Festival of pants...

Love Neuenheim's christmas lights, celebrating the importance of pants at christmas...

"Just because something has happened to you, doesn't mean that it matters."

Ernest Hemmingway

Late Christmas.... part 2

took this, love it, hope you had a good christmas

Late Christmas....

Have been wandering around Heidelberg again today, took a couple of pictures, the second of while I really love, which I'm thinking of using for christmas cards next year....
The Lynched Santa is one option....

Heidelberg wanderings

More Heidelberg pictures

Things I've missed....

Not (just) cold, dark and full of ugly fat girls in short skirts...

Spent christmas in Yorkshire with Kat's family. Managed to do a little walking, mainly around her parent's house and Almscliff crag (close to their house). Its nice to be reminded that Yorkshire countryside is beautiful....

Several Pictures here

Wrong side of the world...

Got back to europe a week ago. Got on the plane and it was 32C and sunny, got off in Frankfurt and it was -5C and snowing. Quite a bit of shock to the system.... Just spent the last week doing a flying tour of england, christmas with Kat's parents, dropped in on my granny for lunch, then had dinner with my brother and sister. Got back to Heidelbery yesterday, have a few days of sitting still here, then off to Italy to eat for a few days.... Pictures to follow

Comments welcome...

feel free to comment, don't be shy (or feel obliged)... I might even remember to read them

Currently Reading....

Borrowed 'Plan B' by Jonathan Tropper from mum while she was visiting. Its quite a light, entertaining book about disfunctional thirty year olds (aren't they all). A group of friends decide to help their famous Hollywood friend kick his cocaine habit by kidnapping him.... Great fun, very easy reading, and quite entertaining... Quote of the day:



"Sex is like air, it isn't important unless you aren't getting any."

Crocs....

Saw this great little exhibition of kids' art by the Esplanade yesterday. A group of school kids were given a pair of Crocs to do with as they pleased... Here's what they came up with.

Crocs Art

Orchid Fun

Pink Orchid
Originally uploaded by adam.cliffe

Went wandering around the Orchid Garden and the Botanical Gardens today with mum. Had lots of fun taking pictures, some of which turned out pretty well.... Here's the evidence

Child labour...

Was wandering around Vivo City today and I had a sudden nostalgia flashback in the form of Girl Guides selling cookies. Haven't seen anyone do this (outside American sit-coms) since the 1980s... Had to buy some, if only to encourage the use of child labour...

Beardy fun....

For anyone who hasn't seen me over the last few weeks, I've been growing a (taliban like) beard. Not particularly deliberately, but more because I didn't feel like shaving (this coincided strangely with Kat going back to Germany). I Finally got rid of it yesterday (an event which has nothing to do with my mum visiting tomorrow)... Had lots of fun using clippers to kill it. Went through lots of dubious facial hair styles on the way back to respectability, including favorites of a fetching 1980s detective mustache and some rather dashing Mr Darcy sideburns. I'm sad to say that I'm not shameful enough to take or post pictures, you'll just have to imagine them...

Things I'd love to learn to do (but probably shouldn't)

Parkour, a french 'sport', kind of a mix of free running, free climbing and stunt-man stuff... v.cool

Currently reading...

One of the things I'm reading at the moment is 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi. It's a great, moving graphic novel about the author's life, growing up in Iran during the revolution and Iran-Iraq war. Like Maus, it is a serious, often very moving novel, which tells a gripping story. I've just seen that they have made a movie of it. (Trailer)

Unusually personal

A glimpse into my mind….

I’m not sure what prompted me to write this. I think, perhaps, that it has been washing around inside my head for a couple of weeks now and seems to get more agitated when I’m walking around. So here’s my attempt to drain out some thoughts on madness. This is my experience of (officially) having bi-polar disorder, or manic depression, or simply being quite, quite mad (sometimes). If you’ve spend more than a few weeks in the same little goldfish bowl as me the outward behaviour won’t come as a huge surprise.

