Koraal Tabak with the dogs

This was the last morning we could go to the beach (where dogs are allowed) with the dogs before they'll start stressing out because of the fireworks. The fireworks here on the island are pretty loud, which I actually love, oddly enough. It just feels right some way or another, guess it's because I grew up with it. Anyway, we went off to the beach and I took plenty of pictures and even filmed sometimes. 

Here is a clip I've made and a couple of pictures :)

Playing around

They're both pretty bad swimmers... One (Rex) splashes A LOT and the other (Maxie) basically jumps in the shallow waters... As you can see here 

Rex, or as I often call him 'sexy Rexy'. Don't ask, it rhymes...

Some other car arrived!

Lucky shot! 

'I never played with sand! How dare you ask!'

Got everything out of the car back home, and they jump back in... Not really willing to get out. (I got the chance to go in the house, grab my camera and come back outside.)

Christmas spirit

Since my last post was a bit down, and I want to stay in the Christmas spirit, I thought maybe share some of our decorations here :) It's not all as these were taken a while back, but it's nice and jolly if you will. I especially love the tree which smells so nice! I always think Christmas whenever I smell the pine tree smell :) Hmmm happy smells!

Crush lost my car (dream)

Blogging at my parents' place just is not working out for me :( I wanted to blog so much things but, yeah... Did not get the chance. Anyhow, the dream I just had:

I was in Boston (I tend to dream that often lately...) and I was walking around with a friend of mine I've had since primary school. We had to walk since a crush of mine borrowed my car. So I had to walk. We went to a gathering where he was as well, and after the gathering we walking together the three of us, he was walking a bit faster and I almost had to jog to keep up with him, resulting with my friend being left behind a bit. Either way we were walking to where he parked my car, but in the middle of it he said he was late for another place, so he gave me the keys and pointed in a general direction where he parked my car. 

So my friend and I walked to the parking lot, only to not find my car. It was an old black car and there were many so I had to look carefully if one of these were mine. None of them were. So we walked further, so far that eventually we were at my house. Still no car. My friend told me to call him and demand that he shows me where he parked my car, since he borrowed it. But I was hesitant to do so. I did not want to bother him. It would be fine, I was just not looking hard enough. 

And I woke up. Issue is, that this does state my personality a lot. I am trying to stand up for myself more, but in the environment I am in now, this is almost impossible :( But I did stand up for myself today :) It's a start in the right direction! 

Happy holidays!! 

 

Photography

I decided to open a new blog dedicated to my photography. Here's the link: http://stephanievhphotography.blogspot.com

And this is one of the pictures I've posted on there which is one of my favorites!

Gotta love my little island Curacao :)

   <3

Home for christmas! Meet the dogs

I am home for christmas! And I have an excellent camera that I tried out today. My models were my parents' dogs (I also consider them my dogs, especially Rex since we've got him while I still lived at home). And they will be for quite a lot of photos too. I just love taking pictures of them :)

So here they are:

Maxi 

Rex

I love the quality of the pictures with this camera! And I still have a lot to figure out with the features. Great photography times ahead!

<3

Placebo live @ Ziggo Dome (8 Dec 2013)

This will be one of those super excited posts! Yesterday I was at the Placebo concert in the Ziggo Dome, and I have been looking forward to this for quite some time. Actually since the last time I saw them live which was at pinkpop 2009:

 

Better quality than my iPhone pics. It was great not having anyone standing in front of you :)

I was so lucky to be able to stand all the way in the front for that concert! You see some snippets here and there when I was in the shot of the audience... I still cringe whenever I see myself in the video. But anyway from that time when I first saw them, I wanted more. And I wanted to at least see them in concert when it's not a festival, and I took my chance! Granted the tickets did not come cheap, I had to pay 50 euro's for my ticket which as a student without a job is pretty much my food for a week. But it was all worth it! And I would go again in a heartbeat! Of course if I had the money. Above is one of the pics I took at Pinkpop 2009 :)

So yeah I was at the concert hall half an hour before the door opened, and there were already quite a few people standing in line. So after we got in, we had to place our coats and bags in a locker, which took a bit of time, and I had to wait for my friend for a bit. Yes this annoyed me a little bit because I kept seeing all these people pass me by getting better spots than me while I was in the line longer. A bit selfish I know, that's also why I kept it inside either way. We got decent spots and even though there were some tall guys in front of me (i'm pretty short), I could still see the stage fairly well. 

