I've been meaning to get to Rotterdam for years now, and today it finally happened.
The reason I most wanted to visit was so I could see the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. It's one of those places that comes up in conversation from time to time when discussing art. It totally lives up to the hype...
From the minute you enter and see how the coat-check room is a series of cages for your belongings and a rope-and-pulley system for your coat, you know you're in for something good...
The collection is varied and excellent...
After I managed to pul myself away from the exhibits, I saw that I had plenty of time to walk to the waterfront and see Erasmusbrug (the Erasmus Bridge... also known as the "Swan Bridge" or the "Harp Bridge), then take the metro back to the train station...
As most of Rotterdam was destroyed in World War II, the city has a modern aesthetic, with a lot of new architectural and artistic structures...
ANYWAY...
I had about 25 minutes to get back to Rotterdam Centraal, which was no problem since the metro only takes 10 minutes.
EXCEPT...
When I went to purchase a ticket, I found out I couldn't buy one. The machine only refilled chip-cards. No problem, I'll just buy a chip-card. Except they don't fucking sell chip-cards. No ticket window. No attendant. No Assistance. Nothing.
So I had to run as fast as I could to get back to the train station.
I hauled ass.
Which was not easy because I don't run very often. At least once along the way I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
But I made it to the station with two minutes to spare, so it's all good, right?
No. My train was running 14 minutes late and so I ran all that way for nothing...
Note how my transfer time is 0 minutes. But not really... if you do the math, it's actually -7 minutes. Yay.
After all that bullshit, I decided I deserved PATATJES MET...
Well, I always feel that way, but still...
The flight over The Atlantic was a non-event. Which is the best kind of flight to have, really.
The plane was one of Delta's latest Airbus A330-300's which feels like the seats are even narrower than usual. It was uncomfortable for me... so I'm only guessing it must be downright miserable for at least half the passengers on the plane. I suppose it's only a matter of time before airlines do away with seats altogether. They'll just stack everybody in the plane like firewood.
On the bright side, the new entertainment system features Picture-In-Picture...
After landing, I took the train to Leiden so I could kill some time until The Dutch Bitch got off work. Back in 2012 I walked around the city to see the sights, but this time it was pouring rain...
To escape the weather, I went to Leiden's National Ethnology Museum, (Museum Volkenkunde)...
It features artifacts from peoples around the world (outside of Europe), with sections devoted to North America, South & Central America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania...
The museum is incredibly well-done and has a surprisingly deep collection. The only problem is that everything is suspended in glass cases with no background, so it can be tough to focus on the artifacts. A few times I experimented with angle-shifting to see if I could add some separation, but it wasn't terribly effective...
The display spaces are pretty amazing, and full-wall projections are used to put you into the place where the artifacts are from...
And then? It was time for PATATJES MET!!!
And now I could really use a nap...
I woke up.
I finished packing.
I drove over to Seattle.
I made my way through SeaTac Airport (barely, as it was torn to shit as usual).
Then I caught a flight to the Netherlands.
The end.
Or... the beginning?
I had planned to catch up on work over the weekend so I'd have an easy three days leading up to vacation. Instead I worked 16 hours every day and will be up working until at least midnight tonight.
I had planned on having my suitcase packed and everything ready to go yesterday so that I could spend a night relaxing before driving over to Seattle to catch my flight. I think we all know that didn't happen. I'll be lucky if I manage to grab a handful of clean underwear as I'm running out the door tomorrow morning.
I honestly don't know who I manage to get myself into this same situation every single time I go on vacation...
Oh well. After tomorrow I suppose it won't matter.
Until I end up in Europe with no pants.
Stop digging out that old bomb shelter... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Cold? "Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash." — Kremlin-backed television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov, host of a weekly current affairs show in Russia. Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast. (from Reuters)
You wanna know what bothers me more than the thought of being turned into radioactive ash? I really, really, want to visit Russia. I always have. Ever since I first saw a photo of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. For most of my life, the idea of it has been an impossibility. But then the Soviet Union collapses, the cold war thaws, relations normalize, tourism becomes more and more common, and suddenly... but not really suddenly... the impossible becomes possible...
