The First Semester (in an eggshell)

Summer has begun, which means that my first semester has finished. It seems too soon for reminiscing, but last week, as I watched a bio-artist tear the head off an almost fully-developed chicken embryo, I knew this semester had been something special.

The compulsory class I took was simply a lot of theoretical reading and not so interesting to me. I guess it was good background, (by which I mean, I will forget it all very quickly). The other course, (As I wrote about a few months back) however, was extremely interesting. See, most of the time when you sign up for a course, you do it because you want to learn more about a certain subject. It increases the depth of knowledge about something by a small fraction.

This course was about an aspect of art I knew nothing about. It was like discovering a magical closet in my room that goes into Narnia, except with weirder shit inside.

I now know about artists growing tissue into a leather jacket, a guy who inserted his DNA into the veins of a petunia flower, a guy who is campaigning to the Dutch royal family to allow him to engineer an orange pheasant for the royal family to hunt... lots of things that can only be described as "weird shit".

I even met some of these artists. The problem with studying art history, as one of them pointed out, is that most artists we study are dead. (or maybe this makes it easier as they can't argue your points. You see, since I got help for my final essay from the artist I am writing about, he asked me to send a copy of it when I'm done. I don't want to! It's like censorship.)

I went to a few different conferences and talks in the field of "bioart", and it was an experience. One artist, while she was speaking, wore an ironing board with a plant on it, connected with tubes to her nose to reduce her carbon emission. She made her point about "carbon guilt", but she kept it on for the next 3 hours, while listening to the other speakers, as if this is what she always wears. SHE WAS WEARING A PLANT! That's not normal!

Another speaker happened to be who I am writing about for my final essay for the course. In a nutshell, he goes around the world and collects tadpoles and frogs and documents the deformed ones. (Huh, that is basically my whole essay reduced to one sentence). He spoke a little bit, and then, like Oprah's car giveaways, he brought out a bunch of aquariums filled with tadpoles, and he gave a spoon to everyone. No, we weren't going to eat them, but we were supposed to help identify if they had any abnormal limb-growths. The first one I checked had three legs! I had found my first tripod! Aren't I lucky? So yeah.

Another speaker (the pheasant guy), joined a class, and the end-of-semester dinner. I have no way to explain him, so instead, I will write down some of the notes I wrote while listening:

• "humane sacrifice"
• "brainus" lollipop (a portmanteau word of brain and anus)
• "Mouse brain attenna"
• "around your anus like a circus" (I forget the context of this)
• "interspecies-hereditary-expressionism"
  

The point is: weird shit.

Then was the workshop in the university laboratories where we injecting salmon semen into chicken embryos. Yes. And, no, I don't know why. I mean, I am an art history student, so of course I know why. I just am not going to tell you and look suave with my hand-made bow tie. So, this artist was showing everyone how to take a fertilised egg and open a hole in it without killing the chicken so we could look at it, and douse it with salmon semen. Then we could close it up and incubate it and see our creations. Although, legally we would not be allowed to let them hatch anyway. But we could imagine chickens that swim upstream, and that's the beauty of it.

So, he tried showing how to open the egg, using an egg fertilised 4 days earlier (they hatch at 21 days). It just looked like a normal egg. He cracked open another one. Nothing. Then he took out an egg from another carton. It was 17 days old. Even he looked nervous about this. He opened up a window, and the other teacher shreeked, "oh my god, it's still moving!" Uh oh...

It was like that scene at the start of Jurassic Park where the scientist is helping a dinosaur come out of it's egg while Sam Neill looks on in horror. You monstor! The egg was broken too much to be closed up again, and soon the gloopy embryo with a moving 17-day old almost fully-formed fetus was sitting in a peitrie dish.

"Now what do we do?" He asked us, and he was totally serious. Some girls were all "We have to save it! Put it in the incubator! One actually took matters into her own hands and put it there. Most people were all "We have to kill it humanely!). So right there, we had an urgent ethical/moral discussion, which lasted about half an hour and culminated in a vote. 6:12 in favour of putting it down.

But then, who was going to do the deed? And how? By now the embryo had stopped moving, and was probably dead, maybe. But we had to make sure it wouldn't just die slowly in a paper-waste basket. Unable to come to a concensus, the artist/teacher tore the head off, in a feat of immense strength. Classy.

Then most of the class continued the salmon-injecting into the younger embryos. (note, only a small percentage of the class comes from an art background.) The details I loved most about the aftermath were:

1. To show respect, a piece of foil was placed over the beheaded embyos eyes.
   
2. The artist/teacher asked a girl to demonstrate the salmon-semen injection by volunteering himself.
3. Seeing an egg-yolk with a tiny beating heart.
4. Naming her "Yokey".
   
