dutch geometry

london

so london was great. flying to luton is annoying because the flight takes 40 minutes but then the bus ride into the city takes 80 minutes. staying with my uncles was enjoyable; it was good to see them again. mostly i just walked around the city and stopped at a few cool things. i saw most of the tourist highlights. i saw all of the cultural artifacts the british have stolen from other parts of the world in the british museum (way to go, guys). the tate modern was cool, with some impressive contemporary stuff including a tall room with an installation by anselm kiefer. i am almost getting tired of impressionist/early modern art being so revered and holy. it is tiring to squint at pissaros and cubist picassos for so long. there is other shit out there. the pop art exhibit to me was trash except for damien hirst's twins piece. they also had a john baldessari retrospective that blew me away. he was expressing a lot of ideas and manipulations in art that i like too. where the pop art exhibit was a packed mass of humanity, the baldessari galleries were quiet and empty and with much better work. i walked around camden, southwark, chelsea, battersea, soho, hyde park, regents park, hampstead, canary wharf, and the bank street area. accidentally stumbled onto james stirling's poultry street post-modern ship building. saw the AA (wasn't impressed). walked across abbey road. walked through neave brown's alexandra road housing development. had an amazing lunch at a vegetarian south indian restaurant in soho. enjoyed walking through hampstead heath at dusk with my uncles, having a pint at a bar where karl marx used to get wasted, and then dinner with my uncles' international friends. i know it was a good trip because at the end of each day my feet would throb because of all the kilometers i had consumed. it was a fantastic weekend. again, check the flickr for all the photos.

in other news i am getting ready for my mid-term presentation in my studio so i'll be putting in the hours now.

also found a practically free fare to barcelona in december, so i'll be visiting for about 4 days. the fare was 0.02 euro roundtrip but there was a 10 euro debit card processing fee making for a grand total price of 10.02 euro. it will cost about 3 times that just to get to the airport in eindhoven. oh well.

last night i went to a hip-hop open mic night and concert in utrecht with my friend sander. it was alright; the main rapper was some guy named BLS from LA. the median age for the dudes in the house band was probably 17 and they played simple hooks like 50 cent's find-me-in-the-club-bottle-full-of-bub beat and the first bar of "people make the world go round." some decent ableton-enabled hip-hop production too that was a mix of prefuse 73 and more ambient clouddead beats. anyway it was fun to see hip-hop in a basement club in a small european city. ok, now back to work.

antwerpen

yesterday i went to antwerpen for the day. it is a small city near the border of belgium and the netherlands. it is compact and gorgeous. most of the buildings are from the 18th century and before and are ornately figured. the streets are narrow stone canyons with cafes and high fashion boutiques everywhere you look. people speak dutch. people speak french. there is a developed asia-town where i explored a thai grocery store. there is also a large african population and i saw stores advertised as "afro-asian markets." that covers a lot of territory. the city is beautiful to explore. the southern part of downtown is newer and more the fashion district but still cool. i walked around for three hours or so and then had a pizza. after dark i went to go hang out with teenage cool kids who were playing a gig there. it was really good to see them again and it reminded me how much i miss being in denton and how cool that town is. i will go back there soon though. i had to leave early because the cheapest train i could find was leaving that night and not in the morning, so i ran (for the first time in a while) part of the way to the train station, barely making my IC train. but, here i am to tell you about it. antwerpen is beautiful.

today i am packing and doing a little work because tonight i am flying to london to visit my uncle charlie! that should be a blast. three days in london. i will report back sometime.

i took a lot of pictures of antwerpen. check them out on the flickr.