Wednesday 10 March 2010 at 10:00
There’s a Dutch expression that roughly translates to ‘money’s got to roll’ (geld moet rollen). Money needs to be spent, not saved, so to say. It’s a very ‘un-Dutch’ expression, since we are nationally and internationally knows as greedy little bastards, who ‘go Dutch’ on every occasion. Bragging about how cheap something was is a national sport and not having money in your savings account is considered very irresponsible and usually a secret you keep even from friends.
I’ve been raised like most Dutch kids have, and I have learned to work hard and save for a rainy day. Unlike many of my fellow citizens, I, however, have never been really good at this. I try saving, I try to look for deals online before going shopping, I try to think of my pension and have a feeling I should worry even more about paying off my student loans. But, I’ve got to be honest here. I’ve never been any good at it. The only result of my Dutch upbringing is the enormous amount of guilt I experience every time I buy something I don’t actually need. And to be honest, I don’t need that much, but have plenty of wants.
So, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should just say ef it? Maybe I should just accept that after almost 26 years I don’t know how to save up for things, I have more clothing than I could ever wear, I don’t honestly care about paying too much for something I like, and I forget about how much money I earn all the time. So who cares? I like fashion. I like buying useless little cute things and art I have no room for on my walls. I like thinking about where to travel to next. I like spending money on food and drinks enjoyed on a terrace in the sun, even if I’m overpaying and overtipping the waiters. Even if that does mean I have to eat noodles the rest of the month.
Now, I’m not saying I should just go ahead and spend all my money and not think of the consequences. I’m not irresponsible. All I’m thinking is that, well, maybe I should stop feeling so damn guilty whenever I do happen to spend money on something I like. Because right now, as it is, I am not even enjoying those purchases I am trying to avoid (but still can’t resist) because I feel I shouldn’t have bought anything besides the absolute minimum. And that people, to me, is a complete waste of money.
So I bought a bright yellow, genuine leather purse at Macy’s while I was in New York. I don’t necessary needed it, but I wanted it. And I love it. It’s yellow (hello!), it’s soft, it has about six different compartments, exactly the kind of straps I like and it smells good.
Oh and it was on sale. Wooot!
(You can’t get all the Protestantism out of an atheist girl, it seems)
Sunday 07 March 2010 at 22:41
This week, I felt like I was in some kind of bubble all week. Must have been the jet lag still. When we got back on Sunday I actually felt kind of terrible, but the flow of getting up early, working late, and running errands took over pretty much right away.
Thursday-evening I dragged home the espresso machine my family and I got Ashwin and set it all up. Ashwin defended his dissertation on Friday and it went really, really well and I just couldn't have been more proud. He wrote his thesis on the relationship between intellectual property law and competition law when it comes to interoperability in software. Yes, the guy is supersmart (and pretty hotttt too, now that we're on the topic of my boyfriend). And yes I read his dissertation. About four times. Edited bits of it, even. Yes, I love the guy very much.
And no, we didn't do anything useful today. We played with Meneertje. Drank lots of coffee and tea with ginger. Went out to get Chinese food. I worked in my journal. All in all, a great week and a great day. Hope you all had a great weekend as well!
Wednesday 03 March 2010 at 12:00
As you might have expected, I was MIA due to my very A trip to New York. We had a great week, and I had a really fun time journalling about my experiences in New York. Although I of course felt terrible for Ash, undergoing his horrific exams in Buffalo, it was really nice having a couple of days to myself - taking all the time I needed to go through the lovely Tim Burton exhibit at the MoMA, to shop, to meet up with some friends, and just get a nice feel for the city and how to navigate it. Mostly, though, it was nice to spend some time together, finally. The last year has been fun but hectic for us and exploring cities together is one of our greatest shared joys.
But enough with the talking, here are the journal pages! Enjoy!
02202010: Yay! I am SO ready for our New York adventure! We just got our 'dinner' in the plane. 20:30 > We're back at the hotel - we just had delicious (all you can eat) sushi at Ichi Umi! Before that we walked around The Village. All I can eat! 3 plates of food.
02212010: This is the view from our horel (Pennsylvania hotel). The room is very basic, but the view is good!
Today we visited the Tenement Museum and the Lower East Side. We walked down there and further south to the Financial District. What a great day!
02222010: Ashwin went to Buffalo for the bar-exam and so I did my own thing today. When he left, I visited the American Natural History Museum. I saw an IMAX film about the Great Lakes. But what I loved the most was the 'Hall of Biodiversity'. Lots of lovely old showcases.
My breakfast: At home I never really eat muffins or drink a lot of cappuccino, but I sure do love it when I'm on holiday. Cappuccino + blueberry muffins + apple = lovely start of the day.
