffic was just buzzing by. but at some point, big policemen on motors stopped all the traffic, and there they were, 6 elephants, one little one, holding each other's tails while they were walking by. ehmm... actually they were racing! they went so fast!!! universal hub did not warn me about that! i was so surprised by their speed, but then realized i never "walked with elephants" (another great title for a movie?!), so what do i know?

before i knew they had passed us, and this first shot was actually the best. we had to run but never really caught up with them (i cannot take pictures and jog at the same time!). well, that was funny.... although i had expected an entire parade... it was just those speeding elephants and their guards, and many, many fat policemen on motors...

i realize i once wrote about elephants and testing bridges, you can read that here. well, this bridge surely passed the test!

here some more pics that i took.

Summer weekend

a summer weekend in autumn. this entire weekend (extended until monday as it is columbus day today, a national holiday. but everywhere it seemed business as usual), temperatures were well above 25 degrees celsius! we went to new hampshire to see the colorful autumn leafs... with summer weather. that was funny. we were there last year somewhere in october as well, perhaps even the same weekend, dont remember.. but then it was a little more chilly, and we were the only people up there. the skilift was not working (as you can see here). this time it was quite crowded, and the lift was working... but we walked up and down (i think a little faster than last time; perhaps running 3 miles every now and then is at least a little bit useful).

Jesus' investment

another wise question from the church, as im yet again not in a writing mood. well... when you invest in something, you usually hope for some interest, right? since jesus in this case invested his life... the interest should be.... more lives? well, he certainly got that. wikipedia just told me there are almost 7 billion people on earth at the moment!! in the year 1350, there were only 300 million, and by 2050, between 7.5 and 10.5 billion people are expected to populate the earth.

whether it was worth the investment is an entirely different question..... currently i would say no, but that changes every now and then.

good night!

WTC memorial

the 9/11 memorial at the WTC site opened this september. fountains have replaced the 2 towers, as you can see here. lit during the night. i took this pic from our hotel room, at 7 in the morning, new york just waking up on a sunday.... they are still working there, as you can see.

to visit the memorial, you need to reserve passes in advance, (they are free, however) specifying date, time and number of people. i tried (here), but it was booked until end of october. since we could see it from our window, that was ok. you could also stand in an enormously long line at the day you are there, to see if there are still any passes left. why isnt it just open for everyone to see? perhaps its just temporary, and they dont want this place to be overcrowded. there are 2 entrances, one for normal visitors, and one for family/friends of the victims. both require an airport-style security-check.

the two fountains have all the names of the victims engraved, also those of the attack on the WTC in 1993. here you can read more about it, also how they arranged all the names. 

on saturday, we went to the international center of photography in new york (free entrance with our bankcard!). i wanted to go there since they had an exhibition about 9/11, to mark the 10th anniversary. however, there was also an exhibition of the danish photographer peter sekaer, who photographed the usa between 1935-1945. those were really good. the professional 9/11 photos did not impress me that much. but... there was also a small room with many, many photos having something to do with that day or the WTC site itself, which were taken by "people". this was a project, i forgot the details, but they asked everyone who felt like it to send in their pictures of that day, the aftermath, or how the WTC looked before... and those were really impressive. some were really good, and many of them really sad. i didnt understand why they put those in such a cramped room....

Sport field

there are some sport fields behind the apartment complex. this was last week, or the week before, in the early morning.

this weekend its supposed to be 27 degrees celsius! but the pool is closed... today it was cold. and im in no mood for writing, as you can see...

All yellow

from above all i saw was yellow and i liked it so much! then i was curious to see what wikipedia has to say about yellow, and thats a lot (here). i see yellow as a positive color, but i do not have any clothes in that color (i do have a pair of shoes. i do have a lot of purple clothes, and purple is the RYB (wiki can explain you what that is) complimentary color of yellow). however, wiki tells me that yellow is associated with the word "caution, as well as with aging for both people and objects ("yellowed" paper).

well, with all that yellow you would almost miss the enormous piece of art in the midst of it. here you can see it from the front. i actually do not know whether i like it. its interesting though. its titled "Companion (Passing Through)". passing through because it came from hong kong, and with several stops along the way, ended up in the meatpacking district in NY, but only until this month. it is made by an artist named KAWS, who grew up in jersey city. originally, he was a graffiti artist and later worked at disney (the sculpture does remind me a bit of mickey mouse, but tim does not agree). but what i really wanted to know was why he has covered his eyes! what kind of companion is that? it took me a while to find it out. some suggested he is playing hide and seek, others that he does not want to see evil (here a lot of pics from the sculpture). well, originally KAWS was invited to make  a piece of art to be displayed in harbour city (the biggest hong kong shopping mall). when he went to look at this location, his immediate thought was “God if I had to sit out here, I would just be mortified if this many people walked past me.” since wikipedia tells me that yellow is also associated with cowardice, i guess that explains why everything around the sculpture is yellow....

