circumstance blog

March 25, 2006

new specs

After many hours in many optometrists shops, I finally decided on a pair. The thing about glasses is just that, well, i hate them. So all pairs are going to look bad. I think I got ones I could live with at least. I would have sent this to flickr with the rest of the specs photos, but I used up my free montly bandwith by being a bit stupid. I refuse to pay for more bandwith when I am already paying for it here.

I have been so busy with work and my business. I am also planning a trip to see my family and a few friends back in the states next month, which I am looking forward to. It is so nice and warm and sunny out today, but I think I need to stay home and organise/houseclean. The busier you are the more laundry gets neglected :(

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May 11, 2005

no comments

for ert

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take

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September 11, 2004

try to remember

There is a perfectly lovely café in the common, and today it was quite nice to sit outside. There was the slight end-of-summer early evening chill in the air accompanied by a nice breeze. Bowlers dressed in spiffy whites were playing on the perfectly manicured green below the patio where I sat with the dog and had a coffee. [Why is it that so many British sports require one to dress all in white? Tennis, cricket, bowling are three that come to mind, and they also are played (or can be played) on a green. The contrast of white on green now makes me think "summer". I tried to take some photos with my phone, but they came out a bit wonky so I made them all arty and stark looking with photoshop.]

Sometimes it is impossible for me to shut out every conversation going on around me in a café. At least when I'm sitting outside I don't have to tune out the tunes that filter through the air as well. So I was wise and brought my iPod with me this time, which I don't use that often for a number of reasons. For one thing it is too loud to use headphones in the tube, the decibel levels of the trains drown out the music. And if I listen for more than a few hours my ears ring for a day afterward, which can be relieved a bit by not using the earbuds and using regular headphones instead. Plus I like to be aware of my surroundings, I feel safer. But what a difference a spot of music can make at this café, whose location I love, but the screaming children, people loudly yapping away on mobiles and cackling gossips I can do without. So I relaxed with the Postal Service and grooved with the Black Eyed Peas while watching the world go by. Or bowl by.

towers reflection

I have come to the conclusion that most of my photography is graphical rather than story-based. I know that it may not be as exciting as other kinds of photography, but I really enjoy doing it so I am going to continue doing it, even if I bore the crap out of everyone else. If you click on the above photo you can see a few photos I have taken recently. They almost verge on the abstract, but not quite.

Sorry I haven't posted in such a long time, I guess I just haven't had anything to say or seen anything I wanted to photograph. I have a new solution for those of you (if indeed there are still any left, I know everyone has unlinked me from their sites!) who are tired of showing up here and not seeing anything new. I am going to set up an email notification list, so if you would like to get a notice every time this page is updated with shiny new stuff, please send me your email address. Of course I will not use it for any other purpose. And don't worry about getting tons of mail either, as I don't post very often!

Also, hopefully when I move this site to a new server (soonish) I will clean out all the comment spam and perhaps update moveable type too. But who knows maybe I won't! I am tired of the colour scheme here, but as long as it works at the moment is good enough for me.

Posted by shannon at 10:04 PM | Comments (1)

April 22, 2003

new gear

Yesterday was a fun day. Bill surprised me on Saturday by buying a motorcycle! He got his full motorcycle licence a few weeks ago, so I knew he wanted a real bike. A new cycle means a few things. One, is that I can start driving bill's C-1 if I want to. (First I need a lesson and a provisional cycle licence, which means I will be riding around London with a big red "L" on my bike. No, the "L" doesn?t stand for "Loser", although it certainly feels that way, it stands for "Learner"). Another thing is that it means I can ride around as a passenger. Although the C-1 has passenger space, Bill couldn't drive with one until he got his full licence. And also I think I would feel like a real dork riding on the back of that thing, since its not like a regular scooter.

So, yesterday we went to a bike shop and I got a bike helmet. It felt a bit strange, I never ever saw myself as being the kind of person who would need a motorcycle helmet, even if it was just to ride as a passenger. Then, after purchasing the only legal protection needed, I jumped on the back of his bike and we took off into central London. It was a bit scary at first but it was so much fun! Leaning into turns (of which there are plenty of, I think the English prefer roundabouts to actual right angles), actually being able to see the sights at street-level (usually on the bus I sit up top, which gives you a great view, but it?s a bit detached from the street), hanging on to bill for dear life when he pushes it up to 50, all thrilling! Its weird the person London is turning me into. I'm glad that we have a form of transportation that makes it possible for us to go places together at least. We just need to work on something so that we can take the dog along too.