Lets start with the ‘up side’. The manic phases often feel quite disconnected from real life. For me, it is often a mix of physical and mental energy. It feels like an adrenalin shot to the heart. I want to run, jump, fly, anything, just to move faster. Life feels turbo-charged, I imaging this is how Superman felt when he was acting as Clark Kent, huge amounts of strength and speed all wound up and it takes concentration not to release it. Often combined with this is a strange feeling of mental acceleration. The rest of the world seems to drop into slow motion, not very slow, but enough to feel like it can’t quite keep up. There’s a huge rush of ideas, thoughts and raw creativity, often completely random in direction. It can be an amazing feeling, its like my brain is actually working properly, as if the rest of the time I was half asleep. I end up sitting around in the middle of the night scribbling the outline of a project, drawing strange contraptions or thing that I would like to build, but probably never will….

….and here’s where things usually start to dip. These huge bursts of activity and planning tend to create piles of plans. Most of these bursts seem to involve projects which can’t be achieved with the things I have, so I end up ordering strange tools, bits of electronics or other gizmos. At work I’ll set up a pile of experiments that I realistically could never deal with at once (in a weeks time when they are ready). I find myself surrounded by so many examples of things I have failed to do. Its an icy shock back to reality, then usually a bit further. The low side often starts like this, or as a huge overreaction to something minor, the kind of thing that would normally bother you for a few seconds, then you would forget about. The sinking continues and expands into a more physical sensation. I walk around drained of energy, feeling like someone has turned the gravity up. Lifting my head up takes noticeable effort and simply moving around becomes almost painful. Emotionally I end up surrounded by either intense grief and hopelessness or just completely numb. The numbness is in some ways harder to understand, it is quite distinct from sadness, it is a complete disconnection from the world. I end up in glass tank, able to see and hear the world, but separated from it somehow. Everything feels relayed or processed, in the same way that the watching the world on television doesn’t feel like being there. The hardest part is to explain to everyone else that it isn’t rational, it isn’t personal, it isn’t that I don’t love you all, I’m just numb.

The low points often last longer and fade away, rather than simply stopping. The local anaesthetic wears off and I start to feel things again. Simply clicking out of it happens much less often, whereas when I’m flying it usually ends with a quick, hard crash. After the lows, normality re-grows.

This isn’t intended to worry, more to try and explain.

A

Please, someone, give Sylvester Stalone some money

Damn... they've just made another Rambo film! Sly Stalone must be desperate for some cash. There's nothing more desperate than an old age action hero.

On Chesil Beach

I've just finished reading 'On Chesil Beach' by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed it. The story is set in a small seaside hotel, where a young couple spend their wedding night. The description of the awkwardness and embarrassment with which the couple approach their first sex is painful to read. It's quite strange, I read the first chapter of this in The Guardian, and it felt like it could have been set in the 19th century, but in fact it is placed in the early 1960s and shows how different things were before the sexual revolution of the swinging sixties. I found the story somewhat depressing, especially how sexual innocence and lack of communication can damage things so easily.

"There is nothing more desperate than an Englishman frantically trying to scrape enough Marmite out of an empty jar to cover the other half of his slice of toast."

Me, just now

Just thought I'd share that

Round 3

The last one, I promise....

Round 2

Just me getting my ass kicked some more....

Very British....

Just got my passport renewed... Only the British could charge S$450 for a passport then only accept payment it cash (had to wander around trying to find a cash machine). Still it was much easier than renewing my passport in England. I was the only person there and the nice woman who took my form seemed glad of the company. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd offered me tea and biscuits...

More strange photo fun....

Had another play around with HDR photography. This time I remembered to take a 'before' picture just using the regular night settings of my camera. I kind of like the results (full size pics here). I had to do a little photoshopping to get rid of the window frame which make a nasty line on the left side. I like the way the yellow safety screen is picked out in the HDR photo. I would like to darken the sky a bit, but I haven't worked out how to do that in Photoshop yet. Ok, so I also need to haul my ass outside and work on my composition, but still... I had a lot of fun taking them and playing with Photoshop.

Orchid fun....

I'm definitely getting old, I'm taking an interest in gardening.... I bought an orchid when I went to the Orchid Garden with Kat. They are pretty cool, they come as little babies (probably not the correct term), in little sterile tubes of food (looks a bit like a tube of fly food). I didn't get around to doing anything with it for about a month, but I finally found a pot for it at the weekend. I got a strange hydroponic type pot, which just has gravel in it (orchids don't need much food). There's a resevoir for water in the bottom (less chance of me forgetting to water it) and a string wick which draws water up into the gravel.











Not a great final pic, but the orchid doesn't really poke over the top yet....
I'm curious to know if/how long the orchid survives....

Safety advice?

