This Saturday I went to Antwerp. My girlfriend works for Libelle, Flander’s most popular women’s weekly. They organized a winter fair and even though I liked the atmosphere, Antwerp drew me out to its city center. Walking around, taking pictures and listening to music. I almost felt back in San Francisco.
WinterFair
Libelle WinterFair in Antwerp's harbor
Antwerp's Harbor
Old vs New
Beauty
De Stip (part of a television show)
Jolly
The past weekend Leuven In Scène took place. To be honest, I’m not sure what it is. A city-wide carnival is the best way to describe it, I guess. Karolien and I only went to an event on Ladeuze where dansers performed acrobatic air tricks with the library as a backdrop. Beautiful!
On Saturday and Sunday and Monday, we discovered the calm beauty of Maastricht. We strolled around the streets, had a few drinks and then walked some more. Maastricht is a beautiful place, and I have some pictures to show for it (click for a larger – and sharper – version, as usual).
Leuven In Scène
Leuven in Scène - Building up
Leuven In Scène - Apotheosis
Some jealous bikers in Maastricht
A beautiful scene in Maastricht
Near city hall
On the old city walls
A student, I guess
A nice place to walk
A nice place to drink
A nice place to rest 1
A nice place to rest 2
A nice place to be together 1
A nice place to be together 2
Maastricht, a nice place
This blog seems to devolve to a weekly thing when life isn’t very exiting, it seems. Well, as long as I can keep filling a weekly post with pictures, that’s enough for me.
Looking back
I miss Stanford and Palo Alto quite often. So now both mine and Karolien’s pictures of our road trip have been processed, it becomes time to review the first three months of 2010. Plenty of pictures take me back, especially those of San Francisco. Below you can find a small selection, but I’m sure many more will follow.
Looking forward
Today Karolien and I went to J.’s future home. It really seems to come together and I can imagine they’ll be happy over there.
Chinatown in San Francisco
Chinatown -The beauty and the salon
Spanish hair dresser
The hair dresser - A happy customer
A Mission shop
J. and her future home
J. contributing to her future home
This weekend it was time for visitations. On Friday we went to Kim and Tim, two friends of mine. In the US we bought Coke that was vanilla flavored, Kim’s favorite. We had to drop it off and stayed for the rest of the evening. On Saturday I went by my grandparents, had lunch at Karolien’s parents, went to see Karolien’s grandparents and I finished the day walking with Karolien’s parents. On Sunday there was brunch at the Kompenhof (again) with my parents. Next week, there’s more time to go see some more friends.
Photography-wise, I’m trying to use my 24mm lens more often. Practicing is really important, as converging lines become more apparent on a wide angle. I don’t think I’ve succeeded yet, so more training is needed.
Going for lunch at Karolien's parents
J. and her godfather J.
J. saying goodbye to J.
Grandparents' living room
Going for a walk
Brunching at Kompenhof
My dad gazing at a car dealer
After visiting Antelope Canyon, our trip took us to the Grand Canyon. Due to the icy weather, the number of possible hikes were limited and the Kaibab trail was recommended the most. Therefore we ended up doing it. It wasn’t very long, but because of the thin and cold air, it became rather physical. Well, to be honest, it is also my fault a bit. The guide said that for every time unit you walk down in the Canyon, you had to triple it when walking up. I wanted to see if I could do it in just twice the time, but ended up going up in less time than going down.
The day after, we visited the Grand Canyon from a helicopter. Papillion was the cheapest company to offer such tours, so we went with them. You have to give a time window when you will go into the air and we were supposed to take off any time between 11 and 12. When driving down to the airport, it began to snow and this resulted in a one hour delay of our departure. Mistakes made by the crew made us wait another hour (and almost one more), but then we took off. A spectacular view was the result. Unfortunately pictures has to be taken through a plastic, scratched and dirty window, so these pictures need some heavy editing. Nonetheless, I have one included below. Later that day we drove down past Lake Havasu to Eherberg, in close proximity of Joshua Tree.