5. The same girl who put the 17-day old embryo in the incubator took it away to dissect it.
   

The point is, again: Weird shit. I don't know whether all of this art is 'good art', but I now know that it exists. I think I understand a lot of what the artists are trying to do, and I believe that they mean well. At the least, it was incredibly interesting, raising questions within bioart, but also general artistic, ethical, aesthetical and practical questions. It was rare experience where in the space of a few months, an entirely new field was opened up to me, and I frolicked through them, picked some flowers and stayed a while. It has been a good first semester.

Half-Update:

Most marathon events take pictures and try to rip you off by selling them for upwards of 8 Euro. I could get these low res images, which is enough. The only regret about the resolution is that you cannot see my awful moustache.
The funny thing is how the company that takes these pictures is called "actie foto". Haha, look, I ran in the half-marathon, and I can attest that it is anything but "action-packed."
Please, do not look directly my competitor's package. Because that's exactly what they expect!


This was just at the finish line, and instead of sprinting the last few hundred metres, I decided to enjoy the atmosphere, looking out of the side-window. (unlike the guy on the right. Settle down man... If you used your brain for just one second, you have no chance at winning!)
It's amazing how much faster I look than all these old-guys around me, and the guy with the flappy feet... And yet, I wasn't. Amazing!
If you look behind me, you'll see that Lemony Snickets is sneaking up on me...

That is all.

The half marathon...

I ran a half marathon 4 years ago. It was an innocent time. I joined the university running club for a 10-week training program. It basically was a running group that went running together 3 times per week, and recommended we ran at least once more on Sunday. I had never been a long distance runner, although I was reasonably fit due to playing a lot of basketball. However, the first few weeks of the training program... Running when you are unfit is like playing an out-of-tune guitar: It just is not fun. But there were girls there (including two flatmates), so I couldn't exactly complain or stop running. Fear of revealing you are a loser: the ultimate incentive...

So it went on, and slowly something changed. I couldn't quite pinpoint it. It almost felt like I was looking forward to going for runs. I was almost enjoying going running. Moreover, I was playing much better basketball. I was eating more, which I really enjoyed. And I was getting only A's at school... (okay, that last one has nothing to do with running, but I still wanted to remind everyone how awesome I was... I know, what happened? Look at me now!)

After 10 weeks, I felt incredibly fit, and I ran the crap out of the Christchurch half marathon. Most people had trouble climbing stairs afterward, but when I finished, I felt an uncontrollable urge to play some basketball. However, once the goal of running a marathon is gone, the urge to go running dissipated. (They did give out a brochure to the Melbourne marathon, but I was not that enslaved). Still, running a half marathon was something I definitely wanted to try again.

The Nelson half marathon was lame and just a cross-country run, so I flagged that, and I wanted to run one in Japan (just so I could stand a head taller than everyone else at the start-line) but my basketball team took priority over the marathon dates. (I ruined about three new years resolutions on this goal) Now, in Holland, with my incredibly sparse schedule, I had no excuse anymore. I committed to the Leiden half-marathon, in the form of 15 Euro. (Amusingly, some people expressed surprise that it costs money to take part in a running event... "they would have to pay me to get me to run 20 km!")

So, the weather in Holland became running-friendly 8 weeks before the Leiden Marathon. That was shorter than I hoped. Still, I went for my first run and hated it. The first run is never fun. But I kept going in the knowledge that it does get better. It is like living with a conjoined fetus.

The best thing about running is the exploration. I mean, these last 8 weeks I have seen so much more of the scenery in my area than I ever would have otherwise (in a 7km radius). People nowadays have such a distorted sense of distance, because they never feel it with their feet. And people underestimate how far you can run. I've ran through all the nearby towns, passed several windmills, about 10 churches, crossed hundreds of little bridges, seen hundreds of cute dogs, I've ran through and got lost in a gated community more than once, I've ran through sand dunes, I've been places that otherwise I'd never even want to go, hundreds of thousands of footsteps, I know the area as well as a counter-terrorist.

Okay, so maybe my total running time over the 8 weeks only amounted to just over 24 hours. But I was feeling pretty good about my chances to beat my previous time of 96 minutes. I mean, check out the photo- You could not tell this guy that he isn't serious. In fact, I dare you to.
This was actually to make fun of the other competitors. You may remember my rant at the Rotterdam marathon about all the competitors wearing ball-hugging tights, turning it into a "package-measuring contest". Well, I decided that a marathon event can be described as: "A gathering of good-looking people in horrible looking clothes". Seriously, besides the tights, you won't have seen as much fluoro colours since the 80's. So I proudly wore my handle-bars (a "dirty sanchez", if you will), a headband and super-reflective aviator glasses to display the fashion sense of the biker from The Village People. No-one said anything about it, or even laughed at me, which I found hilarious: This uniform allowed me to blend into the marathon community! Amazing!

