Lithiumstate

I’m not dead (yet) just extremely busy lately so haven’t had the time to update the blog as much as I want to (like at least every week . .) This morning was no exception; woke up and had to rush trough my usual morning routine, but I did hear the news on the radio stating that my country annualy spends 4.7 billion Euro’s for the development of poor countries. Damn ! That’s alot of money. But I didn’t think much of it at the tme. Fast forward 40 minutes in time and I’m standing at the train station … just like i’ve done the last two months I took a glance at the train shedule and noted that mine had the same daily delay , instead of 10 it was 15 minutes this time tough. With the usual sigh I walk past the train platforms to take the same, reliable metro i’ve been using instead of the train since the last two months. It was then that it hit me ; 4.7 billion Euro’s on the development of _other_ countries whilst our own public transport infrastucture sucks complete ass ? Damnit ! I got angry , knowing that that money would instantly solve our shitty train network. (tough Metro is fine, that doesn’t have inter-city capability which we often need in a country the size of mine) I do remember the short explanation on the radio saying that by some international law we’re abided to spend a certain percentage of the country’s treasury to the development of lesser countries. Makes me wonder how many countries including mine, have been doing this for how many years now and we structurally don’t see much happening in the 3rd world countries in the sense of massive improvements.  The funds we donate seem to be devidied between target countries, an example was given that Suriname only receives 4.6 million euro’s which is peanuts on an annual basis to do some structural good. Isn’t it better to focus all that money into a single country so that massive scale things can be one before moving on to the next ? I know change is a slow bitch but ah well.

In other news, I’ve been inspired by Alan from www.shibuya246.com (if you haven’t checked that out by now go click that link now; even more if your interested in Japan/Tokyo) to start my own weekly photo series; tough isntead of Tokyo it’ll be Amsterdam (i’ll happily trade tough) and instead of Conibini Mondays I’ll have to figure something else out that’ll be nice. But yeah .. expect to see something about that in the days to come.

Coming home from a long hard day at the office I was pleasantly surprised by a certain box the mailman delivered.
I knew who it was from and what was in it and proceeded to strip the box of it’s protective tape to get to the goodies inside. And oh my ! What goodies we have here ! This you see is a “Conbini box” it’s a little project started by the author of Shibuya 246 ; a website you definitly have to bookmark if you love Tokyo. One of the featured series of articles there is the “Conbini monday” where the author Alan; a person who’s been living in Shibuya for the past 20 years trodds in a typical Tokyo convienance store with his camera to show us the wonderfull,crazy,fun and plain yummy experimental food you can get there.

As around any good site online; a strong-growing community of Japan-o-philes from all over the world formed. And before long the idea was offered up to start sending out packages of bliss to the community. So here it is !
If you want your own conbini box, I suggest becomming part of the Shibuya 246 community; as this will (if all things go allright) be a monthly  (non-profit)  event. Again; I cannot thank Alan enough for his time and patience with setting up the Conbini box project. Honto ni arigatou gozaimashita !  – OH. I’ll leave you guys with some more awesome pics. Had to do that before starting eating y`know :)

Winter came quick and hard in December 2009 for us Dutch people. They say that we’ve never seen as much snow for the past 35 years- woah ! And alot of snow it was indeed. I don’t mind snow myself you know, or the cold; I’ve always been resistant to the cold to a great degree but what i absolutely hate – is when trodden snow becomes ice on the streets and then the slippery slidey journey to and from work starts. I simply hate it, no longer can i sleep till the last second to make a run for the bus as i’d fall on my feet if I didn’t move like a snail. Going out drunk is a definite no-no and it’s just a complete hassle to move around in, especially when you carry a lot of (expensive) daily gear you definitly don’t wanna fall with.
Quite to the contrast with cars, cars are fine. Our roads are salted daily in the winters so usually you don’t see a spec of white on our roads and cars can cruise about their usual speed; whilst the poor pedestrians like me have to slide left and right with fear of falling down. Why the hell can’t they salt the pedestrian roads too , just hte main ones offcourse. It shouldn’t be that hard a task really as the main pedestrian roads are neatly lined up next to the car roads here.

The last few days it hasn’t snowed anymore, and thank god for that. I’ve already reached my breaking point last week when both public and regular transport were frozen to a standstill, and I was forced to walk 2 hours home trough a snow blizzard; needless to say I was sick the next morning.  Oh well, at least i’ve taken a few winter snaps last weekend; that’ll be the last of the winter snaps you`ll see from me for quite a while – this guy is staying inside this winter and giving his console gaming some much needed love haha !