And now I'm asking myself... Are current tensions going to blow over? Are current tensions going to escalate? What happens if they do escalate? Have I waited too long? Am I too late?
Last year I ultimately decided to visit Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. But also in the running? A river cruise through the Ukraine, including a couple stops in Crimea...
I guess that ship has sailed... for a while. Or forever. You just never know. How shitty is it that we can't all just get along?
• Flash! The first two comic books I ever bought were Green Lantern/Green Arrow #121 and The Flash #277. Not coincidentally, they became my favorite super-heroes for quite a while...
At least until I discovered The Legion of Super-Heroes. And Batman, of course. But even so, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for those first heroes. Green Lantern finally made it to the big screen with a fucking horrendously shitty movie that I hated. Then Green Arrow got a very good television show I'm currently enjoying called Arrow. Next up? The Flash!
It's a spin-off from Arrow, so my hopes are high. The costume is certainly a step in the right direction.
This isn't the first iteration of The Flash on TV. The first was a show starring John Wesley Shipp back in 1990. It was surprisingly good, but limited by the technology of the day. To say I'm anxious to see what we'll be getting in the year 2014 is an understatement. The pilot is filming now. I'm assuming we'll be seeing it this Fall. Assuming the show is picked up. That's a lot of assuming.
• Drop. Apple has a terrific bit of tech called "AirDrop" that allows you to share iPhone/iPad photos, contacts, files, and whatnot pretty much effortlessly. Open what you want to share, activate AirDrop, and you can beam stuff to other AirDrop users...
Cool!
Apple has a terrific bit of tech called "AirDrop" that allows you to share Macintosh photos, contacts, files, and whatnot pretty much effortlessly. Locate the file you want to share in the Finder, activate AirDrop, and you can beam stuff to other AirDrop users...
Cool!
BUT YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S NOT COOL?!? EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE BOTH CALLED "AIRDROP," THE iPHONE AND MAC TECHNOLOGIES ARE NOT FUCKING COMPATIBLE! This is outrageously stupid and, for the life of me, I just don't get it. I keep thinking "It's coming any day now, I'm sure!" But then it doesn't, and I get pissed off all over again. Why bother naming them both "AirDrop" if they are so different that they can't even talk to each other? How is it that Apple can be so smart in so many ways but so stupid in others?
• Stick! I promised myself that I wouldn't start in on the new video game, SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH, until I finished LEGO MARVEL SUPER-HEROES, but I just couldn't resist any longer. I'm a massively huge South Park fan, and the trailer looked amazing (warning, NOT safe for work)...
And you know what? It IS amazing! It looks exactly like you're "playing" an episode of the TV series. As if that weren't enough, it is frickin' hilarious. As in laugh-out-loud-funny. Not only because it's South Park, but because they've managed to create a fully-realized RPG game that's actually a parody of RPG games... with humor built into practically everything you see and do. I'll want to play it a bit more when I get back from vacation before I write a review... but, if you're a South Park and video game fan, it's pretty much a no-brainer. You simply must own this.
• Mars 2. The Veronica Mars movie (which I reviewed here) has only been out for three days, and already the sequel talk has started. Here's creator Rob Thomas Himself..
“With the first movie, because it was crowd-funded, it was a love letter to the fans,” he explains. “I put every character they loved back into the movie. There are a lot of inside jokes. With a second movie, I would build it from the case out. In the first movie, I feel like I did just the opposite. I put all the dessert, all the frosting on there, and then put a detective case in the middle. On the next one, I would want the detective case to be the driving force of the movie.”
It's as if he read my blog post and is answering my prayers!
Needless to say, I would be positively thrilled to get a sequel. Especially if we get a fantastic Veronica-Mars-style mystery on-par with what we saw in the first and second seasons of the show. NOW SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
Annnnnd... the end.
Every time there's a mishap, problem, disaster, or close-call with a flight, I'm inevitably asked something along the lines of "You fly a lot... don't you worry about this happening to you?"
To which I always answer "No. Not even a little bit."
And every time I say it, I realize that people must think I'm lying... or dismissing them... or saying whatever I have to say to convince myself that I'm invincible. But I'm really not. And this is why...
