outtakes 365 project

Here are more pictures not chosen for my official picture of the day. It's been a while since I posted 365 pictures, so there was a lot to choose from.



Feb 22 - I pressed the buttons, but the elevator never went anywhere. Maybe this is a mirage and there isnt an elevator in the bike garage (;
















Feb 26 - Love Potion. Drinking with co-workers. Hmmmm













March 2 - Opening act for 30 Seconds to Mars. Shame we got there at the end; they were really good. See the guy with the bat? He was playing the drum set with the bat! Crazy











March 6: My favorite Saturday treat: Bram Frites met fritesauce! My favorite. mmmmm now I want some. nom nom
















Little chicks in the Hema!













Ran into co-workers / friends Sue and Marieke. Marieke needed books to read for her impromptu holiday in Egypt. SO we popped into a used book store that I didnt know was a used bookstore. I LOVE used bookstores! It even had English books (these are not in English). Now I have to forget I know about this place before I blow all my monies!







Beautiful old books in a foreign language
















March 7 - New lesson : blue skies + green sadly does not = spring

Expat life

Posting more pictures that didnt make it onto the official 365 Project as my picture of the day. Might actually make this a weekly event. It's keeping me more active in blogging than ever before. So if I have the time, I'll try every Sunday.


Not entirely sure when I took this picture on my mobile phone, but I just learned how to download picts from my mobile onto my computer this week. They are glass plate spreaders I made by melting glass in a bunsen burner flame. I'd never done this before so they are a bit uneven. Ah well, it was fun.









Feb 14: Sunday morning coffee with my new china set from the Hema. I bought this with my giftcard from the University as my Christmas present to myself. Totally fell in love with this pattern. Wish I could afford the entire set of dishes.










Sepia version













An egg boiling in water. Thought the ripples in the water were cool.












Feb 15: Bunnies at night with Lazer Eyes. They always come out at night! There are bunches of them living near the bushes around the infection unit.











Feb 18: Lichen on the Vet School. Another shot taken with my mobile phone.











Feb 21: Fog in the morning. Woke up to a world hiding in fog.












Also, a note on trying to focus on the positive aspects of being an expat: it's not easy when the citizens of the country you live in dislike immigrants. The overt racism and poor treatment of non-Dutch people really really bothers me. I wish I could let it go or let it roll off my back and not bother me, but I cant. Last night I was with a couple other expats and we waited in line to get into this restaurant/bar that has dancing at night in Utrecht (called Havana Club - the food is not Cuban but they try) and we were denied admission b/c none of us were Dutch. I'm pretty sure this is illegal. I may have gotten all angry-obnoxious-drunk american and yelled some not nice things at the bouncers.... I shouldnt have done that but I was so angry. We were dressed properly and we were a bunch of good looking people and this is Utrecht! Not effing New York city or LA. This was not an issue of us not fitting in with the beautiful people. This was us being blatantly discriminated against b/c only one of us spoke Dutch (not me). I've heard stories of Moroccan or African or people looking like they are Moroccan or African getting rejected from clubs, but I never heard of people being rejected just for being foreigners. And I'm a legal effing resident. I pay their high taxes just like everyone else. I was quite upset over this so I ended up just going home.
On my bike ride home a vehicle driving behind me started beeping and the driver yelling at me so I waved at it to pass. It didnt pass, it just kept beeping. Since I was already quite angry I did another typical American thing and pulled my bike over and flipped the bird at the driver. So the guy pulled up next to me and started shouting at me in Dutch. I yelled back "Het spijt me, ik spreekt geen Nederlands, spreekt u Engels?" (i'm sorry, i dont speak Dutch, do you speak English?) And then he shouted at me something about being an ignorant foreigner and not knowing the language who bikes too slow and i'm rude and something about arresting me. I shouted back that I'm a kennismigrant and therefore not required to learn Dutch. There was more arguing about me not being able to speak Dutch and he kept saying something about having me arrested if i didnt calm down. Eventually I just said i'm sorry ive had a bad night you're right. And he drove off. In my drunkenness I thought he might have been the police b/c the van looked like a police van. But he was not. I cried the entire bike ride home. Like hysterical crying. I'm surprised I didnt crash my bike - I was basically biking without seeing anything.

