LATE-NIGHT POOL

Sunday, March 31, 2002

15:44 Add-on
Since I have too much to do I decided to create a new section for archiving images of pools I have visited (see menu above). So far it contains only the two Hamburg pools described in the previous entry. The ones from Amsterdam, Montréal, São Paulo should follow.

Update
Added to the pool of people: Brechtje (yet a new one), Charles (in memoriam), Dewald, Gerard, Joe.
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Saturday, March 30, 2002

15:20 Last weekend in Hamburg
There's a lot of room in Germany. You can swim without bumping on people! You can even have a full lane all for yourself if you feel like it. Bäderland – a company I wish was my own – has 26 pools/baths/saunas in the Hamburg area. I've been to two of them.

The Alster-Schwimmhalle was a tip from a local waiter. A short walk from our hotel, it offered three pools, all at 28ºC: one (olympic) for swimming laps, one (recreational) for kids and similar-minded people, one (outdoors) for enjoying the weather. Plus a full-fledged sauna environment that included a green-lit bionarium(?). Oh and a gym with a view on the olympic pool. The Alster-Schiwmhalle opens seven days a week until 23:00. A three-hour ticket cost EUR 5,20.

Next day (thanks to a precious tip from Nicola) I took a metro to Hamburger Straße and walked some 15 minutes to the Bartholomäus-Therme, a much more relaxing place with two semi-olympic pools connected by a sauna complex.

The whole place was designed/decorated in such a spartan way that at first it felt like there was nothing to look at. I started with the sauna area. It was quite busy but people related very little to each other, except for an occasional volunteer or staff member who would stand inside one of the saunas and spin his/her towel around to cause some extra hot hot air. That seemed to be very appreciated. As expected, you're required to wear a bathing suit at the pools – except on Mondays – and a towel at the sauna (Kein Schweiß auf' Holz).

The lap-swimming pool was apparently under maintenance (mirror-like surface, no lifeguards, nobody swimming) but the recreational pool was very lively - in quiet sort of way. The whole basin was metallic, probably stainless steel. There were barely any children. As the daylight faded outside the staff started placing man-sized chandeliers next to each of the columns of the arched hall. I went to the mezzanine, shot quite a bit of video and took pictures and no bathers or staff members seemed to mind (a true public space?). I saw two coin-operated sunbed cabins and decided to give it a go.

The Ergoline Avantgarde sunbed looked more like a stasis chamber designed by Nike. It was the only kitsch item in the whole building. The reference chart defined my skin as Type IV (Olive) and so I was ok to go for the 16-minute session. So I lay on the wavy ergonomic plexyglass surface, obviously molded to the shape of a very large, average Germanic body and feel like a child doing something meant only for big people. There's many buttons and controls. As I press the start button a soft, feminine German voice gives me warnings I don't understand. It' spectacular. As she speaks dozens of fluorescent tubes light up, soft music plays (the Spice Girls!) and adjustable fans fan me from many interesting directions.

When I emerged from the tanning booth it was dark. The pool area below was now candle-lit except for the underwater spotlights. Big blue-green water with bits of fire all around. Things got definitely much more romantic and many couples are now hugging and kissing, pushing and pulling each other in the water.
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Friday, March 29, 2002

10:54 Every single person out there is an idiot
but collectively they're a genius,
according to Billy Wilder (who died yesterday at the age of 95).
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Monday, March 25, 2002

11:36 Posting quickly from a Saturn shop in Hamburg (yet another weird keyboard - umlauts abound) at the end of a short trip full of interesting pools, baths and other corporeal investigations. Pictures and details coming next (yes, yes, I know I have said this before). See you in Amsterdam.
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Wednesday, March 20, 2002

23:16 Thanks to JH for sending me an mpg version of REM's Nightswimming (the ultimate late night pool video). I hadn't seen it in years. It is really beautiful.

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Monday, March 18, 2002

14:25 Via Fred: James Buckhouse's Tap for Palm OS.
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14:17 Via Fred: the Alternative Dutch Dictionary. Tja.
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12:26 I spent part of last weekend in Brussels and Antwerp and was amazed at how friendly and intense the contact between people seems to be. People are involuntarily nice. That contrasts with the fact that Belgium cities are quite run down and the class distinctions are much more evident than in The Netherlands. What's the logic?

