Friday, May 29, 2015

Mr2

Once upon a time there was a very mean person who discovered another person's blog and proceeded to make fun of it every chance he got.

The end.

Monday, February 23, 2015

OV Chipcard

In The Netherlands we have this awesome public transport pass called the OV chipcard. You need it for pretty much all types of public transport, and I use it daily on my travels to and fro Amsterdam. It requires you to check in at your departure location and check out again at your destination. If your chipcard is inspected while traveling and happens to not be checked in you risk a fine.

Due to the fact that traveling to Amsterdam is part of my daily routine, I am often on autopilot while doing so, and sometimes I find myself sitting in the train without any memory of whether or not I checked in. This kind of sucks, because it makes me nervous about the train dude showing up, thinking I might get a fine. I've had it happen that he asked for my card, with me fidgeting nervously, SURE that I was about to get fined because I had zero recollection of checking in so surely I had forgotten. Only to have him give me my card back with his noncommittal-train-guy-face, and move on to the next person.

After this happened on several occasions, I slowly began to `trust' in my subconscious checking in for me. It's a weird idea, that. That my body is somehow separate from me, and knows how to do stuff without any input from "me".

Today was another one of those days, except this time for some reason I was feeling anxious that I might have indeed forgotten to check in. I spent the whole journey anticipating the ticket inspector. He was a no-show. And what good fortune for me because when checking out in Amsterdam I noticed it lit up as "checked in"  instead of out!

I spent 100 seconds looking at the slowly crawling seconds hand on the clock before being allowed to check out again, but although this made me two minutes late arriving at the office, I figure all in all today started out on a positive note as I saved myself 6 euros and 40 cents on the one way fare Utrecht - Amsterdam! :)



Thursday, July 3, 2014

ESL One Frankfurt 2014: Some Impressions

Saturday, June 28th.

I wake up at the ungodly hour of 4:45, 15 minutes before my alarm clock was supposed to go off. Even my subconscious is excited for ESL One! I'm at our parents' house because we're taking mom's car, and she wakes up at 6:15 just to see me off cause that's what moms do. In a chipper mood I drive off towards Enschede, to pick up Sheever from the estate where she was celebrating one of her sorority friends' wedding the night before. It's early, traffic is light, and I take full advantage. At around 7:30 I am parked directly in front of the entrance of Sheever's hotel, and I hop over to the passenger seat.

We're off! Frankfurt here we come! Once on the highway Sheever jokingly says that we better not get pulled over because she had a lot to drink the night before and didn't get a lot of sleep. About 15 seconds later we pass one of those work-traffic on-ramps where two German police officers on motorcycles watch us go by. We look at them, they look at us, I tell Sheever she totally jinxed that. Then things stop being funny because one of them actually pulls out onto the highway behind us. The next minute is spent in anxious silence. Suddenly another car overtakes us, and for some reason the police dude decided to chase him instead, we watch and hang way back as he is signaled into one of those truck parking lots. Oof. 

Thankfully the rest of the trip passes without incident. We admire the German hills (something we don't have back home) and I have a look at Sheever's brand new ipad.

At about 11:30 we finally arrive at the hotel! We booked the Lindner hotel directly opposite the stadium because we are lazy and it wasn't even that expensive. But it was a good choice, because apparently some of the casters and players are staying there as well, and as we go out to head to the stadium we actually meet up with some of them and find our way to the entrance together.

Now I'd never seen the inside of a stadium before,  but when we first moved out onto the premium balcony and had a look around, it sure was impressive. I have to be honest though, and say that it also felt smaller than I'd imagined. I say felt, because it was still pretty huge. The "field" area though, hardly seemed big enough to play football on, but I think that was partly because one large strip of it was covered in shops and booths and whatnot, and of course people were sitting on the rest. We got there as a match was already going on, and the roar of the crowd that first time was really something. You just sort of perk up at that much enthusiasm and exhilaration coming from so many people, and everyone is smiling and enjoying themselves, it was wonderful really.

What was even more fun though, was the first time Sheever and I went down to the public area. I think we were aiming for the secret shop, but we made it about 10 meters before the first people approached Sheever to ask for a photo or an autograph. I hadn't been to TI3, so I didn't know what it was like to witness people actually wanting to take pictures and stuff with Sheever, it wasn't like that at Dreamhack winter, where I guess there's way more people also from other games who really would't know who she was. So this was completely new to me. It put a big smile on my face though, so many people were just so genuinely happy to see her! I became pro at stepping to the side whenever someone stepped in to take a photo with Sheever, and I think I must have held over a hundred smartphones over the entire weekend. The monies that passed through my hands!

This "mobbing" as I heard someone call it, remained a thing throughout the weekend. I know that at some point Sheever was like, "well I think I've pretty much had all the people that wanted a photo by now" and she said I shouldn't be disappointed if it didn't happen as much the next day, (because I was thoroughly enjoying this, probably more than Sheever since I didn't have to do anything) yet even after she'd done a signing session on the Sunday it still never seemed to end. Pretty cool if you ask me!

