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September 30, 2004
herfst
Posted by Faith at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Still Life
Posted by Faith at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
the loneliness of the long distance cringer
From this side of the world the embarassing reality is that John Howard IS Australia, and since no one over here ever hears of any opposition to him, his policies or views, all Australians are assumed to be in support of him. I now know how Americans must feel when they are harangued for what Bush is doing! Its NOT good!
And when I do catch up with Australian news it does tend to seem that the opposition has keeled over and given up! So it's a blessed relief to find out that the anti-John league is not confined to my mother, her dog and one-and-a-half democrats.
There is for instance the book and site, Not Happy John, or the brilliant Liars for Howard while Dear John have got the graphics and viral element covered. (And Jacob's next T-shirt)
Meanwhile Back Pages and John Quiggin provide the commentary and opinion to keep the dialogue going.
I hadn't seen the legendary australian-cultural-cringe in Melbourne for years (decades?)now but for many Australians overseas it has been replaced by a serious political-cringe. I don't expect Australian domestic politics is ever going to be of great international interest but with so much online discussion there can only be a better understanding fo the breadth of opinion and views in Australia.
At the moment the only Australians in the European news (outside of sport) are John Howard, standing resolutely next to George Bush, and the odd shark. hmmmmmmmm.......
Posted by Faith at 08:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 25, 2004
1
Posted by Faith at 07:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 23, 2004
multi-skilling
Jacob took four steps by himself last week, just getting it in within that crucial first-birthday milestone. The other day he did it again. The last few days he has been doing it several times a day, very casually, with nothing more than a smug-pleased-with-himself-look to mark each sucessful wobble through space.
But this morning he really let loose with a development in fine-motor-skills that will leave them breathless at the Consultatiebureau next month. I was tying his shoes, (he can't do THAT yet) and looked up at my gorgeous civilized well-brought-up-son, to discover he was picking his nose! He has a cold at the moment so there is plenty of material to work with. He only rarely misses his nostril and sticks his finger in his eye. But its the intense concentration and satisfaction on his face that floors me!
Posted by Faith at 05:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 22, 2004
a picture tells a thousand words
While doing some badly needed housekeeping I discovered a server full of photos from the old version of weblijm. If you are interested here they all, very handily collected on a single page for your easy reference!
Posted by Faith at 03:03 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 21, 2004
Hola!
So here are the photos from our trip to Spain, or at least some of them.
Because besides these, taken with a series of disposable cameras and with all the frustration you'd expect to feel when you thought you'd be using a Canon G2 instead, there were about 160 other photos, taken with said G2 but unfortunately stolen by the same asshole who stole our camera. I don't mind too much about the camera but the memory cards with the photos..........
I still beat my head on the table everytime I think of it. It was the first trip since I had Jacob where I was getting back into enjoying taking photos again. Maybe because he's older, or we're more trained, but it was the first time I was relaxed enough again to devote the thought and energy to the photos rather than what Jacob was doing, needing, wanting. And they were soooooooooo good! easy to say when no one is going to see them now, but there were some doosies in that lot!!
The one nice thing about these is that the crappy quality of the disposable camera gives some of them a painterley look which I quite like. Enhanced with Photoshop's "Adjust auto levels" and they're plastic-fantastic!
So here they are, from Valencia de Don Juan to the southern part of the Picos de Europa and back south again to Madrid, as framed by Jacob naturally!
Posted by Faith at 01:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 20, 2004
No More Adver-comments!!
Some of you may have noticed the hundreds of comments on this weblog selling Viagra, a rather stunning array of pharmaceuticals and access to all sorts of gaming sites. I started off manually deleting these, but quickly gave up there were so many. MT 3.1 has a fix for this, comment approval, which I first saw in action on LoobyLu. So today I finally got around to upgrading and implementing the comment approval process. It works, joy-of-joys! Hopefully today will be the last time I have to delete over 300 comments in one sitting! My mailbox is already full of the frustrated eforts of the usual bots, hopefully they'll soon give up and GO AWAY!
Did they seriously think my mother was going to make some difference to their revenue this year?
Posted by Faith at 04:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 19, 2004
Jarig!
