Apparently I never posted the link to this year's carnaval party on here!
It was another success with a good amount of visitors, of which most hated the genuine carnaval music haha. But I got drunk big time and had a brilliant time. Again no headache or other physical discomforts the next day so I've truly figured out how to get drunk and still have a great time the morning after!
Didn't shoot that many pics since I was too busy getting drunk but click HERE to see them.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
rainy spring
Last post for today :-)
Recently started playing soccer again which feels good after gaining some weight during the winter time. Today's weather was perfect for soccer: bit chilly, slight rain and enough guys who showed up.
Btw, one of the Tepper guys shot some cool pics of last week's game. Click HERE for those pics and if you're only interested in seeing sexy me then click HERE.
My legs don't feel too shabby so all good. Just my head feels rather drowsy after playing soccer. No idea why but if you find spelling errors and such in these posts of today then you know what the cause is!
This Friday (April 18) we'll be going to the Hungarian food place again. Third time for me and I love Alexander's food! Genuine Hungarian food rules y'all!
Spring time has arrived, temperatures still jump up and down quite a bit here in Pittsburgh but by now I've gotten used to that. And since my deviated septum surgery I haven't gotten a single cold or flu. Knock on wood!
Speaking of my septum, I had my last appointment with the nose doctor last Friday. He said my nose is healed for 90% and the remaining 10% should be healed in about 2 months from now.
I don't have any real problems, just still some irritation spots in my nose. I'm sure it will take plenty of time to fully heal but no worries.
Soon enough summer will be here and I'll be going to MDF with Joost and Iwan, ICLS conference in Utrecht, Graspop festival in Dessel, CIM festival in Urbana-Champaign and CogSci conference in Washington DC!
Yay for traveling!
Recently started playing soccer again which feels good after gaining some weight during the winter time. Today's weather was perfect for soccer: bit chilly, slight rain and enough guys who showed up.
Btw, one of the Tepper guys shot some cool pics of last week's game. Click HERE for those pics and if you're only interested in seeing sexy me then click HERE.
My legs don't feel too shabby so all good. Just my head feels rather drowsy after playing soccer. No idea why but if you find spelling errors and such in these posts of today then you know what the cause is!
This Friday (April 18) we'll be going to the Hungarian food place again. Third time for me and I love Alexander's food! Genuine Hungarian food rules y'all!
Spring time has arrived, temperatures still jump up and down quite a bit here in Pittsburgh but by now I've gotten used to that. And since my deviated septum surgery I haven't gotten a single cold or flu. Knock on wood!
Speaking of my septum, I had my last appointment with the nose doctor last Friday. He said my nose is healed for 90% and the remaining 10% should be healed in about 2 months from now.
I don't have any real problems, just still some irritation spots in my nose. I'm sure it will take plenty of time to fully heal but no worries.
Soon enough summer will be here and I'll be going to MDF with Joost and Iwan, ICLS conference in Utrecht, Graspop festival in Dessel, CIM festival in Urbana-Champaign and CogSci conference in Washington DC!
Yay for traveling!
more spring time yay!
About 1.5 weeks after I messed up my back I was going to the AERA conference in New York City which was my first time being at the AERA.
The back was fine but the youth hostel I was staying at had put me in a room right next to the shared bathroom haha. So I slept like maybe 1 or 2 hours that first night. Next morning I asked for a single room which was not adjacent to a shared bathroom and fortunately they could accommodate me. Only weird thing in this 2nd room was that the heating was on most of the time and there was no control panel with which I could turn it off. Oh well, just slept with the window open and in my birthday suit :-D
The conference was actually better than I expected so that's always a good thing. Since it's the biggest Educational Research conference in the US there were thousands of participants and they used four big ass hotels in Manhattan to be able to host all the parallel sessions.
I had a presentation on Thursday morning in a session with all professors. It's always fun to be the odd ball out, people take notice and wonder what my position is. Presentation went well and after making a joke about my wicked beard people even dared to ask some questions!
Ran into Sarah again whom I had met at the EARLI conference last year in Budapest. She went into hyper job searching mode on day 2 haha. I'm sure she'll find a good job.