The opening act was a band called TOY and it wasn't my style to be honest. It felt to me like they were trying too hard to be eclectic. Next to that the light show they had was very annoying. Most people had their eyes shut or turned away from the stage. I couldn't look at them either. The light kept flashing directly at you so you only saw their silhouettes and because the lights were flashing in all colours, it just felt like you were tripping since you started seeing those spots you get after an intense light hits your eye. That for a bit more than half an hour was too much. So I was happy it was over. Don't get me wrong, their music was good, just I've heard it before and I wasn't impressed. Also it just was not my style. 

Then for the show we all came for: Placebo!!! The first song I didn't know, which annoyed me a bit, but from there on I sang along with every song. Yep I guess I was one of those annoying people in the audience. But I got a lot of smiles at me from the people around so I guess they didn't mind :) Maybe because they saw how happy I was to be there jumping and singing along and stuff. I absolutely LOVED the concert! Yes I am biased, so you shouldn't ask me to critique them because I've been a fan since I was in high school, which is almost 10 years ago (damn I'm getting old!). 

At a certain point two very tall guys (that were under the influence of drugs if you ask me) came standing in front of me. I'm too nice, because if I see someone in the crowd looking forward and trying to pass, I let them pass because in my mind they're trying to get back to their friends... How wrong was I. They stood right in front of me and kept talking the entire time. I could follow their conversation better than I could hear the music. Apparently they got in for only a couple of euro's and didn't even know the band. They made fun of the people that were looking forward to it for months and they were here standing in front somewhere. I kinda got pissed off, I mean fine that you don't know the music is okay, but you don't go to stand in front of short people when you're clearly very tall (nearing 1.90 meters) and then talk instead of listening to the music! So I just sang louder whenever they tried to talk and jumped a bit more against them when it was the appropriate jumping time. This annoyed them a little bit I guess because they didn't talk as much anymore. Thankfully after about 4 songs they wanted to get more beer so they left! I still enjoyed the songs Placebo played while those douchebags stood there, but I enjoyed it much more when they were gone :D They played about 1 more song and then left the stage to wait for the encore. Which of course came pretty fast and so more singing along and jumping and dancing :D They played the new album of course, but also classics such as Special K, Every You Every Me, the Bitter End, Black Eyed and Kitty Litter which naturally I all love. There were a couple more songs I would have loved for them to play, but I mean if they would've played all the songs I would want to hear live, they would have to play at least 5 hours. And I do understand that that would be a bit much ;-) 

Afterwards I asked my friend if he liked the concert, since he wasn't biased. And he actually did :) If he didn't he would have said so I do believe. I'm still so happy I got to go! It passed by so fast though, even though they played for about 2 hours.

So here is a very amateural picture of mine and more professional ones I got from the internet :) 

Sorry for the quality, it's an iPhone picture...

Last 2 pictures from the Ziggo Dome twitter account. (@ziggodome)

Nail polish: Jesse's Girl Intensity Nail Color; Glee

As there's people working in my bathroom at the moment, I figured I might as well post something about the polish I'm wearing. It's kinda funny how they're (the workers) getting rid of the tiles in the same rhythm as the music I have on right now though. But anyway, let's proceed to the nail polish!

I bought this one more than a year ago in Boston and have gotten many compliments on it. Sadly we don't have this brand in the Netherlands, but we have many nail polish brands so I can't complain :)

Somehow I thought this color was names Island Girl, no idea how I came to that conclusion since that is nowhere written on the bottle. The color is Glee and it's pretty and sparkly! 

The bottle Jesse's Girl, Glee! And yes there's a drop of polish right next to the G. Happened when I just bought it :( 

The polish does not cover that well, so I had to put 4 layers of it on, but the result is very pretty! And also Christmassy! Here some pictures of my nails in different light :)

Tried out something different here to make the pic... Not sure if I like it, kinda looks like one hand is strangling the other... But you do see how the color looks in the shadow vs a bit more light :)

And here's a pic of how the polish looks in the light.

As you can see it has a green/blueish and gold shimmer to it. It's not a gel-like polish, so for me that's a good thing since it'll stay on longer - not easy to peel off. I really like it :)

<3

Throwback Thursday: Music

Because I absolutely cannot live without music, I figured why not do a throwback thursday with a song that I loved in the past? So without further ado, here is the first song ever that I can remember loving. 

Sinead O'Conner - Nothing Compares 2U

I think I was 2 or 3 years old and I was absolutely convinced that Sinead was crying in the video. It is a bit of a depressive song but somehow it touched me as a toddler and I still love the song to this day :)

<3

Small Christmas shop

As I was catching up with a friend I've known for almost 20(!!) years now, we passed a cute little Christmas shop in Amsterdam centre, so I figured why not share this deliciously yummy christmassy stuff? So here are a couple of pictures :) 

I am really excited for Christmas so there will be many more christmassy posts coming up ~ just so you know :D 

"I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it!" 