I noticed this by the lift at work today... Admittedly the top part is pretty standard, but with the wheelchair picture I'm taking it to mean one of the following:

1. In the event of fire, handicapped people are screwed

2. In the event of fire, handicapped people should fling themselves down the stairs in their wheelchairs.... not sure if that's better or worse than then fire....

Facebook...

Read this on BoingBoing and thought I'd link to it as we were talking about Facebook and why I refuse to join which go along the lines of: I am not a 14 year old girl, I waste enough time already, hugging someone on Facebook doesn't do anything for me, I don't care what most of the people I have ever met in my life are doing right now (except my friends, who I prefer to exchange real communications with, even if it is infrequently).

Facebook will sink under the weight of socially obligated "friendships"

Didn't get to do any sparing today, not enough time. But what I did get was the movies which Marcus recorded of my fighting (getting my ass kicked) by Yang (a guy who I swear can fly)... I also discovered from watching the movies that the rounds are only one minute long... You can tell how knackered I was by then end of the first round because I'm wandering off to the wrong corner...

Round 1



Will try and upload the other two rounds tomorrow, this one took ages...

Gladiator...

Had great fun at Arnis last night. Went to both classes again (in a fairly suicidal way), but I was allowed to try sparing for the first time, which was lots of fun... Got dressed up in a huge helmet with a cage on the front an lots of neck padding, also got a groin guard and I was given a 'padded' stick. I have discovered the following:
1. The term 'padded' is relative, it still hurts when you get hit, although I was too knackered to notice.

2. Fighting is really hard work. We did 3x2 min rounds with 30 seconds break in between. I now have much more respect for boxers... It was one of the most tiring things I've done, much harder that the 45 min workout which we had to do before it (which probably didn't help).

3. Most of what I have learned during the lessons vanishes in the first 15 seconds and the whole thing rapidly degenerates into two 6 year olds with sticks (at least in my case).

4. It is surprisingly fun. I'm looking forward to doing it again. (once the bruises have gone down and my muscles have recovered).

5. Its really hard to take pictures of yourself to illustrate bruises...

Photo fun....

Starting playing around a bit more with my camera... lots of fun to be had, so many settings to use (understand). Also started experimenting with High dynamic range photography, which is a method for taking several photos at different exposures and combining them to get cool pictures. This isn't great first attempt (lots of funny reflections from my apartment window), but it was fun to try.... I like the fact that the pictures tend end up with strangely vivid colours.














Larger version

Feet

Apparently you're not a proper blogger until you've posted a picture of your feet... so here's mine

(and I was learning to use my new camera)

"I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate"

George Burns

just another day at the umbrella farm

virtuous pain.....

Felt like i needed the extra work out last night so did both Arnis classes again.... I worked out that I did 200 press ups over the course of 3 hours... feel very manly to day, very old manly, I ache like hell and I'm hobbling around like a cripple.

Another tough day in the Rørth Lab

Why my lab are so wonderful...

Have been meaning to write a post about this for a while now, but have just got back from the kite place so it seemed like a good time. So, the story so far is that for my 30th my Lab (and Christian) got me an extremely cool (and very me) present of a remote controlled kite. Unless you've seen the people flying them here, that won't mean too much. It's designed and made by a Singaporean company called 'Go Fly Kite'. It is a fairly big kite, with a model airplane engine on the front. The really cool part is that it also has a whole load of LEDs (lights) all over it, and cos its built from carbon fiber it's really lite, so is very maneuverable. I've been lusting after one since I first saw the club that makes them flying them at night by the river. It looks like a scene from 'Close encounters of a third kind'. Lots of strange alien lights diving and swooping through the air.... Any how, having got it I'm very eager to fly it... so I went to the shop today to try and get a lesson (which they are happy to give). They suggested I try flying the simulator first (the controller plugged into a computer). I was kind of keen to try flying the real thing, but they effectively demonstrated that it is much harder than it looks. My simulator experience went like this.... {Adam makes plane take of with relative ease, plane turns, plane crashes into ground} repeat X times.

So spent a couple of hours hanging out at the shop today (which is cool cos they have big sofas and they're really chilled out and friendly). After much practice I can now make the simulated plane take off, fly around in all sorts of (unpredictable) patterns, and crash into the ground.... They managed to convince me that I shouldn't try the real thing until I could make some sort of landing.... (which is a good point, although they are happy to teach me how to repair broken kites....) Still it was lots of fun and they're happy for me to drop by anytime and practice/get advice and help until I'm ready to fly for real. (am at level 2 of 4). So hopefully with a bit more training I can fly for real next week. Until then, here are some pictures of my kite (as yet unnamed)

Just read....