That's a FlightRadar24 map of all the commercial planes in the air right now. Thousands of them. And here's a close-up look at what's flying over the mainland US alone...
That's pretty much going on all day long, though things shift a bit as some parts of the world go to sleep and other parts wake up. With this kind of traffic in the air 24/7, it's easy to see how flying truly IS one of the safest activities you can do. My drive to the airport is a far, far more dangerous journey than my upcoming flight to Europe.
And so no, I don't worry about flying.
Not even a little bit.
If it happens, it happens. But the odds are so mind-bogglingly low that it's just not worth fretting over.
Getting trapped in a middle-seat between a smelly person and a crying baby however?
My deepest sympathies to everyone affected by the disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370.
Two weeks.
Two weeks until I blow this popsicle stand for twelve whole days...
Guess I should really start making plans and stuff.
After getting slammed with snow for the past couple days, Stevens Pass was "chains required" this morning, which meant I had to go Blewett-Snoqualmie since it was merely "bare & wet." Unbeknownst to myself at the time of purchase, my piece-of-shit car is not able to wear chains, which means the fucker should have never been sold in the Pacific Northwest to begin with. Oh well. It's an additional 20 minutes to my travel time, but them's the breaks...
Great way to spend a snow day!
"I'm never leaving my house again."
—Everybody who has ever seen a bed bug in their hotel ever.
Back when I was traveling poor and sleeping in hostels (on good days) or train stations (on not-so-good days), I fully expected that I'd eventually wake up to find a spider on my face... or cockroaches in my shoes... or rats in my luggage... or some other infestation nightmare. I took every precaution I could but, when you're lodging on the cheap, there are inevitabilities that you learn to accept.
But I was ridiculously lucky.
With the exception of a minor ant problem once, I don't have any such horror stories to tell.
And once I was making a bit more money and started staying in nice hotels, I never thought I would. Even once a resurgence of bed bugs was being reported. "Surely that won't apply to me and my four-star hotel!" I'd say to myself.
Except I was living in a dream world and it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down.
So when, at long last, I finally awoke to find two bed bugs crawling on my comforter, I was anything but shocked. My astounding run of luck had come to an end and nothing more. It was a horrifying wake-up call, and I tried to be grateful I wasn't bitten, but it's not like freaking out about it will do any good.
And that's when you start combing the internet to find out what to do.
Only to find out that any hotel can get infested with bed bugs regardless of how much money you pay. Even worse, no hotel is really immune from being infested because there's simply no way to avoid the problem when you've got a steady stream of people passing through your doors... any one of which could be bringing unwanted guests with them.
So this is my new reality...
The good news is that I found no evidence of bedbugs after baking all my stuff. But I regret nothing. Not the $350 I spent in bed bug defense. Not the extra time and effort it took to be cautious. Not the paranoia in going above and beyond in making sure I'm not unleashing an infestation in my home.
Because the alternative... having to get rid of bed bugs when they're so notoriously difficult to get rid of... is so much worse.
Better safe than sorry and all that.
And if you do any traveling? Better protect yourself. It's only a matter of time.
I woke up at 3:30am this morning with a feeling of dread over having to leave San Francisco.
Last night Jester invited me to join him and a friend for dinner, and we ended up at a fantastic Turkish restaurant called Troya where I ate entirely too much hummus and falafel. An experience I can't even dream about having back home.
Good times. Hence my reluctance to leave.
About the only thing that kept me going was unwrapping my new tattoo, which turned out even better than I thought it would. I never realized how incomplete it looked before. Which only makes me want to run right back and have more added to it. Or start someplace new. I dunno. I've decided I want something inside my left upper-arm, so maybe that will be my next piece. And even though I wanted some asymmetry going on, now I'm thinking I might like something on my other inside forearm too. Still don't feel like I want to go past my arms... but who knows?
Meanwhile, back at 4:00am...
I don't remember the ride to the airport.
The only thing I recall about my flights was the yogurt parfait they served out of SFO.
I can't even remember how I got home.
I suppose the fact that the entire day's travel is one huge blur is a good thing? Funny it doesn't feel that way. Or maybe I'm just imagining it. Because all I'm feeling now is tired.
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