Cali Tree Beauty: Part II

This is the second tree - this one stands in the Sequoia National Park. The picture was taken close to sunset. This time I will just let the image do the talking...

Cali Tree Beauty: Part I

I didn't want to keep this picture from anyone, as I personally think it's amazing. It is a very lucky shot, as the sea gull is exactly in between the two trees. The picture was taken on November 23rd, 2007 at the Venice Beach Boardwalk in Venice, CA.

The shadows are also pretty cool. On the far right, there's a second sea gull on the ground also making for a nice shadow effect.

I wish to thank the California sea gulls for their cooperation :-)

Minas Morgul

This is the parliament building of Georgia, on Rustaveli Ave. in Tbilisi. It as built during the 50's, and clearly this is a result of Stalinst architecture that spread over the Soviet Union in the 30's.

At night it looks like a fortress, or some palace of evil from a movie. It's truly impressive. The building actually has a square courtyard in the centre, and as it is built up against a hill, it really seems to rise up from the low point (Rustaveli street level).

The building was constructed for the bigger part using forced labour from German POW's. It took them approximately 9 years to build this structure. Whoever survived the construction was allowed to go back to Germany.

The California Smokers Witch Hunt

Most people will probably know California isn't the most smoker-friendly place in the US. Apart from smoking being banned in all public places including bars and restaurants, smoking is also officially prohibited within a 20-feet radius of any openable door or window.

The practical enforcement of the 20-feet law is a completely different story (20 feet usually turns out to be somewhere in the middle of a traffic lane) but the intentions are clear.

But who said "Volksgericht" is old-fashioned? During my stay in Santa Monica, I was getting a coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on OPB and settled in at the outdoor seating area. Facing me was a blind wall (meaning I was compliant with the 20-feet rule) so I lit up.

I had barely taken a hit or a very Californian-looking guy came up to me from across the seating area, and busted out "you're not supposed to smoke here". No excuse me or any form of fake sugar-coated politeness that usually accompanies the general way in this place this time.

He was looking as if I was an old nazi found after 45 years in Argentina, or a tramp sitting on someone's front porch. He looked really nasty.

"You mean it's not allowed here, or I'm not supposed to?" I replied trying to look equally nasty. "You shouldn't smoke here" was his only reply. I felt like givinig this guy a smack. I most definately felt like making a point out of it.


But then I remembered the first rule of travelling: stay out of trouble in foreign places. I consider the US a "contingency 3 country"(the higher the number on a scale 1-6 the more you wanna stay out of trouble) so my ratio disciplined my anger and I put the thing out. Back in Holland I would've probably told the dude to go screw himself and then ignore him while finishing my smoke. Not here.

When leaving I gave him a dirty look. He grinned. Bastard.

This sign indicates the presence of a designated smoking area at Sea World (San Diego). I was very happy when I saw this sign, as it rendered my plans, of taking a strategic place behind a wall, or at the top of the seats surrounding the seals & sea otters show in order to have a smoke, obsolete. The arrow points to the top right. When I checked out the other side of the sign, the arrow pointed to the bottom left. Right. I figured this *was* the designated smoking area so I lit up. Undisturbed :-)


The irony is of course that so much time, effort and nastyness is put into fighting one of the great dangers of our time: smokers. They smell. They're nasty. They're evil. If you stand on Lincoln & Pico between 5 and 5:10 I guess you inhale as much shit as you'd get from an entire pack of cigarettes. And the fact that smokers die younger after paying a lifetime of extra taxes on tabacco is good news for healthcare - it allows them to focus on less nastier people (see picture).

The Dude in the Kitchen

Back in May '07, I visited a friend of mine who moved from Holland to Georgia 5 months earlier. At the time he was living in a not-so-chique typical run-down Soviet style apartment on Tamarashvili, a busy street in Saburtalo (a district of Tbilisi). There were more needles than people on the street there. But as usual in the Georgian capital, it was a rather relaxed scene and the junkies didn't pop out until after nightfall.