We spent the Saturday alternating between watching the games from the early bird area, the premium area, and the player seating area. We met up with a bunch of people, and hung out with Anuxi, Meruna, and Ryan for a while. It was great fun, and the audience stayed hyped pretty much the entire event.

I had planned for this blog to be a clear description of the Saturday, followed by a clear description of the Sunday, but I am starting to notice that much of what happened is blurring together in my head so I don't know exactly on which day happened what. I guess imma just throw all my observations out there, regardless of chronological order:

Sausages. We ate a lot of them! The food was free, and if you didn't want to eat potato salad or pretzels, then sausages were pretty much it. I didn't mind though, I thought they were pretty good. Energy drinks, too. Free redbull! No wonder everyone was so hyped. They also had a lot of different flavors, so I tried a lot of different kinds. I liked how the analyst panel was right there on the premium balcony, and you could practically stand right next to it and have a look see at what was going on. A floor up from the premium area were the player balconies. There were also player rooms, basically every team got a room assigned to them, and the team names were announced on a display next to the doors. I don't think the players spend much time in them, but if you went out the other side of the player room you were on the player balcony, and that's pretty much where most of the players/VIPs hung out. We also watched The Netherlands - Mexico in one of those rooms, together with Trance whom I recognized from the EUHub, and another guy from Twitch who spoke a little bit of Dutch, and some other Twitch people. Every once in a while Singsing would stick his head in to see what was happening but for the first half of the game as you should all know, nothing really did. Whenever we would hear the crowd roar Sheever would have a look and come back with "Fnatic is winning" and "Fnatic got racks" and little updates like that. The second half was a lot more exciting and we had a lot of fun watching. Were glad really, that there had been an opportunity to do so at all.

We ended up watching the grand finals from the player seating area, and I had brought up some of those twitch dongers to blow up to we could slam them together and a create some hype! DPM got my backup set. We enjoyed beating the hell out of those things whenever something remotely exciting happened, but not everyone was as appreciative as us. After some disapproving glares from Puppey I decided that was quite enough. Still, gg, had fun.

Then last but not least, THE AFTERPARTY! WOO! We met up at the hotel with a bunch of people and ordered enough taxi's for all of us. When we arrived there was a bit of confusion as to where the VIP entrance was, but find it we did! I remember the guy saying I had to take off the black VIP wristband, because we were getting a white one. He then proceeded to put one on my wrist and I noticed to my horror that he had gotten one of my arm-hairs stuck in the band! So I said something like "OH MY GOD MY HAIR IS STUCK" and he just took my wrist and did a little countdown before ripping it away from my wrist, and with a tiny pinch the problem was solved. Thinking back I think I must have already been a little tipsy (we had some beer earlier) because that seemed like a weird conversation. Anyhoo, we got in! Right inside was a big sign that said VIP up the stairs so up we went. I won't go into too many details other than that it was a lot of fun! Drinks were free, which on second thought wasn't such a great thing for yours truly, but more on that later. First time I had go pee I ended up downstairs in the non-vip area where is was crowded as fuck, I nearly tripped over some stairs, and some guy who helped me up was able to tell me where the toilets were. Made it there safe, hallelujah. As the night wore on and everyone drank more and more, I remember talking to a lot of people, and I'm just now hoping I didn't make a complete fool out of myself because I really shouldn't have drank so much. So around 4:45 I was starting to feel not so great. Sheever was out on the dancefloor somewhere and I had just spend about 15 minutes sitting in the hallway of the ladies bathroom (there was a chair there! Just for me it seemed!) cause it was nice and quiet there. Also, if I did have to throw up at some point I figured the toilets were within reach. When I finally managed to get her attention I made her big sister instincts kick in by proclaiming I wasn't feeling well at all, so together we left. Taxi's were parked right outside so that wasn't a problem. We were in bed by 5:15, and though Sheever told me to "Drink a whole bottle of water Ri!" before we went to bed, I was like yeaaahhh but seriously I felt so queasy I didn't feel like putting anything into my stomach right then. Oh the regret!

So yeah next morning was pure hell. My stomach felt like one ball of pure agony just clenching in on itself again and again. And while I lay on the bed in agony, Sheever went about packing our stuff while singing Rudolp the Rednosed Reindeer (don't ask).

For obvious reasons Sheever was driving, and she dragged us into a McDonalds because according to her I needed fat and salty food. I actually managed a cheeseburger and some nuggets. Didn't feel that much better though the way back, but a little over half way we did switch and I drove the rest home, I think it may have been a good idea to have something else to focus on rather than my stomach.

Overall though, the event was amazing. I just wish there were more awesome events like this in Europe, outside of Dreamhack. I met so many great people and I still remember thinking on Saturday that tomorrow there was going to be ANOTHER DAY just as cool as that one! And just feeling this wave of happiness at the thought. Good times.

I have to add also, that I was really grateful for also receiving a VIP pass, because obviously I'm not. But maybe because of that I appreciated all the more, so thanks ESL dudes!

