Blob[p]Eefje's online sketchpad

There is something wrong with my RSS Feed. However I don’t know what. Bloglines doesn’t recognize the feed, and it will only read the comment’s feed. I have looked through Word Press help, and found the answer. But the solution is apparently not really a solution for me, since it is written in some gibberish techie language which I (poor non-techie soul) completely clueless about how to apply that. From the Word Press support page, this broken RSS feed thing seems to be a bug in WP 2.0. Fine, but I want people with subscription to still be able to read my blog with their news reader.

Anybody has an easy, non gibberish solution to my dilema? I welcome all help I can get.
Thank you in advance!

I’ve been tagged by TeriC. So here we go:
Four jobs I thought of doing in the past:
(I was seriously thinking of becoming one of these)
1. Fashion Designer
2. Chef with own restaurant
3. Travel Journalist
4. Graphic/Web designer

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. American Pie
2. Kung Fu Hustle
3. Kill Bill
4. Taxi (French/original version by Luc Besson, with a man as the taxi driver, not the US version with Queen Latifah)

Four TV shows I watch:
1. CSI Las Vegas (RTL 4)
2. CSI Miami (RTL 5)
3. Idols (RTL 4 – this year they have much better and more mature candidates (20-35), who can sing.)
4. Desperate Housewives (Net 5)

Four places I have lived:
1. Surabaya, Indonesia
2. Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
3. San Francisco, California, USA
4. Utrecht, The Netherlands

Four places I have vacationed:
1. Paris, France
2. Denver, Colorado, USA
3. Barcelona, Spain
4. Bali, Indonesia

Four favorite dishes:
1. Chinese Roast Belly of Pork (For Nam)
2. American/English Breakfast (Egg, sausage, bacon, hashbrown,…)
3. Dutch ‘Boerenkool stamppot met (rook)worst’ (Kale mixed with mashed potato with smoked sausage on the side)
4. Thai ‘Phad krapow neua’ (Beef with basil leaves)

Four places/countries I would like to visit one day:
1. Portugal
2. Maldives
3. China
4. Japan

Four places I would rather be:
Home or anywhere where (as long as) I feel at home and can be myself. Home is where the heart is.

Four sites I visit (almost) daily:
1. Algemeen Dagblad (news)
2. Bloglines (read all my blog subscriptions here)
3. Dictionary & Thesaurus
4. Google (who doesn’t?)

Four bloggers I am tagging:
…
Now I need to tag 4 other people. However, as I have learned, not all people would like to participate in this tagging game. So if you would like to be tagged, let me know. I’ll put your name with link to your blog on the list above. Thanks!

Phew! At last I can breathe again!
My ‘doom’ period lasted longer than I thought. It was just not such a fine time. I was busy, and unfortunately I felt down at the same time. In combination with the Thanksgiving dinner, where in the end I had to go home late, it was just too much for me. I got sick last week Monday. I did not go to work until Thursday and could not work. It was a very very bad cold. I felt like a dying fish (slimy and could not breathe, had to gasp for air every second). What I could do during daytime was try to sleep with a huge headache on the couch accompanied by several cats. The cats have been very helpfull. How? It was cold outside, but inside the house I felt even colder due to the cold and fever I had. The cats provided me with some extra body heat on top of the blanket I was using. So it was very cozy!.
Now I can breathe again. It is not yet back to normal, but it is getting there. However I am still trying to get over this ‘doom’ period and to get some more confidence back. I just have to try to face the world instead of hide.

Since the last post, I only managed to get a few sketches done. Often I didn’t feel like sketching. However, I forced my self to do some, which actually helped me feel better. I am hoping that I will get back to do 3-4 sketches a week again soon.

I did the above sketch on the train, before I got sick. I had a guidebook for Brussel with me, but I couldn’t figure out if we should go to Brussel or Frankfurt for a daytrip. I still can’t.

Just a doodle.

After I got a bit of my strength back, I made the sketch above. I used dip pen and ink (bordeaux/burgundy) and watercolor.

I’ve been tagged by Maggie. So now I need to list 20 things about myself. I’d like to thank Maggie for letting me use hers as guidelines. Well, here we go:

1. I love Asian food. I like American and European food as well, especially Mediterannean cuisine. Eventhough I like European food, I find French/Dutch/German cuisine rather bland.

2.However, I love to eat Dutch food in the winter. It’s the ultimate comfort food. My favorite is Boerenkool stamppot met rookworst (Mashed potato with kale served with smoke sausage). Hachee (Dutch beef stew with lots of onions) is also another favorite of mine. I dislike Hutspot (Mashed potato with lots of onion and carrot, usually served with some meat), I won’t eat this. Why? Because….

3. I hate carrots. I get nauseaus from the smell and the taste of carrots.

4. I lived in Stillwater, Oklahoma for about 5 years and San Francisco for about 3 years. I met Nor in San Francisco.

5. In the past, I wasn’t into cats at all. I didn’t have any pets, until 5 years ago. Nor introduced me to the joy of having cats and now we end up with 8 kitties as housemates.

6. I wanted to become a cat breeder. But due to lack of time and courage, I decided not to. It does take some courage to do, especially during difficult moments such as during difficult labor with problems, when there is a sick kitten, etc. I don’t think I can handle the stress.

7.I’ve been lusting after a yellow superbike Ducati 749 for quite sometime now, but for that I need to win a lottery.

8. I always eat Vietnamese loempia (eggroll) for breakfast/brunch on Saturdays. This is a routine. Once I get to the market stand, I order: 1. regular loempia; 2. loempia special; 3. a portion/6 small pieces of pangsit (fried wonton); and 4. another regular loempia provided that I am still starving. I know, this can’t be considered as a healthy breakfast. But to me, this beats 2 slices of bread and butter with ham and cheese.

9. My dream vacation destination is the Maldives. We’ve been planning to go there for a couple of years now, but we haven’t been able to realize the plan.

10. I like the work of ‘older’ masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Steen, and even older ones such as Carravagio, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.

11. I can’t swim. Well, I actually can but only one style and very bad. Therefore, I don’t like to swim in the sea and won’t.

12. I am addicted to watching Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) on tv. My favorite is CSI Las Vegas with Grissom.

13. I don’t eat fruit. I only eat it, if it is already cleaned, peeled and cut up.

14. I don’t drive. I let my driver’s license expire years ago. I hate to be stucked in the traffic jam. I don’t like careless and rude fellow drivers. I let Nor drive our car and I go everywhere by public transportation. But public transport can also be a pain sometimes.

15. I am afraid of walking on a floor made from glass or any transparent/translucent materials, and especially if the floor is located high up, e.g. glass bridge. With great difficulty, I may be able to cross to the other side. But I will certainly have sweaty hands and shaky knees.

16. I dislike arrogance.

17. It is not easy for me to make a conversation. After a short while, I always end up asking myself….what am I supposed to say next?…

18. I always feel uncomfortable, when I am the only one who is different in a room. Different: being young/the youngest and being the only female and also being the only non-caucasian. In this kind of situations (usually at a congress/forum/conference here), I stand out (too much) from the rest of the crowd, which I don’t like.

19. I drink 3-4 cups of (strong dutch) coffee with sugar in the morning on a regular day. In the afternoon, I drink mostly water or sometimes chinese jasmine tea. When I have a deadline, I drink 6 – 8 cups of coffee. This can give me the boost that I need or it can backfire and make me even more tired.

20. I am obsessed with books (is there such thing as book fetish?). It doesn’t really matter what kind of book it is and what the content is. It can be a blank too (a journal). The thickness matters the most; the thicker the better. When I see a thick book, my hands itch to grab it and run to the check out counter as fast as possible.

Now I am tagging:
A Doodle A Day
Craftmonkeys
Laurelines
The Creative Journey

Can some one please help me with this encoding business? I’d like to be able to type out these nice special characters shown on the left (see image) on my blog, but somehow I can’t seem to figure it out.
I have changed the encoding (as blogger suggested) to western mac, western iso, or unicode. As blogger also suggested, I played with the template on blog encoding a bit. Then I typed code of the characters (as listed on the W3C’s website), the 3 digit code that begins with &# and ends with ; but somehow I saw nothing but funny character on my blog after I republished it. Nothing works. It did look ok on the preview or compose. I kept the language on English (US) and I’d like to keep it that way (is this actually the problem?). If you know the solution to my dilemma, please share it with me. I really appreciate it! Thanks in advance.

Special for Slashdot visitors….

(…Jurt 1235 waves the banner enthousiastically…)

Now you know how Jurt 1235 your fellow geek and an avid member of Slashdot.org looks like…(well, sort of).

Thanks for visiting

My package arrived this morning! YAY!!