02232010: Today, the weather was crappy! I first walked around a bit, then met C. for lunch. Afterwards I did some shopping at one of my favorite stores there: Anthropologie. It's a little expensive though, so all I bought was this necklace that was on sale and blue nailpolish! Then I got completely hosed... Brrr...
02242010: Today I spent most of my day in the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA. I LOVED it! So cool! Then in the evening I had dinner in the West Village with C. Afterwards we got cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery. I took some home for Ashwin who came back this evening.
02252010: Wow! The weather was crazy today! On tv they called it 'February Fury'! We went to the Design Museum and I got a 5 year journal by Tamara Shopsin. Ashwin got a really cool book. My feet were completely soaked - snow and rain does not like Uggs, so we went back after that.
02262010: Manhattan --> Brooklyn --> Wiliamsburg --> Manhattan
On Friday we tried to really make the most of our last day. We walked to the New York Public Library where I did some drawing. Then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn. Unfortunately, the New York Transit Museum, but we had a nice walk around the neighborhood. We had fries at 'Five Guys'. Then we took the subway to Williamsburg, which was cool, but it was getting dark and it was not as nice as we thought so we went back to Midtown to have a delicious Korean BBQ!
Day savers: Because my Uggs were soaked all the way through on the first day of snow, I got these rubber boots in New York. They've been real 'day savers' in the slushy streets of New York.
Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 21:25
For me, working in my journal is like meditation. Actually, I wouldn't know, because I haven't ever meditated 'successfully' (and boy I tried, but my mind just won't shut its little piehole), but I imagine this would be it. Total focus and peace. This is usually my answer when people ask me how I keep up with drawing in my journal on a daily basis. Well. Because it's my 'nothing box'.
Mostly, what I've noticed is that where drawing little scenes of my day helps me to put each day in perspective, drawing patterns and letters helps me to dive straight into that quiet place. A beautifully drawn letter can add as much to the page as a pretty picture does, I'd say. Personally, I like to draw letters without sketching them out first. There's something about putting ink directly onto paper that is just so very satisfying to me.
Naturally, faith has it that I can't really draw anything without sketching it out first, so my letters often look verrry 'DIY' (see evidence above) and I misspell half of my titles, but who cares? Right, guys? Right? Guys?
Ehm... okay.
Wednesday 10 February 2010 at 22:21
Lately I’ve been obsessed with macarons, those colorful Parisian cookies. I remember first seeing them in my old boss’ office when she got some for her birthday. I commented on how pretty they looked and she said ‘but dear, it’s not about the look of them at all. Here, eat.’ But for some reason I didn’t. Not sure why.
So when recently I saw macarons for sale not just at my local grocery store, but also at the bakery near my work and at the bakery near the train station, I decided to get some. A little treat. A small box of tiny macarons to photograph and maybe eat. How nicely would the colors of the macarons go with my interior?
Right. As you can see, I’ve got only this drawing.
I’m on my third box.
PS: Don't you just LOVE this image by Jennifer Causey (aka 'Simply Photo')? So pretty!
(www.jennifercausey.com & her Etsy shop)
Sunday 07 February 2010 at 17:20
We've got a trip to New York coming up that I'm pretty excited about. My boyfriend is a little less excited, since the reason for this trip is him taking the New York Bar exam. This is the exam straight from the inner ring of hell he needs to pass so he can be a real lawyer (besides just getting paid like one). Now, you all can stop feeling sorry for my poor boyfriend right there. My boyfriend's parents took him and his sister to New York pretty much every summer holiday, so the guy knows the subway system by heart and has a list of 'acceptable' steak houses engraved in his mind. Oh annnd his boss is paying for his part of the trip. Boo-hoo right?
Now, me, I'm just going for fun. I've been to NYC only once before (my parents usually opted for the ever-educational camping trip in the backyard. Lesson learned: mud sucks). But, during that one visit I've seen Times Square, ate bagels with lox, walked around Central Park, the Met (for two days), the MoMA, Guggenheim, and saw the Empire State Building. Got myself a corny picture in front of Tiffany's (including croissant), nearly got run over by not one, but two, taxi cabs and did the helicopter tour (which was pretty awesome). Pretty good score, I'd say.
This time, I'm feeling a little more adventurous and ehm... am planning my days in meticulous detail. I've only got seven days in the big apple and about a million things to see. Planning is not optional (btw, when is it, if ever?). Plus, even though my boyfriend is very willing to see an 'eum' (to quote Homer Simpson) every once in a while, I don't think he's up for the three-museums-a-day-dream I've usually got planned out for myself.
So I'm trying to narrow it down a little. Right now, I'm feeling pretty good about The Cloisters, The Drawing Center, the Tim Burton exhibit at the MoMA, cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery. What about you? Anything you think I should go see?