Since I'm officially only allowed to do 2 conferences per year and I'm doing 3 this year (AERA, ICLS, CogSci) I was keeping costs down as much as possible. That explains why I was staying in a youth hostel in the upper West side.
Oh, on Tuesday night I wanted to take the subway back to my hostel but apparently the line I wanted to take had stopped running at 10pm. That's rather early for NYC, no?!?!
Anyway, I walked back to my hostel (about 50 or 60 blocks) in about 40 minutes and my beard protected me from the night vipers to approach me.
The conference ended on Friday and since my flight back to Pittsburgh was scheduled for Sunday I finally had some time to check out the Big Apple. Went to Ground Zero, the Virgin Megastore (hey music addict for life haha!), the Guggenheim museum and walked back to my hostel through Central Park.
On Sunday I was supposed to be picked up by SuperShuttle and they had even confirmed the pick up twice but failed to actually do so. Ended up taking a cab and made the flight easily. SupperShuttle said they'd give me a refund but as it turns out they didn't give me a refund of the cab costs (what was I thinking?) but 'only' of the original SuperShuttle tickets.
Oh well.
Pics of my NYC trip can be found HERE
The back was fine but the youth hostel I was staying at had put me in a room right next to the shared bathroom haha. So I slept like maybe 1 or 2 hours that first night. Next morning I asked for a single room which was not adjacent to a shared bathroom and fortunately they could accommodate me. Only weird thing in this 2nd room was that the heating was on most of the time and there was no control panel with which I could turn it off. Oh well, just slept with the window open and in my birthday suit :-D
The conference was actually better than I expected so that's always a good thing. Since it's the biggest Educational Research conference in the US there were thousands of participants and they used four big ass hotels in Manhattan to be able to host all the parallel sessions.
I had a presentation on Thursday morning in a session with all professors. It's always fun to be the odd ball out, people take notice and wonder what my position is. Presentation went well and after making a joke about my wicked beard people even dared to ask some questions!
Ran into Sarah again whom I had met at the EARLI conference last year in Budapest. She went into hyper job searching mode on day 2 haha. I'm sure she'll find a good job.
Since I'm officially only allowed to do 2 conferences per year and I'm doing 3 this year (AERA, ICLS, CogSci) I was keeping costs down as much as possible. That explains why I was staying in a youth hostel in the upper West side.
Oh, on Tuesday night I wanted to take the subway back to my hostel but apparently the line I wanted to take had stopped running at 10pm. That's rather early for NYC, no?!?!
Anyway, I walked back to my hostel (about 50 or 60 blocks) in about 40 minutes and my beard protected me from the night vipers to approach me.
The conference ended on Friday and since my flight back to Pittsburgh was scheduled for Sunday I finally had some time to check out the Big Apple. Went to Ground Zero, the Virgin Megastore (hey music addict for life haha!), the Guggenheim museum and walked back to my hostel through Central Park.
On Sunday I was supposed to be picked up by SuperShuttle and they had even confirmed the pick up twice but failed to actually do so. Ended up taking a cab and made the flight easily. SupperShuttle said they'd give me a refund but as it turns out they didn't give me a refund of the cab costs (what was I thinking?) but 'only' of the original SuperShuttle tickets.
Oh well.
Pics of my NYC trip can be found HERE
spring time :-)
Time to resuscitate this blog. So what happened in the meantime??
Early March I messed up my back rather badly and after working at home for a few days I thought I could go into work. BIG mistake.
On the bus my back just fell apart and when I got off I crumbled. Made it to my office and started calling people to see if anyone could take me to a hospital or medical center. Fortunately my colleague Ryan was willing to help me out and drove me to a medical center out in Monroeville.
I first declined the shot but after my back crumbled fruther and I was literally shouting in pain I reconsidered haha. Also got some X rays taken but it was all muscle damage. They sent me home with prescriptions for Vicodin, Lodine and Valium.
Took me about 2 weeks to fully recover from this excruciating back ache. I might have overdone some activities which are taxing on the back and I've always had a weak back according to the doctors. Back when I was a child they told me I should swim a lot haha. Gee thanks doc!