Naturally, we visited Joshua Tree the next day. It was a quick visit on our route to Los Angeles, where we arrived in the late afternoon – just early enough to explore it by foot. Yesterday we went to its beaches, Venice beach and Santa Monica beach. Quite a variety in characters: tarot card readers, rollerskating people, bodybuilders and medicinal marijuana doctors were screaming for attention.
Today we’ll visit Santa Barbara and drive up the coast line to Monterrey. This will be our last stop before San Francisco, where will will complete our tour on Wednesday.
The Grand Canyon from a helicopter
Joshua Tree
Walt Disney Concert Hall
A girl playing in the fountain near Hollywood Boulevard
Modern Times at Hollywood Boulevard
A random dude outdoors
I'm not interested in stealing your art, I just want to capture the art on that dude's back!
My father is in Palo Alto for a small week. He arrived around noon today at the airport in San Francisco. It was really nice seeing him again, even though my head (and stomach) was still pounding a bit from the evening before when G., C. and I went to the Nut House on California Avenue. It was a splendid evening, studying probabilities in a Yahtzee-like drinking game. We all lost, by the way.
My dad rented a car. A normal-sized Chevy. Yet the sales lady from Avis knew how to convince my dad to go for a Ford Mustang in bright red instead (see the not so very great picture below). We took it to his place, he checked in and we headed for San Francisco where the Chinese New Year Parade took place. It wasn’t as special as I hoped for, but as it became darker, the lights were really pretty sometimes. The day ended with a steak. Yes!
At Nut House
Being persuaded
My kingdom for a horse
Checking In
My father at Union Square
Parade
Under her umbrella
A lot of politicians participated
Dreamy bokeh at the parade
"I call him ... Goldenboy!"
Parade
Do you have that too, not being able to stop thinking? It happens to me quite often and it can be really annoying when trying to sleep. Just to give you an example, yesterday evening I was listening to Maria’s Bed, by Bruce Springsteen. It gave me a visual image of lying in the middle of the bed. So I asked myself the logical question “Am I lying in the middle of my bed?” To make a rather long series of thoughts shorter, I ended up trying to find an algebraic formula for the location of the middle point of a normal density function, parameterized for its variance. With my eyes closed. And the right half of my brain trying to sleep.
Maybe it’s being alone for too long (this reminds me of a Seinfeld episode), maybe it’s the stimulating environment. Whatever it is, it resulted in me being tired today. The train rides to San Francisco were the most enjoyable: just sitting and listening to music. I went to a small exhibition on aerial photography and LAB 3 printing (nice supersize pictures, given that some were taken in the ’70s), walked around at Union Square and sat at Borders for a book or two.
Tomorrow there’s work (and laundry). Looking forward to it too. As already mentioned, my pc has been down so I got behind on the latest problem set that’s due on Tuesday. But I have a feeling I will be well-rested the day after tomorrow.
Around Metreon building
Around Metreon building
But I did. It wasn’t telephone operator 1, 2 or 3. I foolishly thought it was the service technician that came by on Tuesday. But it was a good old ICT Leuven employee that provided me with a solution for my failing pc. They mailed me a new hard drive with both the operating system and relevant K.U.Leuven programs preinstalled on it. After 15 minutes of out with the old in with the new, and a couple of hours of reinstalling my own programs, I am proud to be back in blogging business. And normal business too for that matter. Working is rather difficult without a pc.
Picture wise, I have three pictures to offer. The first two are taken in San Francisco before going to the Luc Tuymans Exhibition I blogged about before. The last picture is taken in Palo Alto, where there was a massive power outage on Wednesday.
A view over Telegraph Hill, taken from a moving cable car
At Washington Park in North Beach
Lights out
Today I went to San Francisco instead of yesterday. The weather was incredible! A good opportunity to test the Leica too. Since Leica is associated with black and white photography, I decided to look for scenes that would fit this well. I’ve taken some color pictures too, but since they would be out of place in the series below, I’ve decided not to post them here. A film look was the goal.
This evening I got together with Chris to solve the problem set for next week. I’m quite tired, so I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
On the cable car
Bird
A lovely filled frame
At Telegraph Hill
At Telegraph Hill
A perfect angle
Boxed in
so what becomes of little boys
who run away from home
At Borders (click for larger size)
At Abbey's (click for larger size)
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