Just finished reading 'The Raw Shark Texts' by Steven Hall. I really liked this book. I was slightly skeptical at the beginning, the protagonist wakes up lying on the floor with no memories and no idea who he is. He receives a series of messages from himself, with hints of who he is. He discovers from a psychiatrist that his girlfriend died in an accident and he lost his memory after this. I admit thinking at the start of the book that this was going to be somewhere between a book version of Memento and the Bourne Identity (neither of which would have been too bad). In fact the book rapidly takes several more Kafkaesque turns and gets pleasingly strange. I don't want to ruin the book by explaining it more, but it is really worth reading. I also love some of the type setting in the book. Which really adds to the feeling of it. Especially near the end (you'll know what I mean when you get to it).

Buy it, read it, share in the hallucination.

Artistic Genius....

Found this on BoingBoing. The new Guinness advert is amazingly good

Empty spaces...

Kat has gone back to Heidelberg, her absence is palpable...

Sentosa....

Went to Sentosa with Kat yesterday.... It was, on the whole, incredibly tacky... if Disney made an island it would look something like this. Here are a couple of Flickr sets to try and explain this....

First the trip there.... (not on the whole bad)

Then the tackyness of the the nature walk....

Finally Underwater World, which I actually really liked. Took lots of pictures here of strange creatures. Particularly liked the Sea Dragons (Like Sea horse, but cooler) I also really liked the Sea Angels, which I didn't manage to take pictures of, but were really beautiful... (and fluoresce)

Secret Ninja Training....

Kat and my Dad dropped into the end of my Arnis class on Sunday and had a good laugh at me. (This was also the day I decided to forget everything and hit myself in the head with my stick).... Here's the evidence

Kat found this in Melbourne....

Some grooming required....

Haven't shaved since I was 29.... just thought I'd share that...

Quote of the day....

I'm reading (almost finished) Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, I like it all in all, a story about two disfuctional guys living two disfunctional lives. Just read this part....

"People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have away of looking at things - even tragedy - with a sense of irony. There's some truth in it; it's pretty stupid, though. Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. After that, there's just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. You might say, after that, there's only death."

hmmm..........

Bollywood gone so so wrong...

double the pain....

Just done the intermediate and beginner's Arnis class, two and a half hours of stick swinging fun... Plus two runs, two sets of warm up exercises... Feel very virtuous now, going to ache like hell tomorrow..... :o)

Photo update...

I've uploaded a few more photo's from Hsin's camera from Bintan. Some taken by Hsin, some (mainly the strange portrait ones) taken by me.

Yellow melon

My food discovery of the week is yellow watermelon. Nachen brought one into work yesterday. I didn't even know they existed.... the also taste different to regular red melons, a bit sweeter I guess. (here's our melon being cut up by Li Heng (Nachen's man)

Taxi strangeness

Now that is a smart taxi driver....

Public service anouncement

This could be the tag line for a cheap horror/sci-fi movie

Holiday photos... part one

Just got back from 3 days on Bintan to celebrate my birthday (which is tomorrow). Have so far only uploaded the photos from Kat's camera, will add more as I get them from everyone else.

Bintan Album

Strange Deserts...

Kat and I had these strange deserts at the Shin Kushiya (Japanese Grill place in Vivo city). The left one is green tea ice cream with caramelised sweet potato and red beans (ice cream good, potato
and beans strange). Mine was black sesame ice cream with black sesame cream and a strawberry. Looks like chemical biproduct, tasted great.

Amazing kids things....

Saw these great horses at Vivo City shopping mall. They are in a courtyard on the second floor. Basically kids sit on them and bounce up and down, there must be some sort of spring in the horses which allows the front and back legs to open a bit, then come back together, propelling the horse forward. Looks like great fun for kids... also a great idea...s

light latenight laughs

cleaning frenzy....

Aaargh.... Kat arrives in 7 hours, my apartment is now messier that it was yesterday...

I finally collected my boxes of crap from Minna's place, now my living room is filled with half unpacked boxes and piles of stuff.... not a great improvement.