Fortunately the back feels fine again now and I'll be more careful, read lazy, next time around when I'm doing something which is taxing on my back.
Early March I messed up my back rather badly and after working at home for a few days I thought I could go into work. BIG mistake.
On the bus my back just fell apart and when I got off I crumbled. Made it to my office and started calling people to see if anyone could take me to a hospital or medical center. Fortunately my colleague Ryan was willing to help me out and drove me to a medical center out in Monroeville.
I first declined the shot but after my back crumbled fruther and I was literally shouting in pain I reconsidered haha. Also got some X rays taken but it was all muscle damage. They sent me home with prescriptions for Vicodin, Lodine and Valium.
Took me about 2 weeks to fully recover from this excruciating back ache. I might have overdone some activities which are taxing on the back and I've always had a weak back according to the doctors. Back when I was a child they told me I should swim a lot haha. Gee thanks doc!
Fortunately the back feels fine again now and I'll be more careful, read lazy, next time around when I'm doing something which is taxing on my back.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
food poisoning, movie news, carnaval and more essentials reads
First note to myself: never EVER eat expired food in the US!
Two weekends ago I ate some eggs which were 2 days over their expiration date. Have done that before in the Netherlands and never caused any problems.
Well, I guess I found out the hard way that the expiration date really is the expiration date in the US. Ate the eggs on a Friday evening so soon after I got sick and subsequently I had some serious throwing up and diarrhea to deal with during the entire weekend. Fun times!
It had been almost exactly 4 years since the last time I had to throw up so I guess I'm doing fine with serious short term illnesses :-)
As everyone knows Heath Ledger died last week which for some reason was more shocking than the average celebrity death. I did like his acting, especially in the not so mainstream movie "Monster's ball".
Whatever the cause of death, accidental OD on prescribed drugs seems likely, it is a shame that he had to go at the age of 28.
To end this post on a more positive note: there will be another carnaval party at my place!
It will take place in exactly one week from now so it's going to lots of fun and I will be drunk. Hopefully I'll be able to have such a perfect after drinking experience like the few times I actually drank alcohol last year.
And who knows, maybe drinking booze will finally make the swelling in my left nostril go away? Sure enough the septum is still not healed, much to my (and the doctor's) surprise. But the doc assured there's nothing to worry about since it's still clearly healing. It's just healing rather slowly. Oh well.
Gonna see "Rambo" later on tonight! That's going to be AWESOME as hell!!!
Two weekends ago I ate some eggs which were 2 days over their expiration date. Have done that before in the Netherlands and never caused any problems.
Well, I guess I found out the hard way that the expiration date really is the expiration date in the US. Ate the eggs on a Friday evening so soon after I got sick and subsequently I had some serious throwing up and diarrhea to deal with during the entire weekend. Fun times!
It had been almost exactly 4 years since the last time I had to throw up so I guess I'm doing fine with serious short term illnesses :-)
As everyone knows Heath Ledger died last week which for some reason was more shocking than the average celebrity death. I did like his acting, especially in the not so mainstream movie "Monster's ball".
Whatever the cause of death, accidental OD on prescribed drugs seems likely, it is a shame that he had to go at the age of 28.
To end this post on a more positive note: there will be another carnaval party at my place!
It will take place in exactly one week from now so it's going to lots of fun and I will be drunk. Hopefully I'll be able to have such a perfect after drinking experience like the few times I actually drank alcohol last year.
And who knows, maybe drinking booze will finally make the swelling in my left nostril go away? Sure enough the septum is still not healed, much to my (and the doctor's) surprise. But the doc assured there's nothing to worry about since it's still clearly healing. It's just healing rather slowly. Oh well.
Gonna see "Rambo" later on tonight! That's going to be AWESOME as hell!!!
Friday, January 11, 2008
movies that didn't make my top 10 of all time faves
When I was making the top 10 of all time fave movies I didn't spend that much time on finding those 10. It was only after having picked those movies that two other movies quickly came to mind that easily could have ended up in the top 10. If only my memory had brought them back to my working memory faster.