TL;DR

ESL ONE WAS AWESOME AND I SHOULD DRINK LESS.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Unwanted Visitor

So I live on the 20th floor of an apartment building, and one of the things I like to mention as an upside to living this high up is that there are very few bugs. And this is true, there are fewer bugs this high up, but I still get the occasional bug, and boy was I rudely reminded of that yesterday.

I was lying on my bed, reading, and it was getting late. My french balcony doors were open because it was hot out, and we'd had a beautiful sunset earlier. Since it was still light out when I'd lain down to read, I only had my nightlight on and so when I decided to get up and get ready for bed it was pretty dark. The doors were still open and there was a beautiful pink glow from where the sun had set earlier, that I decided to take a closer look at. So I walked over to the balcony, admired the view for a bit, and then brushed what I thought was a stray hair out of my face. Newsflash: it was not hair.

The moment I realized it was some sort of big bug entangling itself with my hair I freaked the fuck out. Shaking out my hair and sprinting for the light switch because I couldn't see shit!

I walked back carefully to find that a freaking SPIDER had tried to land on my head.  I get the chills just writing this down. I TOUCHED IT. IT TOUCHED ME. It took me a while to get my bearings. It had been hanging by a thread from the ceiling, but all my jumping around probably changed its mind and it was now back up there, rubbing his legs in glee! I could SEE it!

That dude was going down.

Okay I have to be honest I took the time to cuss at my boyfriend for not being there when obviously there were some boyfriendly duties to be performed, and I also took pics for evidence.

BEHOLD:





I realize from this picture he looks kinda tiny, but I assure you he was anything but! Here where I live we are used to getting the spiders with the superskinny legs and like a tiny round brown dot for a body, this guy was something altogether different. At least for me. 

Okay so one thing was utterly clear to me: I had to get rid of it. I took a tissue, climbed up onto a chair and got in his face with it. This was about the time that I found out I was quite reluctant to stick my hand out toward it, never mind touch it (again!). It was also moving around restlessly with its spiderlegs, and that unnerved me. Maybe it was one of those jumping spiders, and for a second I flashed back to some youtube video I saw once where a guy is up on a chair in a similar position I was in, (only yeah, his spider was much bigger) and the moment he goes for it the spiders hops right onto his face. I COULD NOT GET THAT IMAGE OUT OF MY HEAD. So I stood there whimpering for a bit and decided that no, this was not the way.

I decided to capture it instead. I got out a glass and a postcard, and went at it the old fashioned do-gooder way. I almost smashed the glass on the ceiling getting him in, and I nearly cut off one of its legs getting the card under, but I wasn't feeling remorseful.

So now I had this:






He was not happy about being in that glass. Kept trying to find a way out. Go figure. I seriously considered just leaving it in there until it died, I just really did NOT want it out of the glass, and I had all kind of scenarios running through my head where I would lift the glass to kill it only to have it escape. In the end I could do neither, and instead held the glass with card still on it over the balcony railing, I shook the glass a bit to make sure he was sitting at the bottom, then removed the card and quickly turned it around and shook it out. When I next looked it was gone, and I sincerely hope he fell down 20 stories. Pretty sure he'd survive that, too, look at me being all magnanimous, I am a merciful god.

I did however, have an irrational fear of some breeze having picked him up and dropping him right back in my room, so I searched the floor and the doorposts for a bit. Didn't see him though, and I hope never to see him again. Even just looking at that picture gives me the chills! I can't believe he landed on my HEAD.

Please never again.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Derangement

Why is it that every time I go to the bank to deposit money (and I don't do that often) the bank always has some kind of outage going on which means the deposit machines don't work. And by always I mean the last two times I went. But still, those were like half a year apart, just my luck. Today's bank manager even had such a compelling story that I left feeling sorry for him rather than indignant anger at my own failed request. Go figure.

Monday, January 27, 2014

A Humble Request


I want a beach and I want palm trees and I want a nice view of the ocean. I want a swimming pool because although the beach is nice to look at I don't particularly want to swim in it. I want a swimming pool because I can see the bottom and there are no jelly fish. I want nice chairs around the pool for lounging, and I don't want to have to worry about other people stealing my lounge chair. I want soothing music in the background and a tropical breeze. I want a cloudless sky and I don't want any children screaming or crying, in fact, I don't want any children there at all. I want a buffet style dinner setup and I want it every day. For breakfast too. I want the food to be of great quality and variety, I want drinks alcoholic and normal to be available every second of every day. I want the other guests to behave. I want a clean room and bath, with no cracks in the tiles and no insects. I want a soft mattress, but not too soft. I want a balcony with a view. It would also be nice if all participants are in a nice mood for the full duration of their stay.


One can get so demanding when browsing travel agency websites.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Inevitables

Realizing once again that finding a really good book is both a blessing and a curse. I love reading it, and therefore am unable to put it down. I try to read every spare minute I have, and am usually only half there when I'm not engrossed in the story. Yet after it's over I drop right into that after-book-depression-hole and linger for awhile. Ain't nothing I can do about it neither.