Three ladies

i was fascinated by these 3 ladies in new york, but each time i was ready to shoot, someone walked into the pic... grrrr...

i actually wanted to post another picture. i looked up everything i wanted to know about it, but that took so much time that now im too lazy to write it all down. some other time then..

good night!

Slut walk

on saturday we also witnessed the SlutWalk NYC. above some participants are being interviewed. this was at union square, where they held a rally after they marched through the city. (just before we had lunch at some sandwich shop and that was sooooooo goooooddd!!). mostly young women participated with little or no clothes (a few were topless and they were photographed most; im not sure that was the purpose of their protest). the first protest march took place in toronto, canada, in april this year. they protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to any aspect of a woman's appearance. why? it was incited by a toronto police officer who suggested that to remain safe, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized". he later apologized for this remark, but the slut walk was born: the founders of the slutwalk observe that historically, "slut" has had negative connotations, and their goal is to redeem the term. on april 3, they organized a protest, and interestingly, they requested women to dress in everyday wear (to symbolize ordinary women, sexually assaulted in ordinary life), yet many women dressed as "sluts" in provocative clothing. since then, slutwalks have been held in many cities, with women dressed as above.

just last week, NYPD police officers warned women in Brooklyn not to show too much skin after a recent string of 10 sexual assaults in that neighborhood. well.... i dont know what to think. i think i agree with some opponents that say women should not protest for the right to be called slut, and i think it would be better if they protested in ordinary clothes. we, for example, just went there to see how crazy some people were dressed. on the other hand i do understand that a police officer cannot say that you should not dress too sexy as otherwise you yourself are responsible if something happens to you.  at the same time there were protests at wall street, already since 2 weeks, demanding to end the modern gilded age, end joblessness, stop political corruption, end health profiteering and ending war. on saturday they went to the brooklyn bridge and it all became a huge mess, resulting in the arrest of some 500 people. so i guess its good we did not go to either of those places!

Chinatown bus

as mentioned yesterday, we went to NY for my birthday! while the past 2 times tim drove us, we decided to take the bus this time. since we were staying in manhattan, it would be really expensive with a car (parking costs at the hotel; 55 dollars/night). many bus companies can drive you to new york, but a little search told me what i already knew; the chinatown bus is the cheapest, and the most frequent. 15 dollars per ride per person! and during weekends buses leave every half hour.

many times i have been warned about fung wah (the name of the company). riding with them is dangerous! their buses are crappy and you risk your life just to save some money! many accidents have happened in the past! i never checked whether any of this was true, but.... having been on a terrible busride to canada and back with greyhound pretty recently (they also drive to NY ), i decided that such busrides are scary no matter how much or little you pay, and booked our tickets with fung wah.

our bus would leave at 6.30 on saturday. we got at the bus station a little after six, and were hushed into the bus. thats the only thing the lady said; hurry, get on the bus!! else they were speaking chinese... we just landed into our seats when the bus took off. 15 minutes ahead of schedule. no word from the busdriver (as opposed to greyhound where the driver was giving a 15 minute monologue that was really, really irritating, and he did that at every stop). this bus did not have any stops (perhaps the brakes did not work?!), not even a short bathroom-break. but... bathroom was all around us, sitting near the back of the bus, we were close to the toilet and the entire ride the bus smelled like ass. my goodness.. it was really bad. luckily i had something to cover my nose and mouth, as i saw many other passengers do as well. on top of that, the bus was making a terribly loud sound during the entire ride (tim said there must have been some mechanical problem, which scared me a little). but... before we knew it we were in chinatown, at 10 in the morning already! not at some fancy bus station, but just somewhere, along the street. they had already thrown out my luggage, and the bus disappeared as fast as it came....

well, that ride was shitty, literally. but we arrived quickly without any unnecessary stops in between (other companies have stops where more people get on or off). the entire process, although in chinese, seemed very efficient and everyone in the bus was quiet (perhaps all were too sick and deaf.. :) ). we were making jokes about "fung wah". perhaps it meant shit-ride from hell? or terrible smell for cheapos? or.... just shit bus? well, my beloved wikipedia just told me what it really means:  fung wah is the cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese name, 風華, which means "magnificent wind." HAHAHAHAHA! even better than we could imagine.... including both the shit and their speed... :D

here you can read about the accidents with fung wah buses (not as extreme as you might think from the bad reputation fung wah has, although im glad i was not in the New York-bound bus that lost its back two wheels), and here you can read reviews from passengers (they are pretty funny sometimes).

above a picture on bowery, but more about that some other time!