They had so much cute stuff! And we were very afraid we might accidentally bump something over and break it, thankfully that did not happen!!

Sorry for the quality, but as you can see everything was super expensive so we did not buy anything. But it's a nice store to visit either way :)

Random picture of the Christmas decor in the street, this one really reminded me of a DNA strand! Yes I find that cool, I'm a nerd :)

<3

Spooky nightmare

Yup I had a pretty intense nightmare last night, whereby I woke up all icky and sweaty and scared and afraid to fall asleep again even though my eyes did not want to stay open, which made it all more scary for me somehow. Aaaanyway let's get this story typed out now!

I was talking to my supervisor in Amsterdam about job opportunities and he mentioned a group in New York that performed excellent research in retrotransposon activity. Well I did prefer to do my research in GBM, but this sounded very cool as well, so I agreed to it. Catch was I would live in a student zone in NYC, I didn't mind since I'm used to that and as long as I have a place to stay in the beginning I'm happy. I figured I can always look for a different place there if it didn't suit me.

I was in NYC, walking down the street, it was daylight and very busy with many students running around and throwing with water balloons and having fun. 

Picture from google

I was with my sister and we just bought/rented (?) a house outside of the city. I didn't mind having to travel over an hour to work as long as I had a nice place to rest (doesn't sound like me here...). The garden was dead and the house looked like something from the 60's. But hey, my sister was happy with it and I didn't mind. Then the weird stuff started. There was

a lot of wind sometimes in the middle of the house, weird sounds... I remember talking to my dead dog and being happy that she was at my side and protecting me. I also had to tell my parents that she was very thankful for the life she had living with them. I was starting to worry that now that I openly accepted the link I had with my dog's spirit that maybe other spirits would also show, perhaps the bad kind. This scared me.

The weird stuff in the house continued, I got locked up in the washing room and could not get out. I screamed and kept hitting and kicking the door and called for my sister who was just in the other room, and all of a sudden she opened the door, like it was never locked. She never heard me, just wondered why I was taking so long. So we figured at that point that we're dealing with an evil spirit. She went to the bathroom and my parents came by to check on us. I kept looking at the bathroom's door, since I did not trust the silence, but my parents were not worried. My sister took very long so I decided to check it out, only to find that she was hung by the chain from the toilet. She was dead. 

We were all very shocked and because it was getting dark we figured to all sleep in the same bed so we'd be by each other's side. I then had an out of body experience where I saw the phone-cord choking all 3 of us at the same time, when I saw us waking up, I woke up from the nightmare. 

What also scared me was that my teddy bear positioned so it was looking at me. It always sat at the exact same spot so this is just normal, but at that moment I had to place the bear somewhere else. It's been a while since I've had a nightmare like this, and my morning was not fun because of it! So I was happy I was meeting a friend in the city. 

Pretty P2 Nailpolish!

A dear (and crazy for doing this) friend of mine has gifted me the above set of nail polish!! This is a brand I was not familiar with and honestly, I really like it! I meant to post this sooner, but as I was busy working towards my degree, I didn't have time. And I actually wanted to make better quality pictures, but I still don't have a better camera than my iphone... Patience is a virtue, 2014 will be a year of pretty pictures! Yes I promise! But anyway back on track now. The set includes a basecoat from P2, a topcoat from Lacura Beauty and 3 beautiful colours (as you can see): 020 Chestnut, 190 midnight vamp and 080 lovely, all from the brand P2. We had been talking about using good basecoats and topcoats so the polish would last longer, because as I've posted before, nailpolish does not seem to stay put very long on my nails.

The first look I've tried was with the 020 chestnut polish. I've started with the basecoat and added 2 layers of the 020 chestnut polish and finished it off with the Lacura Beauty topcoat.

Basecoat, P2 020 vibrant chestnut and Lacura beauty topcoat

Below you see the result. The polish has a gold shimmery undertone which I really like and I remembered I had a gold crackle polish Antiqued Gold from Sally Hansen which I figured could look nice as an accent finger.  The polish actually stayed put for about 4 days, which made me very very happy :)

Pretty autumn-style polish!

For the next look I decided to use the 190 midnight vamp one along with the 080 lovely polish.

P2 basecoat, 190 midnight vamp, 080 lovely, and lacura beauty topcoat.

I've done one hand with the sand style polish one as accent colour and the midnight vamp polish for the other 4 nails, for the other hand I've done the exact opposite, as you could see in the pictures below. I had a very stressful time so I was constantly scratching at the polish, so I've tried them another time (less stressful naturally) and they also stayed put for about 4 days :) I just need to quit scratching at my polish, I don't seem to learn though since today I've done the same thing for a different look :( Oh well, 1 step at a time right?! 

