Occasionally, it’s good to just sit back and syndicate content, so I’m going to share a few gems with you that I came across in boredom today.
First – a really cool drum and piano composition done using stop-motion animation by someone who can’t play either the drums or the piano.
Drum and Piano
And next, something a bit more suspenseful:
Categories: Personal
Rockin out to Franz Ferdinand
I just got back yesterday from a long weekend in Amsterdam (made a bit longer because of a small mis-calculation on my part). The visual feel I got from Amsterdam was different than from any other place I’ve been. The sky was overcast most of the time, but there was still this intense sun that would shine through once in a while and give everything is weird misty brightness. At first I thought that maybe my pupils were just dilated. It was almost like looking at a slightly over-exposed photograph with a soft focus, but this picture is unaltered and the effect was even more intense in person.
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| From I AMsterda |
Three other things struck me about the city fairly early on:
It’s growing. There’s construction going on everywhere. Huge cranes dot the skyline and main streets are being torn up. Shops sit with their doors and windows open while workers reshape the insides to suit the needs of the new owners. If you head north, past Central Station, you’ll see half-finished sky-scrapers jutting up from behind a large canal.
It’s dense. The streets are narrow and the buildings are all touching each other. The largest sense of space you’ll get is from waling next to a canal or through one of the city squares. Everywhere else is crammed full of restaurants, stores, bars, clubs, cheese shops, wine shops, bakeries, coffee shops (read: pot bars), cafés (read: coffee shops) and apartments on the levels above. Not to mention the 6 H&M stores you can pass on a 15-minute walk.
It’s a city of constrasts. Ominous black towers stretch into a white hazy sky, living spaces are shuffled in among the businesses, pedestrians, bikes, trams, and cars share the same roads, families take walks with their children through the red light district. Everything is jumbled in together into one place and it all just finds a way to exist together and create a community.
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| From I AMsterdam |
If you’re traveling about, add Amsterdam to you list. It’s such an experience. Soon, I’ll share some more pictures and some of my experiences. Until then, feel free to check out the pictures I posted on Picasa. For now, here are the highlights:
Categories: Culture · Personal · study-abroad