Birthday weekend

it was my birthday this weekend. and therefore, tim and me went to new york! tim booked a very fancy hotel, next to the wtc-site. or now, rather, the 9/11 memorial. our room was on the 42nd floor, with many huge windows, giving us an amazing view in 2 directions (we were on a corner, so more windows!). it was really beautiful.... yes, i went up on rockefeller center, and the empire state building, but this was a totally different experience. seeing manhattan during the day, at night, in the early morning, during sunrise. waking up during the night and seeing this incredible view.... really cool (too bad there was this enormous flatscreen blocking some of the view.. :).

to my left you see the tower that will replace the twin towers. if i understood correctly, they are now halfway with it.

more tomorrow!

Mystery object

i cannot sleep and thus turned my computer on again.... then i realized its theme day! above my picture, do you know what this mystery object is?

its 1.30 now, at 4.30 the alarm will go off and we will have to get up.... to catch the bus to new york! yesss... we are going to NY for the weekend! is that why i cant sleep? i wish it was.... :) (and i hope i can make up for it in the 4-hour bus trip). very much looking forward to it, and to taking, hopefully, a lot of crazy pictures. hope there wont be too much rain, although here its raining like crazy since a little while.

and the mystery object? its a rather old photo, taken january 2008, to be exact. i was at home, in utrecht, looking up, and took a picture of my lamp!!

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Tour bus

there are many tour buses in boston, i guess from different companies. there is ofcourse the famous "ducktours" that both drives you around boston, as well as is able to go into the water (as they describe it themselves: a W.W.II style amphibious landing vehicle). i never had the slightest urge to take such a tour. i am somehow always annoyed when they drive by (and they do, very often), they block your view, they stop on the middle of the road to allow the lazy people to take pictures of the "sights" they ought to have seen, they cut you off while driving yourselves (in this case; tim :) ).

this tour bus i saw last week or so. and it is advertising for boats?!! so basically advertising against themselves? a lot of these tour buses also promote that they drive "green", but are they really green, when going through the city with so many at the same time? (often only half-full or less, as they just drive around and tourists can hop on and off).

for me that ad said enough.. :)

Feel free...

...to leave a response. on sunday we saw this message leaning against a tree in the public garden, close to the ducklings. i wonder whom and why this was put there, what they did with it, whether there were many responses... googling around i found that it may be a quote from einstein, and actually he meant to warn you for oversimplification, leading to a false conclusion. certainly hadnt thought about it from that perspective.

the past weeks i had been wondering whether this blog is useless. it sometimes gave me the same feeling as when being with a group of people. one is telling an interesting story, and you can relate to that, wanting to share your view or experience or whatever. you start talking, but so does someone else, and mid-sentence you realize that nobody is listening to you. what do you do? do you continue, a little louder? or are you embarassed, and stop abruptly? do you notice just one person in the group does listen to you and then you continue talking to only this person? or do you wait till the other person that did get the attention is finished, and then tell your story? and... do you listen to that person's story, or are you merely waiting for ir to be over? and, what does that mean? if you cannot even listen to what someone else has to say, and just want to blurt out your story, is anyone, ever, really listening to you either? 

but... then just recently people told me that they do check this blog. sometimes every day! and more people than i thought! and they also noticed when i was posting more irregularly. but unlike biebkriebels, they do not leave a response (while i like comments!!). but well, did i write a response on that piece of paper in the park? no....

so... i will continue, because i like taking pictures, and i like to write a little, or a lot. (and each time it makes me realize how hard it is to write down your thoughts... )

Cheer leader

during friday's football game we also saw cheerleaders! i had never seen them in reality, but so often on tv. it still is funny to see how everything you see in the movies is just real and normal here, while we (or me?) think its made up for the movie, and very funny (perhaps that explains why we have to laugh more often in the cinema than the real americans?). i was surprised to see that some were not superpretty! (i also learned from the movies that only the most pretty and popular girls can become cheerleader, so perhaps that is one of the few things thats only true in the movies). here they were holding one girl up in the air, i think there were 4 or 5 like these, and then they would let themselves fall down, all at the same time. they were also twirling their pom-pons around, but to me it all looked pretty useless and actually was diverting my attention from the game.... 

i did have to look up the word pom-pons, and ofcourse discovered a wealth of information about cheerleaders! how interesting... for instance, cheerleading originated (ofcourse) in the usa, but intially was an all-male activity! johnny campbell (he sure does look cheerful!) in 1898 was the first to "cheerlead" (i made that word up). only in 1923 women began to join, and with currently 97% being female, dominate the sport (there is so much more to read here).