I did put about 3 layers of topcoat on the sand style polish (080 lovely), so it would feel smoother, the roughness makes me want to scratch over it more, while when smooth, I find it easier to let it be. Thankfully the visual effect was the same. 

Pretty pretty!!

So sparkly!

Love these colours and the quality! So a big thank you again for sending me these!! I've tried the base and topcoat on other polishes and it does improve how long the polish lasts, so these work better for me than the others I have. Maybe I should do a review on the base and topcoats I have and how well they work for me :)

<3

Humorous Christmas music

Yes I've started with Christmas posts! It's my absolute favorite holiday and time of the year, I look forward to Christmas more than my own birthday. So as soon as summer is gone, I start thinking 'Yey! Christmas is on its way!'

I love the music, of course the classics are always a must to listen to, but I do like to spice it up with some humorous music in between. And especially when they sound like the original, but the lyrics are off. So I always have some songs from Bob Rivers in my playlist. Call me silly, but I guess sometimes I'm still a bit stuck in my high-school humor zone.

Here is one of the songs from the album 'Twisted Christmas'.

 

He has many more songs and I can't get enough! I think I'm going to burn some of the (less offensive) songs on a CD and just add them to the mediaplayer when I'm at my parents' place for Christmas. Just to see if they'll realize that these are not the 'standard' Christmas songs. Muahahaa

<3

Jealousy and envy are our best enemies

We've all had people around us from whom we knew they did not have our best interest at heart. But what we all have to learn, and this is usually and sadly the hard way, is that almost no one has your best interest at heart, at least not sincerely. Let me explain this more clearly because there are various categories here. We all know the jealous kind who isn't even your friend. I'm not addressing these people, we all know to keep away from them. I'm talking about friends. People you trust, but feel like you need to be careful with what information you share with them, maybe because you feel they envy you. These friends could be very nice an fun to hang out with, but as long as you're not doing better than they are, all will be good. As soon as they sense that you are doing better than they are, will it be in a materialistic, career-wise or romantic aspect, they will change their attitude. I notice that their advice and suggestions changes in a way that they belittle you or make it sound ridiculous what you're asking or saying. Maybe you even read in their eyes that they secretly hope you'll fail. Maybe they are ashamed of wishing that.

Sadly there are many of these kind of people. Personally, I don't understand this behavior. I admit I have friends of which I would love to be able to live their lives, but I will never wish them to fail or wish that they wouldn't be happy. I can sincerely say that I wish everyone the best in life. If a friend will get a job I desperately wanted, I will be upset, not at my friend, but at myself that I didn't work harder or that I didn't do something in my past which would've made me get the job. With friends who are living a life I want to be able to live as well, I try to work hard to get there, I try to change my situation so I can get what I want. I ask advise on how they achieved that and then give it a try myself. 

Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't understand why the majority of human beings only feel good about themselves when they compare their own life with others' that haven't achieved as much. This is behavior of the unintelligent and low life in this world, and I am sad that there are so many of these kind. 

So, what do you do to make you feel better about your life? 

Picture from google

Desperate in some hotel

Yes! Another dream I've had! Here goes:

Taken from google, it was the one that looked the most like what I saw in my dream

I was in this hotel with a bunch of people I know, but aren't really friends with. You know the kind. Either way I saw my ex there and chatted up with him. I felt very lonely there since no one would talk to me and I really wanted someone to be at my side. I had the idea he was still into me so I decided to get back together. He was happy but he got right back in his selfish and jealous ways, not wanting me to do anything without him, even though he never wanted to join any activities with the group. The next day I chatted up with some people and it was great. I felt again that I made a big mistake taking him back again, so I went to the hotel, got to our room and started packing my stuff to move to a different room. He entered the room and brought with him his parents to tell them the news. Can you say awkward? There I was frozen with almost all my stuff packed. His parents disappeared (it's a dream, mine aren't always that realistic) and he started being very angry. I apologized and explained it was a bad mistake, that I didn't love him and I was lonely and at the time wanted to believe I had feelings for him. He threw me out. I didn't care and just took my stuff and walked in the sand (it was at some beach). There were some cute little apartments or condos and my new-made friends were there, so I joined them and asked if there was a free one there for me. There was and I started unpacking my stuff in the one that was left free. It was pretty big with my own kitchen, bathroom, etc. The only thing was that the air conditioner was on very high and the condo was very cold! I went outside and joined the group for some activities on the beach.

My alarm woke me up, and I felt so guilty that I didn't even felt bad in the dream that I used my ex that badly. Glad it was a dream and not reality! Although the beach was very nice!

<3 

Back onboard!