Have also discovered that cleaning is a pain when it's so damn hot. Hopefully my neighbours didn't spot me wandering around scrubbing like a madman in just my underwear and rubber gloves (they probably think I'm a strange fetishist if they did)

must stop blogging and rearrange my piles some more...c

How Google used to work....

here's to the future...

happiness through electro-stimulation....

for the true coffee addicts...

This is a great piece of design, which will be used by illy at the next Venice Biennale.

Daywatch [Dnevnoy dozor]

Wasn't feeling very sociable (for a change) so decided to go to the movies on my own. Went to see Daywatch, a pretty cool Russian film which is the sequel to Nightwatch. Its pretty much a fantasy action film set in Russia in the 90s (which is part of what makes it so great), at times it has the feel of The Matrix, but cos its Russia, no one is dressed nicely and everything is much more creepy. Strangely one of my favorite parts was the subtitles (it's filmed in Russian). Instead of the usual 'done by the trainee the night before the release' efforts most movies have, someone clearly spent some time on them, so they fade in/out, pulse and rattle or some words are turn blood red (like the word blood). The whole effect adds quite a bit to the illusion and actually added quite a bit to the mood of some of the scenes... Overall quite fun (if a bit geeky)

recently read....

Troll: A Love story by Johanna Sinisalo
A fantastic book which Minna recommended. A pretty surreal romance with some interesting observations on how we exploit nature and tend to treat people like animals and animals like people...





Crooked Little Vein, by Warren Ellis
A great, but highly highly weird book. Journeys through the stranger parts of American counter culture (especially strange sex fetishes). Hard to explain it in a way that does it justice, but I liked it....

Things I'm reading....

Notes from an even smaller island
A Bill Bryson like series of anecdotes written by a British guy who lived in Singapore for five years. I borrowed this from Thomas and its quite fun to dip into every now and then. Its written for both expats and Singaporeans, providing funny tales of strange Singaporean behaviours, customs and encounters, as well as a fair few 'dumb Ang Moh' (dumb white guy) stories.

Also explains some aspects of Singaporean behaviour like Kiasu (something like fear of failure, often at the expense of others)



In the Miso Soup, by Ryu Murakami
I got this partly because I've had good experiences with Japanese writes called Murakami...
I'm only halfway through now, but its quite a gripping wander around the seedy sex districts of Tokyo, which isn't something I immediately associate with Japan. Liking it so far...

very Singaporean....

just an observation from my Arnis class today...

We have the class in the main courtyard of a CC (community center) and there's a walkway around the outside, with rooms on three sides and a car park on the other side. For some reason, despite the fact that there are 15 (sweaty) people swinging sticks around and generally not looking around them too much, most of the other users of the CC just walk right through the middle of the courtyard to get to their cars... they seem completely oblivious that they are in real danger of being hit (accidentally of course) by sticks... The also don't notice (or respond) to the whole class stopping and staring angrily at them.

(I've managed to resist the temptation to hit/yell at them so far, but its only a matter of time)

I'm sooo dumb (part 2)

Just got into my apartment. Have discovered that although my condo has 6-7 security guards, none of them have keycards for the apartments...

Eventually managed to get in touch with my landlady, who was wonderful and came over and gave me her key. She was very nice about it and thought the whole thing was hysterical... (especially that I've already managed to lose both of my keycards)

now I just have to sleep off my hangover....

I'm so dumb, sake is so evil....

I'm such a dumbass.... went out last night with the Russians, went to a great Japanese barbecue place (there's a little bowl of charcoal in the middle of the table, you cook your own food). Drank way too much Sake (which seems to have a delayed action on me.) Got horribly drunk, lost wallet in either the restaurant or taxi. As a consequence today I have 1. a huge hangover 2. no credit cards 3. no way of getting into my apartment (key card was in my wallet)....

Fortunately Snezhka let me sleep (pass out) at her place and lent me some money this morning, so I wasn't totally screwed....

Went to the bank this morning to cancel my cards, and happily discovered that they could give me a new ATM card on the spot, so at least I can get some money out. Now I just have to see if I can persuade the condo people to let me into my flat. Could also do with trying to find the landlady and asking him if he has a spare key card (as I've already lost both of the ones he gave me).....

am sooo dumb....

Nachen

No particular reason from this pic, just took a picture of my student, Nachen and thought it was funny, so figured I'd post it before I lose it.