I've been working on my first ever book design at work. It's called De 5 Kindconclusies and it's about the 5 personality types of people based on 5 'child conclusions'. It's all in Dutch, but hopefully it will be so successful that it gets translated into English ;)
And hopefully it's so successful that my book cover and design becomes world-famous. Haha.
Anyway, last week I made a mock-up or dummy of the book for our acting editors in the office. It was pretty fun and nice to work with paper and my hands again. Kinda bored of doing websites all the time. Websites are so... intangible. Duh, right? But, yes, they are. Print is my baby.
I hereby copyright my book cover design. No derivatives or copycats allowed!
I think the book should be out somewhere in May or June. I can't wait!
Next, I went to watch Cinderella by Matthew Bourne (choreographer) at the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam. It's a ballet based on the Cinderella story set during World War II. Very interesting. I also had amazing seats. I love how I can afford to watch shows like this here when in Malaysia they'd be overpriced. Sure, it wasn't cheap here, but it's still manageable on a normal salary.
That's the net screen thing they place over the stage before the show starts. Schrobbenmaster has photos of the performers giving their exit bows but I'll put them up later as I don't have them with me yet.
The Nieuwe Luxor Theater is quite nice. What I like most about it is that you can take the underground metro (which is just 5 minutes walk from home), change lines once and you walk up literally to the doorstep of the theatre. Don't ask me why I find it cool, but I do. And from the upper floors of the theatre, you can look down to the metro entrance, which is basically just an arch and two escalators heading down. It's almost like someone just popped a hat on the ground, but you know that there's loads of things going on underneath. Yeah, it's hard to explain.
What I don't like about it is that it's on the other side of the bridge, which makes biking for me virtually impossible. I can't handle the bridge. Maybe after another year of living here I'll be fit enough for it.
One of the disappointments of the week was missing James Blake at Motel Mozaïque. Last month, I'd grabbed an Uit Agenda (magazine on happenings in the city) and seen that James Blake would be performing in Rotterdam. I like his music (check him out on Spotify) and felt that I should take this opportunity to watch such a unique up and coming artist.
Unfortunately I forgot all about it until Schrobbenmaster and I were one day biking back from Chinatown past Schouwburgplein, and we saw colourful lights and heard music playing. We stopped by the side, parked our bikes and walked around and realised we were actually in Motel Mozaïque's outdoor show.
It looked good!
It wasn't very busy when we were there (around 8pm) and there were only around 3 'attractions' like a soup kitchen (reuse everything and don't waste!) and a small housey thing with people trying to pull you in to wear green hats and eat snacks (don't ask me, man). Schrobbenmaster and I played with big cubes of colourful lights (pictures below and coming soon as well). And in the big church-looking makeshift building below was where the music performances were.
Later that night, I read someone tweeting that they had seen James Blake's performance at 22.30 :( Felt kinda disappointed, but it was my fault for not remembering! Anyway, the whole thing was rather wonderful and I really like Rotterdam for the ability to surprise me with arty events like these.
Last weekend was the awesomest though.
I had class on Saturday so I decided to wear something nice (yes, been browsing fashion blogs again and feeling inspired to make an effort). I wore my Maison Scotch white fitted collared shirt with a little blue handkerchief in the pocket with my blue pantalon leggings from Uniqlo. For some reason, the label of my Maison Scotch shirt was sewn upside down.
But anyway, I felt stylish enough to walk down Nieuwe Binnenweg and past Rotown and Stalles for coffee after with my Dutch teacher and a fellow classmate. I don't even know why I wanna look stylish for the people there, as they're so uppity and not very nice.
Both places were packed to the brim because it was a sunny day, but we saw a little bench free. This bench was connected to two long tables with about 7 women occupying it. My teacher went up to them to ask if we could just use the bench, but they just gave him a flat 'No' without even being polite (I could only see their faces, but they didn't look friendly at all). How arrogant!
We ended up further down the road at Coffee Company where we had a much nicer spot in the sun anyway, and away from the snooty noses and prying eyes of the middle-class wannabes.
And later at night, Schrobbenmaster and I went for drinks and played pool for the first time in Rotterdam with some friends. We ended the night at 'T Zwarte Schaap on Witte de Withstraat, which is fast becoming one of my favourite bars. It's not a bruincafe (old-fashioned brown Dutch pub) and it's not a Rotown. Everyone looks nice but sociable and the interior is modern yet small and cosy enough. If I had to compare it to somewhere in KL, I'd say it's like twentyone on Changkat, except less 'dressy sophisticated'. But still stylish enough!
On Sunday, it was another nice sunny day, so Schrobbenmaster headed to the beach with his friends, while I met Hanselem for drinks again at Coffee Company. We then moved to Bazar to have baklava.
It was my first time having baklava and I think I'll order it next time I go. It's kinda sweet but I like the pastry. That's the baklava with the white sugary beard above it. I couldn't resist having a chocolate truffle tart from Dudok.
Very nice afternoon discussing topics like underwear personality types and what colours are associated with what you wanna say about yourself :P I found a very informative website, but halfway through, I found out it was a website for gays. Well, they had the information I wanted anyway!
Am currently hooked onto the soundtrack of Sucker Punch. Look for it on Spotify as well ;)
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