The Best Week of Music

Four months ago, I wrote this glowing review about seeing my favourite band play live. It was Groundation's first performance in The Netherlands, and only four months later, I was able to see them for their second Dutch performance. This time, in Den Haag. It was in a small-ish music hall, or as optomistic musicians who can't sell out big concerts like to call it "an intimate audience". Among the spectators was my own father. Awesome. I was converting my dad to a Groundation faithful. On the one hand, I feel lucky to see this band before they make it big, but on the other hand, it is such a shame that such good reggae music goes on largely unnoticed, while only four days later in Amsterdam, a giant reggae festival is going to have thousands of fans.

Of course, I will be among these thousands of fans. Are you kidding me? Let's give you a quick run-down of this line-up.

Shabba Ranks: Not exactly my style, but he is a classic voice in the early reggae-Dance hall transition.

Jah Cure: A cult-figure in reggae, and justifiably with a voice like this.


Serani: I didn't know him before, but this track is pretty sweet.

Tanya Stephens: A big up and comer, with an original sound and as reggae people call it "conscious sound". I am not exaclty sure what that means, but I pretty sure this song has it.


Richie Spice: In March, I went to what I then thought was a big reggae concert, and Richie Spice was the headline act. I thought the concert was then worth it, and this time, he is the 4th act I want to see. Although in March he was a bit of a let-down. I mean, he couln't even hit many of his own high notes. Maybe he wasn't entirely conscious. So I am hoping he sing his boots off and earn back my respect, because his songs deserve them.

Maikel X: I saw him before at Park Pop while I was dressed as MJ, and being a locally based-artist, he is the the weak link in this line-up. But good for him.

Duane Stephenson: Another new-up-and-comer singing true roots reggae. I have been listening to him a lot recently, so this is exciting. He also appears to be "conscious" in this song:


The ony problem is, with such a huge line-up, and a huge night ahead, I hope I can be conscious myself for the entire night. If I can, it will easily have been the biggest week of music of my life.

Farewell Giselle

Giselle

Feb 2009 - 15 October 2009

It's never easy when you lose something important to you. But at the same time, you try your best to deal with it, knowing that good things are supposed to end. I always knew this time would come, but it is still difficult when it is taken from you. It doesn't seem fair, when it really nothing could be more fair. It happens to everybody.

My bike, beloved Giselle, was stolen from me after I locked it up at the station last Thursday morning. Bikes in Holland are very frequently stolen; they are more contagious than an STI. I kind of expected it to get stolen this year, which is why I got a cheap bike, but I was still careful to always lock her up. It is sad to lose my bike. Of course, I am not really talking about my bike.

But let's talk about my bike. This was our last adventure together.

Okay, it was Saturday night after 3am, and I was... No, let's phrase this more carefully: I had been drinking. It was a party in town. I was coming home by bike, and I was needing to cross through to the other side of the station. For the purposes of a visual aid to the story, I will include a map.


View Larger Map
Starting from the bottom of the map, I was biking up towards the station (the large white building at the top-left.) However, as I entered the map, a sporty white car came out of the side street from the right. Giselle no longer has a working light, but then, in Holland almost everyone's light is broken, and this was a well-lit and relatively busy street, even at this early morning hour. However, the car didn't stop for me, and I had right-of-way. However, as I say, "right-of-way means very little when you are in hospital." I swerved to the left, and avoided driving straight into the driver's door. But my pedal hit and scraped against the front bumper of the car. Yes, I had officially been in a car-to-bike crash. I didn't fall off, and Giselle had suffered no damage, but I was pretty pissed-off.

Maybe in retrospect, I was acting. Maybe I was just relieved to have avoided a potentially bad crash. And I probably shouldn't have tried to be so tough. But in the moment, I was pretty pissed-off and I gave that driver of the car an earful. It probably contained many words of an offensive nature. It was also in free-flowing angry English, which I'd like to think sounds much more threatening to a Dutch person who would understand most of it, but be unable to reply.

Feeling better, I continued to bike on up the road toward the station. That's when I observed the same car coming up behind me with the lights on full. Shit. About where the "Paviljoenshof" is on the map, I ducked through a small gap onto the footpath to get out of the car's way and let it pass. I biked slowly to let the car go by, but it drove up further onto the pedestrian crossing and onto the wide pedestrian area in front of the station. The car was facing me. It was staring me down.

Shit.

I had pissed the guy off. And let's, for a moment, consider what kind of person drives around the city centre in a flashy car after 3am in the morning. I won't draw any conclusions, but surely you know of similar people in your home town.

This is where all my years of movie-watching paid off. I tore off a chapter from the Bourne Identity, and started biking towards the car, swerved to its left, over the pedestrian crossing and back onto the road. The car was turning around like a slow dinosaur, unable to keep up with my agility. I then quickly turned back towards the station entrance, through the sliding doors and inside. I knew there are cameras there, and also security guards late at night, especially on weekends. I was safe... Also, the station has a back entrance where it is difficult for cars to get to. I simply biked through to the other side and biked home.

I doubt the guy (and I vaguely remember there maybe being a girl in the passenger seat) was actually going to try run me over (because cyclists make dents), but he may have wanted to get out of the car and fight me with more than just words. I say this because I heard a similar story where a car driver got out and ran to try and fight a cyclist he almost hit.

It was a close call, because let's be honest, I couldn't fight my way out of a roomful of newborn puppies. But I am grateful that Giselle was there for me in my time of need, and did everything asked of her. And I will always have stories like this to remember her by. And that is something that noone can take from me.

Happy Leidse Omzet!

This last weekend was the biggest festival day in Leiden, celebrating the hard-won independence from Spain. However, after the last "biggest event of the year" was spoilt after me getting prematurely excited about it, this time I had no expectations. And when you don't have expectations, you should expect great things.

So, on Friday the 2nd of October- the biggest party night, I was busy not expecting anything when my flatmate said- "Hey Ruben, you like cooking, it's the 2nd of October, do you want to make "Hutspot" for us... for 6...8 people?"
I said "Sure... What's hutspot?"



It's basically just mashed potato with onion and carrot. There were some crates of beer, and so, the night organically grew into a great night out. After eating (and drinking) in, we headed into town, which had transformed into a giant carnival and festival with rides, games, outdoor beer vendors, thousands upon thousands of people (sometimes literally), drinking on the streets and in the canals on boats, and outdoor DJs. One of the DJ events we went to was on a small barge in the water, from which many people peed off. Again, I will not divulge whether I partook in this ages-old Leidse tradition, but I will say that it was awesome. The whole night was.

I was in such a good mood that it felt like New Years. But instead of saying "Happy New Year" to all the strangers, I adapted the saying to "Happy Leidse Omzet!" I now know that it is actually "ontzet", but I don't think it mattered much. Most people didn't understand what they were supposed to say back to me. So, after some trial and error and persistence, I adapted it to "Happy Leidse Omzet, WOO!", which got a more-or-less desired result ("Woo").

Actually, after a getting home and spending a full day hung over, we all finished the beer and had another night out in town. Rinse and repeat. The two nights melted into one weekend of pure awesomeness.

I know, this post isn't really leading to a point, but I promise it is leading to something much better: a compromising photograph of myself as a visual representation of how great the weekend was. It was at 4:30 AM after the first night. I had gotten home, and had finished chatting and sobering up with the others who had made it home. This photo shows where I took a rest at the halfway point between my living room couch to my bedroom. I wasn't actually sleeping; I was more "doing a David Hasselhof".

In all fairness, the photo probably looks worse than it is... Anyway, here you are.
Happy Leidse Omzet everyone!

...

Woo!