Earlier, when I said that exploring was the best part about running, I lied. The best part: carbo-loading! oh man, an excuse to eat as much a humanly and humanely possible! It makes it all worthwhile. The day before going the half-marathon, instead of running I stayed at home and ate enough food to make an entire Ethiopian family hate me. It was awesome!

Unfortunately, unlike the Rotterdam 10K I ran in, I did not bring my camera along for the run. It was a miserable day. The start was at the exact centre of Leiden: A relatively narrow street, filled with people. Seriously, it was a bottle-neck for the first 8km. It was so busy that it was impossible to get into your own rythm. You would have to run at the speed of the people infront, until you spot a gap to dart through, and you'd have to slow up again.

The course led south into the next town of Zoeterdorp, and through to Voorschoten before veering back north. A brass band was playing at each major interval, so we could listen to 20 seconds of cheerful music. There were at least four brass bands along the course, and about 8 rock/pop bands. One was a tent erected outside of someone's farmhouse. They could have been playing "guitar hero" for all I know. Still, it was appreciated.

The splits along the way worried me. The clocks and distances told me that I was going much slower than I expected to. I felt the goal of 96 minutes slipping away from me. After the halfway point, the crowd had thinned enough for me to concentrate on my own speed, which was nice. And the sun came out for the last 20 minutes, as came into the home-stretch and re-entered the town of Leiden. The photo above is one of the city walls that we ran though. There was an angry-chick-rock-band playing, and tents selling beer.

And... over the line... Here is an actual video of my spectacular finish.
http://www.racetimer.se/nl/runner/show/513718?race_id=193&layout=racetimer_eu

Yes, that video proves that long-distance running is possibly the most boring spectator sport ever. I crossed the line, got a medal, a cup of water, an energy drink, a piece of fruit and.... a beer. A beer? How awesome is that! It would have tasted awesome if it werent for that god-awful energy drink, but it's the thought that counts, and the thought of getting beer after doing a half-marathon is awesome.

My time was 104 minutes. I ran the first half 2 minutes faster than the second, so I wouldn't have made it under three digits. Maybe I should have trained for ten weeks. Maybe I should have carbo-loaded more. Maybe I shouldn't have drank 2 nights earlier. Maybe I should have shaved off my handle-bars to save on wind resistance. But the more I thought about it, the more I miss basketball. At the time of my marathon in Christchurch, I was playing basketball at least 4 times per week- ontop of running. I always thought that running helped my basketball, but now I think my basketball helped my running.

It still feels wierd for me to be physically tired without having dribbled a basketball, or chased some kind of object. Running in itself is great, but is not enough for me. It was ironic then, that my singlet I was wearing for the half-marathon was my old basketball team singlet. One day I will make a new years resolution to run another half-marathon to beat my old time, but I vow to always make time to dribble a basketball too.

One final not about my time. I know I was disappointed at my time, but I think the real reason for it is that the marathon organisers measured the track wrong. Look closely at the medal... Yes, that is a comma! That explains everything: I ran 21097 kilometres. Of course it took me a few more minutes to complete the course. I had just ran over half the circumference of the entire world! So, my average running speed was 12171kmph. I am redeemed!

Running Out of Time

You may recall me stating my intentions to run in the Leiden Half Marathon, and I still intend on going through with it. After Queen's day hangovers, I fell ill for a few days, and missed out on going for a run for more than a week. Basically, my previous 6 weeks of training had been put to waste, and I have one week left. I was hoping that by the time the day came, I would be very fit, and it would be more like a Sunday afternoon run. No, the half-marathon has become a proverbial marathon...

This can only mean one thing: I need a montage.


It really is like I am in a lame movie script. (You have one week to train for the half marathon, or else the evil alien overlord Gorthax will control the last piece of the glipthion key which would give him ultimate world domination, but you cannot reveal this to your reporter love-interest Suzy-Blue to protect her, but she follows you one evening while training and discovers the truth, so my only hope is to run the best half-marathon I possibly can to forever obliterate the glipthion key, destroy Gorthax and his evil empire, and finish the film having won the affection of Suzy-Blue, because now she practically has to.)

My point is, this is the busiest month for me, probably of the whole year. On top of my marathon montage, I also need three "essay writing montages", "preparing for an open-mic comedy night routine montage" and hundreds of "reading book montages"... I'm so busy that I have quit working (well, I have turned off my cellphone in case my pimp calls me).

This busyness is especially shocking when you consider the contrast with my life up till a few weeks ago. The running joke in my apartment was asking me if I had class. The two responses to my answers would be
A) "oh, that's unusual."
B) "Of course you don't have class."