We went downtown (am I right in calling it that? I know technically its "central London", but old habits die hard) to get new eye glasses. And I couldn't make up my mind, so I ended up getting two pair. Which one do you like best? Bill said that one pair made me look like the old lady in the Farside cartoons. Bah!

I can see again! yay!

these?

or these?

I still haven't heard if I got a second interview for that job I was talking about last week. I won't know for another few days. This weekend was really slow trying to sell mobiles. The holidays were bad for business I guess.

This nice American woman who walks her greyhound in the park every morning is moving away. I am kind of sad because she seemed really cool and I wish I had gotten to know her better. I guess I just figured she would always be around. I also saw a sign that said they were trying to close down the children's zoo. I don't know how I feel about that. I know I will miss the monkeys.

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March 08, 2003

ball of fire

Too many words in that last post. My apologies. Enjoy a nice cup of peets Garuda blend. Watch the sun set on the gulf of mexico:

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January 12, 2003

Clear winter sky. I

Clear winter sky. I am reading Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls at the moment. This book seems to match the weather.

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December 28, 2002

set up, knock down

I rode my bike around Battersea and Clapham this afternoon. The street is bumpy and uneven, there are no bike paths. There are many planes circling overhead, always the planes. It used to be I could hear the jets flying over my house in Bernal Heights, but here they are not so much heard as they are seen. Big bloated birds, they make London seem so important, people coming and going, always coming and going, even if you can’t see them all from your seat at Fresh & Wild's juice bar on Lavender Hill. People want to be here. London is an important place, so the planes tell me.

I have been trying to get myself together. For many months now actually, but as some things are finally sorting themselves out, like a decent place to live, it becomes more pressing. It's just a coincidence that the New Year coincides with my need to get myself on some sort of path. I loathe the idea of making new year's resolutions, to come up with a list of self-improvements just because of the date on the calendar. Indeed, making resolutions seem destined for failure. People who tend to make them are the same people that clog up the gyms and yoga classes every January, only to abandon their plans a few weeks later. (Thank god for that, actually. Who likes crowds?) I prefer to set goals. (Which always brings to my mind the CIV song set your goals. Come on all you sXe's out there, sing along! Pump your fist in the air!) Anyway, although I mention that I am making some goals, I prefer to keep them to myself. Set your own!

I added another list to my lists page. It's an exercise from a self-help book (yeah, I know, groan all you want) that I found on my hard drive. The list is qualities of my dream job/hell job. I didn’t really find it helpful at all in finding a job, as most real jobs involve doing crap you hate. But it was fun to think about, maybe someday a reality. If you’re not doing your dream job right now, make up a list of your own whydontcha?

Another thing I wanted to post was the song that inspired the name for this site, Silkworm's Nerve's from their Firewater release. Its not a great song, but one day it just stuck in my head.

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October 29, 2002

new hair

My arms are long enough for a self portrait!

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May 03, 2002

ZZzzz

It’s a new month and I havent written anything for a little while here. Why? Well, because I've been in a bit of a funk and really don't feel like thinking about why. So I don’t write, because writing makes me think. Funny that. I have been running and reading, that’s about it.

My good friend jane came out from San Francisco and visited for a bit. Mostly it rained while she was here which was a bit of a bummer. But it was great to see her and I'm glad she came.

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April 01, 2002

let sleeping dogs lie

lazy

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March 30, 2002

better homes and gardens

Yesterday I decided to go to Ikea. Not because I needed to buy anything for our hovel. (Living here temporarily it would be silly to buy anything but truly necessary items. I have been debating in my head for 3 months now whether a tea kettle is a necessary item. I have looked at them in a million stores, yet I can still say the answer is NO. A saucepan will do just fine to boil water, even if pouring it out can be rather tricky.) I decided to go just for the ride. Because of course Ikea is located in some far-flung outreach of the city. I just wanted to explore the bike paths that wind around the outskirts of town. I love that at every intersection there are signs with meter markings to other destinations "Diemen 10", "Haarlem 20". It was rather smelly driving through the countryside though. I couldn't tell if it was the fertilizer for the fields or just the ditches with muddy water. It was rather odd riding on a bike path that ran along the freeway, while listening to Elastica's "car song".

I ended up at Ajax's ArenA (spelled with two capital A's for the soccer team I guess) which had a shiny new mall next to it. It was an amazing modern architectural feat. I didn’t really spend too much time looking around in the stores though, because all of them were home-design shops. Every shop, and we're talking at least 50 of them, had its own little showroom, boggling the mind with a zillion combinations of how your dream house could look like if you only had the will to slough through them all: kitchens with shiny brushed metal stoves and countertop espresso machines, living rooms with overstuffed chairs and precision lighting, glistening hardwood floors samples and paints in a thousand deliciously tasteful shades. I snapped this photo and quickly left before I got dizzy.

I eventually found the Ikea, looked around a bit. It wasn’t all that exciting having just been to the Vila ArenA mall, I must say the Dutch have outdone the Swedes in this round.

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March 17, 2002

the night walk

I began the afternoon innocently checking out my web page's stats, to see if my recent inactivity had slowed down the traffic. That led me to some stranger's web logs, where I found they had linked my site to theirs. I spent a good while reading people's sites that are way more intricate and robust than mine (oh how I hate to use that word "robust" when describing anything other than perhaps coffee, but well, there it is), people who seem to live much more interesting lives and take way more photos than I do. I wondered how they found my site too. I'm sure someone somewhere knows the friend of a friend of a brother of a coworker or something. It can't just be pure web-connectedness.

So after feeling a bit out done, I decided to get off my but and take a long walk before it got dark, and take my camera along to see what I could do. These are some of the snaps I took tonight. Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

I still can't get used to the fact even though daylight savings time hasn’t happened yet, it doesn't get dark here until maybe 7pm now. There is this eerie glow that hovers in the early evening sky.

glowing sky

It rained early today, rather than later in the evening like it usually does. Not a day doesn’t go by without some sort of damp.

The ice rink behind the museum seems to be on its last legs, melting away

I took the dog and headed east, through the Rijksmuseum

I love that you can ride your bike right into the middle of the Rijksmuseum, through this echoic corridor

I ended up in a part of town that was crammed with antique stores. I took a few photos of the creepy dolls in a storefront.

And of course, the obligatory dog picture

I am starting to understand why I like to take photos. Just looking though a lens, makes everything sharper, makes the ordinary something more than it is. At least for me.

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March 05, 2002

dutch treat

Rode out to the park today to take some photos and give the doggie some exercise. Most came out pretty boring, so I started fooling around with color curves in photoshop and came up with something interesting. It looks as if this picture was taken at sunset, but it wasn’t. I kinda like it. I wish I knew more about color photography in general, and how these color curves work.

Another thing I like: the doggie treat vending machine at the pancake house in the park. People stop in for a cup of coffee verkeerd (white coffee or coffee with steamed milk, it translates literally to "wrong coffee", which I can now pronounce and order correctly, at which point I get an earful of Dutch back at me. Just because I can order coffee people, doesn’t mean I speak your language!!) and the dogs don't have to beg for your silly little sugar cookie that comes with it. The very fact that dogs can come in to restaurants and cafes, or ride public transportation makes Amsterdam a much nicer place for Misha. And for me too!

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March 04, 2002

frothy

I found out today that the fluffy doll cake phenomenon isn't native to north america.

This photo was taken in a kinder-shop in the neighborhood. This one, while not using an actual Barbie doll, does bear striking similarity to her Barbie cousin across the pond. She may be made to resemble Maxima, new princess of the Netherlands, in her wedding gown. I wonder why it is that these dolls always have their arms in the air, as if an imaginary robber is saying: "Hands in the air! This is a stick up!" Or maybe its more like: "Come and get it! EAT ME!"

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February 27, 2002

windy city

It was another extremely windy day. Not the best day to take a bike ride, but the clouds, the clouds! Big puffy clouds rolling by in a bright blue sky brought me out.

I thought I might try to take some pictures on the pretty bike path along the water, but it was very difficult, managing the dog and the bike with the wind. So one photo with a smudge on it is all you get. I have been scouting out places to run, and this bike path looks fab.