Sometimes you notice that you seem to have more energy than normal. This time has sort of sneaked up on me the last couple of weeks. I feel alive again which turns out I didn't for a long time. Perhaps it had to do with health issues I thankfully got rid of. Either way everything now is going super fast and I feel on top of it all, much like sitting in the front seat of a train and seeing where you're headed along with everything that passes you. Nothing can hold you back, you are on track and that is the way it will be for quite awhile now. At least I really hope so, but part of me knows so. I love being in control and knowing what will happen next, although with the job hunt I don't know where I'll end up next. Could be anywhere in this world and I sort of like that idea of having the entire world opened up for me. Maybe because I'm slightly claustrophobic and hate the feeling of being stuck somewhere, anywhere. Who knows. Either way I love my life right now, even though it's super busy and I rarely have time off, I'm happy and at peace with myself. Yes I need to hit the gym and lose many pounds, but you can't have everything. I'll hit the gym when I'm done with everything happening right now. 

A heavy weight has been lifted. 

<3

I didn't know I was a vampire? ~Dreams

Aaaaand here's another freaky dream I've had. Again I decided to write it down much later, because it's still nagging at my head and I didn't feel like opening up my blog to write it all down when I woke up. Anyway here goes:

I was in some sort of camp with old buildings that were falling apart. We were in a hall with several dusty tables and a blackboard where a hairy teacher was explaining the facts about being a vampire. He pointed at me and said that I was the perfect example of someone who was a vampire but still didn't believe in them. I responded with that I don't drink blood, I age, and I can't run very fast. I am human. To which his response make me ponder my existence. His response was: 'You've told us you've been feeling very tired the last year, sometimes you've been feeling more energetic. These times were all when you've had raw meat. The blood in there made sure you got your energy. Next to that you're a night person. You have no problems working at night. You can feel the mood people are in and you notice many things going on around you before they actually are. Your dreams are also too vivid for a plain human being. We are not immortal like in the movies, we are just evolutionized in a certain way that we differ from humans. There are also werewolves out there. Those are the ones that have a lot of muscles and have very low IQs. They don't have to be hairy or change into wolves. The wolf comes from the fact that they have an affinity with dogs.' 

Yeah I didn't say much from there, and I was basically confused. What is going on? I don't know anyone here, how did I get here? There was a loud bang outside and we all ran out. 

I was fighting a werewolf now, like the ones from the movies and not at all like the teacher explained them to be. The fighting also went just like in the movies, very violent, only difference was that I was also discussing with that werewolf whether I was a vampire. The wolf thought I was but I still didn't buy it. It's all just bullshit. 

Then I was running inside one of the buildings trying to escape something. I had no idea what, but I ran fast (for a change, because usually in dreams I run painstakingly slow). I turned around and I was alone. 

Then I woke up.  Maybe I should do what Stephenie Meyer did with twilight and make a lot of money by making this small piece in 5 books. I mean, we apparently have vampires and werewolves in there anyway... But that does mean more writing for me to do huh? Maybe another time... 

<3

Painting from Luis Royo, who used to be one of my favorite artists about 8 years ago. I think it suited this post :)

Drew is back?! ~Rishloo

picture taken from google :)

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!! My favorite band ever, Rishloo, is back together! The singer, Drew, rejoined the band after he quit almost 2 years ago because of personal reasons. I remember being so upset because I was finally in the US for a year and thus my chances of seeing them live would be much better than my chances were living in Europe, and then they split up. I still ordered a shirt from their site, because, well, they are my favorite band ever, so why not?! And so just now I was looking on youtube to see how the project of the remaining band members, The Ghost Apparatus, was going and this was their latest clip:

They saved the part where Drew was singing for the last but I already read the comments and started squealing in my room. Yup I squealed. I'm not the person that yells or screams, I squeal. Deal with it. 

Problem is now I'm too excited to concentrate on my writing. Drew, I blame you... Nope, I'm not blaming the fact that I was roaming on youtube for no reason because I should've been focussing on my thesis.

I also came across this clip of the band announcing they're back together:

Anyway I just had to post this! Here's to hoping for a European tour so I could see them live - finally!!

<3 

Pickwick Green Hammam tea

Today there was no electricity or water in my area, and for someone who only drinks tea or water, I became very thirsty! So I went ahead and took the stairs, just FYI, I live on the 12th floor, so it was a workout. It was also funny since the hallway was very dark and thus everyone jumped every time they came across someone, as did I. But at least we all laughed it off and around 3pm we had our water and electricity again, so all is good! 

Anyway when I went ahead to the supermarket and bought me a lot of bottles and cans to drink (the construction will continue for a while and I don't trust it anymore), I came across this tea box. I am ADDICTED to tea. I have an entire drawer filled with all different types of tea, and I'm always up for trying new kinds. So I figured let me just get this and try it out. Can't go too wrong since my favorite type is green tea. Granted there is mint in there and that is usually overwhelming. 