Ive spent the entire day today annoyed at myself and annoyed at the people in this country. Being angry and annoyed is not going to help me to adjust or have a happy life here. But at the same time if I bottle it all up inside then its just going to come bursting out like it did last night. I'm going to have to find some constructive way to deal with this.

more 365 outtakes

I love my Cannon PowerShot SD700 IS Digital Elph but being a part of Project 365 has awakened the artist in me and I now want, with all my heart and soul, a digital SLR and a tripod. I blame my father for introducing me to SLR's with multiple lenses and tripods as a child. His amateur (and he's good!) photography habit really rubbed off on me. Seeing all of the amazing pictures on 365project.org makes my heart ache for a better camera. I vow to drink one less beer every week until I have one! Too bad I do not think this will happen before I go to Tel Aviv. But it is my new goal!

Oh, and here are some outtakes.


Feb 6, 2010
Found wandering Utrecht City. What are they doing to that poor boy?
















Feb 6, 2010
At the Xenos.
Make sure to have all your 2-foot ducks in a row!
I should have gotten something else in the shot for size comparison.









Feb 9, 2010
Dizzy stairs at the Medical School of UMC Utrecht.
















Feb 10, 2010
Ice on my office window.

365 out-takes

My desire to have awesome pictures everyday for project 365 is taking up a lot of my time! Especially when i get absorbed in trying to capture something difficult. Was inspired last night by another girl's self-portrait 365 (info here and here) and a little jealous of her superior equipment and skills.
Anyway here are some outtakes from the last couple of days of pictures that didnt make the cut as "official picture of the day."

January

I have had a really tough January. Possibly the worst January ever. Not a good way to start a year for sure. First, I had to leave my friends behind in New England, again, knowing that their lives are changing so rapidly I may not "know" them the next time I am able to see them. After I got back to the Netherlands I have been incredibly homesick and depressed. Then I got actually physically sick, twice. First a viral URI (possibly the flu, I thought I was dying), then a week after getting better I was socked with a bacterial sinus infection that moved into my ears. Ugh. I have not had otitis media since I was a kid. It hurts! Meanwhile all of my experiments went wrong. Either b/c i did something wrong or because of equipment that malfunctioned or parameters we were unaware of (such as European mice being colonized in their nose with bacteria of the same type that I work with) - so basically a giant waste of time and money. I've worked every weekend in Jan. I've had to cancel plans with friends new and old thanks to working weekends and being sick. A little hard to cure my loneliness and depression if I cannot even have a social life in the first place.
The icing on this shitty cake was this past friday my mom called me, my Grandma had died that day. This was my dad's mom. My dad's parents live in Texas for the winters, so no one was even down there for it. My parents and aunt were actually on their way down since we knew it was coming. She had a stroke before Christmas. The cause of the stroke was cancer on her spinal cord. She was paralyzed after the stroke. Not a good way to live life when you are that old. I spoke to her on the phone on Christmas (everyone did), so at least I got to tell her Europe was going good and so was my PhD. She was a survivor of breast cancer so it was pretty amazing that she lived this long anyway. - And I'm pretty sure it happened before I was born so that would be pre-1980's which makes her survival even more amazing. I was not as close to her as my mom's parents, but she was still a wonderful Grandma. On a side note, it's been a little over a year since my Uncle Tom died of brain cancer, so this side of the family is not having a good January for sure either. My poor Aunt, first her husband, now her mother. I hope that she is ok. It's very hard to be so far away from family and not be able to be there at times like these.

In order to get past this horrible month I have decided that tomorrow, February 1, is a new new year for me. It will be a fresh start. A better year. This January will be put behind me. From now on, things will get better. To commemorate this fresh start I've joined the 365 Project and I'll start tomorrow (you can find me here). From tomorrow onwards I'll take a picture and post it every day. I'll focus on ex-pat life and try to focus on good things. And I'll work on my photography skills. Once upon a time, I studied visual arts as my minor in high school and college and I took "old school" photography classes. I've even won awards. I really miss that connection to art - taking the picture, developing the film, deciding which pictures deserved to be printed, processing the print - i miss it all. I dont have any fancy camera equipment here, just my "point-and-shoot" digital camera, so I'm going to push that to the limit. See how far a hand-held can take me. And maybe if I have a little extra monies, I'll get myself a decent SLR, we'll see.

Hooray for tomorrow! Now, I have to get to the lab and do some work.