FINALLY. I have my residence permit. It is so ridiculous that I had to wait 2 months for it, and that I am leaving 2 months later. 188 euros for this identity card, and my hair like some out-of-shape balloon (hm...)

I am entering a portfolio for the Spore Fashion Design Contest and hopefully, yeah. I could stay up all night and that's fine because this is the coolest and biggest thing I have ever done in my life. I am really enthusiastic and excited about it! I also have to thank Bin and Feli for helping me out - really, really great friends. Although technically I don't have the portfolio ready yet, I will just make some last comments because I won't be around for the weekend. Iamspidermonkey is coming to town yo! Tori Amos' concert in Amsterdam on Sunday. Whee!

My eyes are so tired from staring at the computer. I have about 26 hours to complete my portfolio, research for a very boring essay topic, finish my presentation, and plan itinerary for next week.

It's festival week here in Utrecht. God knows what we are celebrating, but, whee! this place rocks. It started on 17 May. I thought I had class and so very foolishly, I cycled out to the city center only to realize that all the shops were closed and the streets deserted. Except - there was a man dancing with the lamp post, another on the bench, and another walking about repeatedly taking off his jacket and putting it back on. Land of insanity!!! I guess they were performers...

On Friday night, I joined the guys for drinks at the city center. We argued at length about simulation and simulacra. Right.

festival ad werf








ho man...i love these 2. mash and adolfo. they are the perfect absurd theater act. like watching a play from beckett.







Last night we had our own mini-party at Sherilyn's birthday party. It is so funny and entertaining to be around these crazy flatmates...Mash and the Italian girls, Chiara and Valeria.
This is what happens when you try to extort money from machoman. Roar!

I caught 4 of Wong Kar Wai's movies. Chungking Express, Days of Being Wild, 2046 and In the Mood for Love. All incredibly good films. In Days of Being Wild, there is a scene when Maggie Cheung is told that "from this minute, she must forget him."
She looks at the clock...silence...we wait for 60 seconds to pass. A minute takes 60 seconds, 2 minutes 120 seconds. How do you do it, forget him, when a single minute moves at such a painfully slow rate?
Watched Wes Anderson's (The Royal Tenenbaums) Bottle Rocket too. Had one of those feel-good endings. Also been following Monk episodes, and can even sing the opening song. Gah! I'm turning into a compgeek. Doing lots of photoshop editing which is in fact really fun. My sis says "Mei, I'll be rooting for you 200%." I can only hope and to believe, that I can give 200% as well.

Kroller-Muller Museum, Sculpture Garden and Hoge Veluwe National Park

Yesterday was a day well spent in the Kroller-Muller Museum and the National Park, in the province of Gelderland. The park encompasses more than 5000 hectares, has 3 main entrances, and from each entrance there are free bicycles which you can borrow to cycle to the museum, which is deep within the park. Whew! That was a long sentence, and still it is not enough to tell you how huge and amazing this place is, with its marshlands, forests, sand dunes, and a modern art museum.

This museum is by far, the best museum I have ever visited. The facade of the museum is made of glass, so that you can look out into the garden, and others from outside can look in. It sort of de-centralizes the position of a museum. Also, because it is inside a park, you feel as if you are surrounded by nature, and at the same time, nature is integrated into the space you are in. I am terrible at conveying this but basically, what I mean to say is that boundaries are blurred and you can step into different spaces without clear distinctions.

The work I like most is the installation “glass”, by Joseph Kosuth. A square glass plate is leaned against the wall and the artist photographs his image in the glass, creating a repetition of the image within the image. It (as I copy from the information sheet) "dematerialises" the art object and questions the essence of art, and as Kosuth calls it, "object definition". That is a huge concept to swallow, but my own response would be that you see your image inside the glass and at the same time, what lies behind it, the wall which is substantial and "real".

I've never been able to understand why people love Van Gogh because I really do think that his paintings are ugly. But now upon closer investigation, I am begininning to see the genius behind the paint strokes and how they arch into their own shapes and forms within a landscape.




The sculpture garden was so fun! It was like unlocking the mystery of the secret garden or okay, never mind. There were, in unexpected corners, strange sculptures such as (from my point of view), a white duck floating across the pond, mini stonehenge, aboriginal huts, a giant screw, a harp, a house, giant oysters, and many more which I didn't see because it was closing time and we were hastily chased out.

2 booths which you can go in and slide the door shut...you can clap your hands and shout and hear loud echoes of yourself inside the booth...people outside are able to hear you but you can't hear them...


From afar, this looked like a giant giraffe head sticking out. There is a small and suspicious-looking door which you enter, climb a few steps, and emerge out onto this strange plate of depression, protrusion, bold black lines marking routes...









And finally, we come to the extraordinary cycling experience around the Hoge Veluwe National Park. It says "park", but it is nothing like the artificially trimmed and decorated parks you usually see. Instead, what you get is a variety of awkward broken branches, chopped trunks, trees of all sorts, and all of a sudden, we’re in a desert-like place. It is, as Adolfo puts it, a Dali scene. An epiphany, perhaps! It was extremely surreal, and bizarre. You felt like you were in Africa and maybe a leopard would run past you. The landscape seemed almost human. It was not just an adventure, but one that took us to a completely separate world, and all this time were you aware that this “world” has always existed?

ps: I wanted to take a picture of us cycling but the attempt to balance the bike on one hand while trying to find my camera in my bag take it out switch it on focus, led me swerving right left and into the woods. hahaha! anyway my camera went out of battery so i couldn't capture no nothing.

Moping around

All grand travel plans thwarted, stalled; only bleakness, only exhaustion, and only a whole lot of administrative shit.
My reputation for falling down is legendary. Mash, Adolfo and I were walking home, they were talking, I was half listening, half dreaming, the next thing I knew, I was down on the muddy ground.

the bout of bad luck continues. on sunday, i wanted to go to venlo. from utrecht, i had to take a train to eindhoven and switch to another train to venlo. unfortunately, and most unfortunate i must say, at eindhoven, i found out that the trains going to venlo were not operating. and so. i had to take another train heading towards maastricht, and from there take a train to venlo. in short, i basically travelled from a to z to b, instead of a to b. to further sum it up, the entire trip took me 3 hours instead of 1 1/2 hours.

anyway, i am glad i went to venlo to see nuance's dance performance. all the dances from the ballet school were really energetic and powerful and very impressive. honestly, at the age of 14 (and perhaps at 21), how many people know what they want to do in the future? visiting nico, evelyn and nuance was nice too because...i was treated to a buffet, 2 art galleries, a peculiar therapeutic session, given good german beer, chocolate mousse, cake, a pack of thai jasmine rice, roses from their garden...

worst luck ever. and to end off a perfectly fine evening! on my way home, i must have cycled over some sharp object, the bicycle tyre deflated before i could say "shit!" i walked back home with the bicycle, feeling absolutely pathetic while other cyclists gleefully rode past me. then i dropped my bicycle light, got it shattered into bits. as if things weren't bad enough, i desperately needed the toilet. ugh.