I tried it out, and I love this tea! The packaging is gorgeous! And the taste is very light and refreshing. You taste the mint the most, but it's absolutely not overwhelming as I thought it would be. The taste of eucalyptus and green tea are also there and I think the mix is great! Usually I like some honey in green tea, but I didn't feel the need to do this to this one. Maybe I'll try it out next. Either way I'm sure to buy this again! It just feels too luxurious and yummy! A real treat for yourself on a cold day :)

<3

Social media pros & cons

Social media has it's good and bad sides. I'm going to list a couple on each side from my own personal experiences. Let's start with the good ones first!

Pros of social media

• Of course the biggest plus side of social media and all that comes with it, is the ease of keeping in touch with others. If you come across something on your way to work that reminds you of a friend you haven't spoken to in a while, then you can easily snap a picture of it with your phone and send that friends the picture with a message 'made me think of you!'. People nowadays don't have an excuse to not keep in touch with their friends, wherever in the world they may be (as long as they have internet). 

• Next to this a big reason for everyone to keep facebook is because the events you get invited to. If you have friends like I do, that don't have facebook, you tend to accidentally forget to invite them because it's so easy to make an event and invite your friends through facebook. Even though an email is also quickly sent, you don't have the reminder or the RSVP in there, and any changes you make in the event, people will see automatically. It's easy, and we are living in a very lazy world. 

• We all have those people where we tend to wonder what they're up to in their lives. Well social media allows you to have an idea about their lives, depending on how much they share online of course. Either way usually the place they're living is stated, so you know you can contact the person when you're in the neighbourhood. 

• In this economy it is tough to find a job, so because of linkedin you have a network and people who you can contact or who could help you in your search of a job. Maybe they know someone who is looking for someone with your qualities! We all need contacts in the business world and this is an easy way to have that! Someone asked me to add him on linkedin so he could contact me when he heard of a good PhD position that became available, so who knows what effect he could have on my future career! 

Cons of social media

• So a big negative point in my life of social media is the constant contact you have. I love it when I shut down my phone so no one can contact me and I have some peace and quiet. However, as soon as I keep this up for too long, I get emails (which I do check on my laptop) asking if I'm okay or if I lost my phone or whatnot. Also I am the person who's scared of missing an important call. I tend to miss the old days where cell phones did not exist and internet was a new thing and very slow. I loved snail mail (okay last time I used that I was probably 10) and the excitement of getting a handwritten letter in your mailbox. At that time along with many stickers, which I used to collect. Somehow it was more peaceful and less forced. It feels to me like a lot of contact nowadays is forced. Such as the 'read by' feature facebook has. I tend not to read a message when I know I can't answer it immediately because I'm worried the person will think I'm ignoring him or her. Ridiculous, I know! But these things are going on in my head. It is also the reason why I changed my whatsapp settings to people not being able to see when I was last online. I don't mind not being able to see when someone else was last online, so I'm all good with that, and it did relax me a bit more. Also because of the constant contact, we don't write accurately anymore. Messages have become short and distant I feel. I love receiving long emails from a friend about their vacation or something that has happened. But I have to admit, I don't tend to write long emails either. It's so easy just to send a short message. I'm such a hypocrite at times, I know :p Blame the laziness ;)

• A big negative point of the social media is the ease for someone to stalk you. Like the song from Taryn Southern - crush (see the link below) which is awesomely humorous, it's also very accurate about what's going on nowadays. Especially for the younger ones amongst us that have no clue about privacy statements and who could see what you post and share online - because once online, always online. Even though I am very careful about what I share, I have had my scares from friends who've sent me links where there was a picture of me and I had no idea it was taken whatsoever. Not to worry, it was never any embarrassing or nudity pictures, but it is shocking when you see yourself when you had no idea about the picture or post whatsoever. Also this was printed in a newspaper on the cover... Through some friends I also found out that there are clips of me on youtube from dance competitions. Sure it was a competition, but it wasn't like I was somewhere in the background, the camera actually focused on me. But really I don't mind these clips, my point is how easy there's something of yours online for everyone to see without you being able to control it! And we have all googled crushes and facebook 'stalked' them. I try not to, I never used the star feature either, but you can't help but wonder what they're up to and just check their page out. We're curious beings and there is no harm in that, as long as you don't take it overboard and start stalking the person. Because with the combination of the various platforms and the activity of someone online, it is possible to know where they are at what time and figure out their daily program. Especially for those in highschool, it's so easy to know what classmates are up to. And these people are usually pretty careless with what they post and show online, not realizing how it can come back to you later in life in a very negative way. I wonder how the president in 20 years will cope with it, because there will be tons of that person online. It could be scary really. 