I have done some research on some art supplies stores, both online and local ‘real’ stores. Unfortunately, there is not one store in Holland that offers all products in my shopping list. So through the Everyday Matters group, I got some names and links to online stores outside the Netherlands. I finally decided to order the products at Jerry’s Artarama. It seems like they are the cheapest one. I read their customer service page and information about shipping carefully. Put all selected products in the shopping cart, registered payment method, filled in address, and chose ‘the Netherlands’ as country. It all went OK, I even got an e-mail confirmation 2 minutes after I ordered. Next day, I checked out my order status online and freaked out because suddenly ‘United States’ was listed as the country of the shipping address instead of ‘the Netherlands’. I just got to call them to make sure that they would ship it to the right country. After telling a customer representative my order number, she dropped the news. My order has been canceled. CANCELED????? ( what is she talking about? I got a confirmation. Under order status on the website right in front of me, while calling, says that payment method is accepted. So how can it be CANCELED????) I didn’t cancel it. ‘No mam, we just no longer ship to the Netherlands’ Since WHEN? The website does not specifically mention anything about shipping to the Netherlands (Ok, I was half yelling and felt irritated, frustrated, etc. etc but I am not going to repeat the whole conversation here)….Finally she said that the supervisor would send me an e-mail confirming that I am not going to receive my order ad that my credit card will not be billed. Feeling very annoyed, I filled in a feedback form on their website and just wrote down my rants. Today, I got 2 e-mail replies from Jerry from two different representatives. One mentioned that the reason they do not ship to Holland anymore is because the high credit card theft that has came from here. (I am not aware of this at all. No news here regarding credit card theft. So I personally think this is just made up). The second mentioned that they do ship to NL but only if the payment is via money order or cashier check. (This make a bit more sense to me, although the reason behind it is a bit dubious. But it is not my concern). Well, if that is the condition, then they should have mentioned that on their website and also to which other countries this condition applies!

After this annoying experience, I decided to order at Dick Blick. I made sure that I called them first to confirm that they do ship to NL. And yay, they do. Now I am waiting for them to contact me about the shipping cost and to get my approval, then the products are on their way. Hopefully they do that soon and that the process will go smoothly.

Hhmmm…

I’ve been reading Danny Gregory’s journal off and on and in no particular order. I was reading his entry ‘Why do I do it?/My story’, written on April 16, 2004 and found this line: “Architects students worked notoriously long hours. Fools, again. At best, I’d heard, they’d make $30 grand a year.”

Ehem…
I was one of that fool and still am a fool, I guess. Am I really enjoying what I do? I don’t know. I think I did enjoy the study, despite the long hours. But now I can’t say I really like what I do. Long hours, (usually) minimal pay with unpaid overhours – sorry to dissapoint you Danny, feeling extremely tired all the time. It’s amazing to think that I still have about 32-35 years to go before I am elligible to retire. Can I really do this that long? I don’t know, seems like an awfully long time to do something that I don’t really enjoy doing afterall.

The end of Danny’s entry is an inspiration to me for a carreer change. I’ve been thinking of this off and on too for the past couple of years. Until now, I always find it difficult, too complex, too much stress. I am so afraid of rejections, always thinking that I would not be able to do it because I might not have the correct education, etc. etc. blah blah… Just too much to think about that I decided to stick to what I do now. Hopefully I can change that…sometimes in the future. But first I REALLY do have to figure out: what do I enjoy doing? What is important in my life?

To Danny: thanks for your story.

Last night we went to Groningen to see the last show of Claudia de Breij. She is a cabaretiere (stand-up comedian) and she ended her tour/show ‘Claudia zuigt’ (Claudia sucks) yesterday after 2 years. Below, I’ve added the poster of the show which was considered scandalous by a few religious towns in the Netherlands.

It was such a fun evening for us and the show was great. We’ve had such a laugh! The show was also filmed by VARA (public television) and so we might just be on TV. They said that they will broadcast it on October 22. I’ll be waiting.

Before the show, we had dinner at the Bronco steakhouse. Nor had spareribs and I had a rib eye steak. They were great too. Better than any other restaurants in this region.
I also have to admit that Groningen is a much cleaner and better maintained city than Utrecht. Go Groningen!

NOTE: The picture of the poster is from www.stand-upcomedy.nl. For more information on Claudia de Breij, visit her website www.claudiadebreij.nl.

Yesterday, my colleague and I went to the 100% design in Rotterdam. It’s an annual exhibition of design items, designers, and companies at the Van Nelle Design Factory.

I’ve never been to the Van Nelle or the 100% design exhibition, so it was an experience. The building itself is awesome, but the exhibition was a bit dissapointing.
Too small and I expected something big. The annual exhibition in Kortrijk, Belgium is much much better. I’ll probably go there this year.

The free entrance ticket that I got from my co-worker

It has been a very busy and totally hectic week. I had 3 deadlines in one week. My client from London was working from my office on Tuesday and Wednesday. On wednesday morning he even came at 8.45 pm! I was quite shocked when I let him in to the office.

Anyway, I managed to do several sketches in my journal. I’ll try to upload them this weekend. I’ll also try do some washes. Hopefully it won’t mess them up.

Early this evening I bought my first Moleskine sketch book. After reading raves on the sketch book from some websites, I got curious. I refused to buy it before, because It was expensive. It still is. It costed me euro 15.95,- !! That was from de Bijenkorf in Amsterdam. Hopefully, it is something.