but.... ever since the big bang theory, i cannot think of cheerleading without thinking about the conversation penny and sheldon have when penny is trying to make him feel better. she tells him not only he has lost his opportunity to greatness, but also she, when she was not chosen as the head cheerleader. it makes sheldon only more sad, as you certainly cannot compare missing out on the nobel prize with cheerleading. and more importantly, he absolutely does not see how she can be a cheer leader, not being able to cheer him up at all!! (i searched on youtube but cannot find a fragment of this.. buuuhhhhh)

Special effect

at the photo course on sunday we also learned how to shoot a moving object such that the object is sharp, but its surroundings all fuzzy. we then went out to practise on some field next to the street. ideally, this car should be entirely sharp... i need to try it more! but when i was checking the photo later on my screen, i saw that there was another special effect. the driver is making a face... and hes not wearing a shirt!! looks pretty weird.... 

ofcourse, some cars were honking etc, seeing us all standing there with cameras pointed on them.. :)

Thats boston

close to our apartment complex are 2 cemeteries, and i sometimes like to go there. especially when the leafs start to fall, it will be very pretty. you can get to both cemeteries through a small forest (can you still call it a forest when its small?). and i discovered there are several paths taking you there. i found a path i had not yet seen before, and just followed it, thereby discovering that the forest is actually a little bigger than i thought! i just followed the path (but aaargh, i was not pleased by all the musquitos), up and up and up, and suddenly i had a wide view all around me, i was so high up! there, thats boston, those tall buildings. then to the left (out of view) you have revere beach, right underneath me the cemetery and a little to the right our apartment complex. well, that was a surprise! 

i decided to walk on, but then got onto some construction site that was fenced off... :( buuuh. maybe i could have climbed over it, but i didnt want to embarass myself and get stuck somewhere or whatever, and thus had to walk the entire way back again. but actually i think that was nicer than going through the neighborhood.

here it seems boston is quite far away, but its only 12 minutes by subway.

Three miles!!

a few weeks ago i made myself the following promise; run 3 miles (5 km) without walking in between. and this had to be accomplished before i turn 30.... (iiieekkkk, 30!! 30!). now i know many people run easily a lot more than that.... but im not the sportive kind. i always liked swimming, but other than that, really nothing else. ok, i used to bike a lot, but for a dutch thats just a means of transportation. upon moving here, i stopped biking, as i think its too dangerous. ofcourse i feared not being able to bike properly anymore when going back to the netherlands, and thats what brought me to the gym of our apartment complex (plus i did not want to outgrow all those clothes i brought from home....) the past year or so i spent numerous miles on a stationary bike. my goodness, how boring! (but now i can bike better than ever..)

oh, but actually i wanted to write about running. well, at some point i decided to try running, and i hated it from the first try. but i just wanted to be able to do it!! so i continued... even got some real running shoes, but those turned out to be awful for my feet, and thus i remained with the sneakers above... and today, finally, i managed to run 3 miles in 29 minutes and 10 seconds, without stopping! jeeejj!!!! and im not yet 30... 

and im happy with that picture too! it might seem boring, but i could never have taken it without the photo-course i took. for this pic, i changed the ISO, the white balance and i choose a low aperture, while before all i ever did was changing the ISO a bit every now and then (if i thought about it). jeeeejjj! and also that before im 30, and my camera turns 1 (i got it last year for my bday from tim; hes also in the pic, can you find him?).

Parachute jump

today i had a "photo fieldtrip", together with julie. with 10 others or so, a real photographer told us more about all the buttons on our camera, and how/when/why to use them. after an hour of instructions, finding all the buttons, trying some settings, we went out into the wide wilde boston for a bit and tried it for real. that was interesting, and useful (for example; i wish i had known some of the settings during friday's game; im sure i would have taken some better pictures!). now i just need to practise, and really use those settings, before i forget it all again. its just... often you i suddenly see something, and want to take a picture quickly, before the moment is gone again (and im still searching for the particular settings).

julie also told me im doing a bad job here, at my blog. which is true... as i sad already this week, im often skipping a day, even though biebkriebels also wrote me some nice words!! so... i will try to do a better job now again.. :)

i just told julie that coney island is really worth seeing, when in new york, and especially this structure called the parachute jump. sometimes also called the eiffel tower of brooklyn, it was built for the 1939 new york world's fair in queens, and moved to its current location in 1941. although not functional anymore since 1968, the ride was based on functional parachutes which were held open by metal rings throughout the ascent and descent. in 1939, adult riders paid 40 cents and children a quarter. the trip up took about a minute and the drop down was over in 10/20 seconds. one time, entangled cables left a couple in the air for 5 hours, but the next day they came back to ride again! yet another coupld married during the ride.... the enrite wedding party was pulled up, and were let down when the couple completed their vows. haha...

nowadays, the parachute jump is protected as a designated NYC landmark and recognized by the National Register of Historic Places. there is so much more interesting stuff to read about it at wikipedia! (here)