LATE-NIGHT POOL

Sunday, June 29, 2003

13:36 The house just got bigger
In the Nieuwmarkt now, connected through the wireless network of the Waag Society. It's my first time connected outdoors. It's a sunny square and I'm surrounded by the noises of the Sunday market (someone begins playing accordeon as I start writing this line).

The wireless setup at home is still not working, mostly because UPC, my cable provider, refuses to support the installation of routers or networks of any kind. Since their cable modem accepts connections from one machine only I'll have to find out how to register the airport base station and/or have both laptop and base station with the same Ethernet hardware address.

Yesterday we spent quite some time fiddling with the settings. At one point Richard also tried a wireless connection with his Vaio and succeeded – unlike me – making the whole thing even more of a mess. Later we found out he was still able to connect even after both the powerbook and the base station were switched off. It turns out we have a neighbour with a pretty speedy wi-fi network, only we have no idea who that is (yet).

It's a mini revelation! The perception of the boundaries of my tiny apartment has just changed (like they did in that dream, long ago, back in São Paulo). For the moment, I'm not sure how to think of them... the old solid walls now more like membranes and the area shared with the unknown neighbor a newly found secret compartment, peeked into for the first time.
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Thursday, June 26, 2003

10:29 Alliance
Aldje and Radboud are about to get married and decided to get two PDAs instead of two wedding rings. They want to be able to share their schedules with each other, something wedding rings are not very good at. What a bunch of nerds we all are!
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Wednesday, June 25, 2003

23:35 It's been over a year since I first saw John Midgley's portrait of Oliver Sacks in Wired 10.04. I was on a train from Maastricht to Amsterdam in the company of Paul and Janet Abrams, coming back from the Design Recast Symposium at the Jan van Eyck academy.

Portrait of Oliver Sacks, photograph by John Migley

Portrait of Oliver Sacks, photograph by John Migley

A (cropped) scan of John Midgley's photograph published in Wired magazine, April 2002

The photo blew me away at the time and does it again and again. More than a beautiful portrait of a favourite, great author, it is an image crammed with pretty much everything that makes life interesting: the (immersed) body, water, ageing, facial and body hair, concentration and a reminder of death. So my plan now is to enquire with the photographer if a print could be made on demand and at which price.
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23:30 Moorish Madrid
Coincidentally, as always, I received this afternoon a letter from Janet containing a photocopy of the Guardian Weekly article by Giles Tremlett describing the newly-reopened Medina Mayrit, the underground Moorish baths in central Madrid (along with a note saying "let's go visit!"):

It has taken more than 900 years, but civilisation has returned to Madrid. In a tardy act of reparation for the damage caused by the unwashed Christian hordes who chucked out the sophisticated Moors in the 11th century, the ancient Hammam – the Arab baths – have been reopened.

The vaulted, underground pools of Medina Mayrit in Madrid
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23:17 Twelve inches
Got an e-mail from Apple confirming the shipment of my 12-inch Powerbook. I decided for leasing instead of buying it (for a pile of different reasons). I own almost nothing anyhow, and if I could lease everything I surely would.

I am now in sweet anticipation and am all ready to chuck away my ancient and once trusty Powermac 7300 which chug-chugs my digital life at home. The new one is wi-fi ready (g!) and I ordered a base station with it, so I can be online all over the apartment, and so can Richard with his Vaio, and so can the neighbours if they try to.
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22:43 thank god
vexed again
perplexed again
...
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Tuesday, June 24, 2003

08:45 Spent the day in Einhoven at the 'Media Manipulation Day' proposed by Annelys de Vet to her students at the Design Academy. I was part of the jury, along with Aaf van Essen and Dick Tuinder. An unlikley trio, each of us with a different degree of toughness (I was medium-tough). I risk saying we all learned something by being there. I certainly did.

I then jumped on the train back to Amsterdam in a hurry to honor the last nude swimming evening at the Marnixbad. The building is scheduled to be torn down and a new swimming pool will be built there, who knows when. As a farewel gesture, Bouke Ylstra, one of the regulars, invited some people to his ground floor Jordaan apartment for a drink in the garden. All very nice and relaxing. It was a special occasion - everybody was dressed.
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Friday, June 20, 2003

00:00
The circumstances are odd, I know, but happy anniversary anyhow!

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Saturday, June 14, 2003

19:40 Milestone
A few days ago I looked down and found a white chest hair. Then I found another. Two first white chest hairs. Cool.
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15:10
Yesterday: interesting half-day at the Young Designers and Industry conference at the Veem building (where most windows have a great view on the water). I found the conference relaxed and low-key, with some insightful bits here and there. Host Peik was most charming and the food unusually delicious. Gabriëlle, Madelinde and I spent a good while at the window looking down at the piers of the Houthavens, a location that might one day be more than familiar to us. The day ended with a light dinner and coffee with Stewart and Caterina who were passing by Amsterdam on their way to Helsinki.

Today: Fixed some stuff at home, did the wash, brought lots of paper to the recycle station, replied to

Flávio's e-mail of two weeks ago and am setting myself up for a long work session. I am designing the graphics for Maandag Prinsjesdag (a new NPS summer show presented by Joost Prinsen with première on June 31st) and hope to get most of it finished by the end of today.

Tomorrow: Joe arrives at noon from New York to spend a week in Amsterdam, which makes me very happy.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2003

13:26 Dogville
Still form Lars von Trier's Dogville, photo by Rolf Konow

Still from the Dogville website (photo by Rolf Konow)

Two weeks ago Richard and I went to see Lars von Trier's Dogville at the Les Halles in Paris (where movie theaters are face to face with a swimming pool). I was very impressed by the film then, and now, in retrospect, it seems even better, one of the best films I've seen in a long time. The final sequence keeps coming back and feeding me stuff. Quite something, really.

It's not possibe to write any more without spoiling the film for those who will still see it, but it shouldn't go unmentioned anyway.
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11:11 Barely awake
Text message sent early this morning to Stefan Kunzmann (part 1)

Text message sent early this morning to Stefan Kunzmann (part 2)

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01:29 In the past few weeks I've been pretty bad in keeping up with social appointments and meetings with friends (live and/or via e-mail). That's mostly because I'm right in the middle of my hayfever season. The air feels like sandpaper and my days are confused and sort of worthless, so I'm limiting myself to the basics. If you're one of the friends I have been neglecting: sorry.
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Saturday, June 07, 2003

20:05 I finally finished writing

the entry I had started when I was in the Paris library a few weeks ago. I added two pictures and some nice quotes from a Nineteenth-century book describing the Paris baths at that time. Appropriately, since I was re-typing words written a long time ago, I took the opportunity to introduce a set of markers (

) for entries or portions of an entry that are written 'from the future'. It serves to link the two moments, now and then, and to keep the notes within their temporal context without all the way faking the time when they are/were written. A small tunnel through one's own timeline.
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13:53 To swim and to drink
Of all European countries, Holland has the cleanest coast and rivers, according to an article in yesterday's Spits (a free Dutch newspaper distributed in trains and metros). The news comes from a recently published research conducted by the EU about the quality of European waters. The Netherlands 'scored' higher than Greece and other Mediterranean countries, which were also very well rated. The Spits writes with enthusiasm about the quality of the Dutch swimming water (the article is titled 'Zwemwater Perfect'). I am sure the countries would all have different scores if water temperature would have been taken in consideration.
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Wednesday, June 04, 2003

22:00

P-i-o-n-i-e-s
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