While waiting for the train to arrive in Duivendrecht, I did some sketches. In the sneltram going home, I did another sketch and analyzed some corporate logo’s. Quite an achievement, I say. In the weekend, I’ll put some color on the sketches. May be it will look nicer with some watercolor.

I’ll try to upload these sketches soon.

I haven’t been writing any entries for almost half a year now. Feel a bit guilty about it. Anyway, this is the short version. I made some progress with my therapist. However at times when I felt down, I felt like I went backward instead of forward. I’ve got a new project. Histerical person drives me crazy at my office. Some unfairness at my workplace irritates me. They are playing cat and mouse with the law, which is also very confusing.

Yesterday, I came across this e-group called Everyday Matters. The group is based on D. Gregory book with the same name. I think this group and the book will be good for me in my effort to umph my creativity. So we’ll see if I can keep up the challange of sending one sketch entry per week. I (half) promise my self that I will sketch at least one sketch a day from everyday matters…

New Year’s Eve was pretty quiet compare to 2003/2004. Cats were doing great. Only Wasabi was meowing a bit. On New Year’s Day we went to Martin. Beside Martin and Ilse, Michel and Arthur were there too. I was dreading the even a bit, but it turned out to be “gezellig”! So it was good. I had a good laugh with Ilse about our honeymoon in Bali with the leeches. It was surprising

Tiring move day

Today I finally finished formatting this blog template!
To be able to do this, I have moved the blog to our own server. Nor has helped me with this. Now I can have my lists of current reads, past reads and to be read pile on the sidebar. VERY COOL!

Sandra has invited me to her place, so I went to visit her today. It was raining very hard for a while, but I managed to go by bike to her place. I waited until it rained a bit less.

She has a pretty large house, 3 stories and a backyard. The interior is in good condition and Sandra has kept it, except the master bedroom, the same way as the previous owner left it. However the style is a bit mix and match that it can be considered as no style.

Our chat was nice and cozy. I briefed her on what I’ve gone through since the last time I saw her. I told her shortly about my tooth, the visit to the surgeon, the *ambeien*, the visit to the GP, the bee sting. We laughed together about my experience with the GP.

Next, she showed me her pictures that she has taken during her vacation in South Africa. She went with her boyfriend, Eric. The pictures are mostly photos of nature and animals. They have made little pics of them self. Then she showed me the house.

On the 1st floor they have the entrance with the WC and the stairwell. The kitchen is on the 1st floor as well and opens up to the dining and living area. The master bedroom, the work room, a guest room and a bathroom are all located on the 2nd floor. Another bedroom is located in the attic/3rd floor along with 1.5 storage rooms.

After the tour of the house, we also talked about her experience meeting the IWCU, International Women’s Contact Utrecht. According to her it is a nice club and she gave me an old newsletter to bring home to read. I said, I am interested in joining and I’ll probably drop by during a pub night. Sandra also mentioned that IWCU has a bookclub and she is certainly going there the next time. I couldn’t possibly show up the first time during a book discussion. I think it would be odd and would divert the meeting from its purpose.

Before I left, Sandra also showed me some of her family pictures. Her mother has passed away and her father lives at this moment in Cape Town, S. Africa.

The rain stopped when I was leaving her house. She let me out and we promised to contact eachother about what and when we are going to do next.

TBL list = To Be Learned list

English (to perfection?)
Dutch (to perfection?)
Indonesian (for the sake of my man?)
French (for Paris, the number one on our list of places to live)
Italian (esp. for reading their fine design magazines)
German
Japanese (for reading manga and recipes)
Chinese: Mandarin and possibly Cantonese (for ordering in a chinese restaurants, reading recipes in internet)
Spanish
Norwegian (for the possibility that we are going to move there one day)
Dannish (for reading design magazines and write to cat breeders. Those Dannish breeders breed magnificent cats.)
Swedish (for working at IKEA Stockholm???)

A brand new blog, a fresh mind, thus the enthousiastic posts. Gastrono-Me. Where did the name come from? For some people it might be obvious that the name is derived from the word “gastronomy”. Totally correct, I say. I love cooking thus gastronomy. However, what I read yesterday on Algemeen Dagblad -a local newspaper- about Nigella Lawson has inspired me to pick this as the title of my new blog. (BTW Where is the old one? Gone, deleted).

In AD it is mentioned that Nigella is the GastroPorn for TV audience in England. GastroPorn stands for Gastronomy Pornography. Cool term. It has something to do with some people’s overactive imagination while watching her on TV with eggwhites dripping from her fingers or licking a spoon of super delicious chocolate. But it is not far off. I, myself, think that cooking and eating can be sexy.

The term and also my hobbies define Gastrono-Me. So it is clear that Gastro is gastronomy. I’ve got more than 100 cookbooks and way too many other books. Me stands for me, myself, the writer of this journal. I’d like to also say something about my day-to-day life.

So there it is.