 

• A very big negative aspect could be online bullying. I am very thankful that that was not a big part during my time in highschool where I was bullied, we only had email, icq, msn and well I did not have the bullies in my lists anyway. Yes some of them did call me, but then you hang up the phone after you told them you know who's calling (I'm very good at recognizing voices over the phone, which freaked them out and made my day!). Nowadays with people taking pictures of you, videotaping you and then posting it online for everyone to see. I cannot imagine how that could be! People creating fake profiles of you just to bash on you... That's just horrible. The person being bullied is never away from the bullies. At least I had my rest when I was home and just dreaded the next day. The kids being bullied now dread what is put online, they get messages, it's a constant thing. I really don't know how they cope really. 

These are my main points on social media. Can't live with it, can't live without it! Just think twice about what you share on the internet and keep some stuff for when you actually see your friends so you have something to talk about. Keep some mystery alive.

<3

Smothered

It has been a while, at least a couple of years, since I've had this bad of a headache. I think it has to do with the fact that I had about 2 straight hours of thinking, whilst paying attention to the students making their exam so they couldn't cheat. This last one was easy since I know quite a lot of the body language signs someone makes when they're preparing to cheat and whenever that happened I walked over to them and stood there overlooking the others as well. With this method, if they actually went ahead and cheated, I would've caught them red-handed. Problem is I had too much time to think about my life, the people in it, where I'm headed, why I want what I want, who my true friends are and so on. 

I am rethinking everything and feeling more and more the need to just move out of this country. Yes country, not just the city. I feel like leaving everything and everyone behind and start a new adventure somewhere else, somewhere I haven't been, somewhere where I don't know anyone yet. I am aware that I have this need because I feel smothered by everyone around me. I feel like everyone feels the need to tell me how to live my life. And I guess today felt as if the last straw was taken. I even missed my stop twice on my way home and I lost my public transport card, all because of the headache and the continuous thoughts going through my head.

 

All I have to say is that change is definitely on it's way. 

I can't hardly wait!

<3

Halloween Horror Show makeup look

Hiya!

So I was looking on youtube for inspiration 2 weeks before this event. I love playing around with makeup and trying out different looks. That's why I'm always excited for events like these where I can go crazy-wild wild makeup :D Yey!!

I actually went with the first look I tried out the evening, because I was quite happy the way it turned out to be honest. I didn't expect it to work out that well so I was very happy :)

The image that inspired me for this particular look was this one:

Image from google

The only thing that made me doubt this look a little was that I had to sit with the thick layer of makeup on my face for at least 11 hours, and after a while my face starts to itch when I'm wearing that much. But I decided around 7pm to just start with the makeup, and if I didn't like it or wouldn't think it would last for the many hours of sitting and watching horror movies, I can always take it off and have enough time for something a bit more simple. 

I finished the look a bit before 9 and I was very happy with how it turned out, especially for a first go with this particular look. So I decided to leave it and just go with it.

I finished the makeup by also adding the bones and shading to the neck, like the original picture, and created a big bun with one of the larger donuts you can buy in a drugstore and pinned a white flower at the side, which you can sort of see in the picture below:

Yes we were goofing off during the first break :D This was around 2:30am and we were going strong!

After the Halloween Horror Show I finally got home around 11am. I have to say that I was surprised at how good the makeup still looked after 14 hours! It did fade a bit and get very shiny, which doesn't show in the picture, but trust me I was almost functioning as a mirror to others! If I want to wear this look more often I'll probably invest in one of those clear matting powders. 

It was a fun night and I can't wait until next time!!

<3

Halloween Horror Show at Pathe Tuschinski 26/10/13 00:00

The movie theatre where they hold the Halloween Horror Shows. (Taken from the Pathe website.)

Hiya!!

Every year there's a Halloween Horror Show where 4 of the newest (usually not yet released in the cinemas here) horror movies are shown along with various short films and special previews and lastly also prices to the best costumes. This was the 5th year it was organized and was my third time there. I have to admit that the movie line up was the best one for me this year!