Bastards. Of course, I have only two more classes until my 3 month summer holidays. Would it be wrong to feel like I have deserved it? Ask me next month.

An Orange Day Turned Black

For those who don't follow the news or live in Holland, you might not have heard about it, but there was an assassination attempt on the Queen, at the Queen's Day Celebrations when a guy ploughed through a crowd in a small Suzuki apparently aiming for the bus carrying the Royal Family. Here is a pretty comprehensive news article, but be warned that the images are quite shocking.

Usually I don't follow the news closely. It gets depressing, unless it is reported by Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart (and there is no way I could make anything from the news even fractionally as entertaining as them, so I wouldn't try), and luckily, the news doesn't seem to affect me much. I mean, the weather presumably affects me, but I don't go to the theatre, I don't think there is an election coming up that I can vote in, I don't follow sports other than NBA, Garfield just isn't as funny as it used to be, and the only stocks I have are water-soluble.

After my bold statement from Wednesday that "I have been waiting for [Queen's Day] my whole life", I knew something had to go wrong. I just presumed it would be something more like sharting myself in public and trying to clean it up before anyone noticed, not a ridiculous and tragic national event. But no, I woke up already hung over on preliminary celebrations on Queen's morning, and my flatmates already had the TV on. It was full-time news coverage of the event. The only other times I can remember this type of news coverage was a few months ago when that Turkish Airlines plane crashed near Schiphol Airport (close to where I'm living... Thanks for everyone calling me to see if I was okay...), the US election nights (although they weren't technically disasters... Well, 2000 and 2004 may be considered that way), the start of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Twin Towers attack.

The point is, in light of these comparisons, I am dissappointed at the sensationalist media, and the then necessary over-reaction of the Royal family and the Minister of Parties. (Oh yes, Holland has a minister of parties. It's like the official Van Wilder of the nation.) They cancelled Queen's day celebrations in several towns. Of course, there were already about 1,000,000 drunk people in Amsterdam, and I'd hate to be the one to tell them that they couldn't party, so instead, they cancelled the evening programs there too, out of respect to the victims.

Yes, it sucks for the victims and everyone in the town of Apeldoorn where it happened. But it was clear early on that this was an isolated event, and the rest of Holland was in no (extra) danger. In the end, 6 people died including the driver, (Which is lucky for him, as otherwise he could possibly have been "The Worlds Biggest Party Pooper" and definitely the "Most Hated Man in Holland".) My point is, I think the only reason the party was pooped was because the Royal Family "saw" it happening. And the cameras saw them seeing it happening. If a car had driven through somebodies living room and killed a family, it would just be a footnote in the paper and a short documentary a few months later. This was hyper-news because there were camera's everywhere (it was internationally news-worthy), and the Royals were nearby. The Royal Family was emotionally scarred, and the mayor and politicians and Prime Minister and milked the opportunity to be sympathetic. It's truly awful for the victims, but I don't think it helps that this news is everywhere, and that they were used for the aftermath politics.
Where was the US-style response: "Don't let the terrorists win!"? or the English response: "Win, lose, we booze"? Where was the Dutch response: "I'll give up, just wait three days."

And what a shame it was. My first Queen's day was officially the worst one ever. It is supposed to be the day where absolutely everyone is in a good mood. I was told it would be like if Holland won the World Cup- and there weren't any sports-haters, immigrants and supporters of other countries. Orange everywhere, at all hours of the morning, day and night, and everyone in a great mood.

Due to the politics, the nearby markets were called off, but I still went to Amsterdam and walked up and down the crazy busy streets wearing my colours, as many people were. It was reasonably fun, I guess. The best part was definitely before I went home and I needed to go to the toilet. "Need" is not an understatement. It was amazing. It's just a shame that Queen's Day was memorable for a relatively banal bodily function.

I hope I haven't been too insensitive, but surely I haven't been any less insensitive than the media and politics. So, I'm dissappointed on three levels. I guess my only consolidation is that the Queen didn't get her parade, and we didn't get our Queen's day. My true first Queen's day will have to wait another year.



Ooh, I forgot to mention that Princess Di's funeral was also a TV "news" marathon "event", even in New Zealand. WE HAD TWO TV CHANNELS IN NZ AT THE TIME! Okay, that was more ridiculous than this lame assaniation attempt. I was only about 10 when Princess Di got buried, and I was thinking "hurry up and play the Elton John song and put that box in the ground already!" I was more worried about who was going to pick up those damn flowers. Seriously, that was a low-point in TV history. And here, I don't care too much if I was being insensitive then, or now. Sorry, I feel that I needed to end this post with some justifiable negativity after some dubious negativity.

Anyway, Viva La Queen! See you next year!