Jacob, our gorgeous little son is one year old today.
In the past couple of months he has completely lost his baby-face and now looks like a real-little boy. Two days ago he walked four steps by himself. He can say about ten or twelve words. Its all going so fast!
Despite buying the super-duper camera before his birthday we were both so busy we hardly used it. If I find a decent photo I'll upload it soon. Where was Mariska when we needed her? Jaap did catch on pixels one of Jacob's famous head-dives onto the floor so hopefully we can share this with you soon!
Posted by Faith at 04:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 18, 2004
The Southern Cross
On Friday evening I trekked east to Rotterdam. Despite some confusion about just how far Rotterdam is and how long the train takes to get there I managed to meet the people I was meant to meet, didn't miss the boat (literally) and spent an enjoyable evening. The occasion was a harbour tour organised by ABIE at which the founder of the Southern Cross Group would be speaking. I fit in because I'm an Australian living in the Netherlands who ocassionally goes to ABIE events and the co-ordinator for the Southern Cross Group in the Netherlands.
Most of my time in the Netherlands I have avoided expat groups for the sole reason that I didn't want to spend my time in an expat-ghetto bitching about the fact that Holland isn't Australia/England/America. (So instead I've cut out the middle man and bitch directly to the Dutch, sad but true!) What I really enjoyed about Friday evening was meeting people who were creating for themselves (and others) very positive and pro-active experiences. Anne Mcgregor, the founder of the Southern Cross Group is one example, I'd never actually had the chance to meet her before and I'm glad its finally happenned. Several other ABIE members and vistors were also very stimulating so it was a great and timely reminder that there are more expats out there than those who confine their lives to the English/Irish pubs and wait-with-baited-breath for the next order of Tim Tams from home.
Posted by Faith at 04:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 17, 2004
click click
While in Spain our trusty Canon G2 was lost and subsequently stolen so we have been doing a bit of homework in order to decide what to replace it with. There's a new G6 which looks tempting but what I've really been wanting is a digital SLR. When we bought the G2 digital SLR's were still the sort of price that meant it was out of the question. But now there are at least two that are about the same price we paid for the original G2 just over two years ago!
So, it looks like its between the Nikon D70, which seems a favourite of several photo bloggers and does well in comparisons and the Canon EOS 300D. I have a bit of a nostalgic hankering for the Canon on the basis of my experience with the G2 and it seems to do better at ISO 100, which I've never used in Holland (and never even seen for sale as film) but which I used all the time in Australia.
Decisions, decisions, decisions....................if anyone has two-cents to add then please do!
Posted by Faith at 11:09 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 15, 2004
Lang zal zij leven!
Happy Birthday Mum!
Posted by Faith at 09:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2004
The Big Day Out. Part 2
Well just before we went to Spain Ron and I managed to get hitched AND enjoy it, which for both of us, was rather a relief! Even the weather played along with a rainy cold morning turning into a sunny, tepid, but SUNNY, afternoon just in time.
The morning we spent driving to Utrecht and back to pick up my clothes which were being altered since I had bought them only the day before. We then had just enough time to feed Jacob and put him down for a nap and do a quick shop on the market during which I bought some flowers to carry as a sort of bridal bouquet.
The ceremony at the Oud Zuid Town Hall on the Konningeweg was led by Claudine Kolloff who even wrote a poem for the occasion. (......Its a Dutch thing) It managed to be both short and sweet and she did a marvellous job of translating what we'd told her about ourselves into something that was meaningful, reasonably accurate and didn't make us want to throw up.
We made a small detour to the rotunda in the Vondelpark owned by Oud Zuid where Jaap did a manly impersonation of a photographer and Edmee a pregnant impersonation of a photographer's assistant, before joining everyone else at Tjing Tjing in De Pijp for champagne, delicious food and gezelligheid. Not to mention a touch of Dutch cabaret as provided by Mischa, not one but TWO Amsterdammetjes, a family of clogs and hordes of other gifts. And THE most delicious wedding cake from Pattersons in Melbourne!
Michael and the chef kok from Tjing Tjing did us proud with the food, the decorations and the service which was all fantastic and meant everyone was able to have a great time and our wedding was in the end exactly what we wanted it to be, just a great party!