In that crappy apartment, in a run-down and patched-up Georgian kitchen stood an Orsk. A What? An Orsk. An old Soviet brand of refrigerators. My friend told me when he first moved in, it creeped him out as the thing seemed to come alive at night. The thing in that kitchen must have been at least 30 years old. But it worked.



In fact, it did more than that. The thing seemed to be alive. It made noises, it moved around a bit and it experienced mood swings (especially after a power cut). Sitting outside on the balcony, you would hear some sort of grunting sound coming from the kitchen. Checking up the thing seemed to have moved a few centimetres.

Orsk was also an insomniac. In the middle of the night, he could make a little jump up in the air and shake. The shaking movement was felt throughout the apartment, transported by the Soviet-quality wooden floors.

In any case, the darn thing was quickly named "the dude in the kitchen".

Sloterdijk Blues

It's a liveless place, with office buildings both empty and occupied, it's always windy there. No one stays. They just pass.

Sloterdijk is a part on the west edge of Amsterdam. It's where my office is. It's too clean to be logically considered a part of the Netherlands, let alone Amsterdam.

At night it becomes really quiet - the only thing you hear are the trains from the Sloterdijk station, a pretty large transfer hub that turns from a busy commuter station into an empty playground for all kinds of shady folk after 7pm. I never have problems though - I look like one of them, apart from the laptop case :-)

The mumbling in strange dialects is only rarely disturbed by the occasional over-caffeinated accountancy trainee rushing to the platform.

If the train on the viaduct tells me one thing, it must be "...gettin' my ass outta here..."

Czars & Soviets

These pictures were taken in the city of Batumi, the seaside resort of the tiny Caucasian republic of Georgia. It's a cool place. As everywhere in Georgia, they like to put certain buildings in the spotlight, but never manage to do it exactly right. There's always something hasty and not well thought through about it. But, it does give you sweet effects after dark and in this case it shines light on two structures representing two opposites in history.

This is Batumi city hall. A Russian building. Fake-French, so to speak. It sits right on the boulevard, which is slow and lazy during the day and bustling with life (and booze) at night. The fountain also has lights in it - looking very classical there. If you would turn 90 degrees from where I was standing, you would see the ferris wheel, and some very bad-taste plastic and neon palm trees on a square that's just a little too large.

Not far from the city hall, is this odd-looking fellow. The parliament building of the autonomous republic of Achara. I really don't know what to think of this building. During the day it looks like a failed Soviet attempt at building a modern office building. At night it's freaky... like it has "Big Brother is watching you" written all over it. But I might miss the point completely. In any case, if you pass it after a night on the piss it makes for a good laugh.

Winter Wonder Land

This is a view from my top window, in a southern direction towards the Nieuwe Kerk ("new church"). I really hate winter and everything that comes with it, but occasionally you can shoot some pretty nice pictures. The air seems thinner, the light is different and the coldness itself is captured in the image.


This is the south-western direction - yet again another church on the skyline. Or cathedral. A meteorologist might explain the funny light effects. I'll stick to pollution. But it still looks nice.

A close-up. The building has something spooky, a bit of a Mordor something to it. The leafless tree is also no witness to a lot of life there. But hey, it's a church. And it's Holland after all.

Hi there

This is not about search marketing, bid management systems or SEO. Nor is it about local search trends, or the latest rant of some marketing guru. I mean, I love my work but there's more stuff to explore.

I am the proud owner of a crappy Nokia N73. It is a very bad phone with an exellent camera. That's why I got it.

We live in interesting times, a turning point in history, not least because of technology. I wonder if the Romans of 476 AD knew they lived on the edge of two eras. Probably not. So do we know it? Probably not.

But by carrying a Finnish piece of junk in my pocket I get to capture some stuff that I think is interesting, or arty, or nice. Or ugly. Or sometimes not because the image is aesthetically appealing but just 'cause it captures the "Zeitgeist" - the spirit of our time, or the one of a time past long ago.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, you might just capture a little piece of what's yet to come.

NB: all pictures on my blog are mine, unless stated otherwise. I am the copyright holder of these images, but I usually don't make a point out of re-use if you ask nicely :-)