Thursday 04 February 2010 at 23:06
So let's get to blogging, shall we? Last week I finally got a Polaroid Pogo. The 'modern' version of the Polaroid instant camera. It's basically a small photo printer allowing you to print pics through usb or bluetooth.
I'd been thinking of getting a Polaroid Pogo for a while now. I have two different kinds of 'real' Polaroid camera's (a 600 af and a 660, both presumably with autofocus), which are now, of course, completely useless to me. When Polaroid declared their instant cameras dead, I was severely broke and out of a job and thus not able to get a shitload of film all at once. I'm not sure it would have helped if I did, since my local supplier was always out of film to begin with. So when Polaroid announced this step into the 21st century I was delighted. It took me a while to finally get around to ordering it, but last week it was so ridiculously on sale that ordering it was totally worth interrupting my 'Gossip Girl' marathon for.
And I'm glad I did. I love it. Although the device is a lot bigger than I would have guessed (it's a little larger than my iPhone), it has the same 'simpleness' to it that the Polaroid instant camera's did. It's sturdy and easy to use. The pictures are definitely smaller than the original Polaroid prints, but they still have that 'analog' feel to it. It's clearly not a 'print' (there's no ink involved) and, check this, it's a sticker as well! Perfect for Moleskine use.
The downsides? Well, just as with the old Polaroid, the colors are a little off and the image is just a little darker than the original. Which is not a problem if you like this effect, but if not, you probably need to fool around in Photoshop a bit before printing. That, or just get a professional photo printer. The Pogo is definitely something you want for fun. Perfect for carrying around (maybe not in your back-pocket, but if, like me, you got jeans that are basically a pair of tights with jeans-print you're not used to carrying around stuff in your pockets anyways. It's why we haul gigantic purses around, right? So we don't have to deal with our jeans that at one point really did fit, I swear) and printing quick snapshots. Too bad it doesn't work with the iPhone. Meh.
(FU Apple. There. I said it.)
Thursday 04 February 2010 at 12:14
So, ehm. Welcome, I suppose. To my blog. Many of you are probably new to this blog as it used to be in Dutch. Up until yesterday. Yesterday, during a 'Twitter-conversation' with my brother (yes, that's the kind of nerds we are) I asked him once more what to do about my blog.
I love blogging, I love blogging in Dutch as well, but I don't love the fact that most of the people I talk to 'on the internet' can't read my blog. Not a word of it. Dutch is not and never will be the new Spanish (where there's a still a large audience world wide).
And so, here I am. Welcome to my blog where I will post pages of my illustrated journal, links to and images of other artists I like, as well as random banter about my life. Enjoy.
Wednesday 03 February 2010 at 12:00
Het is niet dat ik het niet leuk vind om in het Nederlands te schrijven hoor. Neuh. Neuh. Ik had zo na een paar jaar wel ’t idee dat ’t ergens over begon te gaan zo’n beetje. Mwah, grapje hier, typfoutje daar. Doe maar.
Maar toch blijft dat Engels trekken. Zeker omdat ik nu niet meer iedere dag Engels spreek (allee, jong, ik praat als een halve Vloaming hiero (nou ja bijna dan)), maar meer nog omdat ik graag zou willen dat mijn weblog zou kunnen ‘praten’ met de internationale weblogs. Nu, als ik reageer op weblogs die ik graag lees, neem ik mijn eigen link niet mee op in mijn comment. Kunnen ze toch niet lezen. En aangezien deze internationale sfeer wel meer en meer trekt (of altijd heeft getrokken) moet ik de stap misschien toch maar eens durven maken.
Dat allemaal, plus, mijn broer zag dat 't goed was. En mijn broer is heel slim. Dus.
In het Engels dus vanaf nu. Kunt u ’t aan denkt u?
(Overigens, het is niet alsof ik helemaal stop met het bloggen in het Nederlands. Kijk vanaf nu op www.annaenik.nl waar ik met vriendinnetje Valérie de belangrijke thema's des levens (zoals kantoorkonten enzo) iets regelmatiger aan zal snijden.)
Tuesday 02 February 2010 at 18:00
Lisa Congdon, één van de favorieten bij Uppercase (en alles wat hun lievelings is is mijn lievelings), is dit jaar begonnen met een nieuw project: 'A Collection a Day'. Elke dag toont zij op een apart weblog een kleine verzameling. Een verzameling van wat dan ook. Penselen, gummetjes, papiertjes, blaadjes, bordjes. Wat dan ook.
Wat een goed idee. Simpel maar prachtig.
Link: collectionaday2010.blogspot.com
© Lisa Congdon
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