Jacob gave up expecting his three o'clock feed about 5.00 and fell asleep in desperation before Mira took him home for a quiet evening. Tanya took hundreds of photos of her middle finger and Analu did that Budha baby thing of looking on wisely, from a safe distance.
Sunday morning we woke up married, hung over and with a car parked streets away stuffed full of clogs and ammsterdammetjes. Stranger things have happenned!
The first of a never ending stream of photos are here. Courtesy of Jaap.
Mariska's photos should be up any minute now too.
Posted by Faith at 01:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Knitty
The new Knitty is out with another fabulous design for a little girl, Tigger, but nothing nearly as cute for a little boy. Just as well, I still have to finish the Lil' Red Devil Hat and then knit the Pumpkin hat for Jacob. What with all the summer madness and getting hitched and lolling around the terraces of northern Spain, I seem to have let the knitting go for a while. And now there is also Jaap and Edmee's impending bundle-of-joy to knit for!
Posted by Faith at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 10, 2004
Talking in tongues
Jacob's vocabulary is building up. He says "dit" and "dat" when pointing to things, and I know sometimes he is saying "kijk". Other than that there is mama, papa, dag, bad, ja and nee. But today at the children's farm in the Pijp while looking at his favourites, the goats and ducks, he very clearly said "geitjes" and "eindjes". He also says "woof" whenever he sees a dog. Is "woof" a word?
He hasn't said any English words at all but that's my fault for being so slack about speaking English to him. Its just really hard to not slip back into Dutch. But I have been making a special effort for the last few weeks and it is clear now he understands a lot of English now, even if he hasn't spoken any.
And this morning he said very clearly and distinctly, "Jacob", the Dutch way, Yakob . (Thats another thing I've only just started getting serious about, calling him Jacob as pronounced in English)
My brother sent me a copy of The Bilingual Family which I finally got to read while we were away. Its really interesting and also shed quite a bit of light on some of the weird things happenning to my brain lately, especially where English is concerned. Seems English is no longer my dominant language. I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested.
Was it coincidence that while we were away most of the people we met to talk to were somehow themselves involved in bilingualism? Either as teachers or parents who'd raised bilingual kids.
Posted by Faith at 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 06, 2004
Thanks!
So, we are home again....damn! I hate the end of a holiday! Spain was wonderful, despite some unplanned excitement over lost passports, money, tickets, credit cards and camera. Hopefully sometime tomorrow I'll get time to blog about our trip and then who knows, get the wedding and Spain photos sorted?
But in the meantime, we would like to thank the following people who all went to so much trouble to make sure that what could have been a horrible holiday-spoiling accident became nothing more than a few days inconvenience and a nice-way-to-get-to-know-the-locals!
Thankyou to:
-Sonja and Juan in the Netherlands who took the calls from the Spanish police in Valencia de Don Juan and worked out to whom the bag they were talking about belonged!
-Peter and Vanusa in Amsterdam who phoned half of Ijsselstein to track down Ron's parents.
-Corrie and Wim who passed on messages and blocked cards.
-the officers at the Guardia Civilia in Valencia de Don Juan, Leon, Spain who telephoned the Netherlands after our bag was found, not once but twice in an effort to find the owners.
-and last but definetley not least, to Anne-Marie Flynn, Gonzalo Vereterna, Marcos Garcia Granda and Carlos Gonzalez Bodega at the Guardia Civilia in El Pinto, Asturia, Spain who spent hours with us on Saturday when we reported our bag lost, arranged new airline tickets, arranged somewhere for us to stay, lent us their football pools winnings so we could buy food etc, admired Jacob and generally sorted out all our problems until money transfers etc could be arranged on Monday.
-and also to their colleagues at Guardia Civilia in El Pinto who accompanied us on Monday to the Post Office and bank in Cudillero so that we could collect our money without ID and who rang the Guardia Civilia in Valencia de Don Juan after we got the message from Holland about our bag.
Cudillero, Asturia, Spain! There can't be a nicer place to find yourself stateless, moneyless and without a roof over your head!
Posted by Faith at 10:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack