Christmas pressies

On boxing day, you will either be surprised about the present that you have just unwrapped or be utterly disappointed. In my family however, you know what you will receive because the other person will request something or the gift giver lets you think of what you want and buys it for you as a present. So it will be bought, wrapped into a nice looking present and put under the Christmas tree.

This year is another year of complicated decisions and of course saving up to buy pressies for others. Finding a pressie for someone else is difficult, but deciding a pressie for oneself is even harder. Especially, when you want to buy those things yourself or are not sure yet if you want it now. There are four gadgets, that I have been saving up for. All can be used daily and all have their own “I need it” factor.

#1 - I am looking for a new digital camera, which I can use to make better pictures in either a dark place or just full natural colour. My present camera doesn’t shoot pictures in the dark well and the full colour of flowers isn’t always matching to the real thing.
#2 - I like writing things by hand and I like drawing, but both can’t be easily done on a computer. At the moment, I draw on a piece of paper scan it in and touch it up in Photoshop digitally.
#3 - A small portable device for accessing internet, wherever I am and be able to read/write files with.
#4 - Last but not least, fun wherever you are. A gaming console, that can travel with you.

So all in all: 
#1 - A digital camera 
#2 - A digital drawing board
#3 - A mobile internet device 
#4 - A portable game console

Digital camera 
I want my next digital camera to be a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. It has the functionalities, that I need to make real-life pictures. The downside of these camera’s is, they are usually huge and heavy. I like small compact camera’s, because than you don’t need to carry a huge bag around just for the camera. I thought until this year, that no DSLR camera could ever be small.

The Olympus PEN is small and it is a DSLR! It has the features, I want in a digital camera and something extra make HD movies. Can’t wait to be able to buy this with all I have saved up and shoot live pictures of all the beautiful colours of the world. Any luck by the time I saved up for it, it will be on sale. This is the “Olympus PEN E-P2”. Isn’t it a beauty and still small?

Digital drawing board 
The Wacom is the first thing, that comes to my mind when it comes to drawing/writing digitally. I am not a professional artist, so I don’t need the fanciest of Wacom drawing boards. I think the Bamboo series fits me the best. Being able to draw and edit a drawing without having to scan and clean it up first would be great!

I have compared all the Bamboo tablets and these are the ones that are most useful for me (the more pressure capability the better): “Bamboo fun medium pen & touch” or the “Bamboo pen & touch special edition medium”.

Mobile internet device 
A small laptop, netbook or a smart phone… Yes, this one is still undecided and can’t be fixed at the moment. So it is definitely not a potential christmas pressie. All I know is, if its a mobile phone it will be a smartphone with wifi capability and that it runs on Android. If it is a laptop or netbook it will be light and I can play movies, games and edit pictures and movies with.

A portable game console 
The funny thing about this device is, when I have an Android smart phone I might not need it but now that the Nintendo 3DS is coming this might change. Meeh… More about this console: http://3d-nintendods.com/

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Museum nacht 2010

Museum nacht (in English: museum night) is an event in Amsterdam, that is held every year for one night from 19:00 till 02:00. You buy one ticket and through the night you can visit several museums, night clubs and known places in Amsterdam. This year it was on 06 November and I hopped from one place through another in Amsterdam.

Burgermeester
The first thing, my friends and I did was visit “Burgermeester”. A burger place, which has nothing to do with museum nacht at all. It was the place, where we ate dinner. Burgermeester is known to be one of the best burger places in town. I haven’t been there before, but have eaten a few burgers from the place. I ordered a pumpkin burger – Yes, it sounds odd to have that on a burger but it doesn’t look as it sounds. A burger is usually a bun with a piece of meat and some delicious toppings (i.e. onions, lettuce, cheese). The pumpkin burger is a bun of choice either brown or white, it has red onions, melted gorgonzola (a type of cheese), a piece of pumpkin meat with various herbs in it and lettuce. I choose a brown bun and it was to my surprise a very delicious burger. A nice start for the night.

Stedelijk museum
After burger dinner, we decided to go to “Van Gogh museum”. The place wasn’t open yet and the row was very long, so we walked a cross the street to see the renewed “Stedelijk museum” first. We entered and walked through a few… White painted empty rooms with an obvious or hidden camera… Interesting… *said with a sarcastic tone* I was starting to think, that the museum of modern arts has taken the “modern art” a bit too serious. Good thing, they didn’t! We stumbled upon some artwork and a few dark rooms, where you can cuddle and smooch your boy- or girlfriend in private instead of watching the projector movie :p Not very interesting…

We walked up some broad classy stairs and were met with a room filled with George Orwell quotes, written in black on white wallpaper in different size fonts throughout the room. Even though, the statements were nice it made the room too busy to be a room to practice yoga in. There were mats spread on the floor to perform yoga on. The downside of that room is also… It smelled like glue. I guess this is tranquillity of getting high, while you relax on another level?

The renewal of the building was pretty (white), very modern. The broad classy stairs is still the same, but the doors are now white and almost look like part of the wall instead of a door. I opened one of the doors to go to the toilet and was surprised of the weight. The door is quite thick and you need to pull it open. The outside door was not the only one, that was heavy. The same kind of door was implemented for each toilet… It is beautiful, but not very practical. One of my friends also said: “These doors are made for smurfs”. My friend is about 1.90 m tall and the door’s height was half a head smaller than him ^^

The only event in this museum, which I liked was adding my height on an artwork. The picture below is part of the wall of the artwork filled with many names, the swarm of names is for the height 1.70 till around 2.00 m. Yes, Dutch people can be taller than two meters ^^

Van Gogh museum 
Thank goodness, “Van Gogh museum” didn’t have a long line anymore. We were inside, in a few minutes, leaving our jackets in the cloak room, passing through some metal detector ports and walked through a glass door. The hall was filled with people, a bar, a DJ and a visualisation behind him with a kind of disco black and white spiral that turns into the painting of “Vincent’s Bedroom in Atles” (image below on the left – found through Google search) and visa versa.

 

A usually quiet museum has become a party, which was not bad at all. I saw many paintings, which I have already seen when I was younger like the “De aardappeleters” (image above on the right – found through Google search) but there were enough paintings that I haven’t seen before. Especially in the new wing of the “Van Gogh museum”. There were paintings hanging there, that almost looked like photographs. The style of naturalism. Around that time, they could make black and white pictures but not yet in colour the paintings were the perfect replacement and more.

Artis Aquarium
Fishies! And other underwater creatures :3 There were pretty ones and huge ones! No, I can never get bored of watching animals. Though… There was one poor huge fish in a small tank… Shoot forgot its name… It was at the entrance of Artis Aquarium, a huge yellow long fish with kind of worm-tail like flippers.

There were also mounted animals upstairs. I never thought lemmings were that small and cute! One of the mounted animals, a lynx, had some weird eyes in its sockets. The lynx looked like the crazy laughing cartoon hyena's from Disney’s Lion King, which is quite funny. In real life, I wouldn’t even try it… Standing up close to a brown bear and a tiger. They were big! I can see how they can smack a human unconscious with just their flat paw and kill them with their claws.
We walked to Artis and saw a very long line, too many people want to go inside. I wanted to go into the Zoo too! I guess Artis at night is a very popular attraction.

Burgermeester
Another shop of Burgermeester, I was thirsty my friends were hungry and thirsty as well so we ordered something there. I wanted to try their forest fruit milkshake, but it was sold out. So instead I ordered the banana. It was different, than the banana milkshake from Burger King but it wasn’t not delicious. It was buttery and had a weird after taste, even though it did taste like banana. I guess, I need to drink it again to be sure if I like it.

The milkshake was made by a very cute guy :3 For an employer, who has just worked there for two days he was very calm even though they had problems with sold out food and a broken electronic bankcard swiping machine, which forced customers to pay cash. You can usually only pay with a bank pass at Burgermeester. Luckily for them, the machine broke down half and hour before closing time, they close at 23:00.

Hollandsche Schouwburg 
The place, that was once a theatre is now a monument. A memorial for all the Jews, who were deported from this place… I haven’t seen the monument and the garden before, but have seen many documentaries that mentions it. So I visited it with my friends. It was more peaceful and eerie, than I thought it would be.

De Hortus
I haven’t been here before… I love plants and flowers, so not being here before is quite odd for me. I guess I might go there again in broad daylight, because I could hardly see anything. The greenhouses were filled with lights, but they were all red lights. The botanical garden looked more like an outdoor party instead of a botanical garden. I visited De Hortus, because I wanted to see the place and also try some grasshoppers, but they were already sold out when I got there. There goes the “I dare you to eat one with me”, which I said to my friends.

Hermitage Amsterdam
The exposition was called “The immortal Alexander the Great”, various treasures are displayed and artefacts that are related to him. One of the paintings is quite peculiar or more like something I hardly see. It is a painting with a soldier, who has a breastplate with a nipple? (image below).



There was also a huge golden beer mug with a lid and a table clock with a young studying Alexander the Great on it (image below). I couldn’t find a picture of the beer mug on the internet and have no idea how to describe it in detail, but it was beautiful just like the table clock. The images of the table clock and painting is © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.




There was a party in the Hermitage too… We wanted to go there by elevator and almost couldn’t get out of the elevator, because the security guard said the place was full. It wasn’t full at all, when we were finally permitted to go out and check out the party. The DJ was playing music and we could easily walk through the people to see him at the front of the room. People, who were standing on the stairs in line could have easily fitted into the room as well. Oh well, been there seen it and left again… And suddenly, the stairs were empty and everyone could take the elevator up and get out… Ok, why were we held up just now? A minute later, no one could go up anymore and a lot of people started to walk down. I guess the party didn’t last very long? About one and a half hours o.O and it wasn’t even 2 o’clock yet.
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Museum nacht was fun, especially with friends. I might go to another city to do the same thing in the future. Wandering in museums at night is something else, especially with techno music ^^
Line of today: It didn’t rain men, but I saw a few cute guys o ^ ^ o

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How do you define cute from love?

Something is cute, I love cute, but does that mean I love “love” everything cute, or just feel a temporary warm fuzzy feeling inside like a crush? How do you define cute from love?
Cute to me isn’t just found in everything young and small, you know puppies, wolf cubs, panda cubs, foals, lamb and baby turtles… and many more cute young creatures.
In humans, I see many forms of cute, a certain facial expression… A cute smile can be a broad one with lines near the cheeks like that of actor Simon Baker (known from the American series Guardian; Nick Fallin and The Mentalist; Patrick Jane) or a chuckle one from actor Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory; Sheldon Cooper). A blush on your cheeks, just a line of pink under eyes is a rare thing to see, but it is super cute!                

     

                                             Simon Baker                                      Jim Parsons

Character… A mean intend combined with a childish and intelligent remark can be cute when it is said by a certain person like actor Hugh Laurie as House “So what's masquerading as a stroke? Voted worst Halloween costume by the way.” “He should check his pants. I think we might have an anal hygiene violation.” Stumbling over a certain word or saying it differently can also be cute.

Hugh Laurie

A certain behaviour… Making a high pitched cute sound, when you are happy without noticing it yourself. A cute walk, that almost looks clumsy. Typing a keyboard in a way as if it is a piano and of course moving from one place to another in a dance; may it be walking and turning during cooking or sitting on a desk chair with wheels rolling from one place to the other to find a pen, while on the phone. 

Defining love… People say, you love someone when he/she is the first thing that comes to mind when you are sad or happy. It is something mysterious that strikes you once and you are hooked and reeled in towards the one you feel attracted to. Your heart will start aching, when they aren’t by your side and you will feel content when they are. As if they fill the hole in your heart or better said by many “Your other half” or “You complete me!” (a line from the movie Jerry Maguire said by Tom Cruise).
So how do you define love from just loving the cute person’s features? Is it a warm fuzzy feeling paired with desire that you only feel for him and your heart will ache when you miss him? Or is loving his cute features a step towards loving him? What do you think?

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