Everyday Matters Challenge #51 - Draw your TV and a show playing on it.
Here is our TV. And as usual, on weekdays during daytime there is nothing to watch on Dutch TV channels. All of them broadcast soap operas (as the world turns, the bold & beautiful), home shopping programs, cartoon series (unfortunately series that I don’t like). So when I get to stay home on a weekday, I usually watch Discovery, Animal Planet, and sometimes MTV or National Geographic. However, I watch Animal Planet more than the others. After the x-th show about Ramses II or Tutankhamon (spelling?) on the Discovery channel, I just got tired of them. However, watching Animal Planet is always entertaining. Animals are just so fascinating to watch.
While drawing this challenge, I was watching the ‘Miami Animal Police’ on Animal Planet. My sketch shows one officer Gary who was occupied with his case ‘a potbelly pig’. Whenever I have the time, I watch similar shows on Animal Planet: Animal Cops Houston, Pet Rescue, Wildlife SOS, Emergency Vet, etc. This fascination with animals that I have, makes me wonder at times: May be I should have become a Vet… uhm, may be not. I think I will faint during surgery  Seeing (too much) blood gives me shaky knees.
Click to enlarge
Black and white version. Pen and ink.
With colors, done in Photoshop.
…then came the doggy section of the exhibition. I found these two signage most interesting compared to others. It’s the No Poo Zone signage for dogs of the city of Amsterdam. If you do let your dog does its necessity around this signage, you’ll get a fine.
I think it is nice that the city provides these signs on some areas. However, it is really unfortunate that people here still let their dogs poo almost everywhere. Although, I have to admit that Amsterdammers in general are much more responsible than Utrechtenaar (people from Utrecht) regarding dogs and poops. Some Utrechtenaars let their dogs poo and pee inside Hoog Catharijne (a shopping mall), which is very very disgusting and irresponsible and also asocial, in my opinion.
Ok, I’ll stop talking about poop and I’ll write something else….
After having breakfast at Cafe Luna, I went back to the museum, bought a ticket, and stepped into the exhibition hall. Turned right, turned around a bit, and I frozed.
 There was a dead kitty on a display platform. He must have been no older than 10 weeks and got run over by some car. They didn’t say when it happened (that is beside the point), but they explained that it is part of city life. When people, animals, cars, bikes etc. get thrown into a city together, this is what happened. (I left this first bit of the exhibition feeling angry and slightly sad. I am just partial to kitties…)
 I walked across the hall to the ‘bird section’ and found this: “A sparrow and a pot”. According to the explanation, the pot itself is called “De Spreeuwenpot” Sparrows pot) and it is from the 17th century. I am not sure if they still do this nowadays, but in the old days, the sparrows used to make a nest inside pots that hung outside some houses in Amsterdam. There is even a photo of a wall of an old house showing that this had become a symbol. Someone in the past has let the image of a sparrow and its pot be carved in limestone along with the text “In De Sprevpot” (old dutch spelling).
Then I reached the vermin zone. This piece really caught my eyes.”A damaged book and a mouse”. Mice are long time residents of Amsterdam. With all the canals all around the city, they are quite happy to live alongside the Amsterdammers. There was one or two in my old office. I saw one running accros the warehouse at IKEA Amsterdam a few weeks ago. This part of the exhibition shows what mice can do to your house, e.g. eat your antique book collection, chew on cables, etc. While I was busy reading and drawing this piece, there was even a mouse trying to chew my shoe….kidding…it was a fake mouse, like the one that my cats have. They put a sensor on the floor, so whenever a person steps on that particular spot a small white mouse pops out from its little but lighted hole under the cabinet.
Yep…. Here we go again! Another passenger in the train. But this time since I had to stand all the way to Utrecht Centraal, I could draw my model from another angle. The advantage of this angle is that my model was looking another way. So we were not face to face. I could sketch him like mad, keep looking at him, continue scribbling, and he was oblivious to everything. The Mac helped of course. He was so busy working with his Power Book. On top of that he was wearing headphone and sunglasses. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing. The minus point is that standing in the train is always quite tiring.
A study of a leaf and a piece of dried grass from the park nearby my office.
We just came back from watching War of the Worlds.
It’s been an emotionally draining week for me at the office. And in trying to get rid off some left over thoughts and get ready for the weekend, we went to the movie. Besides, I had a coupon from Albert Heijn too that was valid a ticket for whichever film we choose to see. So we decided to go and see War of the Worlds.
I have never actually read the book, nor have I heard the radio show,etc. So I had no expectation or knowledge whatsoever of the movie. So how did I find the movie?
It is quite impressive: the earthquakes when the machines jump out the earth, the facade of the church which is moved to the side, people turn to dust in a blink of an eye, …
It is quite disgusting: the machines suck up human blood, spray it on earth surface as some sort of fertilizer, that part of the machine that suck up the next victim from the cage right under it (to me, it looks like an anus with Tom Cruise hanging from it…YUCK!), ….
It is quite confusing. Some parts just do not make sense to me. OK, as usual I am overanalyzing things. I kept saying to myself and Nor, when we were in our car, that it was just a movie. A fantasy movie. But I just could not help myself…So if people disperse and turn to dust when they got hit by the laser beam, why are their clothes remained intact floating in the air? When I saw lots of jeans flying right after their owners turned to dust, I thought that it would be a great ad for a jeans brand e.g. Levis. Next, if the Mars-men are so intelligent and managed to plant machines under our feet million years ago, why couldn’t they figure out back then that some bacteria could wipe them out? Strange, some research might have helped…Oh well, it’s just a movie…so I’ll stop analyzing.
Note: I drew the sketch above using my powerbook, photoshop, no wacom, no mouse. It’s sort of a ‘finger painting’.
Ok, I am a whiner… I just can’t decide if I like it sunny or cloudy. It was so hot today that I think I was half fried on our balcony. We sat down outside and cooked our food on a mini BBQ grill that we have. But…. it was just way too hot for me. I decided to wear my hat during dinner to protect my eyes from the glaring sun. My next-door-neighbor saw me with the hat, and she looked at me strangely. Yes, I’m a fake asian….or may be not, since some asian do really protect their skin from the sun. Well, frankly I don’t care much for that, I just don’t like to get fried. I’ve had a bad experience with way too much sun on my last vacation. It was not an experience that I’d like too repeat.
But is 31 degree Celcius too hot? For me, yes!. I love it when the temperature stays between 20-25 degree Celcius. More is too hot, less is too cold.
So you can see that Nor and I were frying under the sun while frying our dinner. The ice cold ‘Palm’ beers did help a bit. It made us dreaming of some palm trees…..Too bad. The only palm trees that can live in Holland are inside the World Trade Center in Amsterdam.
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