ralph was a strange lad. he liked to eat carrots whilst swimming. no one much liked ralph. poor ralph. one day there was a sale on carrots at the supermarket, and everyone bought lots of carrots. but ralph bought the most. ralph went swimming lots and ate all of his carrots. but ralph ate too many carrots and then ralph didn't like carrots anymore, so he stopped eating carrots while he was swimming. and that's the story about ralph. the end.
erhm, so we went out that night, i think it was friday, and we had this amazing dinner (i had a starter of scampi met pesto en pasta and then i had zalmonstuk met basicalasaus or something like that, it had tomatoes too, but i forget what the dutch word for tomatoes is. for dessert i had creme caramel. it was all very tasty) at a strange restaurant with paintings of dogs in suits upon the wall. and kayaks, and funny hats.
after dinner we met up with the dutch lot and wandered off to a bar in breda. we followed that up with another bar, but it was unfortunately closing so we were left with no choice but the nightclub. what an abysmal place that was. the club interior itself was rather plush with massive sweeping stairways, chandeliers and huge oil paintings. the clientel (much like cardiac in auckland with it's indulgent decorating) were trashy. hundreds of people crammed in to the "dancefloor" holding beer and trying to talk over the music. I couldn't find, no matter how hard i searched, a single person dancing. it was all a bit odd. we left about four and came home.
sometime the next day i got up and we drove back to breda for the saturday market. i bought some nice joung kaas met paprika(young dutch cheese with capsicum bits) and some french brie. then we went looking for a supermarket, but ended up in a sex shop instead. the "nice" lady came over and tried to sell me some lip-shaped thingy something. we decided perhaps we'd look for the supermarket some more. we got dinner, we home, cooked ate, theyw ent out and i settled down in front of the telly.
EUROVISION 2004. Oh my my, the day finally arrived. after weeks of hype and anticipation i was all exicted and sitting in front of the telly with a nice glass of jack and a bag of candy. i'm not sure i've ever been so dissapointed in my entire life over a television pop music contest thingy. yes, usually you're dissapointed, but this was on a whole new level. it was so bad, that it was actually funny. so i sat there for i'm not sure how many hours, in absolute hysterics over the utter stupidity of this "music" contest. the deal is this: each european country is entitled to enter a band/singer to sing a song to represent their country. they have a semi finals type setup and end up with about twenty something countries each with a finalist entry. everyone sang and it was all very trying-to-be-like-american-pop-but-still-very-ethnic. now, this is where the fun began - the voting. the lines were open for five minutes in each of 36 countries. then, in alphabetical order, we heard the results of each country's vote. so the country representative would come up on screen, say hullo, try to say something comical in dodgy english, smile awkwardly, and then announce the TWELVE highest scoring country entries from their own vote. personally, i thought the english entry was alright, but that had nothing to do with it in this contest - the voting was purely territorial. norway gave it's top slot to sweden, spain to portugal, ukraine to russia, russia to ukraine, etc etc etc. england will never win, because no one in europe likes them. so, subsequently, the ukraine, with it's many neighbouring countries and fairly politically dependant nations came out tops. and poor old iceland kind of got forgotten all the way up there by itself.
right, i'm tired fo typing about that now, and you're probably sick or reading about it too. i just need to say something about cloudbunnies now to make the entry subject relevant. i lay on a sunlounger for a half hour the other day watching the clouds float by, trying to decide which ones looked like a toaster, and which ones looked like bunnies. oh, the joy of it all.
did you do it? check in your pockets right this instant. i can't understand where it's gone, but the sun has vanished fromt he land of the dutchies. it's not there, here, or anywhere it would seem, and i'm awfully frustrated with this droll grey blechness that has presided over us for the last forever-how-long...
there are snippets today, but, largely the sky is grey, and no warmth is reaching us. please send warmth packages, postcards, photos and copious amounts of anything that i like to:
glen tregurtha
eurocamp/keycamp
de olmen recreatie
bovenstraat 98
4741 SK Hoeven
The Netherlands
i also have suspicious thoughts about the whereabouts of my awake-ness. i believe that i'm an involuntary participant in some government conspiracy perpetrated by evil toaster manufacturers with a vengance for something to do with the number seven.
well, really i've just been staying up too late, and getting up too early to go running, and it's all becoming a bit silly. but they put far too much butter and cheese and other bad things in the food and ít's not fair.
three of the dutch staff are leaving today, and it's sad. worse than sad, it's terrible. but we're out on the town in breda tonight, so that'll be excellent. dinner and a few bars, love it.
amy, fellow instructor from 3D last year is comin to see me this weekend for a happy picnic - and verys hortly i'm off out shopping in some terribly exotic place like roosendaal... so all in all the weekend is set to be somewhat of a fun one indeed.
gradually the blue sky faded, rendered grey by stormy clouds rolling over us. the air was sharp, crisp, electric; light surreal. moments after my last post, huge drops began to fall, then moments after i'd dashed inside with my washing the skies literally opened and inches of water collapsed over hoeven. madness. i was soaked through to the skin after running about two metres through the rain from the office to our front door. two of the dutch girls drove up at that point, and i attempted to rescue them from the car with a flimsy umbrella and a huge smile. then lightning... oh yes.
later at night we were walking through the strees of breda, koning inne dag was in full force. people everywhere clad in orange, dutch flags in every available space. beer, more beer than anything. huge lightning strikes illuminating the sky, echoing through the tiled streets. Then church bells ringing. It was as if we were in a film. how strange.
we had good mexican food with orange frozen margheritas... then home to lie on the couch with a glass of wine and watch muriels wedding... an unpredictable end to a rather arbitrary day. love it.
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