From the gap

I was listening again to the Waters of March duet by David Byrne and Marisa Monte and felt (and noticed) the kick of being in a language rollercoaster: my brain effortlessly toggling back and forth between two languages I really understand. I realized for the first time that I'm not passing by – I totally settled in language-gap-country. The nuisance, the handicap changed to recognition: it's a comfortable place to be! It's an important thing for me to realize so, attention, I hereby place my copy-pasted flag in this cracked soil.

Then there's train and Brussels where I more or less gamble which language should I speak every time I meet someone and I find myself speaking Dutch and thinking with brief peripheral wonder it's me; then there's all the Canadian products at Richard's place with two-tongued instructions that you better follow by comparison. There's always a gap and there's always some useful information there.
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10:40 Received last Friday:

Dear Rogerio Lira

Congratulations on recently completing your 500th SETI@home workunit. Through your support, SETI@home has grown to become the largest distributed computation on Earth. We at SETI@home greatly appreciate the 1.27 years of computer time you have donated to the project, and hope that you will continue your support. As a small token of our appreciation, you may now download and print an official certificate stating your achievement of this goal, available at [url].

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Friday, March 15, 2002

10:22

02

It is o two day
I've been building this pool for two years
stretching wider than deep
all these tiles of me

celebrate
celebrate
what else can I say
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Thursday, March 14, 2002

19:36

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Monday, March 11, 2002

15:00
paging Mr. Perry
paging Mr. Perry
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12:16 Baths! Boats! Beer! Boys! she wrote.
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Saturday, March 09, 2002

10:09 I've been having a great time playing Phantasy Star Online on my Dreamcast. My character Trungpa (named after Trungpa) is very busy trying, failing and all the while learning and acquiring skills. Improving and evolving. He's a very good-humored RAmar and has been described as 'beefy' by some and as 'chubby' by others (to my great joy).

One of the most interesting details of PSO is what happens after your death on the battlefield: things continue happening around you but your vision takes a red tint and you see yourself lying on the ground with your property (weapon and mesetas) hovering next to your dead body. At this stage you may choose to return to the orbiting ship where you will rematerialize (in perfect condition) and prepare youself to return to the battlefield and resume fighting. The fascinating thing is that if/when you reach the spot where you previously died your property is likely to be still there, waiting to be picked up again. I find it so thrilling to look at the hovering items and to know: it was here. I remember.

I remember something else: on his very entertaining autobiography Freedom in Exile the Dalai Lama writes about when, after being identified as the reincarnation of the previous Lama and being moved into the Potala Palace, he finds a room containing telescopes and other optical equipment that belonged to one of his previous selves. He ponders that he (he) must have really enjoyed those objects. He doesn't remember. He accepts: this has been my home for many years and many lives; here I am again.
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09:54 Planning a new occasional series of short videos, to be titled '100 Lies,' though goodness knows if I will ever be able to get to a hundred.
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09:51 The Amsterdams Historisch Museum was packed yesterday afternoon at the opening of SEX FOR SALE: FOUR CENTURIES OF PROSTITUTION IN AMSTERDAM. The crowd was ultimately diverse and I had a lot of fun. The show goes on until September 1st.
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Monday, March 04, 2002

21:06

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18:17 The last day or two I find myself really looking forward to this Design Recast thing (for which I've apparently been registered, thank you, thank you).
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11:44 DOBRA 01, the second and latest newsletter from my Brazilian colleagues at Femur talks about the release of their new screen font Clementina and of Partitura, a cute (downloadable) pattern-generating font. The tiny flash presentation allows you to type your own text and build/modify the Partitura patterns.

But remember: flash is evil (I can't even link to the right area of the site).

Which reminds me I've been wanting to link to the excellent Voronoi diagram links posted by C&S in December, especially to Ken Shirriff's leaf-like fractal structures generated from Voronoi diagrams.

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11:25 Unfinished meeting at the studio yesterday evening: ONAF (that's Dutch for 'unfinished') took place once again, a year after its first edition. ONAF is an evening organized by Madelinde Hageman, Annelys de Vet and myself where we gather a few designer friends to chat about work that is still in progress. This second ONAF edition worked much better than the first; this time the projects brought into discussion were on a raw enough stage (good ONAF property) and guest introductions were fast and informal. Many of the attendees baked delicious goods especially for the occasion. The next ONAF evening will happen in June.
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