Good weekends..

Mmmm more weekends like this please!
Why I loved it so much?
Seeing Marije and Jon :-)
Going together with them and Anne&Tim to see Marike (Anne's friend) at Tivoli.
Staying for drinks, talking& dancing.
Walking at night, making funny pictures.
Having breakfest all together at Marije's parents.
Cancelled plans are replaced by other nice things like..
Girlstalk with Anne and dinner with Anne & Tim.
Returning home at 0.00u and remembering the DnB, Reggae&Jungle party at the Landbouwbelang.
Going crazy, dancing, drinking some beers, seeing some familiar faces, dancing some more.
Coming home at 04.00 and sleeping till 15.00u.
Going for some shopping, cook some food, have a chat with your housemate..
What more can you wish for in a weekend?
It makes me forget about the sad things, it's just splendid. :-)

The importance of discussion

Yesterday I went to a lecture by Norman Finkelstein on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Quite interesting. Jewish himself, he argues that every country in the world except for the US and Israël, agrees to the (every year again) proposed peace resolution in the UN, restoring the borders before the 1967 war. He therefore concludes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not as complicated as it seems.
In the completely packed lecture hall, the majority was clearly pro-Palestinian. Everyone was deadly silent, except for laughing at the jokes. What a change however when after an hour and a half the word was given to an arts&cultures teacher who was gonna give a short commentary on the lecture. She was obviously trying to heat up the discussion. Not a bad plan since everyone was taking all the things Finkelstein said for granted. Too bad she was a bit of a chaotic speaker, and saying some things that obviously weren't true. (Never could any arts and cultures student convince me of anything, the way they talk annoys me a bit tbh. No real arguments). But the reaction of the public! People started talking, shouting even! Especially when the word "Islam" was used in not the most positive way, people started shouting and booing. Seriously.. It's a discussion people. If you are only there to hear what you want to hear and not really think about the fact that every story has two sides, what are you doing at a discussion night?
Strangely enough that reminded me of this discussion night we had with the Christian organisation MSVN, where some people also refused to discuss their believes and faith. As if they were saying, I believe in something, but I'm not sure what the reasons are or at least I don't want to discuss them. Isn't it always good to rethink about what you stand for? Don't take an initiative to discuss as an insult to your beliefs, but rather as an opportunity to explain what you stand for.
I really respected one of the guys in the audience who was Palestinian himself, saying (in response to the teacher) look I was there as well when the wall was build and some friends of mine were shot to death from that wall, so I don't agree to what you say about the wall only being a protection to terrorism. If even when you've experienced such horrible things and then you can still contain yourself and go into a discussion, respect!

Writing

So I haven't written in quite a while (or deleted my posts ;-)). The reason for that was because I usually tend to write when I'm depressed. And when you are depressed usually only negative things come out of your mouth ;-) As I wrote in the previous post, a couple of things influenced me in such a way that I felt like life wasn't really worth living. Which is a bit ridiculous, because I have everything going for me. But it's this feeling I have always had.. A depression of the soul hehe.. a feeling of being old, a certain sadness, looking for something you cannot find.
And this feeling makes me leave people behind, even when I don't really know why.
And I was in pain for the people around me.. Them being hurt, me hurting them, they hurting me. And I didn't even realise I was standing still. I had been standing still for over a year. After I stepped out of my relationship, not knowing really why, but not being able to be caught between two people (and mostly being trapped in my own whirlpool of feelings), I just stopped. I shut myself down completely. Only recently, when things were getting worse, Lauran getting cancer, Lalo loosing his baby, no hope for making things work again and I was feeling so so low. I stayed home for two days wondering how long it would take for people to notice if I would be gone. That made me realise I should start living again. Trying to think of what I really want to do in life. And yet there never seems to be the time to think about these things.
Untill one evening you are walking to the train and someone asks you, so what do you want out of life, what are your goals, your future plans..? And you go like guhhhhhhh. Feeling just like crying cause just a month ago you felt like not being there at all anymore, so you don't know how to answer this question, cause the answer is that you don't have any plans, goals, ideas.
If I could choose anything, I would be out there, helping people, do something useful, stopping wars, saving the environment, making people smile, stopping discrimination and intolerance. Instead I'm gathering useful information on the brain. I really love doing that. But does it really help? Don't we need some more dramatic changes these days, instead of a very very slow progress? Don't we need people to look for environmental friendly ways of generating energy? Don't we people to locate mines and remove them? Don't we need people educating where it is most needed? Then what are we still doing in our tiny little worlds, thinking about our tiny little problems. Hoping for Obama to be the new president of the US, is that really gonna solve all the problems? One step at a time right? So why are we not stepping? Why am I not stepping?

Ghe :-) It's time to move, to change, to make plans.. Slowly though.. slowly.. ;-)

posts out there somewhere

Funny how I never listened again to One republic after the concert. The fate of popular music? ;-)

Listening to some Vapirov, Tom Waits, Dave Matthews band, Andy McKee again these days..
Anyway, I have some half written reports on North Sea Jazz and this CD i've been listening to ;-) Hope to finish them sometime.

Maybe when I'm not working, sporting, or sleeping :-)

Concerto 2: One Republic

I'm in love.. Did I already tell you?
In love with a band that is.. ;-)
Must say that I drooled like a sixteen year old girl at the performance of the last band I've seen: One Republic. They are a bit poppy for my taste, but I still kinda love them for now. I think they can be classified as pop-rock in general terms.
I saw them a few weeks back in Amsterdam.. I took a nice little walk through the city, untill I came close to the Melkweg and had no idea where it was exactly. Luckily there were some guys that could help me out. I learned my lesson last time and didn't go early anymore. However, I forgot that this band attracted more sixteen year old girls, who are (compared to people in their thirties that were attracted to the Stereophonics) really fanatic ;-). The line was not too long anyway. It was long fifteen minutes later though. Waiting wasn't too bad since I had some eye candy standing next to me :-). I had never been to the Melkweg, so I expected a cute little Paradiso-like hall. Nuhuh. Yes little, No cute. It's much smaller that the HMH (which was already surprisingly small)! The stage was quite low, which was nice because I was standing really close to it. This time I could seriously touch the singer (which some people even did!). I was not that desperate though.
Because the hall was so small and there weren't that many people in the beginning (i guess it was not even sold out) the performance was really similar to seeing some friends of mine on stage. They also kept goofing around informally which was fun :-).
But the performance.. wow.. they are really really good! There was also a cellist! And everyone played great! The singer did great, also some really high parts, which I really liked. It was beautiful. Also, they didn't copy their songs exactly (like for example a performance of the Killers I saw) but put in some nice changes, interacted with each other etc.
They only have one album out, so they also played some The Verve and "Umbrella" from Rihanna. I had to laugh because I thought it was a joke, but maybe it wasn't..? Nevertheless everything they played sounded great and they talked a lot with the audience (not just the normal "we love to be here Amsterdam!"-crap) which makes the overall experience so much more enjoyable. The guitar the singer played on was apparently horrible because he smashed the first one and stopped playing at the second one (owned by the Melkweg I guess). And then the sound technician of the Melkweg started to play a long with several songs! Hehe that was really hilarious and kinda cute.
At the end of the concert I was floating on a little cloud of music-happiness ;-)
And afterwards the drummer and guitar player even came out to give some autographs!
Overall it was quite surprising for a band that is quite well know through their hit "apologize".
I expected a bit more diva (hehe) behavior, but they were really nice and down to earth.
Me happy ;-)