We had to stop in a café half way home, in order to thaw out some of my fingers. The locals bought misha a beer, which she drank 2 saucers full of, while I had a quick coffee, with the obligatory cookie. I have yet to have a coffee served to me here that didn't also include a tiny biscuit. We both stumbled home against the wind. The end.

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February 21, 2002

leg up

Yesterday we went to the Van Gogh museum. The art was wonderful, but the exhibit itself was rather disturbing. It seemed as if Van Gogh was always trying to please Gauguin, even though his natural style was so different. Also it seemed as if Van Gogh was much more optimistic, yet he was the one who killed himself. Maybe he was too busy trying to please everyone else that he forgot about himself.

Although, another thing the exhibit highlighted was how much these artists seemed to be obsessed with themselves. There were numerous self-portraits, portraits of each other, as well as objects representing the artists and even the artists casting themselves as biblical figures (ok, only Gauguin cast himself as Christ, while Van Gogh replaced Christ with a symbolic yellow sun). Is that what you need in order to go down in history as a great artist, lots of self-portraits? If this is the case, I want to be covered, so last night I attempted my own sort of self portrait. When you're a photographer, though, you don’t have the same freedom as a painter. I decided to do something a bit different. So, here is a part of me anyway.

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February 18, 2002

low light

Went out tonight on my bike to get some ice cream at Australian and attempt some night photography. The camera I'm currently working with isn’t really optimal for low-light. I am really going to have to hunt down a place where I can develop and print my own film as well as scan it. Seems like a lot of work, considering none of it is needed with digital but I just can't afford a real digital camera right now, and I still want to work at a certain level. wah.

Posted by shannon at 11:24 PM | Comments (2)

February 17, 2002

not much

So there was no entry yesterday, or the day before. Oh well. I can't do this every single day, but I still aim to, so that I at least hit 5 out of 7 days. Kind of like going to the gym, you just go everyday until you feel you need a rest.

I needed a big rest. I have been in a really foul mood the past few days. On Friday I decided to try and run a new route, only to get severely lost in bone chilling wind an extra half an hour. Getting lost is fun when you're on your bike in a warm jacket and gloves, getting lost is not so nice on foot in running tights and a t-shirt.

Yesterday I moped around most of the afternoon and then dragged myself out to the movies. I hate the movies, but I figured it was at least something to get me up and moving. But I saw Ghost World, which, while being a pretty good movie, just seemed to put me in a deeper funk. Next time I'll try to go see something with hunky leading men and lots of action if I want distraction.

I contributed a few photos to the mirror project.

This one is of me and bill at the Heineken Experience, one of their breweries that gives cheesy tours now instead of making beer. It's close to here so we figured we go and enjoy the cheap beer and exhibits about hops and barley.

Posted by shannon at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2002

Sarphati Park

I decided to take some photos (sorry, i'll make something prettier than a directory list soon) of the park across the street, Sarphatipark. Living like most do here, in a flat, you don't have a yard or even a patch of dirt like I did in San Francisco. So parks are very important. I consider this park my backyard, as do most of the people in the neighborhood. I walk or ride through it or along it at least once a day.

It's a cozy little spot of green and brown. You can see people feeding the ducks or children playing in their own sandy playground area. There is a small basketball court and even tables for table tennis (which people actually use). I've seen people jogging on the pebble trails. (Since the park is the size of a city block, it would take quite a few laps just to hit one mile, which is why I ride the 25 minutes on my bike to run in the amsterdamse bos.) There are even sculptures and a tiny waterfall, all looked down upon from all sides by the 4-story brick faces of the surrounding houses.

I take my dog there, and try to keep her from eating the stale bread on the ground left for the birds. Dogs are permitted to run off leash, in the dog half of the park (Dogs can go pretty much anywhere off-leash, but that's another story.) Back home there were only a few places in the city where dogs could run free, and those places became fewer every year. The park is divided in half by a pond running its length, and has bridges that cross over in a few locations. Dogs are not allowed in the north part of the park (where the children's playground resides), and each bridge has a cattle-guard type of grating to keep the dogs from crossing over. The non-dog part of the park is only slightly nicer than the dog part. Its nice if you don't like dogs. Or, if you're a cat:

Posted by shannon at 10:49 PM | Comments (1)