This year they had a lot of horror artwork from Eric Peters hung in the foyer of Tuschinski. It looked very cool to have those painting of classic horror characters such as Dracula and the Joker to name a few. And after all the bags were checked for bottles or cans of drinks (these weren't allowed but at least you could transfer your drinks in cups they provided for you, food was okay) we finally got to go to our seats. Since we bought our tickets online and we got appointed seats from there, we didn't feel the need to arrive there before the doors opened, because there is always a HUGE line, which was even there when we got there 5 minutes after the start of the show. But having quite a few of these marathons we knew that the first movie would start somewhere from 00:30. So we weren't worried at all :)

Originally we would've started with Curse of Chucky, but Universal Studios called in the morning before and made the theatre cancel the viewing of the movie. The reason why is not publicly known, so they moved up the line-up and the movie we started with was Insidious Chapter 2. I was most anxious about this one because even though I am fascinated by horror movies, I scare very easily. I've seen Insidious at a previous Halloween Horror Show and it had a lot of good scares which all made me (reluctantly) jump in my seat. And Insidious Chapter 2 had even more and better scares. It was a bit predictable at times, but those jump scares! I have never been scared that much and that bad in any movie I've seen. My poor heart!

Then there was time for a break which usually lasts about 20 minutes, and then the first short movies started with the first of a short trilogy from Jason Stutter: CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE. 



It's about 2 or 3 minutes long but was made perfectly and very unexpected! Loved it! 

 

Hereafer one the next movie started which was the new version of Carrie. I was a bit apprehensive about the remake of this classic, because I tend not to like remakes that much. However, I have to say they've done a reasonable job making the movie a modern version where the highschool kids actually look much more like high school kids than the original movie and they all had smartphones. I have to say I liked the movie! I still prefer the classic mainly because I feel that the actress portraying Carrie was better suited for the role than the remake and somehow the atmosphere was better. 

Then it was break time whereafter the next short of the trilogy was shown: CAREFUL WITH THAT POWER TOOL, which, even though you know what to expect from the first one, was very well done and still very unexpected! Another 3 minutes of sitting on the edge of your seat.
Then another short was presented which was THE APPLICANT (Tim Dean). This one was not too much to my liking. Started off where you were wondering what was going on during that job interview to a twist that was kinda weird and far fetched... A little bit sci-fi horror if you will. It wasn't my style really. You can see the entire short on youtube: 

So around 5AM came the time for the third movie of the night which I was very excited about: The World's End. 



They announced that the movie was not of a particular genre which made it a huge discussion to show it in the Netherlands. It was one of the reasons I wanted to go to this marathon because I really wanted to see it, and I understand after seeing it how it's difficult to put that genre label on this one. It is more of a comedy/drama between middle aged men, but it does have a sci-fi/horror theme to it from the middle on. Not really scares but there are quite some wtf moments. I liked it! But I was also a big fan of the first 2 movies of this trilogy which were Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It wasn't as good as the last 2, but definately worth to see! 

Now it was 7:30am and the last movie had to be shown as well as the shorts after the last break. But first there was a prize ceremony for the best costumes. I love seeing how people put so much effort in it, especially since you have to sit in that costume the entire night, which let's be honest, with a lot of makeup or schmink/latex etc on your face is not comfortable and if your outfit it elaborate you tend not to be able to sit comfortably either. So I applaud those brave enough to go for it! The winners were 2 zipper-faced girls, and the first price was a tie between a horror Sinterklaas & zwarte Piet and 2 witches (which had chins and noses stuck on.
Now it was time for the last short films which was the third of the trilogy: CAREFUL WITH THAT CROSSBOW. A very good short with perfectly fits the other 2! Then there was another short film which lasted about 10 minutes which was Fist of Jesus (Adrián Cardona & David Muñoz) which you can see entirely on youtube:



Without giving too much away, this is a splatter movie which reminded me a bit of the style from the movie Braindead. The story was very original and a lot of humor going with the gore, which is the usual go-to for splatter movies. Then there was a special preview of a upcoming Dutch movie called 'de poel' which I did not find that interesting to be honest. But then again I'm not a fan of Dutch movies anyway. The crowd also did not seem too excited because not many people applauded which was a bit uncomfortable because the director was in the room. We clapped to be nice :) Finally the last movie of the marathon started which was I Spit On Your Grave: 2.



I have never heard of this movie and because the movie was chosen at the last moment they only announced it at the start of the marathon. I fell asleep in the first part, because well I've been awake for all of the above and I was just exhausted. I woke up because the main character was screaming, which happens during horror movies of course, and then I followed most of the movie. It is very graphic and basically a sick movie really. The young woman was raped, cut, beat up, kidnapped etc, to escape the men that kidnapped her, only to get tricked back into the same house. I won't say much more, but I found it surprisingly an interesting film, even though it was that graphic. It did show the emotional traject from someone undergoing the abuse and how others can be too late to really help that person. But definitely not a film for the faint at heart! 

Now at 9:45 the night has ended and we went ahead to walk towards our bikes to have the dreaded bike ride home with all the horror makeup still on (even though it itched like crazy) and having all the people that were up and about staring at us, well especially me since I was wearing skeletal makeup. I'll post the look in another post.

<3