This movie was my first acquaintance with the visionary film maker Theo Angelopoulis and my god, what an immensely breathtaking first acquaintance it was!
To give these two masterpieces their dues which they more than fully deserve, I decided to make this post.
My first acquaintance with Lars von Trier was his amazing TV series "Kingdom/Riget" and I was hooked from the get go. "Breaking the waves" must be his first full length feature that I saw and my amazement only grew exponentially.
I think the term "relentless" describes this gut wrenching movie perfectly. The drama is pure, heartfelt and enthralling. The lengths to which Bess will go to fullfil Jan's wishes is as shocking as it is moving. The short interludes and use of great songs give the viewers some time to catch their breath before the hammer comes crushing down again.
The way in which von Trier shows every self imposed humiliation and determination is breath taking. I honestly can't find any words to describe how much "Breaking the waves" impressed and continues to impress me. The entire cast is superb but Emily Watson takes the deserved first spot with her wonderful performance as Bess.
Interestingly, had this movie ended up in my top 10 it would have been the 3rd movie (in addition to "Naked" and "Before the rain") to feature the amazing Katrin Cartlidge who unfortunately passed away infinitely way ahead of her time.
Bone chilling, goose bump and tears inducing; this movie has it all and then some. Watch it with a box of tissues and let yourself by carried away by this extremely moving movie!
This movie was my first acquaintance with the visionary film maker Theo Angelopoulis and my god, what an immensely breathtaking first acquaintance it was!
It was once again the Dutch TV channel who gave me the opportunity to see this film, several times actually. It is one of those movies that every time it was broadcasted (3, maybe even 4 times) I simply had to shut down everything else and watch it in complete silence and darkness.
The pace is slow but hypnotizing, the story is simple but very touching and the way in which Angelopoulis breathes life into his vision is pure poetry.
There are people who say Angelopoulis is pretentious, boring and self indulging. But with all 4 of his movies that I have seen so far I have been truly touched and impressed by this man's vision. As he himself has said numerous times, he does not make movies for the masses. If you don't like "Eternity and a day" then you're simply not a huge art house movie lover. Nothing to be ashamed of really.
Yet a real loss for you I'd say. How can you not love the photography? How can you not be mesmerized by the frequent transitions between past and present filled with a human's innermost memories?
Bruno Ganz' performance as Alexander is spellbinding and I've only become to realize in recent years how good this actor really is. I shall find out more of his movies to watch a true artist show me how well an actor's splendid performance can feed the soul.
I rcently found out that a Greek company called New Star has been releasing Angelopoulis' work on DVD under the supervision of the director himself. As such these DVD versions are of the best quality one will find. Additionally, Angelopoulis prefers his movies to be seen by audiences at the cinema so very few of his movies were available on DVD until now. I bought the Greek import version of "Eternity and a day" for $40 and will most likely buy all the other titles New Star has released and will release.
I can't wait to watch the tram riding scene again, even just thinking about it sends goose bumps all over my body. God, how much I love brilliant movies!
Thursday, January 10, 2008
deviated septum aftermath
Here's a few pics from the surgery aftermath. They are bloody so if you can't stomach blood then don't look.
This one was shot by Silvia just after I got home from the hospital.
This is one of the arm tags. Interestingly they give patients two tags, one for each arms. As if they're afraid they might perform the wrong surgery on you.
This is about a week after the surgery, nose still swollen and blood crusts all over.
I shot this pic tonight, 3 weeks and 1 day after the surgery. I still have a big bump on the septum in my left nostril. I do hope that bump will disappear in time. Have my last doctor's appointment tomorrow at 11:30am.
This one was shot by Silvia just after I got home from the hospital.
This is one of the arm tags. Interestingly they give patients two tags, one for each arms. As if they're afraid they might perform the wrong surgery on you.
This is about a week after the surgery, nose still swollen and blood crusts all over.
I shot this pic tonight, 3 weeks and 1 day after the surgery. I still have a big bump on the septum in my left nostril. I do hope that bump will disappear in time. Have my last doctor's appointment tomorrow at 11:30am.
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